# API/scraper policy



## Eevee (Jul 11, 2011)

FA doesn't have an APIâ€”that is, there's no mechanism for third-party software to get at FA data and do anything useful with it.  With FA being the biggest furry art site, this kinda blows.

Despite this, some tools have been created in the past that relied on scraping information directly out of HTML.  Dragoneer has historically objected to these on the grounds of bandwidth or something.

Recently our favorite furi imageboard crafted a thing that will download an artist's entire FA gallery automatically.  yak quietly made some trivial change to break the program, which can quite easily lead to an arms race of breaking and fixing.  The ensuing questioning by Pi can be summarized as follows:



			
				#furaffinity-dev said:
			
		

> <Pi> why are you so obsessed with blocking scrapers when you have so many more issues you should be concerned about
> <Pi> why do you consider "people download things from the site" to be such a major issue that you are going out of your way to stop it
> <yak[work]> because I can? there is no technical reason for this. i don't like them, i block them.



Two obvious questions follow:

Is it, in fact, such a problem for users to be downloading art from FA?  I could swear that someone on staff recently claimed FA has bandwidth to spare, but I'm not sure.  There's never been any real word on this, just the familiar disapproving frown from Dragoneer.
What authority, precisely, does yak have?  I've asked him this several times before and he can't give me a straight answer himself.  He's claimed to be leading the project technically, but nearly a year later still says he can't bring on developers or that other things are blocked by higher-ups.  He freely breaks third-party functionality, but some mysterious other staff member went around him to install the cache that messed up logins recently.

So, as usual: what is going on?


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## Pravda (Jul 11, 2011)

It's also a little disheartening that people who _ask questions_ get faced with this condescending, sullen, "we don't have to talk to you about anything" attitude. Bad PR, guys.


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## Aden (Jul 11, 2011)

I'd really like to hear some detailed scenarios for bandwidth usage if scrapers became a common thing, because I'm still not personally convinced that it'll hurt the site that much. Can some more technically-inclined people weigh in? FWIW, I posted my thoughts in the private forum:



			
				Aden said:
			
		

> The thing is, I don't think it'll hurt the site's bandwidth too much. Let's look at two cases:
> 
> 1. Someone uses a scraper to snatch someone's gallery. This means that the script goes through each submission within the specified parameters and grabs each image file. The requests are nearly concurrent, so there's a spike in bandwidth usage for a small time until the images are downloaded.
> 
> ...


 
How right/wrong am I? The unknown thing we'd have to take into account is how much more likely someone would be to snatch an entire gallery if these tools became widely available and the ensuing bandwidth hit. I don't even know where to start.


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## Lobar (Jul 11, 2011)

As soon as I heard someone had written a gallery scraper I knew this was going to be exactly how FA would respond.


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## Xenke (Jul 11, 2011)

I don't understand why someone would want to indiscriminately want to scrape someone's whole gallery in the first place, but whatever.

If it's written in a way that isn't a detriment to the servers, then whatever.

However, if what Aden said is right and it does cause a spike in bandwidth, than I can see how it could be used as a tool of mass denial.

EDIT: Keep in mind, my opinion in the matter is largely uneducated.


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## Lobar (Jul 11, 2011)

Xenke said:


> I don't understand why someone would want to indiscriminately want to scrape someone's whole gallery in the first place, but whatever.
> 
> If it's written in a way that isn't a detriment to the servers, then whatever.
> 
> ...


 
Saving all the images in a user's gallery is going to be the same hit on bandwidth regardless of whether it's done manually or by an automated script.  The script just makes it much easier to do.


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## LizardKing (Jul 11, 2011)

Aden said:


> How right/wrong am I? The unknown thing we'd have to take into account is how much more likely someone would be to snatch an entire gallery if these tools became widely available and the ensuing bandwidth hit. I don't even know where to start.


