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Comment by Jem | Hacker News Reader

Right, because insinuating anyone who uses mibbit is incapable of installing an IRC client is not a sniping remark?

I have no problem with basic aptitude tests. I have no problem with restricting a community to the technically literate. What I have a problem with is the assumption that anyone choosing to use X over Y is some kind of moron.

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Right, because insinuating anyone who uses mibbit is incapable of installing an IRC client is not a sniping remark?

No, simply that as an initial barrier to entry for a technical community, "browsing to a web page" isn't very difficult and serves poorly as a first-pass filter.

You should block email from webmail clients. I hear they're very easy to use.

webmail clients are only blocked 'due to abuse' because it's easy to make bots to register fake email addresses. But even that is not fool-proof. I remember that back when AOL on dial-up was my internet connection, the 'master' account could create multiple 'child' accounts. So even the ISP in that case could allow you to create a 'fake' email for the purpose of registration.

They're also blocked because of a high number of users (proportional to other e-mail services) registering accounts to troll anonymously.

Quite a few registration forms do block webmail addresses for reasons of abuse.

Registration forms that were built in the 90s, agreed.

No, I regularly find modern registration forms that won't accept mailinator or even hotmail addresses (and your service is probably more akin to mailinator than hotmail).

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