Re: [CompInaBox-discuss] creating user accounts

[Eric D. N. <nie...@MI...>]

On Aug 14, 2006, at 10:09 PM, Stephen Gildea wrote:
> I don't mind the "you need to create an account" aspect.  I suspect
> that most competitors are repeat visitors and so won't mind creating
> an account.  You might even be able to design the pages so the account
> creation doesn't require an extra page.

What's your opinion about creating an account automatically for the  
partner of the person registering?

> You collect their email address; why not use that as the name of their
> account?

That can work, but people's email accounts are relatively mutable  
(however it won't be a primary key, so I guess that's ok).  However  
there is the problem with mutliple people using one account -- some  
teams (Tufts, Yale, etc) tend to register their entire team under one  
email address.  Some married couples only have the one account, etc.

>
> Using a funny character to distinguish auto-generated accounts seems
> kludgey.  Why not just add an attribute "needs new password".  You
> might find yourself using that attr again if you implement a "reset my
> password and email it to me" feature.

Agreed.  The "needs new password" bit is always needed, the "needs  
new username" is the one I'm questioning.

Eric