Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

lol. You're giving a small concession? Oh, the arrogance LOL

You can't draw a line as to how many models are acceptable, Gabriele. You cannot reasonably argue that a clothes shop should not display all of its clothes on models. But that's what you are doing, and it makes no sense at all. If you do argue that, you can't then sensibly say that a small number is ok, but not more. Just like it's agreed that, if running bots is ok for me to do, then it's ok for everyone to do, if running models is ok at all, then it's ok to run any quantity of them, as long as they are genuine models.

You really don't want to address the question properly do you?

You say that it's perfectly Ok to spam a search engine.
The search engine does not want to be spammed. It considers it an abuse, and so delists spamming sites when detected.

How can it be OK to abuse a search engine?
It is abuse. The search engine considers it an abuse.

You say that you would stop using traffic bots if LL banned them.
Why would you?
Ah! because there is only one SL right now, and you don't want to be punished for abuse.

But..
You feel that it's safe to abuse a search engine because there are other engines.
It's not a moral question for you. It's simply risk/benefit.


It seems clear that if there were a number of virtual worlds, you would risk using traffic bots even if they were banned, and would encourage others to do so.

OK Rene, I read that slightly different. Perhaps Colette was saying it the way you think, I read it differently. I still think her opinions are valid however either way and as nobody really knows - not even the Lindens then you cannot rightfully say she is wrong except for giving an opposing opinion.

I have to say as a side note, you are coming across as quite offensive in your posts despite my reasonableness in response. So far you have said I am in denial and that I am twisting words and just two examples of this. You may not like my stand point or that fact that my argument with Phil descended in to mud slinging but I that is no reason to start being accusative in this fashion.
If you do not moderate your language to me then you are only going to turn what is left of this discussion in to crap.
Unless of course that is your intention.

You are offensive and border line trolling. I am twisting nothing. Nobody else is having difficulty with what I am presently saying except you. I am trying to have a discussion, if you do not want that then leave the forum, otherwise attack my points and stop making this personal.

Again you are the one who is misunderstanding. My point about them being different is not one of which client is being used at all. You assume too much, I did not say anything about client used to run bots.
My point was *purpose* A traffic bot tends to be as slimmed down as possible to avoid too much noticeable detection of the over use of sim resources. Most of the time they are unclothed and high in a box out of viewer range. These are undoubtedly used only for traffic. Bots that are used for models are clothed, have their default poses overridden and might in fact change pose from time to time to present the product. They are also in viewer range and so the store owner is saying they are willing to take a resource hit because it is important the product is displayed and that traffic is not really why they are doing it. Though in my opinion even a large store should only be looking at having a couple of well placed display bots and cycling the clothing every few hours if they want to show different things.
I am saying this use of resources *to me* would be *more* acceptable than 20 unclothed, unposed bots high in the sky that clearly have no other purpose than to raise traffic.
I am also saying that there will be borderline cases where there is a small store and they are trying to dominate search for a niche market and hiding it as using a couple of clothing bots. Even then I think it would be quite obvious and quite rare.
My further point is that should LL decide that traffic bots are outlawed and clothing bots are not and require all benevolent bots to specially register and have them not contribute to traffic then clothing bot operators would only be too happy to do that I expect. Traffic botters would not be very with that though I expect. So you see how there is a difference now perhaps?
I am sorry I do not know how to put that any clearer.

I don't do that, Mort. I respond to people's views and opinions. I don't try to impose anything. I merely present the other side of the argument. You, on the other hand, talk about forcing the whole of SL to fit your desires. There's a vast difference.

I impose my will on my little corner of SL, and on nowhere else. The SL system then places my little corner where it will in the rankings. I don't try to make anyone else do anything that they prefer not to do, and that's the difference, Mort. You were talking about organising sim owners to place 100 bots on each sim so that LL will be forced to make changes for the whole of SL. Can't you see the difference?

(I wish I could force my will on the search results because I can't compete with island owners who can use a lot more bots than I can )

lol- well there you go then!.

There isn't a fail safe system that can grade between different companies on any given keyword. I guess Classifieds is about the closest and even that can be gamed to an extent
of listing items they do not even sell.
You're welcome to dream one up...but a lot of posters would come right back at you of possible ways of manipulating it.

That's an exact parallel with the beginnings of email spam.
People were 'perfectly within their rights' to send large volumes of unsolicited email to increase their profit. I don't think that can sensibly argued against. So, yes it can be assumed that so was everyone else. If everyone did it, it most likely have a significantly negative impact on the email systems, as it would be a hell of a lot of email. etc, etc.

Morally, you are in the same boat as the early spammers.
Had you been active them, you would have happily spammed the hell out of the Net until something happened to stop you.

You still consider that it's ok to spam a search engine.

So search is limited to your corner of SL? Or is it called manipulation of a gridwide service in order to get results you want.

It's like saying you only paid for votes in you home town, for a national election...

I can, but can you accept your actions are having an effect outside of your parcel?

When logins are restricted do you and the other bot owners log them off to let in other subscribers?

If not you are affecting the grid as well, forcing your interests above others.

I've never said doing away with bots wasn't something that forces a change on others

What I want to see is transparency, I imagine you'd get less hassles if you replaced the bots with campers... or were up front and educated your visitors.

But then there might not be a silent majority anymore if the grid were educated in search manipulation tools and techniques.

