Concurrant residents logged in.

Refresh my memory here.. but wasnt it just a month ago when M. Linden was praising the fact that they were going to push for 70K online at once? I this afternoon (approx 2pm) to 82k online at once. WOW.. ummm yeah.. anyone feel the strain?

Any wagers (Not encouraging anything against TOS) on what the percentage of that is actual unique logins? I have a funny feeling that we are 60-40 Unique Vs Bots at this point. I mean there are still the yahoo's who think bot and camper traffic do wonders for your buisness.. Where is the advantage there?

I have heard alot of people say that there are good uses for bots.. ok so 2 and 3 years ago when bots were just coming on the scene and only used to game the pop list (miss that thing) (back when we cringed at 25-30K concurrancy) people actually did their own stuff instead of relying on bots. I mean when did we become lazy? In saying that I am not calling you lazy if you use 1 or more bots... however.. and please hear me out.. what may be productive for 20% of you is detrimental to 80% of us.

I would love to call for a closure of free accounts ... we all know all know hell will freeze over first with LL's push for education and corporations.. free account closures would help with load issues.. However something else needs to happen.. especially when we are about 3-6 months away (probably much less) from 100K online at once..

See, that right there is an issue.

Ask around. The average SL'er still uses traffic as a metric. One reason I have been told is that it shows the owner cares to try so they must have something worth seeing.

LOTs of people use traffic.

The opinions of the forum population is a bad measure in respects to there being a negative view of traffic. The "average" SL resident uses traffic.

I do not deny using traffic as a metric for success.. Being in SL's entertainment industry, the more avitars on our sim means more renters mean our sim gets paid for and we stay alive. What I was refering to was people who are STILL hell bent on using bots and campers to do the same (which we do not) and it places a severe load on the grid and that loved to be hated asset server.

whatever the reason, i have seen an undeniable correlation between the stores traffic rating and in-world sales.

Even when I had my tiny store open, I would occassionally have a couple of bots just hanging out. I experimented having them there and without. Having them there made a significant difference. I can only imagine how much of a difference it makes to the large mega-bot stores.

That's a fancy title to disguise an anti-bot thread

Money - real money - and a significant amount of real money. Does that answer your question?

Of course there are stilll the yahoos about who, without any experience at all, think that bots don't make a difference. Those are the real yahoos

The traffic numbers are not really a good indicator. On the traffic meter 1 does not equal 1 person, now lets see if i can explain this. The tally is per 5 mins so if you can get someone to stay on your sim for 5 mins each time 5 mins passes the tally goes up. So having campers who are not there or bots who sit there for 8 hrs make it look like you have had a lot of ppl going through your sim. Also way back SL use to give a L$ bonus to the top places

Just because LL refuses to do anything about it, does it make it right at the expense of people who dont use bots? And please do not think I am ragging on you because you use bots.. hell.. if it's legal, I cannot sit here and start getting on you personally about it. I am talking about server and grid load here.. Since they decided to do away with the POP list, it's like they have turned a blind eye to the real issue of what is actually causing 50% of their issues. And that can be solved by re-instating Paid accounts only. I dunno who is going to spend $$$ for 50 bots accounts.

If LL closed bot traffic for one day (yes I know.. all bot users will be up in arms) as a test.. I am sure they would notice a serious decline in grid load.. Hey.. it's worth a shot... You want to stop the debate of Bot versus no bots... Shut us nay sayers up

Yes and its this very thing that is causing the grid to slow to a crawl with 80k people logged in at once....

If there is a Linden watching this.. I would like to know what the percentage of Unique versus same system connections is.. and please do not tell me it's not possible... It is.. everyone PC regardless of how many are on a home network has a unique ID.

You asked a question and I answered it for you. You called people who still think that bots make a difference to their businesses, "yahoos", me included, so I do think you were ragging on (as you put it) about me as a bot runner. Apart from you, there are 5 people so far in this thread, 3 of whom have stated that, from their personal experience, bots do make a difference to sales. As I said, the only yahoos that I'm aware of are those who imagine things and believe them to be true - such as bots don't make any difference to a business - as you implied.

There are also still yahoos about who imagine that (a) 40% of the concurrency number is due to bots and (b) that they "place a severe load on the grid". Those are the ones who, when they imagine something, believe that it is true - y'know, the real yahoos. The stupidity is that they argue on the basis of their imaginations being true.

Here's a piece of real data for you to argue about. Not long ago, I did survey over part of a continent, row by row from the top down, and I found that 24% of the avatars were unmanned - bots and campers. So where is your estimated 40% bots and campers now? If your going to cite numbers, try citing real ones.

It's just silly you should have to run bots to cheat the traffic system, it would be less strain on the servers if they just worked traffic on howmany plywood cubes you stacked in a row or let parcel owners enter their own traffic figure, or better yet charge $1L per point for it.

You may consider it silly, but my ever-increasing bank account tells me just the opposite

I have an alt that's a free account. I use her as a tester, a trouble shooter maybe a few times a month when I've made something and want to make sure all the permissions, sizing, etc., are right. I'm sure there are a lot more people out there like me. It seems stupid to have a premium account for an avatar I use rarely.

