Board errors

[malloc]

zompist, could you add one of those "are you a human" tests to the board to block whatever AI(s) someone is seemingly using the Zeeb to train with?

Seconded. You don't need to convince me about the importance of resisting AI encroachment on language construction.

[Ketsuban]

CAPTCHAs don't really help. You're better off blocking all the cloud services scrapers use. (X runs the video game cut content wiki TCRF, which has been the target of DDoS attempts in addition to the externalised costs of AI scrapers.)

[zompist]

CAPTCHAs don't really help. You're better off blocking all the cloud services scrapers use. (X runs the video game cut content wiki TCRF, which has been the target of DDoS attempts in addition to the externalised costs of AI scrapers.)

Unfortunately I don't know how to do that on a phpBB board.

[rotting bones]

This could be LLMs casually browsing the internet or Palantir building our profiles.

[malloc]

This could be LLMs casually browsing the internet or Palantir building our profiles.

Grr, grr I tell you. Regardless of the cause, we really must do something. The forum is rapidly becoming unusable.

[bradrn]

CAPTCHAs don't really help. You're better off blocking all the cloud services scrapers use. (X runs the video game cut content wiki TCRF, which has been the target of DDoS attempts in addition to the externalised costs of AI scrapers.)

Unfortunately I don't know how to do that on a phpBB board.

I believe it would have to be done at the host level. Maybe contact Dreamhost?

Alternately, someone elsewhere recently recommended Cloudflare Tunnel to me for this purpose. Apparently it’s free, though I haven’t looked into it properly yet.

[Travis B.]

I've heard good things about Cloudflare for this kind of thing myself.

[Halian]

I would prefer to see pruning abolished.

[Travis B.]

I would prefer to see pruning abolished.

Pruning wouldn't do anything about the bot problem.

[Man in Space]

The board has been logging me out a lot lately, even when I have “Remember Me” selected.

[lurker]

For what it's worth, I would look at where these performance issues are coming from. Problems relating to a bloated database would look different to problems created by excessive traffic.

It's sad that small sites like this are buckling under bot traffic, making it hard for players without the budget for load balancing or DDoS protection to get a foothold on the net.

[Raphael]

It's sad that small sites like this are buckling under bot traffic, making it hard for players without the budget for load balancing or DDoS protection to get a foothold on the net.

+1

[Travis B.]

For what it's worth, I would look at where these performance issues are coming from. Problems relating to a bloated database would look different to problems created by excessive traffic.

It's sad that small sites like this are buckling under bot traffic, making it hard for players without the budget for load balancing or DDoS protection to get a foothold on the net.

One thing to note is that the recent error messages have had a consistent theme of too many requests and there have been excessive numbers of guests reported by the Zeeb, clearly indicating that bot activity is the problem.

[Man in Space]

One thing to note is that the recent error messages have had a consistent theme of too many requests and there have been excessive numbers of guests reported by the Zeeb, clearly indicating that bot activity is the problem.

Plus frequent logouts.

[Richard W]

zompist, could you add one of those "are you a human" tests to the board to block whatever AI(s) someone is seemingly using the Zeeb to train with?

Specist!

[Travis B.]

zompist, could you add one of those "are you a human" tests to the board to block whatever AI(s) someone is seemingly using the Zeeb to train with?

Specist!

When dolphins or ravens or bonobos can use web browsers that pass Cloudflare's are-you-not-a-bot test they can use the Zeeb too.

[linguistcat]

zompist, could you add one of those "are you a human" tests to the board to block whatever AI(s) someone is seemingly using the Zeeb to train with?

Specist!

When dolphins or ravens or bonobos can use web browsers that pass Cloudflare's are-you-not-a-bot test they can use the Zeeb too.

Somehow this gave me the mental image of a real AI training a chimp to hit the little boxes for it to join the ZBB.

[malloc]

One thing to note is that the recent error messages have had a consistent theme of too many requests and there have been excessive numbers of guests reported by the Zeeb, clearly indicating that bot activity is the problem.

Petty as it may sound, this only redoubles my hatred of AI.

[WeepingElf]

One thing to note is that the recent error messages have had a consistent theme of too many requests and there have been excessive numbers of guests reported by the Zeeb, clearly indicating that bot activity is the problem.

Petty as it may sound, this only redoubles my hatred of AI.

It's not as if I wasn't worried about AI at all, but there are things I am more worried about, such as the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity, war and authoritarianism. But this thread is not the place for discussing those issues.

[WeepingElf]

I am not an expert on these matters, but maybe it helps if the content of the ZBB is made invisible to visitors who aren't logged in. This is AFAIK a functionality phpBB offers, and only a minor nuisance compared to frequent "Too Many Requests" errors.