Malf on 12/9/2025 at 09:17
Edit: NVM, reading comprehension failure on my behalf.
Kubrick on 15/9/2025 at 17:14
Quote Posted by Al_B
I've been manually turning on the block when needed rather than having it enabled at all times - trying to strike the balance between excessive traffic and adding an extra step for genuine members. This is a problem that looks to be a longer term change to the way that bots access the internet and may need to be automated.
In the meantime, if there are general problems then give me a shout by PM or the contact form - I'm still (mostly!) human and will look to sort it as soon as I can.
That explains it. I live in Argentina and I assume that makes my connection suspicious, since I have to check the box every once in a while, but if that's the price I do not mind at all, that's a million times faster than what the forums were like the past week. So yeah, if you wanted imput on how it works for someone potentialy getting a false positive, even then it's working better, so perhaps the block could remain in place in the future!
Al_B on 15/9/2025 at 20:11
Thanks, Kubrick. I suspect with the aggressive filtering enabled it's just suspicious of everyone - it does the same in the UK. I'm still going to keep an eye on it for now and turn on when necessary - it can also have a SEO impact (not necessarily the main concern) as well as being a bit annoying.
WingedKagouti on 15/9/2025 at 20:56
Just now there were 8 members and 5931 "guests" browsing the forum. I would not expect the deluge of crawlers to let up anytime soon.
Azaran on 19/9/2025 at 14:31
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
Just now there were 8 members and 5931 "guests" browsing the forum. I would not expect the deluge of crawlers to let up anytime soon.
That was the great forum fanclub convention :p
Inline Image:
https://i.postimg.cc/L6tLv096/insidepackage.pngwhitefox on 10/10/2025 at 10:20
I’ve been noticing the same thing lately — pages take forever to load, and sometimes I even get timeout errors when trying to open threads. Seems like the bots are hitting the forum hard again.
Glad to hear Al_B is aware of it and doing what can be done. Thanks for keeping things running! Hopefully the block or some automation can make it a bit smoother for everyone soon.
WingedKagouti on 10/10/2025 at 21:37
The bots are basically just waiting for whenever Cloudflare isn't active to hammer the site. A quick glance at user numbers indicates that Cloudflare filters out about 99% of all connections to the site.
It may not be optimal, but it's either Cloudflare asking for proof of us being human or having a site/forum that may not even respond.
