The discussion regarding the former text of this policy, Wikipedia:Prohibit AOL users from editing has been archived and moved to Wikipedia talk:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs/AOL Prohibition as the discussion was not relevant to the current text of the policy. If you feel a matter discussed on that page needs to be discussed further, please bring it up on the current discussion page.
The text of the proposal has now changed quite substantially from its previous version. Seventeen users voiced support for the precious version while eleven commented that they did not support the policy. The suggestions from that discussion have now been incorporated into the current proposal; however, it is still requested that you comment on what you do / do not approve of within the proposal, as well as if you would support or oppose a policy to this effect. Please make suggestions for improvement as well as arguments for and against the proposal. Thanks. AmiDaniel ( Talk) 06:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Jedi6's second comment. I haven't seen enough drastic vandalism from AOL IPs to think that this is policy would really be necessary. Whatever vandalism AOLers commit can be easily handled by people on RC patrol or by Tawkerbot2. It's not bad enough that we need to go against the fundamental principle of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Hbackman 06:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
This goes against one of the Foundation issues: the "Ability of anyone to edit articles without registering". Simply un-wiki, and not necessary. Agree with Jedi6, there just is just too much collateral damage and not enough provocation.-- Here T oHelp 12:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Can you block an ISP or you have to block their IP addresses? Because if you can block the ISP when the users aren't logged in it would be a pretty useful tool without even thinking about blocking IPs that could be used by other users. 132.204.207.108 13:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal only insofar as it relates to AOL. While I agree that this could prevent some legitimate users from editing without registering, the fact is that it's plain for anyone to see that we get a VAST amount of vandalism from AOL IPs, far more than we get helpful edits, many would say, and do to AOL's dynamic IP allocation, we really have few options to deal with it as of right now. -- InShaneee 16:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Why not try the proposed restrictions for a period of a month or so and see what the results are?? If the result is a serious downturn in vandalism then go for it, if this creates a lot of noise without a serious reduction in vandalism then condsider other approaches?? FabreFaction 14:03 22nd April 2006 (BST)
I agree with FabreFaction on this one. We can discuss this matter forever if we like, but we won't have anything conclusive to consider before we've tried this new policy out. As a matter of fact, I don't at all support the openness of today. In theory, anyone can get an email account somewhere in a few moments, and that's all you need to register an account of your own here at Wikipedia. And to register is not that complicated. You need to dream up a username for yourself, a password, and enter those along with your email address. That's about it. Do we really need to make it simplier than that? My view on this is that the registration of today won't deter those who honestly like to contribute to Wikipedia, only those who for some reason like to kill some time by ruining others work. (Most of my edits are made in order to fight vandalism.) Why should we make it easy for them? Anyway, this proposal feels like a fairly good compromise to me. Let's try it out for some time. / Magore 15:30, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
How do we purport to prevent collateral damage from blocking such a large range of IP addresses? -- Wizardry Dragon 16:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
As it seems that the main reason so many object to the proposal is collateral damage, I thought I'd provide my thoughts on the matter. I erroneously had not considered autoblocking when I drafted the original arguments on behalf of this proposal, assuming that a method was already in place to block accounts without blocking IPs, and now that I consider it, I agree that this proposal may not significantly cut down on the collateral damage created by our current policies; however, I fail to understand how this policy will increase collateral damage. Clearly, in order for this policy to implemented, there will have to be developmental changes to the wiki software to prohibit anons from shared IPs to edit in the mainspace; thus, I don't see why a change in our current method of blocking would be particularly difficult. If anything, a simple fix would be that when an admin goes to block a user, it checks the user's IP, and if it's on the "Shared IPs" list, it would prompt the admin to use caution in blocking the account. I'm not a dev but I cannot imagine that this would particularly difficult to do, and I am actually shocked that such functionality has not been implemented already.
