Board Thread:New Features/@comment-5275700-20150722200934/@comment-89.241.221.45-20150810004257

Jackiespeel: About a year ago, BBC Worldwide's Latin America headquarters in Miami messed up really badly & scripts for Doctor Who Series 8 became available online weeks before the series began airing. At Doctor Who Answers, the admins thought that it might become necessary to disable anonymous editing temporarily in order to protect fans from spoilers. In the event, a clear warning from the admins was enough & spoilers were not posted. The block on anonymous editing would have remained in force only until the spoiler danger had passed (i.e., until the leaked episodes had been aired).

Disabling anonymous editing would have stopped me from contributing to the site. However, I'd have accepted that because (a) there was a very good reason & (b) it would have been a temporary measure only. The admins, however, waited to see if such a drastic measure really would be needed & found that it was not.

To me, this seems the right approach: do this if & only if it's found to be necessary in reality & then do it only for as long as it remains genuinely necessary. There was a "clear & present danger" but DWA's admins didn't panic; they waited to see if that danger would actually materialise & it didn't. Less drastic measures were enough.