Not again...
 

More bots... Why all the sudden is there a increase of bot activity?

I've been wondering the same. :/
There's been an insane amount lately.

Isn't there some way to block them from coming ?
Or at least limit the amount ?

With Crysandra closing we are higher on the search list.

i don't know but it seems that some of our moderators have not been noticing them so they stick around for a lot longer

We do our best, but obviously we can't always catch them right away. Once again, reporting them is the best way to make sure we see them!
-goes off bot hunting-

choco, they do notice them. its just that there are times when not everyone is on at the same time so that's when they appear the most. trust me on this one, try try to kill it asap when they get on and we have hard working mods
cause trust me o-o it could have been a lot worse

Also we ARE blocking them, but unfortunately they come from all over the world with no predictable pattern so we can't put out a broad-spectrum ban or else we'll block legitimate users. We keep refining our ban list every time we find a new source, but it's an arms race.

This could not be truer ^

> Several bots share one specific IP address in China.
> Mods ban the IP address.
> Bots make more accounts on several new IP addresses.
> Mods ban those too.
> Bots make more accounts changing the IP addresses every few accounts.
> Mods ban bot accounts/IP addresses as well as we can, and hire more mods.
> Bots make hundreds of accounts within days, changing the IP addresses anytime they want to.
> Mods go crazy banning.
> Bots go crazier making an insane amount of accounts.
> Mods lose our minds trying to keep up with all the bots.

And so on.

Thing is there have been times where the bots have over run the site and there have been mods on but no one has gotten rid of them until they are reported... I know this because I seen a bot that was in the merchant square that had only posted once and it was left there for over 14 hours, staff had been posting in that section to buy/sell things and it wasn't until I reported the damn thing it was removed but even that took 40 mins with two mods online.

I think I appear to be online even uf I'm AFK; that might be why. Also, I'm one of the very few staffers more often awake at 4am EST and 7am, and I'm way too out of it at those times to ban things even if I see them x___X;

You're complaining about 40 minutes? Our mods aren't computers, and we don't check our e-mail every ten seconds. 14 hours turnaround time isn't even that bad; I would consider anything less than 24 hours to be acceptable.

Also, keep in mind that we're only human. Sometimes I completely miss that a bot has posted even though it's sitting on the front page.