Categories
amusing Web 0.1

Wikia.com’s Uberfuzzy: you idiot

I just tried to create a free wiki on Wikia, to help the developer commuity with Entity Systems. This has no benefit to me, it’s purely for other people. I figured a system like Wikia would welcome such a wiki.

Wikia hasn’t yet implemented any of the common username systems, and won’t let you look at the Wiki to see if it supports the features you need … until AFTER you’ve given them your email address.

So I chose a username containing the text “get open ID”, as a quiet form of protest.

Oh. Crap. Wikia has now enacted a permanent block (their wording) – I cannot create any wikis, I cannot signup under a different username, I’m just blocked.

Wikia has a special page to tell me the name of the person who did this:

http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User:Uberfuzzy

Wikia then tells me to “contact them”.

Only … that person:

“has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users.”

Oh. The only way you’re allowed to contact them … is by creating an account. But Uberfuzzy has banned me from creating accounts.

Indeed, if you click the link to contact Uberfuzzy within the system, you get the text:

You do not have permission to [contact Uberfuzzy]…
…The block was made by Uberfuzzy…
…You can contact Uberfuzzy or another Administrator to discuss the block.

Sometimes the ability of otherwise intelligent people to be so incredibly stupid makes me want to weep :).

4 replies on “Wikia.com’s Uberfuzzy: you idiot”

Hi there! I’m a regular reader of this blog and I a developer at Wikia, so I was very amused to see this pop up in my RSS reader this afternoon. Uber is on vacation this week, I’m pretty sure that was an automated anti-spam mechanism of some kind. We’ve got a lot of those. Let me know if I can help…

Ouch… it looks like Uber turned off his email while he’s on vacation, forgetting that blocked users would still see that message. Sorry about that.

I can’t see what block would have affected you, can you mail me the full details, including the block ID please?

Thanks,

Sannse Carter
Wikia Community Support

Thanks, guys, for the response.

With the site locking me out, I gave up and went with Wikidot instead.

I understand what a huge pain spam / spammer are, but I suggest you re-think how you handle the new-user-account screens. What works for blocking registered users from making NEW comments/pages/etc appears to be a poor fit for account-creation :)

Comments are closed.