Re: user@google.com signup objection
- Posted by jimcbrown (admin) Jan 06, 2015
- 1073 views
Hi
I see that users with @google.com addresses are to be prevented from signing up. I'm afraid I object to this.
(and presumably @gmail.com and @googlemail.com)
No, users from the last two can sign up just fine.
Just because someone uses an @google.com address does not automatically mean they are a spammer or an abuser. I thought it was a tenet of modern western philosophy that one was presumed to be innocent until shown to be not so.
Unlike, e.g., gmail.com, google.com email addresses do not appear to be publicly available. So we already know that the email address is invalid at that point. (If you have an example of a developer somewhere using a valid first.lastname@google.com account to communicate on a project or something though, that's enough proof to warrant a reversal.) Longstanding but lightly enforced rules have always required a valid email address to register.
If someone abuses the privilege of joining the forum, then it should be a simple enough matter to remove and block them.
It turned out not to be so simple (my guess is that the abuser used a location changing VPN), hence the change you reference below.
I also note that administrator approval is required to post. I agree with this - it should again be a simple matter to fire off an email to new users with terms and conditions and standard of conduct required for participation. This level of moderation should prevent, in the majority of cases, abuse of the forum. Replying to this email could be used as a confirmation of email address too.
Agreed. Actually, all the existing email blocks were just quick hacks because no one had ever implemented automatic email verification (so they were meant to be temporary, but then they ossified).
However, I also am wondering why this was put into place. There was no discussion or evidence of abuse presented. Jim, do you realize that implementing unilateral changes of this nature need a lot of justification.
Actually, I did not realize that adding a domain like example.com to the list of domains unavailable for valid email addresses was important enough to require additional discussion and justification. But, now I know, so let's discuss away. 
Like I said above, disallowing invalid email addresses is a long-standing policy of this site. The reason google.com wasn't disallowed until now was that, until relatively recently, no one had tried to use a google.com email address.
Then User89 came in and started violating the CodeOfConduct and possibly the Long-Standing Moratorium on Trolling ... and ignored moderator warnings on the forum. I tried to escalate it to the next level, by sending a warning via email, only to have it bounce. (A quick web search revealed that google.com wasn't available from gmail.) I then locked the account with a message, hoping that User89 would email one of the moderators or admins to get a valid email address for the account (at which point we could pick up where we left off in quietly and privately handling the CodeOfConduct stuff). Instead, User90 was signed up (with a different ip address and another google.com email address). I locked this new account with the same message, and then saw User91, EuSucks, and PythonRules signed up each with google.com email addresses. The ip address was different each time too (Germany, UK, US). In the past, we've banned abusers from this site by using their ip address, but User89 would prove to be a tougher cookie.
So, that's what led to all this. (As an aside, the CodeOfConduct violations were not enough to warrant a ban or any sort of restriction (yet) ... locking the accounts was solely in response to the use of a invalid email address and the lack of another method to contact the user privately.)
Also the 'error message' is not useful at all.
Okay... Give me a better one and I'll change it today.
