[Solved]: Preventing spam bots from distorting view counts?

[creativename]

I just installed the CAPTCHA plugin, but I also have an issue with spam bots terribly distorting view counts. Lots of images had very high view counts due to automated spammers (I wouldn't expect a bot to trigger a view count, but apparently they do).

Is there any way to prevent this from happening?

[Joachim Müller]

Hit counters get increased per visit, so you must have gotten a lot of visits. Some of those visits are of course created by bots and scripts, like search engine spiders, but of course by spammer bots just as well. If this bothers you, you'll have to convert the hits counter to make them JavaScript-driven, as those bots don't parse JavaScript. However, you're on your own with this - I suggest living with the increased hots counter or reset them manually instead.

[creativename]

OK thanks, I'll just deal with it then.

[creativename]

Oh, a related issue - spam bots seem to be corrupting the vote stats as well. I have no idea why a spam bot would want to do this (perhaps it's inadvertent), but many pics have high vote counts and very low averages (e.g. 0.06/5), I assume because of hundreds of extra '0' votes. Only the sum and number of votes seems to be tracked though so I don't know how to factor out the 0 votes. I don't suppose there's any way to figure out how many '0' votes there've been?

[Joachim Müller]

I don't suppose there's any way to figure out how many '0' votes there've been?

Only if you have enabled "Keep detailed vote statistics" enabled in coppermine's config. One issue per thread! Locking.