Is Paying for Links in Profile Picks Cheating?

No, its a potential fair business climate issue.

I wish Zaphod would post that quote by Robin again, they do want the Search to be fair, or at least she does.

O yes I got it. And saw it did make no sense whatsoever.

Fucking bad even? Nice language.

If you "got it" it would make sense to you - whether or not you agreed with it.

Since it makes no sense - you didn't get it.

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As for the language, after the things you Rene and Phil have been saying about me- I think I am being quite reserved.

No one claims that. But answering questions with completely senseless new questions instead of one normal answer, just trying to poke with a stick towards other posters to get an opinion, without stating any arguments, well it comes close.
Still no one managed to answer the riddle I posted:



Quite the example of the way she answers...

Define fair. Paid picks are out in the open. The new search having picks as a factor has changed the face of picks, there are probably more picks being used now than ever before.

Please find one quote where I used language like that towards you. No, not from Phil or Rene, from me.

Is there any evidence that picks are actually doing anything for the search? I heard 3rd hand that a Linden made the comment to a resident during a SLCC business panel quote "Paying for picks isn't doing you any good."

I did not say that you had.

Well the comment sounds fair to me from the point of view that there are other factors. I know from past experience that parcels appear higher in the listings than mine and attract less traffic. they have more picks than my parcel, but that's no guarantee they're going to attract more people. It's one of many tools.

okokokokokok
everybody out of the pool...

this whole thread has just become i am more righter than you ... blah blah fishpaste..

some ppl are of the opinion that although it doesnt clearly and emphatically state in the TOS that its NOT ALLOWED ... they feel it is immoral and therefor wrong

some ppl are of the opinion that because doesnt clearly and emphatically state in the TOS that its NOT ALLOWED ... they feel its OK to do and therefor... ok for them to do.

other ppl couldnt give a rats fart either way as long as they find nice stuff and they can buy it fairly soon after they feel they need it.

and this is great... i mean we all wouldnt want to think the same and be the same...

it might be an unfair disadvantage to game search ... but only a fleeting gain is won.. if the product is not good enough.. the ppl will TP out... if its good .. the ppl will shop and come back and pass around LM...

comparing it to athletes and steroids is silly... its more like a puff of oxygen from a tank right as the starter gun goes off...
SL is NOT full of limitless customers.. there is NOT a huge daily replenish of victims... Places that sell quality goods come into thier own.. and also so do the places that sell junk.. they will fail.

and until such time as LL actually comes out and says NO MORE YOU GUYS .. then gaming .. moral or not .. is the puff of oxygen that ppl can choose to take or not. its a free world after all.
Consumers too should be credited with having enough of a brain to choose

the way this argument reads is that there are a miriad of mindless shoppers all jumping on the top X of the search and spending all their Lindens there...

some might, but i think you will find that the majority of ppl have a mind of their own.

there are far worse crimes in SL ... and those are way more important to fight about...
age sex play .. child pornography .. corrupt land barons... scams .. content theft..
some explicitly against the TOS and some LL doesnt care to get involved with... and most of them outright wrong on whatever level you choose to look at them.

and so it goes on ..

what really is the point of all this nya nya nya anyway?

most ppl who successfully game the search also spend a lot of effort behind their products... constantly bringing out new and innovative stuff.. in other words they behave like any other business in the real world using all means at their disposal to succeed.

traffic botting and camping is obvious for anyone who cares to look at the minimap.. but if the items on sale are good enough then ppl dont care.
is camping any better really than traffic botting anyway? tons of campers use alts and external progs to camp multi and make more...
paying for picks... its a 2 way thing.. paying for advertising... same same.... ppl choose to be paid.. the very shoppers you are arguing to protect... same as ppl in rl sell space on their land for billboards... who is wrong the ppl who offer to pay or the loads of ppl who accept to be paid...

you can argue any of these points both ways and still never win.. it all boils down to a matter of opinion..
even if picks and bots were outlawed tomorrow.. and traffic was based on unique TP in.. do you honestly thing there wouldnt be a way to game that...

SO why fight for fightings sake.. thread after thread ... day after day.. wouldnt it be better to use the time more constructively and leave it up to LL to decided, eventually, one way or the other if these practices will be against the TOS or not?

Because most of the other questionable activities .. Linden Labs has already banned.

When they were allowed, we used to "fight" about all those too.

so you mean you basically just want to fight?

how about lobbying for ppl who have been ripped off by landbarons?
there are tons of those..

it is not against the TOS to kick someone off your land for no apparent reason, after they paid to rent it... LL will not get involved.. and clearly by anyones definition it is theft..

if you want to fight for fightings sake.. do it for the underdog,, the truly abused.. thats way more moral than flooding the forums week after week debating a difference in opinion.

No apparent reason? How do you judge that? Maybe the landlord has a very good reason. Just another difference in opinion.

I used "fight", slightly different.

We do discuss those things .. it wasn't that thread's turn I guess.

