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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

How would you make this site have a gentler slope? Let the user post a comment and then say "Thanks for the comment, now you just need an account to publish this. Enter your username/password."?

Some of the sites that do "gradual engagement" piss me off when they let me believe I'm about to do something and then surprise me with a sign up form. It strikes me as tricky and I very frequently walk away.

I certainly believe it's smart to let users do as much as possible without requiring them to sign up. I think the idea of signing up is pretty ingrained in people though. If you make it dead simple (like this site or reddit) it's not much of a barrier and it keeps things straightforward.

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http://jottit.com has a nearly frictionless scheme.

Yeah, it really hooked me -- even though I haven't used it for much, every time I have a simple, quick task where I just need to get a little info online fast I think of jottit

I am looking at their front page and I have no idea what they expect me to type in a very large unlabeled text entry field.

And if I click on Create, it say "see, that was easy". It certainly was, but what was IT exactly ? :)

I have to agree with huhtenberg, I never heard about Jottit and I went there to check it out but a big blank field with a "create a site" button tells me nothing. Honestly, that is a lot missing in there...

Well: a webpage is created with whatever you typed, and an unique URL assigned.

Then at top left there is a "claim this site" to declare your ownership on it -but you don't have to.

Jottit: a great paste bin. Among other things.

It is possible, and we have done it on jaanix. Take a look, there are no surprises.

You have a guest id with no questions asked that lets do everything on the site. You can keep it forever if you come back at least once every two weeks. You only have to join if you want to have your own subdomain - and we ask you for the name and a password - that's it.

"How would you make this site have a gentler slope? Let the user post a comment and then say "Thanks for the comment, now you just need an account to publish this. Enter your username/password."?"

An interesting idea, but it would probably deter casual commenters. People who drop by, see something interesting and want to add their two cents, sign their anonymous comment, and leave it at that.

It's a bit of a stretch, possibly, but track users and pester them gently if they comment several times anonymously. Something like "hey, I've noticed you've been around for awhile, if you sign up, you'll get these perks. Would you like to?"

http://qdb.us/latest does SOMETHING like this. It's a quotes database and after you've browsed around awhile it puts a non-intrusive nag-message at the top of the screen directing you to the FAQ. Maybe something similar to direct people to a signup form?

Requiring users to sign up before they know if the service is valuable is wrong. Prove to them what you did is worth their time first, then require them to sign up if they want to continue using it.

You get a pretty good idea if HN is worth it by reading the posts and comments from others. If you like what you see and would like to contribute then sign up. Nothing wrong with that. It would be great to allow anonymous submissions and comments but unfortunately this is very likely to lead to abuse.

Some users are used to registering no matter what. We only require registrations to upload content on the site, yet for some visitors the first thing they do on the site is register, without uploading anything.

Seems harder to do with something as granular as posting permissions, I agree.

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