[quote name="@Finlandia" date="2025-06-07 22:21:25" ]
Rocki
The Users Online count comprises of two number; visible logged-in players and guests who are visitors without an account. Invisible accounts are not counted as far as I am aware. At times the guest count has been over three times as high as the user count which feels fishy. If I had to guess why the count gets so high, it is because scrapers use different IP every time they scour through a page and as they do that so fast the old IPs linger for moment which causes the guest count to balloon. Of course that is just speculation on my part.
As far as I have understood "scraper" is a type of bot that scrapes i.e. collects data, mostly text and images, from the internet which is then used to train AI models. They don't have accounts.
[/quote]
Scrapers/webcrawlers are much more than that! They've existed far longer than generative AI and may be used to aid such, but not all scrapers were ever intended or built for that; please don't conflate the two. Crawlers were made as the early internet expanded faster than humans could ever possibly index. So software was made to do just that, index all the possible pages to aid web browsers into serving relevant results.
Rocki
The Users Online count comprises of two number; visible logged-in players and guests who are visitors without an account. Invisible accounts are not counted as far as I am aware. At times the guest count has been over three times as high as the user count which feels fishy. If I had to guess why the count gets so high, it is because scrapers use different IP every time they scour through a page and as they do that so fast the old IPs linger for moment which causes the guest count to balloon. Of course that is just speculation on my part.
As far as I have understood "scraper" is a type of bot that scrapes i.e. collects data, mostly text and images, from the internet which is then used to train AI models. They don't have accounts.
Scrapers/webcrawlers are much more than that! They've existed far longer than generative AI and may be used to aid such, but not all scrapers were ever intended or built for that; please don't conflate the two. Crawlers were made as the early internet expanded faster than humans could ever possibly index. So software was made to do just that, index all the possible pages to aid web browsers into serving relevant results.
[quote name="refractioncannon" date="2025-06-08 19:24:32" ]
might i suggest nepenthes?
[/quote]
no, because 1: nepenthes doesn't differentiate between llm crawlers and any other crawler, as you wouldve seen if you looked at the actual page for nepenthes. there are in fact good crawlers like search indexing crawlers, and if fr were to use nepenthes it'd vanish from every search engine. which would *probably* hurt ad revenue just a *teensy* bit. /s
and before "oh but search indexing crawlers always abide by robots.txt and llm crawlers don't so you can differentiate between them" no, robots.txt is like a tiny cardboard "no tresspassing" sign that traditionally has no real firepower behind it, a crawler ignoring it does not reliably distinguish llm bot from search indexing bot.
2. nepenthes has a high cpu load because what it does is dynamically create pages full of nonsense text to poison the llm crawlers' training data, bog down storage, and slow them down, and the llms will keep going deeper in the pages of nonsense trying to gather every single bit unknowing that it doesn't end. this is a strain not just on the llms, but also on whoever's hosting nepenthes.
hence, an image-heavy, interactive content-heavy site that relies on ad revenue like fr and that gets bogged down every big update is not a good candidate for nepenthes. not to mention it's intended to be actively harmful and i don't think staff would be comfortable with that when there are methods that are far less likely to go catastrophically wrong, like just locking most the site behind being logged in.
refractioncannon wrote on 2025-06-08 19:24:32:
might i suggest nepenthes?
no, because 1: nepenthes doesn't differentiate between llm crawlers and any other crawler, as you wouldve seen if you looked at the actual page for nepenthes. there are in fact good crawlers like search indexing crawlers, and if fr were to use nepenthes it'd vanish from every search engine. which would *probably* hurt ad revenue just a *teensy* bit. /s
and before "oh but search indexing crawlers always abide by robots.txt and llm crawlers don't so you can differentiate between them" no, robots.txt is like a tiny cardboard "no tresspassing" sign that traditionally has no real firepower behind it, a crawler ignoring it does not reliably distinguish llm bot from search indexing bot.
2. nepenthes has a high cpu load because what it does is dynamically create pages full of nonsense text to poison the llm crawlers' training data, bog down storage, and slow them down, and the llms will keep going deeper in the pages of nonsense trying to gather every single bit unknowing that it doesn't end. this is a strain not just on the llms, but also on whoever's hosting nepenthes.
hence, an image-heavy, interactive content-heavy site that relies on ad revenue like fr and that gets bogged down every big update is not a good candidate for nepenthes. not to mention it's intended to be actively harmful and i don't think staff would be comfortable with that when there are methods that are far less likely to go catastrophically wrong, like just locking most the site behind being logged in.
java/tira, he/him pronouns, aro trans dude. fr time +8.
the one day im offline. rip
the one day im offline. rip
20 :: him :: pings/messages = ok!
[quote name="@refractioncannon" date="2025-06-08 19:32:39" ]
Scrapers/webcrawlers are much more than that! They've existed far longer than generative AI and may be used to aid such, but not all scrapers were ever intended or built for that; please don't conflate the two. Crawlers were made as the early internet expanded faster than humans could ever possibly index. So software was made to do just that, index all the possible pages to aid web browsers into serving relevant results.
