About ethics: right or wrong?

I would think that people do not have enough time to go through three pages of aggravation, more so. You cannot see product - you cannot see styles - you cannot see prices - you cannot see inventory. In some cases, you may not even see furniture, if you go so far as to TP. In that case, you have taken up an hour of a shopper's time, and you have rattled them enough to the point that may just log off, and keep their lindens in their pockets for another week. You have also "weakened" a person's shopping enjoyment across the board, in any category.

I've caught a few comments on the search being required/justified to bring people to quality. Otherwise, I don't go down that street on that discussion, because I agree that it is subjective.

I'm not catching what you are saying regarding "quantity".....can you elaborate?

But its simply not true. If a store that specializes in tables does not optimize, they end up very low in search, thus the searcher will not find them. At least, not many users. As I pointed out, I saw the difference of being on page 2 compared to page 1, imagine being on page 20. Since the rest of the grid optimizes, the merchant specializing simply has to optimize too,
My main point about that, is the more dedicated a business is, the more they will try to optimize. Someone already knowing they cannot cater well to searchers for a certain keyword, will not focus on it. At least, that is what results show me.


Now I do not remember whether you have a business, but I wonder about those different ways. Experience did show me that the best way to advertise yourself, is making sure you are found. And believe me I did try out many ways.


Because you know darn well his quality is good (damn I should stop saying that about the competition... you know, my stuff is way better ).

You say it yourself here: like most people do. When most people stop at page one, that page should contain relevant results (from the searchers point of view), and I, as a relevant store, should on it (from my point of view). Only if the results do not contain relevant results, something would really be wrong.


Simply because I cannot determine what another person sees as quality. Nice example: Items I spent hours on, sometimes hardly sell. Items I literally create within half an hour, sell like crazy. Maybe Qie's stuff is crappy, but if it is relevant then people should find it. Let them determine the quality. If he sells crap, his store wont last long.


Here you are loosing me. Tell me how the search system can differ between stores in a) and b)? What I say is that the store selling Linden trees is not a serious business and will not put as much effort in promoting himself, then the store selling good stuff. I dare to say that almost all stores in those 2 example top tens sell good stuff. They are all businesses that are very serious in what they do. Is there beter stuff? For sure. Is it possible to measure that in search? Not at all.
Of course I am rooting for b), and I run my business in a way that I try to be as much b) as possible, by looking at my visitors and what they buy. The higher the visit-buy rating is, the more b) I am. Plus, of course, the more income I have

OK, give me your email address, and I'll make sure that you get all the "nothing dishonest about putting forth what you sell, in volume" promotional material you can stand.



Then why did you bother participating in it yourself? O.o

You're right, though; it is pointless, because it will take even more bungling regulation attempts by LL to "get it right", hurting even more people in the long run. Yay for not sharing the same values!

This is why self-regulation in a free market almost never works. Single-celled organisms in a petri dish will consume all available resources and crowd each other out, ultimately killing each other in their own toxins. Even that has been made as a rationalization for people to do whatever they can to compete at the top of business. The sad part is they don't realize they have relegated themselves and their behavior to being no better than a single-celled organism.

Humans are not amoebae.

No, I don't think "get it" is very high on your cognizance list. <.<



Codify it however severely you want. If you can't sort the spirit from the letter, that's hardly anyone's problem but your own.

Fine, we'll just let LL keep bungling around to sort it out until they just up and remove search completely (either directly, or hobbling it to the point of uselessness for anyone).

Maybe I'm just a spoilt little princess but the whole quality thing does matter a great deal.

I'm tired of wasting time and tp'ing to dozens of stores selling:
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=images&ItemID=1620105
or https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=images&ItemID=1772781
or https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=images&ItemID=542357

before even finding a store that sells:
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=images&ItemID=1296525
or https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=images&ItemID=1517722
or https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=images&ItemID=2030078

If it was like XStreetSL and each store page listed pictures of items that are sold then it would at least be tolerable but having to tp over and waiting for things to rez only to find the former rather than the later again and again just leads to utter frustration.

Churn rate is why it exists. New players come in....older players leave...it's a revolving door!

Think about it- 17 million a/c's opened only 1/2 million active users.....what's that 3%? The vast majority that have bought my products over the last 3 years......have long since left the building. If you have a decent size group (1000's)....check it out!

The companies that spend time gaming/ optimising or even money....do it because they do actually supply good to half decent products anyway.....they would not invest time or money if they were selling crappola!



