Bot Annihalation

You can please yourself what you do and don't do. It's no skin off my nose. I sell between 400 and 500 items a day in my store, and sometimes more, so your stance won't make any difference to me. What was the point in saying that?

You are right if you stopped using them you would be hurt competitively,

by people like *YOU*.

Whether you are in business professionally or they do it as a hobby is moot. Suggesting people "prefer" the ethical choice doesn't make them bad, It just makes them ethical and costs them money.

If you'd rather earn that money at the cost of a particular Ethic you don't ascribe to anyway that is your choice.

Don't be stupid, Colette (I know it's hard for you). It's nothing to do with ethics.

You asked "why not", told you why not.

Good grief. I asked "why not" have walk round the sim. I didn't ask why not buy something. The store is in sky, for goodness sakes LOL

Indeed business ethics (as well as everything else) has changed substantially since 2003 when I first experienced Second Life. To compare today's virtual world with the fairly small, tight knit community of yester year is not reasonable. Things change rapidly in this online experience.

The good old days were not always so good. I remember a war and a tax rebellion. The war began an armaments race that has made combat in SL a very complicated business, and the virtual world more dangerous and prone to griefing. The tax rebellion insured that we are able to build items without having to pay a fee to LL.

This model closely follows RL experience. Times change and the past is the past.

Sure it does Phil

Gaming the system is Unethical.

Thus someone not gaming the system is being more Ethical with regards to gaming the system.

Now you don't value the Ethic of not gaming the traffic system. That is your decision.

Other people do.

How much value the Ethic of fairly using the Traffic system has -- who the hell knows. But that doesn't mean it has no value.

I fail to see how declining business ethics can be seen as a sign of progress.

Ethics have a great deal of value. Many are willing to pay any price in defense of their beliefs. they have very little to do howver with the capitalist model of business. Hence Wal Mart thrives and the Mom and Pop local store dies.

I don't believe I stated this to be progress. However it is a progression As SL matures and attracts more than hobbyists, it becomes more in tune with RL mores and values. Hence the dramatic history that was gambling, the rise of the "escort" and the creation of the land baron.

Well sure. Again it is a trafficbotters choice whether they value the particular ethic of not gaming the Traffic system.

Unfortunately its often reality that ethics and success don't mesh. But that doesn't mean those who ignore ethics didn't ignore ethics.

I sure wouldn't put gaming the traffic system on the same level as Wallmart running people out of business. Its a lot smaller scale.

The rest of your post is based on that statement, so I'll skip the rest.

YOU say that gaming the system is unethical, but that's not good enough - it's just your opinion. Even in the search engine business, some people tried to make out that spamming the engines was unethical. In the end, everyone who mattered, on both sides of the debate, agreed that is isn't a matter of ethics at all. And that was in view of the fact that the search engines don't want to be spammed, and do a lot to fight against it. SL is different. LL is currently content with traffic bots for search rankings, so there's nothing remotely unethical about it - unless you consider that competing by using perfectly acceptable methods is unethical, in which case you are wrong.

Your need to make money from abusing my enjoyment of Second Life has precluded any wish I had to visit your shop.

It's over Phil. It's not you, it's me. We should see other people we have more in common with.

I'll always treasure the good times.

We'll always have Paris.

I love the way Colette thinks!

as i've said before, camping (bots or man-powered av's) forces the LL money system to continue to flow at a regular rate. i don't see it going away any time soon.

having said that, arguiing ethics is moot because (clearly) people have different standards for the same word. it's not even symantics. it's perspective.

Oh please ... this is nonsense.

Your GAMING the system - how can that be ethical?

You are intentionally skewing with the results of a metric that is supposed to stand for something. Knowing full well some of your competitors won't do the same because of their principles.

Don't be silly. I abuse your enjoyment of SL? I've heard everything now LMAO.

I'm using the system in a way that is acceptable to the owners of the system. How is that unethical?

People like to bring ethics into it, in topics like this, when they don't have decent arguments to support their views. They try to make it a moral issue, when it has nothing to do with morals. It's nothing new, Colette.

Okay

Ill try to use small words

Of the two choices -----

Game the system

NOT Game the system

NOT Gaming the system is more ethical.


Linden Labs not bothering to keep their own Traffic System fair does not change that.

You may feel justified in Gaming the system. Heck you may even BE justified in gaming the system.

But it doesn't make it ethical.


-------------------

Now again it might be the ethics in this situation have very little value in the scheme of things. All I am saying is they exist.

It's nothing to do with ethics. Some time ago, some search engine optimisers started calling themselves ethical SEOs (as distinct from unethical SEOs), because they didn't use spam methods to improve rankings (this is RL, btw). Naturally, it caused a debate and, in the end, the people on both sides agreed that it has nothing to do with ethics. You can still see the word out there, but the general concensus is that it's nothing to do with ethics, even though the search engines themselves are dead against spamming them.

It's simply not immoral or unethical to take steps to move a relevant place up the relevant rankings. If you'd said that it's unethical to do things to move a furniture place up the skins rankings, for instance, then I would agree, but you're trying to make out that doing things to move a relevant place up the relevant rankings is unethical - and you are wrong.

A few people start it and 1000 have to keep up...........................'
Classifieds search is corrupt and should be removed completely.

We should get XP for them

Phil, I wouldn't get too overly confident about your blessing from LL on your use of traffic bots - you got an answer from a Live Support Linden through a support ticket. As a forum frequenter, you should be familiar with complaints people have posted about receiving contradictory information from different Lindens through these channels. You should probably hold off on declaring a definitive victory until someone with more authority at LL makes a formal statement on this subject.

The answer was from "Linden Lab and the Second Life Community Team", and not from a live support Linden. The support Linden moved it through to the right people quickly. I'm assuming that it has some authority. At the very least, I've gone out of my way to check up on it, and be honest with them about it so, if a Linden comes along waving a penalty, I have it on record that I asked and got the ok, as long as the bots don't cause problems.

In my limited experience, Lindens don't remove bots just because they are there. They undoubtedly do it if the bots are causing problems, and I'm 100% confident that mine don't do that.

I believe this is entirely irrelevant.




The ethical quandary is a simple one.

Do you have competitors, in your same business, who choose not to game the system on principle?


We both know the answer is yes. Heck one of them had a thread going a couple of weeks ago.

The Lindens have stated more than once the traffic system was not originally intended to be gamed. They have even at times suggested they would attempt to fix it.

Therefore you gaming the system gives you an unfair competitive advantage over those people who are using the traffic system as intended.

Using an unfair advantage in business is unethical.

True, but it pointed out how people tend to use the word 'unethical' wrongly, and how sometimes they come to agree that it was a wrong use of the word.

Bot/camping users don't use an unfair advanatge. They use a method that anyone can use. Nothing unfair about that. The reason that some people prefer not to use the method is a false sense of what's right and wrong, and I imagine that the false sense was generated in places like this. Others simply choose not to compete, or don't even know how to.

No matter which way you try to say otherwise, using a method that is acceptable to the owners of the system, and that seeks to raise the rankings of relevant places in relevant search results, simply isn't unethical.