The fourth player

[Martin Atkins]

Brad Fitzpatrick wrote:
> Preaching the choir, mate.  :-)
> 
> Or do you propose some new wording for the openid website to warn people
> of this?  It seems most people with domains have already done the delegate
> thing, judging by the dozens of comments I've gotten using OpenID.
> 

Yeah, I was basically saying that it would be a good idea to describe
this somewhere on the website. Not right on the front page, certainly,
but perhaps somewhere there can be a reasonably nongeek-friendly rundown
of what role all of the players play and the options a person has for
choosing an ID provider, server etc. including the things they should
bear in mind when choosing.

I think I'll leave someone else to actually write it, though. It'll need
to be written quite carefully to avoid scaring people away or
patronizing people, and I'm not much of a writer.

Another thing that might be worth spelling out is that you can't use
your domain as your identity if it just redirects to some other wacky
URL at Geocities or whatever. The result of all of the redirects is what
gets displayed, which might not be what a user is expecting, and will
bar some users from using their domains as identities.