Hi.
Requiring a real name to be entered won't stop a vandalism _robot_ that does nothing but sign up spoof accounts and vandalise with them. By the time it is discovered that the accounts were not real people (like if the robot is designed to generate names that look like real names. And even then it might hit on a few real people and this might have unknown consequences.), the robot would have already vandalized. What happens then?
There are already counter-bot strategies that WP employs with a good deal of success. We can back that up with tighter controls, since all of our users are logged-in. For instance, we can effectively limit an account to (as an example) waiting 20 seconds between edit. That sort of a system is effective on other high-traffic sites (like Slashdot).
This has little to nothing to do with real names. The same system and the same defenses would be necessary regardless of the real name rule.
