Why can't we just have separate log ins and be done with this nonsense?

this post from a friend pretty much sums it up...

The 'logging out' thing is proving surprisingly off-putting thing for me. It logged me out, and it was five days before I cared enough to log in again. It's as though I keep getting told to go away; eventually I'll get the hint, I guess.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2001834#2001834

doesn't matter that it was posted in the lounge, what matters is people are leaving all the forums.

88 seconds just to get to this forum's main page, log in and get this reply editor to come up.

Definitely not worth it.

About having different accounts and passwords...

I don't know about the Mac world, but in the Windoze world, I stopped worrying about that a long time ago

The current Norton Internet Security includes a password manager... I use one "strong" password to tell Norton I am me... and it manages an encrypted file of all of my login and password combinations for the sites I visit

For those not using Norton, there is http://www.roboform.com/download.html - Free version password manager allows 10 web sites or $29.95 unlimited

As that applies here... since it doesn't look like the Adobe process will be split, it would seem to me that a single password manager might be a good idea for anyone who visits a lot of sites that require logins

JayJhabrix wrote on 2009-05-24 08:05:

This common login is supposed to be one reason why Adobe can't implement NNTP. But what function does it serve?

It reduces the number of accounts people have to remember. I am very

glad I do not have to have separate accounts for the Adobe site, the

WebX forums, the Fusetalk forums, the Acrobat.com site, the

Photoshop.com site, the trainers portal, the Community portal, the

Partner portal etc.

I remember the days those were all different accounts and I am glad they

are gone. I can't wait until the prerelease site and the EDS site are

fixed to work with the Adobe ID as well.

Am sure, that even at this stage, it wouldn't be too difficult to separate the two.

Technically that isn't really difficult. It is about as difficult as

rewriting it from scratch to use proper, proven, cryptographically safe

protocols that allow for differentiating the login timeout between

different areas of the site, allow for cascaded trust levels (because

you are logged in to the store and the store has high trust, you are

logged in to the forums, but the low trust forums don't log you in to

the high trust store), provide API access so we don't have to reverse

engineer HTML junk etc.

But separating them just isn't going to happen. And you know it isn't,

because it isn't a technical decision but a policy choice. So I would

very much appreciate if you stopped whining and detracting attention

from issues that do stand a chance of changing.

Jochem

--

Jochem van Dieten

http://jochem.vandieten.net/

The idea with having a single login between forums and the rest of Adobe.com was to provide a shared experience and tighter integration with other areas of the site. The points system is a good example of this - other community areas of Adobe.com leverage a points system for contribution/participation, and Adobe Forums are part of this overall program.

When we were on the old forums, Macromedia/Fusetalk forums the common Adobe ID account for your login and password. If you were on Web Crossing, you had a completely different login/password that was separate from the Macromedia forums or anything else on Adobe.com. It didn't make any sense from a customer perspective to have two different accounts to access Adobe Forums. I know there were many of you who stayed almost exclusively on one side of the fence (Fusetalk/WebCrossing) so this really didn't seem like an issue, but for the average customer looking for help, it was confusing for them to know which login to use.

The way WebCrossing accounts were managed was not ideal either - John had to manage lost passwords and general day-to-day account management himself. We had customers calling in asking for help logging in, and these would end up all going to John because they could not be managed like the rest of our Adobe.com accounts. Now - if you have trouble with your Adobe ID, you can reset your password or contact Customer Service for help. This removes an administrative burden from John and frees up his time to manage more important issues.

Eliminating this confusion with the login and then consolidating all the forums onto a singular platform were key parts of our recent forums project. That said, I acknowledge that especially for those who were primarily Web Crossing users, losing the permanent login was a big change. The login/timeout behavior is still not working consistently for everyone and it is something we are actively working on. I realize many of you are frustrated and rightly so when you are losing content while posting and getting timed out while actively using Forums. We are definitely experiencing some teething troubles now that we're tied into using the Adobe ID for login, but we will get that resolved so that it's working more consistently and we are working towards ways to extend the timeout without compromising security for other areas of Adobe.com that are more sensitive (like the Adobe Store).

Separating the login is not something we are currently considering. We've worked really hard to consolidate the accounts and all the forums together, and provide tighter integration with other areas of Adobe.com. The only analogy I can think of is that we really feel like you guys shouldn't have a dozen keys to get into a dozen doors, but that you should be able to use one key to get into Adobe regardless of which door or room you're going into.

Hope that helps!

I normally don't like saying "I told you so", and I normally don't, but...

Shortly after Adobe stepped back from the last fiasco, we began hearing rumors about uniforming the looks of all the Adobe sites. Wanting to know what could be waiting for us, I began visiting the ex MM forums. To my surprise, I found that I had to log in them using my Adobe Store username and password, and I also found that I never remained logged in those forums for more than perhaphs a couple of hours (I never measured this time). I therefore came to the Suggestions for the New Forums thread (I don't recall by now the exact name of that now vanished thread), and wrote a message telling about this login problem, and strongly suggesting that the login procedure for the new forums was kept completely separtate from the Adobe Store one.

Some other people from "this side" (ex Adobe forums) also noticed this logout problem at "the other side" (Kath, I seem to remember you were one of them), but after many workrounds were posted, I finally remained as the one poster affected by it. Fearing that this could make my more important request to be forgotten, during the next months (more than a year?), I posted it several more times as a separate suggestion: please keep the login procedure to the new forums completely separate from the one of the Adobe Store. Unfortunately, and as so many excellent suggestions posted in that thread by many other people, it was not taken into account.

By the way, in those months I could also observe how the format of the Adobe Store site became more and more loaded with needless additions, like "fancy" gray backgrounds, large black boxes, and the like; and how many of these additions were carried over to "the other side". Which wouldn't have been so bad if loading times hadn't increased accordingly. My posts asking for the format of the new forums to be kept as simple as possible, though echoed by many, were also ignored, but then this is another story. Or is is?

To end this already too long post: during the test period, I was one of the many who warned repeatedly of the danger of losing many of the most valuable collaborators of these forums because of the incredible slowness  and poor functionallity of the new design. You may blame it on my aging memory if I am wrong, but I could swer that I read more than once semi official replies in the sense that this was a calculated risk of Adobe, and that any loses, however regretable, would soon be replaced by new users.

"In fact, i can't think of one good reason to combine the two."

Because you don't have all the facts, much less all the plans.

It makes sense.

NNTP has a few dozen things going against it, and login creditentials are the least of it's problems.

The very fact that your comment is reasonable and logical means that it has zero chance of being considered by the "management" of Adobe.