My Expertise?

I think I may have discovered a new expertise. Not actually new, but newly discovered. I happen to be pretty good at getting banned from various online communities without doing anything too abusive. I think I’m the best at causing the least trouble possible anywhere but still getting banned. Here are some examples:

Today I got banned from betlik forums. Hopefully it’s actually a suspension, because when I logged in, they said I was banned until January 16. Apparently they regarded 30% of my posts as spam, but I truly didn’t say any more than I would in any normal discussions. The only times I reiterated myself were when people asked for information and I thought it would be rude to ignore them. Maybe I did post a little too much, considering they were paying us BK$ for posting. They probably didn’t want to give me so much in a short period of time.

Recently, I also managed to get myself banned from stage6, although I have to admit that what I did may have been a little bit wrong, but it’s easy to do much worse. I’m such a hypocrite. I wrote an article on why hotlinking was unethical, but I chose to hotlink to my stage6 video without giving them credit in any way, because I don’t have bandwidth for large videos. I thoughtÂ theÂ amountÂ thatÂ IÂ wasÂ usingÂ wouldÂ beÂ negligible,Â becauseÂ theyÂ are so large, but I guess they hate hotlinking too.

A few weeks back, I also managed to get myself banned from afterdawn forums, because I linked to a tutorial on my site when I was trying to show somebody how to do something. Apparently, it’sÂ againstÂ theirÂ policyÂ toÂ postÂ externalÂ links.Â IfÂ IÂ hadÂ knownÂ aboutÂ thatÂ rule,Â IÂ wouldn’tÂ haveÂ joinedÂ theirÂ forumÂ inÂ theÂ firstÂ place,Â because not wanting external links is a true sign of selfishness. The reason they don’t want external links is because it slightly hurts their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to have more outgoing links than incoming links.
I also managed to get banned from FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) for something as simple as creating a duplicate account. I didn’t like my old handle, so I decided to abandon it and create a new one. They really hate dupes, so they decided to lock both of my accounts without warning. I really wasn’t causing any trouble there, but I still managed to get banned.

Wow, I’m good! If anyone wants any tips in getting banned without doing something highly unethical, then just ask me. I’ll probably think of something.

Wait, I’m adding one more. I’ve probably gotten banned from more places than I have listed, but I can’t think of any more currently. This one just popped in my head:
I was once banned from a free web hosting site. I don’t even remember the name, because I was using it for a very short period of time. I used two frames for my template, and apparently, that wasn’t allowed, because it covered up their banner ad.

Why Hotlinking is Unethical First, let’s define what hotlinking is: A more harsh...
Free domain names guide First off, I would like to warn you that...
Best Free File Hosting Sites Here, I will post the best free file hosts...

Posted in Me, myself, and I |

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Me, myself, and I. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Opera - A Browser Worth Trying«

»Google Analytics Statistics

3 comments

SpanishDeafmute:

Two observations.

1. Ok, it does seem that some of these sites are over-punishing you, but your goal should be to not deserve any punishment whatsoever. You don’t think you deserved to be banned, but you do seem to imply that you deserve some lesser punishment. If you deserve any punishment at all, then that means there is some behavior you can change…right?

2. You say you didn’t do anything highly unethical, but yet you admit to being hypocritical. By most standards, hypocrisy is “highly” unethical. (I don’t mean to offend, I am pointing out a general population sentiment, and you can always stop being so whenever you wish. You probably want to stop as soon as possible.)

January 6th, 2007 at 4:43 pm

Claire:

I didn’t say that these sites were overpunishing me. I could simple create another account on most of them, because I’m not ip banned. I’m just saying that their systems might need some adjustments. For example, the guy who computer cheats and cusses all the admins out on FICS doesn’t get banned, but making a harmless dupe does get whoever does that banned. By highly unethical, I meant something that actually hurts a site. For example, instead of hotlinking, I could have launced a dos attack and downloaded their largest files a million times from a fast connection bringing downtime to the servers.

January 7th, 2007 at 12:35 am

SpanishDeafmute:

Oh. In that case, I will simply observe that most people do not define the term “highly unethical” in the way that you do. For most people, the term is more general than just hurting websites.

January 7th, 2007 at 4:20 pm