Bloomin Campers Again

I'm with Oryx on backing you up on this one.

I'm not, but whether any of us are or aren't is irrelevant - it's about as likely to happen as LL turning the Grid into a lolita gambling parlour, or offering as much land as you like for free. It is absolutely central to their model. In two years' time after open-sourcing, perhaps, but probably not then either.

Damn, didn't you two read well? It was supposed to be a non-popular view And now I am going to put a money tree on my land... I like that thought. So if any of you has spare lindens: choose between the tree and my donation jar LOL

Nite, Marcel

I understand why you do it. I think everyone does.

What you don't understand (or just don't care about) is how things would be if everyone did it.

So . . . your idea of "that's just business" is different from mine, in that I wouldn't do something that would hurt the community if others did it, too (or hurts it now), just to gain a temporary advantage for myself.

coco

This doesn't make sense.

coco

However the number of avatars is not restricted to the person who pays for said parcel , but the entire sim.

Including all that person's neighbors, who are subsidizing their ability to host camping chairs.

You know if we cure Phil Linden of his camping addiction,

then the other Lindens could work to find a better system.

It does make sense. Because he uses an alt farm, he gets higher up in the ranking when people search for "low prim furniture." It pushes down some sex shop or club who uses camping and any term willy nilly to get people in their place. So someone searching for low prim furniture would actually find low prim furniture, not Yet Another Penis Shoppe or Yet Another Club that happened to put low prim furniture in their ad to draw people in.

Missing my point entirely - I meant those issues were ethics related, while holiday music volume really isn't.

What we really need is a way for people to tag places with "don't list in future search results." That way if someone tp's to a place advertising low prim furniture that actually just sells peni, they can banish it from their SL lives. LL could then use the number of people who have a place excluded as a metric to factor in to relevance scoring for search.

Still just reading along here, so forgive me if things have already been said, and for talking too much.

But you know, Phil, I wouldn't read just a whole lot into that. There are like a JILLION places in SL, and a whole huge proportion of them ALSO perform a service, by providing wonderful goods to the public.

Even those farther down on search than you get these same wonderful responses from their customers. Many have a lot of fans, too.

So you aren't getting anything special there, to make you think would be denying the residents if they couldn't find you more easily than they find others.

Other people ALSO provide wonderful things (which is providing a service; I see that the same way you do), and also hear the same things.

So you are not doing the customers a wonderful service by using shady means to get the customers' attention first. Those who don't use those means have just as wonderful a service to provide (and some of them better than you, cause its always that way).

Maybe in fact the compliments they get from their customers actually means more, since they know they weren't just the first in the search, and thus likely to hear more of them.

In any case, it's like the other person in this thread warned about: This will not benefit you or your rep in the long run. If you do care about your business and its future, or its longevity (do you care about its longevity?), then you would be well-advised to cease this practice.

coco

K I see.

I have a pet peave against people telling me why I think or feel a certain way.

I read that as you telling me I think the way I do due to sour grapes because I cant compete in business.

And someone else called me a whiner and that all the whiners were worthy of contempt.

So that set me off. I am sorry.

I don't really have anything against campers per se,

I have objections to the fact that camping is used to game the traffic system.

If there was no traffic metric and someone wanted to still pay campers, well its their money. As long as the neighbors could still enjoy their land.

OK, now it's making more sense.

You are going by one place, vis-a-vis your place, and beating them out. A place that doesn't even have your product.

But that is a separate issue, advertising something that isn't there.

What about all the people who DO have the same product?

And by the way, these are not "pseudo-principles;" they are logicically based, as most good principles are, and they are principles as opposed to no principles.

coco

The bots are what stopped me using camping, not anything else. When there were genuine campers there was a cameraderie there which died the second the bots arrived. I had no problem throwing 1K into camping each day if it helped out newbs, the economy needs some input (and I was generous). Thing is, generous to camperbot farmers ... well, they can dream of kissing my derriere, frankly.

Well, that just doesn't make sense.

There are too many people making money hand over FIST (I could name some, and no, I'm not one of them) who don't resort to ANY of these strategies.

Of course, they DO have wonderful products, and wonderful service, and work hard all the time at creating new products for us, so maybe that's why they don't need to make a bunch of fake alts to sit on their properties, and so on.

coco

I think a better analogy is that if you pay me ten cents an hour to leave my "marker" on the bus seat then I will.

*MY* time is worth something, that of Karen Palen is only worth something when I want to go somewhere or do something with her! THAT is much more convenient if she is already online and camping than if she is logged off.

Much of what I want to do with Karen involves monitoring IM or chat anyway and that I can do as she camps.

I am sure the analogy extends to Alts, although my text driven alts are too busy trying out my latest crazy software thingies to have them camp in one spot.

What I would really like is some way to IM Karen from the Opensim grid.

