Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-5192604-20130227083945/@comment-3308937-20130227152618

"It is possible to do this, but it is not something we would usually recommend for a wiki. It's much harder to build the community on a wiki that blocks anonymous users. This is because many first time visitors will try out the site before logging and creating an account. Forcing people to log in first can put people off and slow the growth of your wiki.

While it is often true that more problem edits can come from anonymous editors, accounts are easy to make and it's likely that vandals and spammers will just switch tactics rather than go away. At least with anonymous edits, you can see which are the ones to check first, and can see the IP of the vandal directly. With this information it's possible (in some cases) to block a range of IPs and prevent someone editing who is switching IP addresses.

The main reason we recommend keeping a wiki open to editing by all, is that it's just more friendly that way. Open editing is an ideal, one that wikis were built on. We think it's good to keep wikis that way. Of course, there may be special circumstances on particular wikis, and we are always willing to listen to any specific considerations you might have."

Despite the fact we had a majority consensus, the fact that me having the checkuser right (I can check IPs of registered users) negates the "can see the IP of the vandal directly" entirely and the fact we have (especially at the time of the vote) an extremely low ratio of positive anon edits to negative anon edits and we're already a huge wiki makes the "slow growth" thing pretty much a nonissue.