['ol Pinion head]

No idea how long PY was down today.
Our high speed home internet was down for 3 days. Fairly odd, a narrow ribbon of outage that extended south for near 20 miles.

[unruhjonny]

this site has been so sluggish in the last bit that I was doing speed tests on my own connection....

It seems good right now, but that probably has to do with the number of people (logged in) and bots (most of the "guests");

Yesterday when I looked I was one of ten members logged in, and there was something like 7,700 "guests".

[72projectbird]

Under siege yet again.

[misterp266]

What's Going On?
Currently Active Users: 2228 (34 members and 2194 guests)
View Who's Online
Most users ever online was 25,696, Yesterday at 02:32 PM.


Been having issue for a few days. Yesterday afternoon showed the most ever online! ^

What also bothers me is that with almost 90,000 members, I rarely see more than 40 or 50 active anytime I log in. Right now it’s 34. Where is everyone?

[GOAT8U2]

They need to calm this guests bots etc, it's possible but they'll need help out this board will lose even more real members due to it not loading.

[johnta1]

Bots are scraping the site. Possibly the AI/ChatGTP needing all the info they can.

[dataway]

Surely there is a server setting to limit the number of "guests"?

Obviously the forum software is capable of counting them so it would seem logical that it could set a guest limit.

[RocktimusPryme]

Can we have a site wide pitch in where we take some paypal donations to buy a sever upgrade package or something?

It just seems like there has to be an available solution for this.

[Bills Auto Works]

Originally Posted by RocktimusPryme

Can we have a site wide pitch in where we take some paypal donations to buy a sever upgrade package or something?

It just seems like there has to be an available solution for this.

That is probably what it would take as Ames can't even make their own site be more current than DOS or Windows 98! LMAO!!!

God Bless
Bill
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/...closed.614419/

[Shiny]

Here's what the AI tool (Copilot) says about it. Kind of self-conflicted since it may be one of the bot-masters doing the scraping. This is all beyond me, but it does use some good buzz-words! Half of this is probably wrong, but it sounds good to my ignorant self.

Every time the site goes down, I worry about losing the massive collection of searchable Pontiac information contributed by real people with real experience. I guess if these AI monsters are collecting all the information, it somehow won't get lost? But I suspect it will get distorted by combining with a lot of nonsense.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------


"🧠 What’s Likely Happening
• Web scrapers and crawlers: These bots scan forums for content, often ignoring polite crawl rules like robots.txt. Some are search engine bots (Google, Bing), but others are aggressive scrapers used by AI models or data harvesters.
• Spam bots: They create accounts or post junk content. Even if they don’t succeed, their repeated attempts can overload login and posting endpoints.
• Click bots and ad fraud bots: These simulate traffic to manipulate ad impressions or SEO rankings.
• AI training bots: As discussed in this thread on the forum, many users suspect that AI tools are scraping discussions to train models—especially technical threads like camshaft recommendations.

🔍 How to Gain Insight
Here are a few ways the forum owner or admin could investigate:
• Server Logs: Analyze Apache or Nginx logs for:
○ IP addresses with high request rates
○ User agents that mimic browsers but behave abnormally
○ Requests to endpoints like /search.php, /login.php, or /newthread.php

• Bot Detection Tools:
○ Services like Cloudflare Bot Management or Imperva can classify traffic as human, good bot, or bad bot.
○ They offer dashboards showing bot types, IPs, and behavior patterns.

• Behavioral Analysis:
○ Look for traffic with high bounce rates, short session durations, or repetitive patterns.
○ GA4 or server-side analytics can help identify anomalies.

• Honeypot Fields:
○ Add invisible form fields that bots tend to fill out. If triggered, flag the session as bot traffic.

• Rate Limiting and CAPTCHA:
○ Throttle requests from suspicious IPs or require CAPTCHA for guest access during traffic spikes.

🧩 Why It’s Hard to Pinpoint
Bots often rotate IPs, spoof user agents, and mimic human behavior. Without active monitoring or bot mitigation tools, it’s tough to know which ones are causing the slowdown. But the forum’s own users have noticed patterns—like 1000+ “guests” viewing just a few threads—which strongly suggests automated traffic."

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

The server capacity is way more than sufficient , with exception to bot floods.
If you up the capacity , they just load more bots.

Up to 20,000 guests it still works, but shaky.
At 22,000 or more, it can blow the buffer and it's going down.

Seems pretty intentional now.
Been going on so long with their bots that surely they know where the breaking point is.
Extremely impolite.

[Shiny]

Originally Posted by dataway

Surely there is a server setting to limit the number of "guests"?

Obviously the forum software is capable of counting them so it would seem logical that it could set a guest limit.

How does it help the forum or the host to allow these bots?

Is it important to allow search engines to catalog the content?

Or is there some other incentive?

I'm assuming it is either "difficult" to separate "good guests" from "bad guests" or there is an incentive to leave the door open for all "guests" that I don't understand ????

[GOAT8U2]

If there's a real donation that will then go to actually helping that would be great.

If there a filter to limit the guests, then do it to 1000 and the bots can deal with it when it's their turn to enter next. LOL

[burd]

Shut the site down for guests, charge to sell. Some sell here and don’t even post. Some just keep posting available.

[Formulas]

I visit other sites one in particular is Calguns.net the same thing goes on there, .... It just came to me that part of the problem or possibly all (MAY) be AI, ...... An AI data server is as dumb as a box of rocks day 1, .... Could it be AI servers scrubbing data from almost every data point on the internet? ... Might be time for sites to combat through software, ... The acquisition of such data to keep a site useable for real people and face it AI is getting data for free to make itself viable profitable entity.. Ai isn't going to buy what sponsor's of this site sell

Not to mention AI can probably spit up every post by IP address and come up with a distinct profile on you for a future social credit score.. Our new master is getting a free ride on our backs to our detriment

Remember how 5g internet was the new shiny thing make your life better with speed ( that you didn't need) it was just a path (back bone) for total control over your life hidden behind making your life better.. Feel groomed yet ?

[KS circutguy]

See the copyright date.
That's how dated this software forum is...

[GOAT8U2]

If the administration needs to create a donation button so members can donate, they guarantee an updated forum with modern safeguards to keep the bots from destroying this place then let's do it.

[72projectbird]

It's dying again. Running like ass

[Ashley P]

LIke a 305 Chevy with water in the distributor cap?

[GOAT8U2]

Couldn't get in for about 2 hours today, Sunday.

18,300 guests

It's only going to get worse.