 
Mostly right about the downloading. While the page HTML still has to be downloaded to get the download link for the required piece itself, the thumbnail/avatars/ads/etc can all be skipped. Since the item in question could be anything from a 12kb PNG to a 9mb Flash file, and an uncertain number of avatars, it's hard to quantify just how much of a saving that is.



Xenke said:


> However, if what Aden said is right and it does cause a spike in bandwidth, than I can see how it could be used as a tool of mass denial.


 
That's a non-issue. Just downloading a few million copies of the FA front page or whatever would be equally effective, and easier to program.

Edit: Unless you mean _accidental_ tool of mass denial. That would depend on FA's current load and how popular such a tool would be I guess.


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## Pravda (Jul 11, 2011)

Bandwidth isn't even a concern that yak _brought up_. He just "doesn't like" scrapers and that's that. Thankfully, he was "working on" some other part of the code and could stop this one in time. 

He seemingly refuses to say _what_ part of the code he was working on when this came up. Meantime:

<Pi> have you fixed your whitescreening? have you fixed your filesystem layout? have you fixed any of the CSRF holes?
<Pi> if you have, why are you keeping the world in the dark?
<yak[work]> failing to establish the individual task's worth in effort, and comparing them as if they are qeual.

This is the last thing he's said on the IRC channel, even though there's still a few more questions left standing. So yeah, great attitude there. "all of our actual problems require too much effort to fix", and then dropping to complete silence.


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## Xenke (Jul 11, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> That's a non-issue. Just downloading a few million copies of the FA front page or whatever would be equally effective, and easier to program.


 
Figured as much. I've never really had any interested either way in learning internet maladies.


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## Verin Asper (Jul 11, 2011)

awww, I was gonna use it when my fave artist who tends to clean their gallery every once in a while. D=


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## CerbrusNL (Jul 11, 2011)

Lobar said:


> Saving all the images in a user's gallery is going to be the same hit on bandwidth regardless of whether it's done manually or by an automated script.  The script just makes it much easier to do.


 Exactly.
So more users will be downloading entire galleries, instead of just a favourite every now and then.

"Hey, I've never seen this artist before but his art looks like it could be interesting" *Downloads entire gallery*


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## Accountability (Jul 11, 2011)

This is a trivial thing to be blocking since it's pretty much impossible. Seriously. Ask YouTube how well they've blocked downloader scripts.

Glad to see priorities are in the right place as usual.


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## Pravda (Jul 11, 2011)

CerbrusNL said:


> Exactly.
> So more users will be downloading entire galleries, instead of just a favourite every now and then.


It has yet to be demonstrated, or even brought up by the responsible parties, that this is _actually a problem_. Yak literally has a knee-jerk reaction: "i don't like scrapers because".

Meanwhile, your disks are full. Great job with your priorities there.


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## Verin Asper (Jul 11, 2011)

CerbrusNL said:


> Exactly.
> So more users will be downloading entire galleries, instead of just a favourite every now and then.
> 
> "Hey, I've never seen this artist before but his art looks like it could be interesting" *Downloads entire gallery*


 it also has ties to 
"Well crap, the artist I like is deleting their whole gallery soon" *Downloads entire Gallery*
I have seen some Scrapers that allow folks to download specific images after going thru their gallery though but it doesnt matter you guys even block those.


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## Eevee (Jul 11, 2011)

Neither of my questions were about bandwidth.  :V  Honestly the one about yak's power was far more interesting.


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## CerbrusNL (Jul 11, 2011)

Crysix Fousen said:


> it also has ties to
> "Well crap, the artist I like is deleting their whole gallery soon" *Downloads entire Gallery*
> I have seen some Scrapers that allow folks to download specific images after going thru their gallery though but it doesnt matter you guys even block those.


 I agree there's advantages to having a scraper, but how often will a artist delete a entire gallery?

Any way, are you familiar with FAExtender? A Firefox addon?


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## Diocletian (Jul 11, 2011)

CerbrusNL said:


> I agree there's advantages to having a scraper, but how often will a artist delete a entire gallery?
> 
> Any way, are you familiar with FAExtender? A Firefox addon?


