Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-29313037-20150723052608

I just saw this discussion thread, and so I am going to copy/paste what I said on the news blog over to here - I hope that is fine:

I have only ever supported the blocking of the anonymous, as a strict counter measure for unique transitional periods, where quality is something that needs to be assured for the sake of the wiki's stability. For most other cases, I only see such blocking as an issue of bloated egos, and those that have become desensitized towards the collaborative nature of a wiki.

One of the big ones that I have always seen, as this discussion typically pops up on the larger wikis at least once in their histories, are users that make huge assumptions over wiki-aspects they know next to nothing about, in which they voice their opinions in complete ignorance. This is seen with the new(ish) users, the users that only hang around wikis to be chat-roomers, and generally, the people who are not all-that familiar with collaboration and how important the anonymous community is towards said collaboration.
 * Sometimes, this discrimination is warranted, such as when it comes to votes, as if one feels strongly enough to have prominent voices in a wiki's future, I have always believed that the extra step in creating an account, is a necessary and symbolic act. But outside of very specific cases such as this, such discrimination is nothing more than elitism - especially when the anonymous are not allowed to even have an opinion.

And then there are the veterans. The users that have been on a wiki for years, and are typically experienced with external wikis outside of Wikia, too. These are the users that become protective of their works, and develop an almost paternal instinct for the wikis they call home. This is a trap, and is one that I have had to climb out of multiple times before, as well. Because at this point, the veterans forget what it is like being an anonymous users. Not knowing where to go, what the rules are, how the dozens upon dozens of tools work, how WikiText works, etc. etc. etc. We make assumptions where assumptions are not warranted, and we become intolerant of alleged sourced of disturbance.
 * What this leads to, are leaderships creating stifling bureaucracies. Long-standing members are used to these bureaucracies, but when a new user or anonymous user cannot wrap their heads around whatever silly bullshit the sysops have spun over years of over-protectiveness, they are always used for justification in generalizing the entire anonymous/new-user community. It is a fallacious way of thinking/acting, and only harms the wikis and their collaborative nature.

What should be taken into account, is that even on the largest of wikis, the editors and chatters only take up a minority percentage of actual people that visit said wikis. I am not going to pull some statistic out of my ass, but on the larger wikis such as Wookiepedia, The Fallout wiki, and even some of the biggest wikis out there such as WoWHead and the Imperial Library, have less than a few-hundred active editors at any given time (many times less than even a dozen/couple-dozen active editors), while having traffic analytics showing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of readers.

And that is what is important: because out of those hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of readers, there are going be thousands of them that stop by to make quick edits, fix incorrect edits, etc. etc. before disappearing forever. So while the active registered users are the foundation of any wiki, it is ultimately because of the innumerous anonymous users that wikis get so big after years of existence.

The worst part, is that the anonymous community are ostracized and treated like scapegoats beyond belief. During my time at the Elder Scrolls wiki, a perfect example is seen with this article. TES wiki was worked into a frenzy over an imagined and out-right fabricated issue, in which the anonymous community were being accused of being almost entirely made-up of vandals and trolls, and if one reads my responses in that thread, they will see that I was easily able to contradict the rubbish being spewed against the anonymous.
 * But then another issue is revealed, if the same forum is read further. Even though I provided hard evidence against the OP and his supporters, it was almost entirely ignored, and this is where ego kicks in. Many at TES wiki wanted a scape-goat, and were willing to pull wool over their eyes even when their scapegoats were/are called out for exactly what they are - being scapegoats over the real issues that plague the wiki.

It really boils down to a wiki's size - smaller wikis can get away with blocking the anonymous community, as they do not have much to lose. I still detest such actions, even on a smaller wiki, because a wiki, inherently, is not supposed to be private to anyone. But the larger wikis, are controlled by leaderships that are harming their own wikis by making such short-sighted decisions, towards an overall community that is largely the reason why their wikis have as much content and traffic as they do.