Regi: emails, captcha, nicknames and pwd ...

Subscribers of corporate Megaplan Twitter already know that the long-awaited personal planner is on its way. It will not be called Time-Manager, as previously assumed, but the Miniplane . Internal testing is already in full swing, and it's time to make it accessible from the outside. But it remains to make a few touches and the thickest stroke on the way to publicity - a usable form of this registration.


It should be noted that megaplanders decided to make the product very easy to use (and also free), but perfectionism has a downside. It all started with the fact that several managers could not agree on how registration should look like. In order to persuade opponents to their side, the parties began to drag programmers, designers, marketers into a dispute ... As a result, the number of alternatives turned into three, four, and so on. The recent publication and discussion on Habr did not help .
As a result, we decided to submit the issue to the Habr for the widest discussion and vote. So, there are the following registration alternatives: 

Option "A"

Option for proponents of conciseness. When registering, the user leaves the mail address and fills in the captcha field. Further, it is enough to simply send an email to the user in which to inform everything essential (URL for verification, password, address of the personal page of the Miniplane, and so on). Applying the formula “nicname == e-mail”, the system is logged in simply by entering a password. You can go even further and make identification through cookies.

Arguments for:

• Simplicity and conciseness.

Arguments against:

• You can only start work in after waiting for the mail, and this pause may turn out to be significant.
• Some (and even many) have several mailboxes for different purposes. If you do not use the service regularly, you can simply forget which of the boxes was registered. This will make password recovery difficult.
• It is not always convenient (and not everyone knows how to) copy the generated machine password from mail to the browser.

Option "B"

A bit complicated version. The user fills in the fields: nickname, email and captcha.

Arguments for:

• Moderate laconicism with a greater “routine” registration procedure.
• The likelihood that the user will forget his nickname is reduced, as people have a commitment to use the same nicknames for different Internet resources and services.
• Nick can be used to address the user's personal page.

Arguments against:

• There remains a need to wait for mail to receive a URL check and passport.
• It is not always convenient (and not everyone knows how to) copy the generated machine password from mail to the browser.

Option "B"

The standard procedure is when the user is asked to fill in the fields with a nickname, email, password (twice) and is asked to go through the captcha.

Arguments for:

• This is commonplace.
• You can start working inside the system immediately, without waiting for the confirmation letter to fall into the mailbox and the verification URL will be clicked.

Arguments against:

• Fill in five fields of the form, this is two of it (as in option “A”) and not three (as in option “B”)
• If during registration a wrong address is accidentally indicated, then no one will ever be able to recover the password in case of forgetfulness. In addition, some service functionality (for example, notifications from Miniplan) will become unavailable. If you force them to wait for the confirmation of the email through the URL check, then the opportunity to start working immediately will disappear.

Option "G"

Some kind of transitional option. In the form of a password, they ask for the same nickname, email, password and captcha confirmation, but some hidden machine-generated code has already been entered in the password field. The user can replace it (with confirmation) or can leave everything as is.

Arguments for:

• This is similar to the usual registration form.
• It’s not necessary to invent a password and remember it “right now”. It will be sent to the post office and will be needed when the “cookies go out”.

Arguments against:

• You must wait for the URL check via mail.

Actually, one could start voting, but there is also the omega option.

Option "Ѡ"

We use OpenID, GoogleID, OpenSotial and similar fashionable methods of identification.

Arguments for:

• Everything is very simple, very fashionable and modern.

Arguments against

• In case the user “does not have registration on Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter and finally,” you still have to provide for the usual method of registration and choose between “A”, “B”, “C” and “G”.
• All these "social-idi" make sense if there are applications for the respective networks and / or ways to interact with them are built into them. There will be nothing of the kind in the current version of the Miniplan. And that means that the user will not feel the benefits of OpenID.

And now, the vote

In fact, the vote decided little. The argumentation for one or another option is important. Surely there are still options and I would also like to consider them. So we argue for / against and answer yes / no / don’t know ... We recall the options:

• Option "A" (email + captcha)
• Option "B" (login, email + captcha)
• Option “B” (login, email, passport two times + captcha)
• Option "G" (login, email, machine passport + captcha)
• Option “Ѡ” (any of the options above or OpenID)