A question about bots

[Aenwyn]

Removed question because I felt too silly for asking about it 

Edit: since removing is against the rules, I'll summarise it again: I asked why there were so many bots on my site and if they helped the visibility of my site.

[Scott]

Aenwyn -

Guests are visitors to the forum that are not logged in. This can be members, non-members, and even bots (the most common bots are search engine web crawlers indexing sites).

If there is new content or your forum was recently linked to elsewhere, it may have caused a flurry of activity (both human and indexing bots) to come to the forum and check it out.

Really not much to worry about.

[Kami]

I noticed you deleted the OP out of embarrassment, and I don't want to put you on the spot or anything, but I wanted to reassure you that the question is nothing to feel silly about.

In my experience over the last ~20 years I've been active in online spaces both as a participant and as a working professional, a vast majority of people actually have a very limited understanding about the concept of a "bot" as it applies to internet usage.

This isn't because of a lack of intelligence, and many times it's not even a lack of information, exactly, but rather because the word "bot" is about as useful as asking what's for dinner and being told "food". There are a lot of different types of bots, for a lot of different purposes, some good, some bad, and some neutral but can be used for either depending on the human using it.

"Guest" is a similar term here in the PB ecosystem.

The nebulousness of these terms, which then results in a lack of understanding about what may be applicable to a particular situation, can also be exploited by bad actors who like to fear-monger about the topic, which starts a cascade effect of people being genuinely concerned and spreading misinformation that is unfortunately just true-enough sounding that it passes a smell check.

No one is silly for being concerned or confused because something isn't clear.

All this rambling to say, please don't feel silly if you have a question. We've seen all sorts of questions on this Support Board, and as long as you're coming from a place of genuine intent to inquire and learn, there is no such thing as a stupid question. 

[The Referee]

Jul 24, 2024 15:13:10 GMT -8 Kami said:

I noticed you deleted the OP out of embarrassment, and I don't want to put you on the spot or anything, but I wanted to reassure you that the question is nothing to feel silly about.

In my experience over the last ~20 years I've been active in online spaces both as a participant and as a working professional, a vast majority of people actually have a very limited understanding about the concept of a "bot" as it applies to internet usage.

This isn't because of a lack of intelligence, and many times it's not even a lack of information, exactly, but rather because the word "bot" is about as useful as asking what's for dinner and being told "food". There are a lot of different types of bots, for a lot of different purposes, some good, some bad, and some neutral but can be used for either depending on the human using it.

"Guest" is a similar term here in the PB ecosystem.

The nebulousness of these terms, which then results in a lack of understanding about what may be applicable to a particular situation, can also be exploited by bad actors who like to fear-monger about the topic, which starts a cascade effect of people being genuinely concerned and spreading misinformation that is unfortunately just true-enough sounding that it passes a smell check.

No one is silly for being concerned or confused because something isn't clear.

All this rambling to say, please don't feel silly if you have a question. We've seen all sorts of questions on this Support Board, and as long as you're coming from a place of genuine intent to inquire and learn, there is no such thing as a stupid question. 

As someone who is almost 70 and who was first exposed to computers in my late 30s, I am reminded that my dad told me as a child that the only dumb (silly) question is the one you don't ask and time has proved the wisdom of that statement.

[Aenwyn]

Jul 24, 2024 15:13:10 GMT -8 Kami said:

I noticed you deleted the OP out of embarrassment, and I don't want to put you on the spot or anything, but I wanted to reassure you that the question is nothing to feel silly about.

In my experience over the last ~20 years I've been active in online spaces both as a participant and as a working professional, a vast majority of people actually have a very limited understanding about the concept of a "bot" as it applies to internet usage.

This isn't because of a lack of intelligence, and many times it's not even a lack of information, exactly, but rather because the word "bot" is about as useful as asking what's for dinner and being told "food". There are a lot of different types of bots, for a lot of different purposes, some good, some bad, and some neutral but can be used for either depending on the human using it.

"Guest" is a similar term here in the PB ecosystem.

The nebulousness of these terms, which then results in a lack of understanding about what may be applicable to a particular situation, can also be exploited by bad actors who like to fear-monger about the topic, which starts a cascade effect of people being genuinely concerned and spreading misinformation that is unfortunately just true-enough sounding that it passes a smell check.

No one is silly for being concerned or confused because something isn't clear.

All this rambling to say, please don't feel silly if you have a question. We've seen all sorts of questions on this Support Board, and as long as you're coming from a place of genuine intent to inquire and learn, there is no such thing as a stupid question. 

Thank you, that is so kind of you to say (: