What is going on with this site???

[Bluechel]

This is so

@MK
@Nathan Flowers
@scotrace
@Edward
@RBH
@Peacoat
@LizzieMaine

I know this is posted in the Hats sub-forum, but these are the Bartenders that I'm most familiar with.

this site is so important to me I’d be willing to pay a subscription to make it work

 

[deadlyhandsome]

Tried three times over several hours this morning, but I couldn’t access the site at all. It’s wasn’t just slow, it was completely inaccessible. Tried it on my desktop, laptop, and phone. All my devices work without issue everywhere else so it’s definitely a TFL issue.


Screenshot:

 

[shopkin]

It is slower at times when one would expect a lot of traffic; i.e. Saturday

 

[milandro]

Now it is saying "
Oops! We ran into some problems.
Security error occurred. Please press back, refresh the page, and try again...."


Did that a couple of times but then it loaded the page, very slowly but it did .

Unless there is some ransomeware at play (I doubt it why would they do that there is not much to make here) this is not something that has to do with money, this is a bug and this forum cannot be the only one affected there have to be more.


If this is a Xenforo software then they are the best people to offer some help


Incidentally the forum has very few members at any time on Lin but a huge amount of bots ( 20 times as many members )

 

[MK]

Slow as a three-legged, asthmatic mule. We're on it and it should be fixed soon.

 

[RBH]

I have been occupied with other issues and have just now experienced the slowdown.
I hope it is resolved soon.

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

Nathan pushed the unpause button.
She’s back to warp speed now Captain!

 

[So33]

Glad it was not my system and others have had problems with slow operation.
I prefer company in my misery.,

 

[T Jones]

Tried three times over several hours this morning, but I couldn’t access the site at all. It’s wasn’t just slow, it was completely inaccessible. Tried it on my desktop, laptop, and phone. All my devices work without issue everywhere else so it’s definitely a TFL issue.


Screenshot:

View attachment 545323

This is what I'm getting. I've been using 'duck duck go' from my phone for my searches and I haven't been able to access the site for most of the weekend. I switched over to Google this morning and was finally able to get on.

 

[lina]

For me, it’s been so slow/unavailable that I have almost given up on the site..

 

[milandro]

The site was unavailable all day yesterday ( it was clearly put off line to do maintenance ) , unfortunately whatever was done hasn't solved the problem that is affecting the forum, today the site is available and the loading is as slow as it has been before the members started complaining. Of course the largee majority of the people here are not members .

At this moment there are over 1033 users

Most (1000) guests are BOTS , only 33 are registered users.

I think this may be the problem. The site is clearly targeted by bots , They are overloading the system

At the moment , as I write and try to publish this answer (not happening) the system tells me that the safari can't open the page because there are MORE than 20 redirections


I think the side may be targeted by spam bots and the system is (probably ) fending them off BUT at the cost of the system


Also I have been told by my system that 8 trackers were attempting to profile me as I accessed this page and the system was keeping them from doing so


If you run a google search you will see this is not an uncommon problem, in fact the number of bots on some other fora is 10 times as large


This are just a few examples




https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=851492&nt=6&page=8


https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2643166

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/site-feedback/browser-bots-playing-slow

 

[deadlyhandsome]

I have next to zero technical/computer skills so I can’t speculate on what the problem(s) is. The site is still mostly inaccessible, but every so often I can get in; although, it takes a very long time to load.

I know keeping this site up is a labor of love. Lots of hours and not much in return other than our gratitude. I’ll try to be patient.

 

[milandro]

my suggestions are directed to provide informations to those whom are trying to improve the things

at this very moment the number of bots has shrunk by half and the forum has become reasonably accessible , again

I have edited this answer 3 times

MY OS has had to protect me from 8 trackers some of which may be legitimate but others may not

 

[deadlyhandsome]

my suggestions are directed to provide informations to those whom are trying to improve the things

If that was for me, I hope you didn’t misunderstand my post. It wasn’t a response to your effort to help. I was just reminded that this is all made possible by volunteers and my perusal complaining was tedious. I certainly wasn’t commenting on your, or anyone else’s but my own, posts. I lost some perspective and grew impatient. I’m sure your help is appreciated as it’s pointing to possible solutions rather than my whining.

 

[milandro]

well @deadlyhandsome , though not in particular, but you reminded me that comments, such as mine, may be seen as " complaints". I am happy that you don't see it this way.

I just wanted to make it clear.

I don't look at informing (albeit a volunteer corp) the management of the forum's problems as whining though.