[/quote]
Understood, thanks for clearing that up.
Scrapers/webcrawlers are much more than that! They've existed far longer than generative AI and may be used to aid such, but not all scrapers were ever intended or built for that; please don't conflate the two. Crawlers were made as the early internet expanded faster than humans could ever possibly index. So software was made to do just that, index all the possible pages to aid web browsers into serving relevant results.
Understood, thanks for clearing that up.
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
/// Kacper/Prince
/// 24 + He/Xe
/// Please don't use tone indicators for me!
/// ART SHOP
|
[img][/img]
|
[quote name="Zihette" date="2025-06-09 04:47:30" ]
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
[/quote]
Hi @Zihette! Yes, the something that's going on are the LLM/genAI scrapers disrespecting our robots.txt settings. This is an internet-wide issue, it's not unique to [I]Flight Rising[/I], and we are actively monitoring, investigating, and working on ways to address this long term as best we can — without compromising the integrity of our site or the player experience. [emoji=familiar heart size=1]
Zihette wrote on 2025-06-09 04:47:30:
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
Hi @
Zihette! Yes, the something that's going on are the LLM/genAI scrapers disrespecting our robots.txt settings. This is an internet-wide issue, it's not unique to
Flight Rising, and we are actively monitoring, investigating, and working on ways to address this long term as best we can — without compromising the integrity of our site or the player experience.
[quote name="Aequorin" date="2025-06-09 05:48:39" ]
[quote name="Zihette" date="2025-06-09 04:47:30" ]
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
[/quote]
Hi @Zihette! Yes, the something that's going on are the LLM/genAI scrapers disrespecting our robots.txt settings. This is an internet-wide issue, it's not unique to [I]Flight Rising[/I], and we are actively monitoring, investigating, and working on ways to address this long term as best we can — without compromising the integrity of our site or the player experience. [emoji=familiar heart size=1]
[/quote]
I'm very happy to hear you guys are keeping an active eye on it <3
Aequorin wrote on 2025-06-09 05:48:39:
Zihette wrote on 2025-06-09 04:47:30:
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
Hi @
Zihette! Yes, the something that's going on are the LLM/genAI scrapers disrespecting our robots.txt settings. This is an internet-wide issue, it's not unique to
Flight Rising, and we are actively monitoring, investigating, and working on ways to address this long term as best we can — without compromising the integrity of our site or the player experience.
I'm very happy to hear you guys are keeping an active eye on it <3
/// Kacper/Prince
/// 24 + He/Xe
/// Please don't use tone indicators for me!
/// ART SHOP
|
[img][/img]
|
[quote name="Zihette" date="2025-06-09 05:50:04" ]
[quote name="Aequorin" date="2025-06-09 05:48:39" ]
[quote name="Zihette" date="2025-06-09 04:47:30" ]
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
[/quote]
Hi @Zihette! Yes, the something that's going on are the LLM/genAI scrapers disrespecting our robots.txt settings. This is an internet-wide issue, it's not unique to [I]Flight Rising[/I], and we are actively monitoring, investigating, and working on ways to address this long term as best we can — without compromising the integrity of our site or the player experience. [emoji=familiar heart size=1]
[/quote]
I'm very happy to hear you guys are keeping an active eye on it <3
[/quote]
@Zihette, if it helps, when a thread has multiple staff replies in it, an arrow pointing left will appear in our posts, which will jump to the previous staff reply when clicked.
At the top of the thread, next to the thread subscription star, you can click to be taken the very first staff reply in a thread.
If there are additional staff replies, there will be an arrow pointing right in their replies. Clicking on the right arrow will take you the next staff reply, etc, etc. We included this feature in our forums as it allows players to quickly catch up on all staff updates in a single thread! [emoji=new friend size=1]
Zihette wrote on 2025-06-09 05:50:04:
Aequorin wrote on 2025-06-09 05:48:39:
Zihette wrote on 2025-06-09 04:47:30:
887 users and 8143 guests... Honestly, something is definitely going on.
Kind of worried of how it will affect the servers when everybody logs in after maintenance?
Hi @
Zihette! Yes, the something that's going on are the LLM/genAI scrapers disrespecting our robots.txt settings. This is an internet-wide issue, it's not unique to
Flight Rising, and we are actively monitoring, investigating, and working on ways to address this long term as best we can — without compromising the integrity of our site or the player experience.
I'm very happy to hear you guys are keeping an active eye on it <3
@
Zihette, if it helps, when a thread has multiple staff replies in it, an arrow pointing left will appear in our posts, which will jump to the previous staff reply when clicked.
At the top of the thread, next to the thread subscription star, you can click to be taken the very first staff reply in a thread.
If there are additional staff replies, there will be an arrow pointing right in their replies. Clicking on the right arrow will take you the next staff reply, etc, etc. We included this feature in our forums as it allows players to quickly catch up on all staff updates in a single thread!
We're curretly at 926 users online & 10,228 guests[emoji=pearlcatcher scared size=1]
We're curretly at 926 users online & 10,228 guests
