Wikidot account creator incorrectly rejects some valid email addresses.
Some people try to create an account, but after they hit the "Create account" button and fill out the form, the Wikidot server keeps telling them to "Please provide a valid email address."
I suspect that the Wikidot server is currently using a slightly buggy validator, which rejects some perfectly valid email addresses. Please replace that validator with one that accepts valid email addresses.
The email validation "best practices" has a short list of valid and invalid email addresses that can be used for testing.
There's not much point raising the bug if you don't give some examples of valid email addresses which are being rejected.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
Right, please provide examples of emails that do not pass the validation, but should. Otherwise we will have to cancel this bug report. But if there is indeed something wrong with the validation we are doing, we would be happy to fix it. Thanks!
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
I'm going to go through the list of valid and invalid email addresses he provided in the link, and post back here if there are any problems.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Taken from the link that DavidCary posted: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/JavaScript/Best_Practices#Examples_valid_according_to_RFC2822
Examples valid according to RFC2822
Apparently, these should be accepted as valid, but Wikidot says that they are invalid.
All email addresses here were marked as being invalid by Wikidot… which was the correct result.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Although those emails are valid according to RFC2822, they are not commonly used. AFAIK they are not used for everyday (human) email exchange at all.
Please, if you can see any reason in allowing such email addresses, please let me know.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
I think we can safely reject this bug.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
Well, it is a bug. But I agree, it isn't necessarily one that needs to be fixed asap because those email addresses would probably never be used.
Unless there's more common style email addresses that are being blocked, which DavidCary seems to be implying in his bug report.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
OK, but I still do not know what class of popular email addresses we are ignoring. Without knowing it, it is difficult to go forward, especially that we had no other reports on this issue for the last few years.
So any hint is priceless, but please do not ask us to implement full RFC2822 spec.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
I'm not, I fully understand where you are coming from.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Perhaps you have "no other reports" on this issue because the people who are affected by this bug are not allowed to report bugs. "only registered users are allowed to report bugs", and the Wikidot account creator does not allow the people affected by this bug to become registered users.
As you can see at the top of my resume, my current preferred email address begins with "d.cary+2004" and ends with "@ieee.org".
Today I did a test, and I see that the Wikidot account creator still rejects my email address, saying "Please provide a valid email address.".
People with "ieee.org" addresses are arguably not "everyday (human)"s,
but I like to think they all make positive contributions.
Would you consider using an email address validator that has already been written and tested — such as the one of the many listed at http://www.pgregg.com/projects/php/code/showvalidemail.php or http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=email+validation — rather than writing your own email address validator?
Why not log all failed attempts and review that log from time to time? Or provide a way for users who cannot register (and like David says below, they by definition cannot complain) to contact Wikidot to report the problem.
Portfolio
@David
Ideed, you nailed a bug with your email. We do accept "+" in emails and ".", because they are commonly used, but for some reason our validator does not accept emails that them both. This sucks and we should fix it asap.
Thanks for the real-world case.
BTW: we did not write our own email validator, we started with one from an open-source project that seemed a good fit at the time, but we had to improve it over time significantly. It looks like it is still missing a few things.
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me
The email address validation is almost 100% RFC 3696 compatible. I hope it wont break anything.
Bartłomiej Bąkowski @ Wikidot Inc.
';.;' TeRq (Write PM)