The good people at BoingBoing have upgrade to Movable Type 4.0, and with that upgrade comes the return of comments. The new site has an improved look with better readability and (to my eye) fewer ads. In addition, they’ve hired Joel from Dethroner and Gizmodo fame to run BoingBoing Gadgets, a new sub-site focusing on personal electronics. Welcome improvements all around.
But nothing that changes ever improves without a few mistakes, not even BoingBoing. In order to bring back comments without feeling the pain of comment spam and interminable flame wars, BB has taken two steps. The first, and something I think we all wish we could do, is to hire Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light to manage their comments. Great move. The second step was to require commenters to choose between being anonymous (cowards) or creating an account at BB. That’s right, one more account with a username and password to forget.
What’s sad is that there are at least two better options. The worse of the two is to set up TypeKey authentication. Yes, it’s another username and password, but at least it’s usable across multiple sites. I have a TypeKey account just to be able to comment at the Dooce.
The best solution, which Movable Type 4 supports, is OpenID. This open authentication system allows users to authenticate through a number of different methods (for instance, by having a free LiveJournal or Vox account), and MT’s support is very flexible.
So please BB, please open up a little. Don’t make me get a special account just to comment on your pages (okay, I already did, but still).