In the sim where I keep my store there is a casino that has an absurd amount of "camping" devices. In case you're not familiar, they're systems that entice users to sit on them for the promise of "free" money. They all work with different rates and the point is the longer a user sits on them the more money they'll accumulate, ZOMG just for sitting down!
The obvious reason why landowners use these is because they very effectively game the traffic and popular places list by keeping a large number of AFK players in one spot.
Unfortunately they have a devastating effect on the people who are trying to conduct themselves elsewhere in the same sim.
As of the moment I'm posting this, there are 24 people in the sim and only three others are not present inside his building. 20 people is about average for this casino, though generally at peek time it's 25 and up. It takes a long time for any textures to download, for objects to rez, to walk, to type (because messages come out of sequence) to build or shop. I've tried to contact the casino owner to have him do something about this and he refused to because he removed any pads he'd no longer be listed in Popular Places. Furthermore at the height of this conflict he claimed he'd go and add more camping pads, which he did, just because he can do whatever he wants on his land. By his own admission the camping pads cheat the system. As you can see here he has currently room for 27 camping devices which is up substantially from the number (10 - 13 or so) he originally had. Twenty SEVEN. When the sim can support, at max, 40 people. As you can also see, many of them are already occupied and it's only 2:30 in the afternoon PST. You can online imagine how busy it gets later on when all chairs are occupied AND people are using the casino devices.
Now my gripe is not because I want LL to begin policing land owners, I know the precedent is that in the past we have been allowed to do whatever we want on our land within respect to PG/Mature sims and parcel encroachment. But this goes beyond that. He owns 1/8th of the land in the sim yet has 50 - 70% of the avatar limit at any given time. All of the users on his camping pads are AFK, and some I haven't even seen log off in three days straight. They're still on the exact same pad as they were every time I've checked. It is staggeringly unfair that because this unscrupulous business owner can do "whatever he wants" on his parcel that apparently means he has unfettered permission to use 100% of the sim resources and the majority of the user limit.
As a business owner who resides in this sim, building more content is impossible. I have to go to a sandbox to build because creating a platform 400 - 700 metres up still does nothing about the sim lag. My customers complain about how laggy the store is. That's bad for business. And on top of all this the casino constantly shouts about how someone won 10L$ and I have to hear this on the other side of the sim.
The immediate fix is eliminating the flawed Popular Places list. If you run through them it's clear that every place ON that list has camping devices. This isn't fair and it skews the system.
Beyond that, limits need to be developed so that landowners with a fraction of the sim's land cannot take up the majority of the sim's resources and avatar limits. 20 avatars in one spot isn't a temporary thing with this casino; it's constant. And these avatars, as you can clearly see, aren't shopping or using the games or anything. They're standing in one spot, AFK, sucking out resources that would be better applied to those who are actually present in the system.
I trust that Linden Labs will move quickly to correct this horrific problem.
You may wish to look up many past posts... inshort, yes, we do and have taken action if camping behavior is found to violate the