Lots of people are asking us about the status of our SE import script. So here is the deal. In short, it works fine but because of SE dumps bugs, it can’t work seemlessly. Let me explain, there’s a little problem with people using Google OpenID because of this:
The consequence is that there is no way to identify some users in the SE dumps because some users have neither openids nor emails!
We are very sorry to our users but until StackExchange fixes this, some imported users won’t be able to login.
tl;dr: The solution is to ask all of your users to provide a valid email address so we can identify them when they’ll login in Shapado. Once all of your users have updated their email, create a new dump and send it to us please.
PS: If you are an SE worker and happen to be reading this post, this is how you can improve SE so it retreives the gmail address for people using the Google OpenID:
You need to ask google for the following exchange extension:
“openid.ax.type.email”, see this documentation and here to see more about the OpenID extension standard on email. This is how we do it on Shapado, really easy.
Hope that helps.
Update: Because we use the “Simple Registration Extension”, all users that use the Google OpenID to log into Shapado won’t suffer the same problem as StackExchange users. So if you use our hosting solution and decide to host it yourself later, you will not lose any users even if they use the Google OpenID.
Dan said on 2010-04-30 06:54:19 UTC:
You sooo don't get it.
It's evil to get the gmail address if a user doesn't give it to you, that's why Stack Exchange doesn't do it.
patcito said on 2010-05-01 00:37:57 UTC:
@Dan: I think you're the one who doesn't get OpenID. We explicitly ask for the user to give his email, in fact, this part is done by Google and is part of the official OpenID specification, here is a screenshot: http://pub.ricodigo.com/googleemail.png
I hope Stack Exchange will implement OpenID correctly one day.
PS: and if you need help to implement asking the user's email through openid, here is the spec, it's called the *Simple* Registration Extension (emphasis mine): http://openid.net/specs/openid-simple-registration-extension-1_0.html
Hope that helps.
Dan said on 2010-05-10 20:15:58 UTC:
First of all, let me make this clear, I'm not associated with SE in any way.
Then, as you can see from that guide you linked too, the email is an optional field the identity provider can send to you. You can ask for it, but Google will only give it to you if you ask for it. And asking for it without the user knowing *is evil*.
When you register through OpenID with Google, Google asks for the email on his side. But he won't pass it to the Consumer site unless it is *explicitly asked*.
patcito said on 2010-05-12 04:25:17 UTC:
Dan, as you can see in the screenshot, Google specifically asks for the user to agree to give his/her email away, this is the only way to ask openid users their email through the Simple Registration Extension, that is, through the openid provider (google) and _not_ through the relying party (shapado). And it's not evil because first, this is how OpenID works and second, the user _knows_ we're asking for it as Google specifically asks the user to give us the email!
Here's the screenshot again: http://pub.ricodigo.com/googleemail.png
Look at the part where google asks for the permission to give us the user's email, well, this is the only correct and technical way to do so through openid.