Login Required?
If you've been following any developer blog these days, you've probably seen that there has been a lot of recent activity in online identity management. OpenID has just released specifications for version 2.0 and OAuth has released specifications for Core 1.0. While I think identity management is a great and necessary thing, I would hate for the Web to become a "login-only" environment.
Early in the inception of SundayMorningRides.com, we made a commitment to lowering the threshold to users to participate and contribute to our site. We decided to make the site free (a no brainer), but also to have no logins required to participate on our site. After all, we are depending on the user community for our data - so reducing every little stoppage point helps. I spent this past weekend at a motorcycle show (here's some pics if you're interested) talking to folks about the site and their reaction when told there was no login was amazing...they couldn't believe it! I for one would have to agree, these days it seems like the Web is filled with sites that require a username and password for every trivial action.
As I said, OpenID and OAuth are a great things, the combination of the two allows the creation of truly remarkable seamless user experiences. I would love to have a single login to manage my online identity.
But I would also love to not have to login unless I really have to...what do you think?
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Irony
I completely agree with you -- I think that the user benefit for creating an account and logging in needs to be high to warrant signing in... that said, in moving off the desktop, you no longer can make as many assumptions about the permissions of the user/owner/viewer... as things get more distributed, liability does too, and so while it would be awesome if every page had an EDIT button on it (as TBL originally envisioned) unfortunately there would simply be too much abuse... though, that said, I do agree with your broader point.
I ask you though — why did I have to register to leave this comment? And why, above all else, aren't you supporting OpenID on this site? It's baked into Drupal 6 — you'd think that you guys would want to give people another benefit to flaunt their AOL OpenID!!! ;)