Board errors

[bradrn]

As for ‘not making heads nor tails of it’: the basic idea is that it’s a layer which sits in between the reverse proxy (which connects incoming HTTP(S) requests to the right places) and the web app (which actually handles said requests, in our case phpBB). It filters out requests which look like they’re coming from bots and rejects them before they can interfere with the app.

Yeah, I know what it is, I don't know how you actually install it, much less configure it.

Looks like it’s just a program you put on the server, much like phpBB; it can be installed as a Docker image or as a native package. It doesn’t seem to require a whole lot of configuration beyond adding it to the reverse proxy. If I run into any trouble then, like I said, I’m in contact with its creator and can ask for further clarification if necessary.

[Lērisama]

I went to bed last night thinking it was time to wind down the board. Today I'm not so sure. I did look at how much the site costs... thanks to auto-renewal, I hadn't realized the total.

Is there anything we¹ can do to make it easier for you? I really appreciate the board and would hate for it to shut down because other people's greed and callousness made it too hard, but it feels like there isn't anything I can do about it.

¹ As in board members with no website hosting experience

[Man in Space]

I went to bed last night thinking it was time to wind down the board. Today I'm not so sure. I did look at how much the site costs... thanks to auto-renewal, I hadn't realized the total.

Is there anything we¹ can do to make it easier for you? I really appreciate the board and would hate for it to shut down because other people's greed and callousness made it too hard, but it feels like there isn't anything I can do about it.

¹ As in board members with no website hosting experience

Or those of us who do have (however little of) such experience?

[bradrn]

Semi-related: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-indus ... -next-year

[Travis B.]

I went to bed last night thinking it was time to wind down the board. Today I'm not so sure. I did look at how much the site costs... thanks to auto-renewal, I hadn't realized the total. I have three hosting companies and I'm going to have to figure out how to get rid of one (certainly incatena.org; I'll have to move Almeopedia too).

It would be very sad if this board went away because of the fuckers running these AI bots. I highly recommend working with Brad to get Anubis up to help curtail these bots. (Yes, some people inevitably complain about JavaScript when it comes to the topic of Anubis, but I much rather have the free web requiring JavaScript than no free web at all.)

[bradrn]

I went to bed last night thinking it was time to wind down the board. Today I'm not so sure. I did look at how much the site costs... thanks to auto-renewal, I hadn't realized the total. I have three hosting companies and I'm going to have to figure out how to get rid of one (certainly incatena.org; I'll have to move Almeopedia too).

It would be very sad if this board went away because of the fuckers running these AI bots. I highly recommend working with Brad to get Anubis up to help curtail these bots. (Yes, some people inevitably complain about JavaScript when it comes to the topic of Anubis, but I much rather have the free web requiring JavaScript than no free web at all.)

Doesn’t phpBB require JavaScript anyway?

[malloc]

Is there anything we¹ can do to make it easier for you? I really appreciate the board and would hate for it to shut down because other people's greed and callousness made it too hard, but it feels like there isn't anything I can do about it.

Quite. It's been a beloved institution in conlanging for decades at this point. Plenty of people still cherish this board and post here regularly, even if it has potentially passed its peak. That said, it also sounds like he's also concerned about the expense of maintaining the board which I understand. He has graciously avoided filling the board with ads like so much of the internet has done, but that does mean he's bearing some significant recurring costs with nothing to offset them.

You are not alone in your hostility to AI, as I hope you're aware. Nor do I want the ZBB to collapse.

Maybe not, but I was certainly among the first to criticize AI here and plenty defended it initially.

[jcb]

I went to bed last night thinking it was time to wind down the board. Today I'm not so sure. I did look at how much the site costs... thanks to auto-renewal, I hadn't realized the total. I have three hosting companies and I'm going to have to figure out how to get rid of one (certainly incatena.org; I'll have to move Almeopedia too).

It would be very sad if this board went away because of the fuckers running these AI bots. I highly recommend working with Brad to get Anubis up to help curtail these bots. (Yes, some people inevitably complain about JavaScript when it comes to the topic of Anubis, but I much rather have the free web requiring JavaScript than no free web at all.)

Doesn’t phpBB require JavaScript anyway?

No.

[Travis B.]

Here is a good example of the entitled idiots who think that their supposed God-given right to surf the web without JavaScript is more important than the free web existing in the first place.

[Man in Space]

I’ve just thought of something—I have been finding that the errors happen more during the morning, Eastern Time. Can anyone else corroborate?

[Travis B.]

I’ve just thought of something—I have been finding that the errors happen more during the morning, Eastern Time. Can anyone else corroborate?

Maybe someone starts up their bot when they first get up in the morning?

[jcb]

Here is a good example of the entitled idiots who think that their supposed God-given right to surf the web without JavaScript is more important than the free web existing in the first place.

I am one of those people that surf the web with JavaScript off by default, because sites often abuse it for tracking and loading tons of useless shit after the initial page load, but I'm willing to turn it on to allow sites a way to stop what's basically a DoS attack.

[WeepingElf]

I couldn't get in yesterday because I'd apparently made too many requests (two or three). I'm still recovering.

I don't know what to do about it, but obviously something must be done soon, or I'm out.

That's a little bit drastic, isn't it?