Furthermore, part of the reason that AOL etc. accounts are blocked is because not one, but two or three or four users vandalize from the IP within a short period of time, and as the warnings stack up and there is no way to distinguish between the vandals and the "good" users, the IP gets blocked. By requiring shared anons to register, we can then be sure of who vandalized what, and the number of vandalism attributed to individual accounts would be significantly lower than is attributed to the IP as a whole; thus the odds that an IP would be blocked are significantly lower. Also, compared to the number of anon vandals, the number of registered vandals is significantly low, and I believe that when a user registers for an account s/he will be less likely to vandalize; thus, the vandalism from individual users decreases further, as does the risk of collateral damage as well.
Frankly I wish the vandalism issue would not become the central argument on this proposal (though I do feel it somewhat important to discuss), as I feel this proposal has relatively little to do with vandalism and significantly more to do with not scaring away valuable AOL contributors. The main aim of this policy is to prevent Joe from erroneously receiving Bob's messages while Bob is off receiving messages intended for Dave. That's my problem with Shared IPs, not the degree of vandalism coming from them, as vandalism is not particularly difficult to revert and rarely goes unnoticed. AmiDaniel ( Talk) 01:47, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Jedi6 -(need help?) 02:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we try this, it looks simple:
"Due to repeated vandalism from some AOL users, Wiktionary requires that editors from AOL use
https, a secure protocol that reveals the visitor's true
IP address. The switch can be made by visiting this link. We hope this will be a happy medium between the extremes of cleaning up large amounts of vandalism and having to block all AOL subscribers from editing."
Found in
Wiktionary. --
DLL
19:45, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I should say also this : WP is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, as a public park is a park where anyone can tread - provided he's not in prison.
There are vandals in parks, there are cops also : is the damage so great ; is WP public or private, who makes the choice ? -- DLL
And this : our problem is success. Plenty of articles are duplicated on the Internet. I would suppose there is less vandalism, say, in the Slovenian WP. -- DLL
Sounds like an interesting compromise. How much effort does an AOL user have to expend in order to use this protocol? Hbackman 00:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
This sounds like an excellent compromise to me. Possibly time to kill yet another rendition of this proposal? I think if we are willing to take the effort in making it easy for AOL anons to understand, this may be a very reasonable compromise. Perhaps, when a shared IP user clicks on edit, it would say "click this link to connect to the secure server and edit the page"--even an AOL user could understand that. As I've said before, my issue with Shared IPs is the impossibility in contacting the correct user about his/her contributions, not vandalism or prejudice against IPs (I really should take down my userbox, as I don't agree with it). Thanks for the tip! AmiDaniel ( Talk) 01:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
No. If you are going to have an encyclopedia anyone can edit, then you have to expect some vandalism. -- Osbus 20:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I'm going against my own position with this, but I think that it's worth bringing up to perhaps inform the discussion.
We currently do permanently block a certain type of IP -- I can't remember the name of it right now, unfortunately -- zombie IP, maybe? I don't really know the details of what that kind of IP is and why we permablock IPs of that nature when we find them. If anyone knows what I'm talking about enough to give us better information than I can provide ;) I think that it would be interesting to discuss how and why this type of IP is different from and/or similar to the type of dynamic IPs that this policy proposes to permablock. Looking at an analogous case like this, and deciding how analogous it truly is to the current issue, might be useful in thinking about this policy.
