On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Tyler Romeo <tylerromeo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
To be absolutely clear, this does *not* solve the
problem of bots/tools
authenticating on behalf of a user. All it does is solve the problem of
where a bot/tool authenticates under its own user account and, out of pure
courtesy for the community, asks users to prove their identity before
allowing them to use the bot/tool. For bots/tools that actually perform
edits as the user, OpenID would be useless.
You're confusing use cases. What you're talking is the use case for OAuth.
This thread isn't about OAuth. I believe we have plans to add OAuth next
quarter, but if you wish to continue discussing it, please make a new
thread.
In cases where a tool is keeping an authentication database, and is not
acting on behalf of a user, then OpenID would let the tool eliminate its
username/password store.
Also, I think Wikipedia acting as an OpenID consumer
would be bounds more
useful than acting as a provider. That's not to say that having both
wouldn't be a good idea, but the consumer side of it should definitely be a
priority. Think of sites now like StackOverflow, where creating an account
is as simple as pressing a few Accept buttons.
Sure, it would be great, but allowing authentication as a consumer is a
much more difficult step, and we're not ready to take it right now. OpenID
as a provider solves some long-standing problems and is a step in the right
direction, let's focus on one thing at a time.
- Ryan