Board Thread:Administrators Discussion/@comment-4811793-20130620225343/@comment-5454372-20130623153715

I'm only dropping by this discussion because I saw the link from Community Central, and using a rather haphazard method of "skimming" the discussion here, I'm getting the impression that you guys might be missing the key reason they're turning off anon contributions here.

The policy was never about vandalism from anons, nor the amount they may contribute to your wiki community -- it's about the fact that their IP addresses are readily visible or can otherwise be identified. The policy is about protecting the the privacy of the young users who come online here, and being able to identify the IP address of an anon is something directly addressed COPPA:

excerpt from COPPA: extend the COPPA Rule to cover persistent identifiers that can recognize users over time and across different websites or online services, such as IP addresses and mobile device IDs;

I'm guessing that points relating to how the wiki community may suffer if anon editing is disabled won't really be persuasive, because the legal rights and protection of wiki users would far outweigh the survival of something which is essentially a leisure activity, if you look at it objectively.

If you've actually kept this in mind throughout the discussion, then please ignore my post here. I only thought I should re-emphasise that because using Ctrl+F showed that people were talking much more about "vandalism" rather than "protection" or "IP addresses" (and there's my haphazard skimming method).