A little query please

[playmovictorian]

Good evening dear Friends 

I hope that you are all very well.

At a time when most of the online forums are much quieter than they used to be mainly because of social media, PF is doing very well with still a lot of guests visiting the website ie 353 as this post is being sent but who never ever post or interact in any of the topics they are viewing and I find this rather puzzling...

I can see that most of these visitors are viewing old topics very much like someone going through a library archive but without any interaction such as leaving a comment on that specific topic 

I hope that you will not mind me asking as I have noticed this going on for weeks now and I cannot make sense of it as so many members would be delighted to have someone leaving a thumbs up on a topic either recent or a decade old.

Wishing you a lovely evening !

Karim

[Birdie]

I think those are bots, not actual people.

[minuteye]

If a topic hasn't had any activity in a while, I feel a bit awkward posting on it. Like showing up to a party extremely late, I guess.

[playmofire]

Only members can post I think, not guests.

[Oliver]

If a topic hasn't had any activity in a while, I feel a bit awkward posting on it. Like showing up to a party extremely late, I guess.

I don't think there's any problem with adding to old threads

[Pynedor]

I think those are bots, not actual people.

They certainly are. This seems to come up every so often and, for example, was discussed a bit in these other threads:

https://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=1552.0
https://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=2404.0
https://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=4295.0
https://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=8314.0
https://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=17856.0

I can see that most of these visitors are viewing old topics very much like someone going through a library archive but without any interaction such as leaving a comment on that specific topic 

Most of the threads I listed above were posted more than ten or fifteen years ago, so while finding them I suppose I was in a similar situation! Then again, I'd imagine several of us probably look at older threads fairly often, especially with the significantly reduced posting in recent years.

[Klickteryx]

If a topic hasn't had any activity in a while, I feel a bit awkward posting on it. Like showing up to a party extremely late, I guess.

You mean everyone else is already drunk and couldn't care less when you showed up because they don't remember who was there at the start anyway?

[minuteye]

You mean everyone else is already drunk and couldn't care less when you showed up because they don't remember who was there at the start anyway?

More like "jeez, look at this nerd asking a question about mugs with loop handles! don't they know all the cool kids are into mugs with solid handles these days!"

Which is probably not going to be the vibe on a forum dedicated to love of a toy that first came out in the 70s...

[playmovictorian]

Good evening dear Friends 

We are 10/06 at 7.49pm UK Time and no less than 2368 guests are "visiting" old threads and from what I have checked all different ones...

Could it be that AI bots are revisiting forums to gather some kind of information but what for ?

This is a phenomenon that is affecting PF and Klickywelt in a lesser proportion but not Playclicks.

The same phenomenon affects British Expacts that I visit from time to time.

I wish I was able to find an explanation to this at some point...

Anyway, wishing you all a wonderful summer dear PF Friends 

Karim

[GrahamB]

As I understand it, and I don't claim to be an expert, web crawler bots automatically scan web pages, for example to inform search engines about what is out there. Pages are revisited periodically to check for changes. This has been going on for many years. It may be that such page visits are now better detected than formerly, so appear in website statistics, for example as 'guests'. If the page exists and access is not somehow restricted (as in the "dark web"), bots will find it and analyse it. This is a feature of the www, it's not necessarily sinister (though some bots are probably up to no good) and is something we cannot avoid, like pop-ups and requests to accept or decline cookies....