OpenID

For some reason there’s been an unusual amount of comment spam here this week, all directed at one post. As a result, and looking to the future, I’m considering replacing the existing commenting scheme with one that requires that you sign in with an OpenID before you can leave a comment.

As OpenID is becoming quite widespread, and you can get a free OpenID from many different places (or set yourself up with one), this doesn’t seem an entirely unreasonable thing to do.

Thoughts?

Comments

til's picture
til on May 22, 2008 - 15:56 Permalink

OpenID enabling comments here would be a great thing and is generally the way to go, but it only helps against spam in that it’s not widespread enough (yet) so spammers haven’t developed automated attacks against it.

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on May 22, 2008 - 16:09 Permalink

Yes, I suppose that the next revolution in comment spam will simply see spammers setting up their own OpenID endpoints. Which will lead to a need for OpenID endpoint blacklists. And so on. Perhaps the only thing to do is to charge $5 for comments.

Steven Garrity's picture
Steven Garrity on May 22, 2008 - 16:27 Permalink

I’d gladly use an OpenID to post comments, but I’m a dork.

til's picture
til on May 22, 2008 - 16:48 Permalink

Or still require filling out a captcha even when someone signs up with an OpenID.

(and I would have made much more effort to come up with something witty if it had cost me 5$ to post it)

oliver's picture
oliver on May 22, 2008 - 21:18 Permalink

Will an OpenID make me grow larger?

Marian's picture
Marian on May 22, 2008 - 22:48 Permalink

I’ve had a few altercations with Open ID technology. Can’t say that I really understand it. I’m not sure if that means that I will be prevented from commenting. If so, not sure if my not commenting will matter to anyone.

John Boylan's picture
John Boylan on May 23, 2008 - 14:27 Permalink

I’m with Marian on this one. After ten minutes of in-depth research I couldn’t figure out what Open ID does, apart from it being… open. Still, the world won’t suffer from the absence of my thoughts either.

Jevon's picture
Jevon on May 23, 2008 - 14:45 Permalink

Why not use something like Defensio.com (which I use and is fantastic). They have an API are it is free for blogs like this one (personal).

That way, instead of forcing readers to learn about OpenID, they can comment comfortably and put more time in to being thoughtful ;)