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Are you joking? People invest time/money at the drop of a hat to "game the system", especially if it is "crapola" or infringed material, as it cost them even less time/money to obtain. Less work/cost = more profits.

I have my own theories on churn rate.

I can't go by 3 years, but I can go by a year and a half.....and it seems that catering to those who started a year and a half ago, and keeping the relationship aok....is just as productive if not more, than constantly going after new....but I do go after new, and I do appreciate new very much. I doubt that you could operate to the max, without paying attention to both. And the new, will be the segment that could be here a year and a half from now, that is still aok.

Even the people who purchased land/home packages three years ago.....still send me business. I'm not real clear if you are discounting long term or not. But not everyone has left the building....and they do leave some impressions with their friends, before they close the door and walk.

Those who don't take *any* steps, or even very few steps might well see little business.

Those who follow LL's guidelines and rules and who have decent well-presented product should expect more than those who don't put in the work.
They will have ensured that they can be found in search both for loose generic searches and a variety of relevant search phrases. They are helping people to find them.

Those who ignore the spirit of the rules and abuse ranking systems are gaming.

The idea that anything done to improve ranking is just advertising and therefore acceptable simply does not stand up.


LL are extremely slow to do anything. We all know this.
Look at how long it took them to take action against ad-farm / land extortion. That was ugly in-your-face blight all over Mainland, but it too way too long for them to act.

Traffic-bot farms were a highly-visible farce. It took LL ages and they still have to finish the job. One of the reasons given by LL for not taking earlier action against abusive use of bots was that they didn't want to get into an arms race. In the end, the problem was becoming so bad that the had to move.
But your assertion would have it that this was simply positioning and advertising.

Why in their latest policy statements are they saying that their action against keyword stuffing will be automated - rather just announcing a ban?
For anyone with a lick of sense the answers are obvious and logical.
They would have to police it. They would have to deal with edge-cases.
By automating a reduction in ranking for stuffed pages, they avoid all of that, while still deterring excessive word stuffing.
Yet some will argue that this is LL saying that it's OK to word-stuff, or word-stuff "a bit".

For the first time, they have mentioned Picks as an abuse vector. They haven't mentioned Paid Picks specifically,but given that such Picks are an abuse of the rationale from using Picks as a ranking factoor, it's inevitable that LL will begin to move against them, starting by hitting the commercially available Pick Buying systems.

LL move at the speed od a dead slug. We all know this,
When they have indicated that that are taking action against Search-gaming in general, it is a completely bogus argument to say that every rank-manipulation technique that they have not explicitly banned is legitimate or has their blessing.

lol- funny man!

You'll be sorely disappointed, your Utopia within SL does not exist.
Examine the history of SL and all that has gone on. You close one avenue (E.g SL Banks).....another one opens (Phishing login passwords through 3rd Party Clients)....and so the cycle continues.

100% agree with above.

I find "false keyword" advertising far worst on my personal Richter scale than keyword stuffing or even Bots.

It quite commonly happens in Classified advertising, because someone spends 200K on a classified they feel entitled to list every popular keyword going, some of which they don't sell. Could that be stopped.....I don't know.!
It would take LL to visit such reported locations....and match products sold versus keywords listed.....seems like a long winded process and i doubt LL has any enthusiasm for it.


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Removing some people won't harm SL. More honest merchants take the place of those removed. SL would benefit tremendously.

LL have announced that they will remove people - those that are not amenable to cleaning up their act.
The reason they will remove them has to do with gaming techniques. The fact that someone is selling what they are gaming is irrelevant.

"far worse" implies that something is bad, but not as bad as ....

I'm glad you're amused.



I am not witless enough to allow the impossibility of attaining perfection to be the enemy of seeking "good enough".

I am aware of the history of SL, I've lived over half of it, and I know that it is possible to attain a level of satisfaction with regards to that "utopic ideal". That there are pieces of human offal out there who continually try to destroy it doesn't phase me. The price of freedom (in this case, from said offal) is vigilance.

..and, no, I am not disappointed in the effort, OR its overall results thus far. It probably shouldn't have taken as long as it has, but it is still progress.

- 3000 mirco parcels still exist
- Thousands of unregistered traffic bots & campers still on the Grid
- Age play
- underground gambling
- Numerous Adult businesses on Mature lands
- Copybotting at much higher levels than ever before
- Stolen content sold on XStreet
- RL Copyright infringments of listed products on Xstreet as well as in-world


.......yeah sure.....they're doing a grand job!

