Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-5275700-20150723010424

Cook Me Plox wrote: 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?

The motive, hopefully conveyed in the first paragraph of the blog post, is to increase the number of active registered users on Wikia. We believe that users who experience the benefits of having an account will be more likely to return again.

Why so scared? I didn't intend for "in many ways this is an experiment" to sound cavalier. Rather, this is one part of a larger effort around this goal. As was also mentioned in the blog, we'll be trying other ways of promoting account creation and will be making the process easier.

I think it’s also interesting to consider what being "anonymous" on Wikia versus having an account really means. What is an individual giving up by creating an account? There is no requirement to reveal anything about yourself to the rest of the community. Your username does not have to be your real name, and having a username displayed is arguably more anonymous than having your IP address displayed. Certainly there are valid reasons why someone may choose not to have an account, but as others have pointed out, on the internet of 2015 it's very common to log in to participate on a website.