Posts on Search Engines

[Jake2006]

Hi

I was looking for information and googled google and found some of my own posts made to dog form.org on the internet.

Do all our posts go on the net? I would hate to think that someone used the information I posted as research (unless I had researched the topic thoroughly).

Just a question?

[skunkstripe]

Yes they do. In fact this is a good reason to be careful. Information gets passed around like a wild fire on the net.
Eventually as the posts get older and are archived or possibly newer ones are picked up by the search engines, the posts you are referring to will drop lower and lower in the google list.

We are living in interesting times, aren't we?

[Jake2006]

I agree Jean, and I'm sure something will jump up to bite me on the bum from one of my students LOL

[skunkstripe]

This is the "instant expert" phenomenon.

You or I or anyone posts something on a complex topic on a public forum.

Someone else comes along and gets their information on said topic from this forum and possibly others where there are similar posts.

Then that someone gets their own web site and fancies up the information in such a way as to present it as authoritative.

Now all we need is someone to come along and post from THAT site claiming that they found it on the internet so it must be true.

You know what the intenet reminds me of? There was this saying about how if you had a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters for a million years, eventually your would produce all of the wisdom in the universe. You would also produce all possible nonsense. And no one would be able to tell the difference.

[vagreys]

If you look at who's on the forum, from time to time, you will see the search engine web bots crawling around, collecting post information. That proliferation to the search engines makes copyright on the web interesting.