Bye bye traffic bots

From every useful perspective it is the same. From the perspective of other avatars. From the perspective of the asset server. From the perspective of the traffic score and the perspective of search listings. It's the same. And if you try to prove there is a difference you will tie yourself up in knots coming up with a definition and will achieve nothing useful.

I have avatars I'm sometimes logged in as through the viewer and sometimes as bots. I'm regularly (almost always) logged in on more than one viewer since I generally hold all conversations as Elan but perform maintenance tasks with other avatars. I have 5 computers in my house and two or three of them can be logged into SL at the same time, all using the official viewer, or maybe some openmv client I wrote. There is no possible way to define a bot as anything except an avatar that is not controlled by a human. And that includes anyone who is AFK.

That's just hearsay. When they post something to that effect, then it will apply.

I've no intention of proving anything. A normal avatar, that is unattended at the keyboard, is not a bot. It's perfectly straight forward. E.g. if I log in and a little later I go and watch football on the TV for a while without logging out, I'm not a bot - simple as that. I may be botlike for a period of time, but that's completely different.

Fair enough. Then every avatar standing idle in a box in the sky just happens to be someone who was watching TV at the time. I guess by this definition there are no bots anywhere.

That message is no longer clear.....because of some areas getting nit-picked and hacked for a few to make sweeping judgment calls on morality and ethics across the board....based on their own personal interpretations and definitions.

Get your business in place....up and running....get your tools lined up for a few months....see what you need to effectively run the show......then come back to me and let me know just how clear it is to you.

well just for a little edification...
when the bot thing first came out in the blog.. we switched off our bot pc and logged them out for good.

sales have not noticably dropped... ppl are staying longer on the sim.. walking around and looking at other areas
there is WAY LESS lag... you might argue otherwise Phil but its true.

Only if someone moved the lawn.

I'm not talking about people who are deliberately using bots as subtle or not-so-subtle traffic raisers, I'm talking about people who want to have a realistic model in their store, not something made of prims, and use a bot... They have no idea that LL is now calling that a traffic bot, because they never thought of it as a traffic bot. It's a model. No fucking intent to break any rules whatsoever.

This is like people who have a house and a beach on their personal parcel, and a sign saying "nude beach", and a sex ball in their house. Is that "Adult Content"? Damned if I know. It comes down to intent, says Blondin. If they're "advertising" it, yes. And he says "word of mouth" can be advertising.

If they come into the forums sand starts talking about how they're "getting around the rules, that's one thing. If they come into the forums and start talking about how their private sex bed they'd never actually used for anything but cuddles was getting returned, that's another. The objective facts of the case, outside their intent, are the same.

I'm not talking about THAT CASE. I'm talking about what THAT CASE implies, because there ARE people who ARE NOT intending to inflate their traffic that are doing objectively the same thing in-world.

I don't know if it is or not.

They screwed up on the edge cases with adfarms. If I sell two 2048m2 parcels in one sim, and put for-sale signs on both, that's adfarming. But the blatant adfarm just south of the Coonspiracy is OK.

If the guy hadn't said he was doing it for the traffic, but was doing it to honor his partnership, would it be an abrogation of the rule?

That's like calling every piece of crappy email you get "spam". Camping holes aren't bot farms. They're both bogus, but they're not the same thing.

And, yes, I'll go AFK for 10 minutes. I've got a frigging family. My wife has a broken ankle. She yells, I go see what's up, I don't bloody stop to see whether I logged out or not. That's normal. That's HUMAN.

What can I say to such a post? My traffic bots stood idle in a box in the sky and they were bots. Nobody was ever at the keyboard - they didn't have keyboards. On the other hand, my alt stood idle most of the time on top of the box and the keyboard was right next to me, ready to be used as and when, but not often used. My main av always used a different computer with a different keyboard. Was the alt a bot? I was always here with the keyboard, but not actually typing on it most of the time.

Normal avatars that are in on viewers are never bots - not even if the RL person is fast alseep in bed, and the avatar is left logged in for the traffic. They are just not bots. You, of all people, know what bots are.

Why would I argue otherwise? I've no idea about your sim and how you had the bots set up. All I know is that I also removed my bots, long before the deadline, and it's made no discernable difference to the sim.

If the keyboard is right next to you ready to be used then that is clearly not AFK. So we both agree that is not a bot. If you had walked away from your keyboard and were no longer controlling your avatar then it has become a bot. After all what is a bot if it is not an avatar that is not controlled by a human?

