Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

I don't know where you got that idea.
As far as I'm concerned, any pick in return for reward is a subversion of the system.

Some people choose to carve up land into tiny plots and extort outrageous prices for them. They chose to do that. That's quite an important principle.





People have used their picks to tell others about themselves, their interests and their friends It was part of their Profile. The face that they presented to others.
There was no problem with that. It had no effect on search ranking. You looked at a profile and it told you about a person. You might see an interesting avatar and browse their picks to see what the interests of the person were.
With paid picks becoming institutionalised, that trust is gone. The pick could be some absolute rubbish site that is paying the person to list them. Picks become meaningless as good information. The integrity of the avatar had been sold for fractions of a dollar.

If there were a completely separate Profile section where people could list places for payments then that would be OK, as long as those picks had no effect on search ranking.
If people want to get paid for being billboards, then it should be obvious that they are billboards.
How would it be in RL if you were meeting people in social venues and they were recommending places to you - without you being aware that they were being paid to tell you that? Don't tell me that you would not think badly of the bloody muppets when you found out that they had not been honest with you.




If two or more parcels have exactly the same description then list them (pseudo) randomly.
If ranking is done purely on About Land content, then any stunts being pulled will be totally visible.

Maybe they should be renamed Links rather than Picks



Search engines of every type are abused everyday and slowly but surely people like google are becoming smarter fighting the gaming and I hope LL does the same as time progresses.

This is just my take, but SL is going to maybe be the next generation 3D portal to the internet, so its not just going to be a warm fuzzy place to be with a house and the like but a business world running alongside the players playing the game where businesses will come and go and spam and cheat the system to get better rankings until people see whats happening and don't go to these places, or until LL realizes whats happening and puts in checks and balances just like the other search engines do.

What do you do if you get spam mail or go to search like google and see that someones clearly cheated to get their ranking etc.? I know i just ignore those places and look for the next place that offers me the same service i'm looking for, i don't moan at google etc.

For me its get used to the businesses here, the RL as well as SL ones as i believe this game is changing. Its changed dramatically since the day i first rezzed ever in 2003 when i had the opportunity of being a charter member, i didn't see then what i see now and as my RL job took me overseas for 2 years i didn't bother joining and when i came back in 2005 boy what a difference and now in 2008 for all its problems, its evolved again and in 3 years time i think the changes will be immense we will be able to do a lot of what we do now on the 2D internet i believe in here and in 3D.

So in closing SL will become more like the 3D internet every year IMHO, so i accept that there will be problems, just as on the normal internet. So file complaints etc. but enjoy what we have and vote with your wallet etc. and if enough people do things will change im sure

Swear.... The more things change, the more they stay the same lol. This whole debate on Picks now reminds me of all the whining and soliciting to.....

RATE ME!!!!

The thing is that gaming of search in the current tiny self-contained world of SL has a much larger effect than it does in the wider Internet.
Because of that, it behoves LL to ensure as far as possible that ranking in search is not gamed.

SL may be going places but it's not going to get there anytime soon. It is therefore appropriate and feasible to implement a credible ranking system.
It's a small world. Simple would be good.

With all due respect Phil, you might do well to revisit this opinion.

I understand your bot usage and so long as it's within the rules, you have nothing to fear.

That said, you (as a bot runner, not an individual) might contribute to LL nerfing traffic entirely, which was intended to be used universally by everyone. Not exclusively coders.

Legitimate businesses, will often fall through the cracks as a result of policy changes because of the actions of a minority of users.

Our group experienced this a few times in the past, and we are currently very fearful of slipping though the cracks again, because of the ad farm situation, which has absolutely nothing to do with us.

Like ad farming, ALOT of residents find traffic botting objectionable. Surely you must understand the "squeeky wheel" analogy. I know we would be gravely disappointed, if our operation was nerfed as a result of the actions of those who are only motivated by pushing the rules to the edge for selfish purposes.

Businesses who amass a traffic count, without the use of bots and upon their own merit might disagree with your operation and moreover would be negatively affected by changes.

It happens way too much in SL as it is. There is no good reason to facilitate it happening again. Again, I realize this is not you personally, because even if you quit botting, there will be those who continue to play the traffic game.

"One bad apple......." as they say. You might do well to consider the "barrel".

LOL so true

I agree and its up to us as players here at the moment to make representations to LL to try and get things changed, but i feel that if we don't fit into what LL are planning for the future and we are sadly not privy to that, then all the moaning and groaning won't change a thing, which is a shame as at the moment things do need to be looked at etc. and a good working compromise reached, but as always and as when the internet evolved, corporate business will always win as they have more disposable income than most

However i feel that as always LL will be the deciders to any changes, but I will always comply with the rulings and won't moan or groan as i choose to be here But good healthy debate without personal attacks is always good and essential i believe to the betterment of SL as a whole

They didn't have much in the way of choice. They needed links or the off-the-shelf system they bought wouldn't work. LL didn't choose to use links in the way that you imagine.

