Gaming the EEVBlog forum?

[rolycat]

It would appear that whoever or whatever is doing this has shifted their attention to another negative feedback T-shirt thread.

This is currently at number eight in the top ten topics by views, which are climbing rapidly with just one "Guest" viewer.

At this rate within a few months all of the most popular topics on the forum will be about negative feedback T-shirts.

[Smokey]

Could it be related to someone linking an image?  Not sure how that would work but given there are other people selling that same design, could they just be using part of that page in their site somehow?

[ade]

I thought about that, but the images are actually on CloudFlare and should not increase the # of thread views??

Normally one can check the web log for http referrers but I don't know if that's available...

[Red Squirrel]

Apache logs might point somewhere, ex: if you see an odd user agent that keeps accessing that link.   Can probably grep it so you only see the log entries of that thread.   It might have a referrer too.


I don't think this could slow down the forum much though, depends how hard they are hammering that thread. 

Seems odd someone would do this though,   Hmmm is one of those batteriser topics in a top 10 page somewhere, maybe it's batteriser just trying to get other threads on top to get rid of the batteriser related threads from top 10, as it might cause it to show up higher on google or something.

[rolycat]

It could conceivably be an aggrieved former forum member trying to send a message - some 'negative feedback', perhaps?

There is at least one banned individual capable of writing simple scripts and given to childish acts of attempted retribution.

[miguelvp]

It could conceivably be an aggrieved former forum member trying to send a message - some 'negative feedback', perhaps?

There is at least one banned individual capable of writing simple scripts and given to childish acts of attempted retribution.

I will doubt they ( figuratively ) will promote Dave's products.
Embedded images on the forum do use the URL of the thread FWIW so I think it's just image linking.

 Edit: didn't check but are there images with a lot of views? even guest external views seem to count to the image view count.

Edit2: only a few of the images are attached (that's what I meant btw) but only one has over 4000 views, so that might not be it.

[rolycat]

If anyone is still interested, the "Negative Feedback T-Shirt Design Contest" thread has passed a million views, still with no satisfactory explanation for its popularity.

It is currently the second most viewed topic on the forum, and looks set to reach the number one spot.

[Galenbo]

...So is this the work of a bored script kiddie, an insidious cabal of T-shirt manufacturers intent on world domination, or just a bug in the forum software?

My guess is a tread on some forum for voluntary and professional victims of a self-declared minority.

[rsjsouza]

If anyone is still interested, the "Negative Feedback T-Shirt Design Contest" thread has passed a million views, still with no satisfactory explanation for its popularity.

It is currently the second most viewed topic on the forum, and looks set to reach the number one spot.

Perhaps it is because the audience googling for "T-Shirt Design Contest" is way larger than "Question about analog oscilloscopes vs digital oscilloscopes"

Or perhaps it is because of the answer to this quote:

Do these T-shirts help pull chicks?

They sure do!

[GEuser]

And there i was about to ramble on about me playing the S.T.A.L.K.E.R game and after reading the thread realizing I'd be way off topic .

But since I'm here the new electrical power/consumption meter says when I'm in a very active map (plenty of zombies and mutant/monsters) the computer pulls nearly 700 Watt , lucky i have a 1KW power supply in it ! , multiply that by many many hours over years .

No wonder i get large (for me) power bills .

[crispy_tofu]

Sorry for the bump, but the Negative Feedback T-Shirt Design Contest topic is now the highest viewed in the forum, with 1 428 366 views at the time of posting. Weird...

[System Error Message]

considering the web is filled with bots could they be messing up stats? Infected computers browsing the web looking for emails and so on.

[rolycat]

Three of the top ten topics by views are now bogus - and amazingly enough the latest addition ("My take on the DIY pnp smt feeder") isn't about T-shirts:

[EEVblog]

Perhaps someone is loading an image in the thread or something?
BTW, I have reported the T-Shirts on amazon, as I have registered as the owner of the EEVblog brand on Amazon I should have the power to do that now.

[ez24]

Three of the top ten topics by views are now bogus - and amazingly enough the latest addition ("My take on the DIY pnp smt feeder") isn't about T-shirts:

My theory is that it has something to do with three words:  T shirt contest

who doesn't like them   

And "DIY pnp smt feeder" sounds nasty