From time to time I click on Who's Online to see what the numerous guests on here are doing. Often, they are allegedly printing topics. Sometimes they are printing something that makes me think to myself, "Who the hell would want/need to print that?". Are they really printing the topic? Or is that a flaw in the coding of the forum and they are really doing something else?

I think that's visitors from search engines who are sent to the thread's print page

[quote author=Spht link=topic=17930.msg182561#msg182561 date=1241313883]
I think that's visitors from search engines who are sent to the thread's print page
[/quote]

That's probably it. Come to think of it, I get to the print page of dozens of forums when trying to find something in Google. Any idea what causes search engines to bring them to the print page as opposed to the regular view?

[quote author=Yegg link=topic=17930.msg182567#msg182567 date=1241316971]
[quote author=Spht link=topic=17930.msg182561#msg182561 date=1241313883]
I think that's visitors from search engines who are sent to the thread's print page
[/quote]

That's probably it. Come to think of it, I get to the print page of dozens of forums when trying to find something in Google. Any idea what causes search engines to bring them to the print page as opposed to the regular view?
[/quote]

Maybe google actually prints off every page it catalogs. When you search, it does a scan of every page and then text recognition and then matches your search. Long process, I know, but it's really efficient.

That sounds rather arbitrary to me...

In short, it's probably easier for a search engine to spider through a print page then it is through a full page with pictures, etc.  But that's just my logical thinking.

My guess is the bots are asking for the print device stylesheet so they can get a formatted, non-embedded view of the pages which they can archive.