What are "Robots"?

[oldravendale]

Dear Flying Squad,

I noted recently (can't imagine why I even checked who was on line) that apparently our threads are being monitored by eleven "Robots". What are these, what purpose do they serve and who uses them for what purpose?

Brian

 

[Steph Dale]

Dad,

Search engines use them to catalogue web pages.

Steph

 

[adrian]

I thought I'd blocked/limited the worst offenders, seems like I might have to review the list again.

 

[oldravendale]

Dad,

Search engines use them to catalogue web pages.

Steph

As you know, Steph, I'm a total technophobe, so what would the reasons be for anyone wanting to catalogue web pages? Is this so that they can pick up interests by email address and send out junk emails?

I thought I'd blocked/limited the worst offenders, seems like I might have to review the list again.

Thanks for the comment, Adrian. As you see from my comment to Steph I've no idea whether thee are desirable or not. Just trying to educate myself!

Brian

 

[JimG]

As you know, Steph, I'm a total technophobe, so what would the reasons be for anyone wanting to catalogue web pages? Is this so that they can pick up interests by email address and send out junk emails?

Brian,

I suspect that the majority of bots are from the search engines - that's how they construct their look-ups for you to use in your searches. But I suspect that there are some more unscrupulous ones which will glean personal data for use in jink mails etc.

Jim.

 

[adrian]

I suspect that the majority of bots are from the search engines - that's how they construct their look-ups for you to use in your searches. But I suspect that there are some more unscrupulous ones which will glean personal data for use in jink mails etc.

Correct - they are from the search engines, they are building up a picture of the site so that when you search on google/bing/duckduckgo etc. it will return results linking to WT. Most are well behaved and respect the limits we define. However as you surmise there are a couple of problems ones, either scraping as much information as possible and/or trying to index the entire site every hour. I can view the visitor information for the site to show which search engines are active and I maintain a block list to keep out the more unsavoury ones.

 

[oldravendale]

Thank you, chaps, for advising me about stuff I've previously not encountered.

For a (principally) model railway site I've learned huge amounts about other stuff too! Long may it continue.

In view of this, and the fact that stuff can be sourced by non-members (I appreciate it can anyway but always made the assumption that it was by other enthusiasts with a similar bent) how safe are our own copyright bits and pieces, like photos? I don't really want to reduce definition of my prototype photos, but if there is a possibility of uncontrolled usage may decide that I'll reduce the dpi to an unpublishable level. However, if I do that I recognise that they then become a less useful source for members of this forum.

Brian

 

[mickoo]

In view of this, and the fact that stuff can be sourced by non-members (I appreciate it can anyway but always made the assumption that it was by other enthusiasts with a similar bent) how safe are our own copyright bits and pieces, like photos? I don't really want to reduce definition of my prototype photos, but if there is a possibility of uncontrolled usage may decide that I'll reduce the dpi to an unpublishable level. However, if I do that I recognise that they then become a less useful source for members of this forum.

Brian

Brian, basically the minute you put something on the internet it can be viewed or saved by anyone and I mean anyone and can be published, or used / abused. There is no point even right click save disabling as some sort of vain attempt to 'protect' your work or images; all browsers have work arounds to circumnavigate this and do it legally. The only way to preserve your images is to watermark them with a visual mark or something.

In short, if you have anything you don't want, or would be upset, if it got misused or abused then do not put it on the internet, I'll also add that if you did then you'd be spending a long time policing the web to protect your work, the web is too big to do that effectively.....and life is just too darn short

I take the view that I collect an awful lot of free images off the web, so everything I post here or on Flickr is free for everyone else to download, if they are from the shallower end of the pool and abuse it, then so be it and even if they sell it that's fine, I know exactly how little one gets for published material The one advantage of search bots gleaning all this info is that if your image is misused or stolen then it's very easy for you to find it

So, don't worry about it, save your energies for something more important

 

[Dikitriki]

I take the view that a lot of people have helped me - pictures, drawings, diagrams, information etc. - and me taking the time and effort to post is just giving something back. If people get something out of it, that's fine. If they are sad enough to pass it off as their own then we all know better

Richard

 

[oldravendale]

Richard and Mick.

I like your refreshing view! I'll continue to post.

B