On the side of the Board, before we log in, there is a little space that tells us who is online. along with guests and registered users, we apparently have 37 Spiders.

What are those? Will we be needing bug spray?

Spiders are software programs that crawl the Web. They keep track of what is online and sometimes copy information to remote servers. Google and other search engines use spiders. You can read more about them at Wikipedia (link).

Ewww. Seems very invasive that, especially since not only good people are using these spiders. There really should be some sort of Web DEET.

But without spiders there would be no search engines. All inventions ever have been put to good use and bad. Flint was used for tools and weapons. The wheel was invented for carts and wagons but later also put to use as a breaking wheel. ( and roulette ;~) )

Could we give these spiders the extra responsibility of cleaning up the web as they crawl along? We've got a whole lot of junk out there.

I suppose cleaning up is not considered a productive and useful activity. On the internet and in general. Would they accept this responsability? For the user it's hard to get something off. Deleting a blog is quite a long term job.

And would you want them to clean up something you haven't quite finished yet?

You're right and one person's junk is the other one's treasure. Hard to handle objectivity.

Also, spiders merely record pages, they do not edit or delete them.

Yes, I know, but there was talk of adding reponsabilty. It would be quite nice if all the doubles and no longer avalable entries would be deleted.

Spiders are essentially programs that “crawl” sites and report back to their search engine what their findings are. Their purpose is to make it easy for sites to get listed in search engines.

Jackie/zmjezhd: speaking of "the mantle of invisibility"...
-joe btfsplk

Aren't spiders developed and employed by the search engine companies? In that case, their purpose would seem to be to make the search engine (results) more inclusive and up-to-date. Getting listed is a positive effect from the point of view of the web master of any given site, but the purpose of the spider is to serve the needs of the search engines. Semantics, to be sure, but hey - look what site we're on!