Traffic bots are like LDL Cholesterol

If the stuff is good and the person making the good stuff knows how to get people to find it, it will be found.

That's why, if your going to a club, have a look at the map for the sim first...if you see a spot with 20-30 dots stacked, and tp in, and don't immediately get greeted and see people, you know its bots in the air. Not all clubs are dead and bot infested.

~Brie

This is the kind of kool-aid that propagates the money-making myth and keeps SL rolling along. It keeps people dumping money into failed projects. It keeps the grid full of false hopes rather than full of actual activity. Frankly I have to wonder about the motivation for why people keep saying things like this.

How, pray tell, is someone to be noticed among all the garbage?

Try this. Type "hair" or "boots" or "skin" into search and just try to find the good stuff. Pretend you are a noob and don't already know the names of the quality sellers. How many redundant, spammed listings are you going to look at before you give up? How may useless shops are you going to have to visit?

If you don't already know there's something useful to be found, you aren't going to have the patience to keep searching. And even if you know there are useful things to be found, you're going to have to want them really bad.

Just how badly do you think a noob wants anything at all? Is it no wonder so many of them leave thinking SL is full of hucksters and redundant garbage?

This is the harm Ting tried to explain. Why, oh why, do people keep trying to downplay the problem of SL mediocrity? The notion that everyone deserves to be seen is just dumb. Sorry, the touchy-feelgood tolerance of crap just stinks to high heaven. Are you a Linden alt? Just what do you have invested in propagating this crap?

I had the same problem with the bot surveys. I went out and looked with my own damned eyes. People told me (and still tell me) I didn't see what I saw.

Why? What the hell is in the kool-aid?

Name them. Then explain how a noob is to find them.

Holy crap, the word "pub" hasn't been keyword spammed!

Try typing "hair" or "boots" or "skin" into google. Those terms are too generic for useful results. Teaching people how to use boolean operators and search efficiently would be a better way of helping people find better results.



And your evidence for claiming noobs leave due to "hucksters and redundant garbage" is? Have you surveyed them? I see noobs asking "What can I do here?" I find it highly unlikely that one of the first things a noob is going to want to do is go and spend money on a top quality hairstyle.



The problem of this so called SL mediocrity is also one of its main attractions, user created content and if you start telling people they have to be approved before they can create content and that it has to pass some standards committee before it can be unleashed on the grid you'll do a hell of a lot more harm than good to the platform.

wow someone is trying to make a Bots thread .. after they have officially been banned


Isn't there enough to argue about?



The Issue is now as simple as LL is horrible at enforcing their own rules.

Either they Heavy Handedly someone who doesn't deserve it.

Or they don't bother doing anything to people who do.

Who said anything about that?



I've been to your malls, trying to figure out where you're coming from. Do you create the content sold by Ciaran, Conor or Lauren?

Option C: They do something about some people and those people are then offended because although they're in the wrong, others are still getting away with it.

That's where it's heading when people start saying it has to be of a certain standard to be found and that certain people should be given on a plate a higher profile.



If you've been to my malls you'll know that Ciaran, Conor and Lauren all sell other people's content, in a couple of cases people have asked us to sell their content. However, Ciaran, Conor and Lauren have all created content that has been sold on the grid.

How much? Would you say you are primarily a reseller or a creator? Can you point to some things you've created?

I'm primarily a landlord. No I'm not going to point to something I've created, this isn't the forum to do that in. I don't flog my wares when people are asking about landlords either.

With all those stores in your malls with vendors paying Ciaran, Lauren and Conor, would you consider yourself a reseller, too? How much does content creation figure in your SL business? Go ahead and point to something you're proud to have created for sale. Nobody's going to look here for content, so it's not like it'll be an ad. It's a request.

I'm still trying to figure out why you'd disagree so vigorously that quality things are hard to find. I'm wondering if you have personal experience making something and having it found and recognized.

Yes I'm a reseller and I have no qualms with resellers as long as it's all above board, I make more via that model than I would via straight rentals and it's more down to me to attract sales than having someone else come in, get frustrated and leave and then me have to chase new renters. I'm not pointing to anything I've created, they're not that hard to find though.



I don't disagree vigourously, I said earlier that search is badly used. However I can find quality content by a combination of search, experience and asking other people. I also understand that you have to do more than create to get people to find your stuff.

Anya....I've watched you do your surveying and compiling of numbers. Totally agree with what your figures say, and appreciate the time you take to do the research.

But at some point you have to say....ok, so there's the way it stands....doesn't look like it's changing at the moment....I have the picture. Now....what do I do with that?

I've given quite a few of examples in threads long ago, about things you can do to counter the effect of a good portion of the population using traffic bots. I gathered that they fell on deaf ears....so I'm going to use only one to give an example.

