tigertom - 7:17 pm on Nov 24, 2005 (gmt 0)

Forgive me if this is a noob response.

Couldn't you let bots in for one day a week only, in the middle of the night, and ban them the rest of the time? This, combined with bandwidth-throttling, and a bad bot repellent script, would help.

Unlike most other websites, Bots will come back to WebmasterWorld time and again due to all the links pointing to it. So let them Monday in the early AM only, to get the latest pages.

And bar them from all save the latest pages using mod_rewrite.

Greedy pigs behave one way, polite visitors another. Must be some way 'round this.

Interesting problem. Wish I had it :)