[kde-community] What is identity.kde.org and what is it not, aka how can it help

[Ingo Malchow]

Hey all,

as requested i'd like to wrap up what identity.kde.org is all about, as i am 
sure a lot of people do not understand it yet fully.

identity.kde.org is our central account management. It is based on LDAP and 
acts as a Single Sign On Service. With a registration there you are enabled to 
create accounts on several of our websites. This includes the forums and the 
wikis. But not only that, it also enables you to apply for a developer 
account.

The information you need to provide at this point in time is a valid email 
address (as you need to confirm your request) and a real name. Based on that 
realname you are provided with some options for a loginname you can choose.
One might argue "why realname", and it was discussed elsewhere already and 
probably will change to only email address. Just keep in mind for now that it 
enables a lot of our management services, especially for our developer 
community. But it is important to know that it is *only* for management 
purposes.
Once you jump over to e.g. the wikis and try to login with your identity 
credentials you are offered the choice of another username. And this time your 
choice is considered your displayname. So the loginname from identity indeed 
only acts as a loginname, nothing publicly visible. And again, might change in 
the near future.

As for spam issues, this might only slightly decrease, because spam systems 
quickly adapt to new login ways. But it helps a bit at least.

Additionally, technically we have support for identity logins on the wikis, 
but sadly we still need to supply openid and plain login support, due to 
historical reasons. identity is new, wikis are old... Unless we find a way to 
merge all sorts of accounts this will not change. Unlike the forums, where new 
accounts are now entirely based on identity subscriptions.

But from a user perspective you benefit from one single set of login 
credentials you need to remember and use in several places. And more of them 
to come once we finish their integration.

So much about identity. Consider this just an informal post.

Cheerio,
-- 
Ingo Malchow
(neverendingo)
New to KDE Software? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org or ask questions 
on http://forum.kde.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/attachments/20130724/f9488922/attachment.sig>