About ethics: right or wrong?

Good point, Ciaran. I read the LL stuff that Sling quoted too quickly. What Sling quoted is:-

It's not against any rules at all, or anything else. All they said is that the system may cause keyword-stuffed pages to get lower rankings.

Hey Phil -

You dropped one position on the Low Prim Fireplaces search. Thought you might want to adjust that.

Yet again, you demonstrate that you have absolutely zero regard for the spirit of policy. You game right up to the limit of the letter. That is the lowest level of ethics.

It is clear that LL explicitly regard keyword stuffing as an abuse. You don't care.
My 'bet' above is bang on the nail.

You are entitled to your opinion - and you often state them But I'm not a fraud in any way. Keyword-stuffing isn't against any rules.

And it was true. Also, we knew that LL condoned traffic bots, so I don't know what point you are trying to make.

So it has. Why do you write that? Nobody is arguing with you about it.

They are certainly moving against influencing the search results, that's true. But we knew that - why write it again?

What? I've heard pf stretching things, but that ridiculous lol. I suppose we expect it from you though. It's like you asking me what colour that ball is and I say it's red. You therefore conclude that I think that all balls are red. Oh well.

There's no need to guess about that, Sling. I can promise you it will happen Something wrong with it?

Aha. You scored another point for being right. You're on a roll - that's 2 in 2 days Of course I do things with the business for my own benefit. What do think I have a business for? Is there any reason why I shouldn't fly close to the wire?

Aaw. You spoiled it by spouting garbage again. Do you know anything about "business social behaviour"? Is there such a thing? Oh dear - no there isn't. Oh well. I'll tell you what, Sling. When you have a business, you practice good "business social behaviour" - alright? Personally, I prefer business behaviour, but that's me.

Spirit of policy? I'm in business, Sling. It's an RL business. I comply with the rules. Nobody can ask any more from anyone. I don't run a social organisation. I just make and sell stuff. It's not a social thing.

You socialise according to the spirit of whatever, and I'll just make and sell stuff.

I did? Dammit! So much to do and so little time

Wonderful.
Yet again you prove that you haven't an ethical bone in your body.

I'm in businesses in RL. I know that my customers and most people expect much more than "compliance with the" (currently written) "rules".
Most people would regard your attitude posted here as parasitic.

As a result of the financial crisis brought about by financiers who 'complied with the rules', many more people have become very much aware that "the rules" are no standard against which to rate business behaviour.

It doesn't have to be against the rules to invalidate an earlier assertion from you:


Specifically (selective copy/paste from LL's guidelines for search):
You quite clearly don't comply with all of the guidelines even though you claim you do in this very thread.

You also do not comply with current policy since you continually fuss and tweak to "artificially inflate your rank". While you can certainly argue that it's far too broad and needs to be phrased more specific, even in its most narrow form you still wouldn't comply due to your compulsive tinkering (aka artifically inflating your rank).

FYI-today's L$60 Sunday list includes a "PrimSavers" store so you might want to take a more active interest in your own brand. Then again, it's not technically anything LL is going to ban that other person for so they're probably quite justified in using a similar name to yours.

I'm responsible for the financial crisis? LOL

Sling, you don't have a functioning brain cell in your head. I don''t know about customers but I do know about mine. My customers expect a good service, good after-service, they expect that what I supply is legal, and things like that. They also expect me to supply legal goods, and stuff like that. If that's being parasitic and unethical, then I plead guilty.

I said "against the rules" you argue by quoting guidelines. I was mistaken about the guidelines though. However, they are not rules.


Fuss and teak? Of course I fuss and tweak. It's what optimising is, and LL suggested that we optimise. But it wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't suggested that we optimise - I would still "fuss and teak" for the rankings. It's what you do with search engines.

What is the L$60 Sunday List?

It's part of a new trend where stores join together and offer one (doesn't necessarily have to be exclusive) item for a discounted price on one specific day of the week.

There's L$25 Tuesdays (I think it's Tuesday anyway, only saw this one for the first time a few days ago), L$50 Fridays and L$60 Sundays. There might be more as well.

(They're all run by different people so there's a different set of stores for each "day"

Cool! That's an awesome idea! Glad to see people doing some promotions like that.

Looks like Phil missed a keyword opportunity there. And dang! that store owner is sizzling hot! I don't care how many prims his furniture has!

I'm not going to rise to your baiting in that thread, Sling, but there's a big difference between what we've been discussing here and someone using someone else's business name. There is no specific SL rule about it that I'm aware of, but there are RL laws to protect businesses from it, and they reach everywhere, including into SL.

To answer a couple of your questions from that thread...

The AR that I filed was to ask LL if anything could be done about it. The AR was a question and not an accusation.

I filed it under "Other", and I filed it at the suggestion of a Linden.

Away a couple of days and when I come back I find a, mostly, surprisingly deep thread. Cool!

(@ LittleMe - (if anyone remembers p1, lol) - I hope I'm mostly 2, but sometimes I'll be 4. I think 2/4 or 4/2 applies to most people in the forums. My list was just off the top of my head though, so I'm surprised it wasn't picked to pieces.)

I'm actual serious about having a Philosophy Phd but the only thing it really makes me feel sure in posting is, "no ought from an is" (David Hume). The definitions and questions of ethics, morals and especially right & wrong are not the same. Often even the area of overlap is a matter of argument and it is certainly not logically clear how one can get from a statement in one category to an imperative in another, which was Hume's point. That's why we have laws instead of just morals & ethics.

