Image via Wikipedia

Following on the whole Zemanta thing I’ve been going on about, I was going to comment on the Knowledge Workers blog about my experiences thus far. But, the blog requires people to log in to comment. No problem, WordPress.com is an OpenID provider, no doubt they let people log in using OpenID too. Wrong!

So they give you something you can use elsewhere, but you can’t use it there. Absolutely brilliant.

While it’s great to be an OpenID provider, it’s not that good to keep others from using their OpenID accounts. If they want to ensure that an actual WordPress account exists for each commenter in cases where users want to block anonymous commenting, it should be possible to create “hidden” accounts, each linked to a particular OpenID, that are used for commenters. That’s what happens with Drupal’s OpenID support, at least with the modules for 5.x — a new user can log in using OpenID, and an account is generated for them.

If the folks at WordPress go ahead and do this, then I’ll be able to properly comment without having to go through the rigmarole of setting up yet another account on another site that doesn’t actually tie into my wanted, unified identity.