While I wouldn’t advocate keeping anons from editing articles, I think protecting user pages from them would be a good idea. In all my time here, there has never been a time that I have seen a constructive user page edit from an anonymous editor. They just always replace it with vulgar language. Opinions?
system
2
The only difference between registered and non-registered folk in that scenario is a name to the edit. What if a person wanted to edit their own user page, but either didn’t have the ability to log in or something else rather? Then they’re basically locked out of their own user page.
I agree with WE14 on this, actually. The problem of them not being able to log in to post something is easily fixed if they contacted a, admin, letting them know what’s up, or just registering a new account and changing their user content. If it’s that important to change whatever is on their profile, I think it shouldn’t be a problem to create a new account/message an admin.
Thanks for the suggestion, WE14 – we would only need to semi-protect user pages if they get a lot of anon vandalism. In addition, I echo Maluniu’s point that a logged-out user might be locked out of their own user page.
My thought is, there’s no way to connect users and IP Addresses, so won’t edits by an anon just be reverted anyway?
If an anon edited their user page while logged out, I would suggest using an edit summary to explain.
I think this should be implemented. A userpage is not the most crucial thing in the world, so I think that even if a user wants to edit their own user page while logged out, the benefits outweigh the potential harms here. Plus, if they want to edit their page so badly, why don’t they just log in? It takes all of 10 seconds. I’m not sure what type of scenario would keep someone from logging in.
@Adelaide
While I see your point, it’s easy enough for a sly anon to lie in the edit summary.
@AndrewG1999
Let me tell you a scenario that would prevent someone from logging in. Security. A person gets their account hacked and email changed. Then what? They can’t log-in no matter what they do. They shouldn’t have to be FORCED to log-in, hence the openness of wikiHow.
That is okay and i can accept.
In the case, I think editing your user page is the least of your concerns. Besides, even if they could edit it, the person that hacked them could just change it back. If this happens, you should probably contact wikiHow and get some help to get your account back. Because that’s kinda
a big issue.
system
15
And as well as user page vandalism is really far fetched comparison to article vandalism. Why implement something not needed? I can see if user page vandalism was just as bad as mainspace, but honestly, it’s not. It takes a few seconds to revert, and go off on the next edit… we don’t need the engineers to spend more time on blocking off a section of wikiHow from people not logged into the site.
system
16
Agree 100% with @Maluniu
, this is not needed.
Very good point Lutherus.
Lojjik
18
I can see it both ways. Anonymous users don’t typically need to make edits in the user space. However, we don’t normally apply protections to things unless there’s been a demonstrable need to do so (like a lot of userpage vandalism). It wouldn’t take a lot of engineering effort to implement this, but the matter at hand is whether there might be good reason to?
But why would a anonymous user edit a user page? Generally no anonymous user comes to wikiHow to edit User pages in most cases. If they have an account, they can log in. If somehow they can’t then they should write in the summary that what they did and who they are. If it is vandalized we can revert them so not a big issue. Why would a user would write bad things for himself? I think we can catch them and revert them. I don’t think it would be that necessary to protect user pages.
While this is not necessary, my thought is: anon edits to user pages are almost always reverted, since there is no proof of connection, and when they post profanity, it leaves a bad edit history, even if it is reverted. Just my two cents.
