About ethics: right or wrong?

It's actually been done for a number of reasons before picks were tied into search, including valid advertising reasons.

Still, picks, including ones which are given freely for support, placed in exchange for gifts or cash, or otherwise solicited, are not "illegitimate", simply because another (presumably real) resident is involved, AND does not unfairly tie up resources. Don't forget that camping was odious primarily because of the unfair resource usage issues. It ALSO was used to blatantly game search, but I don't consider it the same level of blatantness as Picks. At some point, there has to be a level of consideration for legitimacy for actions. For example, providing an attraction in a mall to get people to hang around and socialize is not and should not be considered an illegitimate or unethical way of gaining traffic. Likewise with picks.



I don't disagree with that, but I don't consider paying for picks to be inherently "crooked".

For example, if we do business together, like me remodeling your house. If I give you a discount if you'll let me put out a little yard sign that says "Remodeling work done by Talarus Inc.", there is no harm in that.

You do know the difference between "artificial" and "natural", correct? <.<

Better yet, the difference between "legitimate" and "illegitimate"?

Putting the word "furniture" in your parcel description because you sell furniture is "natural" and "legitimate". Putting the word "furniture" in your parcel description 10,000 times is "artificial" and "illegitimate".

And now comes the thing.

After a while I decide I should specify better what I sell, and I change into:
All kinds of Furniture: Garden furniture - Living room furnture - bedroom furniture - (and so on, till the description is full, but all legitimate).

This has a side effect: I rise several places in search. Artificial or natural?

The bit about the delay isn't news.
It's a small thing really.
What matters is what happens afterwards.

You can game right up to the wire if you want, knowing that what you are doing will only attract a penalty after the date.
In doing so, you will be setting yourself up for a fall. No doubt LL will be conducting dry runs on the analysis, and you will be seen to be "seriously taking the piss".


After a date, there is only one sure way for someone to avoid a penalty.

"Be advised that any attempt to artificially inflate your rank in search results could result in penalties to your rank, de-listing from search, and disciplinary action against your Second Life account."

That's "any*, as in *any*
You think you have found a grey area? You risk that being seen as *any*.

No Marcel, wrong.

Your mistake is to think that your "artificial" is LL's "artificial".

While I don't think a few repetitions is going to have that much of an impact, if it is clear enough you're being artificially repetitive, then I would say that you probably should be called on it. What is clear enough? Is it necessary for you to use the word in every case? If it can be said just as clearly with fewer repetitions, then I think it is obvious enough to be acted upon.

"Furniture for every need and place in your home: Garden, Living Room, Bedroom, etc"

However, we're also not talking about something riding the gray areas, we're talking about this:

"~ FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE - FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE FURNITURE "

It is QUITE clear that such is illegitimate and artificial in the extreme and, thus, by the topic of this thread, unethical and wrong.

After a while I decide I should specify better what I sell, and I change into:
All kinds of Furniture: Garden furniture - Living room furnture - bedroom furniture - (and so on, till the description is full, but all legitimate).

This has a side effect: I rise several places in search. Artificial or natural?

Those are not my figures...but LL soon to be published ones, you'll see them release with Q4 Economic review. Do the maths....17m (or 18m) with less than 500k regular users that log in monthly. That's 3% current active a/c's.....meaning 16.5m accounts are dormant, obsolete or dead.

Depends what products you sell.....most of mine fall under Avatar products, which they buy really early on in their SL lives....so churn rate is more important for me then for you. As long as new players keep landing on Orientation islands, my type of businesses thrive, but not necessarily my other ones (I also have Poses biz, Furniture biz, Estate sims and Malls which behave quite differently...which specifically targets more mature Avies obviously)

Nowhere have LL said paid picks is abuse, but people seem to have decided that's what they mean, however what I consider picks abuse is exactly the same as you, an army of alts configured to count in picks search.

Sling. What happens afterwards remains to be seen. You don't know. Only I have information regardling what happens to my html page after the change comes. Are you resorting to judgements in advance now, without even knowing what to judge?

What "grey area" do I think I've found? I'd appreciate knowing because it might be useful.

The dry runs you imagine won't reveal anything that LL doesn't already know, and there is only a very remote chance of anything happening to any keyword-stuffed pages at that time. You should read the blog about it and try to get an idea of what LL is actually doing.

I used the expression "flights of fancy" about some of the things that are being said here, and that's exactly what they are, including your post that I'm responding to. But if you think that your post contains anything that might resemble reality, you're doing the wrong thing. You should be encouraging me to leave my page as it is, so that it can be penalised when the change comes.

