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Allow posting without logging in at least in some communities
I ran the search queries "anonymous", "register" and "unregistered" in the search box but didn't find a thread about why isn't anonymous/unregistered contribution allowed here.
I recall one or two cases were I sat in the bus and wanted to ask something without logging in but didn't do so because I avoid logging in to any application from my smartphone's browsers (from several reasons) and avoid installing any unnecessary apps (Codidact's app is unnecessary for me) so I published these questions in Stack Exchange instead, were some communities there do allow posting without logging in.
I suggest to allow it as a measure to bring more initial content creators (i.e. askers) to the site.
I personally don't use caching in my smartphone's browser at all and generally won't use it, which would obligate me to mentally recall a "long" password for my Codidact account, something I don't want to do
Allowing anonymous posting because one is too lazy to sign in or doesn't want to be kept signed in (as is the case here) …
3y ago
Adding to the previous answer, your use case is, in your own words > I sat in the bus and wanted to ask something wit …
3y ago
Allowing posting without logging in might bring spam since posting will be pretty easy. I would suggest that Codidact …
3y ago
Bad idea for lots of reasons: Anonymity breeds vandalism. Enforcement becomes impossible. How would you ban or su …
3y ago
4 answers
Allowing anonymous posting because one is too lazy to sign in or doesn't want to be kept signed in (as is the case here) when already signed up is not a good idea in my opinion, because all the downsides mentioned in other answers (higher risk of spam) apply without many upsides. One can try though to make the sign in process as convenient as possible if that is not already the case.
The Q&A model works better when signed up and in, because then we can keep track of the behavior and assign abilities/privileges according to this behavior. For taking part here, being signed in should actually be strongly recommended. From a content license perspective it's not needed however.
There might be some legitimate reasons to want to allow anonymous posting. They might include:
- Lower barrier to entry, just wanting to try out this service without the hassle to sign up
- Not wanting to reveal the identity or being connected to a post
For the first, one could allow anonymous posting but would need to have another reviewing step in order to filter out spam/low quality posts.
For the latter, one could have an option during post creation to ask for immediate dissociation with the content.
Both would rather be very low priority at the moment in my opinion. And additionally to maybe gathering a bit more of useful content, it might also be misused (to spread hate for example). Therefore it's unclear if this would ever pay off the effort. I would not volunteer to implement it.
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Adding to the previous answer, your use case is, in your own words
I sat in the bus and wanted to ask something without logging in
Realistically, if someone can't be bothered to take the brief moment it takes to sign in, then is that same person going to take the time to come up with and compose a quality question at that time?
My guess would be: probably not.
Seeing that you aren't going to get an answer immediately even if what you propose were possible, there is already a perfectly viable alternative approach. Simply type up your question, complete with tags and title, which you can already do without ever signing in, as some kind of document, and then post it later when you can be bothered to sign in.
Simply the fact that some feature is perhaps available elsewhere doesn't mean that Codidact has to, or even should, copy it. That way lies madness.
Bad idea for lots of reasons:
- Anonymity breeds vandalism.
- Enforcement becomes impossible. How would you ban or suspend an offender?
- Allowing unregistered users to post is an obvious gaping hole for suspended users.
- Someone who knows there won't be any consequences is more likely to do bad things.
- Writing a good question requires some thought and care. Compared to that, logging in is trivial. We don't want the kind of questions that are written the second a thought pops into someone's head, while banging on a cell phone with lots of distractions going on around them.
Allowing posting without logging in might bring spam since posting will be pretty easy.
I would suggest that Codidact might implement a faster way to login like Google or GitHub. I really like signing up with Google since I don't have to write my details (i.e. name, photo, etc.) manually again on each site.
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