Bots and they new rules

Do you think the new bot rules are being applied?
In my market there are still many of shops using them,the search show places with 30k to 100k traffic and a large string of green dots over them!
It seems some people just game the system and log them in every other day!
In allot of platforms if rules are broken it is a fast and swift punishment .
I kind of feel this is not really being taken to seriously because no one has to pay the price for gaming the system.

I do not use bot's, but what new rules?

well log in stats seem to be lower but I for one thought there would have been a far bigger drop.So I must conclude that LL are not acting quickly on this.

and for the record I am not talking bad about LL,I just feel at times things start out well then drop off.
To attract RL business and such I feel the most important part is making good on your word,If you say you are going to do something it should be done in a whole,not a good start then just fade away.

Either LL is doing something, or some bot runners are proactively removing their bots. They aren't all gone, but the significant drop in concurrency suggests several thousand are.

An unfortunate fact is that unless the grid vigilantes get involved and make a sim by sim sweep of the grid multiple ARing every bot farm for traffic they find no serious dent in the problem will happen.

Heck even if they do it we have to rely on LL to actually ACT on the ARs. An iffy proposition at best.

Check the search still an awful lot of sims with obscene traffic numbers. SO no it hasnt been effectively applied

Call me cynical but I think so long as Linden Lab continues to use "Number of avatars logged in" as a metric of success, they're not going to be in any hurry to remove bots.

I see no pie here!

The policy change came via a Blog which was quickly buried.
How many people read the blogs?

I bet a lot of the bot runners don't even know about this policy change

I think Jack and his team want to do things slowly.....so their login figures don't look too silly!

That's cuz I already eated it!

Whatever you do, don't look up on top of the table!

The unfortunate fact is that LL stated they did not want us to report bot farms, that they would use the search and high results to screen for bot farms themselves. Based on that, I bet any reports would be ignored.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/land/blog/2009/04/23/conclusion-to-the-blog-post-on-bots

Jack Linden:

"How will this be enforced?

This time next week we will begin to routinely look at the Search results and where we find clear use of Bots to gain an unfair Search advantage we will be handling it as an abuse issue. We will not need you to abuse report this, instead we will monitor the Search results."

I think there should be a LL webpage, whereby SL users could simply type in the SIM name and co-ordinates and nothing else. The listing should be numbered too.

Set a rule, that no entry should list a land that has less than 5 suspected bots (or 3 or whatever) to be included

Bear in mind the new policy deals with "Bots" and not genuine Avie campers...so we have to be careful here.

Now i'm not sure how many LL employees form the G-Team, lets say it's 5 for now and the list of offenders numbers a 1000 (probably a lot less!)..by numbering the website entries.....we could have X Linden deal with the 1st hundred, Y Linden deal witht the next 100 entries and so on....

The G-Team member would have to investigate the listing by visiting the location, they would need to determine what are Bots and what are real avies.....i presume they have some back-end data available that could provide a listing of IP addresses or MAC addresses or whatever is required to see multiple accounts being logged in from same household or machine......on that Sim.

The offender is then sent a email....he/she then has 24 hours to conform to LL policy or make an appeal on the grounds that some are i.e used as Models or Group Inviter or any other type of good bot.

Operate 3 strikes and out...i.e you recieve 3 such emails a suspension will follow or the Sim is taken offline or some kind of heavy handed action.....i'm not sure at this point LL are able to strip traffic numbers away from Places Search (something for the future)

If the listed land is dealt with succesfuuly, the land is then removed from the listing as being "actioned". What you have left is genuine live W.I.P listing to be investigated.

If the G-team blitzed this for a week, working through the list.....80-90% of the problem would be over within a week or two.

Just enter "Furniture" in search to see how many are 100k+ traffic with 80 or so bots on land.

The whole thing is a farce. As I've said a number of times before, imo, it's not intended to get rid of traffic bots at all. The only intention is to appease the most vocal people on the subject. On the whole, it seems to have done its job - the vocal people got what they wanted (the outlawing of traffic bots), and LL has got what it wanted (little to no change in the concurrency numbers).

Tomorrow (Thursday) will mark 3 full weeks of the new policy coming into operation (4 full weeks since the announcement), and I see precious little difference in the numbers of traffic bots. The concurrency highs and lows have gone down a little, but only a little, and I can discern no changes in the number of huge traffic parcels. They continue unchecked.

The idea of routinely looking at the search results is pure nonsense. They already have a list of the top 50,000 parcels that are set to show in search, that includes the traffic number for each one, AND is sorted into traffic number order. The list is updated at least once a day and maybe twice a day. So there is absolutely no need to "routinely look at the Search results". Looking at the search results won't tell them anything that the list doesn't contain. It's all a sham, imo.

