We got "gamed"
 

Why does the Cellar tag currently read "This is a community, please don't game us"?

A few nights ago, about seven accounts were created in the space of about a half day. That night, a thread was started and every one of the new accounts posted to it, and what became clear was that this was some sort of game.

They talked in their own lingo and it looked like they were just jumping from forum to forum, staying there a while and moving to the next one. Somebody asked for the "next link" which I could only assume was the next place on the net that they'd invade.

Well what a bunch of crap. I deleted all of the accounts that posted to that thread who were obviously in the game.

I post this here just in case there was any confusion over the whole thing.

Weird.
<shakes fist>Stay outta our sandbox, you crazy kids!</shake>
-Pie

Oh, I wondered what that tagline meant...

When I saw that I assumed that somebody had pulled some shit and that explanations would eventually follow.

So, was this kind of like the invasion from Spain a while back?

Or was this part of the same shadowy "Cellar Watchers" organisation which revealed itself a while back?

Oh I figured it was a dig at me for posting about the free ipods!

Ah... I thought it was some kind of net scavenger hunt/ puzzler thingy. clever little monkeys

So after that happened I turned on user moderation, so that they couldn't game us that way any longer, and then I said to myself that I wouldn't let any new accounts post for a while, let them sit unmoderated so that this thing is stopped in its tracks.

And then I forgot about it, until people wrote to me saying they couldn't post; and so I moderated all those users and turned off new user moderation;

And don't you know, the "Th!s !s n0t pr0n" thread is pounced on by two of those newly moderated people. I think this is all really the down side of becoming more highly-rated on Google or something. Our results seem to be really high on their list right now. I Googled for something recently and was frightened to see a Cellar thread on the second page. People are finding us, curiously.

On to September: every year there is an upturn in number of posts and the Fall is typically Internet time.

Between Cellar and the band gig, you might have to start wearing a disguise when you're out and about.

I woundered just who the hell those folks were , and then the thread was gone ,
i woundered of i had houlsinated the whole thing ,
Good to know that i ain't that crasy !!!!

Let's not bullshit here...you ARE that crazy, but you weren't hallucinating. :)

I....I think that sort of thing is kind of neat actually. Unknown people acting with or without malice in unexpected ways lends something real to the virtual. The Cellar feels like it exists alongside other retreats and the idea of a gang of people travelling through them all intent on their own secret goals adds a frisson intrigue.

It's like the forum equivalent of PKs ( Player Killers) who make themselves very few friends within the gaming community at large but who in general add a great deal to the games theyre in.

Well, Radar's been here for almost 2 years now...

I agree, Dana. They don't seem to be malicious and they're enjoying themselves and the Cellar in their own way, but it's not my bandwidth they're using. :haha: It's like the tourist that blows into Philly, double parks, snaps a picture of the liberty bell, then heads for the Jersey Shore. Drives the Chamber of Commerce nuts.

*nods* fair point Bruce

I did forget about one advantage to letting them roam: inbound links. Every inbound link increases our importance to Google. But yesterday this lowbrow site linked to an iotd blog view, and it really hit the bandwidth hard. Over 7000 views of that page alone.

I should investigate putting some sort of advertising on the blog view to try to recover for the loss of bandwidth for something that won't do us any good any other way. Otherwise, if this keeps up, I may have to shut the blog view down.

Y'know, there IS a way to hide the Cellar from Google using some proper coding or whatever... dunno what it is, though. :greenface

robots.txt, nothing too complex. I'm not sure about more complex stuff like making it not pick up links we post and things like that though but I'm sure it's webserver level stuff.

I don't want to hide it from Google! Unless things get way out of hand.

From what I've seen, not having a robots.txt file would prevent search engines from picking up anything.

No, not having a robots.txt file means they can do what they want, follow every link etc.

But will any results be posted?