Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-9139758-20140426091444

As some of you may be aware, we have had a lot of trouble with anonymous users recently. I, along with other members of the Admin Team, think that it would be best to restrict the privileges of anonymous users. This idea is also related to the fact we have seen a sharp decline in the number of registered users contributing in recent months. I believe restricting anonymous users will encourage people to create an account and, hopefully, stay for longer and work their way up the Admin Team ranks. I have already contacted Community Central about this and their response was:

"Hello, Thanks for contacting Wikia. It is possible to restrict anonymous editing, but we generally recommend against it. It’s harder to build a community that blocks anonymous contributors, since a lot of first time visitors will want to try out the site before logging in and creating an account. Forcing people to log in first can put people off and slow the growth of your community. It is true that more problem edits can come from anonymous editors, but accounts are also easy to make and it’s likely that vandals and spammers will just switch tactics rather than go away. If you need help with spam and vandalism, you’re welcome to contact our Volunteer Spam Task Force (VSTF) at http://vstf.wikia.com. They’re able to give you assistance in cleaning up spam and setting up roadblocks for future vandals. Above all, the main reason we recommend keeping a Wikia open to editing for everyone is that it's just friendlier that way. Open editing is an ideal, one that Wikias were built on. We think it's good to keep Wikias that way. Of course, there may be special circumstances on particular communities, and we are always willing to listen to any specific considerations you might have. Feel free to take some time to think this over. If you do want to restrict anon-editing, please hold a community discussion on the Wikia (not on chat) so the rest of the community can give their opinion on this as well. Once that’s done, let me know how your community wants to move forward.

Lucho Valenzuela Community Support

Anyway, onto the motion:

I propose that we prevent anonymous users editing pages, but continue allowing them to comment on articles.

Please voice your opinion in the comments. 