User blog comment:BertH/Anonymous editing and your community/@comment-961279-20150724145614

Several years ago, I was contacted by Wikia to find out if I wanted to disable anonymous editors on because it looked like we were having a lot of problems with them. I discussed with with the other people in the P&F Wiki and said I was in favor of it. Others said no because they had started editing without an account to see what editing was like before committing to making an account. It surprised me because my experience was that I saw immediately that I wanted to be a part of the wiki and signed up for an account right away.

At that same time, we were dealing with an anonymous editor who showed up under a few IP addresses and kept trying to add some fan fiction over and over again. Then one day an account was created that immediately began adding the same fan fiction. It drove home the point that people who want to cause problems won't let having to create an account stop them and we voted not to disable anonymous editing.

I've seen numerous vandals who just go out and create new accounts when one gets blocked. The most I've seen was around 26 sockpuppet accounts for one person. I've even seen one or two who will dig up an account they haven't used in years just so they can continue vandalizing.

Over on the Simpsons Wiki, anonymous editing had been turned off a few years ago. After I helped get it adopted, I made the request to turn that back on, hoping to make it seem a little friendlier. We've had a few problems with anonymous editors, but not too many.

It often looks like anonymous editors are where most of the problems come from, but it can actually be easier to deal with any vandalism they cause because they cannot upload pictures and cannot rename pages. If they show up under several IPs, it's fairly easy to set up a rangeblock that heads them off at the pass. It becomes more and more difficult for them to find a computer to edit from, so they usually give up.

You have to make the decsion as to whether cutting off a lot of people just because they don't have an account is helpful for your wiki. At least now you can try it out without having to send in a request to Wikia to have them disable or enable it. If you turn it off and you see the editing activity drop way down, you can always turn it back on.