There is a rotation.

cool. I just hope it never happens to you.

debate is good,difference of opinion is good.. but mudslinging, name calling, posting childish pictures for the specific purpose of insulting people isnt morally right.. no?

ppl have argued from its not allowed, through its not moral and all the way down to not fair...
but we (or most of us) live in a democratic, capitalistic world.. commerce is about getting ahead using the means allowed by the system. and people who game the search are doing nothing more.

there is absolutely no difference in real life..
is it unfair that Coca Cola has the obvious advantage of world recognition and plenty of money to back up their advertising campaigns.. whereas poor old somewhere in Bolivia Sparkling Guarana stands no chance of getting out of the foothills?

Maybe, if you want to waste your time arguing about it.. but right down at ground level, that is the way life is.

Personally if i feel that some enterprise is using immoral means (IMO) to market their product, i just boycott it. I wont buy Nikes but I wont stand on a street corner and insult anyone who walks by wearing a pair.

But the topic of this thread was the practice of buying picks/gaming.

I don't go around in world finding people who Game the searches and lecture them.

But in a place where the discussion is being held --- I do speak up.

Don't worry, it never will.

It might be wrong in your opinion, and i respect that,
I cant make you change your mind about how you feel about it.
I can tell you how i feel and listen to how you feel.. but after that, there is not much else to be done.
If you have such conviction then you must give other ppl the leeway to have their own opinions and convictions.

Reading through this thread and others like it.. the biggest impression that i get is that you dislike Phil and Phil dislikes you.

sometimes it seems like the search gaming is not part of the discussion at all.

no wonder ppl dont want to jump in here and give their opinion.. theres a high chance they will be insulted and belittled before the day is over.. and no Colette I am not aiming at you specifically but the whole thread (and others like it) and all the participants.

It is a good topic for debate.. especially because neither side can win until LL lays down the law one way or another.

A lot can also be learned from these threads.. a lot of ppl who had never thought of gaming now have it down pat after reading this.. and on the other hand some gamers have decided to cut back or stop... so it is having an effect both ways..

I for one wish there was no traffic... and no pick counting. but if there wasnt .. what other flawed and unfair system would replace it?

At least with the ALL search, there are more variables.. which in turn makes for more fairness.. each person can choose for themselves a system that they can live with.

and this system, like all other systems will be gamed to exhaustion.. and then fizzle out .. and be replaced and so on and so forth...

but at the end of the day... nothing is fair.
some ppl have the money for great computers, expensive software, amazing internet connections.. is that fair? Some countries dont even offer mildly acceptable connections..
hell i can think of hundreds of variables... housewives shouldnt be allowed to stay online all the time and create content because professional ppl cant .. there is no end to what isnt fair.

all you can do is petittion LL.. and debate fairly

I think you may be right with that.
IMO it might have been effective in the first couple of months of new ALL Search, but i think LL have silently reduced its relevance without letting anyone know......which is how it should be.

On one popular keyword i was no.1 on page 1 for several months. Did not have picks, did very little to promote this particular business unit....just a couple of adverts. I didn't have it in my own picks even. Anyway about 2 months ago it got bounced from the no.1 spot to no.4....a few days later it went to no.8. Now it hovers between no.8 and no.9 from day to day. About a month ago, i thought i'd get it back up the ladder so i used the Picks camping system and ask several F&F to place the company in their Picks. After a month
and spending lots of Lindens, it hasn't done nothing at all! Not even bounced up to no.7 position....i'm totally static at no.8 and that is where i probably will remain. So is suspect Picks has a very low weighting now....and unless you have several hundred of them, i think its not going to have much effect anymore.

Great post eku - the most evenly balanced post on this thread to date.....and covering all the bases

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

Who's "we" exactly?

If you discovered new things, why didn't you add them to the search sticky and share your knowledge?

If you and Marcel want to deliberately keep things to yourself on the other hand then we're back to the "whoever knows the most secrets 'wins' search" debate we had a few months back where Marcel (and restated in this thread) said that it's not about finding/knowing "secrets".

It was relevant to the quoted bit by Mort: you were stuck where you were and your only other option to get ahead was buy your ranking rather than get any further result from optimizing.

If you know that things have changed since then, feel free to contribute to the search sticky.

All I can say is that you need to read properly.
Your artificial construction of an argument on seriousness of offence/cheat is extremely childish.

I said that a person who cheats in a game is as untrustworthy as someone who cheats in business.
That was in response to a suggestion that cheating in a game did not really matter. Of course it matters. Cheating in any area of life indicates a lack of ethics.

No? A hint:

By the way, for the people pointing out that paying for Picks is not against any rules - if you have an LSL script that checks if something is picked, you are. llHTTPRequest's specification states that it will access any page "outside the secondlife.com" domain, so the fact that it works for "world.secondlife.com" is a bug you're exploiting to read a user's picks. The same trick was already enforced against once (when it was used for lifting people's profile pictures)..