LJ user only commenting level?

[charmian]

http://cahwyguy.livejournal.com/1061161.html

On LJ, someone has sent in a suggestion, similar to the oft suggested 'security level for logged-in LJ users', suggesting that LJ create a new level of commenting permissions, for logged-in LJ users only, and not allowing openID users or FB users to comment. (Note that it doesn't affect who can view the entry).

I'm not really sure what such a commenting level would be really useful for, though. If people with FB accounts can see the posts, certainly it's not impossible for them to register and then start commenting, so I can't really see this being helpful from a prevention standpoint; from a spam standpoint, I'm not sure there really is much FB connect spam, or openID spam, but perhaps I'm wrong.

If many people embrace this, however, it really will start breaking some of the interop abilities of openID (and FB Connect) at LJ.

It's also interesting, though, that so far LJ has yet made no decision about the logged-in-user access level. If that's implemented, though, the main party I see it benefiting is LJ itself, because it won't really enhance security for users much. (I also, however, am not sure much disaster will ensue. This function exists in a lot of social media sites which are not disaster zones.)

(Also interesting: http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/1029501.html Someone proposes authenticated RSS reading on LJ. Actually, they're wrong that there is no web-based authenticated RSS reading solution: http://gregarius.net/)

Comments

[feathertail]

The fact that you can't post to communities on Dreamwidth or LiveJournal already kinda breaks OpenID interoperability. >.>b On LiveJournal I couldn't even join one as my Dreamwidth OpenID account.

[charmian]

Hmm, but you could say that it's to be expected because openID accounts don't have personal journals on either service, though.

On DW it seems to be more necessary because of the invite code thing, but on LJ at least you can easily create a new journal, also, and with the latest LJ iteration you can convert an openID account to an LJ one.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

You should now be able to join a community. After release 69 the ability was added but the join button was broken; they fixed that in a bugfix release last week. You can even be made maintainer or moderator with an external account now.

[feathertail]

Excellent! Thanks for pointing that out.

[foxfirefey]

Huh, fascinating! Can you make posts, too?

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

Nope (to my utter disappointment).

[foxfirefey]

Huh. That is a really weird dichotomy, then, given they can administrate, heh.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

The actual suggestion, which I submitted this morning, is actually a combination of security level and commenting permission. The main thrust of the idea is that the "onsite viewing only" security level would prevent an entry from being added to the RSS feed for a journal, disable the "Share this" and "Crosspost comment" options, and treat non-friend external users as anonymous for commenting purposes. What it would not do is prevent anyone (non-friend or anonymous) from viewing that entry on the author's journal page or on a friend's friends page.

[charmian]

Hmm, interesting! Thanks for the clarification.

[foxfirefey]

My guess is they wouldn't count Gregarius since you have to host it yourself.

[matgb]

Aye, I'm surprised that, what, 4 years after you first pointed me at it, that it's not available by someone as a web service. I did a test install, but lost that domain/server account when my finances imploded :-(

[daweaver]

I'm not really sure what such a commenting level would be really useful for, though.

Clearing up an inconsistency in how Livejournal-and-its-clones deal with comments, and I think it's a good idea.

Livejournal currently offers three methods for people to present credentials when making a comment: purely anonymous, with identity verified by an external provider (for this discussion, The Facebook and OPENID will be lumped together), and with identity verified by Livejournal. Options for accepting comments are: all, not anonymous, friends-only, none.

The practical upshot is confusion. The "not anonymous" setting rejects all anonymous comments and some from external providers. "Friends only" allows comments only from those people listed as friends. There's no clear mapping between the options available to commenters and the options presented to journal-owners.

I have no stake in Livejournal any more, but I would not be opposed to an alignment of kind originally proposed: "not anonymous" should mean precisely that anonymous comments are rejected, and "not external providers" would mean that only Livejournal accounts could comment.

Aligning both sides of the user experience is surely a good thing in and of itself. The additional level would effectively grant an opt-out to people concerned that OPENID makes trivial assertions, or that because The Facebook's owners are lying weaselly toerags who are only in it for their own glory and profit, any assertions their servers may make are likely to be weaselly lies.

The original thread, and the resulting formal Suggestion, then diverges into excluding certain posts from RSS feeds and disabling other features. This is scope creep.

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

The thrust of the original idea was about disabling offsite viewing, the ability to disallow external user commenting is the scope creep in this case.
Personally I don't agree with the idea of allowing users to disable commenting from external accounts only, but I can see why certain users want that and I didn't feel it was my place to remove it from the submitted suggestion.