Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia should not have users

Based

Your argument is totally based. Pseudonyms tend to give too much ego and admins too much power. Most admins live by the ban hammer banning a user for simply defining a neologism (if you are on Wiktionary this happened to me arbitrarily by a power-high admin who banned me for 3 days) where as in the image-board model everyone is on the same playing field and people are less discouraged from contributing because the admin-troll banned them for making noob-tier mistakes under the pretext of "muh vandalism" I have never registered on a bulletin board that has pseudos or post counts or other such vanity gimmicks because those tend to distract from the discussion, I have had far more meaningful conversations on /b/ than I have seen on most phpbb, vbulletin or simplemachines based site. Also having a pseudonym makes you more of a target. I have heard a certain Wikipedian is heavily despised by users of another wiki due to the actions by said Wikipedian against their community and this lead a schism where they founded their own wiki to serve as the voice of neutrality and reason since this Wikipedian clearly has an agenda that goes contrary to Wikipedias policy of neutrality. If there were no usernames there would be a higher incentive for neutrality because users like to identify with a cause be it political or otherwise. User talk-pages are basically pointless vanity pages, users of the image-board model don't care for such superficial concepts, they care about getting to the gist of things and having based arguments, Wikipedia should strive to be based. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.154.209.50 (talk) 07:25, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

No more personal attacks

It is strange to claim that just because one doesn't know exactly who another person is that it would be impossible to attack that person, or that these attacks would not be personal. I don't need to know someone's name, where they live, their gender, race, or sexuality to personally attack them. First, I can just make up those details (humdog describes one of the weird/unpleasant things about beginning to use the internet was that many people assumed she was male), as editors often do when attacking other editors (many of whom provide those details somewhere, like their user page). Second, is an attack better because it isn't personal? Lastly, as currently defined on Wikipedia, any attack is personal ("Comment on content, not on the contributor."). Hyacinth (talk) 06:16, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, in order for an attack to be personal the identity must be persistent. If there were no users the only way for us to attack somebody would be, "hey user that submitted change #12345 you suck", but it would be impossible for us to know who that user is. So, how can that attack be personal? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 02:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The essay doesn't mention having no ISP's. More importantly it doesn't offer alternative's to dealing with vandalism. Hyacinth (talk) 06:36, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I got lost. What ISPs? Do you mean Internet Service Providers? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 12:09, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Hyacinth is pointing out that en.wikipedia.org is a domain-name on the internet, and that in order to run a technological service that is implemented in that fashion, you have to have editors connect via their ISPs (which yes means internet-service-providers... the cable company, the landline DSL company, or the cellular carrier through which 99.9% of editors access the internet which includes wikipedia). Your proposal is very drastic: you are advocating that *nobody* should be able to figure out what user submitted what content, if I understand you correctly. For that to be the case, there are only two options: either *nobody* can have access to the wikimedia servers -- which like all webservers since 1993 log the IP, user agent string, and timestamp of every visit to wikipedia -- or alternatively, perhaps, all editors would be required to access wikipedia via anonymizing proxy services that obscure their home ISP. If you do not have that sort of protection in place, then personal attacks *will* continue... worse than ever, because only a select *few* powerful wikipedians will be able to pull back the veil, and figure out who made what edits, and then use their knowledge to destroy editors they dislike, while they themselves remain immune from any retribution, let alone responsibility. See also drone strike and kill list.

Note that, the way wikipedia works *now*, there are relatively few people with access to the raw webserver logs, which contain the full record of every webpage on wikipedia you have ever read, not just the full record of every *edit* you may have created. So maybe, your proposal is just that the view-editing-history feature should be removed, and wikipedia should keep her current wikimedia sysadmins in their current role. Under this scenario, a few very powerful sysadmins *would* still be able to know who made what edits... just like at the moment, a few very powerful sysadmins know who reads what articles. I'm definitely against this alternative proposal; there is already too much pressure on wikimedia sysadmins (Google and the big telecoms would LUUUVVV to be able to spy on every wikipedia page you read -- ever wonder why wikipedia uses HTTPS encryption by default?), and putting our valiant sysadmins in the position of being the only people who know which person made *edits* would either lead to instant corruption (an old boy network where some first settlers and some modern wikicrats used out-of-band communication to control editing behavior secretly), or even worse, self-destruction of wikipedia as a viable entity (all the sysadmins quit due to the stress).

I'm not saying your generic overall idea cannot be made to work... but you need to think it through a lot more carefully, paying attention to implementation details. Hyacinth is pointing out that, unless we fundamentally revamp the technical infrastructure on which wikipedia.org currently is built, it will be *very* difficult to really and truly anonymize edits. I am pointing out that *pretending* to anonymize edits, while in fact leaving the edit-history fully visible to the small cadre of webserver sysadmins, could be a terrible thing. If you really want to anonymize edits, you have to come up with an infrastructure that can support such a mode of interaction, *and* you have to come up with a viable transition-plan to convert from our current webserver infrastructure over to this hypothetical new totally-anonymized infrastructure. It is not something that can be explained in a couple paragraphs. Ping me on my talkpage, if you like. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:47, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