If gaming search indicates that the place has something worthwhile to offer, then anything spammed by email must be worth seeing.

What’s an “average” resident?
Given that most residents don’t run a parcel to which they want to attract live avatars for business, the only use that most people have for traffic is the intuitive ‘must be hot’ reaction to the rankings in Search.
Does even the “average” store/club owner use search gaming?
Gamed traffic is simply a method of misleading people into believing that a parcel has some worth above others.




Well duh!
People still use Search Places. They naturally try the places listed top of the list. Even if there are better places way down the list, the odds are that people in general will limit their visits to the top-listed places.
It's entirely possible of course that high traffic in a place is due to live avatars shopping or socialising whether or not that traffic was primed by bots or camping.





That’s what it’s all about.
Search gamers abuse the system purely to line their own pockets.

Search gamers are shabby souls who put their own interests before all else.
The whole thing is sharp practice, dishonesty and freeloading.

Search gamers have the same low standards of behaviour as do spammers. They abuse resources in order to line their own pockets.


LL are apparently going to come up with policies sometime this century - after they have another few rounds on cleaning up microparcels.

In the meantime, I've come to the conclusion that the only way to get this issue looked at may be to start a movement to get every landowner to run as many bots as they can and publicise the nonsense as widely as possible outside of SL.

Closing or time-limiting free accounts may or may not be a good idea, but it's essentially irrelevant to the traffic-gaming debate. That's because the net-of-stipend cost of a premium account is pretty low, and even lower if Mainland bonus tier is deducted--much less than the cost of feeding a camper 24/7, even given paltry current camping payouts.

So, if a bot's value can't cover the cost of a Premium account, it's just not worth the bother anyway. And as Phil points out, for almost any Search term, the phony Traffic generated by a trafficbot is currently worth much more than that. If the Places tab were removed from Search, it's a more difficult question, but at least at the very high end of results for Search All, I think traffic gaming would still be worth the trouble (and the minimal net expense of Premium membership for the trafficbot, if such a thing were imposed).

I've argued here and elsewhere the various reasons that Traffic is inherently a Very Bad Idea as a Search-ranking metric, even if it weren't gamed and actually reflected the "popularity" that it purports to proxy. I expect I'll get to make those same arguments soon enough, when the anti-Traffic-gaming policy is blogged. And the same status-quo addicts will argue that they "earned" their traffic-subsidized barrier to anybody else gaining popularity. It will be absurdist theatre, all over again.

You can call it what like, of course, but you are right that we do it to line our own pockets. You've never come across businesses that exist to make money before? You never cease to amaze me Still, it's great that you have learned something today. You are now better equipped for the future, and I feel very happy to have played my part in it for you

That's a bit overdue, isn't it? Any update on when we are likely to see it?

Of course businesses exist to make money.
There are different ways of doing that. Your nonsensical ploy of trying to include search gaming with decent business methods ceased to amaze me a long time ago.

Enron existed to make money.
The muppets who doled out sub-prime mortgages existed to make money.
The fact that they existed to make money in no way justified their self-interested behaviour.
There is no difference in principle between search gamers and the types mentioned above. All that is different is the scale. The small scale of SL means that economies are not going to be ruined by the sociopathically greedy. However, the low standard of behaviour is the same.

when i'm out shopping using search, i ignore all results from places with traffic numbers with more than 5 digits, unless i am searching for an orgy room.

The other day i came across a furniture shop that actually had some nice looking stuff, but they also had a skybox with 85 bots!!!

talk about 85 customers who cannot go there because the region is full.

The residents who actively spend money, are a part of the economy on a regular basis fall into two categories:

Unaware of how traffic works, so don't pay any attention - their friends tell them where to go to find stuff.

Are aware of gaming for traffic , and dislike it so don't go to areas where they can see it is done.

The only people who chase the map to go to places where lots of green dots are, noobs and bot hunters.

This is an area that should be on the LL hitlist next though - but I suspect the concurrency changes would make this unappealing to deal with.

i wonder why the places search is still so popular ? if they would remove that , the traffic problem would be solved ?

i use the "all" search, there traffic is not counted, and in most cases in the "details" one can see what's there before teleporting.


*also very curious to the percentage of bots



i fear the same



.

It's the effect on the noob experience that is the most serious immediate impact I think.
I keep coming across noobs who are fast becoming disillusioned in their attempts to find people and places that are actually frequented by live typists.

SL can be a very lonely place, and this is accentuated by the presence of bots masquerading as people.

I used to help at showcase place, and there was always noobs turning up.. How frustrating for a noob to turn up at a bot filled place where there should be people and they can't find them (because they are 4000m up in the air).

You forgot about the 3rd category - the most popular one by a *huge* margin. It's those who know how traffic works, and about traffic bots, and just don't care one way or the other.

I like "nonsensical ploys". They make a lot of real money for me