Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-1142365-20150722215538

I feel anonymous editing is a crucial part of wikis, for better or for worse. Here are my responses to your questions:

It brings a definite mix of constructive and non constructive edits. But then again so does logged-in editing. More important than a mix of edits that all editing brings, anonymous editing allows users to edit without having to associate themselves with a memorable username. To some people, that is very important.
 * What does anonymous editing bring to your communities now, if it’s available there?

See the above answer. Also, potential disagreements with Wikia. Potential parental influence. Maybe they just don't see the point, either they don't edit much, or they simply don't want to go through the registration process, no matter how simple it is.
 * Why don’t anonymous editors create accounts?

Fewer ads. Especially those skin-takeover ads. If I was in a position of an anonymous user who kept getting served skin-takeover ads, I would totally make an account to stop seeing them (browser extensions such as Adblock set aside - not everyone has access to these).
 * What would motivate them to create accounts, besides disabling anonymous editing altogether?

I am an admin on MLP wiki, where we had anon editing forcefully disabled. So here are some answers to the second set of questions:

It made things, especially article comments, easier to manage. That doesn't mean it was beneficial. One of our most frequent and excellent editors was anonymous - they had to create an account and there were a few days where we weren't sure if they were going to. They did in the end, but they could have easily just stopped editing, which would have been detrimental to the quality of our articles.
 * Was it beneficial?

Yes, activity levels dropped.
 * Was there a change in activity level immediately?

Lower than they were before. Nothing particularly major or worrying, but article comments were badly hit. I think people like the ability to comment on articles anonymously.
 * What was the level of activity a few months after the change?

Overall, Wikia should not ignore a very basic "tenet" of wiki editing - it should be accessible to as many people as possible. Disabling anon editing in order to better enforce COPPA is already arguably infringing on that "tenet". Giving wikis the ability to disable anon editing is going a bit far; that should not be something that communities can change, with the most common rationale probably being "there will be fewer vandals".