 
Might I ask if you or another staff member have passed this thread on to Dragoneer and yak so the question about Yak's power and whether or not scrapers are allowed can be answered?

Since it has been mentioned that Dragoneer rarely looks at the forums and yak very rarely seems to post nowadays.


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## Verin Asper (Jul 11, 2011)

CerbrusNL said:


> I agree there's advantages to having a scraper, but how often will a artist delete a entire gallery?
> 
> Any way, are you familiar with FAExtender? A Firefox addon?


 One artist I know...every 3-4 months
on other artist...eh...every 2 out of 3 times they get moody and think their art is horrible or get angry at sites like e621 having their art on there....those though are dangerous as they wont inform you that they deleted their gallery till AFTER
and yes I know of it, but again mass gallery beats individual :V


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## Eske (Jul 12, 2011)

Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't these types of scripts also be useful for things outside of downloading entire galleries?  Such as gathering stats and data on the FA population (i.e. collecting the names of who each user watches, favourites, etc)?  I have seen scripts like these used for pretty epic things (ever wanted to have artwork or artists suggested for you, based on who you watch and what you favourite?).  I have no interest in downloading galleries, but stats are always fun.  

Now on to the srs bsns.  I'm probably going to regret this, but I'll regret it more if I don't say anything.

Honestly, I am pretty shocked with what Yak said in the first quote.  Is this the way staff members truly feel -- that FA's site users mean absolutely nothing to them?  This is something the community obviously wants, and you're denying it "because you can"?  I'm honestly trying to see how this quote might perhaps have been taken out of context, or something like that.  _Really?_



			
				pravda said:
			
		

> It has yet to be demonstrated, or even brought up by the responsible  parties, that this is _actually a problem_. Yak literally has a  knee-jerk reaction: "i don't like scrapers because".



Precisely.  The whole idea that 'if these scripts became available, more people would use them' is certainly viable, but as far as I am aware it is also just a theory at this point.  We don't know _how many_ more people would use them.  It seems to me that FA is just afraid of what _might_ happen, based on conjectures.  Wouldn't it be possible to run a trial, allowing the scripts temporarily, in order to test the community and the effect on the bandwidth?  If it gets unmanageable, they're on the chopping block, again.  Has this already been done, or is FA's bandwidth in such a critical condition that we can't have even a slight temporary increase in use?

Or, as the more cynical side of me suggests, is it just too much work to bother with?  If that's the case, why are there not more staff members to help out?  I know this has been a problem for a long time -- yet I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to help, even as volunteers.  If it meant making the site run smoother, why not?  

The main problem here is that FA's users are left in the dark _a lot_.  So how about at least just hiring a PR staff member, who can tell us what the hell is going on and why?   At this point I'm guessing it's because, as a few have already hinted at, there's virtually no communication between the staff members themselves.

Again, please excuse any and all ignorance of mine with regards to the way these scripts work or the way the site's run.  This is just what I see, and my reaction to that.  If anyone can correct me, please do.  I'd honestly rather not keep believing that the staff members are this apathetic to us.


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## Dragoneer (Jul 12, 2011)

CerbrusNL said:


> I agree there's advantages to having a scraper, but how often will a artist delete a entire gallery?
> 
> Any way, are you familiar with FAExtender? A Firefox addon?


FA Extender is an approved add-on for FA.


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## Dragoneer (Jul 12, 2011)

Diocletian said:


> Might I ask if you or another staff member have passed this thread on to Dragoneer and yak so the question about Yak's power and whether or not scrapers are allowed can be answered?
> 
> Since it has been mentioned that Dragoneer rarely looks at the forums and yak very rarely seems to post nowadays.


 Yak has the right to block any scraper that is not brought forward to the staff to be approved, especially given we've seen some scrapers that were less than elegant and tried to scrape the entire site on a daily basis. Blocked unless they seek approval and let us verify the script, what it does and the reasonings for doing so.


