Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

This illustrates just how inappropriate the GSA is for a SL in-world search.
We don't really have the complex interlinking of entities that exists on the WWW.
We don't really have IBLs in the same sense as does the WWW.
We have to create artificial ones.
We could give varying weights to avatar picks by ranking the avatars by their own IBLs
= Friends. Hey! Rate me!!! Hey! I'll pay you xL$/week to be my friend.
= Groups. People in the same group as highly-rated avatars get a greater weight to their picks. Groups head-hunting for highly-rated avatars.
That sounds like "popularity", but greed makes it not so. *sigh*

SL is too small in scale, and the only IBLs that can be manufactured are avatar-based. Uncontrolled anonymous account creation and payment for what is in effect under_the_counter assistance makes anything avatar based nonsense as a metric.

Question, I did ask it a few postings ago as well: Is the new search really so bad, or is it an improvement over the old search? For me it is a great improvement, I an find what I need, instead of needing a dozen tries in the old search.

No system without flaws, but it seems that at this moment the purchased appliance does a pretty good job. Yes it is "playable", as any search engine is. But it gives great results if you want to find something. And that is what it is all about.

So by that logic, the activities of the notorious ad-farmer UH were not a "misuse" right up to the minute that LL come out with the new policy.
But .... if they were not an misuse, why were they banned? LL knew about it for eons. The activities were "acceptable" to LL.

Yes. Anything that gives a richer result set has got to be an improvement over the old traffic-based listing of parcel names.
I could live more easily with knowing that some are gaming such a system than I could with a world where I see clusters of avatars and know that there are there purely to support gaming.

However, LL should either be cutting out the obviously gamed factors or slapping down the gaming - one or the other.

Well millions would disagree with you since the amount of people using the Google Search engine suggests otherwise. Ok, so LL is using a more simplistic version, but it still delivers better results than old Search....no doubt about it!

Your idealistic moralistic world where everything is hanky dorey and everybody plays by the same rules....is so out of touch its untrue. Do you really think LL has the resources or the manpower to act as text spam cops (for Land Descriptions)? Lets see now you probably want to see the back of Ad farms right? You probably hate Traffic bots and camping bots being used, you probably want LL to deal with the underground gambling that still goes on, you probably want to see WSE (they just re-opened for share trading)and similar institutions removed from the game, you probably want to see the back of Business-in-box items being sold that damage the Content Economy.....how about the blatent use of Copybot and texture theft in general?

I guess Land Bots too that takes advantage of people's selling mistakes on Mainland. How about land griefing and selling small plots for extortinate prices? You probably want all those cleared up too, right? What's your moralistic approach towards EstateOwners that sell their sim whilst having occupants on them, many of whom spent 100's USDs on purchasing land plots?....or even reclaiming sold or rented plots and banning those same residents from the SIM thereafter? I suppose Mainland griefing gets on your nerves too? Oh and what about those age sex players.....we need to weed those out too as its bad publicity for SL in general. No doubt you think LL should provide a much better customer service as well as dealing with Abuse Reports quicker and more efficiently.

Well my dear, thats all fine and dandy! ........but do you think Linden Labs employs 1000 people or just 200 ? Let me tell you this, if you want your "Perfect 2nd Life World", LL would need to employ far more employees than it already has.......and remember a great chunk of those existing employees are involved in the development and stability of the actual Grid. No doubt you also want a stable Grid in your "Perfect World"...right?

If they increased their staff 2 fold, how would they cover these extra costs? Bear in mind that after all the computing costs,..... salary costs are probably the next highest related cost in running their business. So how would they go about paying for all this, so that you can enjoy your "Perfect World" ? They will need these extra bodies to police the Grid so that the above listed issues can be dealt with effectively.

Well LL would have to increase their revenues. the only way they could achieve this without outside FUNDING is to increase the Tier fees or premium account costs or other related fees (upload textures, groups etc) Given the current real world economics .....that would be commiting suicide!

That could very well be argued. If you read what I wrote, you will see my answer to your question. I'm not going to repeat myself for you.

Correct.!
The impact of user opinions here on Residents Answers is almost negligible to the events happening in-world.

I predicted as much when a brand leading Skin designer was caught using material that did not provide adequate licensing to recreate skin textures to be used in SL. I said at the time, for all the hoohah created on all the Fashionista websites......this Skin designer will not shut up shop and people would continue buying her products as if nothing had happened. If you regularly map these SIMs, you'd see it's business as usual!
Most likely instead of making 5000 USD a month she is now making around 4000 USD...with a bit of investment in land or other revenue generating instruments, she could get back up to previous income level iin no time at all.

Yes, but it's a bit apples and oranges. The Google approach is very successful for search of hyperlinked text because it does a fair job of "understanding" the structure of those links, but it relies on a *very* superficial indexing of the text corpus itself. The problem with applying it to SL is that what passes for links here are all pretty much synthetic. So the very thing that makes it appear "smart" for searching the web makes it "gullible" for searching SL.And that's why it's really smart of LL to use a third-party tool for search. It would just be dumb to focus resources on developing some unique search competency. But on the other hand, they should be acutely interested in how search of the grid differs from search of the web, and why. So, if we can help them use what they got more effectively for their (and our) application, everybody wins.

Without first educating all SL residents about the issue and then asking them all stating that only a minority are opposed is about as empty and presumptuous a statement as can be made. Until you've actually polled "the great majority" you're talking out of your behind. What's far more likely is that the vast majority have no idea the issue exists in the first place and their ultimate opinions would depend greatly on how the issue was explained to them. I doubt the "great majority" are pro fraud.

