Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-1724320-20150722231233

BertH wrote: RansomTime wrote: What I think has happened is that Wikia has got some hard data to the contrary. Perhaps they discovered that on the wikis that they've disabled anon editing - they have either not seen a significant drop in the number of active users, or they've seen a rise.

Bert: are you able to confirm any of this?

In 2013, when anonymous editing on some communities was disabled in order to comply with COPPA, we noticed that there was an initial dip in the raw number of edits on all communities but an increase in active user accounts. These numbers returned to normal after a short time. Also, many of our current top WAM communities have anonymous editing disabled either by request or due to COPPA. So we are pretty confident that this won't be a harmful change, though some of the immediate effects might cause concern. That's why one of the questions I posed above is about how things are looking a few months after the change. Hearing stories from admins and editors (and hopefully new users!) will be illuminating.

Many people have varying opinions about what a wiki is, and should be. And about what Wikia is, and should be. But I think we can all agree that the internet has changed quite a bit in the past decade, and that users' expectations have also changed. So in many ways this is an experiment to see what happens. Changes like this can be scary sometimes, but we should not be afraid to evolve. This is really, really scary to hear. I am totally not okay with disabling anonymous editing, unless there's very strong evidence that removing it actually increases activity. I'm certainly not seeing that from any of those wikis or from what you're saying. Worse yet, it sounds like you've already made up your mind. What are the other motives here?