Thread:JosephHawk/@comment-25523075-20150321164509/@comment-1267828-20150321225918

PhilippL wrote: But why are the "A Wikia Contributors" whith the IP Addres not blocked when they have this "Wikia" on the "aka A 'Wikia' Contributor"? Those aren't actual usernames.

Wikia Contributors are users who use the wikia services, but have not made a formal account.

The best way to explain it is like this

Suppose we have three users: One who is a wikia user with an account (We'll call him WIKIA USER 555), one who is a wikia user without an account (We'll pretend he has a false IP of 555.555.555 [yes it is missing an octet, that's on purpose]), and another who is a wikia user without an account (We'll say his IP address is 111.111.111).

Let's pretend WIKIA USER 555 went ahead and vandalized a page. In order for anyone to stop WIKIA USER 555 from spamming or vandalizing pages, they need to block his account.

Since wikia allows anybody to edit, not just those with accounts, it means it has to have a way for admin, staff, and groups like VSTF to have a way to determine who did the vandalizing. So in this instance, let's say a page was vandalized, and 111.111.111 didn't do it and WIKIA USER 555 didn't do it either. By posting a users IP Address, they can then look at the logs, determine it was 555.555.555, and block him or revert his edits.

Now it is used for more than the purposes of blocking, but that's a bare bones explanation of one reason it exists.

What "A Wikia Contributor" tells you is that it is a user without an account (or who isn't logged in). It is a status automatically added to anonymous users to indicate to people "This person doesn't have an account, they're just a non-Wikia user who is contributing to said wiki.