Is Paying for Links in Profile Picks Cheating?

The runners in the analogy would compare to Businesses in SL


The gaming business is cheating the businesses it is competing with.

As it stands right now, definitely no one is being cheated even in the worst case scenario......as we more or less know that Picks has lost it's weighting and therefore its relevancy. We also know traffic has a minimal amount of impact too and that's been highlighted by the Lindens themselves. If both cases apply then All Search really does come down to SEO with minimal influences from gaming applications.

Which then makes this thread a non-event!

Interesting, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours is ok, but apply that to a Linden dollar payment and you object?


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According to the guidelines only certain forums should contain adverts, this isn't one of them. Those who advertise in their signatures are surely at the very least, bending the rules, are they not?

Perhaps but, as far as we know, picks do still have an impact on the rankings even if it's been reduced. I'm after simple answers to two simple questions:- Who is being cheated? What are they being cheated out of?

If it's thought that some specific people are being cheated, such as those who move down in the ranking, then that would be a simple answer to the first question, but it does require an answer to the second question as well because, if they aren't being cheated out of something, they aren't being cheated at all.

It's not a matter of what anyone in particular likes or dislikes. The thread asks if paying for picks is cheating.

Yes.




Because your signature is constant throughout the forums. It would be pretty much impractical to disable it each time to switch sections.

Sluniverse which uses a much newer version of this forums software only displays the signature once per page.

I understand your point and i'm guilty of having mine on. The problem is that i post in the classifieds forum too either for products or land or what not. In those sort of forums it advantageous keeping a signature on......the problem is moving from one type of forum to another and a real bind to edit profile each time.....or one simply forgets!

It doesn't matter whether *you* think the person who cut across cheated, it matters that you can see both sides of the argument. Since noone was ever told "you have to get from A to B using the road" people can argue that the *how* was entirely open to interpretation and best judgement.

LL only says "picks matter" without any rules on what it deems to be acceptable ways to gather picks and what it deems to be unacceptable if anything. Someone can cut across the field and amass picks by paying people to add them, someone else can follow the road and not bribe anyone to add them.

You claim there's no natural order in search, but there's no natural order in a race either. If that person hadn't cut across someone else would have been first, if someone hadn't bribed people to add picks they wouldn't have ranked where they did.

You by no means have to go "yes, I see and I agree, paying for picks is cheating", "ok, I see your point, but since LL didn't explicitly tell anyone to follow the road I personally don't think it's against any rules to take the shortcut" would be nice already .

Or just to be totally obvious if you're feeling dense: without LL clearly going one way or the other paying for picks is open to each individual's personal judgement. Some people are going to think "it's fine if I do because I'm not told I can't", others are going to think "they didn't intend it that way, it's wrong". The judgement of "they didn't say I can't so I am" gives someone an advantage, which puts everyone else at a disadvantage so they loose out.

From a searcher point of view people who game search are going to be the least relevant to me simply by experience from the old search. Whoever is obsessed with grabbing the most eyeball time is rarely somewhere where I'll find anything I was looking for so from that point of view it's also cheating since it makes it that much harder for me to find anything.

Phil - You are trying to use circular logic

Its really simple in reality ....

Competitors who are moved down the list due the the cheating lose sales --- because they are moved down the list.

The same reason you wanted to be on top of the list in the first place.

None of that addresses the question posed by this thread - is paying for picks cheating?

I made a statement that nobody has disagreed with - for something to be cheating, someone must be cheated out of something.

If anyone thinks that paying for picks is cheating, then I'd like to know who it cheats, and what they are being cheated out of. If nobody is being cheated out of anything, then nobody can be cheating.

There is no need for analogies. They are simple questions, and simple answers are best.

We all view cheating in different ways, I don't see it as cheating, I do see using false keywords as cheating though but it could again be argued there whether anyone is being cheated out of anything.

The cheater's competitors are being cheated




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Simple enough?

False keywords are bad, I agree. A case could be made that time is being taken away from searchers who are led to those places - cheated out of some of their time.

If you recall, Google implemented the PageRank system entirely to prevent people boosting their rank on Google by putting up large numbers of unrelated sites that linked to the one they wanted to promote, with appropriate keywords near the link.

Creating artificial picks has, basically, the same effect.

If you haven't figured it out from the dozens of posts in this thread and all the other ones over the past 4 months then you're not going to get it, or you're acting obtuse merely to get a laugh like you said in the TOS thread.

The simple fact is that you refuse to even acknowledge the idea that someone might disagree with you on what makes for legitimate optimizations and which make for questionable/irresponsible ones or even what constitutes cheating.

Paying for picks let someone obtain a ranking they wouldn't have had without resorting to something which is at the very least questionable and which adversely affects others. I highlighted the bit that makes it "cheating" so even you should be able to filter it out of the post.

The fact that I think it's questionable at best is my opinon and I'm entitled to it as much as you are to yours. The fact that it negatively affects others and is done by something which is at the very last questionable is what sets it apart as cheating as opposed to other "optimizations" and it all hinges on my opinion of "paying for picks".

