Too many BOTs replying?

[chijb55]

This has long been my goto site for Arcade Building.  But doing the math, our collective response rate (replies/views) is only 0.3% (for "Normal Topics".)  This based on page 1 data for "Normal Topics", with a total of 126443 VIEWS and only 452 REPLIES.

Are we just seeing a flood of automated/BOT "VIEWS", which skews the response rate? Wondering if maybe this community here isn't nearly as large as the VIEWS would imply.

[lilshawn]

we still read your posts. no sense in replying to them if you know nothing about whatever topic y'all talkin' about.

[chijb55]

Hah!  I don't care if anyone replies to my posts or not.  I'm not so sensitive to issue a "nobody talks to me" post.  This is the internet after all.  SOME level of ignoring of (anyone's) post is somewhat expected.  Do as you like.

But I see a significant number of people asking questions, or looking to start a discussion, with a very (very) small likelihood of ANY response.  And I find that odd.

Maybe it's just me; maybe no one here ever posts anything of interest, and/or every post is someone who knows "nothing about whatever topic".  But I find it odd at the rarity of ANYONE to respond to anybody.

[PL1]

This has long been my goto site for Arcade Building.  But doing the math, our collective response rate (replies/views) is only 0.3% (for "Normal Topics".)  This based on page 1 data for "Normal Topics", with a total of 126443 VIEWS and only 452 REPLIES.

Are we just seeing a flood of automated/BOT "VIEWS", which skews the response rate? Wondering if maybe this community here isn't nearly as large as the VIEWS would imply.

Are there lots of bots crawling this site?  Yes.  That's true of every site and will increase for the forseeable future.
- Some are good like the ones for search engines and archive.org.  Looks like the 11th view of this thread was by a search engine.
- Some are not good like the data scrapers used by spammers.
- IMHO it's safe to assume that Saint isn't hiring bot farms to artificially drive up views for revenue or engagement.

There are also lots of lurkers who read posts but either don't feel the need to reply or they don't want to deal with blowback from some of the cranky old farts.   
- There are already lots of thorough answers in the over 1.7 million posts on the site.
- I lurked here for 16-18 months before creating an account and posting.

Then there are the spammers.   
- A site like this is very attractive to them.
- More than half of the new accounts being created are by spammers.

I see a significant number of people asking questions, or looking to start a discussion, with a very (very) small likelihood of ANY response.  And I find that odd.

Maybe it's just me; maybe no one here ever posts anything of interest, and/or every post is someone who knows "nothing about whatever topic".  But I find it odd at the rarity of ANYONE to respond to anybody.

Let's take a sample of current data from page 1 of the Main forum.

41 non-sticky threads.  7 have no reply yet.  The two thread move notifications don't count.
- Request for an marquee file that was just posted two hours ago.
- Request for comparison of features on a "Zero Lag" (Zero Delay?) vs. IPac encoders.
- Driving game demo release announcement.
- Request for Gauntlet paint color codes.
- Request for Gorf panel measurements.
- A very specific lightgun conversion.  Any respondent would have to be familiar with both the original gun and the new guts.
- Question about reprogramming a second GRS super joystick for Ikari Warriors. (encoder firmware or reprograming software issue?)

The only unusual thing with that list is that nobody has replied to your "Zero Lag" post yet.  I'll try to get to that soon.

Bottom line:  Your "rarity of ANYONE to respond to anybody" opinion is not well-supported by objective facts.


Scott
EDIT: Forgot to attach the image showing that this thread was already indexed by the search engine DuckDuckGo.

[MartyKong]

I am one of those Old farts PL1 is referring to. But while I built a simple 2 player arcade cab the questions today seem more geared towards the play everything aircraft carrier style control panels. I answer questions when I can but am still guilty of lurking from time to time.

[RandyT]

This has long been my goto site for Arcade Building.  But doing the math, our collective response rate (replies/views) is only 0.3% (for "Normal Topics".)  This based on page 1 data for "Normal Topics", with a total of 126443 VIEWS and only 452 REPLIES.

Are we just seeing a flood of automated/BOT "VIEWS", which skews the response rate? Wondering if maybe this community here isn't nearly as large as the VIEWS would imply.

I think to find the answer to this is to simply take a minute to look inward.  Based on your profile, you registered on the site 2 full years ago, yet the only time you have ever posted was the recent post you made asking a question and then this post when it it wasn't quickly answered.

Surely you must have learned something during those two years and could have helped out one of the "know nothing about a topic" folks who asked questions

[pbj]

they don't want to deal with blowback from some of the cranky old farts.   

