Comment by 0x12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0x12 | Hacker News Reader

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  - facebook and/or google may not be around forever

  - my account with facebook and/or google could get disabled by them on a whim, 
    severing my link with the Khan academy

  - there is no upside to me to log in with a facebook
    and/or google account

  - there is a downside, which is that I have to sign up for a different service, that
    I may have valid reasons for not wanting to join (in the case of fb that does not
    require a whole lot of imagination)

And so on.

Really, when you only allow people to log in to your site by forcing them to become a member of another site first you are creating a barrier that need not exist.

I'm sure there are plenty of valid reasons for them why they do it this way (possibly, for instance because google and facebook do a lot of work to ensure that their accounts are only given out to those that deserve it, thereby cutting out on spam), but for me it does not work.

For sure that is a small minorities, but small minorities are at least still allowed to speak up. Good thing HN does not require a facebook or a google login.

This is also a problem for some school boards. My sister is using Khan Academy with her ELL students (they don't speak any English but Khan's working great for them).

Signing a student up to a standalone service is no problem, but as soon as that service includes email or other student communication, the teachers need to get parents' consent.

This is really limiting the adoption across the rest of her school, they don't really want to get everyone a new GMail or Facebook account.

This is a problem for schools using usually custom-built tools to manage the district's resources and administration. For the more flexible charter schools that are more open to the idea of adopting something like Khan Academy into the curriculum, they are small enough (usually one school) to switch over, and are often already using Google Apps as their default method of email and collaboration.

I know that at my sisters' charter school (2 schools, K-8 and 9-12), the entire school is on the Google Apps Education platform and getting started with Khan Academy was really simple for them, as they already had name@school.com email accounts they were used to using.

That's a really compelling point. Thanks.

We're aware of this, and as @genieyclo said, Google Apps for Education is currently the easiest way for a whole bunch of students to get going. We've been successful using Apps for Education with all of our pilot Khan Academy schools so far.

That being said, we're thinking about becoming our own identity provider as well, primarily for this reason.

Just one of those things that's on the list and has to be weighed against everything else -- the majority of our users are doing just fine w/ Google/Facebook.

Super, great to see it's on your radar. Thank you very much for all your hard work.

I know the school board where I live has banned teachers from using Facebook, and to further your point students under a certain age are not allowed to use either Facebook, or Google.

- the likelihood of Facebook or Google disappearing anytime soon is very minimal

- the stories of disabled accounts are vastly over-hyped, and the likelihood of it happening are almost nil

- there is significant upside for you to use your Facebook or Google account to signup/login with a service. Much less work, it's one click to login after you authorize it every time, no need to have another login/pass combo, and if you wish to no longer use the site, it's easy to disable

- most people have a Facebook or Google already, especially KA's market

The effort to create and maintain signups/logins separately for KA vs using existing drop-in solutions for both Google & FB makes the decision obvious. This is a much more convenient solution for both the users and devs of KA.

HN does not require but does allow you to use a similiar login scheme with Clickpass.

Everybody understands that there's a cost/benefit tradeoff here, so spelling it out all over again doesn't really move us forward.

Why is this particular cost/benefit tradeoff bad? Again: the evidence is that Khan is doing well. And Khan is not run by morons who just do whatever Google and Facebook --- the two largest identity providers on the Internet --- tell them to do.

>Everybody understands that there's a cost/benefit tradeoff here, so spelling it out all over again doesn't really move us forward.

You just asked the commenter to spell it out in your previous comment. Chastising him/her for doing so really, really doesn't move us forward. His comments about requiring sign-up (particularly on services that don't allow minors under 13) were an excellent explanation.

Make a new google account. If you don't use google plus it can be whatever you want used with one or many services.

I think tptacek's point was that you don't know enough to call the decision "a really bad mistake on their part". Saying it doesn't work for you, though, is totally fair.

I think my point is that education should be as accessible as possible and that any barrier is too much. There will always be those that are left out inadvertently or because their numbers are not significant enough to be taken into account.

Better to play it safe and to open that door as wide as possible.

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