Hbackman 00:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Flcelloguy recently moved the policy to Wikipedia:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs/AOL Prohibition to coincide with an inactive and archived discussion about a former rendition of this policy. Can someone tell me why? All links to the policy now hide this discussion page as all users are redirected to an archive. I really don't appreciate that this was done (even by an admin) without discussing it first. AmiDaniel ( Talk) 03:45, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users, which is linked to from MediaWiki:Blockedtext. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 12:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
The problems with this proposal--possible collateral damage, possible violation of a foundation issue--seem to outweigh the benefits of it, and I personally believe that pursuing the Wiktionary solution--to require all shared IP users to access the site via https in order to edit--seems to make a lot more sense. I believe that by requiring AOL proxy anons to connect to a secure server to edit we will be able to ensure that messages are received by the intended user, to cut down on the current problem of collateral damage, to cut down on the degree of vandalism resulting from AOL proxies, and to protect the ability of any user to edit without registering. My only question is: How do we implement this change? According to article Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users, "There have also been plans to modify the MediaWiki software so that AOL users would automatically be made to bypass the proxy system using https. This feature is currently still at an early stage, but it may be enabled some time in the future." (Note: this statement has been present in the article since 15 Apr 06.) I was unaware of such plans, but if this is the case, I feel we may need to do nothing but sit around waiting for the devs to do this, unless we would like to propose that this be extended beyond AOL to incorporate all ISPs that connect through shared proxies. If there is not already a plan to implement the https mandate, then I feel we should draft a proposal requesting that all anon users connected through shared proxies be required to connect through the https server before editing. In any case, I feel that the current proposal is unnecessary and would vote to reject it. Your thoughts? AmiDaniel ( Talk) 20:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, we can say that many of the IP addresses that are shared are going to be obvious, but
It's a nice proposal, but I feel it's completely unworkable. Inevitably, vandals are going to slip through the cracks. Lankiveil 04:23, 23 April 2006 (UTC).
I disagree with this proposal for one reason. Universities. A significant number operate through shared IP addresses. Yet, they are major sources of quality improvements. I agree that vandalism is a significant problem, but I think banning those IPs with problems is a better way to go than to ban all shared IP addresses. -- Midnight tonight 05:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems that one of the current problems with Wikipedia:No open proxies is that it's still not techically possible to only allow registered users to post through anonymous proxies. From the talk page:
So, if it's not possible to do that for proxies, how could it be possible for shared IPs ?
By the way, as a user in Mainland China, I already do resent the lack of a "proxies not allowed except if you're registered" method.
(I agree that there's an argument that anonymous proxies would be exploited by vandals in such a case, they'd just have to create new accounts. However, I don't think this is the reason why there's no such feature - the problem is purely technical) Flammifer 08:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I support this potential policy, as long as we change the Wikipedia tagline from "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit" to "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit as long as you plug yourself into our bureaucracy and fill out a form that you might not be able to find." zafiroblue05 | Talk 20:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
That sure would be a very long tagline. Funnybunny ( talk/ Vote for this policy) 20:40, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
As someone said before, the policy we need is to block all anonymous editing. I support this proposal as a step in the right direction.
We need to step outside and listen to what the world is saying about Wikipedia. Generally there is far too much vandalism, and far too much unreliable junk. If you are an experienced user, vandalism is something you get used to, and becomes a minor irritant; if you are new user who doesn't know how to revert (for instance) it is a major pain in the neck.
I cannot see how forcing editors to register prevents anyone from contributing - except for those edits that should be prevented!
Let's get our house in order. AndrewRT 20:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
They already block I.Ps on Mediawiki. The Republican 00:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Do we know how many people there are that have shared IP addresses? I thought there were a hell of a lot and until IPv6 comes in the number is only going to increase. This policy seems far too expansive.
Why are anonymous contributions important again?
It takes all of about three seconds to register. You don't even need an email address. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Profundity06 ( talk • contribs)
I think one issue to address before any further restrictions on anons is done, is the need from central registration for all Wikipedias (e.g. diferent languages). When I go to another language to add a simple inter-wiki link, or make another trivial edit, it's a major pain to register for every separate language. So, before we force anybody to register, we should allow people to register just once, and not repeatedly. We should wish to encouarge more "inter language" editing, not less. I know that's something planned for eventually, but until it happens, it's probably best not to make any new registration requirements (as much as I would like like them). -- Rob 22:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
My impression here is that the proposal is to pre-emptively block all anonymous shared edits. This may allow innocent people sharing the IP not to be blocked but it'll also force many more innocent users to register when they didn't have to before. Couldn't the blocking of anonymous editing be used as an alternative to outright blocking of IPs, whereby users then can't even register? That seems to be the problem now. The vandalism problem is not bad enough to justify this kind of pre-emptive action, particularly given the philosophy behind the project that has brought it so much success. BigBlueFish 14:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The discussion regarding the former text of this policy, Wikipedia:Prohibit AOL users from editing has been archived and moved to Wikipedia talk:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs/AOL Prohibition as the discussion was not relevant to the current text of the policy. If you feel a matter discussed on that page needs to be discussed further, please bring it up on the current discussion page.
