From Woot Wiki

So Darkstar's Woot!-off checker has been prone to the Dear Jerkface problem since version 2.0 and the advent of woot's throttle. I released 2.1 to attempt to decrease the number of rogue fetches, which succeeded. The main problem I've run into is that the amount of traffic has worked against me.

Breakdown (these numbers are solely for demonstration purposes):

1000 users on the site at any given time

10 users hit at the exact moment after the cache expires

the script writes to a file to make sure no future fetches can refresh the cache. The problem is that with all 10 users hitting the site at the exact same second, all 10 attempt to refresh, thereby causing the Dear Jerface error.

I've made a few changes to the structure of the script when it checks the cache age. Instead of writing a new file and deleting it after it finishes fetching the cache it's keeping it and writing the fetch time to the file. There's a randomizer that changes when users that are allowed to refresh the cache read the aforementioned file containing the fetch time. Now that the read times for that file are staggered, it shouldn't allow all 10 to cause the script to fetch.

Will it work? We'll see. If you have any suggestions or alternatives, let me know. -- Darkstar 06:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to have worked. I released Darkstar's Woot!-off checker 2.2c a few days ago. The first guinneapig was mywoot.net. I tested it before releasing it during the March 27 woot!-off without a single "dear jerkface". - Darkstar 16:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)