You may have noticed that recently there have been intermittent issues with the FreeCAD forum. The main reason for this is that the forum is being repeatedly overwhelmed by AI scrapers. Obviously the FreeCAD forum is a valuable resource and we aim to make it as robust as possible.
We have taken several measures to mitigate these issues, such as user agent blocking. However this approach only works if the scraper reports as something other than a web browser.
These are widespread problems reported across many opensource projects. As such, if anyone is interested in researching these issues and potential solutions, or if anyone in the wider community has direct experience tackling AI scrapers, we’d love to hear from you.
Feel free to contact us regarding this subject via admin@freecadforum.org.
One response to “FreeCAD Forum Performance Issues”
Isn’t there a way to limit the amount of data served in time per ‘user’, or the number of links visited? Then again, while only defending, we will never win but always bleed. Think in terms of making the bot do damage to the owner, not profit; maybe it can carry a stink-bomb back home.
/tinfoil
those seem to be deliberate
/tinfoil