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Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:56 pm
by Admin
EDIT2 : If you sign up on this board under a pseudonym, please flick me a PM to introduce yourself. Thanks, Fred.

EDIT : Please see post 3!

Because it is fairly likely that anyone involved with this board will NOT be welcome on msefi.com and sister forums, and the fact that many of the users here probably own MegaSquirt hardware that they need support for including myself, I recommend that you choose a different username, and if possible use a different email account. I may be able to force email accounts to be hidden by default at which point only your username will be exposed. It's quite a shame that this is *probably* necessary, but that's just how the world is.

Once the board membership reaches record highs (in several months to a year) I doubt that this step will be necessary as sifting through all those posts to "catch" people would just take too long.

The decision is of course up to you, and I would prefer that you used the same one so I can recognise you, however I feel that it's in your best interests to choose a different one at least for the time being.

Please note that I can change yours for you for this reason after you log in if you see this afterward and agree. Such service requests should be accompanied by a link to your account on one of the aforementioned forums.

Admin.

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 7:20 pm
by Admin
Before I started publicising the site, I sent an email to around 20 core MegaSquirt people including Bruce and Al. I asked them to review the site content and suggest any changes etc
Me to them wrote:In the same vein, I sincerely hope that I was 100% wrong here :

http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=26

If indeed I am wrong, please let me know and I will quote you there
and pay you your dues.
I sent that email to around 20 MegaSquirt core developers and contributors of various types. I got a grand total of two response back from it. Neither of them were from Bruce or Al, and no one said anything about this thread. For your sake I would take that to mean that what I wrote above is a very real possibility. I find it very sad that I went to the trouble to write that email and virtually no one responded. If any of you are reading this, it was sincere and genuine, and I hope that it was received in that way.

The contents of that email are no secret (nothing much is), so if anyone wants to see it, flick me an email or pm.

Admin.

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 5:03 pm
by Admin
I am moving this post to a global announcement such that none of you are negatively affected by participating here.

It has come to my attention today that one of our members has been banned from msefi.com simply because he has membership here. Alex/ababkin/XStatic participated in no wrong doing on msefi.com whatsoever. In fact, he claims to have not posted on msefi.com in some months. Although this is somewhat expected due to Lances over zealous behaviour with the ban button, I find this totally unacceptable.

If you want your user-name changed to avoid such a situation, please pm me about that now for your own sake.

If you are particularly worried about losing your msefi account, please setup a webmail account to use for this site. I wouldn't put it past them to log on here to gain access to your email addresses.

If you run into this problem, you actually have a legal right to internet anonymity and a list of proxy servers is available at this address : http://www.proxy.org

Using a proxy you can obtain access to the support you are entitled to for the commercial product that you have purchased.

There should never be a need to use such a proxy to access this site.

My apologies to Alex for this unfortunate incident.

Admin.

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 5:42 pm
by Admin
Alex has asked me to add the following information to this thread :
The message i got is :

"Your IP: x.x.x.x was recently used to attempt to access unauthorized material on this site. As a result it has been blocked."

This is not only incorrect , but is a complete slander.

No-one tried to "access unauthorized material" from my personal IP
Thank you for your time.

Admin.

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 11:35 am
by Admin
Perhaps their message needs to change to "someone with an IP vaguely similar to yours..." ?
muythaibxr wrote:I was going to post this in your thread that you link to on your forum, but I talked to Bruce, and apparently nobody has banned Xstatic.

Unless he's trying to use it from a banned IP block, or from your computer, he should still be able to log in.

Nobody will be banned for being on both forums.
I'd like to check to ensure that Alex has access again before I retract my statements above, however this is a positive thing indeed :-)

Admin.

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 9:32 pm
by ababkin
Admin wrote:Perhaps their message needs to change to "someone with an IP vaguely similar to yours..." ?
muythaibxr wrote:I was going to post this in your thread that you link to on your forum, but I talked to Bruce, and apparently nobody has banned Xstatic.

Unless he's trying to use it from a banned IP block, or from your computer, he should still be able to log in.