I do not care what YOU are talking about Talarus, I am talking about what LL is talking about. You know just asd well as me, that the text that Sling explains as very clear, is oopen to way too much explanation.
Of course your latter example is keyword stuffing, we all know that. But we do not know what else is artificial in their eyes.

It is perfectly right to set rules. But the rules must be defined and they are not. This is like saying: It is forbidden to artificially up your traffic, and punishing the first club owner holding an event.

Though it might be they intentionally keep it shady... they satisfy the few that object search optimizing, and do not have to actually act. Just as they did with bots.

By your logic, anything that attracts someone to a parcel is gaming, that means hunts, lucky chairs, money trees, money orbs, parties, events, yadda yadda yadda.

If this is your parcel description, it would be seen as a natural way of servicing searches for key phrases.
It is not a given that the repetition of the word "furniture" has to increase ranking.

If this is the description of an item flagged for Search, it would be unmistakably artificial.

Exactly that is the problem with the current published rules. They are meaning exactly nothing. Paying for picks is an answer to the Lindens calling people to gather picks. Keyword stuffing can hardly be meant as they can prevent that by tuning the GSA different.

More important maybe: People read what they want to read. Sling for example reads: Yay they finally kick Phils ass. Mytself I read: Okay for the time being I have nothing to worry about

Each item I set for sale is named with this convention:

name: Dining room set (low prim furniture)
descr: Another Low prim furniture item by Sampireun Design: Low prim Furniture at its best!

I will list about 100 items.

Dont bother answering, as I will adapt my question accordingly. Not to trick you but to show you that the rules simply are not clear. It is not so strange to put Low prim furniture @ Sampireun Design in the description, the part in the name might be just a tad too much. Who decides what is permitted and what not?

Some pages ago I posed the suggestion of making "gaming" a societally useful behavior by silently translating all search queries into multiple languages. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anybody "bite" on that. I wasn't just joking around (in contrast to my hypothetical "crappy furniture" store which fared better in the discussion; now I'm thinking I should set out some crappy furniture to get in on all the cheap publicity. )

The obvious intent of such a thing would be to increase SL's global appeal. Although it may be true that there are lots of residents for whom English is a second language and they fare quite well, believe me about this: there are many here for whom English is a *foreign* language, who don't speak or write it at all, and use the viewer in their own language.

Some of them make very nice stuff, too. Often they get somebody to translate product and parcel info into English, but it can be hard to find. Hang around some of the lesser known Japanese sims and you'll see what I mean.

Now imagine you're in that situation yourself. What do you find in Search? How large and rich is this SL to you? How many of your fellow nationals will join you in SL?

You get the idea: SL gains global appeal as a result of LL imposing an artificial step in the Search mechanism, such that only multilingual listings can make it anywhere near the top. The effect would absolutely swamp Picks, keyword stuffing, traffic--everything, because a unilingual listing would only be a really dreadful partial match.

So, two questions:

1. Would it be an unethical abuse of power by the LL "government" to impose this?

2. Would it be unethical for merchants to comply?

(For the sake of argument, let's ignore the difficulty of automatically translating search queries. The results may not be perfect, but this isn't remotely as hard as full natural language translation.)

I'm certainly a fan of being able to list my parcel description and/or items in multiple languages, I've ran multiple languages in classifieds.

The intent/principle is what should be defined: if LL is concerned about people artificially inflating their search ranking then it's perfectly fine as it is written.

It doesn't matter if you use keyword stuffing, or paid picks, or any other known or unknown method. If someone's intent is clearly to manipulate their ranking then they would violate the principle.

*How* they are accomplishing it really shouldn't matter because there's an endless number of ways to go about it and some - as you pointed out - aren't inherently wrong but can be misused.

Harsh? I thought it was pretty funny. I do have a sense of humor.



Those aren't the only options, and no, I don't care enough about you or Phil to tip my hand. Mostly, I just don't want to let you fluff Phil up any more than he fluffs himself up without my at least saying "I don't buy it." Whether that rises in importance enough to do something about it depends on my available time. You don't get to decide where I spend my time. What I can learn about Phil's pick gaming will only come as a side effect of another effort, which I may or may not ever get around to.

Optimization takes time....even the way it's been set up now with keyword text density bias, it's not as simple as you think. If you think can place 100 prims and keyword stuff it with say a popular keyword like "animations" and expect to be on Page 1 for the keyword "Animations"......think again.
Whilst it is a lot simpler than the initial settings of ALL Search, there still some other variables to consider, which i won't list here anyways.

