[Groceteria]

I'm saddened to see that RetailWatchers.com has been hit by a DDoS attack and will not be coming back online. This board had a similar issue a few years ago that almost resulted in its demise, and I'm also dealing with fallout from a bot attack in my day job, so I know what a nightmare it is dealing with this crap.

Many of you will remember that Aaron initially established RetailWatchers as sort of a friendly alternative to this one: a place for discussions of current retail news rather than history. It ultimately became much more popular than this space. That was exactly what I had hoped would happen. I knew that discussion of current issues would draw a much bigger audience than discussion of history and that if I allowed this board to go in that direction, the history aspect (which was--and still is--my reason for having the board in the first place) would be overwhelmed and lost in the shuffle.

It's no secret that there's not a lot of traffic around here these days. This board is frankly not a high priority for me and apparently not for anyone else either. Part of that is self-inflicted; I've made new registrations more difficult because I got tired of deleting bogus ones. I don't post here much myself except to note new content on the main site (which is still a high priority for me).

That said, I don't have any plans to delete the board because there's so much great content here from past years. I also will not be opening it to discussions of current events. I have no interest in going down that path, and since I have no interest, I also have no incentive. It's not like I'm being compensated for this. But I make no promises that things will be more active in the future either.

If someone has ideas that do not involve moving into the land of current news and operations (that's not going to happen) or even if someone else has a really big interest in taking over here, I'm willing to listen. Barring that, I guess things will continue as they are until I'm not willing to deal with the logistics anymore!

But I think we'll all miss RetailWatchers and I really appreciate all the work Aaron put into it for so many years!

[Groceteria]

For the record, archived versions of RetailWatchers can be seen here:

https://web.archive.org/web/www.retailwatchers.com

[pseudo3d]

Apologies for possibly in the wrong forum, but I wanted to mention RetailWatchers (down since Monday) isn't coming back. DDOS service and webmaster didn't want to restore it. So, what's the best forum and "living archive" for sharing store news?

[Steve Landry]

I'm saddened to see that RetailWatchers.com has been hit by a DDoS attack and will not be coming back online. This board had a similar issue a few years ago that almost resulted in its demise, and I'm also dealing with fallout from a bot attack in my day job, so I know what a nightmare it is dealing with this crap.

Many of you will remember that Aaron initially established RetailWatchers as sort of a friendly alternative to this one: a place for discussions of current retail news rather than history. It ultimately became much more popular than this space. That was exactly what I had hoped would happen. I knew that discussion of current issues would draw a much bigger audience than discussion of history and that if I allowed this board to go in that direction, the history aspect (which was--and still is--my reason for having the board in the first place) would be overwhelmed and lost in the shuffle.

It's no secret that there's not a lot of traffic around here these days. This board is frankly not a high priority for me and apparently not for anyone else either. Part of that is self-inflicted; I've made new registrations more difficult because I got tired of deleting bogus ones. I don't post here much myself except to note new content on the main site.

That said, I don't have any plans to delete the board because there's so much great content here from past years. I also will not be opening it to discussions of current events. I have no interest in going down that path, and since I have no interest, I also have no incentive. It's not like I'm being compensated for this. But I make no promises that things will be more active in the future either.

If someone has ideas that do not involve moving into the land of current news and operations (that's not going to happen) or even if someone else has a really big interest in taking over here, I'm willing to listen. Barring that, I guess things will continue as they are until I'm not willing to deal with the logistics anymore!

But I think we'll all miss RetailWatchers and I really appreciate all the work Aaron put into it for so many years!

Thank you David for this information.

Just so you know, I visit your wonderful site everyday except for out of town situations.

And, I will always do so.

Appreciate all you do.

[Super S]

I liked having the two separate forums. I have also noticed that this one slowed down a bit, but I still do check in here as well.

With that said there is a lot of change taking place in the current retail world, and in some ways it is "history in the making"

I hope this board sticks around. I have watched as some other forums I once frequented have transitioned to social-media based platforms and the quality of those fell off to a point that they were no longer worth visiting.

[Groceteria]

Thanks for these thoughts. I'm glad there are a few folks who still find the board interesting.

I agree 100% that a current events forum is important. I just have no desire whatsoever to be the one creating and running it. The content on the main site is my big priority now, not the message board, so adding current news discussions here (and adding a lot of extra work in the process) is not an option, particularly when it's not an area that matches my interest.

That said, I'm happy to offer whatever help and advice I can to anyone else who might want to take on a new message board! Anyone?

[Alpha8472]

I am shocked. It was a great place to talk about retail. I don't know of any other forum with so many experienced current and formet retail workers. It was a great source of knowledge.

[bryceleinan]

I was halfway tempted to see what it would take to resurrect RetailWatchers and have a few of us help Aaron out.

[Groceteria]

It would not be terribly difficult to set up a new board. Assuming Aaron still has access to the SQL file that drove it and would be willing to share that, it would probably even be feasible to restore the old posts and user accounts. I’d be happy to help with the initial setup, if someone else wanted to run it, host it, etc.

Like I said, above, I’m a little ambivalent even about this board, and there’s no way I’m willing to take on managing a busier one that’s a little outside my real interest area. But I’d definitely like to see RW come back to life somewhere.

[storewanderer]

It is very disappointing how the site was a DDOS attack target. Why? The site did not sell anything. No benefit to target it.

I just hope other grocery related sites are not targeted too.

[Groceteria]

DDoS attacks (or bot attacks in general) don’t care about content type. In many cases, the attack is coordinated AI trainers, and the main thing they’re looking for is a very text-heavy site. That’s probably why library sites have been so heavily targeted as well.

Ransomware and data breaches are a whole different ballgame from DDoS and bot intrusions.

(BTW, I have merged the two RetailWatchers threads into one.)

[bryceleinan]

I was going to mention that something like Cloudflare has a free edition, and it’s not terribly hard to setup in front of PHPBB from what I was reading.

[storewanderer]

DDoS attacks (or bot attacks in general) don’t care about content type. In many cases, the attack is coordinated AI trainers, and the main thing they’re looking for is a very text-heavy site. That’s probably why library sites have been so heavily targeted as well.

Ransomware and data breaches are a whole different ballgame from DDoS and bot intrusions.

(BTW, I have merged the two RetailWatchers threads into one.)

This makes sense- it was definitely a text heavy site.

Are there ways to present/archive text differently to mitigate potential of these attacks? Like converting text postings to images? Or can the systems also OCR the text from the images?

[Groceteria]

Are there ways to present/archive text differently to mitigate potential of these attacks? Like converting text postings to images? Or can the systems also OCR the text from the images?

Not really. Creating images would be a huge srver burden and would render the site almost unusable because the images would take so long to load. Plus it would be completely inaccessible to visally impaired people using screen readers.

Cloudflare is really the best solution right now (and it has issues as well). It's what feeds you those "just a minute, checking to make sure you're human" prompts that you see on so many sites now.

[storewanderer]

Are there ways to present/archive text differently to mitigate potential of these attacks? Like converting text postings to images? Or can the systems also OCR the text from the images?

Not really. Creating images would be a huge srver burden and would render the site almost unusable because the images would take so long to load. Plus it would be completely inaccessible to visally impaired people using screen readers.

Cloudflare is really the best solution right now (and it has issues as well). It's what feeds you those "just a minute, checking to make sure you're human" prompts that you see on so many sites now.

Makes sense, image thing is a terrible idea then, basically un-workable.

Those prompts that do the check are quick and just add a brief time period to accessing sites.