As an interesting aside on the Google side of things with bots, if Google suspect you are using a bot to generate searches automatically, they blacklist your IP address from Google search automatically.
How do I know? Once I was trying to enter some advance search terms and I was getting my syntax wrong in minor ways and the results were not as I expected. I would make a change and quickly resubmit. There were about a dozen cycles of this in rapid succession and then *bam* I could no longer access Google search. This was at the place I work and then we realised neither could anyone else in the office. The admin person had to contact Google by phone and explain the situation to remove the blacklist. The Google admin explained it to the admin where I work and he explained it to me.
Seems Google do not approve of bots for generating searches at least.

It's you who doesn't accept proper answers, Sling. I'll tell you what. You tell me what answer you want, and I'll write it. Ok?

What a search engine considers spam (you said "abuse", not me) is up to it. What a webmaster does with his/her website is up to the webmaster and to nobody else. If a search engine doesn't want to index a site, it won't. That's all there is to it, Sling. There's nothing wrong with including spam in websites. It's nobody else's business. You are almost talking as though you think that search engines can dictate what webmasters put in their websites. Why the fascination with websites and search engines, anyway? <<=== question - please answer

Correct.

Correct (spam - not abuse. spam does not abuse a search engine) And there are other ways to generate traffic to a website.

Whether or not I would encourage others to do so doesn't come into it. I don't encourage people in SL to use bots. If there were various places to operate, then I may take risks. Who knows? It would be my risk, so who even cares?

As it is, I don't take risks in SL, and I don't spam or abuse the SL engine. I merely use the tools that LL *knowingly* allows to be used. Is there a point that you are leading up to?

Talk is cheap.....do it!

Of course it's ok to spam a search engine. Good grief. And morals don't come into it.

There's a very fundamental flaw in your email reasoning, Sling. So fundamental, that I'd be embarrassed if I'd written it. It is this:- nobody can stop email spam, but LL can stop anything that they don't want in their system.

Good God, sir, take some moral responsibility for your actions. The will of Linden Laboratory does not determine whether something is appropriate or inappropriate, thank the Lord.

Mort, if you can't see the difference between someone affecting his/her little corner of SL, and someone else trying to impose their desires the whole of SL by forcing LL to make changes that suit them, I'm sorry for you. Don't try to shift the focus of this bit. You were talking about organising sim owners into forcing LL to act, and make the whole SL more like *you* want it be. You haven't got a leg to stand on.

It's auto-searches that Google has clamped down on from very near their beginning. They are not called bots - they are just programmes that are used to do searches very quickly - to check a site's rankings - and were around before Google was launched. You can actually trigger the ban that you found, by going through the results pages quickly - I've done that. The ban is only short-term and is lifted in hours.

I wouldn't give a flying fig, that's capitalism in action and I'll wager that my politics are far more left wing than yours.

There's a difference between idealism and realism.

Read her posts....all her emphasis is on Places search being exploited, particularly by Phil.

She makes a rallying call that everyone should acquire bots, so that we can bring the grid to a halt, despite Phil stating that most of his sales come through All Search and referrals which are not Bot biased.

Practially this whole thread is based on traffic bots is it not? Practially all of Pie's arguments focus on manipulation of traffic created by traffic bots.
She talks about how other Furniture makers are losing out on sales because of Place Search and the traffic counting.
.........i suggest you're the person trying to put a spin on things!

You kind of remind me of my belated mother bless her soul! In all my life i never had my Mother ever admit she was wrong even when you presented the facts black and white....even when the evidence was staring her in the face. You might as well just bang you're head off the wall.....because she'd never admit to being wrong. You not Taurean are you??

What you do on that corner of SL affects the grid as a whole.

After all if everyone puts 5 bots on every parcel they own... does it only affect their parcel or the grid as a whole?

Does manipulation of search affect just one parcel or does it affect everyone using the search tool?

Buy me the sim to do it on and i will.

I'll use bots, html injection into the parcel/prims (and if they didn't fix a loophole from when I was playing on the beta grid maybe do a bit more than that), and keyword spam.

I can even link all the bots I make (which can be automated) to a paypal account and hose the pay for picks as well.

Do you think phil or any other bot runner wants that to happen?

For someone to come out and detail every trick they use to manipulate the search for all to see, and force LL to have to fix it now... possibly even shutting down search till some of it can be fixed.

Bots, paid picks, adding html code into the parcel and prim names/descriptions.

All simple things to be done, and if the html code still has some holes ... well then there were ways to get some scripts and such to run back when it was first on the beta grid.

So anything goes in pursuit of the almighty dollar?

So you would have no problem with a corporation starting an army and taking over a small country for true slavery of the population as long as you got the products you wanted for a cheap price?

Are you drunk or have you just lost all leave of your senses?

Wake up and smell the coffee. Good grief man, are you living in a goldfish bowl?

Nope, sometimes the pin is simply putting it in the open.

I know the tools to use to manipulate search to the point it gets attention, and now so does anyone reading the thread.

So now all the competition has the same list of tools to use.

Mort seriously, you need to take a step back, you're losing the plot here. Take some deep breaths for your own good.

it's not as simplistic as that ...there are IBL's to factor in on top of Land names to decide who gets the higher placing.....trust me, i've spent days playing around with it.