The text of the proposal has now changed quite substantially from its previous version. Seventeen users voiced support for the precious version while eleven commented that they did not support the policy. The suggestions from that discussion have now been incorporated into the current proposal; however, it is still requested that you comment on what you do / do not approve of within the proposal, as well as if you would support or oppose a policy to this effect. Please make suggestions for improvement as well as arguments for and against the proposal. Thanks. AmiDaniel ( Talk) 06:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Jedi6's second comment. I haven't seen enough drastic vandalism from AOL IPs to think that this is policy would really be necessary. Whatever vandalism AOLers commit can be easily handled by people on RC patrol or by Tawkerbot2. It's not bad enough that we need to go against the fundamental principle of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Hbackman 06:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
This goes against one of the Foundation issues: the "Ability of anyone to edit articles without registering". Simply un-wiki, and not necessary. Agree with Jedi6, there just is just too much collateral damage and not enough provocation.-- Here T oHelp 12:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Can you block an ISP or you have to block their IP addresses? Because if you can block the ISP when the users aren't logged in it would be a pretty useful tool without even thinking about blocking IPs that could be used by other users. 132.204.207.108 13:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal only insofar as it relates to AOL. While I agree that this could prevent some legitimate users from editing without registering, the fact is that it's plain for anyone to see that we get a VAST amount of vandalism from AOL IPs, far more than we get helpful edits, many would say, and do to AOL's dynamic IP allocation, we really have few options to deal with it as of right now. -- InShaneee 16:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Why not try the proposed restrictions for a period of a month or so and see what the results are?? If the result is a serious downturn in vandalism then go for it, if this creates a lot of noise without a serious reduction in vandalism then condsider other approaches?? FabreFaction 14:03 22nd April 2006 (BST)
I agree with FabreFaction on this one. We can discuss this matter forever if we like, but we won't have anything conclusive to consider before we've tried this new policy out. As a matter of fact, I don't at all support the openness of today. In theory, anyone can get an email account somewhere in a few moments, and that's all you need to register an account of your own here at Wikipedia. And to register is not that complicated. You need to dream up a username for yourself, a password, and enter those along with your email address. That's about it. Do we really need to make it simplier than that? My view on this is that the registration of today won't deter those who honestly like to contribute to Wikipedia, only those who for some reason like to kill some time by ruining others work. (Most of my edits are made in order to fight vandalism.) Why should we make it easy for them? Anyway, this proposal feels like a fairly good compromise to me. Let's try it out for some time. / Magore 15:30, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
How do we purport to prevent collateral damage from blocking such a large range of IP addresses? -- Wizardry Dragon 16:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
As it seems that the main reason so many object to the proposal is collateral damage, I thought I'd provide my thoughts on the matter. I erroneously had not considered autoblocking when I drafted the original arguments on behalf of this proposal, assuming that a method was already in place to block accounts without blocking IPs, and now that I consider it, I agree that this proposal may not significantly cut down on the collateral damage created by our current policies; however, I fail to understand how this policy will increase collateral damage. Clearly, in order for this policy to implemented, there will have to be developmental changes to the wiki software to prohibit anons from shared IPs to edit in the mainspace; thus, I don't see why a change in our current method of blocking would be particularly difficult. If anything, a simple fix would be that when an admin goes to block a user, it checks the user's IP, and if it's on the "Shared IPs" list, it would prompt the admin to use caution in blocking the account. I'm not a dev but I cannot imagine that this would particularly difficult to do, and I am actually shocked that such functionality has not been implemented already.
