Is Paying for Links in Profile Picks Cheating?

Well my mall has a Picks system in it since April.......and Colette is renting space in it...or has space in it. So since she is so ethical......then why is she even still there???

The mall has been opened since Jan 2006.... and has been successful in the past as it is now. The picks helps the Mall protect it's position that it enjoyed prior to All search.

What you have done is try to embarrass a retailer from your own mall, where you obviously do not care about your relationships with your renters.

A Mall owner should be promoting the retailers in her establishment when given the opportunity not derailing a thread and attempting to belittle them just to make some skewed point.

Mall these days are failing stagnant money-pits for so many reasons, your demonstration here being one of them.

But i would not know anything about malls so...

My reading of her post is that she was unaware that the Picks system was being abused at a mall where she had one of her vendors.
Not that you have made her ware of that, she is pulling out.
That sounds like ethical behaviour to me.

I happen to have a business in RL. My standards of behaviour are not lower in that business than they might be in my personal life. The business is an integral part of my whole life.
It is not some place in which I can suspend morality and ethics.

It is true that some business people are not ethical. This does not excuse anybody else from behaving unethically.
I could choose to behave unethically in order to turn more bucks.


Do I understand your point of view.
I do in that I comprehend it in the same way that I comprehend the motivations of email spammers.
I don't understand your point of view in that I have no sympathy for it.


I avoid unethical people. I avoid them in business and I avoid them in personal life. I simply can't trust them.

Yes they are, Sling - the same infintesimal minortity that we call the anti-bots. Greed was an accusation that was levelled by the anti-bots (most of them) in the other current thread - several pages of it I believe - and it wasn't new to that thread. It's one of the regular arguments that the anti-bots trot out. It's just an attempt at slurring people that they throw in from time to time.

They don't exactly say that "it is greedy to sell things", as you put it. What they say is like this:- If a person doubles the number of items for sale, in order to sell more and make more money, they wouldn't call that greed. If the person tries to get more people into the store in ways that they approve of, in order to sell more and make more money, they wouldn't call that greed either. But if the person tries to get more people into the store in ways that they disapprove of, in order to sell more and make more money, then it's greed to them. In other words, the infintesimal minority, who we call tha anti-bots, talk out of their proverbials, and really don't understand what they are saying.

I think what Rene meant is that Colette is an excellent example of people who think they have a right to be found in search just because they made a few things and put them up for sale.

There are many ways to skins a cat!
So there are many ways of generating Picks!

- You pay for Picks using a board.....its clear to everyone that the business in question uses the Picks payment method. it's not hidden or disguised. People can make their own ethical choices about shopping there......they're just a click a way!

- Via customer group notice you can invite your customers to select your company into their Picks. Quite often the bait....is an entry into a prize draw paying large amounts of Lindens and the only way you can enter is by having Picks in your profile.

- same as above, instead of Lindens you offer your products as the prizes instead.

- You can ask all your friends and family to include your company into Picks. Someone that is extremely popular, willl end up with lots of links.

- I could imagaine large estate barons asking their residents to include the Estate's main office in their shops. I'm not sure if anyone has done this yet.....but its just another way

.....and i'm sure there are more creative ways which i haven't even thought about. Phil's way....placing a board inside the shop, i think is a very good option of doing it.

At this point, i'd like to say...i have never had an IM from anyone saying they would not shop e.g at my Mall because i use a Pick system.......equally none of my 120 vendors have said anything similar or refused to continue renting. (Colette will be the 1st!)
Again its my belief and based on the above....that the Picks issue is a problem for the vocal minority.

Also i think the weighting of Picks is overplayed. Its my gut feeling that in recent times LL have quietly behind the scenes reduced the Picks weighting in ALL Search, meaning its less efffective on overall ranking. I could give you a reason why through a recent experience......but it would be wasted energy. Like almost anything else that is written here on this thread.....if it doesn't suit the argument it gets completely ignored. Instead i'll just keep that knowledge to myself. (It could have been useful for casual readers of this thread thinking of using a Picks system in the future)

I have a question, which may or may not cause me to be shot down in flames.

Are businesses in SL real businesses as is constantly boasted by LL, or are they simply games, which if you win, can earn you some chump change?

If they are real businesses then of course they should act ethically, but I'm not sure that any of what's quoted here as "cheating" can be brought under the umbrella of "ethics".

A context in which these issues could more reasonably (and certainly less contentiously) be discussed would be CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Given this context, I wouldn't deny that a closed society and infrastructure such as SL may require certain special dimensions of social responsibility.

In any event, it seems strange to use the gaming terminology of "cheating" and then suggest that this is not in fact a game.

Almost all businesses in SL, including those run by almost all of the participants in these threads, are just play businesses where success is achieved if it pays the tier and maybe a bit of pocket money. But there are a few that are real RL businesses.

Let's not get to hung up on a particular meaning of "game". Terminology tends to be loose. The core of what we are talking about is an attitude to life and to others.

Ethics are as relevant in a board game of snakes and ladders as they are in big business.

Ah! I see.
So it's nothing to do with whether or not paying for picks is cheating.
Tks

Of course not. Whatever gave you the impression that it was? In Colette's case, it appears that the last things she made was 2 years ago, and she complains that search isn't fair.

Well i rent in about 40 malls myself and have been doing so since Jan 2007....so i think i know a little about them too.....as well as running one.

Malls were very good, when the grid was smaller and prior to the gambling ban....since then they have being going downhill. The introduction of ALL search was the final nail in the coffin imo. However there are still a few well run malls that do exist and are profitable for their vendors....and from my experience of renting for quite awhile i know which types that have a chance of working. Yes, they're few and far between.

Colette is a pain in the butt imo....she preaches ethics, yet she rents in my mall. If she didn't know i was the owner....she surely does now.

