LiveCodeJournal.com forum registration

[Peter M. Brigham]

I'm not on the forums, and don't feel any particular need to join them since I'm not a professional LC developer, but the exclusion of gmail addresses seems extreme. I have been using a gmail address exclusively since they were offered by Google. I would hate to have to create a new email account just to join, and I'm not sure what domain would be acceptable other than my own (which I do not have).

I realize that I have no standing here at all (to use the legal metaphor). I'm just commenting as an observer.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig

On Dec 7, 2012, at 7:37 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> A couple members of our community recently wrote me asking why their IP address has been banned from the forums at LiveCodeJournal.com, preventing them from registering.
> 
> We've resolved the issue via email, and they're now able to log in.
> 
> If you've experienced this yourself, please accept my apologies in advance.  I'll provide an explanation on this below, but if you get a notice that either your IP address or email address prevents you from registering at LiveCodeJournal.com just drop me a note with the affected info (IP address or email address you're using) and I'll remove those blocks so you can successfully register.
> 
> Sorry for the inconvenience, but over time as we remove some of the broader blocks we had in place when we were setting up this is now affecting relatively few users.  Going forward it should affect ever fewer as we use more refined blocking measures at the site.
> 
> NOTE: Disposable email addresses are not allowed for accounts at LiveCodeJournal.com.  This includes hotmail.com, excite.com, and even gmail.com along with many others.  This is unfortunate but necessary, since without that restriction I wouldn't be able to stay on top of the requests that flood my In Box from spambots.  Fortunately, since LiveCodeJournal.com's audience is largely developers, most of you have your own domains and use those to maintain your professional correspondences, so this is not likely an issue for most here.
> 
> Also, it's really helpful if the user name you choose for your LiveCodeJournal.com account reflects something of your professional online presence, including something related to your name or business. Account names like "crackz44993", "JaneHotDate" or "freepills" may be misunderstood as a spambot.
> 
> The forum is located here, linked to from the Features section at LiveCodeJournal.com:
> <http://livecodejournal.com/forum/>
> 
> Let me also take this opportunity to invite any of you interested in participating in administering the site or contributing content to just drop me an email and we'll set you up.  LiveCode Journal is a community effort, open to all LiveCode developers.
> 
> 
> 
> Background:
> 
> If you run a server, your log reviews have no doubt made you aware of the constant attack on such systems.  And if you manage a forum, esp. one using any of the popular forum software like PHPBB, you've seen so many spambot accounts that it likely impacts your productivity cleaning them up.
> 
> That's what happened with LiveCodeJournal.com.
> 
> Every day the system notifies me of many new accounts, most of which are obviously bots.  In fact, this flood began even before we linked to it from any public source; spambots are thorough and relentless.
> 
> This activity grew to the point that it was seriously affecting my ability to stay on top of critical email.  As a volunteer effort for the community, the only way I could keep the forum running without negatively impacting my business was to block whole IP ranges.
> 
> Yes, I understand that these days the original geographic distribution of IP addresses is no longer maintained in the same way and doesn't always means that a given user is from the region of the world you might expect, and this will result in false positives from time to time.
> 
> Still, weighing the various tradeoffs, it was necessary to allow me to get back to work.
> 
> In fact, IP range blocking is a fairly common practice for not just forums but even entire domains among small software shops to prevent expensive bandwidth abuse from crack sites in parts of the world where law enforcement has proven themselves completely ineffectual with regard to hacking and intellectual property violations.
> 
> Now that the forums at LiveCodeJournal.com have been made public, I've gone through and removed most of the broader blocks I originally had in place, and the remaining blocks are usually specific enough to minimize the risk of false positives.
> 
> Still, we do see false positives now and then, so if you're affected please accept my apologies in advance, and just email me your IP address and I'll refine that block so you can register.
> 
> Thanks for your understanding on this.  I look forward to seeing humans like you in the forums.  :)
> 
> --
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World
> LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
> Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
> Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
> 
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