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## Eevee (Jul 12, 2011)

Eske said:


> Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't these types of scripts also be useful for things outside of downloading entire galleries?  ...


Yes, and this is more of what I had in mind when I said "API".  We've already seen a few scrapers that only collect stats; there was some popularity-whoring thing a while ago, for example.




Eske said:


> Honestly, I am pretty shocked with what Yak said in the first quote.  Is this the way staff members truly feel -- that FA's site users mean absolutely nothing to them?


Oh man you will just _love_ this thread.




Eske said:


> I'm honestly trying to see how this quote might perhaps have been taken out of context, or something like that.  _Really?_


yak has accused Pi of this a couple times, so for the sake of completeness, the entire conversation was as follows:


			
				#furaffinity-dev said:
			
		

> 09:41 < Pi> yak[work]: it's cute that you seem to have a lot of time to dedicate to messing with scrapers, but not much time to dedicate to polishing up your code so it's publishable?
> 09:41 < Pi> (http://lulz.net/furi/res/1643888.html)
> 09:43 < kay> heh
> 10:20 <&yak[work]> assuming my my hands are in the code all the time, it doesn't take a significant amount of effort to add a whitespace to the template to break someone's regex
> ...



It went on for a bit, but yak didn't respond further.




Eske said:


> Wouldn't it be possible to run a trial, allowing the scripts temporarily, in order to test the community and the effect on the bandwidth?  If it gets unmanageable, they're on the chopping block, again.  Has this already been done, or is FA's bandwidth in such a critical condition that we can't have even a slight temporary increase in use?


ACTUALLY, I just looked this up: FA has 250 Mbps bandwidth, with _no cap_.  That is, they can use as much as they want per month, but combined download speed can't be more than 250 Mbps at any given time.  So worst case scenario is that the site gets slower, _if_ they're already using that much; there's no possible risk of having to shut the site down or fork out more cash.




Eske said:


> If that's the case, why are there not more staff members to help out?


My best guess is that Dragoneer has severe trust issues, including not trusting his existing staff enough to delegate e.g. hiring decisions to them.  The same often extends to technical matters.  But this is wild, wild conjecture.


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## Dragoneer (Jul 12, 2011)

Eevee said:


> My best guess is that Dragoneer has severe trust issues, including not trusting his existing staff enough to delegate e.g. hiring decisions to them.  The same often extends to technical matters.  But this is wild, wild conjecture.


 I have trust issues, yes, and anybody in my position would as well. That said, we're working towards bringing some new talent on soon.


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## Eevee (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> Yak has the right to block any scraper that is not brought forward to the staff to be approved, especially given we've seen some scrapers that were less than elegant and tried to scrape the entire site on a daily basis. Blocked unless they seek approval and let us verify the script, what it does and the reasonings for doing so.


Okay, thank you.  For reference, this is called a bot policy and it is a thing you write down somewhere so people *know it exists*.

That's a strangely defensive attitude for...  "letting" people download from your site, though.  And I'm still baffled about yak's actual role, since he made no indication of existing policy.


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## Pravda (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> Yak has the right to block any scraper that is not brought forward to the staff to be approved, especially given we've seen some scrapers that were less than elegant and tried to scrape the entire site on a daily basis. Blocked unless they seek approval and let us verify the script, what it does and the reasonings for doing so.


 
As per usual, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever, especially since you have published no _evidence_ for scrapers causing anything resembling a problem. Preemptively blocking things by making ad-hoc changes to your production site is just... wow.

Yak "has the right" to do whatever, yes, but he has no actual reason to be doing this thing. And I find it fucking *hilarious* that you demand the right to code review from third parties, but somehow it's inconceivable that YOUR OWN CODE needs to be reviewed.

My suggestion: Stop trying to solve the nonexistent problem of scrapers, and _let someone who understands what your problems are help to fix your broken site_. You recently _ran out of disk space_ and your users are _deleting their own content in order to "help"_. Your pet Moldovan has attitude problems, and some unknown party (I'm guessing Carenath or tsawolf) recently fucked up your site by flagrantly misconfiguring something important. Find some new technical staff, ffs.


