Bots and they new rules

I just tried to get the wiki Office Hours page and found the same thing - down.

But, unfortunately, 11 a.m. is 7 p.m. here, and I have a bowling league soon after that, so I can't make it. It would be interesting to get an answer as to why the #1 ranked place for 'furniture' still has 2 boxes of bots in the sky, and a traffic number of 114,588 because of them, after 3 full weeks of the policy being in force. You want to ask the question?

Well, that kind of loaded question is kinda silly, what do you expect him to answer? It'll just be, "we're starting to implement the policy now" but I'll pass it along.

A smarter question would be "What results have there been so far and when do you think the changes will be noticeable to the rest of us?". But anyway, I'll pass yours along. I should be able to make it.

Here's the sum of his statements on the matter last week:

[11:06 SLT] Mosley Sperber: I'd like to hear an update on how the microparcel extortion and hte traffic bot situations are progressing
[11:12 SLT] Jack Linden: As for the traffic bot issue, the worst case ones are being dealt with now as we started enforcement last week
[11:12 SLT] Jack Linden: We're going to post to the blog again to clarify about camping chairs
[11:12 SLT] Jack Linden: As there's a lot of confusion around those

Jack has a habit of posting to the blog 5 minutes before his office hours because otherwise we whine about it incessantly. So hopefully (but far from definitely) the camping chair blog will be tomorrow too.

I think the proccess was Identify, first warning, 2nd warning, short suspension, so on.
So... say it takes a couple days to identify the first round of offenders, then they issue the first warnings. They are not going to issue the 2nd warning the next day because many people don't log in every day. I think waiting a week between warinings is reasonable. Then another week between the 2nd warning and the suspension. We are now at almost 3 weeks (from begining to identyfy to first suspension) and there's nothing to say that a bot runner couldn't be suspended and still running bots.
So my conclusion is... there is no way at this point to determine if they are actually doing what they said they were going to do. We just have to wait and see.

Thank you for that info, and for agreeing to put the question. I am unskilled (if that's the right word) in that sort of situation, so I would easily ask in a not so smart way. But then I'd press the question if I received the reply that you suggested - and probably get ignored.

From the quotes:-

6 days ago, Jack said that the worst ones were being dealt with then and qualified it by saying that they started the enforcement a week before that. But here we are a week later and still the worst ones are untouched. I could understand the delay with the micro stuff, because that concerns land ownership, which isn't something that can be dealt with overnight, but the removal of bots only requires contact with the owner, and then action if the owner doesn't comply by a deadline. They only need to be turned off - unlike land, no other arrangements are necessary. Contact with the owner can take a little bit of time but not this long and, in any case, LL can deal with the bots if the owner is taking too much time to respond.

@Eli. I understand your reasoning, but people who run a lot of bots (even mid-range people like I was) are making sufficient money from the business that they surely wouldn't risk that sequence being correct. I certainly wouldn't. They'd only need to give me one warning and the bots would be gone. I don't think the blog stated a sequence of warnings. I think it just said that a warning would be given first.

It is not just 100k and high numbers,it is the 30k and 40k numbers that are still gaining unfair traffic.search babies you will see that market ruled by the botters.I like some fair competition but these people are now timing the bots as i been watching one.they join the bots for a few hours then they are gone,few hours later they are back .They know the new rules,they are just gaming the system.I am seeing it on the 100k sim to,no bots for a few hours then a large string of green dots is over the shop,couple hours later gone then back/
I just think people gaming the system are clearly knowing what they are doing.I really find it sad that no one keep their word any more on rules,and on the cusp for letting teens on the grid,,,,,my teen will not be on the grid now....... and I will advise as many as I can that new rules have no effect in SL How can we trust our teens here if simple rules like no bots is not apllied ....So if you can not keep to your word on simple rules,how can you control SL to let teens in...

+1

I seen that too Blah...the logging in and out.

Anyone running bots must be fairly easy to contact....they did after all log them in on that day.

I noticed the logging in and out last summer when I ran my bot surveys. There are a lot of small-to-medium sized bot farms that aren't online 24/7. I think their masters just run them when they are home and have the computer on, or just when they sleep.

I visited a few 60 / 80 bot places a week and a bit after LL said that they would begin monitoring search in a week.

On a number of sims I've seen what must be the same off-the-shelf bot box that hides the tags of the bots in flood of glow. This is intended to make counting and AR of the individual bot accounts difficult without a radar. It make photos near impossible as well.

However, I noticed that as I approached a box on one sim, all of the avatars poofed.
There were more in a higher box. They poofed on approach as well.
With the minimap bug, in which avatars over the old build limit are always indicated as being below you, it's difficult to see if they have moved to a higher or lower box.
It seemed that they were swapping between boxes, as the stacks of green dots on map didn't change significantly.

It goes to show,any one that says "Oh I did not know there was a new rule" might not be very truthful .I think we all have friends ,and if you own a sim then you are not a loner.So how some way some one told you about about the new bot rules.I just have they can game the system and get away with it.

IM very disappointed ! The blog entry has been posted almost 1 month ago and I never read before !