No, users can still have accounts, you just won't be able to see them. Administrators would still be able to see IPs, the very same way that 4chan works. You are confusing two separate subjects: the edit history would remain, you just won't be able to see who made what but you would still be able to report changes. This is the model used by 4chan and the reason why becoming a 4chan admin is easier than becoming a Wikipedia admin. They call them janitors and have limited powers. For some reason we have given our janitors way too much power. If something like this is implemented you would have a new kind of "admin" which would only have janitorial capabilities (banning people that violate the law or people that consistently harm Wikipedia). —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 22:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

vandalism

Many vandals don't get caught on their first act of vandalism, that's why it is important that when you spot a vandal you go through their previous contributions and if the pattern is clear then you block them. Under the no user proposal you could still spot individual acts of vandalism, but how would you identify and if necessary revert their previous contributions, or indeed block their account? ϢereSpielChequers 10:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Administrators would be capable of knowing both the IP and account related to the vandalism; the same way they do today. It's similar to how 4chan operates: they ban based on IPs, and on accounts if users are registered. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 02:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that 4 chan is a good model for the sort of project that we want to be. There are also practical issues, nowadays much of our vandalism reversion is not done by administrators, and we are very restrictive as to who can link our editors to their IP addresses. There is also the issue of how this would effect the editing of an encyclopaedia. We already have a big problem with spammers and the PR industry, many Public relations people want to know and "cultivate" the Wikipedians who edit the articles on their clients. Ending pseudonymity and exposing editors IP addresses would make it much easier for the PR industry to ensure that our articles on their clients were more to their client's taste. ϢereSpielChequers 02:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

No no no, you are missing the point. The only people that would know IPs and usernames would be administrators. Everybody else would not know who's who. Bots can be given the same privilege. When I say IPs I mean unregistered users. Everybody else remains the same except that non-administrators would not know who's who. I don't understand the connection between this and PR firms? It would be the same as today. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 02:54, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I'm missing the point. One of my concerns is that if only admins knew who had done each edit then only admins could combat certain types of vandalism - and we have a dwindling supply of admins. As an admin I don't like the idea of losing a large proportion of the work of non-admin vandalfighters and shifting their work to our remaining admins. Another problem would be in the recruitment of more admins, if no one but admins could track fellow contributors then how would people build up the reputation necessary to become admins? ϢereSpielChequers 10:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Vandalism can be fought anonymously; you don't need a registered account nor to show who you are to do so. Regarding the process of becoming an admin: the same way that it is done at 4chan: admins themselves or a committee would decide such thing. This is the only drawback that I see to this proposal, as today anyone can participate in the adminship process. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 01:11, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not all that familiar with 4Chan, but as their purposes are somewhat dissimilar to ours I doubt that this community would want to reform our practices on their model. As for anonymous vandalfighting, yes it would still be possible for non-admins to do some of it. But if you couldn't immediately look at the other contributions of the vandal you'd just spotted, then your vandalfighting would be less efficient at dealing with vandalism. ϢereSpielChequers 15:11, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

In the case of 4chan they have a report link that allows you to report illegal stuff (vandalism in Wikipedia's context). Administrators there don't actively browse content, instead they manage the report queue. We could adopt something similar. Anyways, yes, new challenges will arise from such reform but remember, this is merely an essay that will allow people to discuss wether we should move in that direction. I just hope we do. :) —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 03:52, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Ahh, so you *are* suggesting that (now-super-powered) sysadmins would still exist. But as WSC is pointing out, you are *dramatically* increasing the pressure on those sysadmins. Currently, everybody helps out with vandalism, and if I -- one of the non-admins that supplies such help from time to time -- notice that 95.146.66.166 replaced the official site of some videogame with a spamlink to a sex-toy store[1] then with one click I can check up on that contributor and see whether they did any more damage.[2] (In this particular example, I did not catch the vandal myself, that credit belongs to first-time-contributor 162.72.251.67 who got angry somebody had vandalized some page they were reading.) Under your proposal, the only person who could do this would is WSC, or some other admin. That increases the vandal-fighting burden on the-few-the-proud-the-brave sysadmins, who are *already* massively overloaded. Even worse, it *decreases* the likelihood that 162 would revert the vandalism... and the likelihood that I would try and track down the vandal... because the only way for us to do that would be to beg for help from some sysadmin. Wikipedia should not be a society of pull. That's one of the ideals behind the stock phrase that adminship-is-no-big-deal. You are suggesting that admins be made *massively* more powerful than now.

At the same time, your proposal also increases the risk of corruption -- WSC mentioned the PR firms, and I above mentioned the spyware firms -- you are asserting it would be *harder* for the PR folks, because they would not be able to get IP addresses of *some* editors (like myself) from the no-longer-public history-logs. But in fact the reverse is true: the PR firms would simply have to bribe one sysadmin, directly or indirectly, and they would get *all* the data for *everybody*. We already have exactly that risk, of course... but our current sysadmins are under less stress, with our current way of doing things, too. Imagine if our sysadmins were overwhelmed with stress, solely responsible for vandal-fighting, millions of users begging for help constantly, wikimedia servers going down under the load, wikipedia articles quickly filling with automated Nigerian mafia powered spam... and some PR guy says, hey, just give me a couple logfiles, and I'll make sure wikipedia gets a ten million dollar donation. *Now* they can say piss off. But if it was a choice between corruption, and the end of wikipedia as a viable encyclopedia... sooner or later, some sysadmin would give up. We do not want to put them in between a rock and a PR 'donation'.

