Dev Tracker - Discussion

That isn't really the point.

BG-wiki includes an cumbersome, suspicious, and unnecessary step for account verification to dissuade registration and thus participation, and it works. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of perspective but the dynamic isn't mysterious or unexpected.

Is this guy for real or does he have me blocked?

There is literal proof of me making a brand new outlook email account, making a BG account through said email and making edits on the wiki with said account in 5 minutes.

The *** you mean "cumbersome, suspicious, and unnecessary step for account verification"? Email validation is standard practice on plenty of sites. Dudes just coming up with ridiculous excuses now.

Been discussed before. There are some "accepted" free email hosts that don't require discord verification.

Other free providers are not. Eg any email anonymiser services.

I could make an Outlook email just for Bg. I *want* to use my existing anonymised email service. I can't without going on a discord.

The other issue is you don't know which provider is accepted and which is not unless you try to sign up.

It's pretty simple really. Go sign up. Does it work? no?

Oh well, don't need a wiki account that bad.

Cest la vie.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Again
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be fair, Nynja, if there are some folks that can't get through the very difficult sign-up process, perhaps it makes for a good litmus test filtering out those who shouldn't be editing it anyway.

This logic is just blaming the victim. Yea, you can still sign up for wiki. Yea, it's not a huge inconvenience. ...should it be any inconvenience? Do you ever like the experience of something becoming more difficult for the sake of preventing misuse?

Do you love filling out captchas? Mandatory 2FA on everything under the sun? Having to change your password every so often, even though it's already secure? Verifying your health information every time you fill a prescription online? ID checks and screening procedures at public events? Antifraud systems requiring additional verification on purchases? DRM on your music? Account lockouts because you didn't notice caps lock was on?

If you're not acting maliciously, being inconvenienced by systems designed to prevent malicious activity sucks. It's reasonable to be deterred. Wiki editing is solely for the sake of helping others; if the initial impression is negative people won't want to do it.

/rant off

Fair point
Imagine being inferior to SpicyRyan lol
Could never be me

Sure, some processes can be annoying. I am not a fan of ill implemented security measures, but if the end result is worthwhile, I just do it (or work around it).

We all play/ed XI where there were plenty of annoying things we had to do because it was needed or the result was desired.

Blocking fly-by-night anon email services is the lowest security bar to potentially block spammers/bots.

Yea, and it might even be necessary, especially when you consider that you have people (like SpicyRyan) who are very emotional about the service or actively want to harm it. It's not wrong for the wiki to take steps to prevent users defacing it.

It's also not wrong to see it as a pain in the *** and disengage as a result. Even if Nynja made him an account, it's not tied to his own preferred email and service. It's reasonable for someone techy to use an email anonymizer and sign up to different services with different anonymized emails. It prevents the real email from being exposed during most data leaks and hinders many types of attacks in addition to improving privacy.

Both ends are looking for maximum security. However, the wiki benefits from contributions while the contributor doesn't. I don't think either side is more at fault here, but Dodik's stance is perfectly reasonable to me. Someone who actively wants to contribute will probably go on the Discord and get their preferred email advance-approved. But, someone who just sees a random thing to be fixed and tries to sign up to fix it is going to give up before they make a new email or ask for permission.

I also take offense to this statement. It's implying that anyone besides the half dozen tech giants that likely feed all your communications right into their preferred LLM isn't credible. Email is incredibly simple to implement and privacy is one of the more desirable attributes of an email provider.

They made it an inconvenience to use them because they have been abused.

Thats like asking why all the skincare products are locked up except for the sunscreen.

Yea, and what's the result of that one? How many people see an item locked behind a case and decide to buy it somewhere else or get it shipped from Amazon instead of waiting 10 minutes to get an employee's attention to pull it out?

That's all Dodik is doing here. Wiki's fine with losing his contribution if it means they don't get vandalized as much. CVS is ok with a 30% drop in skin product sales if they also get an 80% reduction in skin product theft. Neither side is at fault, but I don't think it's fair to blame Dodik for not wanting to be inconvenienced.

Edit: I absolutely made the CVS percentages up. You know, in case some pedantic **** decides to question them.

Strawman and false

1-hes not ordering it from amazon, hes going “guess i dont need it”, then potentially talks about stuff on the wiki being wrong and people not updating it. If anything, I ordered it from Amazon for him, but hes rejecting it because it wasnt the right brand.
2-ive literally documented that it takes THREE minutes to make the accounts

This is a *** FFXI forum. Dudes here talking about “muh inconveniences” when buying a key to make a new account makes you jump through no less than 10 hoops. Buying a server transfer isnt exactly a leisurely stroll either.

