[WikiEN-l] JoanB is DW

Wed Apr 16 18:41:43 UTC 2003

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Stan Shebs wrote:
> You know folks, if people had to register with their real names,
> this whole identity guessing game would go away.

I'm a big fan of UseRealNames myself, but there are two separate problems
here:

1) People on the net being more rude and uncivil than they'd be in
face-to-face conversion with someone of known identity

2) People creating multiple identities just to cause trouble.

Using real names is alleged to help with 1) by making a firmer connection
to meatspace and its social rules, but it doesn't do much about issue 2),
which is about people who have explicitly made the decision to violate
social expectations and deceive the people they're interacting with.

Short of requiring credit cards or physical verification of an
identification card, we can't verify that people are who they say they
are. It will remain trivial to create new accounts under new names that
_look_ like real names. ("Susan Mason", etc)

Requiring e-mail verification would not help either, as it's trivial to
create throwaway free e-mail accounts.

>  I've been messing with Wikipedia for only 10 weeks, so am still a
> newbie, but between the identity games with troublesome users and the
> cleanup of daily vandalism by anonymous users, it looks to me like it
> costs more time to deal with all that than is saved by getting the few
> anonymous contributions.

How many of our regulars would never have gotten into Wikipedia then?

See also: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?LimitTemptation

> Do people still believe that anonymous contribution is critical
> to success, or is it just an attitude left over from the startup
> days?

Yes. A low barrier to entry is one of the essential defining
characteristics of Wikipedia which sets it apart from other projects.

See also at the bottom of
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?LoginsAreEvil :

  "Nonetheless, the trade off is between security and accessibility. But
  bear in mind that in an attack passive readers that do not have logins
  will also be barred or slowed from fixing the vandalism. It is in those
  dire situations that your hidden friends really show."

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)