site traffic

Alex, thanks for bumping this thread.  It inspired me to take another look ...

paul wheaton wrote:Despite some server trouble yesterday, we hit a new record!

   1,519,915!

Not only did we set a new record on the 15th, but it is a substantial leap forward ...



   2,018,005!



The new server handled the load easily!  So that's nice.

Congratulations on passing the 2 million mark!

Alex Howell wrote:
That being said, there is also an enormous wave of bot traffic on almost all websites coming from Lanzhou, China (the company I work for is also experiencing this). It all comes from data-centers scraping data to train AI.....

As you showed though, there is an uptick in sign-ups and posts, so the forums are definitely getting more popular?
Just wanted to mention that the China traffic is, as you suspected, potentially not as exciting as one might initially think... Although maybe we'll generate a super permie AI that will go rouge and reshape the world someday!

Or whittle the attraction of forums to those who need/desire/make time for some sort of pseudo-human interaction.
Everybody pretty much just wants instant answers, simple.  
No thinking, scrolling, sifting or reading of irrelevance/opinion sporting factual clothes.