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right, so the email-only signup really just delays the step of creating a password. Is that better?

Would love to see usability commentary on these sites to see if/how they've decided to use one approach over another.

It's better, in that you now at least know who to contact – someone who showed enough interest to provide an email address.

And sending passwords, even temp ones, through plaintext email is just bad practice, a solved problem, and totally unnecessary.