He's talking about you, Randy.

 

[Zebidee]

There are also lots of lurkers who read posts but either don't feel the need to reply or they don't want to deal with blowback from some of the cranky old farts.   

This is the funniest thing I've read all week Also very true.

It takes some guts to post, at least the first few times. It also takes some skill and thought to make a GOOD post - one that gets your message/question/need across. Enough background/context, but not boring. Motivating helpful people to respond - without waking the trolls.

On the other hand, sometimes people make posts demonstrating a complete lack of thought or effort or research into questions/ideas that an online search could probably answer, while providing very little context/background info. Nobody wants to waste their time responding if the OP invests so little themselves. Nobody wants to ask the obvious questions about details left out. If you DO help, you may either get burned or get pulled into a time-sucking vortex. It's poison. Nobody cares, nobody responds. At best it is troll-bait.

Reminds me of the classic Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969). I still don't know if Bambi or Godzilla was in the right (or wrong), and I still don't care. If you haven't seen this movie then make a spare 2 minutes and grab some popcorn.

[abispac]

This is my all time favorite site, i don't build to many cabs anymore but I am still here every day to see if I can help something if I see something I can help, ill answer right away, but I'm not very smart an some topics, that's why I cant help much.  The site is slowly dying , as most of us are old now, and younglings don't care much about this hobby. Hey I'm still amazed on how mame still gets updated it. I remember when I thought after mame .99 it was gonna be mame 1.0 but no.

[Ond]

I'm a little bit shy but I'll try and work up the courage to post something.

Bot views huh? well that explains those 6 digit views on some of my projects over the years, I always wondered about that...

This thread just tipped me past should I? / shouldn't I?

Too bad if you don't like a flurry of OND content, bots git ready...

[RandyT]

they don't want to deal with blowback from some of the cranky old farts.   

He's talking about you, Randy.

 

I resent that.  I'm only two of those things. 

[Fursphere]

I read the forum for in between meetings at work (So many f'in meetings...).  I generally either don't have time to respond, or don't have anything to add to topics.  I do read a good chunk of them though. 

[lilshawn]

I read the forum for in between meetings at work (So many f'in meetings...).  I generally either don't have time to respond, or don't have anything to add to topics.  I do read a good chunk of them though.

this is quite true. if I pop in during the day, (like now) it's during work, so i don't have time to write a lengthy explanation. if I remember (and these days it seems less and less) and I'm on the computer in the evening, I'll post answers to questions here. not a problem.

but the 1 or 2 minutes i have during work. not so much.

[RandyT]

Reminds me of the classic Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969). I still don't know if Bambi or Godzilla was in the right (or wrong), and I still don't care. If you haven't seen this movie then make a spare 2 minutes and grab some popcorn.

That vid reminds me of the old passage which said: "Blessed are the meek: for the earth shall inherit them".  I'm not up on scripture, but I assume that's what it said.

 

[Ond]

why is this tread titled "Too many BOTs replying?" . The OP is actually questioning the number of views by bots and the declining or lack of replies by real people. What does a bot reply look like? Can we see an example?

[lilshawn]

well, yes VIEWS...but by proxy the explanation involves those which can/will/able to reply.

yes the thread views are way up in numbers from the replies... but due to all the things we say here.

another thing contributing to view count is search engine scraping.

[Zebidee]

That vid reminds me of the old passage which said: "Blessed are the meek: for the earth shall inherit them".  I'm not up on scripture, but I assume that's what it said.

 

The earth shall inherit the meek when Godzilla washes its feet   

[Mike A]

01010100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110100 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101

[Mike A]

4F 6E 6C 79 20 75 73 20 72 65 67 75 6C 61 72 20 68 75 6D 61 6E 73

[Mike A]

01001001 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110000 01100010 01101010 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101110

[Zebidee]

01001001 01101101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 00100000 01101100 01100001 01111010 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000

[javeryh]

This is my all time favorite site, i don't build to many cabs anymore but I am still here every day to see if I can help something if I see something I can help, ill answer right away, but I'm not very smart an some topics, that's why I cant help much.  The site is slowly dying , as most of us are old now, and younglings don't care much about this hobby. Hey I'm still amazed on how mame still gets updated it. I remember when I thought after mame .99 it was gonna be mame 1.0 but no.

Same here. I love this site and talking about projects or ideas but it does seem like the younger generation coming up only cares about shoving as many emulators into one box as they can, which is boring as hell to me. But maybe I'm just one of the cranky old farts...