Bot count, the sequel: 52%

I repeated Saturday's bot survey, in the same set of sims, but this time overnight Sunday into Monday morning. Saturday's survey likely captured the peak concurrency, while this morning's survey likely captured the minimum.

Once again I visited 219 sims on one of the newer mainland continents (I think it's the one called Corsica?) and noted how many avatars were present in each (including the ones with no avatars) and how many were bots and campers. I made a four-sim-wide path across the continent, coast-to-coast. Once again, I noted cases where I wasn't sure whether or not an avatar was a bot so I could visit again in several hours.

The results are as follows:

219 sims
591 avatars, 308 of them bots and campers
52% bots, overall

For sims with 5 or fewer avatars there was an average of 23% bots and campers (51 bots out of 218 avatars). For sims with more than five avatars there was an average of 69% (257 bots out of 373 avatars). The overall percentage of bots was 52%.

Some observations:

There were four fewer bots, but it's not a simple matter of four bots logging off overnight. There was a completely new bot farm of 14 that came online and has since disappeared again, so there are at least eighteen, and probably twice that number, that logged off since the previous survey. I noticed some of the differences. I believe what's happening is that some people run their bots overnight and then kill them in the morning and some people run their bots during the day, but the largest number of traffic bots stay online all the time.

The data is here:

http://greendots.typepad.com/green_dots/2008/11/219-sims-again.html

Saturday's post is here:

/327/cc/293027/1.html

So tell us - what is this intended to indicate?

From what I gather, this is just raw data. Nothing more. There have been many wild speculations about how many residenst online at any given time are actually bots and Anya has taken an approach to find a more concrete value. What you do whith that number is up to you. After all, trying to determin a percentage with a desired argument in mind is a sure way to skew the results. I think Anya is doing a very good job and remaining unbiased and objective. This is in my mind the most acurate count we have been given.

52% of what?

52% of the population online are bots or AFK campers.

do you really think that this is done without a predetermined desire in mind, which would skew the results?

I can not help but think that it is done with a predetermined desire to somehow convince people that there are as many bots as the OP perceives.

my impression with these (now) 2 unofficial bot surveys that are based solely on the op's gut feeling, are way way skewed and are here for nothing more than to try to rile up folks on a subject that is so old now that even the bots are getting tired of it

(shrug) of course others will see it differently, and that is the nice thing, we can all have an opinion, doesn't mean we have to agree

(sorry if my words came out harsh, having a hard time concentrating to try to make a point)

I think she's doing a marvellous job as far as it goes but, unfortunately, it doesn't result in any sort of indication as to how many bots there are on the grid. We went through all that in the previous thread. All she's managed to do with this thread is confirm the number of bots in the same 219 sims, but it doesn't mean anything. It certainly doesn't provide any indication about the number of bots on the grid - unfortunately.

I disagree. She used a certain number of mainland sims. At almost the precise moment that she was doing her original survey, I was on a private sim with 81 people on it, all extremely active, and the sim next door had 31.

If the numbers are to be representative of the SL population as a whole, the numbers are skewed. If they represent just mainland, then perhaps they're ok. I just don't think that they are correct for all of SL.

That's totally false.

This is good data to know when you are thinking about renting Vendor space and you see an indication of high traffic.. If the traffic is all the owners bots/campers then it's not true traffic. Determines if said sim may be a valuable asset as a rental spot.

They are not even ok for mainland. They are only ok for the 219 sims that she swept and even then it's down to her own interpretation of whether an av is a bot or not.

Actually, I agree, which is why I said "perhaps they're ok". Unless she spoke to each and every av on each and every sim, there is no certain way she can determine whether or not they were bots.

My tests show that only 3.246% of the grid are bots.

Adjusting the tests to include asking people a simple calculus question and counting those who don't answer within 17 seconds as bots produces a much more satasfactory percentage of 106.4%.

/me goes "beep!"

Thing is, for me, I've haven't shopped based on traffic since my earliest days, when I learned that high-traffic = camping, sex, or casinos (this was before bots). Now I tend to shop based on word of mouth, photos on flickr or snapzilla (mostly from my contacts), an to a lesser bit, from advertising.

I wonder, from my own experiences, if anyone else does the same and then if traffic bots are really not that useful after all.

In less than 1% of the sims in a time period of how long?

The stats are meaningless. Also they are based on a perception rather than cold hard fact.

If this is to try and get true figures of bots to show they are a problem to LL then this is the wrong way to go about it.

Which is smart research in any event Taylor, if planning to rent a spot. However, unless you see evidence of bots (a large grouping of avs, to which you fly, and find them stacked up on top of each other), you really aren't going to know.

For instance, my mall has very low traffic, which pains me because I can't get some of the larger affiliate associations that I'd like to carry. However, I have a fairly steady stream of people through all day long spending money....they just don't stay for a significant time period. I don't have a club to bring in traffic.

I don't game my traffic in any significant way - but because I don't have those magic numbers, people think it's not being visited, when it is.

Oh and the way to go about it is for LL to actually do the calculating, unfortunately they don't believe this is possible, but with some IP checking and activity monitoring it shouldn't present that much of a problem to them.

I always bring up the map and fly to the heavy populated area to see before I rent.. Drop me a LM for your mall. I'm always looking for new places..

I'll do that tonight

I too have not based shopping on traffic in a long long time, if ever

I usually did the word of mouth, some classifies, definitely looking in the forum classifieds, as well as the onrez and xstreet websites

and the odd time inspecting something

drop me one too honey

I probably have one, but lost in my inventory

I am gonna try some rental areas, to hopefully boost sales (now that I am back home and can hopefully concentrate enough to do some SL stuff)

Hm...that's probably true for me as well. In fact, when I'm shopping, high traffic is a definite turn-off.



I will Rha...I need to speak with you tonight anyway bout business

Personally who cares as we all know LL skews figures always in their favor, as far as shopping is concerned i don't care if they use BOTs or not, if i want something after looking at xstreet and perhaps TP'ing to the shop i buy it for all im worried they can have 100 BOTS running to inflate whatever figures LL allows people to inflate if i want a product i will buy it.

KK, if now is a good time to chat, I can log in world for ya.
gonna be laying down soon though, I hate the way these meds make me feel, so hard to concentrate.

so... yeah right now would be a good time, while my mind is not too much mush LOL

(or we can use pm's if you are not logged in)

Nah, tonight is fine. No urgency. Go lay down and I'll catch up with you later.