My general attitude to passwords is "Never choose something you'd be ashamed to recite to your mother over the phone", since you never know when you'll be in a position where you may have to do exactly that.

As an information assurance guy, I'd encourage users to use the most embarassing possible passwords, since you should never share them. If you need to make resources available to more entities, do it by sharing access, not authentication.

This is what I love about Hacker News... even a semi-trollish post generates two great replies that I am glad to have read.

Generally speaking I agree with you, but in the real world (with real users!) this is not always possible.

Is it just me or are downvoted posts completely unreadable? It would be nice if there were an "unhide" button or something; it's extremely annoying to have to squint to read it.

That's intentional. Downvoted posts fade both to save people from reading them (presumably most are mistaken or nasty) and to damp the submitter's karma loss (the fainter they are, the harder you have to work to be offended by them).

Are you're kidding me? If I must really share. . .most sys admins encourage their users to come up with passwords that read like 'pornographic catch phrases' written in 1337 speak as means of ensuring system security while the end-user is less likely to forget their password since it's something offensive yet expressive.

People are hitting the downvote button more.