[Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

Thu Jun 29 01:34:20 UTC 2006

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On 6/28/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> However, I like numbers... they can mislead but they can also be food
>> for thought. Keep in mind we don't current recommend that anyone use
>> the email this user to contact inactive uploaders simply because few
>> of the images which are eligible for deletion have a confirmed user.
>>
>> There were 57,472 images uploaded to enwiki in march.
>> *21,000 come from uploaders with confirmed emails.
>> *36,472 come from uploaders without confirmed emails
>>
>> There were 30,981 total images deleted on enwiki in march.
>> *5,149 were uploaded by users who had confirmed emails.
>> *25,832 were uploaded by users who did not have confirmed emails.
>>
>> I think the policy makes sense based both on my experience and based
>> on the numbers.
>
> So about 40% of useful contributions come from users without confirmed
> emails, and we would be throwing them away ?

That's only if you assume that all of these users, who previously 
haven't been required to have a confirmed email, would obstinately 
refuse to do so once it becomes a requirement for uploading images. 
Common sense, and actual experience with the experiment to halt article 
creation by unregistered users on the English Wikipedia, suggests that a 
great many of those wanting to accomplish a specific task will take the 
steps necessary to be allowed to do it.

It might be interesting to have a survey of image uploaders and find out 
how many either don't have an email address they can use, or would 
refuse to provide it for this purpose. Then we'd have a better idea of 
what your 40% number really boils down to. But such a survey would be 
most practical for us to conduct...via email.

--Michael Snow