Bot Annihalation

Personally I don't mind a few bots used to demonstrate product, even if they look like they are cleaning windows, but hiding large numbers of them in invisible security protected boxes in the sky or underground kind of indicates some guilt to me of unnecessary usage.

Unless you own the sim they are in, you're stealing resources from the other landowners in a sim and limiting how many REAL LIVE users can enter the sim. So I'd say he's not the griefer for booting your bots, but you are for wasting resources of the sim.

perspective is perspective. we all differ based on upbringing, experience and morals. greed is greed. *bleah* respect is another animal entirely.

If you knew what you were talking about, you might have half a chance of making some sense

Phil...consensus rules. You suck. Bandiwith, resources. Point blank. Kapowz!

Yeah, I know. It troubles me all the way to the bank

laughs..........

LOL too.

Well.. Two things ..

First ..

I already use potentially and Might in the preceding paragraph. Not even my crazy 8th grade English teacher would have expected yet another conditional qualifier in that statement.

Second ..

Strong anecdotal evidence would suggest that concurrency and grid performance are related. Since there is no way to divorce Trafficbots from the asset server as well as the other portions of Second Life that effect their presence, it is a safe bet that Trafficbots have an effect on that concurrency leading to problems.

Okay ..

Traffic is Second Life's version of a popularity contest.

In that Contest everyone gets a vote. The Vote is based on how much time you spend somewhere.

Originally people figured they would get votes by having places worth going to. This was kinda the idea anyway.

Eventually people figured they could influence how people voted by offering prizes and giveaways. People still decided to go to places and thus were voting, but the voting was influenced by what it did for them.

Sometime around July/August of 05 someone invented camping chairs to outright buy votes. Of course they were still the votes of individuals. This continued for a while.

Then Unverified accounts started and Gaming really began. People decided to get the money to buy votes they would make multiple accounts and have several accounts camp. They just wanted the camping money. Of course they were voting more than once.

Then some people figured why buy votes at all? Why not just Vote by themselves a WHOLE bunch of times. So they made mutiple accounts and logged them all in concurrently - Trafficbots.


Vote Early, Vote Often.


"But wait -- its not the same as voting because it only affects a store's ranking" ...

Yeah right .. keep telling yourself that.

It is exactly the same thing as voting more than once. And it is taking money out of the pockets of those who won't do the same.


I will never understand anyone who thinks its not cheating the system. Who the hell are they to decide what they think is more popular matters more than what I think is popular?

I understand people who do it. I Understand why people do it. I can even see the logic in doing it.

But to claim they aren't cheating? ... makes zero sense.


I have considerably more respect for someone who can reason out its cheating but decide they have to anyway.

Than for someone who make excuses for what it is they are doing and to pretend like it is something that is somehow benevolent.

Nothing to be proud about. Plenty of people richer than you suck.

more laffing.

I will triple your laugh...........

Despite my stance (as stated below) on the use of bots to inflate traffic, Colette and Phil you probably just have to agree to disagree. Colette you're never going to convince him that what he's doing is wrong morally at least until LL proclaims it otherwise and Phil I doubt you'll be able to convince Colette that she's wrong.


On an offtopic note it's a shame that I hold firm to my moral stance not to buy from people who use bots to inflate traffic because I'll admit that you make very good furniture, if you ever decide to change you're mind feel free to send me an IM.

Well that will never happen, because I am not wrong.

I have been in Second Life long enough to have seen Traffic before people blatantly cheated the system, I therefore have a clear understanding of how it has been corrupted.

And besides that-- Phil's forums-fu is weak.

on another note, the SLeek thin client has no abuse reporting feature!

Looks around at the posse forming

well when we run 10 or more on it i say is.....specially if they are sitting campinng chairs or sittting is for hours on end

Bots are fine.

Colette I understand your point of view, but Sl is either a "game" or not.

If it's a "game" then there is such a thing as "cheating", but I'm pretty sure in most games you only "cheat" if you break the rules of the game to "win".

