We have a large up to date list of fake/temporary email sites and registering from these is impossible. A list of domains (@whatever.com) used to sign up on the site is also automatically made and this is browsed through to check the sites are all legit now and then too.

Also, if you are using a free email account like gmail, hotmail, googlemail, yahoo, etc etc etc you will not be able to register here either.

This is to prevent things like people having multiple accounts and general abuse

Please just use your internet account that came with your ISP or if you're at university or whatever the one there. Just anything that isn't free, so that we can be fairly sure accounts are unique.

Thanks

Wikipedia should have the same policy. Its called accountability for your own actions. Goes a long way towards stopping vandalism and other abusive behaviours.

Yeah, great going Selina. I had to go through the whole IT rigmarole just to get my university e-mail password back; I've had it set to redirect to Gmail for over a year.

Oh sorry.

Well, there were a few people using the site to spam etc, and of course we had the whole 3,000 Grace Note accounts going, so this was just a measure introduced to make sure its one account each.

Yeah, if needed any of us can create you an account manually, with the password set to whatever you want to then be changed after you first login.

So Mr Aardvark can get away with registering with a gmail account!

So could've you. Remember this has only been implemented pretty recently. People that've been on the board for a while may still be using free accounts. Deleting accounts and asking people to reregister with a free one would be a bit of a waste of time. I'm pretty sure there are no sockpuppets *at the moment* at least.

I was joking! I am indeed using a free account.

And don't tell Grace Note/Race Goat/Donkey etc. that there are no sockpuppets at the moment. They all think I'm a sockpuppet, and all those users can't be wrong.

I think that anyone who has been banned should be automatically allowed in. Even if their ban was legitimate and reasonable, we'd still like to hear about it. Even if you're Willy on Wheels or the Communist Vandal or Mr Treason, you still have something to offer to this forum. It doesn't mean that we approve of what you are doing. But this is about criticism, and obviously anyone who is banned is automatically a critic.

Anyone should be allowed in, from Jimbo Wales to Jayjg, unless there's a ruddy good reason to bar them. But they still need some proof of identity.

Yeah I agree with guy. We know Jimbo Wales, founder of the Wikimedia foundation reads these boards and he or anyone else is perfectly welcome to post here if they want and don't start spurting abuse/trolling (Grace Note did and got banned for it, but lets not forget he's pretty much a nobody in every aspect of his life anyway)

It's very easy to find out if they're a free email host, not rocket science - @whatever.com - just go to www.whatever.com
(and if that doesn't work I test with some other stuff too )

I really should build this into the registration page to read there somehow because people dont seem to read this forum before registering :/

New announcement...

In addition to our longstanding restriction on the use of free web-based e-mail accounts when registering, recent developments have caused us to add an additional restriction on new registrants who supply Wikipedia usernames that either don't exist at all, or have no contribution history. This is due to the increased prevalence of forum-trolling "spambots," programmed to find and register accounts on as many web forums as possible, presumably in an effort to mine them for valid e-mail addresses. Many of these spambots contain logic that will fill in optional fields with the registrant name, apparently in the hopes that this will fool us into thinking that they're actually human beings.

In order to distinguish yourself from these bots, please either leave the "Wikipedia username" field blank, or fill it in with an actual WP user account name that has a history of contributions from at least a few weeks prior to registration. This field is entirely optional, and it isn't especially recommended that you fill it in anyway, especially if you are currently a Wikipedia user in good standing and wish to remain so.

(We'd apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but since it's actually more trouble to fill the field in, there doesn't seem to be much need to do so. )

Now, if you're fairly young and don't remember the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator, but you have seen a similar-looking moustache on photos of Hitler, please note that this is Chaplin, not Hitler.

Just wanted to make sure everyone was clear on that...