"My Picks" Question and an offer to other store owners

Local Chambers of Commerce have been doing it for years. I can sit on my moral high ground as I watch the big guys game the system right and left or I can join a small group of individuals who I respect (in the forums at least) to give ourselves at least one small advantage. I hope it builds to greater coalition down the road.

You only get 1 IBL, but I'm not sure it doesn't pick up all the different named links as keywords anyway?

And regardless of the explanation (not saying what you said isn't true), you have to admit that seeing those picks after asking someone whether they're using the picks as intended is quite ironic .

As far as the choice of word: for me personally if you state that someone is gaming the system, then you're "accusing" them of it. The two are just linked for me, I guess I could have used "claim", but it felt more negative than that. No harm intented .

(Edited to add that I think we hijacked Honey's thread enough now probably *sneaks out*)

Any system on the Net that is not designed to acknowledge the absolute certainty that it will be abused to the maximum possible extent is :
1) Broken
2) Evil. "Evil" because it pressurises decent people into being abusers just to maintain visibility.

It is difficult_to_impossible to design a search system that will automatically detect and ignore gaming.
Whoever wants to run a credible search engine needs the balls to police it. This involves value judgements, and unfortunately this appears to be an area that LL don't have the balls to enter.


It's really simple.
Traffic: This is intended to show true popularity.
Someone has a box of avatars on the plot driving up traffic?
Bang! Gone from search!
- Strike.1 for a week. Strike.2 for *ever*

"No, it's not a box, it's a lake.You didn't forbid a lake"
- "That sort of cartooney lawyer shit qualifies as Strike.2. Thank you and goodnight."



Stuff for sale: This is intended to be a service to people who expect to get search listings that are genuinely relevant.
Someone has a bunch of prims that are 'obviously' set up to abuse keywords?
Bang! Gone from search! Strikes as above.


The really neat thing about SL as opposed to RL is that in-world lawyers are completely dickless - even the female ones.
People will argue forever about their (re)interpretation of the TOS and 'justice'.

You don't like our decision? So sue us in RL asshole!!
"My World, My Imagination" is a place where these fuckwits are told where to go.

and how do you know if we checked each other's places or not?
You are assuming quite a bit there.
I do not liked being lumped into an assumption

I DID check out the ones I added, granted it was only a couple places and I know THEY checked mine as I have a visitor counter that records who visited

(plus some others whom I have yet to visit their stores)

FYI you HAVE to go to their store to add it to picks, else the teleport destination would be incorrect.

*sigh*

I suggested that on the classifieds thread as well .

I can hear the "it won't scale", "we don't want to get involved/our hands dirty" and "self-governance" already though .

Some things scale very nicely if they are made smaller by hitting them with a large hammer.
IF!!
There will never be perfection. People will continue to push the envelope. Just to stop the blatant, stupid, egregious abusers would be a great start.
After that, market forces can take over. If someone is pulling a fast one somehow, be sure that the competition will analyse it. If what they are doing can be shown to be subverting the intent of search, no matter how clever - Bang!

Self-governance is great, unless it the LL flavour thereof.
Taking LL's self-governance to the extreme: Logins will be disabled until enough people vote in JIRA to have them restored.



Let's have some good old-fashioned despotic injustice around here!!!

The point is that you KNOW it's pretty much IRRELEVANT search-wise that I have my store in my picks multiple times, and you still wrote "you're far worse than the people you're accusing of "cheating" - just for the heck of having an upper hand and a good laugh on me. It was a cheap shot, and I was pretty upset about it - I've been reading a lot of your comments, and I always thought that you're one of the bright spots on this forum, and I actually believed that you are going to support me, instead of attacking - (Your thoughts in another thread about policing people for abusing classifieds led me to believe that.)

I don't have to accuse anyone - we all KNOW that this thread was made to take advantage of the errors of the search. English is not my first language, so I'm not sure if I felt more negative or not, but I tried to be as clear as possible, as you said, no harm intented.

