How many "guests" and post viewers are human?

[fat meloe!]

Whenever I visit there are always bingbots and baidu-spiders scuttling around. I wouldn't be surprised if other fancy software dominates the guest section or makes up a large proportion of post viewers.

Jools?

[Jools]

No, they don't count to the statistics. You have to be a logged in human to count. That said, there are 'bots all over the site most of the time, but all they do is suck bandwidth indexing pages.Some of them do provide value in terms of the feedback they provide.

Jools

[fat meloe!]

What about that spambot which posted an ad disguised with an aquarist's advice? I've seen spambots on other forums crawling around with their "mouths" taped shut as well, and they seem likely to fool the system into being real users.

[bekateen]

What about that spambot which posted an ad disguised with an aquarist's advice?

I suppose it's possible, but how do you know the spam wasn't written by a real human spammer?

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

Spambots don't get past the front door, otherwise we would have literally tens if not hundreds of them a day. We do have the odd human spammer which we delete and so don't count towards post / user numbers.

Jools

[fat meloe!]

Thanks, good to know