Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-4189499-20150807142306

I know my reply is kinda late to the mark, but I've not had the time until now to read the conversation so far. So, here's my experience of IP users.

My experience with IP editors is probably different to many others', as the best editor on my main wiki, Doctor Who Answers, is an IP editor. This user is easily the longest-serving member of the wiki community, and is so valuable that he has independantly been offered the chance of adminship by every active member of the admin team, including myself, several times. This user is known as 89 to our community, as that is the first number in his most common IP address (it used to change predictably between 89, 2, 96, and 78, but it's now settled down to pretty much always be 89). While he is "an anon user", he is very much not anonymous within our community, with everybody being able to recognise him by his IP address, if not his writing tone. He has also revealed more information about himself voluntarily than would even be needed for the sign in process, such as full name, date of birth, and place of origin. He is the most active user by far, and one of the most powerful voices in discussions of the wiki's future. I have complete and utter respect for this user. However, he still refuses to make an account! Well, that's not exactly true. He got one once in order to get around a bug which only affected IP users, however he only used it twice before abandoning it. No amount of pestering has convinced this user to create a proper account. Not even the ad argument works, as he has Adblock! The main draw-back is the lack of talk page, but I've got his email which sort of works as a replacement.

89 also isn't the only person who has edited on our wiki long-term as an IP editor. We also had 70 (later 68) who was a regular and a very good contributor. It was later discovered, after a couple of years of knowing this user only via their IP, that they actually did have an account and had been a very senior editor on other Wikia communities before coming to our wiki as an anon. 70, like 89, was a fantastic editor who made some of the most contributions to the mainspace, just behind 89 himself, and was a good regular contributor in the forums. 70 had chosen to ditch his account for personal reasons, and probably wouldn't have continued editing if anon editing had been disabled. Our wiki would have been all the poorer for it. 70 did edit for a while under his actual username, but eventually left due to persistent trouble-making by another registered user (who has also now thankfully left). Having seen that, the "status" which came with being an anonymous user might have been protecting 70 from the persistent negativity of the troublesome registered user by being able to hide a little behind the words "A Wikia Contributor", making which edits were his not quite so obvious. I think that's a completely legitimate reason to continue editing anonymously, especially as the user could be identified easily if needed.

While it is true that the majority of the vandalism we get is from IP users, that's because the majority of edits in general come from IP users. We are an answers wiki, and I believe that people simply wouldn't ask questions at all if they had to go through the extra step of signing up for an account. Anyway, there are very, very few cases of proper vandalism on our wiki, and I do believe wikis in general, despite what people believe. Most instances of "vandalism" are just people trying to figure out how to use the system, or are people who don't understand the rules well enough and so break them unintentionally. It is an admin's job to help these new users learn the ways of the wiki and become more productive users. Of course, there are still legitimate vandals occasionally, but it doesn't take too long to first issue a warning and then, if needed, give them a week or two off to allow them to get bored and go away.

Given all this, I will now answer the given questions.

Anonymous editors bring edits to our community! If it were up to us registered users, Doctor Who Answers would be a dead wiki. That is no exaggeration.
 * What does anonymous editing bring to your communities now, if it’s available there?

To look at another wiki I monitor (I don't really have time to edit it, but I monitor new edits others make), there are very, very few edits made, especially in the off-season (which is the vast majority of the time), and probably about half the edits that are made are made by anons. It's not many edits, but the edits that are made are useful and make that wiki just that little bit better. Of course, the changes have to be checked to make sure they are actually legitimate, but I find most are.

That's a very good question, and one I would really like to know the answer to in regards to 89.
 * Why don’t anonymous editors create accounts?

I know when I first started editing, I did so as an anonymous user for the first few weeks. As a new user, you feel nervous making your first few edits. The time it takes to sign up for an account is an extra 3 minutes for the user to get cold feet and walk away. Being able to make those edits anonymously also allows a chance to make mistakes and improve before creating a permanent identity. The chance to make mistakes without them coming back to haunt you I believe is one big motivator for anonymous editing, at least in the early days of one's editing.

Signing up for an account would also be a barrier to people who just want to edit to correct one typo, or to clarify one fact. If they can just change it, they will. If they have to sign up, no matter how easy the process is, that extra step is enough to prevent many people from bothering. We need to keep the process of making the first few edits as easy as possible, to make sure people do it at all. Once they've made a few edits, then we can start considering convincing them to sign up for an account, but in the first instance, it's better that they just edit, for both their sake and the wiki's.

I can see that some users who have a previous history on Wikia might want to go anonymous to escape that history, to start over fresh without all the baggage attached, as in the case of 70. I believe that that is a perfectly legitimate use of anonymous editing, although I think it would be better still if they just made a new account.

I still have no idea why 89 doesn't have an account.

That is a question I have been trying to answer for years when it comes to 89. :P
 * What would motivate them to create accounts, besides disabling anonymous editing altogether?

On DWA, we have certain features only those logged in can access, such as the editing achievements and the ability to track which questions you've asked to see if they've been answered. I'm not sure if either of these attempts to encourage signing up have actually worked though. Quite frankly, I think just making anons more aware of the benefits of an account (being able to track your edits, having a single identity that is known in the discussion spaces, the ability to customise your bottom user bar, lack of CAPTCHAs) would be the best way to convince them to sign up. there are enough benefits as-is, if only they were better communicated to those without them!

One thing that would be interesting in this conversation is to hear the perspective of a regular IP contributor. In fact, I'm going to go see if 89 has any interest in leaving feedback here, because I believe that actually asking people about their motivations where possible is better than just guessing at them, especially as people seem to have had such a wide variety of experiences with anonymous editing. If any other communities have regular IP editors, I would ask you do the same so we can get the views of these anons before deciding their fate for them.