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mark james

IAP Collection, Curator
Joined
Sep 6, 2012
Messages
12,720
Location
Medina, Ohio
This is a random thread, but may interest a few folks.
I am not very conversant with the current state of internet data base mining - but I am generally aware of the process and intent.

I believe it was 2 days ago, I checked the IAP "Current Visitors" listing and noticed a "Robot: AdSense" was viewing the IAP Collection Forum. My understanding is that that Robot has the ability to data mine images and add them to the Google Images Internet Database. (Please excuse any incorrect terms I'm throwing out here, and feel free to correct me).

Well, low and behold I just Googled "IAP Collection/Images" and now there are many, many of IAP's photos, with links to MPG, MAPG, Gatherings, etc... (sadly even my name).

I'm not saying this is bad, and realize it is simply an element of the future of our technology. For better or worse, IAP images are becoming more widely viewed.

Any thoughts?
 
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leehljp

Member Liaison
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
9,314
Location
Tunica, Mississippi,
I have been one of those who will try out new technology in both mechanical (tools) and electronics early on. I'm just fascinated by it all. However, I hated it the first time ads began to pop up trying to sell me something that I had just viewed on another site or Amazon. I don't have anything to hide in the sites I visit, but it is NO ONE's business in what I look at. I will walk away from a good deal if I suspect a salesman is throwing his sales expertise in a psychological manipulative way. That is a huge turn-off for me. If someone collects data on me, and I don't know about it, I'm not offended, but if they use it to try to manipulate me to buy at a particular site, I will walk. I am not the least bit interested in that company anymore.

Related: In learning Japanese grammar, I made a sentence once like this: "Mr. Yamamoto likes blue cars." The teacher said, "That is technically correct grammatically, but it is an incorrect cultural sentence. You cannot project your thoughts - of what you think another persons likes and dislikes are". IF you add . . . I think he may like . . . That is OK, anything else is presumptuous and therefore rude." Japanese won't let you know it directly, but "presumptuous" is extremely rude in their culture.

I have basically always been like that. Miner Bots enter into "Presumption" and they do not have that right in sales with me. Nor do they have the right to steal my work and post it as open domain. I might not be able to do anything about it, but I don't think they have that right. If someone writes a book and puts it out in print either electronically or in hard copy, any copying is plagiarism and at some point can lead to law suits; but on the internet there are those, and Google is one, who thinks no one has the right to fully own anything in print, (except for them/Google).

This is the very reason that some of our finest pen makers in the past have not posted pictures of their work - people stealing their designs. The first circuit board pens were done by one of our members and posted here years ago. About 4 to 5 months later one large pen making supply companies (that has representatives here as members) started selling blanks copied from his original post.

CAN they be Blocked?
 

jttheclockman

Member
Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
19,082
Location
NJ, USA.
I do not know what all that means because it is way above my pay grade. But if you click on guests looking in you will see a ton of robots. I just counted 10 first page. What this means I have no idea. Maybe Jeff can shed some light on the subject.
 

MRDucks2

Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2017
Messages
3,215
Location
Bristow, IN
Robots have various functions in their data collection: google mines sites to determine how you show up in the search engine. They take a lot of things into consideration in doing this including type of content, activity, images, etc. the better you favor their algorithms for a good website, the higher you show up in rankings. You still compete with paid rankings, though. All in all this is good. You rank higher by score or by paying.

google will also sell access to their databases of information to about anyone who wants it. This is the bad. Most other robots fall somewhere in the same scheme. Finding out what is going on, how much activity there is and trying to decide if the website is interesting enough or has the correct types of info for other uses. Often the sword cuts both ways.

If our site is optimized for search engines or uses any paid or free add dollars, there will be robots. Because their are ads to generate a fraction of revenue, there will be robots. If you are on the internet, your activity is being watched by robots.

If you think you have privacy and use the internet, digital TV or phones... you are wrong. Don't believe me? Take time to read those privacy statements you routinely get.


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
 

Curly

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2010
Messages
4,828
Location
Saskatoon SK., Canada.
The only upside will be someone searching for some form of pen making will find their way here rather than on Facebook or some other place, probably quicker than through word of mouth elsewhere.
 
