Well. That was odd.

[aadler]

A funny thing happened today. I attempted to open one of the links at su_herald — the one that said “Is it me, or was Xander done dirty?” — and I got an ACCESS DENIED message.

The owner of this website (www.buffyforums.net) has banned the autonomous system number (ASN) your IP address is in from accessing this website.

When I used my phone, and made sure I was searching via the data plan rather than through an internet provider, the page came up okay. Does this mean I’ve been personally banned from Buffy Forums? And if that’s the case, why would that have happened?

I don’t know any way of establishing the truth, and honestly it doesn’t matter a great deal, I almost never need anything at Buffy Forums anyhow. But it does make me wonder.

Comments

[thenewbuzwuzz.livejournal.com]

"Does this mean I’ve been personally banned from Buffy Forums?"
No. The "autonomous system number" that the error message mentions isn't your specific IP address, it's more like a whole internet provider. The software that BuffyForums runs on got updated a couple of months ago, and the anti-spam measures were cranked way up -- for a while, it also blocked the Dreamwidth feature that delivers links of new BuffyForums threads to su_herald editors. It's possible the company that runs the software is trying a new-but-not-better approach to that.

"I don’t know any way of establishing the truth"
One option would be to register at BuffyForums and then post in this thread: https://www.buffyforums.net/forum/welcome-to-buffyforums/information-FAQs-and-suggestions/ask-a-question-or-make-a-suggestion/687450-forum-glitches-report-a-problem
I don't think the BuffyForums admins directly control the settings that caused your problem, but they should be able to ask the company that provides the software.

[aadler]

I appreciate your getting back to me on this. As it happens, after I made my post I did further checking, and found that by 1) turning off my VPN and 2) removing the “page 3” part of the link, I could get to the main post and go to page 3 from there. Even so, it felt good to get some feedback on an issue that probably didn’t mean much to the world at large but had some significance to me personally. Thank you.