Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-1038387-20150722210342

What does anonymous editing bring to your communities now, if it’s available there?


 * Don't know. I'm on one wiki that was anon-locked at its inception (before it moved to Wikia, though that's before my time) and 2 that were for COPPA reasons. On one of those, which was geared to a younger audience than I was used to, the anons primarily were hit and run edits that would have to be reverted for policy or MoS reasons.


 * We had anon editing reenabled briefly for a Wikia-run quiz; the "damage" was manageable. I was mildly enthusiastic about further experimentation, others not really.

Why don't anonymous editors create accounts?
 * I can't speak for others. But I was initially hesitant to create an account because I feared it would jump from casual editing to spending way too much time there. I was right.

What would motivate them to create accounts, besides disabling anonymous editing altogether?
 * If I look at the other sites I frequent and the reasons why I created accounts there, it's more or less:
 * The ability to subscribe to other's contributions, favoriting, bookmarking, commenting, that kind of stuff.
 * The ability to customize your preferences: layout, search filters; there are some sites where the search option is only unlocked if you have an account, or where the search and filter options are more advanced if you have one.
 * To be able to have an established presence/identity that I can communicate to others.
 * The opportunity to participate in community events and/or competitions.


 * Some of those are moot when it comes to Wikia, though establishing an identity and unlocking preferences are probably the biggest.