Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

So you think you were justified posting and mocking his personal information then?

its public information and not personal information......its there for all to see, just like you post anything onto a Profile. Unless you make your profile invisible, the profile is out there in the public domain. It would be different if i quoted his home address or email account on here.

What justified the mocking of it?

Troll somewhere else Colette......you are tiresome!
What part of "None of your business" don't you understand?

I can visualize you as someone drinking away and getting more obnoxious by the hour. Spend time with your RL family ffs!

And today's award for most ironic post goes to...

whatever!

If the question is:
"It there an explicit ban on traffic bots in the TOS?"
Then the obvious answer is "No."

If the question is:
"Does the use of traffic bots run counter to the intentions of LL in designing the traffic system?"
Then the answer is yes, and it is screamingly obvious why. Traffic was designed as a popularity measure to replace dwell. Siticking bots on a parcel to increase traffic measurements is the same sort of abuse that killed dwell.

Even Phil agreed with an unequivocal "Yes" when I put the question to him.
He also gave a "Yes" to the question of traffic bots being a subversion of the search system.
However, he later retracted that when he found a dictionary in which one of the definitions of 'subvert' was 'destroy'. Therefore by selecting the most extreme interpretation of a term , he could retract his Yes on the basis that the search system was not rendered non-functional.

Any reasonable person would see that a system designer is not going to set out to create a search system that can be gamed.
Any idea that LL intended the use of traffic bots and paid picks is ridiculous.
Any search gaming system is clearly running counter to the intentions of the system.

Both dwell and traffic were useful albeit not infallible indicators of avatar activity. Dwell is gone and traffic is going to disappear - because of the gaming activities of a few.
The community loses some useful indicators.
LL devs have to be used to build and/or integrate a different search system. Their time is taken up in discussing and tweaking the system to try to mitigate the effects of gaming.


The arguments that any particular search gaming method is not counter to the TOS is bogus.
Look at ad-farming. That was/is an outrageous visual blight on the landscape. It destroyed the enjoyment of SL for many. It wasn't against the TOS - up to the time that LL announced one policy and then another to firm up the first one. If an ad farmer had asked a Linden if their activity was counter to the TOS, they would have been told that their use of their land was not against the TOS as long as it did not violate the TOS.

It's taken a long time for LL to state a policy on an abuse as blatant as ad farming.
Clearly, it's going to take them longer to deal with search engine abuse.



The heart of these Search-gaming threads is that gaming is counter to any reasonable interpretation of the intention of the system designers.
Supporters of the abuses prefer to concentrate on contrived situations and interpretations of words.
There can be no meeting of minds on the question. The criticism of search gaming is to do with ethics. The defence is transparently contrived lawyer speak - and mostly coming from people with a vested interest in continuing the abuse.

And there you have it in a nutshell. It is not against the ToS, which is the topic of this thread.

The intention behind traffic can be discussed 'til the cows come home, but it is not the topic of this thread.

Any reasonable person would take a look at the whole picture, examine cause and effect and see that there is no perfect search system. The person who has a better concept of naming items can achieve better search ranking than someone who uses more colourful names. The person who leaves their brand name as their parcel name loses advertising space.

Popularity is not and never will be a good metric for all places. This is a key concept here because in terms of a club, if people want to meet people then popularity is important, in terms of a store it's just simply not as important. People aren't searching for popularity, they're searching for items.



The heart of the problem is that search doesn't meet the needs of business or consumers. Search is a one size fits all problem, Jeska acknowledged in previous discussions that something needed to be done about the classified side of it.

SLX has a better search system because it puts more power in the hands of the searcher. I don't like the way search has affected parcel names, but naming your parcel something sensible is a waste of keywords because then you'd only get that weighting factor applied to people searching for your name. Do you think that the intent of those who added the parcel name field was for the name to be used in this fashion?

The idea of what the designers wanted is a non-starter in most cases, because it simply isn't known by us. This is off-topic for this thread, but you are talking about "these Search-gaming threads" so I'll throw it in...

