User:Johantheghost/Log in to edit

I strongly support allowing edits only by logged-in users. Why:


 * We want to allow anyone to edit. Great!  But right now we don't.  Right now, many users get blocked arbitrarily, for no good reason, just 'cos they share an IP with some anon vandals.  (See eg. User_talk:217.33.207.195, and many others.)  With no anon edits, all bans would be by account, and there would be no collateral banning — anyone would truly be able to edit, until they commit serious vandalism.
 * Our registration process is the simplest in the world, and should be no realistic barrier to genuine contributions. If someone is willing to contribute a few hundred words to an article, they should be willing to type say 10 characters for a user name and 8 for a password, which is only required once.
 * There is a lot of IP-address vandalism, mostly casual stuff (eg. "Stan is gay"), usually by kids in schools, who are just doing it to see if they really can. I firmly believe that most of these people wouldn't bother if they had to register.
 * When someone makes a change that is well-intentioned, but which I think is wrong, I want to talk to them about it before I hack all their hard-written text out. (Eg. when someone added a huge and good history blurb to Panama Canal, and I felt it belonged in History of the Panama Canal.)  But if they do it from an IP, you can't talk to them, so you're faced with just taking a hatchet to their work.
 * Wikipedia has been in the news!!! But rather negatively, being accused of slander.  We're getting a reputation for irresponsibility which is largely due to the totally open edit policy, and the high level of vandalism.  Interestingly, the remedy in this case was to disable article creation by IPs; but that wouldn't stop someone editing the JFK article to show that he was assassinated by Johan the Ghost.  I think we could demonstrate greater responsibility by requiring logins for all edits.

I strongly support Wikipedia's core policy of openness. But people, think about it: Wikipedia's registration process is literally the simplest in the world, it literally couldn't be any simpler, and no-one who thinks about it rationally can possibly see it as a serious barrier to making contributions. If you're willing to volunteer a couple of sentences on a topic, you should be willing to type in a logname and password, for cripe's sakes.

In short, I'm for allowing anyone to make edits, but I'm for people taking responsibility for their edits, too — even by just tagging a made-up logname to every change.

Getting me down
The amount of IP-address vandalism is really getting to me. Panama Canal seems to be a huge target, and I have to keep a close eye on it, which detracts from me doing real work on WP; and now that U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program is article du jour, it's getting bombarded too. It's making me wonder whether I can be bothered getting the whole Panama Canal series up to FA status; do I want to deal with the incessant vandalism?

I'd like to thank all those who are helping by reverting this trash; but wouldn't it be better if their energy was being directed into real improvements to the Wiki?

Arguments and rebuttals

 * This is a proposal that is very controversial. Anonymous editing is what allowed wikipedia to become huge like it is. However, statically, anons are usually the vandalizers. BUT THINK ABOUT IT. If you wanted to vandalize, all you have to do is create a user name. Most vandalization would still happen if this proposal went through. MOST of anon editing is NOT vandalism, but are edits that would never happen if it weren't so easy to edit. Vandals are more determined than non-vandal anons, therefore they would GET an SN and still vandalize. Remember that people with user names are more anonymous than IP addresses Fresheneesz 19:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Re "Anonymous editing is what allowed wikipedia to become huge like it is" — no, I disagree. Wikipedia became huge because anyone can edit an article.  What some people don't seem to get is that with this proposal, it will still be true that anyone can edit an article — they will just have to log in first, and then if they vandalise, they can be blocked.  Since no personal information is required to log in, I don't see the problem with this.
 * Re "MOST of anon editing is NOT vandalism" — see Some actual vandalism statistics below; I found that 75% of anon editing is vandalism.
 * Re "MOST of anon editing is ... edits that would never happen if it weren't so easy to edit." Nonsense.  If someone is willing to contribute a few hundred words to an article, they should be willing to type say 10 characters for a user name and 8 for a password, which is only required once.
 * Re "If you wanted to vandalize, all you have to do is create a user name." Under this proposal, with email verification, that would be very hard — once blocked, they're off.
 * Re "user names are more anonymous than IP addresses" — you're missing the point. No-one wants to know who these people are in real life, what sex they are, where they live, etc.  The point is that a logged-in user can be blocked, or talked to on his/her talk page, etc.  You can not do this with an IP address, because one address may be used by many people, or one person may have a different address every time they connect — like me.  I have a different IP address every time 'cos I do most of my surfing wirelessly, at places like Starbucks (I like the coffee.  Sue me).  If I have an ever-changing IP address without even wanting to, then using IPs to track vandals is never going to work.

Allowing anyone to edit is not incompatible with banning anons — unless you're assuming that there is a certain class of human being that is permanently "anon". Requiring people to give a username, password and email (with email verification) just one time is not a big deal by any normal Internet standard. And regardless of the ratio of "good:bad" anon edits, the fact is that there is tremendous vandalism by anons (see some actual statistics), and blocking doesn't work at present because an IP address is not a person. A huge amount of effort is expended by people fighting vandalism (see today's featured article's history page, on any day). Wouldn't that energy be better spent on improving Wikipedia? — Johan the Ghost seance 11:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

We can already talk to / block people by IP
No we can't. Case in point: User_talk:217.33.207.195. Any messages or blocking here go to the wrong people.

Some actual vandalism statistics
U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program has just had its 24 hours on the front page. While I was braced for some vandalism, I wasn't quite prepared for the storm of abuse that followed. In 24 hours on the Wikipedia front page:


 * we had 207 edits
 * 79 were vandalism
 * 86 were reverts / fixes
 * 26 (13%) were useful, constructive changes
 * 16 were non-vandalistic but detrimental changes

Of the vandalism edits:
 * 68 (86%) were from IP-address users
 * 11 were from logged-in users; these were 5 persistent vandals, who have mostly been blocked

Of the constructive edits:
 * 7 (27%) were from IP-address users

Of the non-vandalistic but detrimental edits:
 * 9 (56%) were from IP-address users

I calculate that the article was in a vandalised state for over 48 minutes, which means that 3.3% of people visiting Wikipedia for the first time and clicking on "Today's featured article" would have been presented with a giant picture of a penis, or something similar.

I'm grateful to the many people who helped to police the page and keep it clean — for most of the time. What a shame that all that effort couldn't have been directed into cleaning up articles, starting wanted articles, fixing POV issues, etc.