Anyways, I'm coming down on you pretty hard here, because your overall idea is not a bad one, in some respects. I like aspects of it, so I'm insisting that you do it right, if you're going to do it. 4chan is the *wrong* model. Admins don't actively browse content on 4chan? We *want* admins here to actively edit wikipedia. That makes them 'just another editor' who will feel like part of the community, want to protect it *as* a community. Perhaps the biggest downside to hiding the edit-histories from 'normal' editors, where only 'super-admins' can see it, it will quickly become us-versus-them. Bad bad bad. When the PR 'donation' shows up, the sysadmin will convince themselves by rationalization that to save their tribe (the sysadmins... *not* the rabble of whiny editors always begging for help)... that they have to take the bribe. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:09, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

You don't need to be an admin to fight vandalism. Anyone can contribute to fix vandalism. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 22:57, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I am replying over on your talkpage... but in your new approach, only chanAdmins can fight vandalism at the IP-address level. Regular anon editors cannot see the IP of anybody else, and there are no more usernames... so at best they can see a *particular* edit that is vandalism, and revert it manually, and alert a chanAdmin. But they cannot track down other vandalism by that same editor themselves, because there are no usernames, nor visible IP addresses! In your model, only admins can track. In the current wikipedia model, even an anon like me can revert one vandalous edit, and then backtrack the vandal. See example above. Your statement that "anyone can fight vandalism" under 4chanpedia is true, but misses the point: under 4chanpedia, as an anon I can revert one vandalized article... but only under wikipedia can I track the vandal, because I can see their personal edit-history. It is *harder* to defeat vandalism if only chanAdmins can see who is doing what (and thus track vandals). 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Pillars missing

Folks, I disagree with the essay. First of all, because one of the WMF goals is to "disseminate [educational knowledge] effectively and globally". So writing pages isn't enough: Wikipedia should also focus on sharing the knowledge. That's why we have a a main page, portals, Signpost and Facebook pages: people first have to reach the content. --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

How are persistent online identities relevant to that? I mean, we can "disseminate [educational knowledge] effectively and globally", share knowledge, have a main page, and allow people to reach our content without personal online identities. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 01:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

My point has absolutely nothing to do with "personal online identities" or "persistent user identities". I'm criticising the first line of the essay. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

The first line is: "Wikipedia's goal is to compile the sum of all human knowledge." And along with NaBUru38, I disagree... that is *not* the only goal. In fact, it's probably not a goal. The *sum* of all human knowledge is far more vast than wikipedia will ever aspire to include. The goal of the *internet* is to compile the sum of all human knowledge... including a bunch of crap, fiction, quack medicine, quack physics, quack philosophy, quack religion, spam, almanacs, forums, etc. There is no doubt a forum post somewhere in which some tween gives us their opinion on hannah montana's greatest hits... and the fact that they have such an opinion, at that time in their lifespan, is arguably a tiny segment of the Sum Of All Human Knowledge, broadly speaking. But it has no place in wikipedia, because wikipedia is an encyclopedia -- wikipedia is *not* the sum of all human knowledge. It is a 'good parts' version, which strips the Hannah Montana article to the bare essentials necessary for encyclopedic coverage of the history of music, culture, merchandising vehicles, big media, and manufactured celebrity. The fact that millions of tweens believed they loved Hannah Montana is encyclopedic; one such tween's opinions about Hannah Montana is not.

  For those of you playing at home, here are the Wikipedia:Five_pillars. Ahnoneemoos is suggesting we replace pillar#1A (wikipedia is an encyclopedia) with a new pillar#1B (wikipedia is the sum of all human knowledge). Furthermore, Ahnoneemoos is suggesting a modified pillar#3A (anybody can use/edit/modify/distrib CC-BY-SA fka GFDL) into a new pillar#3B (modification only). Ahnoneemoos, are you against copyleft? Or just concentrating on modification, and assuming the others will happen? Wikipedia would not long survive without copyleft... whether GFDL or CC-BY-SA hardly matters, but strong copyleft for sure. Ahnoneemoos is eliminating pillar#4 (be excellent to each other) under the assumption that purportedly-anonymous editors (see above comments for critiques of the anonymizing scheme) will naturally be nice and civil to each other (see above comments on how *really* anonymizing is tough). I would argue that anonymizing is a mixed bag, even if it were technically possible... having seen various anonymized politics-oriented forums around the internet, I feel fully fair in saying that anonymous systems are *worse* than pseudonymous places like wikipedia, where folks like myself and 'Ahnoneemoos' (not their real name... see their userpage) can interact with each other, and if we wish, can even present pseudonymous proposals, long-lasting in nature, and so on.

