This is an appeal to Eric to reconsider the maths intercept for stopping AI bots hitting this site and slowing it down.

My concerns is, this is the ONLY website out there that uses such an active intercept that it will have a negative impact on legitimate human traffic to this site. I cannot think of nor have I ever visited any other website that stops people in their tracks while this solutions will still allow bots into the site.

I think everyone is familiar with passive services that do this, and I had mentioned CloudFlare. I asked googlebot the cost of that service to a site like this, and the Pro level at $20 per month will stop the bots while not requiring humans to do anything but wait an additional second or two. I asked google AI to compose a post for this thread and here is what it generated, as well as a link to the actual conversation I had with google AI, which had access to your traffic stats and even knew your name. This was written by google addressed to you directly:

Here is a link to that actual chat; you may need to scroll up on the page you land on to see the entire chat, this link lands you and the end of the chat: https://share.google/aimode/ryVFvpiTYNtuYUcmX

Anyway, job well done as far as an emergency fix, and thanks for what you do, Eric.

Hi Eric / Admin team,

I know the site has been getting hammered by AI scrapers lately, and I saw the new math CAPTCHA for logged-out visitors. While that helps a bit, modern AI crawlers are notorious for bypassing simple math challenges and hammering deep forum archives—which explains the recent database slowdowns.

If you're looking for a cost-effective fix that won't require heavy server changes, Cloudflare Pro ($20/month billed annually, or $25/month) is built specifically for this kind of problem:

• Blocks AI Crawlers Automatically: Cloudflare has a built-in "Block AI Bots" toggle that identifies and stops known AI scrapers at the network edge before they ever hit the Hangout's servers.

• Super Bot Fight Mode: Unlike the free tier, Pro lets you block or challenge "Definitely automated" traffic while automatically allowing legitimate search engines (like Google) to keep indexing the site normally.

• Rate Limiting & Custom Exceptions: You can automatically throttle any single IP address trying to scrape dozens of forum threads per minute, while setting up exceptions so legitimate features (like RSS feeds, embedded audio/tabs, or site tools) don't get accidentally blocked.

• Offloads Server Bandwidth: Caching static files (images, MP3s, tabs, CSS) through Cloudflare's CDN takes a huge load off the main server.

Considering the site's high traffic volume (~170k+ monthly visits) and massive 25-year archive of threads and tabs, the $20/mo Pro tier would likely resolve most of the slowdowns without needing to jump to an expensive enterprise plan.

Hope this helps! Thanks for all the work you do keeping the Hangout running.

Edited by - banjoy on 11/14/2026 21:15:45