Traffic MUST be redefined

I've had alot of thoughts on this lately now that I'm actually ranging out and beyond my shop a bit more.

And to be honest, alot of what I'm seeing now is vaguely reminiscent of how things were back in November when I started when Developers Incentive was still a factor.

But DI and Dwell are long gone now. Why no change?

Well because its about being on the top of the list...the more people coming to your place...the more people will come to your place, thusly you generate sales and revenue indirectly through that.

Camping chairs and dance pads and money trees....all of which I can see a use for as a way of giving a new player a leg up in the world, are still in heavy use today by people gaming the traffic system that never really shifted when the DI an Dwell payments were phased out.

What does this do for SL? Well I believe it heavily demonizes the world itself because so much good content is simply ignored because so many people are continuing to game the system to draw absolutely impossible traffic numbers for their businesses.

Now...don't get me wrong, but on today's popular places list there was only one legitimate business/theme sim that was NOT using any form of dwell device. This is not conjecture...I actually toured these places and looked. I won't be naming names here because it will just cause trouble of course..but it seems to be that the focus of the traffic system is entirely and completely backwards.

I don't think I, as a developer and someone with a vested interest in Second Life, want people being routed out to big featureless boxes full of badly scripted porn and stolen net pornography and being led to believe that its the "content" that Second Life has to offer simply because the proprietor of said establishment chooses to give away 25L an hour to people that are willing to sit there.

I don't think I want people routed to badly built casinos full of dance pads, or ridiculously badly built strip clubs that sell people freebie porn items, simply because these people feel that its still an economically feasible expense in return for being on the "Popular Places" list.

Do I think my business should be on the Popular Places list? Well...no, I'll take the 3500 - 9100 traffic range that I get and like it because I generate that traffic on true content, things I've built for people to enjoy...not just a silent room full of dance pads/camping chairs and afk zombies soaking up free Lindens that may or may not make their way back into the economy.

But I definitely know that a large percentage of the businesses drawing traffic in the 30k range and up are doing so with absolutely nothing really invested in the area of content. And it is the content of this game that is what makes it so viable.

Now...am I saying that EVERYONE on the popular places list doesn't deserve to be there? Well no...there is one place thats been established for quite some time now, yes its a strip club, yes its got a few dance pads in it, but they've been providing employment and entertainment for quite some time now and I believe that their endeavor is as good as its going to get for that kind of business, in SL. They've lasted quite a long time now and in the club scene in Second Life...that by itself is an indication of credibility, dance pads or not.

Theres also one fairly new place thats just recently popped onto the list that has a very contreversial theme...but again, after touring it myself and seeing what it had to offer I felt that it truely deserves its spot on that list because of what it provides to the people that enjoy that theme....a community where they can be a part of something amongst others of similar mind sets.

But again, this is 2 out of what? 30 listings? The rest are literally featurless. Nothing to make them stand out from each other..boxes of casino games, porn freebies for sale, and newbie avatars being exploited for dwell via camping...or a whopping salary of 20 Lindens an hour to be a "dancer" or "escort".

And those other 28 listings are not what Second Life should be promoting...even indirectly, as the "content" of a world that is a product of Our Imaginations®.

Because I know I've never imagined a featureless box full of ripped off pornography as some kind of....new concept.

The Lindens must put some time and effort into making traffic listings realistic. Camping simply makes this system absolutely perverted and unreliable...and through the traffic system...we are sending everyone coming into the game to all the wrong places (in most cases) and people that might otherwise thrive and find Second Life challenging and engaging will simply write it off as simply a complex internet porn game and leave it at that.

And me, I don't want to see that happening.

There are so many talented desigers in Second Life that have given Second Life so many interesting builds and sims that have nearly no one in them....its just damn sad to see a faceless, featureless, soulless army of big rectangles full of trash minimalize the time and effort these talented designers have put into the game simply because Linden Labs is too busy to bother taking the "game" out of the traffic system and making peoples true contributions to the game be what they're judged by.

Anyways, sorry to be so long winded. Blame Jon Linden for taking the grid down.

QFT and AMEN.

Some people thought camping chairs would go away with the end of dwell, but I was not among them.

However, think about it this way: With the exception of a person using their own alts, traffic represents the places people go to most often. Maybe we wouldn't WANT them to go to the places they go to, but the fact is that they do.

coco

Yes but people go there most often because of the camping devices. I find this not representative of Second Lifes true content nor the talented developers that make it.

Was there an alternative system in that post? It's late and I skimmed.

In my opinion the popular places list should be deleted.

