People's profiles will still exist on wikidot.com, and TOS and any other information could still be delivered to them via whatever registration module is put in place on local sites, in addition to an registration email from wikidot.

What wikidot loses NOW, with registration as is, are users who try join a particular site, not even realizing that it's part of this huge wiki community. They end up at wikidot.com, and don't know where their new site of entry is. Then they quit entirely. They never start their own wiki. They never contribute another thing because they couldn't figure out how to participate in the one place they actually wanted to be in the first place.

Those "lost user links" I added are mostly to people who ended up making ONE post in the community forums where they clearly thought they were still at some particular wiki, and most of them made their last contribution with those posts. For every ONE where there's a breadcrumb trail, I'm convinced there are thousands more who got lost and never posted at all, and just left in frustration.

With a 1 step process, the individual wikis get the users they helped attract to wikidot in the first place, and once their attached to the process, they WILL learn about wikidot in the process, and wikidot's overall retention rate will IMPROVE, not decrease.

Although neither of my sites show direct evidence of wikidot evangelism, they've both had an impact on people who would never have heard of wikidot otherwise. I've got some people on a private site who know wikidot exists because of WiiHD, and very seriously considered bringing a community of more than a thousand here because of it. Sadly, certain forum features have, for now, prevented wikidot from being their primary choice, but every single admin in that team has seen and appreciated the power of wikidot, and I'm certain they'll be back in some form or another one day.

But when individual wikis lose users in the registration process, wikidot loses them too. Everyone benefits from keeping them here, and wikidot doesn't have to become invisible to prevent that loss.

• do not mention that wikidot.com (working in the background) is a service provider with much more features,
• will never build their own wiki, and
• will never read from any "global" serices…
• ( and never read the "ToS").

Typical example is Davids http://fortunz.com/ , where "normal" visitors will not mention for a long time, that in a little line at the bottom is written"hosted by wikidot.com"… ( this is not a critic, but a very good site, David!) .

A login & 1.register page - it is new now on an extra page with a big wikidot logo (and not inside a litle popup) , have you mentioned it ? - is in such cases the only moment to make the "provider" visuable to any visitor…

I would like to have a 1- step register too, but I have no idea how to do it without loosing such effect…

none of his reply undermines the principle that you should be able to join a WIKI ….and….WIKIDOT at the same time.

I would certainly hope not.

You do realize I'm entirely in favor of this solution? In addition to voting for it, and editing it to include additional reasons for adoption, I promote it every chance I get.

There just doesn't appear to be reason, as someone suggested, to go through the trouble of registering for a wiki and NOT getting registered for wikidot at the same time.

An application for membership of a WIKI will automatically create a WIKIDOT account.

Sometimes simple logic is hard to accept!

morrisg

In addition to the technical issues and the difficulty implementing it, not having a general wikidot account would deny users the ability to participate here in the community support forums, as well as probably thousands of other wiki's that don't require specific membership to post and contribute material. At the time of registration, it would be difficult to explain to someone new to wikidot what they would be giving up by unchecking, or leaving that box unchecked.

In addition to the severe technical and user costs of optional wikidot.com registration, it's unclear what benefits it would bring. So long as this wish is implemented, and 1 step registration is put into place, I can't see what additional benefit any user derives from being able to opt out of (or having to opt-in to) wikidot.com membership. Of course, just because I can't see them, doesn't mean they don't exist. What sort of benefits did you envision spir?

Rob

There should be a registration form for a wiki site, that allows the new member to optionally register to wikidot itself with a simple checkbox.
So that one could be member of :

• wikidot (like now)
• the wiki he/she joins alone
• both (with checkbox)