Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-1445357-20130315142943/@comment-1915726-20130319171605

Puzzleclocks wrote:

From a more numbers-oriented perspective, I am curious if disabling anon-comments has been tried before, and if so, to what effect? How much push-back or significant reduction in overall wiki activity was there?

If we agree that disabling anonymous comments isn't against the wiki's overall philosophy(which doesn't seem to be a huge issue since accounts are free, and easy to set-up), the question boils down to numbers: how many worthwhile but anonymous users will we lose, and is that number worth pushing away of to get rid of the less-determined trolls?

Not actually replying to your question. But commenting is specifically discussed here due to the fact that only user will sysop privilege can moderate them. If the discussion takes place in the conventional talk page namespace, any disruptive comment can be easily reverted by any user, including the anon themselves (except for removing revision history which is usually done to messages of racism or revealing personal privacy). As such, trolls prefer to disrupt the commenting system than everything else.