Oleg wrote:I proposed this change because I have a strong dislike of having to retype, or even copy-paste, information that is in plain sight. As has been pointed out, it is possible to copy-paste wrong email addresses. If you really care about your account you should take extra precautions to make sure you can access it. For a lot of users and boards out there, this is either not an issue or they can email administrators to recover/change their accounts.
Saying that users "should" take precautions is certainly true, but we all know that they don't. I'll bet that even most of us have messed up once or twice because we were in a hurry or were so used to typing something that we didn't notice the typo.
Regardless, your problem sounds more philosophical now, not liking the idea of having to type something twice that you can easily proofread. But lots of sites do that, like bill paying pages that want your bank's routing number and account number entered twice, even though you can easily read them.
Or, looking at it the other way, I've seen places that allow you to make your password visible (changing "********" to "password"). If I'm using that at home, I often make the password visible because there's nobody there to shoulder surf me. Why not implement that for phpBB (you could probably do it with JavaScript) and then only have one password entry field, too?
Oleg wrote:Just as there isn't unanimous support for removing duplicated plain text fields, there isn't unanimous support for keeping them.
Yes, so "ties" should go to the status quo.
Oleg wrote:Therefore, I would suggest the following:
1. Implement the facility to change one's email address and password, or possibly allow editing of any fields that can be filled out during registration, on a user account that is not activated.
I'm still not sure how this would work. Would an inactive member logging in get the current "not activated" message and then be redirected to the UCP to check their E-mail address, sort of like how users requiring password changes can get to that page?
If so, that sounds good even if we keep E-mail address confirmation. It will help those people who type the wrong E-mail twice.
Oleg wrote:2. Implement the "contact board administrator" feature to make it easy to contact admins in case of technical issues, such as misspelled email address.
This should be done regardless. I implemented such a change for a client and he loved it.
But now you're adding a dependency on another feature that presumably isn't merged yet. That seems like the wrong way to go about things.
Oleg wrote:3. If after that there are still complaints resulting from people mistyping their email addresses, and there are no reports from people appreciating shorter registration form/process, then we can debate reinstatement of duplicate plain text fields.
Yuriy provided anecdotal evidence that people complain about mistyping E-mail addresses. And I can almost guarantee that the number of reports you'll get from people appreciating the change will be very small. People rarely report that they like small improvements. A better gauge would be if complaints about filling in the E-mail address twice drop off.
Anyway, it seems like a lot of effort has been spent over this RFC that won't really save much time, doesn't have overwhelming support and, to be implemented as described above, needs at least two more (possibly larger) changes. (I don't mean the effort in coding this -- I mean the effort in debating it.
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And believe me, I hate unnecessary redundancy, like voice response systems that have me enter my account number and then, when I finally get an operator, get asked to tell them my account number or voicemail systems that ask you to type in your phone number even if you're calling from that phone.
But having to retype my E-mail address has never bothered me to that extent.
I guess my problem is that I don't like a safety feature removed for a few users' philosophical problems and a miniscule potential savings. Opening the RFC for discussion was fine, but merging it when there wasn't consensus seems premature. As I mentioned above, staff often tells people on phpbb.com that their pet feature has to be good for a large chunk of the community to justify being added to the core, and I'm not sure that this passes that test.
However, if you're bent on keeping this merged, will you at least guarantee us that you'll implement those other two items before phpBB 3.1 goes Beta?
Steve