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jeff

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
8,970
Location
Westlake, OH, USA.
I have been one of those who will try out new technology in both mechanical (tools) and electronics early on. I'm just fascinated by it all. However, I hated it the first time ads began to pop up trying to sell me something that I had just viewed on another site or Amazon. I don't have anything to hide in the sites I visit, but it is NO ONE's business in what I look at. I will walk away from a good deal if I suspect a salesman is throwing his sales expertise in a psychological manipulative way. That is a huge turn-off for me. If someone collects data on me, and I don't know about it, I'm not offended, but if they use it to try to manipulate me to buy at a particular site, I will walk. I am not the least bit interested in that company anymore.

Related: In learning Japanese grammar, I made a sentence once like this: "Mr. Yamamoto likes blue cars." The teacher said, "That is technically correct grammatically, but it is an incorrect cultural sentence. You cannot project your thoughts - of what you think another persons likes and dislikes are". IF you add . . . I think he may like . . . That is OK, anything else is presumptuous and therefore rude." Japanese won't let you know it directly, but "presumptuous" is extremely rude in their culture.

I have basically always been like that. Miner Bots enter into "Presumption" and they do not have that right in sales with me. Nor do they have the right to steal my work and post it as open domain. I might not be able to do anything about it, but I don't think they have that right. If someone writes a book and puts it out in print either electronically or in hard copy, any copying is plagiarism and at some point can lead to law suits; but on the internet there are those, and Google is one, who thinks no one has the right to fully own anything in print, (except for them/Google).

This is the very reason that some of our finest pen makers in the past have not posted pictures of their work - people stealing their designs. The first circuit board pens were done by one of our members and posted here years ago. About 4 to 5 months later one large pen making supply companies (that has representatives here as members) started selling blanks copied from his original post.

CAN they be Blocked?

Can they be blocked? Yes. The result is then that nobody finds any of our content by searching. I believe that would be a serious negative impact to our community. This isn't unique to our site. When you say that it's the reason people don't post pictures, perhaps you mean that's why they don't post pictures anywhere. How do they sell online then? Because every place selling stuff gets crawled too.

I guess I'm a little confused by this thread. Indexing is the backbone of the internet. Looking at it as a bad thing doesn't compute with me. Help me understand the concern.
 

Ed McDonnell

Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
2,294
Location
Melbourne, FL
Dumb robots. Doing a google search as suggested by Mark turned up a bunch of different pens all labeled as pen #50 in the search results. Of course, the robots were smart enough to find the IAP and then find the pen pictures while I haven't been smart enough to find where people are seeing that robots are visiting the site. Imagine how that makes me feel, šŸ˜ž
 

mark james

IAP Collection, Curator
Joined
Sep 6, 2012
Messages
12,720
Location
Medina, Ohio
Can they be blocked? Yes. The result is then that nobody finds any of our content by searching. I believe that would be a serious negative impact to our community. This isn't unique to our site. When you say that it's the reason people don't post pictures, perhaps you mean that's why they don't post pictures anywhere. How do they sell online then? Because every place selling stuff gets crawled too.

I guess I'm a little confused by this thread. Indexing is the backbone of the internet. Looking at it as a bad thing doesn't compute with me. Help me understand the concern.

Hate to have opened a bag or worms. My intent was only to pass on some info. I also would not support blocking our content being mined, as Curly pointed out it will lead folks to IAP.
 

mark james

IAP Collection, Curator
Joined
Sep 6, 2012
Messages
12,720
Location
Medina, Ohio
How do you see it?

Hi Keith.

In the blue bar at the top of the page, click on the arrow button the left of your name. That pulls in the "Members" forum. Scroll down and click on "Current Visitors."

To be clear, I am not in any way promoting any blockage of Robots data base mining IAP. It will give us greater visability. (Although I was disappointed but not surprised to see my name on the topic bar on Google. I'd prefer the emphasis be on IAP and the IAP Collection).

I just found it interesting and thought I'd share - not to create controversy.

Edit: Curly mentioned an easier method! I just saw that
 

jeff

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
8,970
Location
Westlake, OH, USA.
Hi Keith.

In the blue bar at the top of the page, click on the arrow button the left of your name. That pulls in the "Members" forum. Scroll down and click on "Current Visitors."

To be clear, I am not in any way promoting any blockage of Robots data base mining IAP. It will give us greater visability. (Although I was disappointed but not surprised to see my name on the topic bar on Google. I'd prefer the emphasis be on IAP and the IAP Collection).