That is coming, but its not here yet so I just play with Opensim (or whatever strikes my fancy) from another computer.

Ah but the manager definitely felt it WAS his "duty" to force everyone to listen to "good Christian Music".

To him it very definitely was a question of ethics and morality!

Except that said sex shop could also be using an alt farm to game the traffic numbers thereby pushing up an irrelevant location to the top of the list. The fact that some people game the traffic numbers with alt farms doesn't mean search results are more relevant.

--Hugsy

Well - and again, this is a long thread and I tend to respond as I go along - I think you are wrong about that.

It may be true of some people. But the logic of the arguments is good enough not to even require principle, or even a thing against camping, in order to point out what's bad about camping, in the form it presents now.

*I* don't have anything against camping, and never did. It does provide a way for people to make money in a world that offers no way to make money except (a) buying it, (b) scripting and building stuf, (c) dealing in land, or (d) selling your body.

However, camping to help new players is one thing, but as time has gone on, it has become not what it used to be - with real players actually there. There have been people who make unmanned alts just to camp!

And there is no way anyone can possibly get around the problem camping causes with hogging sim resources, no matter how much you try to twist and turn it.

So, I have no grudge against camping; never did. But it has obviously become problematic.

Anyway, what you are doing isn't even CAMPING. You aren't paying anyone.

So how people may feel about camping is a total red herring.

Despite your attempts to be responsible about it (which aren't even necessary under your own business morality), your alts DO affect the system. You may feel like you are controlling it in a benevolent way, but you are contributing to the problem. There is no getting around that.

You seem to have little respect for "principle" and "morality," or at least, you are quick to say someone else's principles and morality are false - though they have sound logical underpinnings - because you don't subscribe to them.



I guess I got here too late, then, to discuss this with you. But I will continue making comments, just as part of the general discussion.

coco

Yes, Hugsy, I know, but in Phil's particular instance his 16 campers might edge out Yet Another Sex Shoppe because they only use 10. I don't know. But the point is, someone looking for that would get a relevant result faster because he gamed the system, and from a shopper's point of view, it was useful. It doesn't matter if he's number 1 for the term, but if he's on the first page, he's golden. And a shopper who doesn't have a chip on their shoulder about the alts won't care, they will have found a viable source of what they wanted faster.

Ideally, this would occur without the traffic, if Phil put every piece of furniture for sale on the parcel and had an info/update/freebie group who put him in their picks.

Supposedly there's an IM client coming that will allow communication with people on the grid when you aren't in world.

In response to the rest, someone might need that seat on the bus who actually wants to go somewhere.

HippoTech makes this device, but I don't know if it's usable without the rental system. But I can IM anyone inworld, whether or not they are my tenants, using this device.

I have seen some "email to IM" devices, but the one i bought off SLX didn't really work. maybe SL broke it in an update.

Lord Leafblower has a device in his shop that supposedly does email to IM but I don't know if it works.

Yes, there is any way to tell if a real person is at the keyboard or not. You just talk to the AI enough.

If you manage to develop a chatterbox that actually does fool people - and I'm not talking about a few people who may be new to artificial intelligence, or who have only been talking to it for a few minutes when you asked - then I really think you should put it out for sale.

Because you will become a millionaire.

coco

Good for them, but i think the argument with a couple of the members here is the fact one persons "campers" are their own alts, not live alts who just happen to be camping, but the shop owners own alts just hidden to increase his own traffic as well as adding them all to his group.

And I started the thread making a point I went exploring and was looking for busy areas to socialise, when i got there the places were empty (I have since been back to all areas several times, still empty) apart from the campers in the sky, most of which are probably bots or land owners own alts. VERY disappointing if you look on the map and see lots of dots, try it out and they are all camping in the sky, and then if you check the traffic its a a stupidly high figure, when in reality there is no-one at the actually place you want to visit.

Apologise for my explanation, I am not the best at articulating lol but I try

Titania xx

That world does still exist in SL, Damanios, and you are one of the people who are successful strictly ON your own merit, efforts, and involvement in the community.

It is kind of a sub-world now, I realize - but it is there and is actually the stronger of the two worlds.

And you will still be here being successful long after some of these fly-by-night businesses relying on tricking people have flown.

Or - there is another possible future. One which is a world of 2 million alts, all going after the business of an ever-diminishing pool of real people.

Which constantly declines, as those people realize that most of the OTHER people aren't real.

But you know, I don't think it will come to that. I think the ones like you will actually be the ones to inherit the SL earth. I think the fake SL will lose.

Meanwhile, I resent that potential real customers get driven out of SL by people who try to trick others, by putting in keywords of things they don't have, for instance; or by putting in 35 of themselves up in the sky somewhere to look popular.

Nobody likes to see a world of sham, or wants to spend time in such.

coco