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Bots-B-Gone .... nicely done :)!

I saw the wildly fluctuating counts (10x normal) cease and drop down to 3x ... now... poof .... gone!

Post election attacks cessation, bot boredom, or Pelicans efforts, or .... ???

Thank you :)

OTOH, does bot traffic increase search engine priority ranking?
(i.e. some sites use bot farms to increase their traffic)

After further observation I believe this to be the case here on this forum.... either externally or by tweaking on the inside....

Mebbe "they" want to have 3-4 times more "active users" ... somebody might have gotten a bonus .... who knows?

It just is :(

This is me standing next to the only "IT" I know.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1733148937.jpg

But I have been trying to get a sense of bots, etc. Is there anything of value in this link?

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-tell-if-you-re-chatting-with-a-bot-1848733021

^^^ Cousin It what a great character 👏

What an actor!

I didn't read much of the link....

The "active user" count is ALL I am observing ... it's bogus .... might be intentional ...

Someone (methinks) just did a reset .... 500 as opposed to 4K a few minutes ago.

Anytime you see this count much above 1200-1500 at peak times.... it's an indicator. It's been manipulated extremely in recent months ... breaking the site for days. Now it's being "throttled" somewhat....

I would love for a "real techie" to visit this thread...

I don't think they want to...

It's just business .... jmho.

My son manages Distrowatch. He said last month they had been inundated with a large number of robotic visits, which of course slowed access to the site for everyone else. He told me how he managed to get things under control again but it was way beyond my understanding.
I suspect Id10t could shed some light on the challenges.

Best
Les

I know "stuff" .... networking protocols, big $$$ corporate web sites, firewalls, intruder protections, and systems/network stuff ... like very few do, or have experience with .... and at all layers of it .... many hats ;)

OLD hats ..... I quit.

I would be glad to discuss this with a technical person, or even Wayne :D

I keed ... it's cold .... and I'm bored :)

Bump... I know you guys are busy ... but is Pelican manipulating this site internally (or externally) or is it an "attack" ....

It's obviously one or the other :(.

Ya broke it and then reset it .... again .... 5:15 EST.

LOL....

I've noticed that since the maintenance the other day, when clicking on 'submit reply', it doesn't show any change right away. It leads to clicking on it again and submitting two identical posts.

Not a big deal...but something changed.

Dude, you need to sleep in until after all of the bots have logged off. That's the problem. Real people aren't supposed to be up that early.

I found something interesting today - tar pits for bots. Bots go in, they get stuck looking at gibberish, and never finish.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/

This site bans several bots, but if the bots ignore the ban, then the tar pit is another option.
I wonder if the bot count would go down if they were disallowed from /off-topic-discussions?

This morning's 5:30 est reset...

Wow ... thank you :)!

KFC called it, bots DDoS PP...

Not only is he smarticles in the ways of the internets.... but he has delicious fried chicken.

Wow, I thought Pelican had problems.

Browsed over to Peach Parts to look at some Mercedes forums. Found a post with 6 replies, 5 of the 6 are bots promoting websites.

https://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/mercedes-benz-sl-discussion-forum/395654-r129-soft-top.html

LOL! What they need is to promote one of the bots to Moderator and let them battle it out!