I just found it interesting and thought I'd share - not to create controversy.
No controversy at all! Indexing, crawlers, privacy, all good topics to discuss.

I don't like people to be disappointed with something related to our community. Mark, if you'll tell me how to get to the search results you're looking at, I can probably figure out what the source material is here that's being indexed with your name. It's very likely something in the Collection forum title that identifies you. I can remove that, as well as disconnect your name from other references to the Collection. Post or PM me the search terms and I'll give it a look.
 

leehljp

Member Liaison
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
9,314
Location
Tunica, Mississippi,
Can they be blocked? Yes. The result is then that nobody finds any of our content by searching. I believe that would be a serious negative impact to our community. This isn't unique to our site. When you say that it's the reason people don't post pictures, perhaps you mean that's why they don't post pictures anywhere. How do they sell online then? Because every place selling stuff gets crawled too.

I guess I'm a little confused by this thread. Indexing is the backbone of the internet. Looking at it as a bad thing doesn't compute with me. Help me understand the concern.

Of course, you are right Jeff! Indexing is the backbone of search and that is what we want. How do you put up with me? - I used to complain on the previous forum setup that search worked for many people but for me and a few others, . . . Now we have it working and I'm complaining that it works! :rolleyes: :D :D :D o_O

When I lived overseas, I was in a relatively safe country but worked quite often with people in high security places. I know some that were escorted out of the country(s), and a few jailed and even worse ("worse" not meant for declaration but for fact - lost life of co-workers). Some of the uncovering came about by watching (bots, worms, or whatever) in specific emails and web sites of people back here in the States that inadvertently posted brief info with names of related people overseas.

Robot-Mining is not always a benign thing. I am still skittish when I hear or see that. I don't mind indexing for searches but I do mind SELLING my searches, and I'm not ashamed of my searches either. You can see my dislike of bots is two fold - selling of personal info, and worse looking for info to incarcerate others.

Thanks for clearing this up. OH, I forgot to mention that on another forum we had "spam bots" 3 or 4 times in the past 15 years, mostly 7-8 years ago until about 3 years ago. Not all bots are the same and it is good that you know the good ones from the bad ones; and for this forum, namely you, know how to keep the bad ones out. Thanks for ALL that you do behind the scenes too!
 
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Bob in SF

Member
Joined
Feb 15, 2016
Messages
1,762
Location
San Francisco
I wonder what Will Rogers would say...

Even Will might meet a Bot he didn't like.

Call me when the AI mavens decide to install/instill a moral compass (or even a smidgen of conscience) in their creations.
 

jttheclockman

Member
Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
19,082
Location
NJ, USA.
Pinterest photos always have many photos from all sources. Mine are in there quite abit especially if googled segmented pens. I google pool table pen display box and my contest box comes up
 

robutacion

Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2009
Messages
6,514
Location
Australia - SA Adelaide Hills
I have seen pics of many of my blanks creations, especially the Banksias on Google searches, many years ago, all connected to IAP or other forums I belonged to in the past and that surprised the hell out of me but not anymore. The "new" internet and all the modern devices that connect us to it are an open book if you know what you are looking for, younger generations have grown accustomed to it they don't seem to bother in exchange for the "benefits" and convenience they get out of it, many of us from the older generations and without much technical knowledge of media presence and how it all works find it a lot scarier and puzzling at times, the way I see it, the only way you, your name and work will be safe from social media of today and tomorrow is if you keep yourself out of mobile phones, emails, internet, searches, purchases online and any of the thousands of things you can do online, including off-course paying your bill electronically, etc., that explains why more and more people want to leave in a true "off-grid" status, I or the other hand, like the convenience of having internet and be able to communicate with the world even though being aware, what I say, show and do online has no privacy and I believe never will, otherwise the "system" as I understand it could not function, I'm I right...?šŸ¤”

Cheers
George
 

leehljp

Member Liaison
Joined
Feb 6, 2005
Messages
9,314
Location
Tunica, Mississippi,
IF there is NOT a contentious fight against "mining for the purpose of cataloging and then selling" in general, it will quickly become acceptable that ALL information is EVERYONE's information. You can't fight that. Then there will be no capital gains or rather no profit for the originator. In a moral-less society/world, Laws are useless once it is out there. The idea from which you create is then not your own.

That is why some of our best pen turners do not/did not post photos of their work. The new morality: "If it is on the internet, then it is not stealing."
 
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