Yes, we are talking about the GSA as implemented in the relatively micro-minuscule closed universe of SL, and not the Google of the WWW.
So millions would not disagree with me.

Read my post above. It can deliver richer results. It's just that the ranking factors need either dropping or policing.



They can implement a search indexing algorithm for text. It's not a new concept. The thing can run automatically.


A lot of people would like to see the end to many of those things.


Why not? How many land-bot runners are there who do not return land that their bots buy when the price set was clearly not intended for public sale? Not many I would guess.
How many times per hour does it happen? How many times per hour would it happen after LL zapped the perps?


My approach would be moralistic.



I am like an open book to you. Your powers are amazing!!




What I would like is for LL to work smarter as opposed to throwing non-smart resources at issues.

There isn't a perfect world. There won't be.
However, it is possible to zap the most egregious perps.

Would you criticise LL for expending resources on ad-farms? They did put some effort into that, and it kept some of their staff very busy dealing with the disposition of the 16s abandoned or taken.
They are currently putting thought into how to clean up mainland. Is this a waste of resources?

Would you criticise LL for dealing with griefers and other abuses? Why not just let them run riot? That would be cheaper.

The vast majority of residents don't give a damn about traffic bots or paid picks. The former causes concern when grid problems arise and then more people moan about them as they believe, rightly or wrongly, that bots are taking up space that humans could fill.

As for paid picks, the vast majority of people don't give two hoots and they certainly don't see it as fraud. Telling someone who chooses to use their pick for a place that they're engaging in fraud is complete and utter bunkum. Fraud would be deceiving them into using a pick when they thought it was for somewhere else. Users have a choice on how they use their picks, there's no fraud taking place.

Agreed.

The point I am making is that those who oppose the use of traffic as a search metrics are not the minority in this thread. In this thread there is a majority of people who either oppose it outright or who express no really opinion one way or another, simply underlining TOS clauses. Perhaps if this issue is made more and more public it actually will turn out that a lot of people DO care, and perhaps their overall opinion of this issue will be in line with the proportions of the responders in this thread, where the MAJORITY of residents find the use of trafficbots to be bad for SL and wonder why it's not against the TOS.



Except there is. And the fabricated traffic numbers and the fictional concurrancy numbers for this platform are the result.

From what i remember, Michael Linden was head of New Search development. He read many of these New Search related threads on RA and took people's opinions into account when setting up those initial parameters. It's not like LL just did their own thing.! There are always going to be winners and losers with any search instrument being used in SL.....it's usually the losers (or the ones that sit on their ass with their do nothing approach) that usually become most vocal on any given forum and cry out loud!

Come along now. I don't think that anyone has suggested that a fraud is perpetrated on the person accepting reward for their picks.
The fraud comes in when those picks are used in ranking to imply that the parcel paying for the picks is somehow more worthy of ranking than another parcel.

The traffic isn't fabricated, fabricated traffic would be achieved by a hack. I don't like traffic bots, I don't see the value they add to the world as a whole but those who use traffic bots do so to generate a figure that the system produces. I'd much rather we had world of warcraft type logins where we have one login and then choose which avatar we enter the world as. I'm not a big fan of multiple logins but people have pointed out that there are genuine useful reasons, testing and machinma are the two I've seen most often cited.

However the average user is bothered about looking for a product and finding it. That's the bottom line, I'd wager more people are annoyed about going to a place and finding the search term was used as a ruse to get them to the parcel than they are about how the traffic figure was generated. If someone goes to a parcel and finds what they want and are then happy with that product or service, they won't be concerned about much else.

If someone sees the reward they receive as worthy of putting the place in their picks, if that adds enough value to the person who places the pick, then there is no fraud taking place. Someone chose to do that. Nobody is twisting their arm.

There is no fraud. You're saying that doing things to move higher in a search engine's rankings than would be natural, and thereby appearing to be more worthy of the rankings than those below, is fraud. You are a voice in the wilderness with that view. You're even a voice in the wilderness amongst the search engines themselves.

From the following link: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fabricated





See specifically definition #3.

I'm a realist.....you are a dreamer!

In an ideal world, LL should stamp out all the previous listed scams or infringments......it's simply does not have the resources to manage the Grid in that way...whilst at the same time focusing on their vision of making this the next WWW enviroment.

It just does not fit!. LL would need dedicated teams to manage some of the abuses i have listed and on an ongoing basis too!

Like in RL , you make do as best you can and live accordingly!

Um, well, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I can't see how you can complain about that..

And yes, I also think that rigging search engine results is, at least, antisocial. After all, if the search engine people wanted that, why don't they just make the engine itself automatically apply all the necessary optimizations to each site it encounters? Then they all cancel out so that only the natural ordering is left.

I made an exception and looked at your post, Pie. I can't quote it because I prefer to generally ignore you.

Definition #3 is the applicable one, as you said. The traffic isn't fabricated, as in definition #3. It really does exist. I'm sure that's what Ciaran was saying, and we've been through it all before.

And while I am replying to you personally, what does concurrency have to do with anything? It's nobodies business but LL's.

You might at least give even the tiniest indication that you have read the text that you are quoting.

And you know this how? It's a thoroughly silly and self-serving argument unless you've somehow asked the opinion of the vast majority of residents. Since you haven't, it's a ridiculous statement.

The figure is true though. We can discuss the merits or otherwise of how the figure was achieved (and it has really been done to death) but that figure has been generated. I know Phil uses bots, you know Phil uses bots and Linden Lab know Phil uses bots.

quick question

do you really think pro traffic botters would be wanting to come out in this thread?
that would be like handing the head hunters, your head on a platter

One can not base much as for who is for or against, based on this thread (or any thread on these forums for that matter)