Blogs. I see a ton of really cool creations featured on blogs. I try to make a list, but the list gets so long. Tomorrow there will be more. The creators took some extra time to use another tool. I don't see any of those creators on here bitching about bots. That might take an hour a day. You can get a lot done on your blog with that hour. I've yet to see a bot runner with a blog, but I may be wrong....that requires daily effort....bots do not.

So say you're not a creator, but you're one of those people who can't seem to find the level above mediocrity that you would like. I guarantee you that if you do a sweep of about a dozen content creators' blogs, or a general SL blog that features those people and their creations....you are going to find what you want and more than you expected. Go get it. Place it on your land or wear it, and show it to people....or go get the LM and pass it on.

You just used your "daily hour of concern" for SL and it's future in a productive way.

(remember...that's only one example....but taking the time to write a really long post of a dozen other examples that will fall on deaf ears....well, there just went the " daily hour of concern" right down the drain)

The same way we did as noobs. Back then, there was no search all, people tended to use the different tabs more. Now with the all search, they pop in words and do just like we did and start the first place that reads interesting. Just like any other game they played, they figured it out. To suggest that they will not ever find anything to do is just silly.

In all my years in SL, i have never found a shortage of noobs that you run into everywhere, that haven't said.. so how can i find this, and pretty much anyone they ask explains. Even anti-noob friendly people tend to point noobs towards someone that can help them (mentors etc)

You find a club in SL, and you check the map, see 237465276 dots, but no event symbol, you haz found de famous botses... it really is not all that hard. Folks figure out these things every day.

Give folks credit for a modicum of intelligence, even if they have the social skills of a brick

~Brie

That is how speeding/traffic laws are enforced in the US ...

Like Anya said :

' How, pray tell, is someone to be noticed among all the garbage? '

Anya's point about 'Search ALL' being equally gamed and spammed to death means that, together with traffic bots in search PLACES, really top notch content creators cannot remain visible and that's a great loss to SL.

All this gaming, gaming the system by talentless fast buck merchants, really is leaving a bad taste for those that want to concentrate on creating outstanding content, instead of playing some stupid game with traffic bots and word spam and product pumping.

Also lets not forget that Xstreet is gamed to death too with certain merchants pumping their products to the front page by buying their own products repeatedly again creating a situation of false popularity thereby misleading and fooling customers into thinking they are buying the best products possible

I love SL and I am appalled by these practices.
The current situation creates an ELITE of MEDIOCRITY

That's so untrue. It would only be true if the only people who manipulate the system are lousy creators, but they are not.

See above.

What you are forgetting is that creating excellent stuff is no good at all unless it is marketed. No doubt there are some excellent creators who don't attempt any real marketing, and they probably think that they are being cheated by those who do. They probably think that they have a right to be found easily because their stuff is excellent - but they would be completely wrong. It's survival of the fittest and there are probably some excellent creators who are not fit enough to be successful, so they don't succeed. It's no different in the real world. For instance, the VHS format was the worst quality of the formats at the time, but JVC marketed it better than the others (they were fitter) and the others ultimately failed.

I get my shopping tips from neither. Instead of search all/search places I'm reading stuff.
Blogs and the "new products" forums here.
Another way to find good products are the various freebie hunts.
By their very nature they attract small, young shops... and there are quite a few seriously good ones among those.

there was a hunt some time ago that ran exclusively male apparel as loot.

I knew a girl once who was a Mentor. Gone from SL now onto a whole other adventure I understand. Anyways, her stock reply to "How do I ... ???" was... "Use your Search like Google, find what you like and click the Teleport button." Some would smile and say thx before they went. Others just poofed without another word, and she would grin and say "they keen to get started." And a few more would hang about asking other questions, as they sometimes do, before they leaped. And leaped they did.

Somewhere in this thread (I think) is a link to my test of search for hair (or was it skin?). All of the first page and a half of results are for stores that are not anyone's favorite. One very mediocre *furniture* store appears *five times* before any of the decent hair stores.



How do *you* (Phil) market your stuff, other than gaming search? And would you consider your stuff excellent?

That is all very time-intensive and runs you past the same torrent of mediocre crap you'd find in search. And I suppose your browser came pre-loaded with all those links? If you like shopping and reading unordered product listings then good for you. It's not a good way to find products. Even knowing that there are good products to be found, I don't have the time to do those things. Do you think all new players are zapped with enough curiosity and patience to find those resources and make time to use them?

Search doesn't need to be perfect to be much more useful than it is. LL needs to stop rewarding mediocrity.

BTW, I used to think your search listings managed to be well-organized, useful and successful, but now they are mostly keyword spam. Is that what successful marketing is about? Is that what makers of excellent products should be doing?

Here it is...
/327/b2/330416/1.html

.