My view is that SL isn't a game, simply because of the RL commercial aspect if nothing else.

In which case I can't really see why legitimate RL business practices are thought of so badly.

Any RL business I've ever heard of which depends on apparent popularity to succeed, uses/pays people to look like paying customers.

Restaurants, retail outlets, theatres they all do it, and if there were lifelike bots in RL they'd be used for exactly that purpose.

So really I agree with Phil that it's a necessary but unfortunate aspect of RL commerce in SL.

I also understand that there is a resource consideration to the use of bots within a SIM. I'm not really sure of the statistics but I assume that they will constitute a drain on the finite resources of the servers in some way.

The issue again here is at what point do you draw the line? How do we legislate what is a legitimate drain on resources and what isn't?

IMO a couple of bots are fine. It's the places with 20 or more that really bug me. I usually leave those stores right away and not because of the bots,but because of the enormous amount of lag. Is that lag from the bots? I don't know, but I think it would be safe to assume they are not helping it any...

In my experience I found a well placed/paid classified helps a lot more than artificially boosting the traffic anyway...

there are always going to be people who take advantage of a weakness, be it a personality weakness, business weakness, etc.

the only reason this issue is an issue at all is because there is real life money at stake, in the end.

people will each have a different perspective of the same situation: those who find bots unethical will even disgree on certain points with others with same general philosophy; those who see bots as ok.... the level of "okayness" will be different with each person.

in this case, we are seeing the extreme end of each on the spectrum. this is a bit like a religious or political debate. neither is right or wrong, it's just perspective. as i said before, morals and ethics differ among people based on many things including upbringing and personal experience. i think it is quite unfair for both of you to point fingers at each other, because you both have valid arguements and you both make perfect sense. unfortunately, LL only cares about their income and therefore, Phil will be able to continue his dastardly deeds and Collette (and others) will continue to suffer monetarily.

once again, it all comes down to money. humans are savage. i don't know why we pretend to be otherwise.

Very well said. You have stated my own position very well, so I am off with nothing more to add.

We know they are wrong, even some botrunners agree, but are "forced" into it for business.
If they weren't wrong they wouldn't go to such great lengths to hide them.
I only have 6 items for sale in my stall, and my sales are bugger all and traffic through the floor, does that seem legitimate reasoning for me to run 20 bots?
Seeing near anone spending on classifieds now needs bots to get anywhere, should everyone run bots till SL grinds to a halt, there's nothing illegal about doing so even if i gets to the point real residents can't login anywhere........
CAmpers run by the camping station owners? Sounds silly, the campers could just stand around instead without the money shuffling, campers owned by the camp system makers seems more likely, I think I will put a few campsystems in the sky in a box and see if they get found with no ads..........

Hello everybody,

I've read through this thread with interest.

Thing is that the only way to stop bots is not to buy from their owners. THAT is business. The thing marketing guys fear most are the customers, as they are only > < this predictable, but have *the* power over all industries.

The thing businesses of today, being virtual or not does not matter, is ethics. What is not explicitly forbidden is allowed. I witnessed my company crush competitors with more than unfair means, those who fought, were flattened and the others just... what was the term... a 'integrated'.

It all comes down to money, if I had the chance to crush the top five of any given marketsegment... I'd do it. And why not? As long as I can go and say 'Heeeey, be sporty, it is not forbidden'

Think business, like the Chinese. The communist country that fully understood what capitalism is about. Crushing the west with cheap labor... ha... Whops... sorry...

So... conclusion? Buy with your ethics in first place and your wallet in second, then it will get better.

You can cheat at RL and non-games too.

This isn't the same as those RL practices at all. In RL you only get 1 account, and can only log on with the one at a time.

Even the Hindus believe you have to trade in your old account to get a new one.

Colette, well we can sleep well with the knowledge that he'll reincarnate as a snail, slow, slimy and absolutely powerless, it would be quite ironic.