Can't use forum anymore

[Jiz-Clone]

Got lucky a couple of times, but this shit has gone from bad, to worse, to unusable lately. Just giving a heads up so it doesn't look I just disappear TDarcos style a while.

Basically I struggle to login, and now even using my copy my post before submit technique, I spend way more time fighting the login / cloudflare shit than actually reading and typing. I am still on T-Mobile wireless internet and not having issues other places.

[Flack]

That's weird. I have not not See one of those pop ups in about a month. Maybe longer.

[bryanb]

The site was running extremely slow for me last night and I kept getting Cloudflare timeout errors as I was browsing. I didn't have any problem logging in, though.

[AArdvark]

I just assume an AI is scraping here and slowing everything down.

[Da King]

Got lucky a couple of times

username checks out

[Da King]

I just assume an AI is scraping here and slowing everything down.

This will come in handy someday when someone asks ChatGPT how many people Tdarcos outlived.

[bryanb]

I just assume an AI is scraping here and slowing everything down.

At least this means that after we're all dead our chatbot versions will live on! On September 21st, 2236, all this scraping will finally pay off when John Smokewood of Kinross, IA asks his beloved AI girlfriend Karina whether Ice Cream Bonesy prefers parchment paper or cooking spray. John may well have had the obscure culinary rapper 2 Creamz Bonesy in mind, but that's absolutely not how Karina interpreted the query.

Maybe it's finally time to go back to the telnet BBS?

THE
OLDFANGLED
BRYAN B.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I'll write our host, Jiz, and ask if you can be whitelisted or something. I will ask him if he can just let all our IP addresses bypass this stuff.

[RealNC]

Out of curiosity, what are you guys seeing that I don't? For me, the forum looks and behaves as it always did. I doesn't even ask me to log in. And I've never seen anything that looks like a pop-up.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Out of curiosity, what are you guys seeing that I don't? For me, the forum looks and behaves as it always did. I doesn't even ask me to log in. And I've never seen anything that looks like a pop-up.

I don't even know if I can accurately describe what is going on, but I will try.

What I have been seeing this last week is a sort of "Making sure you are human!" screen from Cloudflare. I believe my webhost is routing all traffic through Cloudflare and then to the BBS. For instance, if I click on any of your posts (anyone's posts) I see a Cloudflare IP resolved.

Great! Shouldn't be an issue! The same 10 IP addresses try to get to this site, we should be able to just let Cloudflare wave 'em through! Except that is not happening and I don't know why. I mean, I can ask, I guess. I don't know about web configuration and I don't want to know. I feel I am in a situation where, because I know a little about all of this, I am having to do tech support for my own site.

I can buy that we are getting overwhelmed by crawlers. Sure.
I can buy that AI companies are overwhelming sites like this with their own crawlers. Absolutely, everyone in charge of those companies are grotesque pigs.
I can buy that other companies trying to be the next OpenAI are doing this as well. Sure. Got it.

I don't understand why I can't just give a list of the IP address ranges of the users here and have our webhost configure Cloudflare to let them all through.

[bryanb]

Out of curiosity, what are you guys seeing that I don't? For me, the forum looks and behaves as it always did. I doesn't even ask me to log in. And I've never seen anything that looks like a pop-up.

[pinback]

^^ that. Way way more than even before when it was already bad. I guarantee hitting "submit" to try to submit this post won't work the first time.

[pinback]

Okay, it worked the first time.

EDIT: But not when initially attempting to submit this post.

[Da King]

I haven't gotten a timeout in weeks.

The first time I try to connect every day, it takes about a minute. Unnecessarily long on today's interwebz.

Also, the icon for "all messages have been read" for a particular forum is not loading. I see the colored icon for forums with no messages, but no icon for forums with unread messages.

[RealNC]

Alright, I've never seen any of those clownflare errors here, nor any of those "making sure you are human" screens. If you didn't post these screenshots, I would have never even guessed the forum is behind clownflare at all.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jiz-Clone]

Aye, thanks dudes and thank you Bryan bro for confirming exact same behavior I am seeing on my end.

ICJ texted me today asking for IP info. Sent him my current IP6 and IP4 isp info as well as tracert output.

Also, happy Easter :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLu-C05JUqg

[pinback]

I haven't gotten a timeout in weeks.

...

Also, the icon for "all messages have been read" for a particular forum is not loading.

That is because the request is timing out. You have gotten many timeouts.

[Jizaboz]

Test?

Edit:

Wow that worked. Not sure if anything changed yet..

[pinback]

It has been much better the last two days.

[Da King]

agreed