where can I find pick camping places ?

I think you have problems with understanding ethical behaviour.

Most businesses are ethical.
Some businesses behave unethically.
The fact that other businesses behave unethically is not a justification for a business to behave unethically.

Picks buying in an unethical practice.
Why?
Because it games the search ranking.
It games search ranking in the dame way that Traffic was gamed.

not my fault

And your point is?

Actually, paying for picks is a perfectly honest manipulation of search. What's dishonest is you going round telling people otherwise. It's also tantamount to banging your head against a brick wall, but that's not illegal - and it's fun to watch you fighting lost battles

Hi again Phil!

You know what my point is. I made it, and you responded to it. So your asking about it is just one of your usual attempts at put-down.

Just as dwell/traffic was intended to be a measure of the worth of a place, Profile Picks are now a search weighting factor.
If people have places in their Picks simply because they get a payment, that damages the integrity of search rankings. It's underhand and dishonest. It is the same dishonesty as is the use of traffic bots.

You constantly miss the point.
I'm not here on a crusade. I'm not out to win a battle.
Someone brings up the question of Search-gaming and I just raise awareness.
I'm not here on a crusade. I'm not out to win a battle.
..and your attempts to rationalise unethical behaviour have a sort of fascination for me.

You don't say But I have to correct you. There's nothing dishonest about picks camping. The only dishonest thing here is you misinforming people about it. Still, you seem to enjoy fighting a lost battle, and I enjoy watching you, so who am I to complain.

SOmeone putting your place in pick because they liked it != someone put your place in pick because you paid them to do so.

ONNATT!

(Oh no, not another traffic thread!)

Picks camping gives the user the choice of whether they place the pick. It is upfront. Not all picks count so any claim that picks are an issue of popularity is absolute balderdash and we all know that some people place their friends stores in their picks. We also know people have traded picks in the past, they were doing it here.

Picks have gone way beyond their intended use, they went that way a long time ago.

There are umpteen issues with search, traffic and picks. Are freebies ehtical? Money trees? Money orbs? Lucky chairs? In nearly all cases they're designed to attract people to a parcel whose main aim is not giving away freebies.

What we need is a search that gives more power to a user. Let users select how they want to order their search results.

A user choosing to sell their Pick is only up-front for that user and the buyer of the Pick.
It is *not* up-front for the user of Search. That is a none-too-subtle distinction. That is where the dishonesty comes in. Picks buying is an underhand way of manipulating search rankings. The whole dishonest intention of Picks buying is to manipulate Search to give a false air of popularity to the parcel.



A Search that by default disregarded any weighting by Picks or Traffic would be good. A Search that put the power in the searcher's hands rather than in the hands of some unethical businesses would be good.
I'd love a search ranking that penalised or excluded parcels that try to game search results.
The existence of such a search ability would still in no way render search-gaming ethical.

The

You always ignore the way picks are used. They are used in all sorts of ways. You always ignrore traded picks, you always ignore people picking a friends store, you always ignore shout outs, you always ignore that some people's picks never count. There is no strict criteria regarding picks, you always ignore that too.



Based on what ranking criteria? If two parcels have the same keyword which one comes out on top? Random order? Highest classified? Biggest parcel? Alphabetically?

For all we know paid picks may be excluded when Linden Lab detect them, I doubt it, but they may be. Linden Lab make the rules of the search, if they deem paid picks gaming then so be it.

My position is that obtaining Picks in return for a reward is unethical.
That encompasses trading Picks.
If I don't mention a number of ways in which Picks can be obtained in return for a benefit, it is simply to keep posts short.

"The way Picks are used"?
Before Picks became a Search weighting factor, they were generally used as part of the profile that people chose to present to others. 'This is me, my interests, my Groups, my FL, the places that I like to go to.'
People used Picks to talk about their friends, lovers, whatever. That was fine. It added to the information that they wished others to see. It was part of their profile.

Picks buying directly attacks that section of Profile. It diminishes the meaning and value of the Picks section of profiles. Picks buying is unethical businesses damaging a useful social mechanism in order to profit.


Inaction by LL to prevent abuse is in no way a justification for the abuse.
LL have a number of large issues to expend resources on. Any suggestion that they are OK with an abuse because they do not prevent that particular abuse is nonsense.
Example: ad-farming

I'm just pointing out that there are issues with picks that go beyond paid picks. Let's not forget that Linden Lab said, hey picks are important business owners, get people to place picks. The result of that was always going to be providing inducements for people to place picks. It's not like there wasn't a precedent, traffic went down the same road. This decision changed the face of picks.



That's what happens when you put a business slant to a social activity. Picks are now a business tool as well as a social tool but they still boil down to a user having the choice whether or not to comply.



It would be very simple to blog that paid picks are against the rules of search and considered a violation. A knowledgebase article wouldn't take much longer.

It would have been very simple to blog ( along time ago) that ad-farming was against the rules and considered a violation. A knowledgebase article wouldn't have taken much longer.

It would be very simple to blog that buying and land at knock-down prices due to mistakes by landowners was against the rules and considered a violation. A knowledgebase article wouldn't have taken much longer.

