What are these people doing.....???

Denial of service:

1 - Anti-gambling league
2 - Rival Zyngo owner
3 - Old fashioned griefing
4 - Revenge of the mutant ninja bots

thanks for testing that, Phil. I let my sim owner know that they are probably bots and not campers - - so hopefully it will be resolved with further action.

I noted that there's a random money-giver there too, so while they're likely all bots, they may not all be owned by the same person - they're just there to camp for L$.

ok, the plot thickens.....so they could be bots for someone who wants to nab on the money giver....and not necessarily the casino owner.

It's an optional setting for anyone, bot or otherwise, I think -- see edit-preferences-pop-ups down at the bottom of the tab.

I seem to remember that option, too. One of my regulars is at the zyngo machine, now ....and none of the bots have shown up to play.

But I assume they won't show up....since I am not tossing out money every 30 minutes. Speaks for the effectiveness of using a money giver, though.

Thank you all for your observations! I was pissed! Lost a lot of sales for two weeks on a quarter of a sim - but my fault for not paying attention.

Yep - auto-accepting certain items is a viewer setting.

Those avs were certainly not manned at the time of ejection. They could be real accounts in viewers but I think it's unlikely that they all have that setting set - it's off by default. I think it's more likely that they are running in a bot programme.

That also explains why they all belong to the same groups. The operator has them joined in with all these groups, so that they can go around and do the same thing at a variety of locations.

If I have time today....I might contact some of those group owners. But maybe they don't care....it's all about traffic.

It appears that 44 to 49 bots over 24 hours will generate 50,000 in traffic.

ooo good catch, that is suspicious... especially for a random selection that'd waste their time in a zyngo parlor.

the only thing that really threw me at all was their birth dates...

I'm keeping an eye on a store not far from my home where there are 4 avatars on the roof all the time, all of them joined on the same day and 3 have almost the same unusual first name! They are dressed in newbie outfits and never do anything.

They look very much like traffic bots to me. I'm not the sort of person who rushes to make ARs unless a violation is very serious (like offensive griefing etc.) so I'm just watching out of curiosity at the moment.

It doesn't strike me as particularly bright to put traffic bots in newbie outfits in a little huddle on the roof of a store anyway. It would be a lot more sneaky to put them all on separate little platforms at different heights way up in the sky!

Their is no doubt they're bots, it's just a matter of who's bots they are, the sim owner, or someone trying to steal camping money, or, the sim owner just tipping the odds in their favor so the money giver doesn't give out as much to 'real' people. The odd thing for me is how the bots are placed right out in the open like that. I would IM the owner and ask, and tell them to either eject them if they're not the owner's, or take them down if they are, or that you'll AR them.

In any case, why LL doesn't ignore bots when it comes to traffic is beyond me. From the second life blog....
"Picks Matter - Having links in other Resident’s Picks tab counts, but creating bots/zombies stuffed with top picks doesn’t help. The more active Residents Picks that reference your parcel/profile the more relevant your listings will be in the overall search."

If they can determine active residents over bots, then why not just ignore large groups of non active avatars?

It's not the more active accounts that make a difference. It's only certain accounts that do. The reason why bots with picks don't usually a difference is because they are not usually the type of account that does. What matters is whether or not an account has an HTML page and bots don't usually have them, so their picks don't count.

That's for the All search, of course, which is what you got that quote from. Traffic is counted for all accounts.

This is going to be an ongoing problem. They were told to correct it by the sim owner, but they put the money giver right back into place.....and the bots are back. Up to a 30 count now, and assume it will max out by end of day.

I'm not sure that you can tell a person not to use a device like that. I use a prize tosser for my group members - - but so far, it has not been gamed by bots.

The problem is, that once the bots come - they don't leave. So it's not like a normal population of avs coming and going for a prize promotion.

The sim owner kicking them and renting to someone else is one option.

Hopefully that's next on the roster. My sim owner has taken care of any issues quite effectively for years....but I do understand that you may not be able to control what promotional tools a person puts out....then how do you control what is an "acceptable" amount of traffic in for a promotion. If I squeal too loudly on that....I shoot myself in the foot for my own promotions, possibly. Except I never get 49 people for 24 hours!

Conifer - I've had those all around me for years. The ones with just 3 or 4 bots on for 24 hours. They come and go. (the businesses, not the bots) They aren't hard core abusers, since it's only 3 or 4....so it doesn't effect the resources. So I just let it go. I assume there are a handful of these in just about every commercial sim. Would be impossible to police.

I was out last night doing random tp-ing.....and there are still hard core bot users all over the place. The ones with 25 or more.