So I guess that is what "getting Fark'ed" means.

Apparently my recent post How do spammers work? was linked to by Fark (here is the link to the post).

While the person that posted it to Fark might have had the right idea, in that my post here was only meant as a means of discussing possible ways to disrupt that process, many people on Fark took it as I had offered some sort of absolute finality of a solution... which I haven't.
I merely wanted to open up a discussion.

That said, there was discussion and some interesting things were said, as were some amusing things - I appreciate it all - thank you to whoever posted me (to Fark) I guess.

In terms of what sorts of stats came of it, for those that are like me and curious of such events, here is a short rundown (I have a server at Pair Networks if it matters):
1) In the web console, the stats show that for yesterday's 24 hour period, while my server normally got 3,000-6,000 requests, got 152,000 yesterday.

2) Same console, the most I have transferred out in awhile has been about 175MB of data. Yesterday I transferred out 1.2GB.

3) Google AdWords shows that I normally get about 100 hits on there a day, and maybe 1-4 clicks which has never made me more than $3 in a day. Over a two 3 day span now, it shows closer to 20,000 hits, but only about 20 clicks (for a total of about $18).

What that means is that each month I could still handle 333 times the load that I saw - at least in terms of network bandwidth allowances before I start to get charged extra for it.
The processor seemed to be fine with it, which makes sense since the pages are graphically sparse and relatively small in size since they are as close to XHTML as MovableType 2.661 will allow (the "p" tags that it adds all over the place throw it off a bit).
Were this to happen to my training log site which is dynamic, it might have caused a larger server load - not sure.

Also, I run a few sites off of this server, so it is hard to say if all of those hits were on this particular site - but I would guess that 95-99% of them were indeed all here.

While I certainly in no way mind a Fark'ing like that, it should be relatively clear why some people hate/fear them. They have a tremendous impact on server load and more importantly bandwidth usage - but they have very little impact on click throughs on any ads.
That is all fine - the site is free and intended to be that way - I don't require that people click on the ads or even expect them to. They are there just as an attempt to recoup some of the server costs that I incur by having this site and others - so far, it doesn't even come close each month (which is fine because I use the server for a variety of things as well, including stock analysis - incidentally have a blog about that too which I have been so busy lately that I have neglected.).

Anyway - thanks to all that came by, it has been interesting to see. Hopefully some of you enjoy(ed) the site and stick around to contribute interesting ideas.

Posted by Eric at April 20, 2004 08:14 AM | TrackBack