You seem to think the avatar is linked to a viewer and that we can somehow use the viewer to detect the bot-ness of an avatar. With so many alternate viewers around you must understand that is total folly. You surely realise that the same avatar can be one minute using an official viewer and the next minute using an openmv client. Then is it a bot or not? The answer is simple. It is a bot when it is not controlled by a human regardless of the viewer. If I log 50 avatars in using the official viewer and some super computer then they are undeniably all bots. Even if one of the avatars is Elanthius Flagstaff or Phil Deakins.

This is absurd. What measurable difference is there in logging in using the official LL Viewer and leaving yourself idle overnight against using an openmv client or one of the many alternate viewers? If the difference can't be measured then there isn't one.

As for your 10 minutes AFK thing. As I mentioned we can all debate the amount of time an avatar must be idle before it becomes a bot. I'd say maybe an hour would be appropriate but I could see an argument for less. If we were to look at this like true philosophers we might conclude the answer is an infinitely small amount of time. But let's not go there right now.

Except that is not what the policy says. You have written "custom viewer" out of the Linden Lab official definition of a bot.

It is up to Linden Lab to explain clearly what it wants, not up to me to guess what is meant by a poorly written, poorly written policy. (And there is no reason to assume that because the definition of "bot" is not what you would expect, that Linden Lab must have messed up in writing the definition.)

If Linden Lab messed up the definition of bot, they should clarify it. That will remove doubt. Notify them of their error. Let them know what a "rules lawyer" like me has done by twisting the wording. Because truthfully, I don't really care much how they define a bot, as long as it is clearly defined. And finding out today that they did clearly define bot suprised me (and a lot of people, apparently).

When people want to know what the rules are, they do not (nor should the expected to) look up all the commentary that everyone on these forums have about the rules. They do not (nor should they be expected to) read every blog post that a Linden has ever made discussing an issue that might be related to the issue. What they do (and quite appropriately what they do) is read the actual, official rule.

Wait. I'm confused. Is the knowledge base considered some "official definition" thing now? I thought the KB was a collection of half baked nonsense and wildly innaccurate trivia that all right minded people ignore.

That's actually an interesting point. The contract between every resident and Linden Lab is the Terms of Service. The Terms of Service say that residents are bound by the TOS itself and the Community Standards. Nowhere does the TOS say we are bound by anything in the Knowledge Base.

(Does Linden Lab even have lawyers? And if so, do they ever bother to consult them?)

The Lindens don't even use the knowledgebase as a definitive answer of anything.

If you get a piece of mail from Microsoft that's an invitation to some conference, is that spam or not? You can't tell but looking at that piece of mail. I've gotten mail like that that WAS spam, and I've gotten mail like that that was sent specifically to me and me only. Some legitimate mail is indistinguishable from some spam. The world is like that, deal with it.

Similarly, some people behave in ways that makes them indistinguishable from bots. The world is like that. Deal with it, instead of trying to redefine words.

I say there is no amount of time.

The fact that you can't necessarily distinguish a bot from a person *inside the game* means that some people are equivalent to bots. That doesn't mean they ARE bots.

On the other hand, the fact that you can't distinguish some avatars from some bots doesn't mean you can't have a high enough degree of confidence that an avatar is a bot to act on that belief.

It's funny, I just read another thread in which a resident posted a reply to a support ticket, received from Kate of the Documentation team. It stated, "The Knowledge Base is the official location of information pertaining to Second Life."

The thread is here, it's the opening post:

/327/e2/310130/1.html

Is it official or not? I don't know. What I do know is that no one can credibly argue that Linden Lab's policies are clear. A lot of smart people experienced in SL have trouble figuring out what they are, or how to find out what they are.

Parts of it are work in progress. I had a ticket recently whereby the information in the knowledgebase wasn't correct, this was due to the knowledgebase solution not actually working.

Yeah, that makes sense. Not.



Then you are talking about EDGE CASES, right? RIGHT? I'm not. I already said I am quite happy to use a bot for my business. NOT FOR TRAFFIC GAMING PURPOSES. As such, I AM one of those EDGE CASES. LL has said that they are going to go after the blatant abusers first, by using search.

In fact, I am glad that MortVent made that point earlier; I will make sure to parcel off the podium that the bot avatar sits on on a 16 so it doesn't affect the store traffic.

In the cases you cite, LL shouldn't go after them, if it is one or two bots, but even if it is just one or two bots, and a significant part of the intention is to game traffic, then they better not tell anyone, and they better have their use case outlined when LL comes calling from ARs over them. That's now a necessary part of the business model of using bots. I will; I expect everyone else will have to as well. "Papers, please!"