Wikis thrive on many users giving small contributions. Again, the contributor doesn't gain anything from it.

Imagine running a charity collection and IDing everyone who wants to put their pocket change into your bucket. How many folks are gonna start digging out their ID instead of walking away with their coins?

"if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem with random id checks on the street"

"Do your windows at your house have blinds? Why, what do you have to hide."
Blocking anonymous email services is the easiest way to not have anyone want to use your website.

Case in point. All the victim blaming sure makes me want to jump through hoops just to use your site, let me tell you.

The wiki would get more updates, if a sub-forum or thread was made where people can get the information needed and someone else who is comfortable making the edits on the wiki itself can then just put them in. People can ask for information then there too.

It's easier to input stuff than get all the information needed and also input it too.

You have yet to explain how Dodik420x@yahoo.com, or Outlook as shown earlier, is doxing you.

Please don't pretend you don't have a yahoo/gmail/outlook/etc email address that isn't your private/personal email address.

BG isn't the only website that blacklists anon email hosts, and you would have had or will have this issue somewhere else.

My guy, I simply will not jump through hoops to join your site.

I have several yahoo and outlook addresses I could use. I don't want to use any of them. No, I won't tell you why, it's Nan Your Business.

I have several more legitimate several years old non-anonymised non-random-letters-and-numbers email addresses that are not yahoo or outlook that I tried and cannot use without being directed to a discord server.

These same addresses are used everywhere from Github, Amazon, online shopping accounts, paypal, credit card companies, banks.. list goes on.

But I guess BGWiki needs a stricter email validation system than PayPal does, right? Right.

Anyways...

Are there any new items this update? BG hasn't been updated and no form post yet

Badrod, Marjory's Thesis, Trust Tome off the top of my head. If you're asking about items that are now in the DATs which are not yet obtainable, that would have to be answered by someone with the ability/knowledge to compare versions to see what is new.

PayPal just has your banking information, no big deal. But you know, "muh privacy and security" lol

No skin off my back; not my website. Just trying to understand the illogicalness of your stance.

An email address with a PayPal account attached on it. *** huh.

There is no logic as such. Just red flags popping up when a random gaming site rejects any email that does not end with Outlook, yahoo, Gmail or anything like that.

The more anyone defends it and insists it's not a big deal to be asked to personally go on a discord to "show your papers", the less interested I am in using it.

Because gaming sites need more security than PayPal. Yup, that's it. Nothing red flaggy here no sir.

I can't believe this has gone on for several pages.

First and foremost, sort of obviously, Paypal has way more resources to be able to detect scammers and what not. They're also a completely different industry - You're not writing wiki pages or forum posts on Paypal.

But ultimately, like, just don't use it. You're not obliged to. If you don't like the policy, don't use the site.

I personally don't think it'll be too effective. Any spammer can spin up a gmail account in like 5 minutes. So I don't personally think it'll work too well to block anonymous email addresses. But it's their prerogative to do so in an attempt to combat spam. I imagine they're not spending too much time on moderation these days.

I'm signed up with a hotmail address on BG, but I think I got in before the spampocalyse. IIRC the early 2010s flooded the forums with spam and they had to clamp down on filters.

It is kind of funny that the only websites that will let you use disreputable email hosts are the ones that pay companies to stalk you throughout the internet so they know things like how old your email address is. Ironically, probably doing things like botting joining BBCode forums to scrape their member emails/join dates.

That's exactly what I'm (not) doing. However, don't complain when people "can't be bothered to update the wiki" when signing up is so arduous.

Further more, when someone says "you know, I'd rather not use it", maybe not then claim "I didn't want your contributions anyway!" and then call them "worse than SpicyRyan".

I don't think I've ever been called worse.

I could give some feedback but nah its fine, just go on discord and ask nicely for your email to be accepted if you really want to update a page.

Since I'm surprised how few of the people in this discussion seem to be on Dodik's side, this is me chiming in to say both that I think it's an overly onerous registration process and that I know firsthand it's turned off at least one person I know - who would not have been prolific, but it adds up!

I get that there's spam concerns, absolutely. Those concerns may or may not still be valid (likely still are! the internet's only getting worse)... but it might be worth relaxing the constraints to find out. Or trying to find more moderators? I mean, we already have Load-Bearing Funkworkz Problems because one human being has to do things like sleep.

Again, I documented proof that I was able to make a throw away email account for this one purpose and sign up to the site and make edits to the wiki in three minutes.

This process was easier and quicker than 90% of anything FFXI related.


Furthermore, I gave him the account credentials I used for this.