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## kayfox (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> I have trust issues, yes, and anybody in my position would as well. That said, we're working towards bringing some new talent on soon.


 
Who, when?


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## Pravda (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> That said, we're working towards bringing some new talent on soon.


Just a reminder that we have been hearing this same thing, from both you and yak, in approximately the same phrasing ("we're working on it!"), for at least a year.

Who? When? What qualifications do they have? The last time I can recall that you got "new talent", it was a 12-year-old kid from the dominican republic.


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## Xenofur (Jul 12, 2011)

Hi, you might remember me as that guy wot does fchan.

I can actually give you guys an insight into what happens in yak's hindbrain, since i've gone through the same exact shit with fchan. See, in the beginning we used apache. And let me tell you, apache's default config is a piece of shit when it comes to dealing static content, i.e. images. That meant that we'd often have CPU loads of 50+ with NOTHING moving. My kneejerk reaction back then was:

"Oh god, we have too much traffic, need to cut down!"

I looked at server logs and saw there was a bunch of wget stuff in there, so of course, i cut that out! Added a bunch of filters to the server config to block certain user agents. This made me happy.

But the server still wasn't happy. So i looked at the log more. Aha! Lots of hits with referes from other sites, hotlinking! I cut that out and they vanished from the logs. This made me happy.

Over time i checked logs again and again and often would see singular IPs doing groups of hits on images only. Masked downloaders. I blocked them! Doing that made me happy. Again and again.

See something missing up there?

All i did just made me happy because i identified something, acted on it, and saw a result to my action. The server itself however never gave a damn, never ended up being more happy. I never realized that, so i remained happy and kept doing it.

The thing that solved the situation was when i changed the webserver and the server suddenly began IDLING even on high visitor counts. some time later i actually removed all the filtering and blocks and lo and behold ... nothing changed. Scrapers, hotlinking and whatever never made an actual impact in comparison to the load actual users create.

I know yak is a clever guy, but this is a trap even he is likely falling into here. He can take action on things with immediate results and gratification and he can keep doing it again and again and again. It doesn't really matter that it doesn't do any difference to the site's performance profile, since it gives gratification anyhow.


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## Pravda (Jul 12, 2011)

Yes, hence why I keep emphasizing the importance of _showing that scrapers are a problem_.

Meanwhile, it constantly amazes me how Dragoneer can latch on to the least important part of a conversation (FA Extender), answer it, think he's done a good job, and then disappear. Constantly amazed.


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## Eevee (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> I have trust issues, yes, and anybody in my position would as well.


Uh, no.  The entire purpose of your positionâ€”that of a _leader_â€”is to delegate responsibilities, which rather precludes having paralyzing trust issues.  A good leader is cautious, but you are paranoid.




Dragoneer said:


> That said, we're working towards bringing some new talent on soon.


...

Stop.  Just stop.  You keep feeding us this PR filtered sludge like we're going to think it means anything.  Human beings don't even _use_ the phrase "new talent".  You are not a big business, you are not a press release, you are a guy running a medium-size community website for quirky nerds.  You do not need to make semi-faux-formal handwaved remarks about Plans For The Future.  You are allowed to just tell us what you're doing.  But you never do.

And I remind you, yet again, that we have heard this before:


			
				#hackerfurs said:
			
		

> 16:11 < yak[away]> Just for a closing word, I'm preparing to go into the "project manager" mode as far as FA is concerned, so I guess *I'll be getting new people on and moving things forward*.



This is what I'm truly asking about.  Because yak said this on *October 16, 2010*.  That was nine months ago.  Nine months!  We as a species can _make a person_ in that time; why is it taking so long to acquire a person whom already exists?