Nobody will be banned for being on both forums.
I'd like to check to ensure that Alex has access again before I retract my statements above, however this is a positive thing indeed :-)

Admin.
I appreciate Ken's sound reason but it is a fact that both my home and work IPs are banned from msefi.com right now.
Moreover, my work IP was banned from msextra.com and after today afternoon, my home IP is also banned from msextra

this is what i get trying to access msextra:
"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.41 Server at msextra.com Port 80"


One word - lame! Not sure why the admins try to go out of their way to do this while I can easily access both forums through proxies. Indeed i cannot post this way, but i am sure my posting was never a real problem for them, the only reason i see for them doing it is a childish spite and of course the powertrip.
If i am right on this, this is quite sad and i hope the community will hear the truth.

Alex

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 9:42 pm
by Admin
That's funny, I get exactly the same message!

BTW, you CAN post through some of the proxies, but not all. Some support active stuff like that, and others don't.

It's interesting to note that some of the proxies are "banned" too...

Admin.

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 1:43 pm
by turbotuner
Far too much politics over the fence in MS land... not to mention a but 'cliquey'...

Looking forward to getting stuck in to some serious development for a system that betters the engines is put on, rather than the pockets of the people who press the PCBs!

Adam

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:23 pm
by GartnerProspect
:-) Lets get to it!

Re: Usernames and email addresses

Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:53 pm
by jharvey
Admin wrote:It has come to my attention today that one of our members has been banned from msefi.com simply because he has membership here.
I've experienced similar with the MS crowd, not based on user accounts, but based on supporting opensource. So I figured I'd post here. I also hope that the average user doesn't bother reading this kind of garbage. I simply post it because it appears there are other that are having similar problems with the msefi forum, and I think that small crowd will find this post handy. I don't like spending time posting on this type of content, I'd much rather be posting about my design and details about my setup. So it's not likely that I'll reply to responses to this post, unless it helps with my setup.

I currently appear to be banned from msefi with the same approach listed here by another user of this forum. I sent a PM to the forumadmin member at msefi, then shortly after that, started to get this message.

Your IP: X.X.X.X was recently used to attempt to access unauthorized material on this site. As a result it has been blocked.

Of course the X.X.X.X listed the IP of my cable modem and has been stripped from this publicly visible message.

Recently a normal MS forum user inquired about the injectors I had chosen for my small engine project. I tried to find the post(s) I had put in the msefi forum showing things about the injectors, but was not able to find them. That topic included pictures of the spray pattern, measured flow rates with the particular pump I've got, ect. I also found a reference to it from a different topic, so I knew where the topic had once been. So I inquired with forum admin to see if it had a chance of resurrection. The reply noted that admin will prune with out notice, user options are non, and that the data was gone. They recommended I contact myself to find out more about what I was looking for. I didn't like smart XXX fluff of their reply, so I sent the below.
PM from Jharvey wrote:
ForumAdminTeam wrote:Rule #1 on the forums is: "Posts, attachments, signatures, avatars, and any other content may be moved, removed, deleted, edited, or otherwise manipulated at any time, for any reason without notice.

Um rule #1 posted here http://www.megamanual.com/rules.html is "Off topic posts are not allowed." Your claim of #1 rule sets an attitude to your reply, indicating that you think I'm a dumb and or lazy user. You imply that I haven't gone through the simplest and most basic courtesies before posting. I have to admit, I had to count to 10 before replying. Not sure why the choice of attitude, or how it promotes MS.

Any how, you can't offer solutions, understood. I'll seek answers else where.


Here's the thing that biffs me about it. MSefi often puts up walls blocking information transfer. In the forum they prune content, but not fluff. When they decide your banned, they ban you from reading information, as well as posting information. Open-source is about the free exchange of information. I understand that not all information can be exchanged, but msefi blocks information that is intended to be exchanged, and they do it as a punishment. That's not very open source like. In short MSEFI currently has a thumbs down from me, Bruce and Al thumbs up. Bruce and Al participate in open-source quite nicely and exchange information that they feel can be exchanged. They have done an awesome job with MS.

Also note, that when I go to http://www.megamanual.com/rules.html I get this
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /rules.html on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

and when I go to http://www.megamanual.com/ I get this
You aren't allowed to view this page. Continued attempts to access such pages WILL result in you being denied access to all pages. x.x.x.x

I consider it unacceptable for them to sell me a product, then forbid me from accessing the manual.

Getting back to the quote from this topic, I for one will not change my account names here, or at msefi based on msefi's bannings. If msefi bannes me, that's fine. I've found more walls and obstacles there, then I've found solutions.