[teddyh]

> has anyone tried assigning randomly generated passwords to the users

We do that. We generate long random-character passwords (both for e-mail, web sites, and other accounts), and we don’t provide any online way for users to change them. If the users need to change a password, they have to contact us to do it (which is reasonable, since a big part of our value proposition is our responsive support). We only very occasionally even get such requests, and even more seldom get requests from users to set their own passwords. So far, everybody has been perfectly satisfied when hearing “No, users don’t set their own passwords. We can generate a new one for you any time you like.”.

This policy has been in effect since before my time, and I have worked here for more than 10 years. During this time, there was one user who really wanted something more memorizable for a specific account, so I set a correcthorsebatterystaple-style password on that account only. One other user had trouble adding the password to their password manager, and I had to help them do that. Otherwise, no problems.