LL - Let us count the bots!

Might be more than that too, wouldn't suprise me if LL had a few 1000 themeslves devoted to population increasing.
Hech one of my neigbours in my sim has 4 traffic bots, one of my tennants is doing it now, I can't blame them, it seems to be standard accepted business practice now, everyone with a 512m store has the right to run 5 bots 24/7 to get a decent rank in search.
I think I might set up a hot mail account and run a few myself. Sooner or later the media might pick up what a scam it is to allow a virtuall world to be 90% zombies.

Simply, every account must be verified to a RL person in some means, this right for all to have infinate anonoymous accounts has got to stop.

If ACME Inc want 200 accounts they can verify themselves to LL in some way to do so, if Johny the greifer or Charlie the Copybot store owner wants 200 accounts, bad luck.
You want more than one account, show a credit card and pay for the privilage.
The gate is still open and we are all just watching the horses run past.............

Forget all this nonsense about Voight Kampf tests (you're in a desert and you see a tortoise lying on it's back) and counting the number of bots. Not that I'm against it, it just seems an epic waste of time. Just get rid of search places and switch everything to search All. Does anyone actually search in Places anymore anyway? I guess I'm not down with the furniture buying crowd but I can't imagine using anything other than All to find places I'm looking for.

Yesterday in LL Traffic Future Kalpana Linden sent a note which reads
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I have recently started looking at ways to improve search and related areas such as traffic measurement. I know you have all been wondering whatever happened to all the great feedback we got from you folks on improving our search traffic - so here is a quick update.

Over the summer we have been seriously focusing efforts on identifying key aspects of SL to improve, and search is among the top ones there (after stability and availability etc). In particular from your feedback in the LL Traffic Group, we identified a key set of metrics to make available to our residents and that could be useful in redefining our traffic measurement. From that interaction, we also identified that the key areas to focus on in improving search (and traffic) is in having an effective policy to deal with disruptive bots (keeping in mind that some bots could be valid and useful), and in revamping how we deal with events in search. These are all key areas for search, as we move forward, and we hope to have progress in the months that follow, especially over the longer term.

In fact, I just recently started a monthly search office hour (every 4th Thu of the month @ 1-2PM PST) just to make sure to both (a) update residents on what's happening with search in SL and (b) get feedback on things we need to pay attention to. You are all very welcome to come and participate in that whenever you are able. .

Hope this a useful update, and feel free to ping me if I can be more helpful. And of course, you are all very welcome to stop by the search office hour next month for a live chat on the state of search.
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That being said. Will be interesting to see what becomes of the New Bot Policy and weather it will be affective or not. And everyone should attend the office hours to express your concerns

But how the hell do you assess people. Esp the AFK ones (or the ones yu assume to be afk). My partnr and i can spend hours sittign at home not moving from the same pillow chatting in IMs or on msn voice. We can also do the same thing but we are both AFK (she is sleepign i am working in RL).

Sorry your 'observations' ar not an accurte way to work out if someone is there or not

LL just have to give up on trying to use any factor related to avatars as weighting in any Search rankings
If the activity or profile of an avatar can influence Search rankings in any way, then it will be gamed to Hell and back by the ethically-retarded.

Traffic as a factor appears to be on the way out.
Paid Picks is the newest dishonesty, so Picks in avatar profiles should not be allowed to influence search rankings.

If LL can't allocate resources to slap down blatant gaming of Search, then they should at least limit the possibilities for gaming.

The right to be AFK 24/7 so your avatars can sleep is a great thing untill the other 40 neighbours in the sim do the same and you can't get into your own sim or have guests over.

I think they have a very good idea of the number of bots vs humans. Here's a quote from Zee Linden.

"Bots. Based on a set of behavioral characteristics that we observe bots having, we believe that about 10% to 15% of our user hours are attributable to bots. This has been consistent for some time. "

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/second-life-virtual-world-expands-35-in-q2/#comment-614159

So to me, that means that bots are less than 10% of the population at any given time, maybe as low as 5%. I know some people who can spend 12 hours a day in SL, but they can't match the stamina of a 24/7 bot.

Seems pretty obvious that something needs to be done to reduce the incentive to load up on traffic bots - no matter how many of 'em there are. I say we should just stop keeping track of Traffic numbers. Wouldn't eliminate all of 'em, but it'd be a good place to start.

The question should be, how many avs can a sim handle.

Mainland - 40 avs; private sims - 100 avs.

Whether or not thing go "weird" depends on how the bots are used. Camping bots are the worst because they are usually where people are and cause lag. If traffic bots are kept well away from people, then they cause minimal strain on the sim, and no lag for people.

The concurrency numbers are in the low 30ks to the low 70ks. We're talking about the whole day, and not just when you are awake.

But my question was, 40% of what? The concurrency varies widely but the number of bots in use doesn't.

That's a lot of guesses, which aren't useful for determining how many bots there are.




Then I suggest that your observations way are too limited, as others have pointed out.

Some thought concerning bots:-

1. The notecard that was sent out by a Linden yesterday (copied on the previous page) shows clearly that LL have no intention of dealing with traffic bots anytime soon. There is no new policy. If they do anything about them at all, it will be in the coming *months* and "especially in the long term".

