[Alex Pepple]

Dear Eratosphereans,

It has been verifiably brought to my attention that Google no longer appears to respect the no-index code that I had hardcoded into the workshop forums' threads (Metrical, Deep End, Non-Metrical, Translation, and Fiction).

I believe this is part of the new age of the AI race, with Google and similar companies ramping up their web scraping by several magnitudes to feed their data-hungry AI machines.

No matter—I've now done what I've always tried to avoid: implemented a members-only policy for viewing the workshop threads. In other words, only logged-in users can now view the thread contents. It's a drastic solution, but it should resolve the issue once and for all—especially by holding in check, at least somewhat, the floodgates of AI companies assaulting the Sphere with thousands of bots scraping it at any given time!

So, just remember: you now need to be logged in to view the contents of the workshop threads. This will also block Google and other indexing bots from accessing and indexing those threads. For now, this limitation applies only to users in the Unregistered/Not Logged In state, but it may be extended to unapproved new registrations if those begin to pose abuse problems.

Cheers,
...Alex