[Sigia-l] The power of anonymity on forums

[Stewart Dean]

On 27/11/05 9:42 pm, "Andrew Boyd" <andrew at friendlymanual.com> wrote:

> Listera wrote:
> 
>> So (when not legally mandated) what's your argument for insisting on
>> registration with username+email+password?
>> 
>>  
>> 
> The argument used (and I believe it is a poor one) is monetization.
> 
> I am not against exploiting focussed communities for material gain (I do
> it myself), but I am against the over-simplification of the "we have to
> have their email addresses at all costs!".

Wise words. I think it's been mentioned here before but often these email
addresses arnt used anyway. A much cleaner solution is for people to sign up
for email newsletters - that way the user is expecting any communication
they get and the registration is password free (which, looking at your
original message is what you also suggest!)

Valid reasons for registration I know of are for ecommerce (where there are
repeated transactions over a good amount of time), for advanced community
activity like you'll see on sites like garageband.com where one user has
their reviews, band and songs of that band tracked over time, things which
cannot happen if you are an unknown person and for pay for content sites (no
need to provide the main examples of that).

Personalisation I feel is a term over used and underdelivered so I don't see
that as good use for registration.

Stew Dean