  Wikipedia is not perfect: the community-oriented aspects sometimes distract people from improving the articles -- case in point, here I am commenting on a meta-proposal rather than improving an article -- and Ahnoneemoos suggests that is time wasted. In some ways I disagree, obviously, otherwise I would suit practice to belief, stop my comment here, and go concentrate on editing-n-polishing. But more fundamentally, I disagree with the idea that taking away community features, like userpages and essay-proposals and meta-discussions and such, would be an improvement. Fewer people would come to wikipedia, because it would have fewer attractions. Fewer people would stay, because there would be fewer reasons to do so. The community features are a *trap* pure and simple: they encourage people to feel like 'owners' of the website. If nobody had a pseudonym, and nobody had a userpage, and everybody felt utterly anonymous and alone, *way* fewer people would edit wikipedia... I don't think this is at all controversial, but I suppose somebody can catcall citation-needed from the peanut gallery.

  There *are* people that edit wikipedia, and ignore much of the 'community' aspect of it... myself habitually from an IP, although I have a talkpage and comment on meta-proposals, and Ahnoneemoos from a not-really-truthful username, but who tends to disdain userpages and talkpages as time-sucks. We are in the minority, however. And I think wikipedia *needs* to have the community-oriented crap, even if I disdain to use most of it myself... because I want editors to be tricked into showing up for the community, even if they waste a lot of time on it. The truth is harsh, but unmistakeably the truth: people will waste time, no matter what. Having them waste time chattering on talkpages, is arguably not much better than having them waste time gossiping about their neighbor over the fence, and is arguably a big improvement over them wasting time plopped on the couch staring at the boob toob. The point is, *most* of the people that waste a bunch of time on talkpages, userpages, community cliques, infighting, status-swapping, peacock puffery, and grandious schemes ... *also* go ahead and make some constructive edits, from time to time. That's the trap that wikipedia's community-features provide: more gaussian editors, that might otherwise be gossiping over the back fence, or watching the boob toob, ended up coming to wikipedia to gossip and stare... and while they were here, fixed some vandalism, corrected some typos, added a paragraph, or whatever. Those things are *crucial* to wikipedia's long-term success. We want those less-than-fully-dedicated-to-the-ultimate-encoding-of-all-human-knowledge editors to hang around wikipedia... because for every person dedicated to the cause like Ahnoneemoos, there are millions if not billions of everyday folks. We need those millions of half-hearted folks, providing their small contributions... and we need them to Feel Like A Part Of Wikipedia, so that they will defend her when she is attacked, be angry and personally offended when they see vandalism (how dare that vandal mess up *my* encyclopedia!), and suck in their friends/kids/etc.

  Wikipedia is not a social network. But it *is* a community, pseudonymous for the most part, anonymous to a significant degree, but with some editors using their real names, and many becoming personal friends (whether under real names or pseudonyms or both). That is not by mistake. I'm in favor of improving wikipedia's infrastructure to permit *real* anonymous access, and improving wikipedia's culture to *expect* anonymous access as the default. But I'm against getting rid of the pseudonyms, partly because of technical barriers (see comments above), but primarily because I don't think lack of userpages and pseudonyms will keep people from wasting time. If wikipedia no longer offers gossip and cliques, the people who come here primarily for that (and only secondarily for editing) will drift away, to facebook, or the back fence, or the boob toob. Without the flowers of userpages-and-such, wikipedia cannot entice the vast army of worker-bees. That each of them individually does not work very hard, is not a problem -- it is a feature, not a bug. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

p.s. Ahnoneemoos, you also stripped out pillar#2 entirely, WP:NPOV. Is that because you want wikipedia to be more partisan, or are you hoping that neutrality will be a natural consequence of anonymity? Reading politics-forums, that seems to be anything but the case. People feel free to lie, exaggerate, and attack each other *because* they are anonymous, and thus safe. Retaining NPOV is the biggest barrier to pure anonymizing, methinks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:44, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

p.p.s. Pillar#5 is retained fully by Ahnoneemoos: WP:NORULES.

Maybe I should have called them goals instead of pillars. Our WP:FIVEPILLARS can remain. The stuff proposed here is merely our primary focus. NPOV would still remain, etc. having said that, please don't say I'm changing this or that. This is merely an essay whose purpose is to create discussions like this one. Regarding Wikipedia being a community, yes, of course, ANY gathering of people can be considered a community, even if they are editing anonymously. Same with 4chan and their anonymous editors. However, the reason why Wikipedia was created was not to be a community. We are an encyclopedia first and foremost. Community happens as a result of humans being the ones contributing. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 23:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Glad to hear that copyleft and NPOV will stay.  :-) But we disagree about the current prime directive. When you started, back in 2001, the prime directive was to create an encyclopedia. That is a never-ending-goal, in some ways. But in most measureable ways, not only does wikipedia now qualify as an encyclopedia, it is the best encyclopedia in the known universe. Thanks for you part in that; but I want you to stick around for phase two, which involves continuing to polish/expand/perfect wikipedia, but also something else, on top of that. In 2001, the community was ancillary to the goal. In 2013, making the community into a sustainable immune system that will protect and serve wikipedia herself, now that she is out of her adolscence, is the new primary goal. See WP:RETENTION, which you are already somewhat familiar with. I want more Anne Delongs, too. The way to get them is by strong focus on reforming the community into something that attracts folks like Anne, never repels them. Or so I submit. Wikipedia is still an encyclopedia, but the community is no longer ancillary -- we badly need a community that will keep wikipedia around for ten thousand years. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I think not

