I assume you'd be sending the passwords from your site to Perlmonks in plain text?

Yes, the same way that browsers pass the login info to the server when users login to the site :) Though passing the password in plain text would only happen once in order to grab the cookie. Then the cookie would be sent instead. A little more secure. Not perfect, but good enough I say.

How these things go uncriticized on a web development site are beyond me.

They don't go uncriticized. Some people don't like it, some don't really care, and some figure it's great if it allows more functionality to something. I live with the complaints :)

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