Is Paying for Links in Profile Picks Cheating?

QFT

This is what would be a stinging example of a reality check.

i used to run multiple classifieds every week until ll borked the entire classified system.
it isnt worth my time or money anymore.
whatever their intended purpose, picks are the way to go.

The fact that you do it Nina, doesn't mean its not cheating.

Neither does the fact the rest of the system is broken.

i dont pay for picks, although i havent ruled it out.
i do trade picks though. all my alt picks were traded with other business owners.

hey!

i only have 1 place in my picks its my favorite and i love it - its my island

ive noticed some group members have my sim in their picks too
looks like they love my sim -> makes me proud
or its just a sort of simple landmark?
i never would pay people for picking my sim, in my opinion thats wasting money and useless

Well no one can visit now you have 99 hot guys grinning at you and of course you, on the island

Bingo! The consumer needs more options.

Colette where is this criteria on picks that says you can only place a pick if it meets certain standards?

hey!


oh your keyboard works!

me doesnt count in traffic dont ask me why it simply is
but my 99 hot guys boost the traffic up to ~138 000
maybe i should rethink and pay em for adding my sim to their hot picks
noone can enter the sim thats right but im BESTRANKED and i can sell stuff to my >>hot guys<<
this way i also have a lot of transactions does it count too?

sidenote: cos of redesign ive closed the sim to grouponly

Yeah i brought a new one i will send you the bill LOL



Yeah get them to add the sim to your picks and pay em not a lot



dunno if transactions count in traffic lol you never know tho it might so start selling em stuff cheap just in case lol and dam i was gonna sneak on your island to see if you were cheating in any other ways lmao

send it up to -> [email]trashcan666@rubbishDOTcom-org-net[/email]
hope its not to costy im a poor simowner you know

OK bill sent and yes i know your a poor sim owner i am to lol

I am Offering free cheese to anyone who will put my parcel in their picks!
This is top quality cheese.
Goes great with whine

I wouldn't do it for any less than chocolate, sowwies .

---

As an aside, you don't even need people to put you in their picks. Parcels can function as link farms as well and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on yet.

There are a bunch of problems, but they basically come down to ethics, entrenchment, and world affect.

Ethics in that Picks are meant to represent the opinion of the resident who has them. As such, paying for a Pick is a bit like bribing a reviewer - not technically illegal, but definately iffy. But by making it a business advantage, any business that wants to compete on a level playing field _must_ get involved in doing this. Essentially, it's telling every new business that they must game or lose.

Entrenchment - any environment where visibility depends on payment will entrench the existing businesses and slowly bring evolution to a halt as new businesses can't be seen. This problem is actually greater in SL than RL because in RL, locations are much more likely to have walk-through traffic, and that traffic is far more likely to be spending money, than they are in SL. Moreover, in SL the final "end state" of this kind of thing is actually anti-businesses because the end state is that all the visibility is taken up by "gamer" individuals or RL businesses who aren't trying to make profit in the SL economy at all. Places like SLX have New Products searches to prevent this from happening, and LL have already provided a place where you can pay for search ranking: Classifieds. Search isn't intended to be the same as that.

World Affect. I know that many people here aren't old enough to remember dwell, but you are, Briana, so I'm surprised you don't mention that. Dwell was the old system whereby having a popular build automatically earned you L$, and it had to be taken out exactly because of gaming with camping chairs. But in doing so, the actual REASON for dwell - to ensure that people providing CONTEXT, places in which things could happen, interactive play sets, etc, were on a level field with those providing content - was lost too, which singlehandedly created the "SLgroaning" situation we have now (with many fields with far too much content for the available context, leaving newbies conned when they find that there is nothing to do with the cyberpunk/angel/majorette outfit they just bought than to wear it to the same club they were going to all along). In this case, Picks gaming runs the risk of losing Picks - and all of the other purposes it was being used for.

Why would a searcher exclude Traffic and/or Picks?
- They would exclude because that they knew that those metrics were gamed and unreliable.

Why would a searcher include Traffic and/or Picks? How could those options help?
- They would include because they were under the false impression that those metrics were an indication of popularity/relevancy.

It is true that a typical 'Advanced Search' with more options can be very useful for a searcher.
However, the options have to useful options.

If the holy grail is simply more options, how about an option to filter on the fourth letter in the parcel description? So what if it would be meaningless?

One girl's opinion: There will always be gaming of the system. If paying to Pick is the new game, that's fine; at least we don't have to deal with the crappy bot/camp lag caused by Traffic gaming.

Or because they simply aren't interested in how much traffic or how many picks a parcel gets, they just want to find the damn item. As someone points out on another thread, if he's searching for a kitchen he doesn't care about traffic or picks, he wants to find a store that sells kitchens and he'd rather go to the store that has a wider range of kitchens first. They may not have the best traffic or the most amount of picks.



Alternatively they're looking for a high traffic area and want to check out said high traffic area to see how the traffic is attained. The person using this option should be a bit more experienced, it shouldn't be a default option. This would be useful for me when I'm looking for mall space or advertising in clubs etc. If the traffic is a load of bots it's no good to me, if the traffic looks pretty damn genuine then it's time to give it a whirl.



The options are useful, another useful option would be to sort by price.

Personally, I think LL should have kept the Google Rule of Secrecy: we know some things Google uses to determine search ranking, but not everything. LL should never have told anyone picks mattered for results - and if it's changed, they should not say what is being used in it's place. As soon as everyone found out picks were worth gaming, well ...

The Search system IS actually a Google Search Appliance, and it works the same way as Google does - based on links from other pages. The "pages" are automatically generated from the SL database. Picks are important because they create a link from the avatar's Profile page to the parcel's page.

Well, yeah, that's why I said that.

Of course said appliance is also used on networks to index NAS and Dataservers.... all of which contain no links between documents.

So it can be set to be pure keyword only searches with nothing else affecting the results.

Someone can correct me if I'm mistaken but, to the best of my recollection, it was widely known in this forum long before LL posted about it on the blog.

[added]
Correction: if you meant that they use Picks for links, yes ok. They needn't have mentioned that, but it wouldn't have been long before it was seen. They would need to have kept quiet that it's a Google appliance but even then there are signs of it in the search itself.

Just as you all said, any angle LL presents for us to get higher on the list will be exploited and used so we can get our names out there. It's part of the game. Just like real life it's getting noticed, getting the word that you are there. If you truley have a good product, and are willing to work towards making customers happy, is that really so bad?


My personal shopping stratedgy is to avoid the high traffic places at the top of the list. Very few places with real shoppers and quality tried and true products and good service reputations make that spot.
The fashion groups in SL make shopping easier. If I see a place get good mention a few times I usaually go over just to see what they have.
Another way I like to shop is keep my eyes open and click on Creator Profiles of things I like. I excpect them to have at least one location where they sell their work in Picks and I always check their classiefieds for an updated list of locations.

The problem is that this isn't based on work, it's based on money, which can strangle small businesses and increase risk, and thus lower innovation. Pay for more picks, or pay for more Premium alts, and you have a higher placement.

The methods you select, based on word of mouth, are very good and many people use them. But the intent of Search (as opposed to Classifieds) is not to be money based.