Board Thread:Administrators Discussion/@comment-4811793-20130620225343/@comment-5384369-20130622215808

3cooldog92 wrote:

It's pretty easy to get an email too. It's free. You type in some info and bam you have an email. And FYI, you're more anonymous if you make an account since there are sites like this can trace your location based on the IP address that's publicly available when you contribute "anonymously".

Well first off two of those wikis (Victorious and ANT Farm) have already disabled anons for the reasons I've been trying to point out here. The anons totally destroyed the ANT Farm wiki (by vandalizing it and posting X rated comments) and it took a major cleanup operation to make the place look presentable. The Sam and Cat wiki is planning to disable anons as soon as they get enough registered users. I can tell you from talking to them that the admins there recognize what parasites anons can be. I guess they don't share the irrational attachment to letting anons run amok as some do here.

Speaking from experience I can tell you that anons do more bad than good. 90% of the reverts I've had to do are because of anons. Out of the edits that anons did that I didn't have to outright revert, the vast majority I had to delete something stupid they put in addition to something useful they actually added. In addition, I have had to fix the sloppy spelling/grammar in most edits I didn't have to outright revert because a large number of anons wouldn't know proper spelling/grammar conventions if it bit them in the butt. Plus they're unable to have an intelligent conversation about their moronic edits. They'll just fight with you until an admin intervenes and solves the issue. They always come out in the wrong in those fights too because they don't know what they're doing. This is much less of an issue for those who care enough to make an account. Getting rid of these parasites would be good for the wiki.

This seems to be pretty irrelevant to the reason staff are disabling. Keeping people off that are too young to have an account is precisely why staff is disabling anons. For staff it's about not getting hauled into court or fined for violating federal law, not about whether it's a good idea to have anons (which it's not).

I keep hearing talks of a compromise but I haven't heard any specifics. It seems staff already deliberated on this and reached a decision. I wouldn't call it a "lost cause" but it doesn't seem like the outcome will be any better (at least for the users that want to keep the parasites around). Some people just prefer not having an account/ email. It’s pretty simple reasoning. Like I mentioned earlier, I met someone who can’t have an email until next year. Also, why create an account and go through that hassle when you have everything you have right there already, as an anon. For whatever reasons, people just don’t want an account, and we can’t just degrade those people for having opinions. Doing that makes us no better than anyone on here. All it does is make us a bully.

Also, you said that the Victorious and ANT Farm Wiki disabled anon editing because of heavy vandalism and X rated content. That’s the difference between them and us. We do not have anonymous users spamming everywhere, like you think. Please, send me a link of 3 different examples of a large amount of vandalism caused by an anonymous user that is on the Wiki. Not one that was in page history a month ago, but fairly recent, and as bad as you deem it to be. I can only think of one thing that was done about 2 months ago and was quickly taken care of.

You make these anons seem as if they are true parasites, being annoying pests and destroying everything in their path. Anons have in no way even come close to doing any damage. We don’t let anons “run amok” as you call it. Where was there ever a time when the Wiki lost control? Again, any anons who are a problem are quickly taken care of.

Please, do not give false information. Looking at your contributions, no edits have been made to articles. And looking at your edit count, which stretches over all of Wiki, not just this wiki, no edits have been to articles either. All of your edits have come from either: talk pages, User pages, blog posts or threads. So, in theory, all of what you said about having to “revert edits” is completely false.

Also, because the admin side of me is showing, this is your warning. '''Please do not be rude to anonymous users by calling them names such as "parasites" and "idiots". Doing so is rude and can hurt people’s feelings. This falls under the category of cyber bullying, which is not allowed. Please review the Wiki Guidelines. '''

The first sentence of this whole thing is “We wanted to let you know that in order to comply with federal law, Wikia is reviewing the way it handles communities that may be considered directed to people 12 years of age or younger.” So, in fact, this is about age limits, but for some reason, has become an argument about whether anons are good or bad. Just making an account doesn’t make you the legal age. Also, I highly doubt that Wiki will be fined for having an anonymous person on the wiki. Maybe I’m wrong, but if that does happen, then almost all connections to Wiki would be in trouble too. If it was to happen, it would’ve happened by now, don’t you think?

Also, I think you assume for us to be some magic makers, here. We’ve had about 3 days. We’re all still a little bit in shock, and, although it may not be here, how can you be positive that no compromising has been occurring?

3cooldog92 wrote:

I find it funny that popularity is an issue with this but it wasn't an issue when that stupid "no irrelevant comments" rule was concocted. Not to mention making your work harder just for the sake of working more is a waste. Working smarter is generally better than working harder. Plus isn't generally better to eliminate the source of a poison than to be constantly cleaning up its nasty effects?

Popularity for this wiki is defiantly a factor in this situation, it is for almost every decision this Wiki makes. How can you say that the with the no irrelevant comments rule, popularity wasn’t an issue. After we found out that users and anons were leaving, we stared freaking out a little so we had to create the “Talk Like Crazy” blog post. Ask any of the admins here. We’ve all been loyal to this wiki, and we’ve been here through thick and thin. It may be more work, but we’re all willing to put in that effort to make users and anonymous users here content.