It would have been very simple to blog that <an obvious abuse> .......... etc.

Anyone who would judge the acceptability of a behaviour based on what is not blogged by LL has a very impoverished soul.
LL blog and TOS as our conscience?? No thanks!

That's correct.

A landowner has a choice to manipulate Search in an underhand way and also damage a useful social mechanism.
Nobody is obliging them to do the unethical thing.

The existence of a choice in no way justifies the option to take that choice.

If I see a parcel put up for sale for 0L$ or 1L$, I have a buy/no-buy choice and a number of other options if I decided to buy. One of the buy options would be to prevent an opportunist buying, and then notify the seller that they may have made a mistake and can have the land back.
I would have the option of buying and keeping the land. I could say that land-buying is simply a business tool and that keeping the land is not against the TOS.
But then, there's this concept of ethical behaviour!

Sling. First you say that picks camping is dishonest and now you say that manipulating the rankings is dishonest. Make up your mind. Perhaps having a meeting with yourself to get your story straight before posting would help

I'll offer you a little help to get the meeting started. There is nothing dishonest, unethical, or any other negative thing about manipulating the search rankings; i.e. about doing things to improve your search rankings.

Please have a meeting with yourself and discuss ways in which you could improve your reading and comprehension skills.

I said that Picks buying is an underhand way of influencing search rankings. I said that it is dishonest and unethical.

You constantly make-the-mistake/attempt-to-obfuscate by confusing an an overall goal with methods used to achieve that goal.
Doing things to improve search rankings is a useful exercise.
Some ways of improving rankings are unethical and dishonest. Others are not unethical.

Not really, there was a lot more to consider on the issue of ad farming. Paying for picks is an easily identifiable practice and is very easy to blog about.

You know that not all search engines consider paid links a bad practice right?

how is paying for a pick any different than paying for a classified?

both are in the search...

I see nothing wrong with paying someone to place you in their picks (if you can afford to)

it is no different than paying to have yourself up higher in the search rank, or paying enough to be in the paid classified side of the search...

There are major differences between paying for Picks and camping. Pick paying does not harm the experience of other landholders on a sim, or visitors, as it does not lead to dozens of AFK or bot avs crowding a sim. If one configures Picks to require payment info on file, it only rewards real users, not bots.

There are also other reasons besides improving search rankings to reward avatars for Picks. For example, my sim gets a lot of newbies, many of whom don't have payment info. It can be very difficult to convert them into buying, contributing SLers - but I have found that the cash incentive of my Picks overcomes their reluctance to provide payment info to LL. From there, it's only a matter of time before they choose the ease and convenience of buying L$ over scraping for cash around the grid. I have seen this benefit directly, in the form of purchases made by avatars whom I also pay for Picks. Some go on to become renters or merchants, and often, they don't bother coming back for their Pick payments anymore. I don't mind that, I see it as Mission Accomplished - I've helped develop a new Resident who is invested in making SL a better place.

It is absolutely clear and up-front that a classified and its ranking is the result of the parcel owner paying an amount of L$.


"both are in the search... "
They are in different parts of Search.

The theory and the intuitive interpretation goes:
1. Classified - Paid for advertising
2. Picks - The recommendations of your peers

Passing off (1) as (2) is dishonest, misleading, fraudulent, nothing good.

Paying for Picks harms the integrity of the Picks tab in Profiles.
(Quite apart from being a dishonest gaming of Search)

There are classic issues for people in SL.
Where are the good places? Where are the people?

In times past, one could look at avatar profiles and see their Picks as indications of places that they considered interesting enough to get one of their few picks.
With paid Picks, that is destroyed.




If you get satisfaction from giving money to noobs, then why not just give them money?
No conditions - "Hi there! Here's L$50. Enjoy!"

Not at all. I don't recall there ever being any criteria as to what can be Picked and what shouldn't be Picked. Picks are there to show places (and people) that a person likes, and I am sure that people like places that give them money

There is nothing dishonest about doing things to improve search rankings. How many times does it need to be repeated before you grasp it?

What good places? You mean places that give people money? Those are good.

Ah, but that was in times past and you know as well as anyone else that times change The uses of Picks were never cast in stone, as you know because people used them to show their friends and partners, and they still do. You also know it because LL decided to use them for rankings. Times change, Sling. The goold old days are long gone. You have to keep up and move with the times.

It's dishonest gaming of search if Linden Lab deem it so. Until that time, it's your opinion talking. It's up to the people running the search engine to declare what is and isn't gaming, that's how search engines work.

Are you therefore saying that ad-farming and land extortion was acceptable right up to the time that LL took action against it?

Whereas it is true that the practice was not contrary to the TOS, I doubt that many people would have accepted a proposition that the practice was anything other than evil.


It does not take a decision by LL to define what is honest and what is not.
Are you saying that something is honest before a LL decision, but dishonest after a decision?
We are talking about honesty and integrity here. We are not talking about the letter of the TOS.

Are you not confusing LL's TOS with morality?
This would not be a good way of ordering your life.