I would guess that most people who run bots keep a daily check on Search to see how they are doing in traffic v others.

Anyone down the rankings is going to see the same old 80+ bot places for common stuff. What policy? There's a change?


However, one problem with whacking the heavy hitters would be that their disappearance (as skybox groups at any rate) would give the impression of 'problem solved', leaving the more pervasive smaller operations alone.

Let's all pretend that Jack is playing some really subtle long-game. Then we can all relax.

No need to look at the 'furniture' results for it. There are 5 parcels with over 100k in traffic, and that are set to show in search, throughout all of SL. 3 between 90k and 100k, and so on down the list.

There aren't that many of them, but they top the rankings for every word or phrase in their names and descriptions.

To be honest, just like Adult Content changes...i doubt many know of the new Bot policy.
IMO Jack wants to gradually reduce those Bot farms....smooth the login curves, compensated by new joiners over the next few months. They'll probably warn a few each week and that's it

That's what I wrote soon after the policy was announced, but now I'm not so sure. Hitting the top ones won't noticeably change the concurrency numbers. I.e. if the 5 that are over 100k are taken out, it will only drop the concurrency by around 400, which wouldn't be noticed in the concurrency numbers, but it would be noticed by users in the search results. Take the 3 out between 90k and 100k and the concurrency change would be even less, and so on. So at this point in time, I'm of the opinion that the whole thing is a sham on Jack's part. The small changes in the concurrency numbers are due to small bot users following the new rules, imo, and nothing to do with LL doing what Jack said they would do.

well,

MY wild guess is that linden labs doesn't enforce this because they believe that the average trafficbot cheater is too stupid to understand what they are talking about if they send him/her a warning.

they might have a point.

i just looked at a #1 search result, and behold, two boxes with bots, to a degree that almost filled up the whole sim. Mightily smart to fake traffic to attract people who can't go to your shop because the fake traffic keeps them out anyways.

in case you're interested, search term was furniture and the result i mean is the one with the action in the name that gives one of two people a hurting bum 0_o

I wouldn't put your money on that

I wouldn't put your money that either

But it does show that after 2 weeks and 6 days, LL has not yet done what Jack said they would do. It's also an indication of something else I've been saying - that the new policy is half-hearted on their part, because they've no wish for traffic bots to go anywhere, and the new rule is merely to appease some people.

Again I'll point to the ad farming and micro parcel policies. Both were slow to show results. The ad farming policy I'm going to call a total success. The micro parcel policy is rapidly showing huge results over the last week or two.

We already knew this but we have more evidence now of the way Jack works. He implements policy not code. He enforces those policies cautiously and in a way where nobody is caught in the drag net unfairly or without fair warning.

As many of you stated, most people do not read the blog. That is why this policy needs to take a long time before it is fully implemented. Someone from Jack's team needs to contact each person running bots and make them aware of how it affects them. Then they have to go through a lot of back and forth nonsense as the bot runner tries to edge case his way out of it or use his internet-lawyer skills to get around the rule.

As for whether Jack is looking at search or looking at the list of 50000 parcels sorted by traffic... I find the argument somewhat retarded. Since both are basically the same. "Looking at search" is just a plain way to explain the process to people who don't know the intricacies of the Google Appliance.

I disagreed with your previous policy thoughts before, and I still do. I see no reason at all why Jack's people should not approach the biggest users of traffic bots pretty much straight away, and even less reason (though that's not possible) to go into discussions with them about it. If a parcel has a stack of avs in boxes up in the sky, there is nothing to discuss. Turn them off by <deadline>, or suffer the consequences.

No they are not the same at all. One is either doing searches or monitoring other people's search results, and the other is simply looking at an existing list. The first will sometimes indicate some bot use, the second pretty much states it. In both cases, the parcels need to be checked, either personally or programmatically. Imo, either Jack doesn't know about the list (it's possible) or the idea of looking at the search results is just something to say to satisfy people because they don't want people bothering them with ARs.

A few posts ago, someone said that the top ranked place for furniture has 2 boxes of bots in the sky. Can you suggest a good reason why they are still there after 3 weeks?

Phil, you should go to Jack's office hours tomorrow. He's usually pretty open about answering questions on this stuff although last week I couldn't get an update out of him on this specific policy because of all the adult content protesters wasting time. It's also possible he was just avoiding my question I suppose.

What time does the office hour occur? I added a bit to my post - you may not have seen it. It would be interesting to ask that specific question there.

Thursday 11am SL Time here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Linden Estate Services/213/107/49?title=Jack's Office

The logs of previous meetings are on the wiki here: *CORRECTED: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Jack_Linden_Office_Hours (I think) but for some reason the whole wiki seems to be down.