2. Why does anyone care about the concurrency numbers? The numbers themselves have no effect and are totally irrelevant to us. If LL likes having high numbers, it's their business, and nothing to do with us.

3. Don't ever push to get rid of traffic bots because, if you succeed, you'll succeed in causing a deterioration for users. If they ban traffic bots, I promise you that the traffic bots won't go away. They'll be given valid things to do - where people are - and that will cause a lot of additional lag for people. E.g. they'll be converted to camping or models etc. So, even if there are a lot less of them, they'll cause a *lot* more difficulties for people in the way of lag.

4. Push to get rid of traffic rankings. That would remove traffic bots and camping at a stroke.

You should read up a bit more Sling. Picks do hardly influence search rankings nowadays. I posted that several times already in threads like this, and since a few weeks I am sure about it. My picks went down about 25% when I removed my picks system, and my ranking is not only the same, but now and then I switch places with Phil.

As Kalpana Linden said



and Zee Linden said



That says to me that they are constantly looking at ways to have an effective policy to deal with disruptive BOTs which they should, as why should a BOT or camping pad owner use more than their fair share of Sim resources on the mainland. They also recognize that BOTs are only a small percentage of of user hours far less than some have quoted in this thread for instance.

and as Phil rightly said



It would also stop these threads that just keep hashing over the same c**p by the same few people that hate the idea of BOTs. I see it as LL saying BOTs are here to stay we are just working on the finer details at the moment as its a work in progress.

Just my 2 cents worth

LOL

If all the bots and campers are gone we will feel pretty lonely


............. Since LL has many traffic bots
............. I have heavy guns

The only real way to get rid of abusing the search is to only count premium and concierge accounts in rankings and traffic etc

Bots and alts paid to camp or put things in their profiles arnt usually premium due to the cost.

Even though it wont count all the real non premium accounts it still correctly determines which places are truly more popular as they will have more premiums interested in them than the unpopular places.

I use search places to look for things by name. If the venue has paid the L$30/wk fee to be listed, Places will find it and show its landmark info. Search All will also find it, but place it in a list from which you need to find it.

As an example, look up "Club Industry". On the Places tab, it's the first entry, and the landmark info shows by default. On the All tab it's not even on the first page. The mall shows up as the first entry, and to use it you have to click on that, then hit the teleport button to actually go there, and then you can get the landmark info by requesting a landmark.

I'd be happy if traffic wasn't used at all in search rankings, but eliminating Places isn't a good idea.

You might be right, and you might be wrong - about the influence of Picks.
I understand you to say that the number of avatars with you in their picks fell by 25% after you stopped paying for the Picks. That still left x number of Picks, either set by people who genuinely liked your place or still left there by people who used to be paid.
We don't know the ranking algorithm. People just poke at it like a black box to discover the internal weightings.

You know what happened to your picks, but maybe you don't know what happened to the picks of parcels competing for ranking on various search terms.
What if you were to set up a parcel exactly as your existing parcel, but with zero Picks?
If Picks have no influence, then the ranking should be exactly the same.
It would not be the same in Places as it appears that traffic still has an influence there.
The ranking should be the same in All.

They are dead wrong, willfully or otherwise. You can verify for yourself by randomly visiting places on the map as I have.

If 5 places in the Furniture listings first page account for 330+ bots, and looking at the numbers, 1000 bots for the full first page of the furniture listing, then it is not hard to pick up another 5000 bots, and even more.

I am positive that more than 10% of the population at any given time are bots.

Ummmm we are rarelyo n 24/7. We go afk for around 4 to 5 hours a night while mypartner sleeps and there is a 50/50 hance I am doing stuff in SL while she sleeps depending on my mood etc. We own just over 1/16th of the sim. I dont think it is unreasonable to allow our avies to be there, AFK or not, for around 6 hours a day.

The fact is we all share sims. My partner and I are not bots, we have a lonog distance relationship and SL is one way of us being together. For you it may see like a waste of resources or whatever for us to be AFK while sleeping, for us it is an important connection. We get to wake up, roll over and see our avies cuddled together. I get to be the first thing she she focuses on in the morning. I get to hear "good morning" as the first words she speaks.

So only people that pay should be counted? I don't think so, I stopped paying years ago because I saw this coming. Open sourcing of the viewer code was a bad idea. You haven't seen the worst yet.



There are all ready bots that to simulate a real user. Soon you won't be able to know who is real and who isn't. LL uses the idea that "some bots are useful". Tell me how?

If I see more than 10 green dots stacked up on a sim, I don't even bother to go there. It ususlly means they are selling such crap that they need bots to attract the suckers.

I love the idea of bots. I have one myself.

My observations give the benefit of doubt. If you are AFK at home my numbers assume you are "Chilling and IMing". If you are AFK at a club my numbers assume you are either in "Club chat" or "Chilling and IMing", depending on my feel for the venue. If you are AFK at a store my numbers assume you are "Chilling and IMing" unless you haven't moved when I check up on you ten hours later.

So, my numbers probably under-report bots. I've tried quite hard to find the smoking gun to identify club bots and shopping bots, but I haven't found it, so my assumption is still that people that don't respond are live people.

The bots I report are the obvious ones. So, I'm probably under-reporting bots.

Zee is dead wrong. The 10%-15% works well on lightly-populated sims, but is laughably wrong on the rest of the grid.