Thx Lindens for making our SL more worse every day!

No, they're doing the majority of the changes. They're not just integrating changes brought by users... if they were we'd never have had Windlight and Dazzle and the Communicator and Voice.

That is absurd. I'm an architect not a programmer. I have no skills to offer with that endeavor beyond occasionally reporting bugs that I encounter. I pay thousands to LL every year for them to provide me with a platform that works, It is not my job to fix it for them.

You're paying for the servers and customer support, not the viewer.

Sounds kinda like a little idea to throttle the logins to premium accounts only when the concurrency reached a certain level. What's that you say, they never implemented that? Well then, you answered your "If it was possible..." senario.

The barn doors were opened long ago and you can't hardly close them now. Open sourcing was a mistake, in my humble opinion.

There are ways of handling the bot problem.

Make sure that the person logging on is a live person by letting them type a word or a code showed as a jpg or gif picture on the logon screen. This makes it very hard (or even impossible) to auto-connect a bot. This method is used widely on Internet sites that requires login. Should be no problem to implement on the Second Life viewer.

Next step would be to require verification of your login with regular intervals. Let's say every hour. Force the user to type a code shown as a picture on the screen. Failure to do so will force logout within 5 mins or so.
OK, it will be annoying for all of us, but it will get rid of a lot of bots... If you're at your screen, it takes 5 seconds to complete this process, not such a problem. If you're not at your screen, you should get kicked out. Period.

or you have to send a stool sample via your PC
every hour to LL via a device attached to your PC... that would open up a whole new business line...

much simpler would be to use those new finger prick blood tests kits, plug in to computer, jab finger, blood sample reading sent to SL before log in, or eye iris scans, I *shiver* how close are we really getting close to this?

What makes you think LL wants to do anything about the bots?


That's more annoying to me than the bots. I don't particularly like the idea of getting kicked offline if I get up to put the dog out or get a snack, either.

It's cheaper for them to get rid of the bots than upgrading their server park to cope with load they generate. A very simple choice for a commercial company.



Nobody should get kicked offline for getting a snack. That's just normal user behaviour.
However, having a bot online for hours and hours for the single purpose of generating traffic in a store is not normal behaviour, that is abusing the service that Linden provides. It's causing lag for the rest of us.
Furthermore, it increases Lindens cost of running Second Life. And this is the point: Real users pay for Second Life. Bots don't. As a real user, I'm not very interested in paying for the bots. It's that simple really.
There is always someone paying for the party and it's not Linden. It's Lindens clients. You and me. Not the bots. Get rid of them.

It doesn't seem like LL thinks that bots are a "problem" since the way that the search engine is configured encourages the use of them. This seems so pointless, since it makes the search far less useful than it would be if it wasn't being gamed. Of course, too many bots means lag and drag for the actual users of a club, store or whatever. The entire experience is diminished. However, bots raise the logged-in numbers for LL. More realistic numbers would be 10%-25% lower if the bots were kicked off (just my guess).

A captcha approach is trickier than you'd think and, I believe, would cause a lot of issues for real users. People with dyslexia, visual problems or limited understanding of the roman alphabet will have issues figuring out the captcha. Being asked to stop what you are doing and submit of a captcha challenge constantly while inworld would be completely destroy the immersive quality of SL, so I can't imagine it being implemented.

LL needs to figure out whether bots are acceptable or not. If they remain part of the way SL "works" than the server structure needs to be powerful enough to support them.

Yes, an inworld captcha might be a too extreme solution (even if it would just trigger every hour or so), but during logon it would be feasible.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't particularly agree to Linden upgrading server structure to keep up with the bots, since I have to pay for it in the end.
Second Life is about interacting with real users, not bots. Therefore, I'm not interesting is paying for server structures that accomodate massive amounts of bots... If someone wants to start a separate grid for bots, fine, but I'm not paying for it.

If that were the case, LL would do it. The bots aren't just there, businesses are putting them there to drive up traffic numbers & business. LL is making money off the businesses. As long as that's the case, I doubt the bots are going anywhere fast.

Getting rid of traffic bots might reduce the numbers advertised on the SL website.

I've said nothing about getting rid of bots. Just kicking 'em off the grid when the concurrency gets above a certain point or problems occur in the databases. (Though I still don't wanna be in SL when that happens!)

But we already know that LL isn't likely to do that and if they did, they'd botch things up badly enough that no one could get on. Look at how they've handled every other major issue in the past... we get shiny flags, instead of tools to deal with revolving door greifers!

Too many free accts, griefers, bots, campers, the list goes on and on.

Thinking about it, I honestly believe that the bots/search issue is a political masterstroke by LL.

The problem is that they're caught between two stools. If they make search favour newer places, they'll have complaints from consumers who can't find the quality fast. If they make search favour proven quality and popularity, they'll have complaints from creatives whose work will never be seen. Just look at "Little Big Planet", Sony's creative game: it shipped with a popularity-based search and that's being blamed for a fairly major decline, with people actually writing to Media Molecule to complain that "I have to promote my own levels on BBSes and even then have no hope of seeing my level on the main search pages because my level will get less plays than the visible levels have hearts" ("heart" is LBP-ese for a positive rating)

So what's the solution? Easy! Just make the determining factor be something that anyone can do, but that people think is wrong - like running bots. Since anyone can do it, you can claim that anyone can rank in Search if they "try"; since people think it's wrong, the bot-runners, rather than LL, get the public blame.

A policy on bots is coming to a blog near you soon. Whether the policy is of any use remains to be seen.

They know the pros and cons of bots in SL. Right now the pros outweigh the cons for them...because if LL wanted to get rid of the bots.... they would have.

Biometrics are always the wrong answer. What happens if someone does successfully copy your fingerprints or iris patterns in a way that can pass a biometrics test? Who's gonna re-issue you new, uncompromised credentials then?

If new user experience is a priority (it is), something is going to have to be done about the bot situation sooner rather than later. It's boring to find all the highest places in searches being crowds of camping zombie bots. If there's no new users staying engaged, it doesn't matter how many businesses there are in world: Nobody's making money.

I luvs SL but it does seem a lot borkier lately.

Bork & beans! It's what's for dinner.

So we can expect a post every day detailing what new thing has got worse?

nah... from what i've seen in my usual lurker mode would be new posts every day detailing things that usually haven't gotten worse, have been borky for awhile, but only just getting noticed by the poster...

a handful of borkys leads to hundreds of new threads.