Furthermore, part of the reason that AOL etc. accounts are blocked is because not one, but two or three or four users vandalize from the IP within a short period of time, and as the warnings stack up and there is no way to distinguish between the vandals and the "good" users, the IP gets blocked. By requiring shared anons to register, we can then be sure of who vandalized what, and the number of vandalism attributed to individual accounts would be significantly lower than is attributed to the IP as a whole; thus the odds that an IP would be blocked are significantly lower. Also, compared to the number of anon vandals, the number of registered vandals is significantly low, and I believe that when a user registers for an account s/he will be less likely to vandalize; thus, the vandalism from individual users decreases further, as does the risk of collateral damage as well.
Frankly I wish the vandalism issue would not become the central argument on this proposal (though I do feel it somewhat important to discuss), as I feel this proposal has relatively little to do with vandalism and significantly more to do with not scaring away valuable AOL contributors. The main aim of this policy is to prevent Joe from erroneously receiving Bob's messages while Bob is off receiving messages intended for Dave. That's my problem with Shared IPs, not the degree of vandalism coming from them, as vandalism is not particularly difficult to revert and rarely goes unnoticed. AmiDaniel ( Talk) 01:47, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Jedi6 -(need help?) 02:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we try this, it looks simple:
"Due to repeated vandalism from some AOL users, Wiktionary requires that editors from AOL use
https, a secure protocol that reveals the visitor's true
IP address. The switch can be made by visiting this link. We hope this will be a happy medium between the extremes of cleaning up large amounts of vandalism and having to block all AOL subscribers from editing."
Found in
Wiktionary. --
DLL
19:45, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I should say also this : WP is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, as a public park is a park where anyone can tread - provided he's not in prison.
There are vandals in parks, there are cops also : is the damage so great ; is WP public or private, who makes the choice ? -- DLL
And this : our problem is success. Plenty of articles are duplicated on the Internet. I would suppose there is less vandalism, say, in the Slovenian WP. -- DLL
Sounds like an interesting compromise. How much effort does an AOL user have to expend in order to use this protocol? Hbackman 00:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
This sounds like an excellent compromise to me. Possibly time to kill yet another rendition of this proposal? I think if we are willing to take the effort in making it easy for AOL anons to understand, this may be a very reasonable compromise. Perhaps, when a shared IP user clicks on edit, it would say "click this link to connect to the secure server and edit the page"--even an AOL user could understand that. As I've said before, my issue with Shared IPs is the impossibility in contacting the correct user about his/her contributions, not vandalism or prejudice against IPs (I really should take down my userbox, as I don't agree with it). Thanks for the tip! AmiDaniel ( Talk) 01:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
No. If you are going to have an encyclopedia anyone can edit, then you have to expect some vandalism. -- Osbus 20:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I'm going against my own position with this, but I think that it's worth bringing up to perhaps inform the discussion.
We currently do permanently block a certain type of IP -- I can't remember the name of it right now, unfortunately -- zombie IP, maybe? I don't really know the details of what that kind of IP is and why we permablock IPs of that nature when we find them. If anyone knows what I'm talking about enough to give us better information than I can provide ;) I think that it would be interesting to discuss how and why this type of IP is different from and/or similar to the type of dynamic IPs that this policy proposes to permablock. Looking at an analogous case like this, and deciding how analogous it truly is to the current issue, might be useful in thinking about this policy.
