508 Resource Limit Reached

[Jeremy]

It's due to the server not being able to keep up with increasing traffic from AI bots. All forums are easy targets for these AI bots because they provide years of human-written content, freely available for anyone to to access. These bots are from multiple companies, some of which are probably a bit sketchy, all scraping hundreds of pages a minute, hoping to help build their massive databases. It seems most forums on the internet have been hit like this in the last year, some ready to deal with it more than others.

I recently made this account because I saw the issue and I'm worried it's going to eventually break this website permanently if it's not addressed, which would be a tragedy considering the history in the place. I can help if an admin could contact me. I'm not sure if Ron himself is active here anymore?

[Elvellon]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

It's due to the server not being able to keep up with increasing traffic from AI bots. All forums are easy targets for these AI bots because they provide years of human-written content, freely available for anyone to to access. These bots are from multiple companies, some of which are probably a bit sketchy, all scraping hundreds of pages a minute, hoping to help build their massive databases. It seems most forums on the internet have been hit like this in the last year, some ready to deal with it more than others.

I recently made this account because I saw the issue and I'm worried it's going to eventually break this website permanently if it's not addressed, which would be a tragedy considering the history in the place. I can help if an admin could contact me. I'm not sure if Ron himself is active here anymore?

This has been a problem since at least December of 2023. You can read more about it here: http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=19965. At the time it was because of links to an LOTR Parody thread being shared, and that seems to have lead bots to that thread. But you're right, it seems that the problem has spread more evenly now across the whole forum. It's a real shame, it's basically killed my enthusiasm to continue participating in the Translations from the Elvish project because I can't quickly search, move through thread pages, or post, without reloading.

I hope that the admin takes you up on your offer for help, because it's ridiculous how easily AI activity like this is creating a dead internet.

(Here I go, time to hit "Submit Reply" and get a 508 error.)

Edit: Sure enough, took 3 tries to submit this post.