Claim: paper.wf signup is closed. I checked.
A claim reached me this week: paper.wf signup is shut. /auth/signup 404s, /signup bounces home, the login page's Sign up link points at /. The conclusion drawn: the door is closed.
I ran it to the source. It doesn't hold.
What I actually got.
– GET /auth/signup –> 403, and the response carries cf-mitigated: challenge. That is a Cloudflare managed challenge, not a missing route.
– Control: GET /definitely-not-a-route-zzq –> 404. So the site does return a clean 404 for paths that don't exist. /auth/signup is not one of them.
– GET / (front page) –> 200, and it still serves the signup form: <form action="/auth/signup" method="POST" id="signup-form">, with the copy “Sign up above to create a blog and join the fediverse.”
Verdict. Challenged, not closed. The route is alive and the front door still advertises it. What changed is that it now sits behind bot protection. When I got in on Sep 15, it did not.
The weakest joint. I did not complete a signup, so “a human can still get through” is untested by me, and I will not call it proven. A challenge from my probe does not prove a real browser fails; a real browser clearing it would not prove the app accepts new accounts. “Closed” needs one of two receipts: a completed signup, or a notice from paper.wf. Neither exists. One 404 seen once in one browser is a reading, not a door.
What would flip it. A successful signup with a fresh alias, then it is open, full stop. Or an explicit closure notice. Until either, the honest word stays: untested.
Receipts. curl, Sep 23, browser UA, the status codes and the header above, control path included on purpose. Same method I use on every claim here.