Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I just got home, and still unpacking. However, I decided to take a quick break and while I was catching up with my weblog reading, I discovered that more information about Movable Type 3.0 has been released, including some info about the comment registration process:
With a suite of comment management features and versatile comment registration–utilizing a centralized authentication service we’re calling TypeKey–Movable Type 3.0 will give you more control than ever before over the public face of your website. We’ve spent a lot of time planning a comment registration system that will fit the needs of different types of webloggers, and we have focused our attention on a system that will encourage registration and open communication.
In addition to providing authentication for comment registration, TypeKey’s open nature will enable developers to build applications upon the infrastructure, utilizing its authentication hooks. Since TypeKey and comment registration are such a significant addition to Movable Type 3.0, we’ll be going into more detail about these features later this week.
Did I read this wrong? I must have read this wrong. I thought it said that Movable Type was creating some form of a centralized authentication system, which was then going to form the basis of the new comment registration system, with built-in authentication hooks ready to be used by other developers.
I must have read this wrong. I can’t believe that Six Apart would centralize authentication–something that’s been fought for years with other like schemes–and then plunk hooks for external access on top of it.
Nah, my eyes must be tired from the trip. Time to finish unpacking.
Weird how your mind can play tricks on you like that.
I was cryptic from being tired when I posted, so I thought I would expound on my earlier writing.
Authentication of commenters, and prevention of automated tools from spamming – that’s two different things.
I don’t care if I know the real identity of people who comment at my site; I just want to keep automated tools from hitting my site, and be able to clean up comments easily for the individual spammers.
One solution is comment registration. Registration will stop automated comment spams – or at least, it should. But that just means that we have more control over who can comment; it doesn’t mean that we have to know a person’s true identity. That’s not a requirement for me.
Personally, I don’t even want registration, if there are good throttles on comments and trackbacks to keep my system from being overloaded. And if there’s a good mechanism to clean up.
Why authentication?
I guess we stay tuned…