Interesting idea, but I don't see enough of a problem to merit such a radical change. There are also several holes I see:

• What do you do with pages that can only be edited by administrators if the admins only look over vandalism reports? The protection level can be changed to autoconfirmed, but if it's edit=admin or edit=sysop there's probably a good reason, and lowering the protection level will open the article back up to whatever made someone decide to protect it from autoconfirmed edits.
• Even if one can't see user identities, one can still guess at them, and a pretty good guess at that.
• What happens to user talk pages? They may be construed as being 'social', but I see those as being useful because you can address specific problems (including warning templates) to a single user, welcome new users or award barnstars. Edit summaries and article talk pages are less likely to get seen by the intended user -- if there's a need to address them personally, you can't do it without talk pages. Welcoming users and awarding barnstars encourages them to contribute more and lets them know their contributions are appreciated; in other words, it's a sort of reward for doing the right thing. Perhaps one might think rewarding users personally is inappropriate, but what if someone decides to leave because they've done a lot of work and not been thanked? Then what? We want as many good faith contributors as possible, right?
• Grudges aren't necessarily just held against users. It's possible most of them aren't. In my limited time here, I'd say most point of view pushing that goes on is just that and not a personal grudge. Since I assume this is supposed to tie in to edit wars, it won't stop those either because edit wars are fought over content.
• The sort of people who cause the problems this is supposed to fix may mostly not be good faith contributors anyway.

Just my two cents. Cathfolant (talk) 21:51, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm gonna try to answer inline so bear with me.

What do you do with pages that can only be edited by administrators if the admins only look over vandalism reports?

The same thing we do today I guess? Only admins would be able to edit them? Regarding autoconfirmed: the German Wikipedia allows anonymous edits and they seem to be fine.

Even if one can't see user identities, one can still guess at them, and a pretty good guess at that.

How would you be able to guess them when you are entirely unable to see who made what?

What happens to user talk pages?

They would still exist, but they would be private and only admins would be able to see them since they are the only people that can see who's who. Regarding rewarding users: other wikis that are not encyclopedic, such as WoWWiki and Encyclopedia Dramatica, don't use MediaWiki as a social platform, yet they thrive. The reason is their barrier-to-entry is so minimal that users feel compelled to contribute. That is the goal of this essay, to lower our barrier-to-entry.

Grudges aren't necessarily just held against users.

Unfortunately that is not true. Wether we want to admit it or not we do hold grudges against users simply because we can identify users. 4Chan operates behind the anonymous model and it's considered the epitome of human creativity because of that: it's impossible to hold a grudge against someone on 4Chan because every contribution is anonymous.

The sort of people who cause the problems this is supposed to fix may mostly not be good faith contributors anyway.

I strongly believe it's quite the contrary. By lowering the barrier-to-entry and eliminating the ability to identify users, people will be compelled to contribute, since mistakes will be fixed without pointing fingers. If you also look at our statistics, only like 4,000+ registered users worldwide are currently active. The rest of our contributors are mostly unregistered users.

Hope this clarifies some stuff up.

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 01:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to explain. However, I still have a few comments. The remarks I'm replying to are italicised.

The same thing we do today I guess? Only admins would be able to edit them?

Indeed. You will notice I said 'if admins only looked over vandalism reports' (i.e. didn't edit pages). If admins don't edit pages, what do you do? You didn't really answer that.

Regarding autoconfirmed: the German Wikipedia allows anonymous edits and they seem to be fine.

Not sure what you mean by 'they seem to be fine'. I believe all the Wikipedias allow anonymous edits to most pages, and often they are fine but, at least on the English site, they're more commonly vandalism. Can you provide examples of how anonymous edits on German Wiki are 'fine'?

How would you be able to guess them when you are entirely unable to see who made what?

This was one of my weaker arguments. The point was that one can guess at who made what the same way one can guess at whether a user is a sock puppet or not. Isn't that right? For example, if six different IPs redirect Welsh language to Klingon language, it's probably the same person. (Bit of an extreme example, but you get the point.)

They would still exist, but they would be private and only admins would be able to see them since they are the only people that can see who's who.

I see. I assume the user whose talk page it is would also be able to see it, because otherwise what is it for?

My argument about talk pages being useful still stands, by the way.

Regarding rewarding users: other wikis that are not encyclopedic, such as WoWWiki and Encyclopedia Dramatica, don't use MediaWiki as a social platform, yet they thrive. The reason is their barrier-to-entry is so minimal that users feel compelled to contribute. That is the goal of this essay, to lower our barrier-to-entry.

I'm not sure how eliminating user identities would lower barrier-to-entry. Please explain. It would eliminate barriers to anonymity, but that's not at all the same thing. If you're concerned about perceived barriers to entry, see my comments about being thanked for one's contributions. I notice you didn't have anything to say about that.

