I know they are generated by computers. In my chat room we have two BOTS and we can interact with one which can be hilarious. I also know that they or something similar can wander around the Internet looking for information and even signing into sites. We get those in the chat room This is also the reason for those atrocious security codes that cause me so much trouble.

Can someone explain them to me. How they are generated, what they do I am vague in my questions because I don't understand the.

I also wonder if someone could make a BOT that could for instance keep an eye on this board then run home to Poppa and say "Guess who is on the DC Board".

I see several of them around here from time to time. Google/Yahoo to name a few.
I think the info gathering mechanism behind them tries to collect/index certain topics as a search/resource mechanism for anything related to ES4/Oblivion.
They know it's a game that is still played and heavily modded.

If this causes "big brother" feelings for you, then you should discuss this with the Admins, so they can block them.

Thanks, Kosh. Not so much 'Big Brother' as that an individual or trollish type individuals might write a program that could spy. I'm not paranoid about. The chat room I am in has been hit by trolls from time to time and we do have a way to block them out but it would not apply here.

I would like to understand how they work partly because I have the curiosity of a cat.

Actually, bots are programs that spy. Not hacker-type or troll-type spying, though. They are often used to locate and update links from search programs so that people looking for a particular mod, program, or even subject can find them easily.

Don't know how to make them, but I suspect people do make something similar for their own use to let them know when particular threads in a forum have been added to.

We do have a google bot. It is registered. I wondered because in the chat room we have two bots, one from the channel and our own bot, Mystra, who takes care of us. Also, I think the chat room channel has something because I got haunted by some guy who wanted me to play mother to his sad, sad life. Trouble was he could not persuade me that he had good reason for such a sad life. Told him to see a professional help. But one of the other ops told me how to put him on ignore.

cant say im formilar with your chat room bots there nak sorry you got stuck being mother to some poor guy good thing ur free of that now...

as for the bots we get here... they are just google, and yahoo crawlers that colect information on dc to be archvied into the engines... i think that is pretty cool... dragon captions is IN the system

as a standard... php forums show bots as registerd users... googlebot... hehe invison boards... like mechstorm was... or beth is... and i think what nexus was... would get bots... we just wouldnt see them becuase they didnt show up as registerd users... (the odd 'guest' is could be a bot... on anything other than a php forum...

we are a php forum... if you didnt know that already

but ya... i think just bout everything is covered here

";p; You covered just bot everything. Well, I know some of the terms like php but don't know what they mean or how they differ.

As for playing mother or granny I don't mind that but this guy just kept crying about his poor miserable life but didn't want to do anything about it. I couldn't join the chat room without feeling jumped on by him. Now I know a little how people who get those unwanted trackers feels.