December 17:


			
				#hackerfurs said:
			
		

> 09:50 < yak[away]> you don't have to tell me a lot of things aer shit, i know. not enough time to address everything, so baby steps
> 09:50 < yak[away]> in the direction of getting more people onboard
> 09:50 <@Pi> and every time people with the skill to fix your shit offer to help, they're turned away for political reasons
> 09:51 < yak[away]> and that's what i am working to change



April 27:


			
				#furaffinity-dev said:
			
		

> 12:06 < Pi> so how about that coding team you were bringing in
> 12:06 < Pi> in december
> 12:07 < Pi> or the code you were going to push out to someone ~trustworthy~ to have them look at it, that they never ended up getting
> 12:10 <&yak[away]> it didn't happen. many things went bad with both fa and rl, consumed most of the time. *deadline is still june*, by which I am supposed to fix fa enough to not be worried too much about it




_What is going on?_  Even from yak, all I ever hear is what's _not_ happening or what _will_ happen.  The present and past are continually shrouded in mystery.


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## Verin Asper (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> I have trust issues, yes, and anybody in my position would as well. That said, we're working towards bringing some new talent on soon.


 Since you used the term "New Talent" does that mean Yak gonna get replaced by someone whom is willing to do the job even if it means getting on your bad side. Cause it seems even Yak is stuck cause of your trust issues


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## Accountability (Jul 12, 2011)

Here's something from my personal collection of FA monitoring graphs n' charts:

http://i.imgur.com/gp6FV.jpg

The top 10 downloaders (addresses obfuscated, of course) in a 24 hour period between March 8th and 9th, which I believe was the first stable day following the March DDoS. A "flow" is basically a connection to the server to download anything from a complete page or a single file. I think _I_ can tell which ones are scrapers and which ones are people with too much time on their hands...


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## theLight (Jul 12, 2011)

Accountability said:


> Here's something from my personal collection of FA monitoring graphs n' charts:
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/gp6FV.jpg
> 
> The top 10 downloaders (addresses obfuscated, of course) in a 24 hour period between March 8th and 9th, which I believe was the first stable day following the March DDoS. A "flow" is basically a connection to the server to download anything from a complete page or a single file. I think _I_ can tell which ones are scrapers and which ones are people with too much time on their hands...


 
The problem with acting on something like that would be that if you were wrong, you could IP ban a regular user for no reason.


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## CerbrusNL (Jul 12, 2011)

Acc, your picture does not work for me.


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## Accountability (Jul 12, 2011)

theLight said:


> The problem with acting on something like that would be that if you were wrong, you could IP ban a regular user for no reason.


 
I understand that, my point was to try to illustrate that individual users can still use as much bandwidth, if not more, than people downloading using bots. If you're going to try to do anything, let people use bots but impose a reasonable maximum data transfer that if you go over, you get throttled. FA was doing this at some point (that's why this was a preset in their Cacti) but may have stopped.


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## theLight (Jul 12, 2011)

theLight said:


> The problem with acting on something like that would be that if you were wrong, you could IP ban a regular user for no reason.


 
Also, my comment on the app's bandwidth drains. (And I'd really like experienced python programmers to correct me if I'm mistaken.)
I open the pages for scanning using a library called urllib2. From what I understand of how urllib2.urlopen works, it's just grabbing the source of the page but downloads it into a little file object so it can be read locally. The only time I would actually be requesting anything of a large size would be submissions. Login cookies are stored for the entire session, so a use is only logging in once per entire gallery scrape, less POST requests.




Accountability said:


> I understand that, my point was to try to illustrate that individual users can still use as much bandwidth, if not more, than people downloading using bots. If you're going to try to do anything, let people use bots but impose a reasonable maximum data transfer that if you go over, you get throttled. FA was doing this at some point (that's why this was a preset in their Cacti) but may have stopped.



Always a good idea.


