User blog comment:Unownshipper/A Serious Consideration/@comment-1500935-20160922200949/@comment-3967731-20160923164719

I'll grant you that when calculating the number of edits, the number of malicious ones are very,very small when compared to the number of beneficial ones. Still, those acts of vandalism can have an impact.

Since last week, the Handyman article is currently locked to all new and unregistered users just because some troll made repeated inane and vulgar edits on the page. Why did this occur (besides the fact that the vandal had far too much time on his hands)? It was partially because it was easy for this user to do so. He used 3 separate IP addresses to repeat his edits; as soon as Mainframe98 blocked one address, another would resume the campaign.

You are certainly correct that a user could repeat the tactic by creating new registered accounts, but when you consider the extra time and effort that goes into that action, the vandal is less likely (though, not entirely unlikely) to perform such an action. Furthermore, when the Admins have a registered account to deal with, there's more we can do to prevent repeats.

Regardless, it might not take care of all vandals, but it would help guard against some of them.