Who is online?

[Stargazer]

I happened to notice the "Who is online" About 8 named participants viewing. And 100 "Guests"!

I checked to see what on of the "Guests" were viewing. This guest was viewing an old thread from 2015.

Must be web crawlers or bots.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Must be web crawlers or bots.

That has always been my guess.

[Nemesis]

I have crawlers/robots ignored but there are some that slip through. Especially the ones that are trying to scrub for phone numbers and email addresses.  It’s annoying. 

[Stargazer]

17 hours ago, Nemesis said:

I have crawlers/robots ignored but there are some that slip through. Especially the ones that are trying to scrub for phone numbers and email addresses.  It’s annoying. 

Years ago I ran a board devoted to a particular science fiction series, and bots were a horrible problem. 

[Calm]

39 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Years ago I ran a board devoted to a particular science fiction series, and bots were a horrible problem. 

Why?  That was not one of the issues I had to deal with as a moderator/administrator and now I am wondering why not, whether it was just something an owner would deal with or it wasn’t a big issue back then (board was more or less defunct by 2005 iirc).

[Stargazer]

On 8/11/2024 at 7:54 PM, Calm said:

Why?  That was not one of the issues I had to deal with as a moderator/administrator and now I am wondering why not, whether it was just something an owner would deal with or it wasn’t a big issue back then (board was more or less defunct by 2005 iirc).

The board software I was using at the time (this was 20 years ago now) did not make it easy to administer the board, or else I didn't know what I was doing (likely). Bots would register and make all kinds of irrelevant posts that were clearly designed to make web crawlers and search engines go to certain sites. It was an SEO thing, I think. 

I finally got things under control, but it was a nightmare for awhile. The SF series the board was devoted to came to an end because the publisher decided it wasn't profitable enough. The last novel came out in 2009. It was a very good story, and I was sad to see the series end. The Starfist Saga it was called.