Unfortunately that is not true. Wether we want to admit it or not we do hold grudges against users simply because we can identify users.

Sorry, but this doesn't actually relate to what I said. Yes, I'm sure some of us do hold grudges against users (but certainly not all of us as you seem to be saying). What I was trying to say is that some grudges are held against things other than users, and that eliminating expression of grudges against users would not eliminate all grudges.

4Chan operates behind the anonymous model and it's considered the epitome of human creativity because of that:

Considered by whom? What does it mean to be the 'epitome of human creativity'? What does this have to do with Wikipedia? Wikipedia is not about being 'creative', or so was my understanding.

it's impossible to hold a grudge against someone on 4Chan because every contribution is anonymous.

Right. About not being able to hold grudges (and this also applies to 4chan), we have a slight problem here: admins still know who everyone is -- they have to -- and what will you do if they hold grudges? Who will they be answerable to? Other admins, I suppose. This isn't necessarily such a good thing. As I think I've said, the more people who can identify who's causing trouble and warn them, the better. If only admins can do that and some of them are troublemakers themselves, it becomes much harder to solve the problem because there are far fewer who are willing and able to work on it.

You've mentioned having a 'vandalism report' button. I'm a member of several sites with something like that (not 4chan) and it doesn't always work very well. The main problem with it is that users may not always use it and admins will then have to surf through many, many edits if they actually care about reverting the bad ones. There are several reasons why users may not use the report button. The two that jump to mind are: perceived lack of effectiveness; and, as before, no recognition of efforts. One needs to make clear to users somehow that the report button really does work well and there's some compelling reason they should use it.

Here is a thread on one of 'my' sites that, at one point, touches on how the report button isn't much used. Incidentally, I never use report buttons. My line of reasoning is that 1) someone else will probably report it and 2) nothing may be done. I'm sure I should report out-of-line posts. I just don't. I'm sure that if Wikipedia were set up the same way I wouldn't report vandalism. I prefer the system where one can do something about the vandalism oneself rather than sitting around waiting for an admin, who is probably very busy, to clean it up or not. I don't think I'm alone in this either.

I strongly believe it's quite the contrary.

You do realise that could be interpreted as meaning that those who hold grudges are mostly good-faith contributors? I'm sure that's not what you meant, but it comes off that way.

By lowering the barrier-to-entry and eliminating the ability to identify users, people will be compelled to contribute, since mistakes will be fixed without pointing fingers. If you also look at our statistics, only like 4,000+ registered users worldwide are currently active. The rest of our contributors are mostly unregistered users.

Again I don't quite see the logic. How does lack of finger-pointing by all users but admins compel people to contribute? One can't compel anyone to contribute; it's their choice, not anyone else's. One can only make it easier. Eliminating some users' ability to see your username does not make it easier to contribute, much less compel users to do so.

What hiding your username does make it easier to do is, essentially, have an infinite number of sockpuppets. (Yes, I know admins will see who's who. See my comments about having as many users as possible able to solve vandalism.) There are currently rules in place against sock puppets; are they not there for a reason? To most users, everyone will be a sock puppet whether they want to be or not. Is this really such a good thing?

If you're planning to have only everyone's IPs show up in all cases, I believe there was a discussion some time back of not allowing unregistered users to edit Wikipedia. A reason for this may be that IPs can be changed and there is no good way to prevent a particular person from editing with an IP. Another reason is that some IPs are shared (e.g. schools) and it may do more harm than good to block them. So it's not too hard to see that having unregistered users able to edit is a real problem and the solution is most definitely not to make all users unregistered.

Cathfolant (talk) 17:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

No response to my arguments for 4 months, and only one person who thinks this is a good plan. I don't think this will ever be accepted. Sooner or later it should probably get userfied or marked as a failed proposal. Cathfolant (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

This is not a proposal. This is an essay. Having said that, I'm a volunteer, not a paid employee, I don't have to answer to anyone. I really have no interest in replying to you, since it seems you have completely missed the point that no one will be able to see your IP. Your whole argument is based on the belief that people will be able to see your edits, which is something not being proposed here. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 10:19, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree! The primary article dephender (sorry, broken eph key; an identity give-away!) in the talk page, states that:

"My name is Aubrey and I'm a pathological liar. I have been editing Wikipedia since 2001 and have had, and still have, several accounts listed under the list of Wikipedians by article count. Please, do not contact me for any reason whatsoever. Instead, assume good faith; be bold; ignore all rules"

on his user page. This contradicts the talk page-related points here, quite humorously! Iph Wikipedia had non-persistent user/ editor ID's, Loki-ish individuals such as Ahnoneemoos could run around, creating hilarious but disruptive edits with impunity. --FeralOink (talk) 06:23, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Users get banned by IP, not by username. When an account gets banned, a user can still create another account and continue this hypothetical "disruptive" behavior you mention. It is not until the IP is banned that you truly ban the person. The same can be done if we remove user accounts. Your point is? —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 10:19, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

