A Completely Unrelated Series of Thoughts... Part 6

[NES_Rules]

Next person to register will be member 9000...

Bet it was a bot.

Sadly, it was. I'd say 4 out of 5 new registrations are bots. Hence, why most of my RFG time is spent battling them.

does the registration process not have a captcha?

It does, and its set to its strongest setting. We're also connected to StopForumSpam, so anyone on their list can't register. Those two things probably keep out a hundred bots every day, but a few still manage to slip through.
Just one of the costs of having such an awesome forum I guess.

So, silly question...what's a bot going to do once it's registered...tie up resources or something?  Sorry, IT ignoramus here...

if you're ever on the site really late at night you're more likely to see some of it before the mods catch it, some of it can be pretty hilarious.

Most of them actually just put a bunch of links in their profiles to whatever site they want to "promote". I don't think many actual people are clicking those links, so I'm assuming they're more for crawlers to access them so their site appears to be more popular/more connected to the rest of the web. Which just means more advertising dollars to those sites.

But its not harmless to us, we have had over 9000 registrations, but currently have only 6500 members, so if left alone, that would be 2500 profile pages that are taking up our bandwidth solely to benefit other websites.

[moonraker_fats]

Next person to register will be member 9000...

Bet it was a bot.

Sadly, it was. I'd say 4 out of 5 new registrations are bots. Hence, why most of my RFG time is spent battling them.

does the registration process not have a captcha?

It does, and its set to its strongest setting. We're also connected to StopForumSpam, so anyone on their list can't register. Those two things probably keep out a hundred bots every day, but a few still manage to slip through.
Just one of the costs of having such an awesome forum I guess.

So, silly question...what's a bot going to do once it's registered...tie up resources or something?  Sorry, IT ignoramus here...

if you're ever on the site really late at night you're more likely to see some of it before the mods catch it, some of it can be pretty hilarious.

Most of them actually just put a bunch of links in their profiles to whatever site they want to "promote". I don't think many actual people are clicking those links, so I'm assuming they're more for crawlers to access them so their site appears to be more popular/more connected to the rest of the web. Which just means more advertising dollars to those sites.

But its not harmless to us, we have had over 9000 registrations, but currently have only 6500 members, so if left alone, that would be 2500 profile pages that are taking up our bandwidth solely to benefit other websites.

Wow, anything to make a buck for some folks I guess...probably not a lot of job satisfaction with that one...

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

As someone who does a lot of ad clickwork to scrape together a few bucks, I feel like the internet advertising bubble has to pop at some point.

It's like bots on bots on bots. Then when you get to the cent per click stuff that I do it's like people on bots on bots. At some point the people paying to advertise will have to look at what they're paying for (other people paying other people to click their links) and realize that it's not actually selling any extra products.

[SirPsycho]

So this was my reaction to logging in tonight.

[Zagnorch]

As someone who does a lot of ad clickwork to scrape together a few bucks, I feel like the internet advertising bubble has to pop at some point.

It's like bots on bots on bots. Then when you get to the cent per click stuff that I do it's like people on bots on bots. At some point the people paying to advertise will have to look at what they're paying for (other people paying other people to click their links) and realize that it's not actually selling any extra products.

Uh-oh, you've discovered their terrible secret.

Hide yourself away before they make you disappear for knowing too much.

[bickman2k]

[Zagnorch]

Oh, you poor, poor man. I'm so sorry.

[techwizard]

i'm confused, what's new in that picture? there's nothing to put the sizes into perspective, i don't know if the small ones are new or the big ones

[Izret101]

I think there is a child of unknown sex joining the family.

[bickman2k]

I think there is a child of unknown sex joining the family.

You are correct, sir!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Tynstar]

Congrats lots of RFG babies in 2014!!!!

[OatBob]

Watching the Olympics. It's a shame we couldn't beat the Canadians at hockey (again).

Also, "Die, rebel scum!"

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

^ Or the Fins...

[Duke.Togo]

Major congrats bickman!

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

Harold Ramis is dead

No more Ghostbusters