Geek Gibberish? What does this mean?

[Bella_Bru]

This would have been way more exciting had he typed in ALL CAPS or added a dozen or so exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[OldSgt.]

Methinks it's a message to someone the Mod put up as a warning, try asking " Admin Moderator". for more info.

[Not A Snowbird]

informs the webcrawlers not to spider the site.

But what does that mean? English, for the rest of us?

[ctdonath2]

Search engines (Google etc.) are technically referred to as "spiders" or "crawlers". They follow EVERY link on a site; on a site as big and dynamic as FreeRepublic, that's a lot of links, and spiders end up needlessly get in the way of actual users. The flurry of new posts & threads just complicates things, and induces spiders to hang around even more - soaking up processor time & resources which would be better spent serving FReepers.

JimRob is asking such search engines to stay off the site today. There is so much activity that their efforts are practically worthless and only serve to make the naturally heavy load even worse.

[Betis70]

Shows up on mine too. Running Firefox. Maybe it is browser related?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Long Explanation: People can run automated programs called 'bots' (short for 'robots') that hit a site to download and archive data.

Short Explanation: If you don't understand the message, it doesn't apply to you.

By the way, thanks for posting another content-free vanity. It really helps.

[KillBill]

Who's JOHN Robinson? Is this some joke from 2000?

I know JIM, but not John.

[evets]

A spider (a.k.a crawler, robot, or wanderer) is a program that periodically reads the content of website pages and indexes them. A database is automatically built and continuously maintained, and indexes pointing to new content are added and dead links are removed. These indexes allow search engines (the likes of Excite, AltaVista, Inktomi, etc.) to retrieve the pages that best match the keywords used in a query submitted by a user. Spidering (or crawling) is the term used to describe the work these tireless spiders perform.

[sc2_ct]

Search engines are supposed to look for a file named robots.txt in a root folder on a webserver to determine whether or not a site wishes to be spidered/crawled (in other words "scanned"). If the search engines are ignoring this file, then it means that the search engines are creating an additional load on the server. With today being a day that will probably have record bandwidth and server utilization statistics, any little bit they can do to reduce unneccesary usage will help to ensure that response times remain bearable.

[Howlin]

God knows we need to know EVERY POSSIBLE THING somebody out there is thinking today.

[areafiftyone]

LOL I need this with my nerves! ;-)

[OXENinFLA]

[Born Conservative]

All your Robots belong to us...

[Americanwolf]

More appropriately it is:

Can I get a......UUUUNNNNGGGGHHHHH!!!!

[newgeezer]

Simply put, there are some automated programs crawling the Web (spiders, web, get it?) indexing and/or searching for things on the site. FR has elected to use a universally-accepted method to keep those spiders out, thus reducing the load on the FR servers. That only works on the honor system. If someone chooses, they can ignore the request, and index the site anyway.

FR is warning such rogues that, if it continues, he will lock-out the offenders (deny access to their IP addresses). I don't know why he doesn't just lock 'em out and be done with the SOBs.

[Zack Nguyen]

You have no chance to survive. Make you time!

What you say?!

[nfldgirl]

Gosh! I just LOVE this website!!! BIG TIME!!!
Thanks JimRob!!!!!!!

[bwteim]

It means: "Be strong good country America person Kerry is not good Poland persons in America make America President strong that is good not that person comunist kerry that person is not good that person is comunist devil evil dork paper that person do not like America strong!!"

[b4its2late]

I didn't post this and don't post vanities.

[N. Theknow]

Please consult your FR secret decoder ring.