Board Thread:Administrators Discussion/@comment-4811793-20130620225343/@comment-4717855-20130623234545

Undead.exe wrote:

If they needed ideas, what I would suggest is to treat any and all anon edits like they're one single user. Basically, if you try to post while you're not logged in, it's like you're logged in as a communal guest account which cannot be told apart from the other guests, so all the edit histories for guests are collected under one single account.

There is a drawback to this suggestion, however, and you guys have already been discussing it: weighing vandalism against good anons. I'm only putting forward this suggestion because I'm guessing it's the quickest and easiest to implement. Hiding the actual IP address of each identifiable anon may or may not be technically more difficult to implement (and there's also the problem that users can still be identified by other means, such as writing styles, interests, etc -- though that argument can be made for people with accounts as well). Alright, so if we manage to edit the wiki in enough of a way that we really don't come across as violating COPPA laws, we can keep the anons? :) Yay for compromise!

Well, for your suggestion, you stated the main reason that I had to say against that idea, so not much to say... Also, I have a feeling that if that were to happen, another fight would eventually break out over anon's rights on the wiki, and we've already suffered a big enough fight recently. :/

And yes, some anons can still be identified by other means, but generally, they purposely put some detail in that makes them specifically easy to identify, so yeah....

Hmmm... Do you think that we could simply have anons choose a nickname for themself to act as their "username"? I know it seems ridiculous-- it kind of is, though; I'm having a idea block :/-- but do you think that then we could hide the IP address then and replace it's current position with a "username"?