Forum:How to forbid anonymous edits?

Hello! I'm the Mass Effect Answers wiki bureaucrat, and I need information on how to forbid anonymous edits on this site. I know it's a harsh move, but it's necessary (due to an ongoing technical problem with server cache update). I need to know whether it can be done internally (by user rights management), or does it require Wikia staff assistance? I would greatly appreciate help on this matter. Mitranim 15:59, August 17, 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe this is a Special:Contact matter, but IIRC, it's only done when there's a history of heavy vandalism. –  Jä zz  i  16:08, August 17, 2011 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) You'll have to start a community discussion, and then cite the discussion in a Special:Contact message. Staff don't usually block anonymous editing, but they may in cases of extreme vandalism or other extenuating circumstances.


 * If I understand you correctly, both of you mean that to block anonymous edits, Wikia staff help is needed. Can this thread be used as a request (I will provide an explanation if needed), or do I need to contact them using a special form? Mitranim 16:29, August 17, 2011 (UTC)


 * A special form is not required. By "community discussion" Monchoman45 means that you need evidence that you discussed whether or not to block anonymous editing with the other members of Mass Effect Answers, and the majority agreed that it was needed. Also, you might be interested in the information at Help:Protect site. --Gardimuer { ʈalk } 21:27, August 17, 2011 (UTC)
 * Blocking anon edits are against Wikia's terms of use, and so it's unlikely that this'll happen. The technical issue needs to be solved, not the blocking of edits --  Random Time  21:29, August 17, 2011 (UTC)


 * It's easy to say, but I have contacted Wikia support about the problem a month ago, and they were unable to resolve it. The thing is obnoxious and I'm in a desperate need of some countermeasures. Let me be more specific and give an example of what I'm dealing with. Check any of the intermediate edits. It happens every day, in insane amounts, leaving me to clean up the mess. Only anonymous users are affected, so I need to make all contributors to this site register and log in. I realize it's not a perfect solution because of server workload, but there's no other way until the problem is fixed. Either by banning anonymous edits, or putting extra prompt to log in on every page edit, or in whichever other way, the site needs to make everyone make an account, because people are just wasting their time on posting redundant content and forcing extra work on admins. Suggestions? Mitranim 11:15, August 18, 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's a lot of anon edits, they don't look counter productive, but I'd like to know where they're all coming from, and why they don't know how to add returns to their edits --  Random Time  11:42, August 18, 2011 (UTC)
 * It happens because anonymous users receive old, long ago cached content. Even when a question gets answered, to most anonymous users, it still appears empty. They type an answer, press "Save", and everything they typed gets crammed to the top of the page. This is absolutely counter productive, because this content is usually redundant and only repeats what has been already said, instead of furthering the discussion and adding additional information which would happen if the user could see earlier posts. The other side of the problem is that people can't see answers to their own questions! And it can take up to 24 hours for a server to refresh the cache (some questions have been receiving those snowball edits for so long). This is absolutely unacceptable for an answers site, hence why I'm requesting for aid. Mitranim 12:00, August 18, 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah! That explains a lot of what I experienced in some of the answers sites. For me it was enough to never go back to one. Since then I've only heard "the answers wikis on wikia are crap" from everyone.
 * Like others said, put a page in that wiki with a discussion about blocking anonymous editors; have the usual editors comment on that page supporting you; send a message to Special:Contact explaining the problem and with a link to the page with the discussion.
 * After that, you could also send a second message describing the problem and asking for the problems to be fixed with technical solutions.
 * 14:08, August 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * The best solution would be to globally disable caching, but that may be bad for the server. It may help if you use JS to add  to the end of every url on your wiki.


 * Monchoman: I purge pages regularly, and it never helps. Disabling caching globally sounds like a reasonable solution. It should have roughly the same effect as logging everyone in, both content wise and server workload wise, and with less hassle for our users. How can it be done?
 * Nidek: can you remember when was the first time you met this problem on other sites? On MEAnswers, I never noticed it before July 1st (roughly).
 * I'm not sure about starting a discussion on blocking anon edits just yet. The Help:Protect site page says that Wikia staff will only block them for 12 hours, and even if they would actually do it permanently, I would like to explore alternative solutions first (like disabling caching). Mitranim 15:03, August 18, 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I have no idea. At the time I was goofing around at some (answers) site linked by someone, probably someone here asking for help with something. My approach at that time was not methodical at all.
 * Since then, I've seen at least 1 discussion here that left me with a bad opinion about the answers wikis and wikia's attitude towards them. You can search around for it, I'm sure it's not hard to find.
 * 23:44, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

(unindent) Wikia will disable anon editing for more than 12 hours on request if there is a good reason. For example, some gaming wikis ask to disable anonymous edits on the days leading up to and immediately following a game release that would majorly increase traffic to the site. This prevents the amount of vandalism from overstepping what the administrators can handle. This happened once on a wiki I was administrator of, and the staff member who turned off anon edits forgot to turn them back on... so we had about two months of no anonymous edits until I requested it be returned to normal. :P Gardimuer { ʈalk } 20:12, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'm going to start the discussion on my wiki then. But is there truly no other way? Monchoman mentioned something about disabling caching globally. Or maybe add a script that would spawn a pop-up (like the one with "paste your text here when you press ctrl+v") with a prompt to log in upon visiting every page. Is this possible? Mitranim 20:35, August 19, 2011 (UTC)