Controlling Access to the Forum

[JonT]

As many of you know, we are being regularly targeted by automated attacks which slow down or completely stop access to the forum and other parts of our site. I do what I can behind the scenes to fend these attacks off, but it is a thankless task. Fred and I are going to trial a change to the site which means that you may be asked to prove that you are a human before accessing the site. Once you have been asked to do this you should not be asked again for four weeks. If you switch to another device then you will probably be asked again. I am not sure how this will work with Tapatalk.

If this is all too painful then I will disable the check, but please let's have a trial and see how we get on. The alternative is to stay as we are and tolerate the attacks from time to time - I can't guarantee I will always be able to fend them off without disruption.

Please respond to this message to let me know how you are getting on with the checks, which should start this evening (Monday evening in the UK).

EDIT - This has now been enabled.

[Peter_S]

Hi Jon,

I passed!

Very easy process.

[JonT]

That's good to hear Peter.

Just as a pure comedy moment, I managed to fail the test (some weird question about spinning objects) and have now discovered that if you do so the address that you use to access the site is blocked permanently.

It looks like Tapatalk no longer works with this extra level of checking, which is not a surprise.

This may be a bit of a draconian approach I fear.

[Ian Bee]

On an android phone I can pack a suitcase, but apparently not drag a hexagon (a phrase I didn't imagine typing earlier today).

But I am logged in.

[FlbrkMike]

I’m able to log in but the meters I rowed today (about an hour ago) aren’t being updated on the meterboard. The note at the bottom says “next update in -145 minutes.”

[Mike Channin]

I managed to persuade it I was human

[JonT]

I’m able to log in but the meters I rowed today (about an hour ago) aren’t being updated on the meterboard. The note at the bottom says “next update in -145 minutes.”

It may be unconnected, but the Meterboard seems to be broken at the moment. When I look at it there is no data displayed at all. The Meterboard data is still stored on the server, but for some reason is not being displayed. I'm regretting making this change now.

[JonT]

I have removed the checking and the Meterboard is displaying properly again. I have no idea why fetching and displaying data from Concept2 was impacted by this change, but it looks like it definitely was.

Mike - what is your name on the Meterboard? Have your metres appearerd yet?

Sorry for any inconvenience caused folks.

[fkoene]

Not expected behaviour, the meterboard stopping. Definitivly strange.

[Wolfmiester]

I'm just really pleased to hear Peter is still human, good news.

[StvPitts]

Looks like there is still an anomaly with the meterboard this morning, at least for my own entry.
Meters rowed on Oct 13 are in the Oct 14 column, Oct 13 is showing no meters rowed.
Season total meters agrees with the C2 log, but the day mean number appears to have been calculated
with on less day than expected.

Not familiar with how the data is being retrieved and crunched from C2 to update here so can only offer the observation.

Steve

[JonT]

Looks like there is still an anomaly with the meterboard this morning, at least for my own entry.
Meters rowed on Oct 13 are in the Oct 14 column, Oct 13 is showing no meters rowed.
Season total meters agrees with the C2 log, but the day mean number appears to have been calculated
with on less day than expected.

Not familiar with how the data is being retrieved and crunched from C2 to update here so can only offer the observation.

Steve

Thanks for taking the time to point this out Steve. The Meterboard is not written as intuitively as it could be. Basically, if the board (or Concept2) is down for a period, the Meterboard catches up eventually, but places any meters that it has not seen before in the day that it found them rather than when they were rowed. This is because the tool just looks at your total meters stored by C2 and records any differences that it sees - allocating that difference to the day it found the change. This works nicely when you have people who do not record the data on the day they rowed it, but gives this odd appearance when the gap is because of a system issue which it has recovered from.

In terms of the mean number, I will take a look, but I suspect this is the age old debate about whether you count a day during that day or when it is complete. I can't remember exactly how the code works, but sometimes this does make things look like they are a day out.

Jon

[Peter_S]

I'm just really pleased to hear Peter is still human, good news.

Thanks Wolfie. I passed, but honestly, the bar was pretty low.