Strategies for stopping bots, ludicrous scrapers and other cyber detritus

Yesterday when I published my latest experiment I was planning on leaning back and luxuriating on the pleasure of finishing a thing, but the universe had some other plans in store for me. It occured to me to check my web statistics, when I noticed an anomalous spike. Surely that could not be a sign of my experiment having become very popular, because I had just posted about it it was not my most…