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## Dragoneer (Jul 12, 2011)

Eevee said:


> Stop.  Just stop.  You keep feeding us this PR filtered sludge like we're going to think it means anything.  Human beings don't even _use_ the phrase "new talent".  You are not a big business, you are not a press release, you are a guy running a medium-size community website for quirky nerds.  You do not need to make semi-faux-formal handwaved remarks about Plans For The Future.  You are allowed to just tell us what you're doing.  But you never do.


Yes, I am aware of that. I'm sorry if you felt the need to over-analyze my word choices, but I mean it all the same. We're bringing new people on to tackle the problem, and when we're ready to announce it we will.



Accountability said:


> I understand that, my point was to try to illustrate that individual users can still use as much bandwidth, if not more, than people downloading using bots. If you're going to try to do anything, let people use bots but impose a reasonable maximum data transfer that if you go over, you get throttled. FA was doing this at some point (that's why this was a preset in their Cacti) but may have stopped.



We were watching people, and found a few of the top downloaders were bots, and a few of them were just really enthusiastic downloaders. Hence why we never took action on people except in a few rare instances against accounts we found were bots (judging from sheer volume over a short period of time). We limited a percent of a percent who were downloading unreasonable amounts). Basically, the top 1 or 2 downloaders were downloading 10X as much over the next user. Only bots. We have enough bandwidth to support legitimate users or those not trying to rip the site or cause unnecessary strain. 

The amount of bots we throttled I can count on one hand.



theLight said:


> The problem with acting on something like that  would be that if you were wrong, you could IP ban a regular user for no  reason.


 Hence why we took action on bots, not users.


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## Rossyfox (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> I have trust issues, yes, and anybody in my position would as well. That said, we're working towards bringing some new talent on soon.


 
I am left curious as to what your test of trust consists of. Do you hook them up to an e-meter or something?


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## Pravda (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> Yes, I am aware of that. I'm sorry if you felt the need to over-analyze my word choices, but I mean it all the same. We're bringing new people on to tackle the problem, and when we're ready to announce it we will.



You're doing it again, Sean.  We are not interested in hearing what you're planning on announcing later. It is not useful to announce what you are planning on announcing later. You continue to make future announcements of possible plans, and in the process, don't actually accomplish anything.

Again, we have documented logs showing you've been planning on thinking about maybe possibly bringing on new people for _at least nine months_. Who _are_ these people? Do you have them and it's just taken 9 months to get them up to speed? (I'm going to suppose that you _don't_ have anyone lined up, but your PR filter keeps you from coming out and just saying that. It sure is a pity that you don't have several qualified and capable individuals offering to help out in #furaffinity-dev on furnet, right?)


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## Dragoneer (Jul 12, 2011)

Rossyfox said:


> I am left curious as to what your test of trust consists of. Do you hook them up to an e-meter or something?


 Lord Xenu would not approve of me giving away my methods.


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## Pravda (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> wacky zany xd reference


Again, amazed at how you can latch on to the most useless part of a conversation. This certainly explains a lot.


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## Diocletian (Jul 12, 2011)

Pravda said:


> Again, we have documented logs showing you've been  planning on thinking about maybe possibly bringing on new people for _at least nine months_. Who _are_ these people? Do you have them and it's just taken 9 months to get them up to speed? (I'm going to suppose that you _don't_  have anyone lined up, but your PR filter keeps you from coming out and  just saying that. It sure is a pity that you don't have several  qualified and capable individuals offering to help out in  #furaffinity-dev on furnet, right?)


 
This is what an admin said in another thread re bringing on some new staff (admins):



Arshes Nei said:


> I actually made the recommendations to forward   several people up from the forums to main site since month of June. [...] I'm not going to go into what the holdup is nor speculate.


 
http://forums.furaffinity.net/threa...-is-going-on?p=2616284&viewfull=1#post2616284

If new admins are being held up, then new technical staff must also be held up I imagine.

edit:

I wonder what the hold up with new technical staff could be. Perhaps the 'trust issues' have something to do with it, since that leads into lack of delegation and various other things.


