Potential bot invasion?

[Keith Barrick]

Ive been following the total members on RD for about 8 days now and 8 days ago we had 113,000 which was when I started watching. And in the past 8 days we have had 3,761 new members join.... I know RD is a thriving community but the Ratio of members to posts is alarming.

Threads 29,964
Posts 800,254
Members 116,761

With these numbers that is roughly 7 posts for every 1 members. RD has been up for 4 years.... and naturally alot of the posts are from earlier in its lifetime. This can mean 1 of 2 things:

1) We have HUGE amounts of people joining RD and simply scanning the forums never posting. (which is not good we want active members in the community)

2) We have a massive amount of bot accounts being created possibly attempting to post silly ads and such. (Also I believe the anti-bot measure in the registration page is gone)

Im just pointing this out as the member #'s keep skyrocketing yet we arent seeing a relative increase in the number of posts. Maybe its just me but something seems like it might not be working properly.

Keith

 

[Keith Barrick]

Also just found this post by Dave Stephenson http://www.racedepartment.com/announcements-feedback/51980-spam-2.html#post786181

It relates to a potential reason behind bots (if they infact are creating accounts)

If I am incorrect in all this, the question is...why are the massive amounts of new members not racing/posting?

 

[Omer Said]

I think your number 2 reason is also valid. There are lots of users who only register for downloading content.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Because a lot of the new members visit the F1 2010 forums mainly. A forum is more than just a communication tool. For some its a place to race, for others to chat, others only download files from the download section etc.

The amount of bots is relatively low but they make a lot of "noise" when they post. All of them are banned (just like those with a double account) and they are moved to the banned usergroup (not counting toward the actual member numbers actually).

Agreed it would be nice if some more people talked although the postrates are currently pretty high, 1000 posts a day on average and with no new game releases that is pretty active.

 

[Jim Cole]

I am kind of curious as to which forum is getting the most activity.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

F1 2010 - The Game by a mile!

 

[ufunacaoenn]

F1 2010 - The Game by a mile!

I can just imagen how popular the F1 2011 will become when it will be released.

 

[Dave Stephenson]

huge

 

[Rupe Wilson]

I think theres a bot on the loose.......http://www.racedepartment.com/off-t...nk-logins-acc-paypal-shipshop.html#post828236 or am i wrong

 

[Hiroshi Awazu]

F1 2010 - The Game by a mile!

Really! I had no idea that game would be so popular. And now I know what a "bot" is. I'm on this site all the time and I notice the amount of new members but don't see many of them posting. Keith you are right on 1 and 2. As for me racing, i really wish there was a 9pm EDT slot. I'm off work Monday to Thursday but can race Tues, Wed, or Thurs plus my gf works those days from 4 to 10pm so that is my window of time.