As a software developer by trade, it breaks my heart when I see someone doing something very stupid with their software, or especially a website.

I used to love to browse through SyFy Wire. I found so many really good articles. Then I would want to post a comment. At the time, they were hooked into three social media platforms. My first instinct was Facebook, because it's ubiquitous. But no. That was blocked at the place I worked, and my work also didn't share bandwidth, so I didn't want to waste my limited phone bandwidth, and I didn't want to be bored as I ate my lunch at my desk. So I used G+. Google's platform had become well known enough that logins were accepted. The third option was Twitter, and I don't twit.

I'm sure some of you may have heard, G+ was put to death a while back. That pretty much ended my ability to enjoy Syfy Wire during the day. And at night, I come home and write, or mow the lawn, or mine copper and refine it into chromatic metal. Can never have too much of that stuff. Recently I have been between positions, and so I started back on Syfy Wire, using Facebook to log me in. Today, it's not working. Something on the Facebook side has failed. So again, I can't post.

As a software developer, I can't help but wonder why they built their site to rely on other people's software working properly just to allow people like me to post a comment. I'm an author for cripes sake. My posts will at least be spell checked! Why wouldn't you want my participation? It takes all of five minutes to set up an Identity Server. Handle your own logins! Microsoft has been doing multiple source verification for ages, out of the box, and they always allow for local accounts. So instead of posting a nice little comment on your site, I posted this rant on my blog, instead.

Stop relying on social media for your authentication for comment posting. You should be better than that.

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