Maybe, but it annoys me seriously, and the ZBB is not the only place I know where I can talk about conworlds, conlangs and linguistics. The outages just spoil my fun, and when something you have been doing just for fun andisn't fun anymore, why not quit? Hence, I have decided to opt out instead of continuing whining about the situation.

I don't know what to do about it, but obviously something must be done soon, or I'm out.

Quite. I have been a loyal member of this site for over two decades at this point and I really hate to see it collapse. Despite my growing frustration, I am doing my best to take people's word for it that this problem has no simple or affordable solution. Given the growing consensus that AI scrapers are causing the problem, I think this vindicates my prescient hostility to AI.

If these sort of comments are intended to motivate me to put more effort and money into the board, they're doing the opposite.

I hereby apologize for that. I understand that it was not helpful in any way. I also understand that this is a difficult situation without an easy solution. And I cannot contribute anything of value, so I'll shut up and take a break.

[Travis B.]

We'll definitely miss you, especially that, even with the outages, the ZBB is an all-around great board for such things (better IMO than Reddit or the other place).

[WeepingElf]

We'll definitely miss you, especially that, even with the outages, the ZBB is an all-around great board for such things (better IMO than Reddit or the other place).

I understand; the CBB is not as good as the ZBB (I don't know Reddit, but apparently, it sucks), but the outages here just drive me mad and spoil the fun for me. At least the CBB works, even if the people there are less linguistically sophisticated; and I don't miss the political discussions here at all because most of the ZBB politicos are IMHO cranks. I don't want to go through the cycle of frustration I have been going through over and over again since the troubles started almost a year ago (and there is no end in sight, as zompist appears to have decided to just sit them out) any longer. You must know that I am a highly sensitive person (has to do with my autism-spectrum condition) who is very vulnerable to hefty mood swings. I at least need a break!

[bradrn]

(and there is no end in sight, as zompist appears to have decided to just sit them out)

Hey, this is unfair. It’s a genuinely difficult problem which has been affecting the entire Internet. I have the requisite skills and contacts so I’ve offered to help, as I’ve done before.

[Travis B.]

Yeah, bots have been absolutely hammering the entire Internet, not just the ZBB, and many sites have been dealing with availability issues and higher hosting bills as a result. Brad here can help set up Anubis for the ZBB to deal with these issues, and Anubis has shown itself to be an effective countermeasure to these bots (and while bots can work around it, by doing so they open themselves to other sorts of blocking based on things such as User-Agent).

[WeepingElf]

(and there is no end in sight, as zompist appears to have decided to just sit them out)

Hey, this is unfair. It’s a genuinely difficult problem which has been affecting the entire Internet. I have the requisite skills and contacts so I’ve offered to help, as I’ve done before.

So my impression was wrong; I apologize. I know that this problem is affecting the entire Internet, and indeed in my semi-optimistic (i.e., things get better after first getting worse) "Global Spring" near future setting (which I haven't said much about here yet, because so much is in flux there), the entire Internet collapses about 2030 under the onslaught of AI scrapers, similar to the way Usenet died about 2000 because it was helpless against spam. The tech corporations eventually decide to try again the old business model of the centralized online services (like AOL or CompuServe in the early 1990s), in which they are supported by authoritarian governments, and thus replace the Internet by the Metaverse (the techbros are already talking about such a thing today), which in turn provokes a counter-movement, the democratic Subspace (which is illegal in most autocratic countries, though). Well, both Usenet and the Internet are experiments in practical anarchy; one has already failed, the other is likely to fail soon.

And I have revised my decision to leave the ZBB. There are alternatives, but I don't want to miss it. However, I do intend to spend less passion on it than I used to.

[WeepingElf]

Yeah, bots have been absolutely hammering the entire Internet, not just the ZBB, and many sites have been dealing with availability issues and higher hosting bills as a result. Brad here can help set up Anubis for the ZBB to deal with these issues, and Anubis has shown itself to be an effective countermeasure to these bots (and while bots can work around it, by doing so they open themselves to other sorts of blocking based on things such as User-Agent).

So there is at least a silver lining on the horizon; good to hear.

[alice]

So my impression was wrong; I apologize. I know that this problem is affecting the entire Internet, and indeed in my semi-optimistic (i.e., things get better after first getting worse) "Global Spring" near future setting (which I haven't said much about here yet, because so much is in flux there), the entire Internet collapses about 2030 under the onslaught of AI scrapers, similar to the way Usenet died about 2000 because it was helpless against spam.

This is not unlike the phenomenon of "gray goo", or indeed the inevitable end-product of AI slop constantly regurgitating itself. But don't panic; I'm sure the techbros have plans to stop it happening or to keep it under control. They're so clever!

The tech corporations eventually decide to try again the old business model of the centralized online services (like AOL or CompuServe in the early 1990s), in which they are supported by authoritarian governments, and thus replace the Internet by the Metaverse (the techbros are already talking about such a thing today)

Note for the potentially confused: this has nothing to do with what zompist.com used to be called.

Well, both Usenet and the Internet are experiments in practical anarchy; one has already failed, the other is likely to fail soon.

That's an interesting insight. Remember the old saying "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it"? Where's that optimism now?

And I have revised my decision to leave the ZBB. There are alternatives, but I don't want to miss it.

Glad to hear it!