Bloomin Campers Again

Money trees are not only a source of cash but a great way to explore. I camped and hit money trees like crazy. There is nothing wrong with money trees or camping - the problem is always in the abuse of these things.

Yep for the poor goldfarmers from asia it is their RL livelihood too, they just run 1000's of bots sapping our resources through their limited viewers and never log in to SL unless something goes wrong, and the dumb thing is business owners here are stupid enough to buy camping pads from them then keep paying out to non residents, thinking they buy stuff, we need more busineess like this to help SL grow

I found another lot of 30 or so helpless trapped AV's in an invisible 10x10x10 box 24/7 protected by a security orb at Venufalat 223,62,767, wonder who's they might be?

I saw a blog post somewhere out there about a store on a sim that had over 70 bots in a big hole under the ground. I had to go look for myself and they werent camping, just all standing there like the zombies from I Am Legend...looked freeky more than anything else and I cant imagine shopping on a sim that would do that for traffic. If you have a good product, let it speak for itself. The zombies are scaring away people

Yes its just a game, so whats the fun if everywhere is dead lol.

Titania xx

I had a money tree for members under 30 days old. NO it didnt affect traffic cos they were only there for a moment to see if there is any money on it, so made no difference to the traffic count cos they were not standing around for hours on end, I had to get rid of it eventually cos it was costing me too much, now we have freebie items for newbies instead like skins and clothes etc.

Titania xx

What do you think they are?

So there's no logic in it then, or do you prefer to keep it to yourself?

I'm sorry you chose not to answer my questions, Alicia. In case you overlooked them, I'll repeat them...

Why should it change? What's to hate about it?

What???

Helpless? Actually, there are 16 of them - not 30 or so. And they are high up out of everyone's way, not causing lag, and not an eyesore. Like I said, business is business. If you don't like them, perhaps you would like to explain what's wrong with them, as nobody else has chosen to.

Simple, it's cheating.
And the Goldfarmers from WoW aare here in SL too, milking it , it's even easier than WoW because it's an open source viewer, they don't have to hack the main client.

It gives a false impression, simple as that. Business is business, so advertise, sell yourself! If your offerings are worth it, why the need to boost figures instead of let people decide for themselves?

OH THOSE POOR ALTS, NOT EVEN DRESSED lol. Hey thats a good idea, make loads of alts, stick them above your land in an invisiprim box and add them to your group to make your group member figures look good too.

Titania xx

Using campers to gain traffic is lying to your customers. Your traffic numbers are nothing more than lies.

Starting out a possible business relationship with a lie is just not a good way to do business, IMO.

I don't shop at ANY business that uses campers. If a store owner needs to lie to me to get my business, they are not trustworthy enough to give my money to.

Parasitic Zombies in Virtual Reality--

In what way is it cheating, Tegg?

Titania. So do you suggest that a business owner, who has excellent products, should do nothing to improve his/her rankings in the Places results so that people can see the stuff? How is that helping people if the excellent products are not being found from there? How is it allowing people to judge for themselves, if they don't get to see the stuff? You could just as easily say that businesses ought not to be able to buy their way to the top of the rankings in Classifieds (as you suggested). In both cases, its doing something unnatural to reach the top of the search results, so that people can find what you have, and in both cases, what you have may be very good or very bad. Where's the difference?

Actually, it's getting to the top of the Places results. There's a huge difference.

I took over 46,000L in the store yesterday. It doesn't sound like a bad way to do business to my way of thinking.

That's your loss then (and it's not lying). And I don't know where trustworthy comes into it. You pay the money and the SL system gives you the goods. What's to trust?

Believe it or not, people use SEARCH for a product. I see you sell low prim furniture etc. When I shop and I want low prim furniture, I put LOW PRIM FURNITURE in search, just like the rest if us do, then we go to those places to see if it really is "excellent" stuff that is worth buying OR NOT. There are other ways to get noticed other than classified, try paying for ad boards, put on special offer days on the forums, get REAL avs to go out wearing the group tag with your shop on their profile. But campers is the easy way out lol

As for how much you made, I couldn't care less!!! If you think your items are "excellent" then well done! But surely its up to others to decide that and vote with lindens not fake traffic?

