People with an empty character slot have the opportunity to do the funniest thing right now.
But in all seriousness…whaaaaat. Good luck fending them off - we’re a super weird choice to bot, leave us alone!
But in all seriousness…whaaaaat. Good luck fending them off - we’re a super weird choice to bot, leave us alone!
Kim wrote:
oh. my. god.
Hours of server tuning and things were only marginally improved. Then I notice a high amount of search traffic for nonsense terms. Turn off the search function for non-member accounts, and suddenly, like 99% improvement. We were being absolutely saturated by spammers searching the site for terms like "dubai hotels" a thousand times a minute.
Hours of server tuning and things were only marginally improved. Then I notice a high amount of search traffic for nonsense terms. Turn off the search function for non-member accounts, and suddenly, like 99% improvement. We were being absolutely saturated by spammers searching the site for terms like "dubai hotels" a thousand times a minute.
Rigby wrote:
People with an empty character slot have the opportunity to do the funniest thing right now.
Be really careful with this joke everyone, the mods might end toading you as a spammer. We see enough chat GPT generated characters with links to casino sites hidden in them these days for it to be a pretty routine clean up
Kim wrote:
oh. my. god.
Hours of server tuning and things were only marginally improved. Then I notice a high amount of search traffic for nonsense terms. Turn off the search function for non-member accounts, and suddenly, like 99% improvement. We were being absolutely saturated by spammers searching the site for terms like "dubai hotels" a thousand times a minute.
Hours of server tuning and things were only marginally improved. Then I notice a high amount of search traffic for nonsense terms. Turn off the search function for non-member accounts, and suddenly, like 99% improvement. We were being absolutely saturated by spammers searching the site for terms like "dubai hotels" a thousand times a minute.
We appreciate your efforts Kim.
Damn AIBots flooding the internet and ruining it for us humans. It's happening all over. Even my go-to Tolkien information site 'Encyclopedia of Arda' and the 'Barrow Downs' forum is getting flooded with traffic. It takes a few refreshes to get past a regular 508 error on the Downs. It may also be a reason why the Black Dahlia roleplaying forum has thrown in the towel and is shutting down next month.
It's already driving me crazy! 😤
UPDATE: September 3 - still as slow as a 🐌
UPDATE: September 3 - still as slow as a 🐌
Well, it's not as bad as before, but I'm definitely still seeing periods here and there where the spam attempts spike so high the site starts to chug again. Gonna have to keep working on it.
And yeah, spam was always an issue on the internet, but in the past few months with AI it's gotten SO much harder to deal with effectively. Lag aside it is raising the workload on me and the mods dramatically.
And yeah, spam was always an issue on the internet, but in the past few months with AI it's gotten SO much harder to deal with effectively. Lag aside it is raising the workload on me and the mods dramatically.
Would it be possible to maybe make captchas or some sort of human test to try keeping the bots from making accounts?
I can't get over this spamming. But in retrospect for the old guys and gals here this takes me back to the dial up modem days which made Rp's so extra special cause gods forbid someone picked up the phone just as you sent your reply out and have to rewrite it again. Kinda nostalgic.
wow, the lag is even worse than it was before, at least for me. 35 seconds to load this page, and trying to edit character pages is sooo hard. are we still getting hit by tons of bot traffic? this must be very frustrating for the mods to deal with...
im so sorry youre having this issue, kim. the lag is strong, but we will persevere
I feel bad for my earlier joke.
I'm glad I'm not the only one having problems. I actually restarted my phone several times thinking that was the problem despite only having issues with this sight. It's so bad the sight is completely unusable for me for periods of time as long as houers while at other times it works just fine.
Thank you so much for your dedication trying to figure this out Kim!
I'm glad I'm not the only one having problems. I actually restarted my phone several times thinking that was the problem despite only having issues with this sight. It's so bad the sight is completely unusable for me for periods of time as long as houers while at other times it works just fine.
Thank you so much for your dedication trying to figure this out Kim!
For me the site has become all but unusable. If I get it to load successfully twice a day without at least ten refreshes that is an achievement. It doesn't matter what device I use it is always the same.
Mine has been extremely slow lately, and almost unusable. But it has its moments where it also works fine so I guess it depends on the day and where I'm at during the day. But I'm glad to know it's not just me.
Twelve hours ago, the site was nearly instantaneous reacting to my clicks. Now, it's taking 40 seconds per click to react (I have a rather loud ticking analog clock in my home office so I counted the ticks). It makes it a challenge to actively participate, so I'm getting to the roleplays that need replies and copying the previous reply to write offline, and then coming on to paste a post.
I'm guessing it is caused by a huge amount of server hits. I was just over on Barrow Downs . com and they have a similar issue. Their server gives a '508 resource limit' error and a refresh or three usually loads the page. They have an activity count at the bottom of their page that said there were 6565 guests and 1 registered member on the site. I'm not sure what can be done about it if the url is on a 'bot-list' going around.
Oh Geez... it is a bit like when I had a 28.8kbs long-line dial-up speed in the early years of this century. It was all the 1930's vintage telephone lines to that small mountain town could muster from my 56kbs provider twenty-six miles away. I was so happy in 2005 when cable broadband came to town.
Edit: 2.5 hours later and the site is flying fast on my iPad. Yay!
