530 guests?!

[peteski]

I started browsing the forum around midnight July 9th and it has been really slow to  respond.  Checked the status and it showed:
 530 Guests, 16 Users (0 Buddies)

Users active in past 30 minutes:
peteski, Spades, C855B, Hedron, rickb773, Dave V, wcfn100, southernman, Dreyfusshudson, samusi01, skytop35, jym1, davefoxx, mopacaustin, Mark5, Tom L

Is it normal to have that many guests browsing the forum?  Probably some Web crawlers, bots or AI are involved.

[Mark5]

569 at the moment.

[Simon D.]

666 just now. Ominous…

[C855B]

It's gotta be an AI bot attack. There's a forum I frequent that has an AI stalker that has cracked the account signup, creating new accounts and posting up to 400 spams every evening containing nothing more than a link to (what we think are) phishing sites or worse. Driving the forum admin nuts. Obvious solution is to change the signup page, but site management is apparently scared to do so considering recent fubars with updates.

[John]

If ya'll are stressed about it, I can turn off viewing any of the boards unless logged in 

[C855B]

If ya'll are stressed about it, I can turn off viewing any of the boards unless logged in 

Seriously? Maybe something similar can be a strategy. First tool in a hacker's kit is to keep probing until you find the weak spot. The problem in the other forum I mentioned is serious and is stealing bandwidth.

[John]

Most of these "guests" are coming out of Singapore and China today ..

[Scottl]

Good news is TRW expertise and humor are training AI models.

[davefoxx]

Haha!  Before you know it, a$$hat will become a term of endearment. 

DFF

[ednadolski]

Before you know it, a$$hat will become a term of endearment. 

hmm, some  told me that was already the case....?? 

Ed

[davefoxx]

hmm, some  told me that was already the case....?? 

Ed

Outside of TRW, that is.

[peteski]

It is a half past midnight EDT - we down to only 80 Guests, 4 Users (0 Buddies).

[MK]

Who said N-scale is dead?