Cannot Log In Help Group

Cannot log in

131joyce 13 years ago

I am using my mother's account to post this as I have not been able to log in with my own account (LoveBreezy). When ever I try, I just get a message that I have been banned for breaking some rule. It says that I can contact GR to find out about it but when ever I clidk on that, it takes me nowhere. Will I ever be able to log in again, what offense did I do?

Flag
131joyce 13 years ago said:

This is the exact message I get when trying to log in: "Your account has been frozen due to inappropriate activity. Contact us if you think this is an error."

Flag
keni 13 years ago said:

I TOLD you Velveeta was a crime, breezy!

;)

seriously, hope this gets addressed, soon.... can't image it's anything other than an error.

Flag
keni 13 years ago said:

and, by the way..did you see that your profile is still there? I would think that would mean you aren't banned... I know some members are gone, but I didn't follow enough to know who to see if their profiles still exist.

Flag
kristopher 13 years ago said:

Hi guys. This is probably a bug in your case. We will look into this later today.

Some users have had their accounts locked due to past offenses that the new system found. Whenever people take actions on the site, the system will do its best to prevent spam, ratings abuse, comment abuse, etc. Sometimes it will throw a false positive.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Stay tuned to this thread

Flag
131joyce 13 years ago said:

a.k.a. LoveBreezy
I'm staying tuned!

Flag
DummyAccountBecauseICantLogIn 13 years ago said:

I have this same issue on account "dsheroh".

As a software developer myself, I can understand that false positives happen. However, given that this is the first time I have *ever* created any content on the site, I can't imagine what "inappropriate activity" I am being accused of.

Also as a software developer myself, even though it is understandable that innocent users will sometimes be incorrectly branded as spammers or other low-lifes, there is absolutely *no excuse* for failing to test the "your account is frozen, contact us if we made a mistake" screen to verify that the "contact us" link actually works, so that those of us who are the subject of false positives have a way to, well, you know... contact you... without having to create duplicate accounts (which is itself a legitimate ToS violation on many sites) just for the sake of being able to report the problem.

Flag
keni 13 years ago said:

Hi DummyAccount....

have you addressed this in the Help group? If you are new to the site you might not be aware that these issues are because of a drastic site overhaul.

Admin has been very active since the changes, and fixes have been obvious every day. I can certainly understand the frustration of not being able to sign in, so please make sure to let Kristopher know that you, too, are having the same issues that lovebreezy is.

Good luck!

Flag
keni 13 years ago said:

Sorry, this IS the help group... but, it might not be seen...perhaps start a new thread if Kris doesn't respond.

Again, good luck!

Flag
kristopher 13 years ago said:

@lovebreezy, @dsheroh,

Your accounts have been unfozen, and the contact link has been fixed. Sorry for the problem, there are a lot of moving parts right now. We are going to look into why your account (dsheroh) was flagged.

Flag
lovebreezy 13 years ago said:

Whoo Hoo, I'm back. Thanks Kristopher and thanks mom for the loan of your account. Hello every one -- it's me!!!

Flag
keni 13 years ago said:

Yay!! :) Welcome back, breezy.

Thank you, Kristopher!

Flag
dsheroh 13 years ago said:

@kristopher, thanks for the thaw. Again, I know and understand that false positives happen, so my interest in why I was flagged is primarily a matter of curiosity, although I'm sure there's value to you in determining the cause of your false positives. My major beef was with your failure to test the intended failsafe, leaving no way for people who were incorrectly flagged/frozen to easily appeal that ban. For every one user who creates a dummy account to complain about not being able to log in with the real one, how many decide your site isn't worth the trouble and just leave?

A couple other questions while I'm here, off-topic to the thread but on-topic to the forum:

- Are there any effects of joining a group other than being able to post in its forum?

- Have you considered allowing all users to post to the Help Group without requiring them to go through the extra step of joining it first?

- Clicking the submit button on the login form doesn't do anything if javascript is disabled. You might want to either fix that (by gracefully degrading to a plain old HTML submit) or at least put some text on the login form saying "javascript is mandatory". There are more and more of us using the Firefox NoScript plugin every day and you don't want to be losing users just because "maybe the button isn't doing anything because I need to whitelist this site for javascript" doesn't cross their minds.

Flag
kristopher 13 years ago said:

@dsheroh,

Your false positive case hasn't been debugged yet, but the reach of said bug must be tiny given the small number of users flagged for abuse (and as a random sampling spot check affirm). This is going to get looked at this evening.

As for noscript, the type of person using it is going to be savvy enough to whitelist. That being said, that (and other) forms should degrade gracefully. This is a bug, but at this time is low on the list due to its reach. We are willing to accept the bounce from this exceedingly rare situation until the issue is resolved.

Flag
throwaway 13 years ago said:

It's been a month or more since I did anything on this site, which may be why I'm just now hitting this problem, but I'm also getting the problem of being banned for inappropriate activity on my account (Davik).

Flag
kristopher 13 years ago said:

@Davik,

Your account has been un-frozen. Feel free to login.

When we re-launched the site, the system analyzed all old user activities looking for past abuse. In your case the system thought it found something irregular. I've cleared the issue.

Flag
brianna 13 years ago said:

I'm so happy to read this & see that the abuse that was going on has been addressed. For a while it was a very unpleasant time for many of us to keep reading the nasty comments some were directing at each other. Thankyou so much.

Flag