There is something on the entry that's says that accounts is subject to be suspended and maybe banned !

And more: I read about this bot thing as hoax.Then I gone to the SLKB and the KB says that if you have a private sim you can control your resources as you wish !!!!!!!

What I did ? I just relaxed !!! So, I was totally in risk in these last 30 days.

I believe that a announce like this requires a better broadcast - and obviouslly adopt a policy like "on the 1st time we will just send a warning...without ban or something".

Ok, that's fine...I hate bots anyway and will be awesome a act like this.And I shutdown my bots few minutes after read the entry.

But LL also says that bots is still allowed if the bots have some functionality that's can be usefull in business...

So, let me predict the future...

Clothes, Skins and shapes shops will use tons of bots to expose the products on the store.Like a model on the glass when you see a store on the mall.

My competitors (I sell prefab homes) will put one bot in each home on the sim.The bot will say "Hello, Mr Customer ! Do you need more information about this house ? (Customer say yes) Ok, Mister Customer, this house have 3 rooms, a balcony, a pool, bla bla bla...
Then when I see my customers doing this...I will need to do also otherwise I will loose so many sells.Awesome !

See ? This kind of attitude will not reach the primary benefict ! No Chances !

My opinion: Bots can exists anyway for REAL USEFULL PURPOSES ! Find some how to implement this idea without left gaps that's shopers can use as reason for bots.

The how ? Dunno !

What's wrong with that? That would be totally awesome.

Not quite right Henry

Eventually LL will adopt a system where you can register good bots like "Models" and "Greeters" . These good bots will be stripped out of the Traffic calculation or recording...so in essence the company won't benefit in Places Search by using these type of Bots. Only companies that genuinely want to use bots as Models & Greeters will use them.......my prediction you'll see a massive decrease in store models.

I can see this final solution quite away off though, but it will happen eventually.

yes, will be awesome.But the primary goal to be reached is: Don't pump up the traffic in a not fair way.

Humm...this really changes anything...

So, models, greeter. etc...Will be in a database that's flag as a bot and then this will not count on the traffic ?

If Yes: good ! A very smart way indeed ! ty for let the things clear to me.

Yes- that's LL final goal

How long will it take?

Looking at the snail pace that Jack & his team are enforcing their own policy, I'd say any backend coding and registration system is likely to happen in 2010 as opposed to this year.

Based on previous comments, that's "cut out a 16m parcel that doesn't show in search and put the bot in that parcel".

My main question would be: Why all this effort, if removing traffic as a way to sort search results, would work right away?

So the fact LL chooses for this policy, does have an agenda of its own. Either they hope indeed they can somehow mask the drop in concurrency, or they do not plan to enforce it anyway. My bet is on the first.

As long as the flagging of store models is not implemented yet, we will see an explosion of those. Adding to the lag for the visitor of course. Plus of course camping farms will come back, because people do want traffic, after all it helps their rankings. So basically, our experience will get worse instead of better, and that sucks.

Voting I did not do yet, as I want to wait a bit longer. We just might be surprised, just as we were with the ad-farming.

I haven't followed any of the blog discussions, but I'd assumed that the microparcel comment was just a temporary measure rather than the stated idea of somehow differentiating bots. Is my assumption wrong?

One tricky thing: how do you distinguish bots that are just there to build up traffic (clearly bad) from bots in clothing stores that display the merchandise (arguably good)? Or do you make the clothing stores go back to employing camper models instead (perhaps better because it spreads the economic benefit a bit)?

A single 24/7 bot will give you more traffic than most of your non-bot-using competitors, so I don't buy the "I'm not doing it for the traffic" argument. It was a mistake to do anything short of removing traffic as a search metric.

Guess I was totally wrong. It was almost 40 minutes before his office hours!

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/land/blog/2009/05/21/further-clarification-on-bots-and-camping

ooOOoo. I've been keeping an eye on the blog today and I hadn't seen it yet. Off to look now

ETA:
I even got the first comment in

As requested I posed your question. Something for you to ponder Phil (or rage about) while bowling.

[11:05] Elanthius Flagstaff: Jack, OK, you started enforcing this policy 3 or 4 weeks ago and yet the worst abuser who has about 123k in traffic and appears top in the search for the contentious "furniture" category still has 2 massive boxes full of bots. What's going on? Have you even spoken to them?
[11:06] Jack Linden: Elenthius, I can't speak to specific examples but, in some cases it was the lack of clarity over bots vs non-bots but afk
[11:07] Jack Linden: Now we have cleared that up, it will make it much easier to go forward
[11:07] Elanthius Flagstaff: So are they arguing back and you're beating them down as we speak? Seems to be taking longer than I would have expected. These guys don't have afk avatars they have large cubes filled with Casper the friendly ghost clones
[11:07] Jack Linden: Dennis, I think we'll need to see how it goes now. I agree there are more of you than of us. so if it looks as if we really need that support we'll ask for more reporting
[11:08] Elanthius Flagstaff: When do we get fancy graphs showing how many bots you eliminated?
[11:08] Jack Linden: Tal, I think it'll speed up alot now - many people felt that campng chairs were not a part of the policy