In your proposal, *only* super-admins would be able to know IPs. Lacking pseudonym-accounts, the rest of us -- editors outnumber admins 10 to one or worse -- would be unable to instigate community control. As a concrete example, say I care about Hannah Montana, and decide to 'own' her page, and protect her from criticm, and so on. Everyone is anonymous now, except admins. Which means I can make as many edits to her page as I like, as long as I'm reasonably subtle. Unless I write something blatant, like 'playing Hannah Montana music cures cancer and gives orphans their real mommy back' then no admin will ever have time to notice; they will be swamped hunting real vandals (see logistical troubles above). But there will also be people, totally anonymous from my non-admin perspective, out to get Hannah. "How would you be able to guess them when you are entirely unable to see who made what?" Easy. I'll assume the worst. No doubt I will have been through many battles with trolls, anonymously asserting that Hannah Montana music is banal (oh not true!) and her success is manufactured (how dare you!!!) and she is a brainless celebrity with no talent (OMG now you die!!!!@@!1111!!!). If some anonymous editor comes along, and makes any less-than-complimentary edits to the Hannah Montana article, *that* is how I know they are a bastardly troll out to sully Hannah's good name, and I will do *anything* to destroy them. I'll report them to admins, I'll bribe admins with sexual favors, I'll crack wikipedia's server security, I'll packet-sniff the entire internet, I'll use cross-site script-kiddie stuff I downloaded from byelorussia, I'll get all my real-life Hannah Montana fan-club friends to come make the article *really* true....

  Now, obviously this scenario is going a *little* overboard. But replace Hannah Montana with Bill Gates, Richard Stallman, Barack Obama, Ron Paul, Israel, Tiananmen, Hitler... something *really* controversial... and my point should be clear. Pseudonyms can be very helpful in helping passionate editors retain their sanity. If they feel like somebody is attacking Hannah's honor now, they have a username to pin on that attacker, which tends to lead to ad hominem, personal grudges, cliques, and all the usual crap. It also leads to sanity: if 300 pseudonyms are against me, maybe I'll check my premises. On the other hand, if they did *not* have that pseudonym, and persecution of poor Hannah continued as usual, then it would start to seem like *everyone* else on wikipedia was out to get Hannah Montana... and that paranoid perception would quickly turn wikipedia into a cesspool. We already have editors who believe *everybody* on wikipedia is a sockpuppet, and this paranoia leads to cesspool behavior. But most editors retain their sanity. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

The root cause of Wikipedia's dwindling number of editors

According to the proposal-slash-essay, Ahnoneemoos believes this problem is *solely* due to Wikipedia's allowance of persistent user identities. The logic goes that, once you allow pseudonyms, editors will start to spend a lot of time making their usernames look cool, by tweaking the colors and fonts and styles. Once you allow publicly-visible talkpages (as opposed to contact-an-admin or be-contacted-by-an-admin talkpages that Ahnoneemoos proposes as a replacement), editors will spend a lot of time gabbing with each other, styling their talkpages, writing templates for other editors that want to style their talkpages, arguing with each other about the best talkpage styling template-system, tweaking fonts and colors, and so on. Just like myspace, or facebook, or any other time-wasting social network, in other words. Not in the essay, but over on their homepage where they explain their reasons for writing the essay, Ahnoneemoos goes on to explain that rather than concentrating on polishing and improving articles, which is what most editors did in the Good Old Days of 2001 through 2005 or so, all the kiddies nowadays concentrate on wiki-politics, wiki-bureaucratizing, wiki-voting... and when they *do* bother to look at articles in mainspace, their 'edits' consist almost entirely of deleting, reverting, inserting huge garish This Article Sucks template-tags, and criticizing everybody and everything. In my personal wikipedian jargon, these folks are the Bad Cops -- some of the Bad Cops are admins (the kind that has a ban-hammer ready and raring to go at the slightest provocation). But most of the folks I characterize as Bad Cops are not actually admins: they are just normal editors, who spend all their time reverting, deleting, tagging, and criticizing... so much so, that they never actually contribute to the *article* content, because they were too busy criticizing contributions made by other people.

Whether this is a bad thing or not, I'm on the fence. There *are* bad people out there. Wikipedia is constantly targetted by spammers, the staff HQ of politicians, Hannah Montana fans, and everyday vandals. There are also a lot of new editors, who simply don't understand how wikipedia works. (This is not all that strange... wikipedia is *weird* when compared to the likes of amazon and facebook, let alone google and msn, not to mention nbc bloomberg whitehouseDotGov et cetera... with the 'normal' sites like that all over the internet, no wonder people have trouble grokking the ways of wikipedia, on their first few edits at least.) Ahnoneemoos is arguing that, if we didn't have pseudonyms, we would no longer have Bad Cops that were *not* admins... the admins would specialize in being bad cops (fighting vandals/spam/etc), and all the rest of us would specialize in creating and polishing content. For many reasons, I don't think Ahnoneemoos's essay-not-a-proposal will actually work... see above... but I *do* see many of the problems they bring up.