And just a reminder, I started this post with places people go to socialise, THOSE are the main problems, when people may look for lots of dots on the map and high figures to find places full of people to interact with, not get there, find the place empty but tonnes of dead dots in the sky.


Titania xx

I don't have anything against camping, money trees and the like. In fact I used them once upon a time not so long ago. i even used a lucky chair just yesterday because it shouted the right thing as i walked by it hehe. I just don't like the way people use these things to game the search results.
You want to help newbs? fair enough, set camping chairs etc, but using a ton of alts in a box (or under a lake ) is just creepy. Is it any wonder SL is like it is?
It is a sheep mentality to think 'everyone else is doing it so i will too'. Why do you need to boost traffic if your store is that great? If these people took the zombies away, you would see the clear distiction between those who are just in it for the traffic and those who are genuinely trying to keep ahead in business.
If you are good, you wont need zombie farms, people will know you are good and return, they will recommend to others etc. That is how it should be, not fighting with each other over traffic, but working to be the best in what you do.
Phil, I am not having a go specifically at you. I haven''t been to your place and I haven't seen what you do so I cannot comment.
Please don't take my comments as speaking about anyone in particular as they aren't aimed at anyone. I just needed to rant a bit about it lol.

I don't think its possible to get 50k or 100K Traffic without paying people somehow to be there.

The biggest clubs Ive ever seen in my time here that didn't have campers or constant money give-aways were in the 20's.

The lag alone puts a limit on how much traffic you could get by active, participating, clubbers.

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Of course camp chairs are cheating the system. Its gives a place a higher traffic number than they would have if they didn't pay people to sit there and raise their traffic.

If Traffic is a measure of how popular a place is, if you skew the numbers based on paying camper zombies, obviously the places that are actually popular suffer.

Of course, who are we to tell a land owner what they can do on their land?

Don't outlaw camping .. Just get rid of traffic numbers .. then you'll have less campers .. and the problem is solved.

True, and tbh I got the impress (or heard a rumour) that traffic figures were being stopped anyway. I normally tend to go off peoples profiles, if someone has a place on their picks i go out of curiosity, or just do a search using keywords for what I want. I just noticed the high numbers where i got there in empty places, and I actually lost a couple of dancers to these places cos they said traffic was 100K plus, but even they admit now it was a mistake cos the club itself is empty. Their loss now lol.

Titania xx

Exactly. Many of us have been asking for this for ages, and Linden Lab have indicated that this may happen. I don't know what the problem is, you don't even need to remove the calculation - just leave it in "About Land" and remove the "Popular Places" list. Landowners can still record their traffic, it just removes the incentive to cheat.

Yes, skewing your popularity by ANY MEANS is cheating. Period. Offer a better product/service instead of filling your place with bots.

This is really impressive.

And it definitely proves the point that gaming the traffic system can help sales!

And paying campers can be profitable!

But didn't your mamma tell you bragging about how much money you make is rude? Never mind the fact that its basically rubbing those who DON'T game the traffic system's noses in it?

I went out wandering the other day across the grid, starting from my home on the mainland and what did I find? Bots, alts, campers, zombies. But no 'real people' if you know what I mean. I checked 5 sims and got quite down about it. It's like a post-apocalyptic world! 28 Days Later

With regards to whether inactive avatars do any harm...well they do take up resources on a sim. And if a sim has a limit of 40 avatars and someone has 20 inactive avis sitting up in a skybox, it limits the number of visitors for everyone else on the sim. A big problem I had in my old mainland home when 2 casinos moved onto the sim. Often I couldn't get home because the sim was full of zombies.

Also it makes it really hard for people 'playing the game'. If you want to know how good a shop is you can't use traffic numbers to judge. If you're looking for a bunch of people to hang out with green dots on the map mean nothing. There are work arounds (asking friends, looking in other people's picks) but it all takes extra time. I wish I got L$'s for the hours I've spent TPing in and out of nasty stores and empty clubs trying to find cool places.