The crapola is not so much on ALL search......I can't speak for Places Search as i never really focused on it...when the Bot wars were going on.

The logic I was using was that of paying people cash to sit on the parcel for significant times or to have a place in their Picks.
Setting out to pay people cash for traffic /ranking is gaming.


Who's going to wait on a Lucky Chair if the product they would get is not attractive to them?
If someone comes out with say, a Lucky Chair that gives cash, zap them and delist the people putting them out.

Would you hunt for items that you do not want?

Of course, a gamer could reward people with products that they did not actually want, but accept because the gamer has set up a system to buy the items back. People get to know. It spreads. It begins to show on radar.



Parties and events? They have to be good in order to attract people. They have to be both good and ongoing to have an ongoing effect.

It would be imperfect if traffic not related to the core business of a parcel counted towards ranking for the business.
But hey! We know that overall it's going to be imperfect.
All sorts of people are going to be getting away with flying just under the radar, risking the event of them coming to the attention of the wrong person.

Realistically, we can only expect that the worst systematic offenders will be detected and delisted - with random less high-profile offenders getting hit as well.
It would be great if it were perfection, but that's unlikely to happen.

So am I, but we're also having a conversation here, and the issue transcends LL's take on it. If it didn't, LL would never have to consider changing their policies, because they would be 100% defined and accurate.



I think that more than just her are guilty of that. >.>



That's why we try to get them to see it. They don't always, that much is beyond clear. However, it doesn't mean they will NEVER see it, though it may take a lifetime of effort to get them to do so. <.<

Still, it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me are other people's subscription to ethical values; not with respect to themselves, but with respect to others. I don't care what people do to/for themselves that only affects themselves. However, when their swinging fist connects with my snout, I'm going to have something to say about it. Anyone who has a problem with that, well, tough.



Anybody who sets up a ruleset and enforces it needs to have the wisdom to be able to judge intent from circumstance to enough of a degree to be efficient at applying said ruleset. They don't have to be perfect, as no one can be, but they must do a good enough job to make having the ruleset worthwhile. Punishing the low-hanging fruit, and leaving stuff which isn't fruit at all alone.

There is no ruleset in the world (Real or otherwise) that can 100% define any and all proscribed behavior. In every ruleset, there is always gray area, left to the judgment of those charged with enforcing the rules. Oft times in RL, those judgments are recorded for posterity in a form known as "case law", and used to guide other judges when other, similar "grey areas" crop up.

In that (or any) situation, I would HOPE that the person(s) making said judgment would recognize whether the circumstances do indeed reveal a level of intent to break the rules, at least sufficient enough to justify any punitive action taken. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. We all know that LL has a very spotty enforcement efficiency record overall. However, I would rather have some halfway-decent rules and enforcement over living with the inanity and abuse. Of course, I would prefer that all people respect the commons and each others' right to a fair share of it, but in absence of that, regulation (and all the ills that come with it) will have to do.

So you're climbing down now? You puffed your chest up by claiming to have "the means of finding out", and yet you choose not to find out when challenged? Anya, we know you. We know that you spend hours and hours counting bots (or avs that you decide are bots), so don't let us down. Use your "means" to investigate, or are you afraid that you'll find no Picks rewarding of any kind? Yeah, that must be it. You like to say stuff against people, but you climb down with your tail between your legs, when challenged - even when you claim to have "the means to find out". You're just a bag of hot air.

Now come on, Anya. Do the checks you claim to be able to do. Show us that your word is good. You have been challenged, so get on with it.

Not saying it doesn't take time; I am saying it takes a TRIVIAL amount of time, and is most definitely not enough time or effort to discourage the "crapola" or knock-off sellers. They have more time than the "nice" or "legitimate" sellers.

I'm only going by what you said that you would do. Remember? It's the thing you forgot that you said and had to be reminded about.
My point was that if after that date, you set up to test the upper limits of word-stuffing you risk coming under the *any*.




I was speaking of the time after the date.
The "You think you have found a grey area?" (Note the question mark) was intended to refer to some point after the date when you might come up with what you considered to be a grey area.




You didn't read what I wrote.
"You can game right up to the wire if you want, knowing that what you are doing will only attract a penalty after the date."
If you think that there is a very remote chance of LL doing something to keyword-stuffed pages in the gap, fair enough. Personally I'd put the chances at zero. That's what I indicated in the post, and that's what you missed.


I did read the blog and the guidelines LL are clear about what they will be doing.
After a date they intend to automate the punishment of stuffing.
On top of that they intend to take action against *any* attempt. *Any* would include a level of stuffing that did not trigger the automated analysis.