I don’t like using a temporary e-mail address for signing in to web pages. The reason being, if they are going to ask me for my e-mail address, I’m going to assume they are going to want my actual e-mail. If I give them a temporary e-mail address, I’m just cheating their system. I’d rather not use their system than cheat it.

If there were a note on the login page that stated perlmonks doesn’t need a permanent e-mail address, I would get a login that way, but right now it the “please note” section does imply that someone may want to contact me in the future.

Using the Anonymous Monk login to post usually isn’t a problem, but Wassercrats does gets a higher than average number of anonymous responses, which makes it difficult for him to figure out who is who. However, I’m not going to cheat perlmonks for his benefit.

If there were a note on the login page that stated perlmonks doesn’t need a permanent e-mail address, I would get a login that way, but right now it the “please note” section does imply that someone may want to contact me in the future.

I'm not sure how you are reading it to get that implication. The "please note" section on Create A New User says:

We are not going to send you junk email "member updates", sell your address to spammers, or display your email address for people to see. This email exists so that you can receive your password, and/or retrieve it if you forget. There may be future email functionality, which you will have the option to turn on from your user settings page.

It fairly clearly says to me that any email interaction after the original receipt of your password is going to be optional (and opt-in). Is there a way it could be reworded to make this more clear to you?

I don’t like using a temporary e-mail address for signing in to web pages. The reason being, if they are going to ask me for my e-mail address, I’m going to assume they are going to want my actual e-mail. If I give them a temporary e-mail address, I’m just cheating their system. I’d rather not use their system than cheat it.

But how would a yahoo or gmail or other free account not be an actual email address? I think I know what you're saying, that it's not the email account with your ISP. But in addition to my ISP account, I have 3 yahoo, and 2 gmail accounts; all "actual" accounts that I use for various things. One is used specifically for occasions where I'm required to give an address, but I expect it might generate spam; I can just close it and open another if it gets too bad. Another I use for things like PerlMonks, where I do want an ongoing relationship; but if it did start accumlating lots of spam, it wouldn't be the end of the world to close it and get another.

I don't think you need to worry about it being what you call a temporary account; I haven't gotten any email from the site yet. I don't think you'd be "cheating their system" using a free acount.

TheEnigma