Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-1251315-20140825123912/@comment-26474238-20140827223604

Dire Skeever wrote: I stand by my previous statement. It is not unreasonable to ask visitors to register before editing our wiki, especially considering the amount of vandalism that has been happening. (Even if it is just for a month or two.)  As long as both registration and access remain free and open to everyone, I believe it IS "in the spirit of wiki."

But this is just one skeever's opinion. The fact of the matter is, some people do not like creating online identities. Forcing them to create accounts, just to edit, is exactly that: forcing them to create an account just to edit. If you think for a second that in forcing them to create an account, that prospective editors will not turn their back on the wiki and never attempt to edit again, then you are sorely mistaken.

By violating Wikia's ideal of assuming good faith, and essentially replacing that with an elitist ideal of anyone not having a registered account as being useless, then I can assure you that the wiki will, indeed, suffer because of that change. Just because registration is "Free" (not going to bring up the fact that Wikia wikis are plagued with ads), does not mean we have a right to tell users that genuinely want to better the wiki, that they cannot until they just through hoops and register.