How does a mod get 2000 downloads in a single hour

Wow! Maybe some trending self-fulfilling prophecy thing? 4h and 5230 downloads of latest version and 5302 total downloads. And rapidly increasing as we speak! This is going from my least (though newest) downloaded mod to second most dowloaded instantly.
It's going viral! :)
I guess my other local mods that I like but never uploaded should get uploaded too... If they are must have for me then others light like them too as well.

I had a theory that someone was botting this mod to the top of the trending tab

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/hnsiqe/possible_botting_on_the_mod_page/

I've never seen anything near this amount of growth on a mod

Yeah it's a bit weird that it gets about 1/second consistently (for the seconds I tried refreshing the page). I can't stop someone else from downloading it though if that's what is happening.

It's been rising for 5 hours. If someone was downloading it manually they would have to be... very dedicated

I didn't suggest 1 single downloader doing it without a bot. I meant that it could be organic growth, many different manual downloaders instead of a bot. But the consistency is an argument against it.

I replied in the reddit thread.

14736 total now. Not updating any longer. But still #1 on trending. So the botting has stopped. I guess we can see what impact being on #1 trending actually has on downloads now, subtracting 14736 from total once it drops down far enough.

It seems to be getting around 4 per hour, which is respectable

Also I think it's good that this didn't end up overtaking handy hands.

It overtook ChunkyChunks and some other decent mods though :/
But I agree. And 4/h is like 10 times more than it got before "it was trending" and #1. But it being #1 isn't really boosting it that much now. Maybe only doubled it's actual user count.

LaboriousLaboratory and Artillery Combinator are a bit less interesting to me than InfiniteInventory though. Might let those up for adoption so I have time to maintain some new mods.

14774 after 18 hours. Still #1.

14809 after 29h. Still #1.
So 73 downloads. Not counting legit downloads while the bot was running.
So it got more legit downloads in slightly more than one nychthemeron without someone using a bot to download it, from being on #1 trending. Or what took 16 days from release. I would guess another 30ish legit while the bot was running for ~12h. Though it was nighttime in EU for most of it. For some reason the previous release (v1.1.1) went from 70 to 71 after v1.2.0 was released. Strange.

This is good information. I suppose trending wasn't as impactful as I thought.

15058 downloads, 6 days after the botting stopped. Still #1 on trending, but a trending score of 3.9k instead of 6.3k now (number 2 has 1.1k score).

I just pushed v1.3.0. So I guess we can kind of see amount of legit installs in a few days, from auto updates. It's still trending so some downloads will of course be fresh ones.

Edit: 472 downloads in 1h. 2800 downloads after ~3h. 3600 after ~4h.
Seems like it's getting 1 download after 2 seconds or something fairly consistently again...

It looks like its getting botted again

Yep :/
Same behaviour, started soon after update released, again. Similar consistent download interval of a few seconds.

Edit: 20h, 34247 total downloads. 19186 downloads of latest version. 13.1k trending score.

Now #2 on trending now, should drop down from first page soonish now. 34863 total downloads. 612 downloads of v1.4.0 that was released 8 days ago. I think maybe almost half of those were in the first 2 days or so, so actual users who updated.

Edit: not #2 because my trending score dropped. It's number 2 because #1 is being botted. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/hourly_autosaves/downloads

Now actually droppong on trending list. like #13 now with 740 downloads in 10 days of the latest version, 34991 total downloads.