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Comment by alexholehouse | Hacker News Reader

Registration is literally no more than the three boxes on the signup page, which was a pleasant surprise.

I think people are starting to suffer from signup fatigue (even with just 3 boxes). Wherever possible, services should get right into the kernel of the experience and ask for registration later.

Seconded; it may be "only" three boxes, but I can browse SO or SE by filling in zero boxes. This reminded me of a site (can't remember which) that comes up in Google results for some UNIX CLI searches I've done and requires sign-in or payment(!) to view community contributed answers. Bugger that for a lark.

Quora? I always avoid Quora links for that reason. Worthless compared with SO.

Experts-Exchange[0], perhaps? There were (are?) some workarounds for getting E-E's full results, but SO/SE is so much better, it doesn't matter what's on E-E anymore.

[0] Don't look here for a link from me, I'd rather not encourage them by sending traffic their way.

I hate to be a citation dodger, but partly due to laziness, and partly due to not wanting to send any traffic their way, I didn't bother digging up what site it was. I'm all for paying for expert opinion when a) it's better than I could do and b) the people providing the expertise get the majority of the money. Charging money for unverified, uncompensated answers? Too lame. I am one of those people who used SO/SE for quite some time and finally signed up for an account when I stumbled upon a question I had an answer for. I don't mind giving back, much as I didn't mind contributing to CDDB until Gracenote ruined it. Whatever other gripes I might have with SO/SE, I think it's so successful because of its model.

Yes. I was interested in the site, went to the page, saw the signup boxes, and left.

Went to the site, was annoyed by the sign-in requirements, and left.

Came here to write a comment, then decided to go back to the site. It accepts joe@example.com as a valid email. Typed throwaway password.

That is still far too much before I even know what it is! At least show a picture or two of what's behind the registration wall.

Tip for others: Just register with fake details in order to see what the site is. There is no email verification step. If it takes your fancy just re-register again properly.

Edit: I realise I sound a bit negative, so I want to say that everything I didn't mention was a positive. The site looks beautiful, what content is there is fantastic and you should definitely keep it up.

This site doesn't necessarily need off-the-bat registration, so forcing users to register when we think registration isn't a necessity is the issue I think.

3 boxes, or 1 social sign-in, is the norm nowadays.

That doesn't make it good. Maybe you're arguing that the target market won't care?

I'm just saying that this is the standard way now. Everybody wants to make it as easy as possible for new users to sign in.

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