Barring that, I think, popular places should be tied in with ratings. I'm sure people will try to game that system but if it costs 25L$ to rate something I believe people will be less-inclined to do so for fake reasons.

Let's say the top highest-rated buildings get a link to their plot.

This will begin to support actual creativity as opposed to a bunch of people sitting around. Like I said I'm sure people will try and futz it, like saying you can't get in unless you positively rate something, but it doesn't immediately strike me as insurmountable.

But the friggin Lindens haven't changed anything at all by their current system. It's the same as dwell and DI, just without the extra cash. :/

I wrote a bit about this over in the Land and the Economy Forum for someone curious about traffic. I had nothing but data to share as I never followed through on the analysis I was preparing for the SLCC.

I guess I was a "bad boy" in this discussion as I had low-paying moneyballs and dancepads in the area. My location was an alternative sandbox, and basically featureless and uninteresting as the snapshot shows. While my underlying motive was to study how traffic worked within Second Life, I chose the sandbox route after viewing the public sandboxes offered by Linden Lab and some of the larger land dealers and wanting to provide an alternative.

You can see two floors of the three floor build platform I had using the GNUbie store's build texture. I also provided a large professional hose I bought as a place for furniture builders to use in seeing how their creations might work in a home. I bought waterside property and provided three locations for water vehicles to be built and tested. Finally I provided a number of free rides on the edges of the parcel. These were meant for people to take breaks and have fun. The moneyballs (four spread across over half a sim) paid out randomly to non-AFKers (I made sure to find a feature-rich and low-lag moneyball) in hopes to provide a few extra L$ for texture uploads or "freebie" buy packages (there were landmarks to Yadni's and other places). The same was true of the dance pads, just four, with the notion that even builders and scripters wanted to take a break (using a sealed-in dance club) and chat with others away from the building and to also get a few extra L$.

I guess I "gamed" the list as well, but I have to admit I was proud to be the only non-casino non-sex-area on the Mature Popular Places list for over two months, and also living with the fact that the Jizo region was limited to 30 avatars while those ahead of me generally had 40 or more.

Without an alternative proposal to determine Popular Places, I don't know what the solution is. I don't think removing the list is a great idea, many newer residents like an easy way to "go where the green dots are". I have offered to build something similar to the Topsites-style website lists as part of my Second Life Handbook project, but wish I could get some more feedback on implementation.

The smplest implementation is residents add their parcel, description, images (yes, plural ) and category/sub-category choices. Users see the list of all and then can filter it. People who actively click on a location (a secondlife:// link) log a "hit". People can also leave ratings (I prefer the 1-100% scale as opposed to five stars, but I'm open to suggestions) and reviews. The question is how the rankings are updated (instantly, daily, etc.) and whether to only count logged-in users (my site has an in-world avatar-linking system for account creation).

The goal would be to create a system that appeared out-world, was "perfected" *cough* and then offered back to Linden Lab for potential integration with the client.

I agree with this wholly, and I apologize for not having an alternative ready on hand to present. It is something I will ponder for a bit and see if I come up with a suitable offering. I was hoping that some moderate discussion on the issue might shake loose a few neurons.

It's quite clear to anyone who's been here a little while that "most popular" does not equal "best" by any stretch of the imagination, thanks to the way traffic is calculated and the way people abuse it.

Some of the "popular" places are almost unuseable because they are so full of laggy scripts, dance pads and other crap that makes the region crawl to a couple of FPS, and if I was a new player I can see myself deciding that if this is the best SL can offer, I don't want to be here.

There are so many fantastic places, beautiful builds, that maybe only get a couple of hundred traffic so don't appear popular, but offer so much more than somewhere that pays you to sit in a chair.

One of the problems is that, to get people to stay somewhere, there has to be something to do. People can visit my plot, fly around for a couple of minutes, say to themselves "thats nice" and fly off somewhere else. They might visit a store, see something they like, and then go home to place it on their plot. It could be the most fantastic experience in SL, but if people don't stay there, their quality isn't rewarded.

Compare that to a Tringo place, for example. By its nature, you might get 10 avatars sitting there for an hour playing a few games of Tringo, grabbing a huge slice of traffic, when in reality it's just an "out of the box" activity that generally is rather laggy - nothing unique or special about it whatsoever.

It is very discouraging to builders like me, when I put a lot of effort into making something truly unique - I very rarely use other people's items, textures or whatever in my builds - yet the few fly-by visitors I get tend to either ask "so what is there to do here" or "CaN i HaVe SuM mUnY".

