identity as a URL instead of an email? hrmmmm

[Martin Atkins]

Harry Heymann wrote:
> 
> So why make my identity a URL?  I know there are technical reasons for
> this, but ultimately I don't really care about them in the face of the
> kind of user confusion this will create.
> 

So far, no-one has come up with a workable solution for an OpenID-like
system that uses email addresses for identity. Do you have one?

The most common issue with this is that people *don't want* to tell
others their email address just to access some site, because email is
tricky to reliably filter should someone start sending you loads of crap
you don't want.

I think in the long term the XRID people would like their own crazy
brand of URI to become the identifier. XRID can be a layer atop URLs, so
if they have success with that then a future version of OpenID (or, more
likely, YADIS) will be able to use these instead of URLs. For now, we're
stuck with URLs.

This is irrelevant most of the time because users don't need to know
that what they're entering is a URL. LiveJournal users just get told to
put in "username.livejournal.com"; they don't need to know nor care that
this is the URL to their journal.