You don't know that LL intends that people don't do things to move up the All search rankings and push others down. They may very well intend it, and they may very well intend that Picks are 'organised' for that purpose. They may very well intend that the search is just like a web search engine. After all, they did tell us what counts towards rankings and they are not stupid enough to think that people wouldn't use that information against their intended desires. You can't push your preferences about the All search into LL's intentions. Like the rest of us, you simply don't know what their intentions are/were.

For instance, they may actually want people to influence the rankings and compete in just the same way as happens on the web. They may even hope that an seo industry developes in SL. They are not creating a game. They are creating a platform where real business can flourish as well as other things - just like the web.

The point is that we simply don't what LL's intentions are regarding search, and we certainly can't assume that our preferences are LL's intentions or preferences.

Reminder:
That's written about the All search, and not about traffic.

And what was stated in Rene's quote was Bots in the wide meaning of all bots, so it is the use of said bot that matters.

Bots are allowed as long as the bot is not used to violate the ToS

He was not told traffic bots specifically were okay.

Yet you repeatedly state and imply your idea of what their intentions are, and that your vision is the only one that matter...

Actually he was (and so was I). Read it again.

Linden : actually bots are not against the TOS, if they are not used to violate the TOS
Linden : yes, as long as you don't violate the terms of service, those should be ok

So the same spiel : as long as they don't violate the ToS

Key in the second is "should" so he or she wasn't sure about it.

You omitted the parts where Rene asked specifically about traffic bots. The answer was about that question. Selective snippet posting is not very useful.

The second response was the one about traffic bots specifically

Perhaps you should reread what he posted.

My question was in a ticket - not live chat. Here it is:-


And the reply:-

Take special notice of the question - it's specifically about traffic bots, and not about the general use of bots. The reply was a reply to the question about traffic bots. Rene's was the same.

Try reading it again, and notice this part:-

How much clearer could it be?

So how much of the sim you own?

One could point out if you are using bots (plus yourself) over the percentages that you are negatively affecting the sim.

If you own 10% of the sim, at most you can use 10% of the max avatar count

Otherwise you are impacting the performance of the sim and using resources that are not yours in violation of the ToS

And you still got a catch all, but you don't realize it.

It's the same basic spiel given when asked about any alt accounts, and bots in general Phil.

A definative, vs a carefully added CYOA in should.

That's a very dangerous road to go down that would punish success. Personally I don't agree with multiple logins but there are uses such as machinma where a one size fits all policy doesn't work but if you start getting into sim resources based on how much of the land one holds it gets iffy.

So You are saying it's fine and dandy for someone owning a 512m plot to put 20 to 30 bots up on a mainland sim?

It still allows 10 others to log into the sim

If you want to use camp pads, they return any over the percentages and warn you flat out about it.

Why should bots be treated differently?

It doesn't matter what the basic spiel is. It was the answer that was given to my traffic bots question. If they have a basic spiel for questions like that, then it shows they have a current policy on it, and the policy is that it isn't against the current ToS, which is the topic of this thread.

Negatively impacting a sim means something different to how many avs you are responsible for having in it as compared to the land you own in it. If your idea is correct, then anyone who owns less than 1536m of a sim, negatively impacts the sim by merely entering it. But for the information, I own a little over half of the sim.

[added]
Also, this thread is about whether or not traffic bots are against the ToS. Clearly they are not. If the question was "Can traffic bots be used in such a way that they are against the ToS?", then the answer would be yes.

Nope, the speil is considered standard practice for most customer service industries. It's non-committal and allows them an out in case someone gets in trouble doing something.

Surely with your experiences in the world, you know all about corporate cyoa policies. Much like the tech from the phone company telling you the connection should be up and working soon... or a secretary telling you the boss should be getting back to you about that within the next few days.

The only resources that you can claim regardless of plot size phil are your avatar and the prims on the plot. Any additional resources used by you are what count towards impacting the sim adversely, just ask the ones that had their camp pads returned.

Mort under your idea 1 person wouldn't be allowed on a 512, they wouldn't be allowed on a 1024 either, a 1024 would allow for 1/64 of a sim's use, an avatar is 1/40.

Usage needs to be dynamic, a script may for a few seconds a day use more resources, but then it goes back to being idle.