[Foundation-l] Robert Mugabe's daughter - news story originating from Wikipedia?

Fri Mar 30 01:46:32 UTC 2007

On 3/29/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> > We've never demonstrated that turning off anon-page creation made a
> > substantial improvement on enwiki... I wouldn't make claims like yours
> > without seeing it.

Firstly, calling them "anonymous" as we do is silly, and is part of
why some of the people opposed to registration used to complain about
being asked to create accounts... "You want to take my anonymity! I'm
secret!". IP users are far less anonymous than the majority of our
pseudonymous users.

Secondly, there was little effect from disabling IP page creation
because it was IP /page creation/, not IP page /editing/. Creation
does very little damage, and can be evaluated more easily. If an IP
creates an attack page, it'll get deleted (usually).

When crap gets inserted into an existing good article, it's more
likely to slip by. (and then there's articles that are such vandalpits
that they pretty much become sacrifice zones...)

I've never been convinced of the benefits of IP-address editing,
honestly. Our username registration is so easy and lax... there's no
"barrier"... (or at least there had better not be. I tend to assume
everything's like it was a couple years ago, and keep being surprised
to find processcruft...) IP editing also makes licensing issues and
some agreements murkier than it would if they registered for a name
and clicked the 'I have agreed to the terms and conditions' checkbox
at that time (rather than the 'by submitting this, yada yada in the
edit screen). (Note that I said "murkier". I'm not saying anything
against the validity of the current approach.)

The vast majority of vandalism is done by those without an account.
That much we know. It'd be nice if we could research how many useful
contributions have come from IP users in the last couple years. "the
last couple years" being important, because while I know there used to
be a number of good IP contributors, I believe that class of people
generally have accounts these days.

I've drifted off my point. IP page creation has very low damage
potential, so it's not useful to compare it with IP editing. The
cost/benefit ratio of IP editing needs to be evaluated to move
forward.

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]