I'm guessing it is caused by a huge amount of server hits. I was just over on Barrow Downs . com and they have a similar issue. Their server gives a '508 resource limit' error and a refresh or three usually loads the page. They have an activity count at the bottom of their page that said there were 6565 guests and 1 registered member on the site. I'm not sure what can be done about it if the url is on a 'bot-list' going around.
Lanx12 wrote:
I can't get over this spamming. But in retrospect for the old guys and gals here this takes me back to the dial up modem days which made Rp's so extra special cause gods forbid someone picked up the phone just as you sent your reply out and have to rewrite it again. Kinda nostalgic.
Oh Geez... it is a bit like when I had a 28.8kbs long-line dial-up speed in the early years of this century. It was all the 1930's vintage telephone lines to that small mountain town could muster from my 56kbs provider twenty-six miles away. I was so happy in 2005 when cable broadband came to town.
Edit: 2.5 hours later and the site is flying fast on my iPad. Yay!
Maybe they're trying to seek revenge for this year's Epic Week.
These are the moments when I realize how dependent I am on this site for my daily dopamine hits. I feel like a junkie going through withdrawal 😂😭 For me the past 2 days have been excruciatingly slow, slower than before, so I'm guessing the bots are at it again and even fiercer this time around 😢
It's the brutal cycle of spamming technology. Right now, this is new so there aren't any good methods to spot it. Eventually someone will figure out a good countermeasure, then the botters will start trying to figure out a way around the measure.
Would it be possible to limit how much a IP Address can search per minute? Like say 5 per minute? Since I presume the lag comes from them spamming the term thousands of times per minutes so if they can only do 5 instead of thousands, then that should massively help without offering much hinderance to actual members.
Would it be possible to limit how much a IP Address can search per minute? Like say 5 per minute? Since I presume the lag comes from them spamming the term thousands of times per minutes so if they can only do 5 instead of thousands, then that should massively help without offering much hinderance to actual members.
From the sound of things, it's not just the search that's an issue anymore, but that does make me wondering if the bots managing to set up accounts are also spamming the search. As much as the server keeps getting overwhelmed, for it to just be registrations or even registrations and posts and character creations and uploads and whatnot on those bot profiles seems like it'd be really obvious in the database and in massively overwhelm any ability the mods could have to keep up. While RPR is usually a fairly chill site, it definitely does have periods of very heightened activity, like during Epic Week; and while sometimes a little lag shows up with that, I can't remember it being anything as severe as it's been lately.
Of course, if it's mostly just bots crawling through pages at this point, I'm not sure what there could be to do about that without just massively restricting non-member ability to view just about anything. I assume RPR has had the little file that tells bots what they can and can't do here, but it's been widely noted more and more bots have been just totally ignoring that over the years.
Of course, if it's mostly just bots crawling through pages at this point, I'm not sure what there could be to do about that without just massively restricting non-member ability to view just about anything. I assume RPR has had the little file that tells bots what they can and can't do here, but it's been widely noted more and more bots have been just totally ignoring that over the years.
Zelphyr wrote:
From the sound of things, it's not just the search that's an issue anymore, but that does make me wondering if the bots managing to set up accounts are also spamming the search. As much as the server keeps getting overwhelmed, for it to just be registrations or even registrations and posts and character creations and uploads and whatnot on those bot profiles seems like it'd be really obvious in the database and in massively overwhelm any ability the mods could have to keep up. While RPR is usually a fairly chill site, it definitely does have periods of very heightened activity, like during Epic Week; and while sometimes a little lag shows up with that, I can't remember it being anything as severe as it's been lately.
Of course, if it's mostly just bots crawling through pages at this point, I'm not sure what there could be to do about that without just massively restricting non-member ability to view just about anything. I assume RPR has had the little file that tells bots what they can and can't do here, but it's been widely noted more and more bots have been just totally ignoring that over the years.
Of course, if it's mostly just bots crawling through pages at this point, I'm not sure what there could be to do about that without just massively restricting non-member ability to view just about anything. I assume RPR has had the little file that tells bots what they can and can't do here, but it's been widely noted more and more bots have been just totally ignoring that over the years.
Hmm… my method of troubleshooting this would be to shut down search completely and see what the result is. It would be inconvenient for members for that time, but if speeds ramp up, then it would indicate that spambots had appeared Human enough to get set up here. To do anything else on the site they would likely appear making characters and posts on forum threads, guestbooks, DMs, etc. One of my guesses is they are scraping to populate AI databases.
I have to admit being wary of many of the names that appear on the ‘Our most recent member is ‘whatever name’. Give them a warm welcome!’ feature at the bottom of the community page, especially when they are similar or the same as some I see actively spamming on other sites I visit. You hardly ever see them make introductions or ever appear being active. Even some of the introductions seem a bit AI-ish to me and are thrown up as ‘cover’, but that is just the ‘Suspicious Steve’ character in me observing things.
I will say that right now, the lag for me is minimal in a variable 2-8 second range which is acceptable. I know the server lags some when Kim is working it behind the curtain, and we all have her back with this and aren’t just a bunch of whingers.
Like Min-ya says; we don’t notice how much this place has come to mean to us while things are working smoothly, and come to appreciate all the efforts when things slow down. It could be worse… like a complete server crash.