zaoshang

I'm posting this here in the Suggestion Box, as I couldn't find a more specific place.

For several months, I've been having problems accessing writingforums.com. First, I thought the site had died out, then other people told me they had no problem accessing it. Today I just tried coming here from an anonymous browsing site, and it worked! Which means that I am not allowed to access this site.

I don't know how you'd feel in such a situation, but I myself find it very rude and unfair. I have always been polite in my posts, which dealt mostly with criticism and writing matters. I always tried to be constructive. Then what exactly is wrong with my behaviour or my identity?

The only cause I can suspect is my IP (81.180.164.222). It seems that, for some reason unknown to me, it was listed on some black list. I know that because I was once banned from contributing to Wikipedia. But I e-mailed them back and told them there must be a mistake, and they removed the ban.

Whatever the reason of this weird ban, I find it totally rude, because there was plenty of information about me on my links, and the administrator/moderator/whatever who did it could have made a little check beforehand. I'm trying not to be sorry for having been a member of this forum and for having spread the word about it.

zaoshang/Marius

Ben

You can post things so I'm guessing that you weren't banned. Maybe your I.P. was blocked by mistake?

zaoshang

If I hide my IP (as I'm doing now), I can access the site. But otherwise, I can't.

Indeed, I am not banned as a user, but something in the information that my browser sends out to writingforums.com makes this site to refuse me access.

Ilan Bouchard

How long have you been unable to access the site?

I can almost certainly say you were not banned, or that if you were it was by mistake, unless you were caught plagiarizing or something.
Which I'm certainly not accusing you of.

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zaoshang

Hi Ilan. Well, it's been going on for several months - I'm not sure exactly. Three months at least. But it's something rather unpredictable: two or three times last month the site was accessible to me, then it vanished again. (Oh, and three days ago I received a Happy Birthday e-mail from WritingForums.com, which was kind of nice (thanks! ), but didn't explain the mystery.)

Now that would be a surprise to me! If such was the case, I'd like to know more about it.

Whatever the reason, I don't find it fair for members to be banned/blocked without prior notice.

teflon

Doesn't sound like you were banned as a member. It resembles a situation that happened when WF was hacked last year, and simiularly, when together with Lit.org it was moved to new web host. Some IP could not connect for months. It turned out to be in the hierarchical mature of the Internet domain structure, the IP numerical was last in the line. I don't think WF admin would bar a person by barring an IP. However, it could be a coincidence that your IP is from the same Ip provider that hosted the WF hacker.

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zaoshang

I hope you're right, Teflon. And I hope there's a solution, too.

Pawn

We haven't knowingly banned you. However, I recommend checking with Chrispian to make certain that he hasn't made an accidental error. Emailing your ISP to be sure that they don't have any random prejudice against the site might also be helpful.

For the record IP banning is a very rare recourse here. Had you warranted it, you would know.

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zaoshang

Thank you all guys for your kind support. I realise this all happens because of my provider. But I found a way to work around this problem. See ya!