Thanks for reducing some of the excessive 'bot activity

[sozzled]

I don't know what has changed (or if anyone on the forum management team has instituted any change) or why (and I don't need to know if changes have been made or why) but there's been a marked improvement in the excess "page view" counts seen on new topics created on this forum in the past week or two.

In the past, where a new topic was created, regardless of the number of replies made, the page view counts soared into the tens and hundreds of thousands within a matter of a few days. Not so today.

I've been aware of difficulties with the forum, especially in the past two weeks, resulting in HTTP 503 Service Unavailable errors. While these things occur from time to time, there's been a reduction in their incidence.

So, for whatever reason has resulted in the reduction of "service unavailable" issues, there seems to have been a corresponding/(?)co-incidental reduction in topic "page view" counts. This is good as the "page view" counts are now a better representation of how many human agents are hitting the forum instead of (as I can only guess) the number of 'bot agents targeting the forum.

Good work. Thanks. Cheers.

[sozzled]

I don't know what has changed (or if anyone on the forum management team has instituted any change) or why (and I don't need to know if changes have been made or why) but there's been a marked improvement in the excess "page view" counts seen on new topics created on this forum in the past week or two.

Looks like this was a thing of the past with new topics attracting several thousand hits within an hour after they were created or updated.

[sozzled]

Pleasantly pleased to see that, after a couple of months' return to humongous 'bot "page view" counts, we've returned to normality. We may never know what was changed but thanks anyway.

[sozzled]

... and now, in the past 24 hours, the 'bot activity (as seen my recent "page view" counts) has returned to its previously high levels again.

[sozzled]

It's reasssuring to see the 'bot activity (that is responsible for the excessively/unbelievably high "view counts") has returned to the usual low level of background noise. When the background noise becomes a deafening roar (i.e. the view counts rise by thousands in a matter of moments), it may suggest that the forum site is heading for problems, viz. a DoS attack is underway and could result in the forum crashing because of it.

Thanks.