Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bunderbunder 5002 days ago
I love being able to log in using an OpenID provider rather than creating an account.

Because it's one less !$@%!@$! password to remember. Or it's one less $@&%!@$ hassle adapting my password creation formula to a new site's password requirements. Or it's one less place where my don't-care-use-it-everywhere username/password key is stored, perhaps @$2(! in the clear. Or perhaps it's just one less time I have to type in a @$@(%^! username and password. Or @*($&%! create one.

2 comments

I agree. But unfortunately, OpenID can magnify the problem for some people. For example, my girlfriend has at least 4 different Stack Overflow accounts because she can never remember which OpenID provider she used, so she keeps accidentally creating new ones.
Yeah, that happens to me to. I need there to be a system that says "We've never seen that ID before! Do you want to link it to some other account?"

Which means maybe you should have a separate button for "I want to create an account here" and "I want to log in again here". I know that's heretical to the OpenID community, but I usually know whether or not I have some account on a site, but I usually don't know whether I typed in my openID url or hit the Google button.

The simple solution is to setup a priority and stick to it.

e.g. Google > Twitter > Email >>> Facebook

Exactly. I used to run a small StackExchange site. One day I had a look at my user dump and was surprised to see how many duplicate (and triplicate) accounts there were.
Haven't been able to log in to StackOverflow for weeks.
Browser ID is the future