Bloomin Campers Again

Phil - I hope you DO continue to post. You have been very open and very helpful to nearly every business owner reading the forums, explaining exactly how the new search worked, etc. If you were wanting to have an advantage over everyone else, you would not help in this way. You are equally open about your camping policy - it's not my bag when camping gets ridiculous, but it is tolerable in small numbers, especially active residents that camp.

Whatever you post on almost any subject there will always be someone with a different point of view. Camping just happens to be a subject where a lot of people have vociferous views - don't take it to heart though !

~Snowman~

Edit - having seen the subsequent posts, I regretfully have to take some of the above back. Damn.

I couldn't help but notice that most of the mudslinging that came your way, came after you disclosed how much profit you are making.

The facts are that camping is allowed and showcased in LL's "Official Guide to Secondlife" as a legitimate way to boost your business.
Quote:Therefore it still makes sense for many business owners-especially retailers-to hire avatars to hang around for the equvilant of a few real life cents per hour.

Bots are also allowed.

Most of the arguments about resource drain can be negated by buying your own sim. Your sim, your resources to do with as you please.

/me whistles and does a loop the loop....

Nika - you are a classy lady !

Reading all of these pages has kept me entertained while SL is down...so thanks to all of you! While i love a good debate as much as the next person, I do want to add a few comments. First, I know Phil. I know his furniture is some of the all time best in SL especially in the low prim catagory. I have used his stuff in many interior design jobs and also referred a TON of people to his store almost on a daily basis. He has also been VERY helpful to me with any questions i have had, suggestions about my own furnture and has taken care of my friends as well. So any comments on his lack of generosity etc are just from ignorance....go meet the guy, see his stuff and then form an opinion.

As for the alt/bot/farm/thingy/box ... I am really sorry that the SL system because if its design encourages business owners to try to find ways to manipulate the numbers. BUT...i do not have an issue with anyone who does this. I will go to Phil's store again and again because of what i see and purchase in his store...BUT i might never have gotten there the first time if his listing was not closer to the top of the pile. So, God love him for figuring out a way to get me into his store initially. If he had crap or bad ethics in his biz....i would not be a repeat or referring customer. It is as simple as that.

As for the draw of resources on the sim...i am manager of two and went on a hunt on Christmas night when NO ONE was even on SL for what was causing the lag. Guess what was the worst offender? Scripted candles in the residents apartments! Oh, and a scripted penis attachment that a former renter had left on the floor that had become invisible. Once i removed some of those offenders, the lag was cut in half and has not gotten back up to those numbers since. So, things like the scripted danceball, visitor list maker, mega penis, candles, moving chickens, scripted furniture, a flight feather etc that I removed were the culprits...NOT avs. So sorry, but even 100 avs on a sim, just being with no attachments and no scripts is NOT going to drag down the performance as much as if you put out a bunch of candles and your new scripted romantic dining tables for your honey. Oh, and dont get me started on the thousand prim hair that folks walk around with....see how fast you can get by that on a sim. LOL

And one more point...i swear....We were courting a RL company to come to our sim to have their presence in SL. They chose a well known high traffic sim because of their traffic numbers even tho we tried to explain that those were not real people there. I even went to the sim at different times of day and yelled - is anyone here real? in two languages...only two of the huge crowds of campers answered me....so those were NOT people chatting in IM and sorting inventory, they were bots. So the traffic numbers DO in fact hurt a sim or business if their numbers are low in some ways. So anyone who gets creative about how to increase the numbers and therefore their success....if just plain doing a better job of working the exiting system than others.

End of rant...thanks! waving to Phil....you can pay me for this in those great leather couches of yours please. LOL

Nice idea - but can you imagine the mayhem when Mr Botmeister uses 200 alts to trash the record of a competitor?

Just sayin....

Umm... oh, nevermind. I'm sure we're all ARPANET-spelling-challenged, too.But I don't see anybody saying that it's unfair *competition*, rather that it's unfair use of resources. (I already commented that "unfair" didn't sound quite right in that context.) And by making it a condition of successful competition (however true that may be), competitors would be driven to respond in-kind, damaging everybody's in-world experience (to whatever extent).I don't know what on earth was being measured here, or what those "candles" could be, but any reasonably scripted candle is either a texture animation or a particle effect, both purely client-side prim properties with no need to retain a script at all. 15,000 one-prim particle-effect candles won't have the sim impact of a single avatar. FWIW, I already tried in this thread to explore technical ways to minimize the impact of trafficbots--which didn't get very far. But the fact that they have an impact is just not a matter subject to debate.Oh, the Objectivism guy! That makes a lot more sense. I was thinking of Franz Joseph GALL, the Phrenology guy (which would have been pretty snarky, now that I think about it).

/me really wants to hold the pillow down until the last word is silent.

