[wpietri]

I agree IPs are PII, and that they can lead to unmasking. I also agree the person I replied to was wildly overstating things.

But for the current context, where we are talking about whether or not user account registration is helpful in preventing abuse, I think the kinds of low-probability, long-timeline consequences you describe are not really going to deter most would-be vandals. Especially since Wikipedia is going to know the vandal's IP address whether or not it gets show publicly. So I think Wikipedia is still a good example of how "no user accounts" is workable at scale.

[danShumway]

That's totally fair. In the context of preventing abuse, having an IP address on Wikipedia is definitely less useful to them than having an IP address + an email + whatever other verification methods services are throwing in front of accounts.