waffle

To emphasize a point from the previous post: Waffle now only accepts comments from people with an OpenID.

There are two major reasons why. The first is simply that OpenID is exactly the kind of standard I want to succeed – open, decentralized, secure, free and providing a useful function. The second reason is providing a better experience for people leaving comments.

You had to leave your email address and fill out a simultaneously intelligence-insulting and spam-robot-busting math question. Now you just have to login with an OpenID – and an OpenID simultaneously makes sure that you can stay anonymous if you want to and that no one else can impersonate you, even if they fake your name.

If getting an OpenID was hard or cost money, I would not do this. However, many of you already have OpenIDs, there are excellent fast services for getting free OpenIDs (including multiple ‘personas’) and there are excellent free services for hosting your own OpenID server and as many accounts as you want.

Don’t see using OpenID here as registering a magical ‘Waffle account’. OpenID will be everywhere within a year, mark my words, and you’ll be able to reuse your account everywhere without relying on any specific third party service.

So in conclusion, my current opinion on OpenID on Waffle is that I didn’t go OpenID-only without a reason. I’ve listed my arguments. If you want me to open up “accountless” commenting again, either counter the arguments I’ve already laid out, or present sides of the argument I haven’t even thought about.