I don't expect the people with the keys to the engine room to be there at all times (here or anywhere else). I am a long standing member of another forum ( with a more "intensive" number of participants) and there are only 4 or 5 actually active moderators. They also have paid ones (that forum is owned by a Canadian corporation which owns thousands of fora) but they are monitoring the forum even LESS than the volunteers!

All of them are in the American time zones, so, anything happens while they are asleep, the forum relies on the membership reporting abuse and anomalies.

If the forum had (which may be the case here) very high protections against spam bots and such things (in order not to have someone getting through the protections at least at times ,especially while the watchers are asleep), then. there would certainly be moments in which the forum would collapse under the weight of bots.

Bots activity is a forum problem everywhere.

After all, trackers and bots must be attracted by people writing here. Although most of the posts are about vintage items, all the participants here can be seen as potentially interesting targets because we are searching brad names and have threads on Stetson, Resistol, Clarks, Barbour, you name it....

Anyway, thanks to all of whom work behind the scenes. I hope they appreciate the fact that even though no complainer is an officer here, we are volunteering surveillance too

 

[GHT]

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The Gremlins remain, but, looking on the bright side, I have never heard of DNS, now at least I have some very basic knowledge of a Domain Name System server and it's configuration, not that I am any the wiser, I'm more saddened and frustrated that TFL won't load.

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

well @deadlyhandsome , though not in particular, but you reminded me that comments, such as mine, may be seen as " complaints". I am happy that you don't see it this way.

I just wanted to make it clear.

I don't look at informing (albeit a volunteer corp) the management of the forum's problems as whining though.

I don't expect the people with the keys to the engine room to be there at all times (here or anywhere else). I am a long standing member of another forum ( with a more "intensive" number of participants) and there are only 4 or 5 actually active moderators. They also have paid ones (that forum is owned by a Canadian corporation which owns thousands of fora) but they are monitoring the forum even LESS than the volunteers!

All of them are in the American time zones, so, anything happens while they are asleep, the forum relies on the membership reporting abuse and anomalies.

If the forum had (which may be the case here) very high protections against spam bots and such things (in order not to have someone getting through the protections at least at times ,especially while the watchers are asleep), then. there would certainly be moments in which the forum would collapse under the weight of bots.

Bots activity is a forum problem everywhere.

After all, trackers and bots must be attracted by people writing here. Although most of the posts are about vintage items, all the participants here can be seen as potentially interesting targets because we are searching brad names and have threads on Stetson, Resistol, Clarks, Barbour, you name it....

Anyway, thanks to all of whom work behind the scenes. I hope they appreciate the fact that even though no complainer is an officer here, we are volunteering surveillance too

Have you tried DMing the management team directly?

It seems they’d be made aware of your observations much sooner then monitoring this thread randomly.

You are obviously knowledgable on the inner workings of forums and i think they would appreciate your input.
Just a thought.
Thanks
B

 

[milandro]

Have you tried DMing the management team directly?

It seems they’d be made aware of your observations much sooner then monitoring this thread randomly.

You are obviously knowledgable on the inner workings of forums and i think they would appreciate your input.
Just a thought.
Thanks
B

You kindly credit me for more actual experience than I really have, although I understand how It may look like I know a lot more than I do

All I know (or think I know) is all I've written here before

1) this appears to be a forum running on a certain platform , perhaps Xenforo? IF.... that is the case the people from Xenforo are the best qualified people to analyse te situation and act upon it

https://xenforo.com/

2) The observation of the forum having a large amount of bots can be made by anyone just by looking at the members on line list.

I am sure it was taken into account by anyone looking at the matter at play .

As for alerting the management to this thread it was already done by another member @TheOldFashioned a few days ago. Doing so , again, could have been seen as an annoyance and frivolous. So I didn't do it.

@MK
@Nathan Flowers
@scotrace
@Edward
@RBH
@Peacoat
@LizzieMaine

I know this is posted in the Hats sub-forum, but these are the Bartenders that I'm most familiar with.

@Edward reacted to this

Hi all, it's been identified over the last 24 hours that a number of folks have found the site is running slow; the management is looking into this to see if there's a specific cause - we should hopefully know more soon.

therefore I expect the entire moderators group to be aware of the issue and at least some of them to keep on monitor ingthe situation (which now appears to be better than yesterday or this morning Central European time).

 

[hambone71]

Still having issues this evening. I checked in periodically throughout the day and it seemed fine. This evening it still having problems loading pages and refreshing.

 

[hatsRme]

+1

Still having issues this evening. I checked in periodically throughout the day and it seemed fine. This evening it still having problems loading pages and refreshing.