Oh, and a thought on detecting spiders/bots. Folks might remember that a couple years ago, we had an incident where something happened -- an out-of-control bot or something -- and we had a few hundred thousand pageviews eaten up in a day or three.
Yuku never noticed. I had to bring it to their attention and then point out strenuously that it was a freaking obvious anomaly in our usage patterns before they'd credit us back the pageviews.
I haven't seen any evidence that their system has changed in the ensuing years. And given how many boards they host, I suspect that it would be beyond their capabilities to monitor each and every board for unusual usage patterns; doing so would slow down things so far that everyday use would be impossible. And how would they differentiate between "unusual usage" and a board with a sudden gain in popularity?
And honestly, any kind of usage is money in their pockets, whether it's from ads or pageview contributions. It's not in their financial interest to analyze usage and block "improper" access -- it loses them money on both ends of the transaction. If they're monitoring traffic in any way, It's probably some DHS- or NSA-mandated content/keyword tracking.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
Yuku never noticed. I had to bring it to their attention and then point out strenuously that it was a freaking obvious anomaly in our usage patterns before they'd credit us back the pageviews.
I haven't seen any evidence that their system has changed in the ensuing years. And given how many boards they host, I suspect that it would be beyond their capabilities to monitor each and every board for unusual usage patterns; doing so would slow down things so far that everyday use would be impossible. And how would they differentiate between "unusual usage" and a board with a sudden gain in popularity?
And honestly, any kind of usage is money in their pockets, whether it's from ads or pageview contributions. It's not in their financial interest to analyze usage and block "improper" access -- it loses them money on both ends of the transaction. If they're monitoring traffic in any way, It's probably some DHS- or NSA-mandated content/keyword tracking.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.