RIP

[milton]

This forum seems to be dead on its feet, far from the lively place it used to be.
Dying a slow death.

[JRW]

Too many aggressive responses, unfortunately.

[sydenhamgardener2]

It would be a real shame if this forum died off. The replacements - e.g. NextDoor and facebook are nowhere near as good. Nextdoor in particular is totally useless. Slow, terrible search, over moderated. Awful.

[danmarwil]

I have found a lot useful information in this forum but agree with the response regarding aggressive comments. I often don’t post or reply due to the almost inevitable paranoid diatribe that follows from a small minority.

I really enjoy living in the area in general though so would be good to see more action on here.

[admin]

If you flag up a nasty response to me, I'm more than happy to deal with it. Just report it, it's easy!

Just click on the exclamation mark above the comment and go from there

Best wishes

Your admin

[stuart]

I have found a lot useful information in this forum but agree with the response regarding aggressive comments. I often don’t post or reply due to the almost inevitable paranoid diatribe that follows from a small minority.

I really enjoy living in the area in general though so would be good to see more action on here.

There is still a lot of action in Sydenham. If you click on the 'News' link in the top menu you will find a daily Sydenham update. It would be good to get some follow-up comment here.

There is also a companion Forest Hill update for our friends from the North.

Stuart

[syd]

Hey I hope not! There has been some good work done on this forum my favourites are helping to get Nando’s and sorting out the monstrosity!!

[Nigel]

Just had a quick look at the various fora on this website - I’m actually quite staggered at how little comment there has been on anything about anything .
I agree with the points about NextDoor , definitely over moderated but I suspect more a reflection of society, and I use the term loosely - that and the soft clampdown on free speech that seems to be everywhere

I really don’t know what people are looking for this LR Amy other forum but it seems really easy to fall foul of a certain type person who seems to know best, values freedom but just not yours . Ive been suspended about 4 times for very modest and moderate posts that somehow breached “ Community guidelines “ . It would be a shame to see STF go .
A very good evening
Nigel

[JRW]

Hey I hope not! There has been some good work done on this forum my favourites are helping to get Nando’s and sorting out the monstrosity!!

When I was campaigning about the Monstrosity, I got what felt like an enormous amount of flack from anonymous posters, accusing me of making things up. I hope the current extensive rebuild of the facades from the foundations upwards shows that my safety concerns were not unwarranted .....

[syd]

Hey, I’m bumping this as I think we need to remember the power of this site and thank the mods and admin for their hard work!

[broken_shaman]

Maybe the fact that you get logged out when replying or can't make a new account on the site might have something to do with it? I posted about the account creation issue a while ago but had no reply to that either.

[syd]

Maybe the fact that you get logged out when replying or can't make a new account on the site might have something to do with it? I posted about the account creation issue a while ago but had no reply to that either.

Maybe the fact that you get logged out when replying or can't make a new account on the site might have something to do with it? I posted about the account creation issue a while ago but had no reply to that either.

Hey Admin, can you look into this ? I keep getting logged out too. It worked when I selected remember me

[stuart]

May I reply on the Admin's behalf. My company hosts the forum and is responsible for how you get to it. But not what happens on it!

The login problem arises because the forum is under continual attack. Hence the Cloudflare verification you see before you get to the actual forum. Every few weeks I lift the guard to see if the attack is ongoing. Within 24/48 hours it starts again with enough ferocity to make this and other users of the server unusable.

The way Cloudflare confuses the attack means that unless you tick the 'Remember me' checkbox on logging in your identity gets lost and you have to login again. This is a well known issue with this forum's software and Cloudflare. We have tried all the known dodges to get around including shifting servers.

So we are between a rock and a hard place. Why target STF you may ask? There are at least two possible explanations.:

AI Training: STF holds a huge and treasured set of nearly 150,000 posts over 20 years. Just what AI LLMs feed off. The less scrupolous AI companies of which there are many do not follow the traditional search engine etiquette of obeying the websites stated policy (through a robots.txt file) and search slowly and methodically so there is little impact on the server. Hence we and many other similar sites are hit by what is effectively a DDoS attack - from many sources which makes selective blocking useless.

Mailicious Attacker: Over the years STF has gathered a number of discontents who would like and in one case tried to bring STF down. You can now rent a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack to try and achieve this.

We can't distinguish whether it's and/or/neither.

BTW if you use LLM AI remember that it's usefulness or otherwise is based on largely stealing other people's work. Not to mention the environmental and fiscal costs. Please use it sparingly if you can.

Any questions or suggestions?
Stuart

[syd]

Hi Stuart, I’m happy to tick the box to post. I’m grateful we have a bot less place for real discussions thanks to you and the team! The rest of the internet seems like a miserable hateful place full of misinformation and deceit.

[alywin]

AI Training: STF holds a huge and treasured set of nearly 150,000 posts over 20 years. Just what AI LLMs feed off. The less scrupolous AI companies of which there are many do not follow the traditional search engine etiquette of obeying the websites stated policy (through a robots.txt file) and search slowly and methodically so there is little impact on the server. Hence we and many other similar sites are hit by what is effectively a DDoS attack - from many sources which makes selective blocking useless.

I'd suggest it's more likely to be this one: I moderate on another forum where Cloudflare is persistently being triggered, and the same is happening on other forums I visit, too. I'm not aware that my forum is being the subject of malicious attacks.