Wikipedia is not able to get enough admins. Partly, this is because the admin process is deadly poisonous. Wikipedia is also not able to grow our number of editors. This is *not* because nobody understands that wikipedia is editable by anybody... that was true a decade ago, but nowadays most people grok the basic fact that 'anybody can edit wikipedia' is in fact true. But just because something is true in theory, and just because most of the internet-going public is aware of that basic truth, does not then imply that Anyone Can Edit Wikipedia... because in reality, anybody who dares to edit wikipedia, without first reading five thousand bleepity-bleep pages of numbing bureaucratic crap, is going to be smacked down by a Bad Cop. This might be an admin, or a bot written by an admin, who happens to be a Bad Cop... but more likely, they will just be reverted, with nothing said at all, by some normal-user-with-delusions-of-grandeur Bad Cop, who feels they 'own' some article (whether it be about Hannah Montana or whatever). Wikipedia actively discourages new editors, because many existing editors feel it is Their Duty to revert Bad Stuff... and very *few* editors feel it is their duty to *help* actually so to speak *improve* content. They are happy to revert any content which does not meet Their High Standards... but too lazy to actually help some new editor bring new content *up* to those standards... or even bother to explain those standards to the newbies. After all, the Bad Cop editors are not responsible for the newbies not Knowing The Rules, and they are not responsible for Helping The Newbies learn to edit wikipedia, and after all, that newbie was editing from an IP which means existing editors should Assume Bad Faith and revert that sucker *hard*.

This is a very bad thing. We *need* to have some Bad Cops... but we need them to focus on the Bad Guys that are *actually* harming wikipedia. This means spammers, and rampant vandals. *Nobody* else. Fumble fingered newbie editors should be talked to and mentored, not reverted and banned. (The argument than everybody is 'too busy' to take time actually helping is self-fulfilling: if instead of taking the time to help, you just revert and ban, then as sure as the egg heading for the floor will break, you will not have enough time to hold hands in the future either, BECAUSE THERE WON'T BE ENOUGH HELPFUL EDITORS in the future, because your stupid actions in the past killed the joy that newbies might have felt, and drove them away, which means admins & editors in the future are overburdened because no new admins & editors are being produced/groomed/encouraged in the past or present.) Rather than try to eliminate the Bad Cops by eliminating pseudonyms, I think a better plan is to try and groom Good Cops: folks that will *help* new editors, not just revert them without comment. Folks that will concentrate on pillar number five -- no rules that get in the way of improving the encyclopedia -- and stop using technicalities as their excuse for rudeness. See also, pillar number four. Of course, just grooming Good Cops is not sufficient: we also have to get the Bad Cops to realize they are harming the long-term prospects of wikipedia for survival and, uh, 'thrival-ness' through their short-sighted actions. They *are* doing their reverts and deletes and banning in good faith... they really *do* think they are helping wikipedia... which makes this task *really* hard to properly accomplish. We *need* the Bad Cops around. They write the bots, do the new-page-patrols (aka who can I delete today patrols), and go up against the mafia-powered spam-czars of the universe. But we also need them to Leave The Good Guys Alone, and let the good cops do their job, which is converting newbies -- fumble fingered and ignorant and biased and naive and foolish but with the right instincts -- into future editors & admins -- some of whom will be Bad Cops, even, to reinforce the over-worked ones we have now. Everybody was a newbie once, even the Bad Cops... they have just forgotten.

Anyways, I've been pretty harsh on the essay-slash-proposal that Ahnoneemoos put forward, and I hope they forgive me, because I'm fundamentally in agreement with them about the problems... I just disagree about the fix. I've been even more harsh on the folks I call the Bad Cops, but I've tried to be fair, even while I criticize. I truly appreciate them for what they do, the essential work of keeping the scum out of wikipedia -- I just need them to back off, and remember that just because a person is a newbie, does not therefore make them scum. Those noobs are the lifeblood that will keep wikipedia going, indefinitely, if we help them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:17, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Hey man I appreciate the interest but there's no way I'm replying to that WP:WALLOFTEXT.

Anyway, please do not come to erroneous conjunctures. First of all, no, in no way am I advocating that the SOLE cause of our dwindling numbers is the use of persistent online identities. There are many reasons, this is just one. Second, no, I never advocated that this leads to colorization of usernames of whatever. I don't know where the hell you are getting that from.

You should focus on being an effective communicator. Be concise. Nobody is gonna read a wall of text as a volunteer.

—Ahnoneemoos (talk) 22:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the criticism; it is perfectly true. The numbering refers to User_talk:Ahnoneemoos#WP:NOUSERS_criticisms_in_a_nutshell, but that might get moved to an archive at some point. Here is the TL;DR version. Usernames are fun, making wikipedia fun is (#5 below) crucial to her longetivity, getting rid of usernames will not force people to concentrate on articles, it will force them away from wikipedia. Usernames help anons like me track vandals and revert all their crap (#2 below), not just depend on admins to do it for me, like I would have to do in 4chanpedia. Worst of all, if only chanAdmins can see IPs/pseudonyms, then (#1 below) a rogue chanAdmin will be *extremely* powerful... and that very fact guarantees that (#3 below) such rogue chanAdmins will arise, because the stakes on top-ten-website-in-the-universe wikipedia are tremendously higher than on 4chan. There is no #4. I'm not sure I really understand what you essay proposes, see #0 below. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)