It is ultimately those like me who create our own unique in-world experience who offer far more to improve Second Life, than those who offer 'out of the box' other people's stuff. Let's hope that the creative types don't give up and leave, to be replaced by real world corporations getting special favours and throwing advertising but nothing else at us - otherwise SL will just stagnate and die.

Lewis

And there was I opening an art gallery. Did really expect any traffic?

Perhaps the popular places list should be made up of the most popular places in each category or something. Is that not feasible? Then you wouldn't end up with a page of casino and porn houses.

Albion

It's a principle that worked very well in Sims Online, so there's no reason why it can't work here. After all, we do have separate property categories for the search, so why not have it for the "most gamed traffic locations"... sorry "popular places".

There is so much more that could be done with the "search" to make it more useable - for example, using things like "-ingo" to filter out all of those if we have no interest in those games but would be interested in more unique games. I don't know if this features at all on the "Big List" but I'm going to head over to Answers and ask.

Lewis

Money trees to do not increase traffic. I have a money tree on it's own plot of land, it gets LOADS of visitors but the land traffic shows as very low because people whip in, pick the tree and whip out again. It is there to give new people a leg up, which is what it is desgined to do, not to generate traffic
I know nothing about camping chairs and dancing pads though.
I do acknowledge what you are saying too though!

Maybe traffic coud be based on the amount of interactions residents have with a certain place (clicks on items, movement etc.) instead of the time they spent there. (Or a combination of both.)

This could also be gamed ofcourse (using client scripts to create continuous interactions, people actively clicking items for thousands of times etc.), but it's a lot more complicated than just using an anti-idle device.

Implementing this would be a major change to the traffic mechanism though.

What makes a build 'good?' During my brief time in SL i have seen some awesome architecture and lovely landscaping. What do i do when find such a place? I send half an hour wandering around and admiring the view, then leave. I usually never go back. Yes, it was very creative, well made, and enjoyable to look at. But i have already seen it. That may be your idea of a 'great build' but it isn't mine.

I doubt that any casino or brothel will appear on any 'Seven Wonders of the SL World" list. But at the casino i can find OTHER PEOPLE. We can chat, dance and play simple games together. At the brothel i can hire real live humans to spend a few hours doing whatever i ask. I find that more interesting than simply wandering thru a creative and artistic ghost town.

So which are the superior builds? Who has the right to decide whether your Great Pyramid is more interesting than the Live Sex Show? Hmmm, maybe the traffic system IS working after all?

That's the problem - it's simply measured on "time spent there" instead of any indication of quality.

If somewhere is badly designed and takes 10 minutes to figure out what's there before going, they get rewarded more traffic than a carefully designed easy to search place that you can see in 2 mintues doesn't sell what you want.

Lewis

You can only find other people at casinos because they're already popular. An empty casino, and there are many, are oddly depressing places. Personally the idea of watching naked avatars or hiring a virtual prostitute is about the last thing I want t do with my time and if that's all there was at SL I wouldn't be there.

Of course, what you find more interesting is up to you. I suppose the question is, Is SL being marketed towards people who like casinos, cyber sex and guns?

Albion

The current method assumes that people spend more TIME in places they enjoy. Alternately, one could assume that people spend more MONEY in places that they enjoy. Maybe the business owners would be better served by a 'most profitable places' instead of a 'most popular places?" That might frag the campchair palaces, since most of their visitors are there to get money instead of spend it.

Probably easily gamed by simply using an alt to buy a plywood cube for L$10,000 again and again, then giving the money back to the alt to repeat.

I personally wouldn't be at all worried to see the entire 'popular' list scrapped altogether, and improved search facilities in its place. There are not many places that make the 'popular list', and from my experience few of them actually deserve to be there.

Lewis

Apparently, yes. It does seem to be marketed to them. And there are a lot more of them than there are of you. Or maybe not, if the traffic system isn't working well, we don't really know.

*shrugs*

I rarely even look at the popular place list. In all my time in SL (just short of year) I think I've looked at the list a dozen times. And then only just to see if a certain place was there, and trying to figure out why as that place sucked, imo.

I don't care about traffic. I don't care about classifieds (being able to buy your place in the lsiting is just retarded).

Most in SL learn that "popular" does not mean "quality" or even "good". Some of the most popular places on the listing are the most laggy, piss-poor builds, and rude buisness owners I've seen.