Rhaorth, sorry, I shouldn't have assumed anything, although I think you missed the point. All I ever wanted to say is that I don't agree - if you trade your picks with someone in this thread, you won't use your picks for what they were created. Nothing to assume here - you either honorate the shops you really like and you've been to in the past almost 2 years, or honorate the guys you've found in this thread.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I harmed anybody's feelings, I'm probably overreacting, or I just simply don't trust LL to police everything for me - even though I agree with Sling, that would be the best thing to do.

I'm smiling to myself here. I've been in the search engine optimisation business since before Google came along, so it's been a while. That's the business that gets websites to the top of the search engine rankings. I stopped doing that some time ago, and I've been in SL for the last year instead, and now what do I find? Search engine optimisation all over again

In the real world of search, all but 2 people in this thread woud be considered as blackhats (spammers), and the other 2 people would be thought of as whitehats (not spammers). But that's the real world, and this is SL. In the real world, search engines have guidelines, and websites that are in breach of them are penalised in the engine. Being in breach of the guidelines makes someone a spammer - not the person's actions.

This is SL, and SL doesn't (yet) have any search guidelines, or rules for search, so nobody can be in breach of them - hence nobody can (yet) be a spammer. Judging by LL's treatment of camping, which is intended solely to game the Places search resuts, it's everyone for him/herself here - survival of the fittest, and all that. So nobody is doing anything wrong by exchanging links - and neither are those who have hosts of alts high in the sky, etc.

Really? You mean all those years ago, LL foresaw that they would change their search system to put weight on people's picks, and created the picks section for that very reason? You must have some great insider knowledge to be able to tell us how our picks are supposed to be used. Better run out and tell all those thousands of residents who use their picks to feature their friends and relatives - and who have been around much longer than you - that they're misusing the system.

Generally, going into a thread like this one and telling small business people who are trying to help each other out that they're being unethical is not going to get you favorable reactions. You don't like it, you don't have to participate. No problem.

Puppet, instead of unnecessary irony you should probably try to understand what you're reading. LL designed their new search system with the intention that people will use Picks the way I described. It happenned 3 weeks ago, not 3 years ago. Please explain me why was the picks system included in the new search, if it's not meant to be used as I described.

I also don't post my opinion to get favourable reactions. It's my opinion. You don't like it, fine, no problem, but why come here and insult me? Prove me wrong, convince me, but stop commenting ME, comment my OPINION! Thanks

Oh no, Puppet is too dumb to understand to understand what she is reading! Talk about insulting someone. Nope, I understand you just fine.

By the way, the word you are looking for is sarcasm, not irony.

My point is that unless you have inside connections, you do not know, and cannot tell any of us with any authority, how LL intends the picks section to be used. Profile picks have been around much longer than 3 weeks, or even 3 years, and people have been using them in various ways ever since they were implemented. I did not get an official communication from Linden Labs telling me that the picks are to be used solely in the fashion you described from now on, and that all residents need to change our picks for the purpose of enhancing the new search results, therefore, you are wrong.

You still seem to miss the point to me, so I really think that you didn't understand me (Btw, sorry if I insulted anyone, I got a bit carried away, sorry. I really hope we can debate the issue without getting personal.)

What I said was that the new search was developed a few weeks ago, not the picks. And when the new search was developed, imho LL decided to start and use an old feature (Picks) differently. That means, that people COULD use picks for whatever they wanted to before, but they SHOULD use it differently from now. Or at least I THINK that is the Linden's intention. If I would be the Linden responsible for the new search, it would definitely be my intention.

I don't think it's a "right or wrong" issue either. The real question is, is trading picks good for SL from a customer's point of view? Is camping good for SL from a customer's point of view? Is using 3000 empty boxes named as a keyword good for SL from a customer's point of view? My guess would be no, cause these methods are exploiting the flaws of the search therefore it makes harder for customers to find what they're looking for.

If those 3000 boxes name products in a vendor available for sale it should be acceptable, but what a waste.

Do a search for "picks camping": Pay me some money and I put your store in my picks for 24 hours. It was only a matter of time until this would be available. (At least this doesn't create lag!)