Er. I have to say that there is a slight problem with this. A slightly foxed copy of Das Kapital to anyone who can point it out.

/me shakes head sadly . . "The one that set out those Christmas presents at the forum hangout wants to kill everyone now. What has this thread wrought? Why? Why have we allowed SL to come to this where residents want to kill each other? WHY?"

"no killing or maiming of the innocent is intended in the making of this post"

I just want everybody to get along. I know that'll tend to make some pat my Pollyanna head and send me off. But...expect more presents next year.

Mighty tempting. But you know, now that there's no Soviet Union, I find Marxism everywhere I look. That Romney fellow, for example, must be twice as far left as Huckabee. If only I were in Iowa tonight, I could save the world from the Red Menace.

You're right. Any time LL adds a feature that's meant to be an objective measure and a benefit to those without an agenda, some feckless weasel will come along and subvert it for their own unearned personal gain, at the expense of everyone else. Dontcha just love human nature?

Randy Newman, speaking to Karl Marx:

You see Karl the world isn't fair
It isn't and never will be
They tried out your plan
It brought misery instead
If you'd seen how they worked it
you'd be glad you were dead
just like I'm glad I'm living in the land of the free
where the rich just get richer
and the poor you don't ever have to see

It would depress us, Karl
Because we care
that the world
..still isn't
..... fair

I've read all the posts, coco What I wrote didn't apply to everyone. Some people on the 'other' side have debated very sensibly. The post was about those who turn to throwing stones in lieu of sensible debate/discussion. They just can't help it, I suppose. Even since my previous post, one or two just had to throw more stones - just for the sake of it. One of them seems to think that I fill my store with fake customers. It's hard to believe how anyone could come up with that, but someone did. Lies, twisting things, inventing things, false accusations, etc. - some people in this thread have no qualms about using those tactics - and they would like SL to be nice place lol.

Perhaps it did - I didn't actually notice. I do know that a few people seem to have resented that disclosure, but it was used as a real example to correct someone's erroneous statement, which it did very effectively. I won't do it again in a hurry, but I wonder if knowing what can be made in SL quietly changed anyone's mind a little about camping and alts. Just a thought

Phil, what you make in SL has absolutely no bearing on whether or not using bots to artificially inflate your traffic numbers in order to game the search engine is ethical or not. It isn't. It doesn't matter how effective it is at maximizing your profits. It's a deceptive practice that misuses server resources at the expense of other land owners and their visitors, misrepresents the actual traffic at your store, and harms every honest person who doesn't game the system who might otherwise rank above you. It doesn't exactly require an advanced degree in business ethics to figure out that it's unethical. The more people who adopt your cutthroat attitude towards gaming the search engine the more useless it becomes for everyone, and the more the SL experience is diminished as a whole. I'm reminded of one of my favorite song lyrics...

All the world is a cannibal
Even time itself will eat us all
But that’s no reason to be a jerk
You either make it better or make it worse

Campers are annoying. If I go anywhere there are campers I immediately leave. People who run their businesses this way do not deserve my moolahs. I hate being spammed "come join our new mall 349085902384592348058234952340++ traffic"..get there and it's all campers and some terribad looking builds that probably took a whole 5 minutes to throw together. Placing the camping chairs/pads/whatever and making all the alts probably took the longest. No thank you! ....

Sorry Chip, but you are taking that disclosure out of context. Go back and read what it was about

The rest if your post has all been said and corrected before, so I won't reply to it. I said that I won't get into it again, and I won't.

I dont really agree with this post at all.

Because on numerous occasions you and others pointed that it is a profit related rationale, basically claiming its good business sense. Therefore whether you like it or not your boast about how much money you made is relevant to Chip's point.

If you didn't want it brought up, well you could have minded your manners.

As for whether the rest of his post has been corrected, I'm not so sure.

Its been CHALLENGED by you and a couple others .. but to be corrected that would imply your opinion somehow is right and others (including mine) were wrong.

I was corrected on the parking lot stuffing, I had no idea people were so sleazy, but other than that I wouldn't call anything your side of the discussion has said as anything more than opinions.

Oh yeah and I corrected someone on Marx. Thats about it.

I understand the Kremlin had a nasty moment this afternoon as Marx turned in his grave. LOL

Oh yes, for the record I *HAVE* read all of Marx (the crap about equal worth of all labor as well as Das Kapital and his later "works".

Whether you like it or not, profit is the ONLY reason that business exists. You may want to subsidize the lazy slobs of the world with YOUR money, I keep mine for people who actually produce more than they consume.

Yes profit is the so reason for business to exist. But without charity, what good is all the profit?

Unbelievable LOL

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his own soul?

Incredibly unbelievable LOL!

I think the point is, profit is ending up with more resources than you start with. Charity is one of the things you can do with the profit, if you choose. But you can't do anything with the profit if therer's no profit to begin with.