[Marketing] [OpenID] Website Being Updated Today

[Scott Kveton]

> I think it is a very slippery slope for the website and/or board to
> recommend OpenID providers without being inclusive of ALL providers.

I would agree with this if we were talking about just about anything
other than a users digital identity.  Let me explain.

There have been countless blog posts and notes to the general list
saying "if I am a user, where do I get an OpenID?"  People invariably
end up at openid.net and then are completely stumped.  The process is
painful at best (well, before yesterday it was).

Now, if you look at the listing on the wiki:

http://wiki.openid.net/Public_OpenID_providers

we see 40+ sites that provide OpenID's ... now this is fair to every
single provider out there but is completely worthless for the end
user.  They want to click a button and end up at a provider.  Now, if
they are coming to openid.net for a digital identity and we send them
off to a evil/bogus/soon-to-be-out-of-business provider, how good is
that for the user and/or OpenID as a whole?

To that end, I actually like Drummond's proposal however, I don't want
to committee this to death so that we create something that makes
everyone happy but creates a completely confusing tool for end-users.
I firmly believe that we need to create a tool that is easy for users
or, no matter how inclusive it is, it will fail.

- Scott