Proposal talk:Less anonymity

I support this idea. I have placed the similar proposal not being aware about this one. Audriusa

Contra

May work out somehow for "normal" people, but as soon as you are a well-known expert in reallife, wikipedia will become a place for advertising your skills and defending your territory. It will slowdown work and scare away some of our most valuable users and decrease artcile-quality:

• Would you (anon user) dare to challenge Professor John Doe (M.I.T) in a discussion about the quality of sources he provided for the article "Intermolecular force" ?
• Would he have to listen to you (anon user) in the first place ?
• Would you (anon editor) invest hours of work into an article, while most of the credit goes to the well-known Professor who only made some minor changes ?

I wouldnt bet on it. So, if somebody feels that he or she has to unveil their identity, they may set up a facebookaccount or something and let the entire world know that they are wikipedia-user John Doe. Alexpl 08:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

If you are going to get involved in admin activities such as blocking vandals I would strongly advise against revealing personal information on wiki. Where we need to verify who someone is in real life - such as for checkusers we have mechanisms to do so - but IMHO we should be thinking about encouraging all new users to avoid revealing their real names, not the opposite. WereSpielChequers 03:51, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. That entire Media-Literacy-thing should be teached in schools and by parents in the first place. We can only provide some minor assistance.Alexpl 07:56, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Big contra. There is absolutly no need for real names. This will ruin the wikipedia idea.--Avron 18:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I would never reveal my real identity on Wikipedia. Even as a new user, it wouldn't have occurred to me in my faintest dream. With the current system, everybody could track each and every click I made on the wikis within the last 2 years or so. Wikimedia is amassing large heaps of personal data about me, and publishing it worldwide. Being anonymous, that is fine for me, but connected with my real-life identity? No thanks. (Am I the only one thinking this way?) --B. Wolterding 23:33, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I couldnt agree more. My past contributions would have been 90% lower without anonymity. Alexpl 10:49, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The key to the accuracy of Wikipedia is the attribution of contributions to verifiable sources. If a contribution is well sourced, then it is entirely irrelevant who typed the actual text. It appears as if this proposal would prefer to replace this principle with an appeal to authority, which would clearly be a step into an entirely wrong direction. --195.65.8.2 13:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

How will this affect editors' ability to deal with ambiguity?

It's impossible to edit without being faced with questions about the right choices to make. Trying to make it easy to associate an idea with a person is reasonable for trust, but is it reasonable to require violations of identity privacy? Does the quality of an idea have more to do with the idea than the editor inserting it? Would a double-blind accuracy review system be better than trying to pin identities down? 99.60.1.164 20:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Not me

I am a mathematician. I regularly contribute content to math-related articles. I do not always contribute anonymously, but I will only continue to contribute as long as I know that anonymous contributions are accepted without prior review. Anonymity protects my freedom to speak when powerful and corrupt organizations would prefer that I remain silent. Where there is anonymity, there will be freedom. It is my enthusiasm to support this ideal that keeps me coming back and regularly donating my time to this good cause.

Why?

This proposal completely fails to explain WHY anonymity is a bad thing. Many good edits are anonymous. I personally do 80-90% of my editing as an anon, despite the fact I am an administrator on WP. As an admin, very little of my time is taken up in dealing with anonymous editors. Manning 11:30, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Reputation

This proposal justifies itself on "This is the only way to get a higher reputation" However, as far as I know:

• Other institutions and organizations are being forced to take wikipedia seriously and in high regard as its quality and coverage continues to grow. I do not need to cite various popular articles that have made their rounds in the news press about Wikipedia comparing favourably to the encyclopedia britannica or taking a larger part in education and popular culture.
• Reputation has never been an overriding concern of wikipedia, it was always about providing good, free, knowledge that anyone can safely contribute to.
• Wikipedia is in the top ten of English websites on the internet. Again, I hardly think Wikipedia is in a crisis of being respected or valued.

This won't work

If we introduce something so strict that our verification is highly effective then it will cost a lot of money and greatly reduce our editorship. If we skimp and introduce a half baked thing such as digital photographs of passports then we can anticipate reputation loss as soon as stories break such as "admin was 16 year old who emailed in a copy of his father's driving licence". Either way this will be expensive, counterproductive and damaging to our reputation. WereSpielChequers 21:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

If something like this is put in place, it will be the Essjay controversy all over again. This can only hurt Wikipedia's reputation. The only real way to improve our reputation is to continue to improve the content of all the projects (i.e. Wikipedia, Wikibooks).-Chinless Fish 01:59, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

is this a joke?

copy of a passport? are you kidding us? User talk:202.111.2.186