[sneak]

Comcast has a portal for law enforcement to request subscriber information at https://lea.comcast.com . That IPv6 address, plus the current date and time, uniquely identifies you by name and service address. Any edits you make to Wikipedia from that address are not anonymous.

[wpietri]

This is a use of "anonymous" that is unfamiliar to me. Do you mean something like "untraceable"? For example, when non-profits credit an anonymous donor, they know who the person is. In that more common sense of the word, Wikipedia's anonymous edits are indeed anonymous: they are published without a name attached.

Anyhow, that seems besides the point. All HTTP requests come with IP addresses. That the police might be able to trace them back to a house eventually does not say much about either Wikipedia (who would give up an IP address with a warrant whether the edit was for a named account or an anonymous one) or no-user-account systems in general.

[maccolgan]

You are confusing anonymous and pseudonymous. Tor for example can afford you request-level anonymity.

[wpietri]

I really don't think I am. Look, for example at this project that is on the front page of HN: https://docs.taler.net/

They describe it as an anonymous payment system. That matches the first definition here: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anonymous