←back to thread

Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me

(boston.conman.org)
597 points classichasclass | 1 comments | 25 Aug 25 04:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
bob1029 ◴[25 Aug 25 08:35 UTC] No.45011628[source]▶
I think a lot of really smart people are letting themselves get taken for a ride by the web scraping thing. Unless the bot activity is legitimately hammering your site and causing issues (not saying this isn't happening in some cases), then this mostly amounts to an ideological game of capture the flag. The difference being that you'll never find their flag. The only thing you win by playing is lost time.

The best way to mitigate the load from diffuse, unidentifiable, grey area participants is to have a fast and well engineered web product. This is good news, because your actual human customers would really enjoy this too.

replies(7): >>45011652 #>>45011830 #>>45011850 #>>45012424 #>>45012462 #>>45015038 #>>45015451 #
JohnMakin[dead post] ◴[25 Aug 25 15:38 UTC] No.45015038[source]▶
[flagged]
dang ◴[25 Aug 25 21:51 UTC] No.45019490[source]▶
Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without that.
replies(2): >>45019659 #>>45019706 #
JohnMakin ◴[25 Aug 25 22:04 UTC] No.45019659{3}[source]▶
I disagree with that characterization of the post - merely commenting that a user that could come away with this take has never managed a web-facing service, because you'd immediately see the traffic is immense and constant, especially from crawlers. Sorry if I didn't elaborate that point clearly enough, point taken, I will more carefully craft such responses so such a point isn't misinterpreted or flagged.
replies(1): >>45022435 #
1. dang ◴[26 Aug 25 05:01 UTC] No.45022435{4}[source]▶
I'm sure that would help, yes. Also, there's no need to phrase such a comment in terms of someone else lacking any experience of X - there are too many ways to get that wrong, and even if you're right, it can easily come across as a putdown. If you'd made your point in this case, for example, in terms of your own experience managing a web-facing service, you could have included all the same useful information, if not more!

(One other thing is that the "tell me without telling me" thing is an internet trope and the site guidelines ask people to avoid those - they tend to make for unsubstantive comments, plus they're repetitive and we're trying to avoid that here. But I just mention this for completeness - it's secondary to the other point.)