[wp-hackers] "commenter" user role

[Jeremy Clarke]

-1 for having records for all commenters in wp_users. Whatever you
guys are thinking could be solved by it should be solved by the
existing option to allow/force registration for comments. If you feel
like you have a reply then please re-read that last sentence, its a
killer.

-100 for moving users into wp_posts, that's insane.

Some added considerations:
 * When you have a lot of authors/editors this situation looks very
different. If you are alone as admin (i.e. Otto and Hikari) then you
are MORE likely to feel comfortable having registered readers because
the table was empty anyway. When you have 300 users in various roles
then the Users system is kludgy enough without also having to account
for thousands and thousands of records for commenters who are likely
to never come back again.
 * The distinction between 'a registration' and 'a record in the users
table' makes sense but I think it involves a distinction that
invalidates the claim that they should live in the same place or are
the same thing. If there is no password, no login name and no
permissions then it is not a user. IMHO for this proposal to be
logically consistent - for commenters to make sense in the users table
- then they must be users! They need to be normal users with a role of
'commenter' as their distinction, not some weird ghosts cluttering up
the wp_users table invisibly. They should show in the normal users
list and be filterable as a role like the other roles. I think
imagining this is enough to give nightmares to admins of sites with
lots of users and commenters, and points out a major flaw in the
proposal.
 * Whatever you guys are thinking could be solved by it should be
solved by the existing option to allow/force registration for
comments. (sorry, I had to reiterate that, its a killer)

-- 
Jeremy Clarke
Code and Design | globalvoicesonline.org