Comments | suggestions: Give validated OpenID account full site privileges

fiddlingfrog in suggestions

Give validated OpenID account full site privileges

Mar 05, 2009 21:59

Title
Give validated OpenID account full site privileges

Short, concise description of the idea
Give OpenID accounts with a validated email address access to all site features including joining communities and posting to a journal.

Full description of the idea
This idea stems from the much simpler suggestion to allow OpenID users to join/post in ( Read more... )

openid, § implemented differently

Comments 57

azurelunatic March 6 2009, 04:49:53 UTC

This looks as if it could also be related to http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/595984.html

fiddlingfrog March 6 2009, 06:16:40 UTC

Y'know, a few hours ago I would've sworn up and down that I had read all the OpenID suggestions in the community and didn't find anything close.

Search Fu --

omnifarious March 6 2009, 04:57:18 UTC

One of the easiest ways to implement this is to simply allow an OpenID to be associated with an existing account.

fiddlingfrog March 6 2009, 05:21:07 UTC

When I started looking into this I was mainly thinking about people who have no existing LJ account but sign on solely with OpenID.

azurelunatic March 6 2009, 05:27:26 UTC

There are two possible paths I could think of for associating an OpenID account with a full LJ account: one, by associating it with one that already exists; two, by building a new LJ account based off of an OpenID account.

omnifarious March 6 2009, 06:02:25 UTC

Yes, but I think either would be equally easy. In fact, once you've done one, you've probably done the other. Associating an OpenID with an existing account is what Brad should've done in the first place IMHO. Though he was all taken with the idea of LJ being an OpenID provider because he wanted third-party sites be able to verify that you owned an LJ without having to have your LJ password.

This is when someone asked about something very similar a long time ago.

Thread 9

tupshin March 6 2009, 05:12:27 UTC

I've proposed that we treat OpenID accounts as full accounts once they additionally validate an email address. I'm curious what people think of this possibility.

azurelunatic March 6 2009, 05:17:26 UTC

If you don't think it's technically implausible, I like it.

fiddlingfrog March 6 2009, 05:24:18 UTC

By full account do you mean journal posting, community joining, paid/plus account, Scrapbook, the whole nine yards?

Really, I just want OpenIDs to be able to join and post to communities, the rest is just icing on the cake for me.

tupshin March 6 2009, 06:37:56 UTC

yup...whole nine yards. we might get there incrementally, but I see no reason for that not to be the goal.

Thread 25

tailen March 6 2009, 16:52:52 UTC

Hi, I posted the original suggestion of this in February 2006. I was assured then that this feature would be implemented and I even got the email addresses of two LJ developers who were supposed to do it.
Every year I send them an anniversary email asking when they intend to do this.

Honestly I've given up on it, and evidently so has LJ. Their implementation of OpenID is still the most half-assed I've seen, yet they're the inventors of the technology and they're even trying to spread it to others despite not practicing what they preach.

At this point I'm almost on their side because they've let OpenID rot and it's still no closer to being a viable single-sign-on technology than it was when it was invented. There are plenty of design flaws in the protocol and it's ripe for one-stop-phishing. None of this is being addressed because there's no resources to do it.

So maybe it's actually to our advantage that LJ has neglected their own invention for three years and counting.

azurelunatic March 6 2009, 17:15:30 UTC

Which developers are you corresponding with? I know there have been a number of staff changes over the years. tupshin up-thread there is LJ's current Director of Development. He's been with LJ for about a year now.

imc March 6 2009, 17:19:09 UTC

Of course, OpenID was invented by brad, and he hasn't worked for LiveJournal for a few years now, so that might explain it.

fiddlingfrog March 6 2009, 19:42:15 UTC

Some of the above conversation is getting complicated and built on incorrect assumptions, so let me state why I made this suggestion and what I want to accomplish.

The degree program that I finished several years back is restructuring and the interim head of the department asked for my help in setting up a mini-alumni association for graduates of the program. After tossing out ideas like e-mail lists, Yahoo groups, Facebook, Blogger, etc... we thought that LiveJurnal would suit the needs well: threaded conversations and OpenID logins were the two main perks.

So I went ahead and created u_of_i_lighting and am now waiting for my ex professor to create a LiveJournal account so I can make him a maintainer/moderator. That was the only downside that was discussed - that he, and anyone else he would like to post, must create a LiveJournal account. Despite the proliferation of identities that he already has, he needs yet another one to post to LiveJournal. If he wants to have a guest blogger they need to have a LiveJournal account ( ... )