Because I'm very easily amused, I found the idea of a pre-dawn Robot Snoop totally hilarious when I happened upon it! But what I mostly use the Current Visitors list for is to stumble across interesting threads and topics other than the most recently-visited ones.
Although they use the same spidering technology, Brandwatch is a little different than search engine spiders. Their clients are corporations, and their purpose is to gather information about what people think about the products or services produced by their clients. Because they are seeking to determine what people think, rather than websites in general, they go first to member profiles, and then to the individual posts, largely ignoring anything that isn't related to a product or service that can be attributed to a specific company. They are interested in what you think about specific products, services, and industries, not who you are. The reason they go to your profile is that their task isn't to determine what the SENIORSonly Club forum website thinks about the product but to determine what each individual member thinks about it. Otherwise, the results would be skewed by those who are more prolific reporters than others. For example, because Martin posts a lot about his disdain for the medical and pharmaceutical industries, a spider might think that the SENIORSonly Club forum hates doctors and medicines. This would be an inaccurate representation, but it might appear so to a search engine spider because Martin is prolific in his posts about these matters. They are not looking for information about you, as an individual, as this is not their goal, and because it would be a waste of resources, given that many of us aren't using our real names anyhow. Instead, they will begin their search in a member profile, in order to determine what that individual thinks about a particular product or industry. In that way, each individual forum member's opinions are given equal weight. For example, you might post about how you love the Apple Watch. In doing so, you might make only a few posts about your positive experiences with the Apple Watch. I might go on a multi-post rant over several threads about how I hate Apple Watches but, as far as Brandwatch is concerned, one forum member likes Apple Watches and another doesn't. Of course, it's probably more involved than that. The algorithm might attempt to determine why you love Apple Watches and I hate them, as well as which features you particularly like or dislike, and so on. Brandwatch isn't concerned about who you are, as an individual. Rather, their algorithm would identify you in such a way that might be similar to Individual-1, Individual-2, and so on. Of course, I don't know exactly how their proprietary algorithm is set up, and probably wouldn't understand it if I did, but I did look into the company, and that's what they're looking for. They begin at your profile and then drill down through your posts. That's why you see them in your profile. If you're still concerned, I have mentioned before that anyone is free to change their email address, to use a junk email address from Gmail, or one of the several other free email providers; it doesn't even have to be a real email address once you've been approved here, although one that doesn't get to you would adversely affect your ability to retrieve a password. Nevertheless, neither guests, other members, or spiders can view your email address. Probably better would be to edit the Privacy section of your Profile. If you require that someone be a member to view your profile information, then the spiders won't be able to access your posts through that avenue. Of course, your opinions about various products won't be counted. You might still see them listed as viewing your profile because spiders don't remember that sort of thing and they are still going to try to access it, which will show them as being there whether they got in or not. I'm not in the least concerned about Brandwatch, and I kind of like companies to know whether I think their product is great or whether it sucks, and why. When my wife calls to complain about something, she gets a replacement, and often other stuff to boot. When I call to complain about a product, they hang up on me or threaten to call the police. I was glad to see Brandwatch here because now these companies are paying someone to determine what I think, and what you think.
Oh, I'm not bothered! I just have this silly thing about Bots, currently, and make a lot of jokes at their expense. Can't help but think of those old SNL skits, where home-invading robots barge in and start manhandling some older folks. Or that TV series, Humans, in which William Hurt is a victim of the Nanny State, and forced to endure the cold and humorless oversight of a mechanical Nurse Ratchett. Then there's the novel by Jack Williamson, I think, called The Humanoids, in which the Bots take their Asimovian duty to protect humans to such extremes that people are basically confined to their softly-padded rooms so that they can't possibly be damaged! Yeah, I do tend to get carried away. . .
@Ken Anderson Thanks for the explanation. Good to know that the members only setting in our profiles prevents them from accessing posts that way
"Visual representations, including artwork and inscriptions, were used for cultural communication in the ancient world. In particular, doorways and thresholds were an important locus of power in Greco-Roman antiquity.” “Writing was and is a means of delineating and mapping space,” Bond explains, and “certain words could serve to set the tone for guests entering a household, just as a welcome mat does for us today.” "Indeed, some historical examples are quite comparable to modern mats, like the stoop of Pompeii’s House of the Faun, engraved with “HAVE” (meaning: welcome). Other entry artwork, though, was designed to protect against things like the “evil eye” (a curse believed to be cast by a malevolent glare) or combat other similar superstitions." Sarah Bond - University of Iowa
This may not be the correct place to post this thread but I see no other place to post it. I see that certain members are on line here at any given time. I ALSO see that there are "robots" on line here. I am not very knowledgeable about the internet so this is a mystery to me. What are those "robots" doing" ? Are they collecting information about us as individual members ? Thank you.
The robots are here because they do the search engine searching for information to put on the internet. This is an important part of the forum, because it helps people find us. As an example, suppose you were doing a search for the James Webb Space Telescope (which we just now have a thread for here), one of the results might show the thread from this forum, and so you might come to the forum to see what we have to say about the telescope. If you were not already a member here, and were a senior, then you might browse the forum for a while and decide to join. Sometimes, Ken posts search engine results for the forum to give us an idea how well we are showing up in search results. This is also the main reason that he asks us to always use thread titles that explain what the thread is about, and not something like “guess what happened to me today”, which might be interesting to someone one who enjoys your posts, but it does nothing to attract other people to the forum. As for people always being here, i guess some of us do spend a lot of time on the forum, because we enjoy visiting here. Also, we try to have at least one of the greeter/moderators online as often as possible, so you will almost always see 1-2 of us online, too. Hope this explains things for you, @Richard Whiting , and if not, then Ken or John can always do the technical stuff explaining.
As Yvonne, said, they are web crawlers, Richard. Ken discusses it here and provides links in that post to a few other threads where he discusses it in detail.
Hmm. Does that mean that anything I write, or search for, will be recorded by a robot ? If I have a conversation, supposedly private, on Facebook, will that be recorded by a robot ?