The difference between the bot issue and the adult content issue is a matter of perspective, and it is a rather big one. Adult content is an endemic, and some would argue, necessary aspect of their Second Lives. Bots are not. Bots are an OPTIONAL tool which, in this case, are abused, and LL is doing something about it. With adult content, it is a core activity to Second Life, and LL is attacking it wholesale, both good and bad, with a really crappy policy. The bot policy is NOT blanket attacking the use of ALL bots, it is attacking the specific problem use cases, just like with microparcels; they attacked adfarmers, and they attacked the microparcel barons. They didn't attack people using them for minor advertising, nor did they attack people using them for servers or other reasons (like Blue Button or Elanthius).



Then they shouldn't be bothered over it. What's the problem?

Oh, right, the loophole. Well, ya know, some use cases are just gonna have to take the hit. The store running 20 model bots "just because I need to show off my entire clothing line" is just going to have to suck it up and pare down.



I'm aware they screwed up SOME edge cases; we told them they were screwing it up, but then again, the impact of those screwups was NEGLIGIBLE at best. Did land sales stop all of a sudden because people couldn't see the signs? NO. Why? BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE USE THE EFFIN' LAND SEARCH FUNCTION TO FIND LAND FOR SALE. Amazing, no?

Oh, and let's talk about the benefits.. even in regions with large parcels cut into lots of smaller ones, you didn't have to see fields of spinning yellow "FOR SALE" crap anymore. A net plus, methinks. Oh, yeah, they couldn't be spinning or floating anymore. Great. Still fields of yellow "FOR SALE" crap that was almost totally redundant. No, I didn't miss them.



Honoring his partnership, IN A STORE? Uh huh.

I dunno, all I am trying to say is that people need to get off the ridiculous "gotta cheat to win" mindset, and that there are blatant cases and edge cases of it; the blatant cases get the sledgehammer, the edge cases get the scalpel. People who are cheating, and admit to cheating shouldn't be coddled.

Those that cheat need to be ganked for it.

Stupid SHOULD hurt, otherwise there is no incentive to not repeat it.

You may have the KB confused with the forums.

If it is from Microsoft to ME, there is no doubt; it's spam, and is deleted forthwith along with all the penis enlargement, mortgage refinancing, 419 scams, and every other piece of junk mail that hits my inbox.

We've already been around the block on the spam issue. You don't consider stuff spam that I do, and vice versa.



Great, you've just set up the next loophole for people to use to game traffic in search. "Oh, don't run bots, just run 20 instances of SL with everything turned down; they won't know".

THAT is why Jack was saying that they will be looking at SEARCH, and then looking at the places that rank high on search and why they were so. Those that appear, from a behavioral standpoint, to be using bots will likely be asked to stop, then forced to stop. All claims aside, there is NO RELIABLE WAY they can ever detect bots. It is too simple to make the bot clients behave like the SL client, and they don't want to get into a technological arms race with bot client makers any more than they want to do so with copyright infringers.

If they are going to solely rely on letter of the rule tactics, they'd never be able to keep up with the loopholes. Hence, they AREN'T USING THOSE TACTICS ANYMORE.

Right. The example in question (two bots, performing a function that is not obviously related to traffic) is an edge case. What makes it traffic gaming is *intent*.

But if they get enough people using one or two bots to game traffic, they will. And they won't base their decision on what someone says in the forums, because they won't even look here. They'll base their decision on what they see in world. And what they see in world is two bots dancing. They don't know if the two bots are dancing because it looks cool, or because it gets the user 1440 points of traffic.

Based on what Linden Labs has done in the past, they won't come calling, they will simply ban the two bot accounts and go onto the next ones. It's not "Papers, please", it's "boot to the head".

I am opposed in general to the adult content policy, as well as being concerned about edge cases. I am in favor in general of the bot policy, as well as being concerned about edge cases. I was in favor of the adfarm policy, but I was concerned about edge cases. The way the adfarm policy has screwed up on edge cases reinforces my concerns. It's possible to be in favor of a policy, in general, while being concerned about the details of implementation. WHICH IS MY POINT HERE.

The problem is that Linden Labs has a tradition of fucking people over in cases like this.
Don't put words in my mouth.

The adfarm just south of the coonspiracy is still fucking there, because Linden Labs targeted the wrong behavior. Like banning unsolicited commercial mail instead of unsolicited bulk mail has made the CAN-SPAM act fucking worthless. I don't want to see Linden Labs going around fucking up innocent people without solving the real problem because they're trying to hammer down the wrong kind of edge case. I don't want to see a permanent floating botswarm teleporting all over the place and lagging the grid more while Linden labs is running around hammering down statues.

Where the fuck have I disagreed with that?

Where have I said that they should require that the apparent bots are really bots? Oh, I didn't. In fact I said exactly the opposite. LEARN TO FUCKING READ.