Things I do look for in places;
Cleanliness of the build - Are there flickering textures? Are the textures too high-rez and lag inducing? Plywood showing? Even if it's not a place to sell prim-builds, how a place looks reflects the attitude of the owner. This also includes Picks in the owner's profile. As well as the wording included.
Lag - Are there 15 billion scripts in the area that serve no purpose? Swirly lights in clubs will turn me at the door. If I can't move to enjoy the area, I'm not staying.
Product/Service - Quality and how it's presented. A lot of this can be subjective. A builder who has been in SL for years needs to meet higher standards for me than the new Resident that started up two months ago. I've seen builds being sold by long standing buisnesses that I wouldn't give to someone in a freebie package.
Word of Mouth - Perhaps THE most important factor. What do others say about the place? About the owner(s)? About the service and the customer service?

I find a place I like, I landmark it and comment it so I know why I landmarked it. I might not spend the time there to earn traffic, but I do pop in to see about new products, or to buy ones I've been saving for. How often I come back depends on how closely the service matches my personal needs, and on the quality of the work. One of my favorite clothes shops puts out new outfits almost daily. I'm there a lot, so probably drive the traffic up. The one tech place I frequently purchase from takes a good deal of time in between new products (detailed prim-work and scripting takes time), so I don't frequent as much, but never forget it, and pass on that name to anyone I meet that seems intrested in that genre of products.

In short, traffic means squat. It might get people there, but it's not going to hold them and make them dedicated customers. That takes quality.

~Jessy

Ya know, I was thinking it might be a nice idea for one of the oldbies who know their way around SL to pen a Notecard that could act as a "Second Life Handbook" for newbies, directing them to useful and beautiful spots that they could visit to have fun and a richer SL experience than rotting in a champ chair. It could be distributed (for free, of course) at places at places newbies frequently visit like Yadni's, Gnubie Store, etc. Placed in a conspicuous place so it's easy to find.
In a section about making money in SL, it should mention the evils of camping items. I think, once it becomes common knowledge of how the owners of such items are using the new residents to abuse the system and how such activities lag the sims, their should be a noticeable decrease in their use. A lot of residents don't visit the forums and don't have a clue of the problems camping causes, an easy to find explanation would inform more people than all the complaining on the forums combined. They should be directed toward finding Money Trees (my wife makes more in an hour of visiting them than you would sitting in a camp chair/dance floor all day, for pete's sake!), how to look for REAL work, directions to places that help teach real, useful, in-game skills like building (I.E. the Ivory Tower). Anything but camping!

When I go looking for something, I run a search for it. 'Popular places' always show up first. *sighs in frustration* When I look for hair, just to see if there are any new artists, I always wind up with a freaking long list of camping chairs! I'm so sick of scrolling down that long list that I never get to leave my own shop when looking for hair!

Remind me to check and see if the "" around a word works as it does for most search engines.

I don't think you were a "bad boy" at all.

People need jobs in SL. You provided them. The only downside to these particular jobs is that sometimes the chairs and dance pad fill up a sim so that people who live there can't get in.

I loved your sandbox with the moneyballs. It was FUN. You could work, chat with people, check out everything there, and get a few bucks, too. That's entertainment.

And I don't think you gamed the list. You SHOULD have been proud to provide such a popular place.

Really, it's ridiculous to have this ethic where only content creators can be unashamed.

Unfortunately, the movement has been to shame and remove EVERYTHING. Every single thing ordinary people like, need, use, or find fun or entertaining. Clubs, dance pads, money balls, malls, Bingo and Slingo, yard sales - you name it. Stipends, dwell, traffic, ratings, even the forums.

I'm surprised people aren't campaigning to get rid of the visual green dots themselves.

Those who have speeded that movement are the ones who should be ashamed.

Built in to all that, though, is SL's ultimate death as much of anything but a platform for advertisers, so it really is a waste of energy to argue against it.

What will be, will be.

There's a very big difference between those things and the camping devices. The camping devices are more than an eyesore. If all my only complaint was that they're ugly and tacky that'd be one thing, but they're detrimental to the sim and to the users who are actually present in the game.

As I said, the only real problem with them is they fill up a sim sometimes, and won't let the other owners get to their homes.

(As for them being any problem in terms of scripting, I don't believe they are any worse in that regard than all the other scripts we have, right?)

coco

P.S. Even that is not the problem of the camping chairs; it is the problem of SL. Anything that draws a crowd has the potential for making it impossible for others to get to their own homes and shops.

That's a very bad flaw in the SL design, actually. I'm surprised it wasn't anticipated by the designers. I personally assume it was, but there was no real fix for it, in a contiguous world with homesteads. But then, I don't know much about game design, so I have no idea if this could have been avoided or not.

P.S. Clubs, games, all that - yes, they DO cause the same problems.