6 ms·

I am genuinely curious - why are you (and some others) against openid? (apart from the trust factor)

zaidf 17y ago
It is a pain to use and understand, even for a techie like me. When it works, it's magic. And often I don't mind--especially since facebook's implementation of it. When it doesn't work, I've no freakin idea what is going on. And it really makes me miss the plain ol login/pass.
- justlearning 17y ago
  i can relate to that - with logging with openid here in HN. I had to post an "ask hn" to catch attention of pg - who resolved it. I couldn't make head or tail of what was happening and strongly assumed that clickpass was at fault. Then pg said he had to fix some code.
  - mcav 17y ago
    Oh. I, too, had an issue logging in with OpenID here. I finally gave in and reset my password so I could log in with that.
- JimmyL 17y ago
  I have had no problems (or difficulties) with OpenID - set up an account on myopenid.com, pasted two lines into the source of the root page of my domain that delegates to myopenid, and then I just use that.
- kniwor 17y ago
  I haven't come across a scenario where openid did not work. Care to elaborate? I think of openid as the git of the login systems. Elegant in it's simplicity but comes with a minor learning curve and the benefits of climbing the learning curve far outweigh the cost of doing so. And very much like git, it takes 15 minutes to get over the learning curve if you are good with google and/or have some guidance.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
It's a royal pain in the ass. Like everyone else in the world, I already have a well-established workflow for managing usernames and passwords. My favorite tool is 1Password for the Mac. It works seamlessly with the majority of websites. It doesn't work well with Stack Overflow. Most sites log me in with one keypress; Stack Overflow now takes two keypresses and a mouse click, and that's after I carefully set it up by hand, because the auto-learning feature doesn't work with OpenID. I resisted using OpenID for months because I didn't want my login on Stack Overflow to be tied inextricably to my Yahoo or Google identity. I can change a password, and on well-designed sites I can even change a username, but I can't change my OpenID on Stack Overflow by any means that I can find. (Yeah, I know I could have used some kind of identity-forwarding fu to use my own domain as an OpenID, and then forwarded the actual task of running an OpenID server to some other entity that I could change at will. Whatever. I don't want to have to read a goddamn FAQ in order to log in to Stack Overflow, of all things. Even the Treasury Department, which has the most baroque login scheme I have ever seen, involving a personalized plastic card and an onscreen keyboard, doesn't make me read a manual in order to use their site.) (And, yeah, I know that there are honest and hardworking startups dedicated to providing me with an OpenID. Not to put too fine a point on it: If my Stack Overflow ID is going to be inextricably tied to somebody else's website being up, I'm going to pick a website that has been up for at least one decade, and promises to remain up for as many future decades as possible. If my identity can't be made to live as long as me, I've got a problem.) So I finally gave in and signed up with my Yahoo OpenID. I have no idea why I picked them over Google. I doubt it was for their track record of preserving user privacy. But the pain did not end, because I proceeded to forget which ID I had used. In their zeal to ensure that everyone on Earth is pre-provided with an OpenID, the standard's proponents have created a monster: My OpenIDs outnumber my uses for OpenID by an order of magnitude. I have a bunch of Google accounts, and I tried one or two of them, and then I just decided that I had better things to do than write that post on Stack Overflow. If I hadn't happened to have left another machine logged in to the site with a very long-term cookie, my username would be gone forever. (They can't email you a hint, because they don't capture email addresses.) At least now I've taught it to 1Password, and if that fails me I can Google up this rant. ;) Sadly, all of this has had the Pavlovian effect of making me feel really angry every time I see the login screen at Stack Overflow, a truly useful and even inspiring site which I read fairly often. Never a second chance to make a first impression, I guess.

zaidf 17y ago

It is a pain to use and understand, even for a techie like me. When it works, it's magic. And often I don't mind--especially since facebook's implementation of it. When it doesn't work, I've no freakin idea what is going on. And it really makes me miss the plain ol login/pass.

justlearning 17y ago
i can relate to that - with logging with openid here in HN. I had to post an "ask hn" to catch attention of pg - who resolved it. I couldn't make head or tail of what was happening and strongly assumed that clickpass was at fault. Then pg said he had to fix some code.
- mcav 17y ago
  Oh. I, too, had an issue logging in with OpenID here. I finally gave in and reset my password so I could log in with that.
JimmyL 17y ago
I have had no problems (or difficulties) with OpenID - set up an account on myopenid.com, pasted two lines into the source of the root page of my domain that delegates to myopenid, and then I just use that.
kniwor 17y ago
I haven't come across a scenario where openid did not work. Care to elaborate? I think of openid as the git of the login systems. Elegant in it's simplicity but comes with a minor learning curve and the benefits of climbing the learning curve far outweigh the cost of doing so. And very much like git, it takes 15 minutes to get over the learning curve if you are good with google and/or have some guidance.

mechanical_fish 17y ago

It's a royal pain in the ass. Like everyone else in the world, I already have a well-established workflow for managing usernames and passwords. My favorite tool is 1Password for the Mac. It works seamlessly with the majority of websites. It doesn't work well with Stack Overflow. Most sites log me in with one keypress; Stack Overflow now takes two keypresses and a mouse click, and that's after I carefully set it up by hand, because the auto-learning feature doesn't work with OpenID. I resisted using OpenID for months because I didn't want my login on Stack Overflow to be tied inextricably to my Yahoo or Google identity. I can change a password, and on well-designed sites I can even change a username, but I can't change my OpenID on Stack Overflow by any means that I can find. (Yeah, I know I could have used some kind of identity-forwarding fu to use my own domain as an OpenID, and then forwarded the actual task of running an OpenID server to some other entity that I could change at will. Whatever. I don't want to have to read a goddamn FAQ in order to log in to Stack Overflow, of all things. Even the Treasury Department, which has the most baroque login scheme I have ever seen, involving a personalized plastic card and an onscreen keyboard, doesn't make me read a manual in order to use their site.) (And, yeah, I know that there are honest and hardworking startups dedicated to providing me with an OpenID. Not to put too fine a point on it: If my Stack Overflow ID is going to be inextricably tied to somebody else's website being up, I'm going to pick a website that has been up for at least one decade, and promises to remain up for as many future decades as possible. If my identity can't be made to live as long as me, I've got a problem.) So I finally gave in and signed up with my Yahoo OpenID. I have no idea why I picked them over Google. I doubt it was for their track record of preserving user privacy. But the pain did not end, because I proceeded to forget which ID I had used. In their zeal to ensure that everyone on Earth is pre-provided with an OpenID, the standard's proponents have created a monster: My OpenIDs outnumber my uses for OpenID by an order of magnitude. I have a bunch of Google accounts, and I tried one or two of them, and then I just decided that I had better things to do than write that post on Stack Overflow. If I hadn't happened to have left another machine logged in to the site with a very long-term cookie, my username would be gone forever. (They can't email you a hint, because they don't capture email addresses.) At least now I've taught it to 1Password, and if that fails me I can Google up this rant. ;) Sadly, all of this has had the Pavlovian effect of making me feel really angry every time I see the login screen at Stack Overflow, a truly useful and even inspiring site which I read fairly often. Never a second chance to make a first impression, I guess.