Online communities, like Wikipedia, produce valuable public information goods. Whereas some of these communities require would-be contributors to create accounts, many do not. Does this requirement catalyze cooperation or inhibit participation? Prior research provides divergent predictions but little causal evidence. We conduct an empirical test using longitudinal data from 136 natural experiments where would-be contributors to wikis were suddenly required to log in to contribute. Requiring accounts leads to a small increase in account creation, but reduces both high- and low-quality contributions from registered and unregistered participants. Although the change deters a large portion of low-quality participation, the vast majority of deterred contributions are of higher quality. We conclude that requiring accounts introduces an undertheorized tradeoff for public goods production in interactive communication systems.

像Wikipedia这样的在线社区产生了有价值的公共信息产品。尽管其中一些社区需要潜在的贡献者来创建帐户，但许多社区却不需要。该要求是否会促进合作或抑制参与？先前的研究提供了不同的预测，但几乎没有因果关系的证据。我们使用来自136个自然实验的纵向数据进行了实证测试，其中突然需要Wiki的潜在贡献者登录才能做出贡献。要求帐户导致帐户创建量的少量增加，但同时减少了已注册和未注册参与者的高质量和低质量贡献。尽管变更阻止了大部分低质量的参与，但绝大多数阻止的贡献的质量较高。