Subject: Tools logins -- Aaaargh!

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:08:56 -0400

There is probably a better place to complain about this, but...

There are various IETF "tools" web pages.  But I have a devil of a time using them because they do not identify themselves usefully when asking for a login.  There are multiple login databases in the whole IETF tools suite, and experienced users know which database controls access to which tool.  But for us unwashed masses, there is no way to guess which web pages demand which password because they are named inconsistently.

Let me propose:

* Each password database has a *single* name which is the only name that it is ever referred to by, such as "IETF tools login" and "IETF datatracker login".

* Each login prompt gives the *single* name of the password database that it is driven by.

Otherwise we get such messes as "trac.tools.ietf.org" demanding an IETF tools login -- not IETF datatracker login -- and its login prompt identifying the realm only as "IETF".  Which is pretty useless to the uninitiated, since "track", "tools", and "IETF" are all present.

(I'm continuously amused by the fact that a roomful of computer geeks, who spend their days making unambiguous descriptions of operations to computers are unable to make an unambiguous description of an operation to humans.)

Dale