BOTs logged in?

[jer]

Hi hi:
I know I don't contribute much, but I couldn't help notice the BOTs that are logged-in.
Is this a normal occurrence? What do they do? Do they have an effect on our activity here?
I must've been sleeping to not have noticed them sooner.
Jer

[Kevin Chalet]

Is this a normal occurrence? What do they do? Do they have an effect on our activity here?

It's completely normal: these are web scraping bots used by search engines and content aggregators to index the TGB content. Nothing to worry about

(there are of course evil spam bots too, but they are disguised as fake user accounts and not listed as bots)

[jer]

Well thanks, I'm an Olde old-timer.
I was around when Morris f*cked up the Internet with that Unix worm.

[Kevin Chalet]

Hehe, yeah, those were the good old days (I'm old enough to remember that phpBB used to power most of the forums/communities... now most people are on Reddit and are happy with that )

[jer]

Gee, I guess Reddit & them are just souped-up BBSs.
I just realized that.
Hey, we would dial in to BBSs at companies to get updates and drivers.
Try to imagine loading drivers & patches & SPs without the internet...no WSUS either.