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## Eevee (Jul 12, 2011)

Dragoneer said:


> Yes, I am aware of that. I'm sorry if you felt the need to over-analyze my word choices, but I mean it all the same. We're bringing new people on to tackle the problem, and when we're ready to announce it we will.


Word choice is a critical part of text-only communication.  In fact it's the *only* part of text-only communication, kind of by definition.  You use words that are vague and slightly obscurer than common counterparts.  They give a pseudo-official air to what you say without requiring that you actually say anything specific or useful.

Even just now, you say you're going to _announce_ something.  I can't recall ever making an _announcement_ for one of my own projects; I just say what I've done and what I'm working on doing.  Yet it's been said several times that new people are coming in, and you still just announced a future announcement about new people coming in.  I still don't know who they are, what's standing in the way, what's _been_ standing in the way, what needs to be done to clear those blockers, etc.  I just know that you're intending to do something you intended to do nine months ago.  Hell, even "I haven't gotten around to it yet" would be worlds more informative.

So the problem isn't the particular words; it's the strange state of mind I assume you must have to use those words.  What so strongly compels you to keep your users, your _community_, in the dark?


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## PaulCook (Jul 12, 2011)

Going on a little banning and deleting fit, Sean? I thought you said you'd try to do less of that in the future...


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## Armaetus (Jul 12, 2011)

I don't think that was warranted worth banning at all, I see nothing banworthy there. Jeez.

You can't just ban folks being overly critical of you and because shit's not getting done _nine months later_.

Seriously.


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## Aden (Jul 12, 2011)

>*Eevee*

What the hell?


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## greaseyote (Jul 12, 2011)

I swear I've seen this sort of thing happen outside of FA, at cons for  example where some incident happens and the gut reaction among staff is  along the lines of "Don't talk about the sex in the champagne room.  There is no sex in the champagne room. In fact, there is no champagne  room."

I'm thinking, this is just the way socially challenged  people (admit it, many furries are like this, including myself) handle  problems...


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## Lobar (Jul 12, 2011)

It's not like problems go away when you ban the people calling attention to them.


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## greaseyote (Jul 12, 2011)

Lobar said:


> It's not like problems go away when you ban the people calling attention to them.


 
What if your fursona is an ostrich? Head in the sand and all that... 

Not that it justifies this, but I can see how challenging Dragoneer's personal credibility could translate to a loss of revenue for the site, which would only exacerbate existing problems.


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## Verin Asper (Jul 12, 2011)

Was to be expected with neer showing up, now what will they feed us to justify their ban.
Just like how FA seems to prefering to annouce things on THIRD party sites, those folks will just keep on calling out on things off site to which folks would bring it on site.


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## theLight (Jul 12, 2011)

LOL. Oh admins, you so funny. 

That was seriously uncalled for. Way to reach a whole, new low guys. Criticism!? Pointing me out on my evasion tactics!? Oh no! *Banned.*


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## Verin Asper (Jul 12, 2011)

theLight said:


> LOL. Oh admins, you so funny.
> 
> That was seriously uncalled for. Way to reach a whole, new low guys. Criticism!? Pointing me out on my evasion tactics!? Oh no! *Banned.*


 I"m just amazed they just didnt ban all of us who were actively criticizing the site in this topic :V


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## kayfox (Jul 12, 2011)

Crysix Fousen said:


> Was to be expected with neer showing up, now what will they feed us to justify their ban.



They were previously banned or something.

Honestly I dont see how this is any different from going and whacking a hornets nest, you got a group of people who get really upset when you try to hush them up, much more than when you bullshit them, and ban them while deleting their threads.

Yeah, might not be a good idea.


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## Lobar (Jul 13, 2011)

kayfox said:


> They were previously banned or something.
> 
> Honestly I dont see how this is any different from going and whacking a hornets nest, you got a group of people who get really upset when you try to hush them up, much more than when you bullshit them, and ban them while deleting their threads.
> 
> Yeah, might not be a good idea.


 
More pertinent might be that the goal of everyone that just got banned was to _improve FA_.


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