Bots

That's what I don't get: They use this the first time. They know it's being very visible. They are inviting comments ... and they are neither testing the feature before first use nor fixing the problem right after it becomes evident! *facepalms*

I was out bowling when the blog was posted - well, almost posted since it's near invisible and you'd have to be looking for it to actually find it. Ciaran told me that it was coming and I was really looking forward to see how they'd screw the issue up, but they didn't - Jack merely posted.... well nothing. What a let down.

Ugh, maybe it's just because I'm not used to it but I don't like this threading so far. I'm trying to read every comment but I have to hunt up and down because new comments may appear in the middle of the page.

The RSS feed helps a little but it seems to miss a lot of text, or maybe it's ignoring quotes or something, can't quite tell.

*EDIT: Oh thank God. Just go to Your Stuff->Preferences and change it from Threaded to Flat

It would good if everyone with problems with the blog voted for http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-982 "Problems for blogs.secondlife.com".

If you've already voted, but are having new problems, you could add a comment with a description of the new problem.

Watching it is good to if you don't mind the email.

There was some discussion yesterday at the opensource office hour about bots. The full chat logs are on the wiki, but the gist that I got was they were looking at adding some new features so that bot software could be made more system-friendly, i.e. upon login a bot could inform the servers that it only needed certain kinds of packets, and then the server would not try and send the bot everything it sends normal users. The idea being to cut down a bot's impact on the servers and other people around it.

-Atashi

I actually started buying all my furniture from Phils bots, they sell the copies at a good discount, when you go to his store, just ask for what you want "from under the counter please"

the upswing of this would be the low bandwidth client i have wet dreams about every night.

well... almost.
bots such as the sllandlist bot would still be banned of course. any kind of bot that benefits the community at large would need to be shut down asap. merlin needs the search, see.

We'd get rid of traffic bots overnight if LL would allow people to specify any traffic number they wanted for their parcels. People who wanted to use traffic to track how well they're doing at attracting visitors could do so, and people who wanted to game the system would all have equal footing without loading the grid with bots.

No, I'm serious. Really.

Now you've done it! That facility was only known by a handful of trusted people but now the whole world knows and I'll have to disable it

It fooled me at first too, you have to login first to use the "Join Discussion" button.

That's very telling. Together with Jack's blog, which was hidden and merely asked for a discussion, and his recent comment that selling traffic via bots "isn't cool", it all indicates to me that LL's attitude to traffic bots is accepting of them, and of not wanting to do away with them. But they may eventually try to appease some people by making an announcement about using bots to game the traffic rankings, which would result in the skyboxes full of bots disappearing.

For the last few days I've been writing a system of bots that are much worse for users on the ground in the sim because the bots do things. Right now there are two castle guards that continually do their rounds in the sim. Any users within range have to receive their movements, clothing, animations, etc., all of which uses the same amount of system resources that two normal avs generate. The system is written and I can place as many such bots as I like. If LL announce a ban on using bots to game the traffic rankings, this is what will become of many of them. They'll come down from the sky, where their resource useage is minimal, to the ground where the people are, doing acceptable things that enhance the ground area, and causing much more resource useage and even causing lag. Atashi's report may reduce the data that is sent to the bots but it won't do anything for the data about the bots that is sent to normal avs. Bots like my castle guards are what is to come if LL do it wrong, and I have to say that I expect them to do it wrong.

I should say that I haven't written the system so that I can influence the traffic rankings should LL screw up. I wrote it just for something to do. Lately I've found a new lease of interest in SL by trying to make the ground (all rock!) a little more interesting and the castle, which is a work in progress, is part of that. Basically, I'm just tinkering, but it does give me some interest in SL. I'm thinking about making one of the guards sneak off into the hills, have a kiss and cuddle for a few minutes with a girl there, and then get back on his round I'm also thinking of making a serf bot, pulling a cart with seats in it, so that people can be taken on a tour of the sim - with commentary. I'm just playing, but if LL gets it wrong, we can expect to see many skybots come down to where people are, doing things, making the resource useage much worse and even perhaps being the main cause of lag.

So rather than stop gaming the system you would rather adversely affect the grid even more?

Yeah Phil's post did come across like that although the use of bots he describes that actually adds character wouldn't be such a bad thing at all, I'd be interested in bots like that. There's some interesting development going on with bots but they will use more resources than some of the existing bots.

Actually, adding some kind of semi-intelligent NPC character may add a whole new dimension to what interesting builds in SL.

Phil, while intending to go down a wholly different route, may be on to something here ...

I didn't say that at all. In fact the last paragraph states exactly why I've made the system, and it isn't anything to do with manipulating traffic (I'm not using any extra bots and I'm not preparing for the future). I wrote the post to show what will happen if LL makes a bad decision. It's nothing that hasn't been said before. It's just that now I can show the sort of things that many of the skybots will be converted to do - and why it will be bad all round. A few would actually be a good enhancement, but that won't stop people from making as many as they can to continue influencing the traffic numbers and, by doing so, actually make things much worse all round.

ETA:
I just re-read my post and a sentence in the middle paragraph does make it sound like it's what will become of my bots if LL make the wrong decision. By "them", I was referring to traffic bots in general, and not to mine in particular. I have no intention of converting mine for that purpose.

Yes, it would. It would be very very bad.

Witness the totally asinine conversation that happens at clubs. It'd be okay if the place was empty and you could decide quickly that it wasn't worth staying, but no. It's full of chatting people. It takes time to determine that they're all bots. Wasted time. Time you spend and then come away thinking SL is really frickin' creepy.

SL doesn't need more of that.

If LL punishes obvious bot usage they will cause exactly what Phil is describing, and SL will be worse off for it. It'd be better to leave it alone. The only logical change they can make is to eliminate traffic as a component of search results.

With that, there is overwhelming agreement in this forum, but not 100%, and I'm not an exception.