Nick Szabo  🔑

If I use a throw-away email it's a PITA for me and useless for account recovery. Just turn it off -- it's going to discourage other new users and ruin the network effect, making it pointless for me to join in the first place.

Not lazy, just know a thing or two about UI and mental transaction costs and network effects. If it presents unnecessary difficulties for me it will discourage others as well. P.S. you aren't going to solve identity.

Wasn't calling you lazy, Nick, I just know that many will look at this thread. Fine don't come.

Should be relatively simple to swap out the membership methodology since moderation is always done locally per instance, but what method would you prefer @NickSzabo4 ? Just enter a name and go?

Name, password, repeat password, that's it. If you really have to you can later bug the user to enter an optional email address and explain that they may have problems recovering their account in certain circumstances if they don't.

I tend to agree fully, but that also requires a reddit-like spam detection (and post throttling for new users) so that a mass number of throwaway accounts don't ruin the community. Or reputation system & filtering. I think it's an essential part of self-organizing communities.