The list of recent visitors to my blog reads:

abobbyuasday1523 aeveasshuze8545 bannaswift8532 bvelesyarkay5495 edurPaf eveaslttley1370 milesqdaka9263 robertosrancesay9473 veasyandext4015 velesywift9991

The registration process has evolved since the last time. Their linux-distribution is now:
KarolinafduDP or AndreasiuxYO or similar names. Not just one. Their countries vary but their occupation is also a country now... It looks like someone tests his account-creating bot with LQ.

My blog-posts, especially those last two which are of no general interest, find many fans in no time...

Is someone doing something? I wonder where these bots will finally find real “work” to do.

No more concerned about them, than about the other spammers or bots.

That same bot has been hitting this site for quite awhile now, although seems Jeremy has finally modified his spam filter to pick it up and stop the accounts created by it from posting spam it seems.

I'd be more worried about people creating sock puppet accounts and being allowed to keep posting with them - it's ridiculous how Jeremy allows that here.

Okay. I just wanted to be sure that I am not the only one who sees these accounts. On the other side, I know that – using a webdriver implementation – I could write a better bot...

It cannot be ridiculous what Jeremy does and how he does it. The word is really misplaced here. The time that I spend on LQ, I have been about 0 times (zero) victim of one such account or otherwise profoundly troubled by their action. That would have been ridiculous.

You will not tell me that I do something right that other people do wrong... but I do also not stop you from saying so.

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Nope, you're not the only one to notice that bot, Michael, not at all. Clearly whoever wrote the bot doesn't have much of an imagination given the same nonsense in each user profile of each of it's accounts, not to mention 4 or 5 digits tacked on to the end of nearly all of the usernames of the accounts created by it.

I presume this was addressed to jeremy and his (?) merry band of moderators. Seems to me various nefarious entities are eventually cleaned out. Maybe I have more toleration than some.

This what?

Me, I explained above that I wanted to know if the phenomenon is an old one or already been noticed as I can see these accounts only in my blog, where – statistically – nobody else will look for them. What other people address to Jeremy can or can not be on-topic in this thread, personally I believe to have expressed myself rather simply, this time, and – I hope – clearly.

Thanks for the information, I received further above. Now do not dwell too much on different things. Else I might ask how anybody could spend so much time in a place she/he does not like to spend time in. I am not (yet) in that mood, to ask.

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Getting back to the original Q:
Yes, I am. there's quite a few accounts that behave in weird ways, and if they had spam links in them I'd immediately be convinced they're partly or fully automated with no interest in human interaction whatsoever. Here's one recent example.
Yes, I am worried the bots are getting more and more sophisticated, and detection is getting harder and harder, and it's making the real humans feal alienated.

All but 2 “recent visitors” of my blog are bot-generated non-users. 1 had been banned for spamming. Remains 1 real LQ-user. Are we a minority, already?

Kind of a mixture of thoughts here.

Spammers, bots, and trolls are ineffective if no one pays attention to them.

Persons on this site are very adept at noticing them. So report them.

I get it that reports do not always result in a desired immediate banning. Sometimes their behavior needs to be fairly obvious to merit action on early instances of suspected bot behavior.

I didn't know that we could see who visited our blogs. My mixed thoughts are that I'm not sure I consider that highly important to me to know.

The ones that (to me) are most troubling are those who are CLEARLY spammers, who make one post, and have their home-page in their profile set to be some site for hair loss pills or essay writing services. They obviously don't know that those things aren't crawled by any SEO engines, but that DOES give them a valid account on LQ to post with, and if they come back in a month and edit their post to include those links, they WILL get into search engines, so they succeed.

Would be beneficial to see action against those posters at the outset. Something like removing those links from their profile, and a ban until they respond to the email/message asking why they're posting such things. That would prevent a bot from using that sock-puppet account, but a genuine user would answer and be allowed to continue.

Most, if not all, mods cannot do anything besides ban the user. They cannot edit profiles. They cannot address posts in forums where they do not moderate. When banning a user for spam or advertising, my preference is to remove all posts that I can, and I do so, but as mentioned I cannot remove posts in forums where I do not moderate and also cannot edit or remove the user and their profile entirely.

Either you're saying this, or from your post it is giving me the thought that their profile is still there and possibly any links they have included in that profile can be seen. I don't know if that's a true conclusion, perhaps if there are any examples of banned persons who still have a profile containing ads, this will be useful. (Understood that posting it here thus permeates their ad intent, perhaps re-report and also cite this conversation?)

People do report suspected spammers and it is helpful to see the reasons, many reporting persons do spell out those reasons, and explain where they see the advertising. Not defending any practices. Sometimes it is 100% obvious if the advertisements are for hair care, essay writing, or dirty sites. If their ad sites are for technical blogs or help. Sometimes it is a fine line. You for instance can have your own business and include a link for that in your signature or profile. So long as you're not touting that in technical threads, then I believe that is allowed under the rules for the site.

I'll point out that it is not a perfect world. If someone makes a report of this nature and they feel that it was ignored or overlooked, I'd suggest a PM to the sub-forum moderator(s) who should've done the evaluation, as well as Jeremy, if you feel that it was dismissed with undue haste.

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Okay.

I understand all of that.

What I do not like to say in a thread like this, even if it is my own: “The number of visitors of my blog is of a certain interest to me” – make that: would be. Currently I am deceived by the fact that this number does not convey any information, that folks who appear to have an interest in my blog are inexistent and those who are living people, are almost impossible to detect. I feel superfluous here. A bit more even, when I see my blog.

This may not be the attitude of many and does probably not even express an opinion, shared by some. That is, why it is me who started this thread and not anybody else.

I might decide to just stop being on LQ as one possible, logical consequence.

Fine and understood, and excuse the flippant opinion I voiced earlier, we all have different thresholds of tolerance as well as things each considers relevant.

Best I can suggest is to do the reports for known to you bots and again, if you feel reports are ignored, please use the Contact Us link or PM persons directly with your concerns. At the bottom of every forum main page lists the moderators responsible. Some not very active, hence the recommendation to pull in Jeremy if you feel there's a situation being ignored.

Obviously you can decide [what you wish], but I don't really think that will be based on those spammers. That is just not logical.