(Debates on ethics usually quickly get to something like i) if it is morally wrong to kill, is it also wrong to save 1,000 by killing one. ii) Would it be ethical to kill your child, knowing that they planned to kill 1,000. iii) are 'sins of ommission' (not doing something you believe you should) as bad as 'sins of commission' (doing something you believe you shouldn't))

For the second half of this thread I'd have to say that a good case could be made that while one person appears to be acting morally, if not ethically, several more are being ethical but immoral. Now there's a good stance to stir things up!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only bother to read this bit if you are interested in how I come to that statement above.

It appears to me that Phil's position is there is NO HARM in his practices. Hence, he is acting morally - which only he can judge. At the same time, it is clear that those practices, while legal, are unwelcome and discouraged by the community as defined by the people here and LL. They are therefore unethical, but only in as much as Phil gives a toss what that community thinks (subscribes to their ethical standards).

By those same standards the people posting-against Phil's practices are behaving ethically, in attempting to support the spirit, not just the letter, of the 'law'. However, that same spirit would prevent them from singling-out an individual and writing in terms that look like flaming. Thus, they are breaking their own ethical code with intent to harm and so are being immoral.

Gah, what a lot of rot that sounds! Even saying something interesting about aesthetics might be easier, lol.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was to be expected, yet I hoped for a different result of this thread. Not another "Is Phil Evil?" thread.

What I was hoping for somehow, is that people calling others immoral and without any ethics, would explain their point of view here, or at least think their own reasoning over. Nevertheless I am happy to see some good postings here! Especially the last posting from Indeterminate Schism is one in the spirit I was hoping for.

People like Phil are of course not without ethics or morally bankrupt. Writing things like that are just utter bullshit. The most one can say, is that a certain action one does in SL (like having traffic bots, or paying for picks), is immoral or unethical. That does not make a person unethical, just one of their actions.

The most important thing though in my own opinion, is that ethics are not the same for everyone. So when I follow my own ethics, trying not to harm anyone in the process, I might still violate someone elses ethics. Let me illustrate that with an example that is very actual at the moment.

Within my ehtics, it is perfectly normal to optimize my parcel for search. Using my knowledge of search, and a lot of research. This might result in using keyword stuffing (in fact I am using that for one of my businesses). The fact that Search All rewards keyword stuffing higher then a good page with my items listed, is a shame of course, but if it works, it works. No harm to anyone else, in my eyes.
Now someone else might think different: they could say that by using the stuffing, I take the place from someone else. Therefore I am immoral, or at least my action regardng this topic, is immoral/unethical.
My defence would say: optimizing for search so you rise, always makes someone else drop. They can counter that, by also optimizing. That is what SEO is all about. The sites that optimize best, rank highest. There is no way around that.

In the end, we are both right from our own ethics/morals; we simply think different. And however I may understand where the other person is coming from, that does not indice me to use their ethics in my decisions. In the end, for me it is important that my actions are justifyable to myself.

It really would be nice if people calling others completely without etics/morals, would think a bit about this.

I should say this.
I have nothing in particular against Phil as an individual. I don't know him I've never met him. I did once come across an avatar that I knew to be one of his alts at a parcel that was being discussed in the Forums. Our brief conversation concerned the parcel only.

For me, Phil is simply a Forum proxy for a type of mentality that I despise. Most gamers just get on with their activities and don't come here to defend the behaviour.
If it had been a Joe Bloggs who posted in defence of Traffic Bots and other gaming, and not Phil, we would have seen Sling / Joe exchanges. I would have had nothing in particular against the Joe person. Marcel would bemoan - Not another "Is Joe Evil?" thread.

What I attack here is primarily a mentality.
Certainly it looks like personal attacks. It's difficult to keep a debate around a hypothetical person who is gaming search, when a person is in the debate describing their own search gaming actions.

I don't take any of his attacks personally, even if they are intended that way.

Wouldn't that be be perfect for you - people not defending their activities, leaving people like you completely free to attack to their heart's content Perhaps you should reword your sentence to, "Most gamers just get on with their activities and don't come here to defend or attack the behaviour."

I'm not a gamer, btw - never have been. Are you?

ETA:
For your information, I didn't come her to defend anything. I was already here - just something else you got wrong.

For no reason in particular, I was thinking about what sort of behaviour should be considered as gaming.

Running Traffic bots? Yup, and LL say so.
Keyword Stuffing? Yup, and LL say so.
Paying for Picks? Yup, and LL say so.
Doing anything to artificially inflate search ranking? Yup, and LL say so.

Oh. My mistake. I thought you meant gamers as in game players. Even so, it would be really nice for to able to attack without anyone countering your attacks, wouldn't it. But you're going to get that here.

If it's alright with you, I won't get into the use of the word for any of the things you mentioned.

This describes a zero-sum game, which is inherently amoral. The problem is that the harmed party in this kind of SEO isn't other participants in the game--most folks don't much give a damn about the other merchants who optimize less or differently. Rather, the people who suffer as a result are those who try to use Search to find stuff, and get more noise than signal from the results.

So it's a bit more evil than the typical Tragedy of the Commons: the most harm is to people who not only aren't overgrazing their sheep--they don't even have any sheep to graze.

(It's actually even a little worse and more complex than that because there are multiple Search mechanisms, so what actually happens is that fewer people use the GSA-based search than would if the results weren't contaminated by keyword-stuffing. And that plays into a whole complicated political fray with a completely different set of winners--i.e., trafficbots--and losers.)

Of course, this all belongs in a different thread because the folks who are "doing evil" here have no real appreciation of the damage they're doing, so it's not a real ethical or moral debate.

"Gaming" in the context of SL Search:

Fortunately, keyword-stuffing should be a thing of the past in the very near future, so there's not a lot of point in discussing it too much.

Yes, yes. I said that I misunderstood your use of the word. Which part of that did you fail to understand?