Talk:Musings about unregistered contributors

You may want to distinguish among:

• differences which are inthrinsic to the very concept of unregistered/anonymous user as we know it (lack of a stable identity with clear boundaries: no stable user page, talk page, contribution list, watchlist), which can be considered a feature or a disadvantage (usually a disadvantage for newbies; often a refreshing feature for worn-off oldbies);
• differences which are just accidental, including the very fact of being labeled by the IP I suppose (and originally reverse domain).

--Nemo 22:24, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

A reasonable point. I'm yet to see the distinction, myself, in a way which would give me understanding of which is which. --Gryllida 06:35, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Hard to draw a line, indeed. FYI, [1]. --Nemo 11:51, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Shared accounts consideration

Please create a subsection for each of your thoughts. Don't keep them together. I would like to see some space for thorough discussion of each thought. Thanks.

Some projects', such as Wikipedia's (see here), documentation prohibits registration of shared accounts. I can see some reasoning behind that, such as us not trusting that their password is secure enough to not leak outside of their group, and abuse potential (I can vandalize a bit and claim account shared, to not be held responsible for my harmful edits). Properly supporting shared accounts would be a challenge.

For context, shared IPs exist. They also have the abuse potential, with one user making an edit and claiming that it's not his fault. Currently they can exist in the shared form, but the whole thing gets blocked in case of abuse. In contrast, shared accounts are blocked on-sight.

I would like to ask for your thoughts here about improving shared "thingies" — IPs and accounts — support. I would like to ideally consider the pros, cons, and challenges of supporting both shared IPs and shared accounts fully.

1. Cookie authentication?
2. "This account is shared" tickbox in preferences?
3. Means to appoint an internal supervisor within a shared "thingie" who can bar troublemakers from access?
4. Any past effort in this direction?
5. Conceptual or technical challenges not mentioned above?

Thanks. Gryllida 03:25, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Anonymous contributors are identified by IP address, so there is really no option to disable sharing as long as IPs are used for that. In fact, the right of anonymous users to edit most pages is mentioned explicitly in the founding principles page. I don't see any reason why we should have shared accounts. Why not just use one account per person? It avoids all these problems and allows proper attribution. PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:31, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of giving unregistered users the same facilities as to registered users (access to preferences, to beta features, so they can provide beta feedback). To do that, I have to try to erase the boundary between how we treat unregistered and registered contributors. Being able or unable to share a "thingie" -- IP or account -- is a prominent boundary so I'm discussing it first. Gryllida 07:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I think you're missing the fact that IP addresses do not refer to a specific person, but accounts do (or at least should). PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

If you were to do that, i'd use something like company profiles/pages, that have personal accounts attached to it. This still makes individuals responsible (which is part of why we have the rule) and at the same time (can) show affiliation. Facebook, Google, Github etc have such concepts. BTW there are some wiki's which already have organization accounts (de.wp if i remember correctly and Commons). They are only allowed upon approval. TheDJ (talk) 13:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

This makes sense. PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but I'd like more input on the alternative solutions. Specifically something involving eventually granting IP contributors access to preferences and some methods of authentication that don't involve registering. (I appreciate your detail, too; '[corporate] groups' are a related feature.) Gryllida 06:58, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand this whole section. The point of unregistered users is that they don't have a unique identifier (currently username, replaced by IP) for a single identity (usually person). --Nemo 14:53, 6 April 2014 (UTC)