If you think my Mall is a money pit then they are just more baseless assumptions....as i recycle all the Mall's profits back into marketing. 120 spots full with a waiting list...only had 1 vendor leave in the last 12 weeks and that was 2 days ago........and Colette will be the 2nd!

If I have described some activity as greedy, I have done so hand in hand with an explanation of exactly why I think it is greedy.
That is entirely different to just trotting out the word as a slur.
I believe the same apples for most of the people who are critical of search-gaming.

It suits the pro-search-gamers to try to create a false type of argument. 'If you say that the way I run my business is greedy, then you are saying that all business is greedy.

Well in that case you and me are done discussing, as we were before. The main point of discussing to me, is to mutually understand each other better, not te be right. In your case this seems to be impossible, so from my side, I will stop trying.

Since there are more then just you reading this thread: Your point of view is more then stubborn in my opinion, and pretty extreme as well. Keep comparing paying for picks to email spamming for example, is too weird for words to me. Calling me an unethical person because there is one thing I do, that you disagree with, is as weird. Feel free to avoid me, I have no problem with that, but I think you should try to put things a bit more in perspective then you do.

To make things clear: In this thread, and any other bot/picks thread that will come up in the future, I will keep on defending MY values. Franky I could not care less about what some of you think of my values, but the public has a right to know both sides of the story. Let them draw their conclusion.

I never had the impression that the point had anything to do with the thread topic. Come along now
The complaint is not that search is not fair - per se. The complaint is that some people are gaming Search, and rendering it unfair. It's the gaming that is the subject of all these threads.
You know that of course. You and others just continue to try and distract attention from that simple central point.

Chump change? There were 218 people last month that earnt more than 5000 USD....and at the top of those 218, it's more likely to be around 20,000 USD (large estate owners)....thats not chump change in my books unless you're a multi-millionaire already.

LOL you should read back this thread, including your own contributions, and then read this line again.

I'm sorry if I'm appearing dim, but in what way?

In a game of snakes and ladders there is a set of rules as set out by the developer of the game. If you break them then you are indeed shown to be cheating and forfeit the game.

playing with a loaded dice, moving more squares than you are allowed, going up a ladder when you shouldn't have. Disregarding the rules of the game? Yes. Liability to having your whole ethical framework and personal code of honour brought into account? No.

In any event, those actions are against the rules as designed by the game developer and if done in blatant visibility of other players would certainly earn you censure.

I'm not sure that Phil et al are actually doing that.

To take the Snakes and Ladders analogy ad nauseum, I think what people are saying to Phil is.. "Yes, by taking advantage of a ladder (as devised by the developer) you're cheating against those that for some reason decide not to".

Finally, as a relative outsider to the Forums I find it strange that SL business owners who at worst "game" the system have their ethics and personal morality abused, while on another thread the acts of cheating, lying and infidelity in personal relationships with RL partners is tacitly supported.

A strange ethical framework indeed.

It's that word "understanding" again.
We have discussed. I comprehend your position.

I totally comprehend why "comparing paying for picks to email spamming for example, is too weird for words to" you.
I use the comparison to illustrate the socopathic attitude involved. The mechanism isn't directly comparable.

There are all sorts of situations in the world where discussion will at best only achieve comprehension but never sympathy.
It does not worry me that you are done discussing with me (again).
I'll continue to highlight abuses of SL. You are obviously free to ignore me if you wish.

Keep hanging around, and you will see that in each and every thread around this topic, the main word is unethical. With most of the other arguments are shot to pieces with facts, the ethics and morality argument seems to hold strong They do not want to discuss, they want to be right.

A very good example of that is the impact that bots (yeah I know, nothing to do with Picks) have on the system. With the knowledge I do have, I proved as well as possible that an average traffic bot hardly puts load on the system, and definitely has no impact to the concurrent logins (that is the way LL describes the problem, when they block new logins). Some others contributed to this knowledge as well, its not only my effort of course.

Now the argument of server load is almost not used anymore, yet no one in the anti-camp ever said: we might have been wrong on that one. Instead they bury it and come again with the ethical part.

Well, I can live with that. Let my Picks paying be unethical in their eyes. But to call me an unethical person, is a bridge too far.

No matter how well that would suit you, you will not be ignored. People deserve another viewpoint to what you call the abuse of SL. Letting people with extreme ideas speak out with no response, might cause the general audience to believe them. No thank you sir

The point I made is that, seeking to increase earnings is not greed in the way that the word is used to slur people, regardless of the methods used. I made the same point in the other thread too. And I *did* say that all business is greedy (in the other thread), because businesses try to make as much as they can, whether they need it or not. I pointed out that it isn't greed in the way that the accustion was levelled. Listen to Crystal - she makes very good sense.

The word "greed" is trotted out from time to time, by the anti-bots, as a slur - with the sole intention of blackening the targets. It's just a favourite piece of mud that gets thrown.

Yes, i think it is very important to trot out both sides of the argument.

In the "bots" thread you and i were accused of being Pro-Botters....yet neither of us ever used them or even liked them!! Work that one out?

I think a certain group here would like the run of the forum so that they can influence opinions to those casual readers......almost like brainwashing. It's good that readers can see boths side of the coin and then make their own mind afterwards. That's how it should be!

You don't have to actively use Picks or Traffic bots to argue a case for them.

No. I'm saying that gaming search is the equivalent of loading the device.
The ladder was designed for ascending. The search ranking factors were not designed with a view to people using traffic bots and pick buying. Or, if they were, then LL has a LOT of explaining to do.


For me, it's not a matter of degree.
Someone who cheats in a board game is as untrustworthy as someone who cheats in business. I would not do business with someone who cheats in a board game. It betrays a lack of ethics in their makeup.