Personally if I see campers or zombies in a store or club I go elsewhere. It says to me, 'this place isn't good enough that they can rely on word of mouth to get traffic.' Hence I don't bother to stick around to wait for it to rez. Experience has taught me that the really great creators/club owners don't have campers because they don't need them. Really high traffic figures in Search also put me off as it's obviously faked rather than real traffic.

If you search for something it's highly likely the top 10 results (based on traffic) are really naff places. Hence I normally start half way down the list and start bouncing around. With all the hunting required it's a good thing I wear sensible shoes

In the end though I don't blame the business owners who use them. It's just like advertising in the real world. It works. Adverts in the middle of your favourite show, flashing signs on the side of the road, and all those horrible things. They're there because they work.

However it does bug me so I won't be having them when I reopen my store and the last time I checked there weren't any at the Forum Cartel Hangout and that place is doing just fiiiine

There are far too many posts/points to answer, so I'll just pick this one

It wasn't intended as bragging - that's not something that I do by nature. It was taken from reality to make a point against what someone had written - and it quoted what had been written.


Overall:

I understand the idea that, when people see dots on maps, and such, it would be nice to find that they are real people, or that the traffic numbers are generated by actual place visitors rather than by campers or alts. But SL is a real word where real business takes place, and businesses will do what they legally can to succeed. It's nothing new. It's the normal way of business in any world.

In this particular case, camping etc. pushes *relevant* places up the Places rankings - where people who are looking for things want them to be. Let's not forget that. If you're looking for low prim furniture (someone's example), isn't it better to find low prim furniture specialists at the top, even if they used camping to get there, than have to go to many places before finding one? It helps people to find what they are looking for.

I lost my campers ( 3 - 6 ) of them 1 mth ago.
And spent the money on Classifieds instead.
Sure my traffic went down to 8 - 11K from 11- 15K daily but the sales figures werent effected one bit.
Campers are a dying tradition whether ppl are foolish enough to not want to believe it or not they are.
Then of course theres the " other " type of campers were the user DLs a client from SLlib and makes 20 alts and logs them in on a 2nd PC.
The bot alts cannot be seen by the naked eye ( no green dots on the maps ) but they are there none the less there for adding false and high traffic to a store and costing the owner nothing but the added electricity of running his 2nd PC 24/7

I know one store thats doing it right now with 30K traffic, nothing but freebies off the net and worst still illegal commercial txtrs from Subdimension Studios
The man who owns the Sub Studios ( one of our artists ) has IMd the owner and he hasnt even replied! How stupid is that?

Hes cruising for a law suit and the sooner the better.

I agree with that completely. My store is on mainland - 40 agents per sim - and I'm aware of what goes on in the sim. I never allow it to get close to being full.

I know that a club will open in the sim in a month or two - I've chatted with its creator - and I know that I have to leave room for everyone, so before Christmas I decided to move the store. I haven't decided yet whether or not to buy an island, because there are other options. You can accuse me of not agreeing with the sentiments expressed here, but you can't accuse me of trying to hog a sim's resurces for myself - not even for business

I'll take a stab .

I'll never buy anything from a store that uses any form of camping for two reasons:
- you're (ab)using a disproportionate share of limited resources. It doesn't matter if you own the entire sim and you're not inconveniencing a single person, there is a high limit on concurrency where the grid just plain breaks. If every single shop owner jumped on the bot-bandwagon SL would become unusable for legitimate users
- search (old and new) is messed up to the point of being near-useless, mainly because of tactics like the ones you're using

I don't want to encourage abuse of either of the two so it's my choice to only spend my money in stores that let their products stand on their own merit rather than selfishly game the system at the expense of others.

What camping does .. realistically is take two search criteria:

Classifieds and Places,

and makes your ranking totally dependent on money spent


The Places ranking wasn't supposed to be dependent on money spent, it was supposed to be dependent on how many visitors.


Thus its gaming distorted its original purpose.

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For those of us old enough to remember BEFORE camping chairs .. Clubs used to do similar by using raffle balls and having constant contest givaways, there was still a lot of afk dancing going on.

But Camping chairs increased the /afk just there for traffic things exponentially.

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SL Trivia: I'm pretty sure the first ever camping chairs were at Lost Dog, I remember seeing them in July of 05, and thinking "wow thats weird! People just sitting there afk all day."