Who is he/she or....?

[atusiya@]

Hey ! Inktomi Spider.. Who are you ?
I wonder ...

[Hobo]

It's a search bot, I believe, that sends info to search engines, but also clog up bandwidth

[Al the Vykker]

Yeah, good you brought that up. I was thinking it was a bot, but wasnt entirely sure. I was like Ive never heard of that member before.

[oddguy]

I'm also curious about a new member. Who is Alf's Assistant? Every time I click on it to see the profile, I get to a page that says I have no access.

-oddguy

[Al the Vykker]

That means they dont have full membership yet, so you cant view their profile. Its probably not really Alf's Assistant. I could be wrong though.

[Xavier]

Al, use your mod powers and see...

[Esus]

I think that would be a search engine, atusiya, when looking just now; I saw some Google Spiders;

12:17PM Google Spider Viewing Thread: Release Date
12:17 PM Google Spider Viewing User Profile

[oddguy]

That means they dont have full membership yet, so you cant view their profile. Its probably not really Alf's Assistant. I could be wrong though.

You are wrong! Bwahahaha!

*calms down*

Ahem...take a looksie at this thread.

Alf's Assistant!

-oddguy

[Abe's son]

We got spiders all over TDH... maby one fallowed me here....

[Codek]

Spiders are not quite "Bots" as such. Spiders do exactly what spiders do in real life. They crawl the web, downloading things as they go. Spiders often download and save entire websites just to provide faster searches and word matches. They only do it on popular sites though, so this site must be quite popular.

Another feature of a spider is to gather information such as statistics, and hits. This is to figure out whether the website the spider is visiting is popular or unpopular. If it's popular, a second spider will be called in, and the two spiders will systematically download the website, and add it to the search info database.

The reason spider bots are assosciated with websearches, is because a spider bot gets sent around the web on most searches, looking for content that the database does not yet have. The spiders' first role though, is to check the database to see if any matches can be found. This all happens in a matter of miliseconds, and gets faster and faster as time passes.

A searchbot, is quite similar to a spider, only that it just seeks out content matches, then generates a link using php. The searchbots' role is really to take snippets of relevant data, that can be processed through php to appear on a results page. The spidered database pretty much "hints" the searchbot on where to look, and what to look for. For instance, if you searched for the word "Oddworld", the searchbot would ask the spiderbot to check the database for any websites that are listed to contain that word, then the spiderbot would tell the searchbot which ones contain that word, where they contain it, and what the URL is - once it does that, it puts those links onto the results page ready to go into php - then it searches the net accompanied by a spider, looking for content matches. Once those are found, links are created, and the list of results are put in order of best match to worst match.

Again, that all happens in a matter of miliseconds. The difference between a spider and a searchbot, is that the spider deals with content, and the searchbot deals with searches. Originally, there were only searchbots, and searches used to take ages, but now you can get to the most popular site in much less time.

[Wil]

They crawl the web, downloading things as they go.

Wow, just like real spiders!

Sounds interesting. Apparently we're popular enough to get four or five of these spiders crawling the Forums - that's how many I saw online the other day. Are spiders how the Wayback Machine was compiled?

In any case, they don't seem to be causing any problems. But they are rather swamping Who's Online. Perhaps their preparing for the fabled influx of members following the release of Stranger.

[oddguy]

Yeah, when going to "Who's Online" I'll see six or seven spiders. I guess OWF is moving on up in the world!

-oddguy

[Al the Vykker]

You are wrong! Bwahahaha!

*calms down*

Ahem...take a looksie at this thread.

Alf's Assistant!

-oddguy

I did say if someone provided evidence or showed that he was from OWI, I would believe it.

[oddguy]

Just joking around.

[Joe the Glukkon]

I was wondering about this Inktomi Spider thing the other day ago and was wondeing what they are.At first I thought they we're like enemys of websites, but I was wrong.

[a flock of seagulls]

s-s-s-spiders? i-i-i-i have a b-b-bit arachnoph-phobia *sees one and squishes it* GET AWAY! aaaagh!

[Codek]

Wow, just like real spiders!

Sounds interesting. Apparently we're popular enough to get four or five of these spiders crawling the Forums - that's how many I saw online the other day. Are spiders how the Wayback Machine was compiled?

Yes, the waybackspider is the one that gets wayback entries. It only starts doing it after it finds a site that has a certain number of hits. So OWF will probably have quite a few wayback entries.

I wouldn't worry about the spiders on this website. They do suck up a bit of bandwidth, yes, but not loads. They download the entire site (or most of it) using several spiders at once, in order to reduce the bandwidth leeching effects, and to get the site downloaded faster. It's an intermittant nuisance at best.

[Fez]

as long as we dont start getting worms, i'll be fine.

[Alcar]

We have spider recognition turned on. Basically it's there to determine between real guests, and those guests that are actually spiders.

Alcar...

[oddguy]

Ah, so we probably had spiders before and didn't know it. We just know now because the spider recognition is turned on. Hmmmm.

-oddguy

[oddguy]

Inktomi Spider's haven't shown up lately, but I'm now seeing Google Spider's. Hmmmm.

[Alcar]

The Inktomi Spiders are actually there still, it's just that there was a massive change between Yahoo and Google the other day. I could add the new searchstring to recognise them, but the lastest vBulletin will do exactly the same thing.

So I'll wait, and not mess things up

Alcar...

[oddguy]

Ooooh, I just saw an Ask Jeeves Spider. Yay!

[Majic]

There seems to be some sort unrecognized spider/bot, or something else really odd going on. There's about 15 guests, probably more viewing attachments in the thread entitled "new Species"

http://www.oddworldforums.net/showth...#postid=101600

Just thought it was a be focked.

EDIT: Wait, no... Just realized there were multiple PAGES of "Who's Online". Hence, the new record of 140 people on at once.

Damn.

[Sl'askia]

*looks at all the 'spiders'*

*goes to get her bug spray*

Spider: At least she ain't blaming it on me...

Trazu: Once she figures out how she will, just you wait and see.

Spider: *glares at Trazu* You asking for a beaten shorty?

Trazu: *glares aback and grips the hilt of his sword* *growls* Don't call me 'shorty'...

[Alcar]

Already realised. As I explained to Max the Mug, it shouldn't be a problem, as this month has seen a massive decrease in bandwidth useage. So the extra amount of spiders shouldn't be a problem at all.

EDIT: Rachael

Alcar...

[Sekto Springs]

The forums have been unusually slow lately and I wondered if the spiders are clogging up the bandwith. But apparently the forums have gone back to their good ol' high speed even though the spiders are still loitering on our bandwith. Oh well, I won't lose sleep over it.