Is Paying for Links in Profile Picks Cheating?

Replaced with nothing. We have classifieds for that sort of advertising already.

Search has to have order, are you suggesting "Show in search places" is scrapped?

Random order would work just fine. Let the user choose between random or alphabetical. Most people would probably choose random just to avoid the inevitable five pages of "AAAAA1111 Low Prim Furniture!." Have it re-randomize every time the search is refreshed. If they did that having a well known and solid reputation would count for something as people would be less dependent on search to find you, and every single person with a search listing would have an equal random chance of being on page one with every search. Problem solved.

Order can be based on relevancy of the classified, and have nothing to do with traffic to the sim or parcel or how many avas have the site in their picks. It would require humans to screen and accept the ads before placement - but if you can't wait a week for a classified ad, you don't have much of a business in the first place. :/

OMG that's genius. And little guys without the big budgets stand an equal chance of placement at the top as everyone else. Genius.

Well I like this idea as it would mean people actually sensibly naming their parcels again as brand awareness would be more important once more.

Excellent idea Chip Now i wonder if LL will look at it?

That idea I love, thanx Chip

I wouldn't say that the 'picks' feature is being or will be destroyed, a better analogy is that they are being slightly abused, only a small percentage of people will ever sell their picks. The main bulk of the community who play SL day in day out will not buy into this, just like they never spent their online time camping and in my experience it's these people who have the most interesting picks. A good portion of picks will be on alts anyway and they will only ever log in to cash in. So I think if you randomly click on someones profile in a publc place the chances are the picks will be legit rather than sold to a business.

Random would be brilliant.
Given that any new attempt to rank on avatar activity or avatar voting will be gamed to destruction, it's better to leave people go to Classified if the want to pay for exposure.

I'd say they're evolving, as they have been doing so ever since people decided to use their picks for something other than a land location. I've seen friend shout outs, policy FAQ's, general nonsense in picks. Isn't this part of the point of Second Life, an evolving world? The users are utilising the resources in a way they see fit and until that crosses the line into being such a pain in the arse that residents demand action, I really can't see the big deal.

I really don't see why people are getting their knickers in a twist over paid picks, but heck maybe paid picks should be called sponsored picks and have a different colour tab on an avatar's profile so that those who are heinously offended can avoid them.

aaaw, poor you. LMAO!

That is the main crux of the problem, classifieds don't give enough exposure, the new search hasn't been good for classifieds. The best exposure comes from the general search.

So you are saying that most picks will be artificial and not real picks by warm humans at all.
Why then should they influence ranking??
While they do influence ranking, then referring back to the threat title - it's cheating.

It may be true that a walking/talking avatar's picks will be 'old-style' at the moment,
However, as new people join and ask the age-old question "How do I get L$?" and increasing percentage of residents will enter a culture in which picks are for earning L$.

It's not cheating, it will never be cheating, people put picks in their profile of their own free will. Cheating would be having an object that somehow managed to put a profile pick on an avatar's profile without their knowledge.

They influence ranking because LL has implemented yet another system that can be Gamed.

Simple as that.

Business is business and if LL presents us with a way to get an advantage over our competitors then people will take it. We are not playing with monopoly money here. We are operating in a virtual world but this is real life, I still have mortgage payments to make and thats what SL is for. If the consequence is that I can no longer rely on the validity of a "warm humans" picks then thats a sacrifice I am willing to make.

It's not cheating as long as I operate within the TOS. It may not be ethically right but it's not cheating.

I'm fine with biz doing that. I don't do it myself (sell my picks) but if a place I like is offering to do that I usually think its a neat idea.

Traveling thru SL via profile picks is one of my favorite ways of randomly exploring SL

I admire folks who work hard to set up biz here...its a pretty amazing thing to do.

The bots tho use up resources that are shared and paid for by all residents one way or the other. Its false advertising to me. But that is assuming that people are choosing to be paid for their pick for a place they like anyway and want to support.


Would someone have a paid pick for a place they didn't like?

I think if someone goes to the effort of creating 50 alts to maximise the amount of picks they can sell then I doubt they care whether or not they like the bussiness, just would be looking for the highest return for each pick spot.

Somthing interesting i have noticed, allot of my regular customers, who had me listed in their picks before I started paying, have taken advantage of the payments and signed up, but from what i can see they havnt sold out their picks, they are just picking up a small payment for a pick that would have been there regardless,

I have seen profiles with the same pick in it like 10 times..

now I am getting the hang of this..

I need camping devices, traffic bots - 40-50 Alts but keep them alive, pay several hundred people thousands of Lindineros for picks to pretend they like my store.

What's the going rate for picks.. and does begging for money in the form of a tip jar in your store deduct search browny points?

We're not sure if that works, if the system is decent it shouldn't.



Not quite so fast caped crusader, misuse of camping devices and bots will get you a spanked backside and not all picks are equal, accounts need to reach a certain criteria before their picks count



L$1 a day and tip jars only get you brownie points if they're accompanied by an Ann Launay style avatar.

haha those terms are all to complex for me.. I will just try to not mis-schpell the name of my produKts and hope that people will find them the way they have been... which is on SLX or by clicking on their neighbor's stuff to see where it came from. hahaha

$1L a day? that is like 0.00333333333333 american cents.. hard to believe someone would lift a finger for that...

one thing just did occur to my masked brain..

maybe.. the reason why picks help search rankings is because in order for people to add you to their picks they have to go there... and when they are there they increase traffic...which I believe is still very important in search relevency.. ..~~

the LL blog reference to picks is so vague that I believe it to be a fairy tale... or wishful thinking.. I hope an entire industry of paying people to add picks is not based on that single statement...

'xactly. They could also combine random and alphabetical. Have it always alphabetical but randomize which letter shows up on page one each time. If everyone had an equal chance at exposure in search then brand awareness would be the key to getting ahead, not gaming the search engine or gimmicks, though gimmicks would surely still be used as a way of building brand awareness, and we'd still have keyword spam and bogus keywords, but it would be a hell of a lot better than it is now and far more fair to everyone. I can picture people carving their land into separate 16m plots and listing every one in search.

The other thing LL could (and absolutely should) do is get rid of the ability to create unlimited alt accounts.

My tests indicate that it doesn't work.

You are banging your head against a brick wall, Ciaran. They are not the slightest bit interested in anything but their own desires. You can tell them 'til the cows come home that multiple picks don't work, etc., and the very next time there's a thread about it, they'll come back with the same things all over again. They simply don't want to know anything that devalues their arguments.

They are only interested in having things their way throughout the whole of SL. Most people are content to just look after their own little part of it, but not the ones you are debating with. They want to shape all of it into what they want it to be, but they never will.

Good practice.

I am beginning to think people in the UK have stricter boundaries for the word "Cheating" than we do in the US.