Hbackman 00:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Flcelloguy recently moved the policy to Wikipedia:Restrictions on Anonymous Editing from Shared IPs/AOL Prohibition to coincide with an inactive and archived discussion about a former rendition of this policy. Can someone tell me why? All links to the policy now hide this discussion page as all users are redirected to an archive. I really don't appreciate that this was done (even by an admin) without discussing it first. AmiDaniel ( Talk) 03:45, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users, which is linked to from MediaWiki:Blockedtext. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 12:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
The problems with this proposal--possible collateral damage, possible violation of a foundation issue--seem to outweigh the benefits of it, and I personally believe that pursuing the Wiktionary solution--to require all shared IP users to access the site via https in order to edit--seems to make a lot more sense. I believe that by requiring AOL proxy anons to connect to a secure server to edit we will be able to ensure that messages are received by the intended user, to cut down on the current problem of collateral damage, to cut down on the degree of vandalism resulting from AOL proxies, and to protect the ability of any user to edit without registering. My only question is: How do we implement this change? According to article Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users, "There have also been plans to modify the MediaWiki software so that AOL users would automatically be made to bypass the proxy system using https. This feature is currently still at an early stage, but it may be enabled some time in the future." (Note: this statement has been present in the article since 15 Apr 06.) I was unaware of such plans, but if this is the case, I feel we may need to do nothing but sit around waiting for the devs to do this, unless we would like to propose that this be extended beyond AOL to incorporate all ISPs that connect through shared proxies. If there is not already a plan to implement the https mandate, then I feel we should draft a proposal requesting that all anon users connected through shared proxies be required to connect through the https server before editing. In any case, I feel that the current proposal is unnecessary and would vote to reject it. Your thoughts? AmiDaniel ( Talk) 20:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, we can say that many of the IP addresses that are shared are going to be obvious, but
It's a nice proposal, but I feel it's completely unworkable. Inevitably, vandals are going to slip through the cracks. Lankiveil 04:23, 23 April 2006 (UTC).
I disagree with this proposal for one reason. Universities. A significant number operate through shared IP addresses. Yet, they are major sources of quality improvements. I agree that vandalism is a significant problem, but I think banning those IPs with problems is a better way to go than to ban all shared IP addresses. -- Midnight tonight 05:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
It seems that one of the current problems with Wikipedia:No open proxies is that it's still not techically possible to only allow registered users to post through anonymous proxies. From the talk page:
So, if it's not possible to do that for proxies, how could it be possible for shared IPs ?
By the way, as a user in Mainland China, I already do resent the lack of a "proxies not allowed except if you're registered" method.
(I agree that there's an argument that anonymous proxies would be exploited by vandals in such a case, they'd just have to create new accounts. However, I don't think this is the reason why there's no such feature - the problem is purely technical) Flammifer 08:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I support this potential policy, as long as we change the Wikipedia tagline from "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit" to "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit as long as you plug yourself into our bureaucracy and fill out a form that you might not be able to find." zafiroblue05 | Talk 20:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
That sure would be a very long tagline. Funnybunny ( talk/ Vote for this policy) 20:40, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
As someone said before, the policy we need is to block all anonymous editing. I support this proposal as a step in the right direction.
We need to step outside and listen to what the world is saying about Wikipedia. Generally there is far too much vandalism, and far too much unreliable junk. If you are an experienced user, vandalism is something you get used to, and becomes a minor irritant; if you are new user who doesn't know how to revert (for instance) it is a major pain in the neck.
I cannot see how forcing editors to register prevents anyone from contributing - except for those edits that should be prevented!
Let's get our house in order. AndrewRT 20:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
They already block I.Ps on Mediawiki. The Republican 00:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Do we know how many people there are that have shared IP addresses? I thought there were a hell of a lot and until IPv6 comes in the number is only going to increase. This policy seems far too expansive.
Why are anonymous contributions important again?
It takes all of about three seconds to register. You don't even need an email address. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Profundity06 ( talk • contribs)
I think one issue to address before any further restrictions on anons is done, is the need from central registration for all Wikipedias (e.g. diferent languages). When I go to another language to add a simple inter-wiki link, or make another trivial edit, it's a major pain to register for every separate language. So, before we force anybody to register, we should allow people to register just once, and not repeatedly. We should wish to encouarge more "inter language" editing, not less. I know that's something planned for eventually, but until it happens, it's probably best not to make any new registration requirements (as much as I would like like them). -- Rob 22:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
My impression here is that the proposal is to pre-emptively block all anonymous shared edits. This may allow innocent people sharing the IP not to be blocked but it'll also force many more innocent users to register when they didn't have to before. Couldn't the blocking of anonymous editing be used as an alternative to outright blocking of IPs, whereby users then can't even register? That seems to be the problem now. The vandalism problem is not bad enough to justify this kind of pre-emptive action, particularly given the philosophy behind the project that has brought it so much success. BigBlueFish 14:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)