[OpenID] Fwd: Excellent critique of OpenID usability

Joseph Holsten joseph at josephholsten.com
Mon Aug 20 05:02:09 UTC 2007


On Aug 19, 2007, at 11:11 PM, Jonathan Daugherty wrote:
> # > But openid.net isn't for end-users now, and shouldn't be in the
> # > future.
> #
> # The problem is that it IS, whether we like it or not. I've lost
> # count of the number of times I've seen someone smart say "so I
> # decided to have a play with OpenID, but after 30 minutes of
> # searching I couldn't figure out how to get one so I gave up". That
> # just shouldn't happen.
>
> +1 on making openid.net more marketing-dense and end-user oriented and
> moving specs / protocol / technical details to something like
> developers.openid.net.  It won't hurt this engineer's feelings if
> those things are somewhere else.  I'd rather see openid.net be useful
> to the (many) people that run away confused; we need them to get
> interested!
+1
Since we can't get openid.com or openid.org to host a site that's end  
user specific, I'll gladly defer.

Just to prove I've got some moron to complement my asshole-ness, the  
use-cases we're looking to solve are:

Where do I get an OpenID?
- A concise list of reputable OpenID Providers, with some explanation  
of their niche. Can we possibly keep this limited to ~7, with a link  
to a complete (user-submitted?, moderated?)  list like we currently  
have?
  esp: AOL, Livejournal, TypePad, MyOpenid, ClaimID

How do I use it?
- A visual guide to safely using OpenID, with some mention of phishing

What can I use it?
- A few of the best OpenID Relying Parties, again with a link to a  
complete (user-submitted?, moderated?) list

Why do I want it?
- A very brief, non-technical description of why OpenID's might be  
better than their present username/email/password hell.

Is there anything else we need it to do for the site?

And who is trying to tackle miksovsky's second, seventh, and eighth  
recommendations?

http://josephholsten.com

PS: sorry for the double post Jonathan



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