If someone thinks paying for picks is perfectly alright then they wouldn't see any malicious intent or deception which would make it cheating in their opinion.

And all in all, I'm not terribly surprised you didn't want to address my other post and just want to bury the thread in repetitions of the same thing over and over again.

No. The Google founders invented PageRank while they were still at Stanford university developing their engine. In fact is was Larry Page (one of the founders) who invented it, and it's named after him. What it is, is a system to evaluate the linkages of the web and allot a score to each page according to it. When Google was launched and eventually rose in popularity, PageRank actually caused people to put up large numbers of websites that linked to the one they wanted to promote.

There was no need to go over what has been said in previous posts and threads, Kitty. The questions are very simple, and best kept that way. So...

The only thing you wrote that actually answers the questions is "... which adversely affects others...". Although you didn't answer in a simple way, I take it you mean that the ones who are being cheated are those who move down in the rankings. You haven't yet said what it is that they are being cheated out of, but I assume you mean a higher place in the rankings.

If my assumption is correct, then I say you are mistaken because nobody has a rightful place in the rankings, therefore they cannot be cheated out of them. The rankings were not theirs to be cheated out of. They didn't lose anything.

Oh this is a bunch of nonsense.

If someone would have had ranking number 5 , but instead they are ranking number 23 because of the people who are gaming the system

They got cheated out of ranking number 5.

Agreed, the only way someone could be cheated out of their rightful place would be if rankings were in some way quantifiable, they're not. There is not a single factor ranking system here.

But its not necessary to know exactly the effect of the cheating.

If an athlete that uses steroids wins the race, do we know exactly how much faster the steroids made them?

We only know that it influenced the outcome.


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Or in Kitty's example

Do we know exactly how much faster someone who took the shortcut became?

Not really .. but we know it influenced the outcome.


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You could still cheat in a race and loose, by the way. Doesn't mean you didn't cheat.

The athletics thing is easily quantifiable though, the first across the line is deemed the winner, then if they fail a dope test, they cheated and are disqualified.

If we were applying Second Life search usage you'd have to take into account the number of fans of each athlete, the number of visitors they get to their training camp, how well they named their training kit, how effective their advertising was, whether word of mouth got around about who was supposed to be the best athlete yadda yadda yadda.

There's no single factor that decides rank in search.

The rankings are dynamic, so you can move up or down a few places nearly each day, if other people are actively doing SEO. So no one is entitled to any position.....Phil might not be in no.1 position tomorrow for keywords "Low prim Furniture"....it would be up to him to respond.....or leave it as it is and go into eventual freefall. Everyone has that choice to make....no one is entitled to any position. Invaribaly those that spend more time on SEO will increase their chances fo better positioning.

Even if you lose positions on your favoured keywords.......you should be testing new keywords all the time looking for alternatives....even secondaries or variants of a popular keyword helps bring in extra traffic...that is all part of the SEO process and requires a lot of hours to test them. Here is something quoted on a website and holds true for All Search overhere.

" Understand your target group: Before doing a keyword research, understand your target customers. Research and analyze the psychometrics of your target customers – find out how users search for products or services you offer, what are the search terms they use for searching.

"Research on the search count and competition: Once you have decided on your list of keywords, find out the search count and competition for them. Search count is the approximate number of searches done using a particular keyword while competition is the number of web pages available on that particular keyword. By finding the count and competition, you would know whether you have chosen the right keywords. You would also recognize keywords which you may have missed out. It is always better to choose a competitive keyword with a good search count."

The above are all part of the process of doing proper SEO in SL to a lesser degree.....Picks is just a lazy man's tool in effect.....which we know has been downgraded in terms of relevancy....so the effectiveness of Picks in ALL search is not the "be all end all" of a high ranking positions. I have several no.1 positions on popular keywords without the need to use Picks or bots or whatever other root cause.....in fact in some cases i don't even have a pick of that business unit in my own Picks.

Does it really amuse you that much to insert those little words? Noone ever said anything about a "rightful place" and I most certainly didn't.

All the people you knocked down a spot lost something if you didn't keep on manipulating search by questionable means.

Are they solely entitled to the spot they had? No, noone ever claimed that. If someone used only legitimate means to get to and hold a certain ranking then they are cheated out of a ranking they hold by merit if the one overtaking them only got there by questionable means.

For the last time: A gains something solely by merit, B takes what A gained solely by deception. B cheated A.
If B does actually have more merit than A then there's not a single problem with B ranking first. Noone is going to argue that's cheating.

You can argue back and forth on what's merit and what is deception/questionable/dishonest, but as soon as you decide for yourself that one thing is merit and something else isn't then someone is getting cheated out of what they had.

And once again: it also negatively impacts searchers as well since it becomes all that much harder to find things when instead of the promised relevant results you just get a bunch of gamed rankings back.

do they allow steroids for Figure Skaters?

exactly people are getting confused by the details and losing sight of this important concept.

You're moving the goalposts and actually figure skating is harder to quantify than a race, there you have judges.

They allow figure skaters to spend more money on training and equipment than other figure skaters. Some figure skaters are awarded more sponsorship money than others.