Does a SE Spider have a Gender?

If so, what would it be? Should we name them like Hurricanes?

[duckhunter]

I was just responding on another thread and started to refer to a spider as a "he". I backed up and replaced it with "it".

Now I have this question in my foo brain. Does a Search Engine Spider have a gender? If so, what would they be?

Googlebot, YahooSeeker, Fast, Slurp, MSNBot.

[bill]

They're obviously female. I don't know a male robot who would act like Googlebot on my sites.

<tongue firmly embedded in cheek>

[Warren]

Didn't Matt reveal this at the Boston Pub Con?

I seem to recall (only cause this was just before having way too much beer) that they are both male and female.

That way, when the server room door gets closed for the night they get "busy". Nine months later, they have new Google bots!

[phidentity]

Ok guys... i'm sorry, it's official.

We are all geeks/nerds...

Jon

[Leosghost]

While we're being about as geeky as it gets ..
If you write the sentence like this ..

Does a Search Engine Spider have a gender?

It's Ok ..

But ..if you abreviate Search Engine to SE ( like in your heading ) the you have to write "an" and not "a"...

Thus ..
Does an SE Spider have a gender?...

PS ..In french ...araignée ( spider ) or also a type of crab is ...une araignée..so she's female ...

PPS ..it was actually the "a" versus "an" thing which caught my eye and caused the grammatical "tilt" in my mental pinball machine

[IanKelley]

In spanish spider is "araña" so if we use the romantic languages as a guide they're all spiderettes.

On the other hand, in chinese spider is "&#34584;&#34523;". But I have no idea what that means :-P

[added] Apparently WW won't display chinese characters [/added]

[vkaryl]

Black widow = she. SE spider = she. Black widow = SE spider.

[yah yah - there are obviously male "black widows" (they're the ones which get eaten....) I don't know anyone who's ever referred to a black widow as "he"....]

[duckhunter]

I'm not sure either male or female would be capable of digesting the entire web. Brute strength and speed are needed along with the softer sided discerning tastes of what to investigate and what to leave alone so I'm starting to lean towards Warren's hermaphrodite option. Programmers = Male & Female so why wouldn't you end up with a blend of the two?
Geek, yes. Foo, yes. Mental break or is it time for a drink?

[Leosghost]

's always time for a drink :)

[patoruzu]

>>In spanish spider is "araña"<<

My native language is Spanish and I’ve always thought that Googlebot is a he-bot.

In Spanish “robot” is usually “el (he) robot”, not “la (she) robot”. “Lo (neutral) robot” doesn’t exist.

Because of that, sometimes I name Googlebot “el arácnido” (arachnid), instead of “la araña” (spider).

Anyway, perhaps there are he-bots and she-bots :-)

[vkaryl]

duckhunter: I'm not sure Warren was postulating a hermaphrodite option....

Anyway, how about "heeshbots". That should cover it nicely.

Leosghost: yup. Wine for me....

[Essex_boy]

Got to be a she, would a male be take an age to come to your site, be so unpredictable, unreliable, temperamental and go into places after being told not to?

Its she.

[duckhunter]

unpredictable, unreliable, temperamental and go into places after being told not to

Sounds more like one of my kids ;)

[patoruzu]

So maybe "he" is just an inmature child.

This is a real discussion on the gender of angels...

[iamlost]

My best friend names her computers. Macguru names his bike. This thread personalises rampaging software.

Just stop already with the animism and anthropomorphism.

Bots are programs: lines of computer code repetitively performing a task.

They are not entities. They have no gender. They have no life.

Having discussed this topic with our pet rocks (and with a supporting opinion from the neighbours cat) Me, Myself, and I are in agreement: you are all very weird.

[duckhunter]

with a supporting opinion from the neighbours cat

Now that's wierd. We're just looney from too many hours at the keyboard.

[Essex_boy]

'They have no gender they have no life.'

Wasnt aware we'd met.....