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Captchas, Captchas and more Captchas


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I am getting inundated by Captchas this morning. Every time I hit the home tag, I have another Captcha. If I open another window to the site, captcha.

 

It's not the annoying ones where I have to put letters in that I can't read; it's only the one that says, "I'm not a robot." But I've had to go through 5 of them this morning.

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I've taken to randomly updating trophy lists: I RNG a page number of the 64,000 on the site, and go down the list updating. I'll allow for 2 minutes of judging-me time...

 

1...

 

2...

 

Ok, we're back. After a few, I start getting the "click to prove you're not a robot" box, then the Captcha, and finally the multiple Captcha with sloooowly revolving pictures. I'm just trying to keep the site more statistically accurate! Is there a way to get an ISP exemption or something?

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18 hours ago, visighost said:

I've taken to randomly updating trophy lists: I RNG a page number of the 64,000 on the site, and go down the list updating. I'll allow for 2 minutes of judging-me time...

 

1...

 

2...

 

Ok, we're back. After a few, I start getting the "click to prove you're not a robot" box, then the Captcha, and finally the multiple Captcha with sloooowly revolving pictures. I'm just trying to keep the site more statistically accurate! Is there a way to get an ISP exemption or something?

 

Isn't this exactly the type of thing that the CAPTCHAs are designed to prevent? Sly doesn't need or want people to mass update tons of pages on the site -- he can run scripts that auto-update pages much more effectively than any of us on the "outside" can, and he can do it in a way that makes sure he doesn't kill his server (he almost surely has lots of the updating happen automatically during non-peak hours in the middle of the night).

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49 minutes ago, NathanielJohn said:

 

Isn't this exactly the type of thing that the CAPTCHAs are designed to prevent? Sly doesn't need or want people to mass update tons of pages on the site -- he can run scripts that auto-update pages much more effectively than any of us on the "outside" can, and he can do it in a way that makes sure he doesn't kill his server (he almost surely has lots of the updating happen automatically during non-peak hours in the middle of the night).

 

I don't think I reach bot scale: a max of 50 updates a day vs 3.7M million accounts on the site, 250k of which are automatically updated every day. But I get what you're saying. Would there be a way to update the 3.5M non-member accounts without making the server crash/using crazy amounts of bandwidth? Updating 10k a day would only mean a 5% increase... shouldn't make a huge difference.

 

Members make up less than 10% of the accounts... and from what I've seen, no non-member account seems to ever be updated.

 

My compulsive updating habits likely don't have any sort of meaningful impact either statistically or on bandwidth, but I'll stop if Sly asks (or when I reach Captcha stage!).

Edited by visighost
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1 hour ago, visighost said:

 

I don't think I reach bot scale: a max of 50 updates a day vs 3.7M million accounts on the site, 250k of which are automatically updated every day. But I get what you're saying. Would there be a way to update the 3.5M non-member accounts without making the server crash/using crazy amounts of bandwidth? Updating 10k a day would only mean a 5% increase... shouldn't make a huge difference.

 

Members make up less than 10% of the accounts... and from what I've seen, no non-member account seems to ever be updated.

 

My compulsive updating habits likely don't have any sort of meaningful impact either statistically or on bandwidth, but I'll stop if Sly asks (or when I reach Captcha stage!).

 

If you see a profile that hasn't been updated lately (as in more than a month since the last update), you don't really need to force the update.  Just visiting the page seems to put it back into the update schedule.  At least that's what I've noticed just from looking at some profiles that are close to my rank.  For some, it's been months since they've been updated.  But, if I check back later, I see they got updated again shortly after my visit and are then scheduled to be updated in another week.

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On 11/1/2018 at 0:29 PM, dmland12 said:

If you see a profile that hasn't been updated lately (as in more than a month since the last update), you don't really need to force the update.  Just visiting the page seems to put it back into the update schedule.  At least that's what I've noticed just from looking at some profiles that are close to my rank.  For some, it's been months since they've been updated.  But, if I check back later, I see they got updated again shortly after my visit and are then scheduled to be updated in another week.

 

Good to know - but I updated users out of curiosity, so the whole point was to see right away what games they'd played since. So much unsaid when people haven't updated in years... Stopped playing? Created a new account? Passed away?

 

Oh, and Captcha stopped popping up last week... but I suddenly got a locked-out message meaning I can't update anything anymore. I maintain this is strange since the updates should not have a significant impact on bandwidth, but whachagonnado. I'd be curious to know at what point one is considered bot-like...

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57 minutes ago, visighost said:

Good to know - but I updated users out of curiosity, so the whole point was to see right away what games they'd played since. So much unsaid when people haven't updated in years... Stopped playing? Created a new account? Passed away?

 

Oh, and Captcha stopped popping up last week... but I suddenly got a locked-out message meaning I can't update anything anymore. I maintain this is strange since the updates should not have a significant impact on bandwidth, but whachagonnado. I'd be curious to know at what point one is considered bot-like...

 

Wait - were your posts serious? I detected a hint of sarcasm running throughout all of them. 

 

If you were being serious, I'd say you crossed the line between man and bot some time ago. If not, I continue to find this conversation humorous. :D

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1 minute ago, starcrunch061 said:

Wait - were your posts serious? I detected a hint of sarcasm running throughout all of them. 

 

If you were being serious, I'd say you crossed the line between man and bot some time ago. If not, I continue to find this conversation humorous. :D

 

Haha, I was! But this doesn't mean I take myself seriously - my behavior is totally irrational. A weird way to kill time I guess... :P

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  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Dragon-Archon said:

Does anyone else get a captcha too when trying to edit a post? I get them when saving an edited post in the Community Events subforum.

I did last night. Was wondering why.

 

3 hours ago, Sly Ripper said:

 

Is this a cloudflare one? I'm hoping that it'll learn not to for editing posts.

Yeah, same as @Dragon-Archon

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