Are friends' pricks a measure of a place's popularity. No.

They change the rankings. They don;t subvert them in the way you probably mean.

Yes.

Unless of course the reward is someone else returning the favour and putting someone else's pick there in exchange for the same, then you're quite happy to excuse it. Sorry, no dice.

As for land, yup people can cut it up and set it for sale for extortionate prices, when they cause visual grief to their neighbours they run the risk of being told to stop it. People set bigger parcels for sale for ridiculous prices too.



I know paid picks exist, I also know people put their friends picks in there in exchange for the same or just to boost them. I also know that a place with a lot of picks has achieved that by attracting people there, otherwise people wouldn't have signed up to paid picks.

I can also see that some places pay a shed load of Linden dollars to get a top eight classified and that will give them greater exposure, as does showcase. People know this is going on, otherwise the systems employed wouldn't make one iota of a difference to search results.

People search for something, TP in and if the product is rubbish, they TP out.



If that system was employed then it would be about the person who had the better strategy on writing an about land description, it still wouldn't be about the quality of the product.

Depends on the sim and theme i suspect lol

All typos will be quoted.

If you'd quoted the continuation of that small part, you would have realised what was meant by it. It didn't say that I *only* pay heed to others. It simply said that I do pay heed to others, and I gave some examples.

Traffic was never a measure of actual popularity, regardless of the intention and how it was used. It was nerfed, as you put it, by camping - long before I joined SL. Later it became more nerfed with the addition of traffic bots. Even later still, I started my store and soon afterwards I was shown some traffic bots. I have no qualms about competiting in the field that I found when I started, and I don't disagree that I am now contributing to the abolition of the use of traffic as the sole ranking factor in the Places tab. It was nerfed in 2006 when I joined, and the sooner it goes the better. I am happy to be a part of its demise.

We are all legitimate businesses.

In my experience, the vast majority of residents don't care either way. The "LOT" that you speak of are just a few people in this forum.

I don't consider "selfish" to be the right word to use about businesses that seek to increase their profits. If it is, then all normal businesses are selfish, and I'm happy to be one of them.

Then are fiends IN picks a measure of the popularity of the places where the snapshops where taken? No. They are a measure of the popularity of the friends.

Damn! Did I write "pricks"? LMAO

LOL! Best laugh of the thread, I guess it depends on which side of the fence you're on

Don't look at me. I don't have any friends' pricks in my picks LMAO

I had to QFT it was to good an opportunity to miss

Well I had to QFT someone will use it in their sig line im sure

It's not a case of excusing back-slapping picks, or even being happy to excuse it. Such a thing is impossible to detect.
Logically such a thing comes nowhere near the effect of a few hundred or thousand of paid picks.

Between those two factors, it's not feasible to prevent it.
It is entirely feasible for LL to see a place offering rewards for picks and instruct the owner to cease the practice ( when the practice is counter to the TOS).



Add:
It never was about the quality of the product. It never will be.
The issue is relevance. Popularity has gone out the door as it's gamed into nonsense.
Relevance simply based on the description of a parcel would appear to be appropriate for purely inworld ranking.

Hey Phil, we are in agreement. I, in common with most people, don't consider a business that seeks to increase its profits to be selfish.
It's the methods used to increase the profits that are in question here.

You keep trying to avoid that distinction, and as long as you do, I'll keep pricking you

The sooner Traffic goes the better in my opinion, dwell was the cause of camping as landowners did anything to get more cash from LL I remember sims a lot more laggy because of being filled with campers, in fact camping once was profitable for the newbies at 60L$+ per hour at one point in some places especially when the AFK devices came onto SLX everyone could camp all night and yes most were AFK so they were almost BOTS then

It will be great if LL comes up with a decent and fair way of ranking because of popularity rather than how much the landowner pays people or how many BOTS are run, so i say DOWN WITH TRAFFIC as the sole ranking factor for places.

Can we keep pricks out of it please? I cocked it up enough already

Ah I'm somewhat in agreement with you here. I'm still not sure how it would work when lots of parcels have the same keyword, maybe pot luck and random order, I'm not sure that's feasible with the system they use.

Personally I find false keywords more annoying than traffic bots or paid picks.

Perhaps Sigmund Freud slipped into your friends list?

The bottom line, is that IF SL continues and these other grids grow and if in fact all the hallucinatory kool-aid predictions of the higher profile metaversacademics that gush over SL, ever come true---then, as long as the attitude is no proper policing and nutty anarchy, then it will end up a scammer paradise that will die and never be of use to anyone.Anyone who plans on conducting business in a Virtual Reality today, who supports bot deceptions etc., are simply shitting where they live---on the floor.