I didn't say that SL would be harmed. I said that SL would not benefit.

Isn't it possible for you to just respond to what's written sometimes, instead of putting words in people's mouths, and judging them for those words?

Okay I am going to ask you two questions. One about whether LL is going to do something anyway, and two, it is possible?

1. They will remove people? Just as they removed bots? If they even cannot manage (or do not want to manage) to remove bots and campers, how on earth are they going to remove merchants that for example buy picks?

2. Let's say they are going to fight payed picks. What about the stores that already have 600+ rewarded picks in their profile? Yes, I do my research, my store had around 70 picks, my competitors have hundreds. Now in Phils case they are honest picks as he never rewarded them. The spot above him and the spot below him do have reward systems.

Now they ban those reward systems, but the picks already are there. So in fact they reward the people that payed money or prizes for picks, as others can never accumulate that many picks without rewarding. Of course some of the 600+ picks will be removed, but if no reward system exists anymore, I predict that most picks stay where they are. Why would the use remove it anyway?

So the only way to do this, is ban reward systems, and remove all exisiting picks. But would that be fair to businesses that never payed for them?

Believe me, nothing will change. The same stores that put effort in search now, will do so in the future and be visible.

@Kitty: Yes you are spoiled princess
But seriously, with the current search system there simply is no way to show quality. For that it might be better to use XStreet as you have pictures there. But of course people complain about their search system as well.

That's down to the individual business owner. You may say game, some might seeing it as optimising. Some techniques are more blatant than others.

I thinking using MM Boards. Lucky chairs and Sploders are ways of enhancing traffic units.....don't kid yourself thinking that all merchants give away freebies and money out of the kindness of their hearts......behind it lies the ultriamotive of enhancing ones traffic units, thus rankings in Places Search. Something i don't choose to do...but I don't have an issue with it.....each to their own.

How about having a Mainshop on the same plot as your Club, where you know most of the traffic will be generated through club to the benefit of the Main store......that's if you want to get all ethical about things. There are many ways to skin a cat!

Down from 10s of thousands.



Down from 10s of thousands.



Who cares?



Better than ubiquitous above-ground gambling, I suppose.



Who cares?



As a percentage, I don't subscribe to it, but yeah, it is pretty bad nonetheless.



Yeah, they definitely can do a lot better job in that regard. Still.



Better than nothing, and it sure doesn't mean we should just roll over and let them do nothing. *I* don't think so, at least. <.<

There's a very simple solution to that of course . Banning the pick reward systems is hopeless, those using them will just jump on the next "not against the TOS" scheme so LL should just delist them from search for X weeks and permanently on the subsequent violation (followed by a permaban on the account if they try to circumvent that).

Wipe out enough stores from search and the remaining ones will get the message.

Awww... a princess should have a pony though *nods*... so vote, vote, vote (http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-3694) .

Yup. When people won't stop abusing, you simply have to make it too toxic for THEM to continue.

The only problem is that LL abhors directly punishing residents for bad behavior. Rather, they like to talk with them for a bit, find out how they feel, see if they can work out some kind of deal, then eventually just ignore the problem, rather than ban the ones causing the problems in the first place.

Sometimes they do, or at least rattle their Sword of Damocles enough to get compliance, but for the rest, they pretty much just let it hang.

From search? Hopefully. The could potentially ban people, but I doubt they will.



I'm not convinced of that, and I have the means to test it.

My advise to you....is that you should focus on making your Business more successful and driving traffic though your Main stores/mall area...than the time you spend preaching ethics on these threads.

Having a Mall (built in 200 empty of vendors...is not cool!

1) The Mall is not my sole focus of business in SL, nor my sole focus in SL period.
2) It isn't empty of vendors.
3) The Mall has been being built since 2008; it wasn't "built" in 2008.
4) It is neither done nor open yet.
5) "Preaching ethics" will happen no matter what I do, it is as much a part of me as anything else.

But, you know, don't let your superficial observations get in the way of the facts.

You quite selective with your "who cares" i see.....so much for your staunch ethics. I think those Adult businesses who were forced to relocate to Zindra care.....they are at a disavantage to those same like for like businesses who can be seen in Search by non age-verifieds.

Gambling is Gambling and against your own U.S laws, which we all have to unfortunately abide with......even the auto-play Zyngo machines stretches the imagination.

Sex age play with child avatars?......and you say who cares. Wow...just wow!