GGn: New Golden Rule: Scraping Ban

Quote:

Hey GazelleGames!

We'd like to announce a new golden rule that explicitly disallows automated scraping through apps, scripts, or other services:
Do not use automated services or scripts to scrape the site's HTML pages. Exceptions can be made for good reasons, but require prior staff approval. For automated access, we instead recommend using our API, the notifications system, or IRC channels.

Recently, we have increasingly noticed issues with people scraping site pages, sometimes with extreme frequency. This causes unnecessary strain on site resources, especially as many of the underlying reasons could easily be accomplished by other alternative services and systems we already provide.

Further, there has been an increasing issue with people using automated scraping solely to generate item drops. This is considered abuse and undermines our economy system. The items system is built to encourage and reward legitimate activity — not to be abused by automated tools through pointless activity. We want to be clear that such activity violates our golden rules and will accordingly result in serious consequences.

Alternative Options
For those looking towards alternatives, there are often better methods than manually scraping site pages. If you're looking for new torrent uploads, we have a notification system with a variety of filters to alert of any interesting new uploads. See the Notifications wiki article for an overview. Alternatively, we have an announce IRC channel that lists all new uploads and can be quite useful in conjunction with auto-dl filters, plus miscellaneous information announced in #gazellegames and #Log.

For other purposes, we have an API that enables applications to gather site information. While this system is officially still in beta, interested users can request an API key. The API can deliver a multitude of information, such as user information, conversations, information from torrents, and much more. Finally, we are open to suggestions of new systems or information to be added to our API. If you do have any ideas in that regard, please post them in the API Changes / Improvements thread.

Exceptions
Finally, we'd like to clarify that this new rule comes with two exceptions: It does not extend to scripts that enhance active and legitimate human activity and also doesn't apply to scripts that merely replace legitimate human activity that would happen anyway. For some specific examples, scripts that alter the information seen on a page, scripts that carry out multiple activities on a page with a single click, or scripts that open a game's page you wanted to look at all aren't an issue. Applications like jackett also aren't affected and can continue to be used for legitimate purposes. With that said, we encourage use of our API wherever possible as opposed to other approaches.

GGn Staff