I'm totally confused by this thread. Why "waste" anything to register new users? It seems totally counter intuitive since the point of BitShares is to eliminate waste. Fine, so that refers to mining waste but I'm totally confused why people just don't buy their account registration for what you seem to be saying here is only a few pennies anyway.
I feel like I'm missing something fundamental (yet again). Someone care to pls explain?
How could we allow people to register names without going through a central service like a faucet or forum?
And how do we prevent spam accounts?
Exactly what type of users are you targeting to register? Seems like if you have good functional value people will
pay to register to get access to that functionality. Make it too easy & you'll get the spammers and nuisance registrations.
I'm still not sure I understand what the problem is you're trying to solve. I was looking the the BTSX account list a few days ago on BitsharesBlocks and noticed tons of names I highly suspect are abandoned and no longer active. Just garbage collect them.
In terms of registered names, well there may be a need for some type of fee, but not necessarily. They don't charge for gmail addresses, it's first come first served. If the account names are like DNS, some form of auction would be appropriate.