Has there been an 'upgrade'?

I've viewed four threads so far this morning, and have received a Cloudfare robot check three times so far. That's been fairly typical of the last few days.

It seems to be related to how fast I move around the site. If I move around too quickly I apparently look like a robot.

If someone within TSR hasn't "tweaked" any settings to cause this, then someone at Cloudfare has.

Yeah it looks like you have to wait a couple seconds (at least for me) before you move around different parts of the site and you don’t get the pop-up.

This works for me waiting at least ~5 seconds between each click then I’m able dodge the popup.

I think that I’ll need to do this until further notice as I’m kind of getting sick of the popup on ST2.

As am I. It's not always "hands off" either. I often need to click "I am not a robot", then wait whilst it refreshes a few more times; it then asks again, and only on the second or third time decides I'm human.

It's also far more likely to appear when I'm using the web site from my mobile than from my laptop, from the experiments I've done. I suspect we're stuck with it for at least the next week or so, as there's going to be nobody around to fix it.

I normally don’t consciously wait a few seconds before clicking something else again.
When I do consciously wait a few seconds, I’m able not to get the popup and if I get it again, it’s only because I was too fast and forgot to wait a few seconds.
So your theory of people being too fast might be true because when I slow things down, I’m able to dodge the popup.

Wouldn't this have been noticed before now?

Wouldn't this have been noticed before now?

It seems likely that something has changed, triggering this behaviour. For example, if a web site is being hit 10 times a second by a particular IP address then it's reasonable to conclude that it's a robot at the other end rather than a human user. But what about being hit 10 times in 10 seconds? That could be a human user clicking a link, scanning a message, then clicking another link, etc. in rapid succession.
It's likely that Cloudfare (or TSR) has tweaked the threshold at which the speed of usage implies the user is a robot. So one has to use TSR at a slower-than-normal rate to avoid breaching this threshold - a threshold which has only recently changed.

If someone within TSR hasn't "tweaked" any settings to cause this, then someone at Cloudfare has.

To be fair, I've also had my suspicions on that one 😮

Confirmation was given to me on 17th December that the cloudflare had been stepped up for a reason. I don't think I am able to share that reason publicly but it seems odd that we have communication suggesting the opposite.
I hope, the post on the previous page saying "nothing has changed recently that would impact performance in that way" is referring to the other issues ReadingMum has listed, including typing lags and the survey of doom reappearing constantly. Not the cloudflare issue.
I've had a lot of cloudflare checks too, I've had the survey of doom once but then I have changed wifi location which I assume is what's responsible in my case. The typing errors I haven't seen.

The cloud fare issue yes (dozens and dozens of times a day), and I’m being asked to fill details about my educational status daily (on the old version of TSR that I’m on).
I refuse to fill in the details about my educational status and

Hi. When you say the old version of TSR do you mean you are seeing this popup asking for data on older pages? I'm looking into the newer version on the react thread pages to check if there is a problem with that but just wanted to check if you mean this one?

I assume old version of TSR means ST2

Cloud flare robot check every day.
I answer that I am a parent to the purple questions most days. Typing lag is not currently happening but was bad a couple of days ago - I could enter a whole sentence, one finger typing on my iPad, before I could see anything

Hey folks, sorry about the Cloudflare gate. We had an unreal amount of bot traffic in the run up to Christmas so you might have been unlucky enough to be sharing an ISP with the troublemaker. We've relaxed the rules again now so hopefully it makes things smoother especially for those still on ST2.

Is there any chance in the future of clearly announcing when you do this? Clicking "Im not a bot" isnt anywhere near to what happened last year, but this "often" occurs with replying to a thread and the reply disappears so its either typing out the reply again or not bothering. Ive done the former, but getting close to the latter.

Hi. We haven't changed anything that would make the parent/student data popup show more frequently. There is a cookie that should mean it only shows at most once a week but if you log in on different devices/browsers or clear your cookies then you would see it more frequently than that. I will ask the dev team if there is anything we can do about this since I know its not the intention to show it users every day and understand it must be very annoying!

Hi. When you say the old version of TSR do you mean you are seeing this popup asking for data on older pages? I'm looking into the newer version on the react thread pages to check if there is a problem with that but just wanted to check if you mean this one?

Hi. We haven't changed anything that would make the parent/student data popup show more frequently. There is a cookie that should mean it only shows at most once a week but if you log in on different devices/browsers or clear your cookies then you would see it more frequently than that. I will ask the dev team if there is anything we can do about this since I know its not the intention to show it users every day and understand it must be very annoying!

I also seem to be getting the cloud fare verification way less on mobile in the UK compared to if I’m abroad (in the EU), is that normal? We’re talking exponentially less (from 50-100+ times a day to like under 5-10 times a day on ST2).