Are your human employees registered?

Forget about this 'camping' v. 'employment' thing.
It's a complete red herring. It's irrelevant.

Camping isn't banned.
People can have as many camping pads out as they want - provided the camping is not done on land flagged for Search.

The common factor between campers and employees is that there is a financial inducement for them to remain on a parcel. They can not be seen as bona fide visitors who have arrived into the parcel purely to shop / socialise / RP / whatever as per the meaning of the parcel.
From the point of view of valid Traffic counts, there is no difference between campers and employees.

A store can have as many models, customer service reps, greeters, etc as it wants - provided that these avatars are arranged so as not to affect traffic.

One person on a parcel for fifteen minutes probably scores the same amount of traffic points as ten people on a parcel for a minute each. There's some voodoo in the formula but it really isn't a good statistic.

I think that "modelling stand" is a red herring in this case. Modelling stands are not "camping items", although they can be used such. If there really were 30 of them, then I find it very difficult to accept that they were genuine employees, even though they might all have gone through the employee process to circumvent the rules. It does sound more like a camping group than genuine employees, even if the 'employees' didn't realise it. Of course, the store may be incredibly huge and need that sort of number, but I don't think it is. From what we know, or think we know, the case in question does appear to have been dealt with correctly, imo.

As far as genuine employees are concerned, the rules are ridiculous. Whilst it's right that they shouldn't count towards traffic, LL hasn't yet given us any means of knowingly complying with the rules. And then, what about owners? The whole thing is one incredibly stupid way of trying to achieve what LL appears to be trying to achieve.

I imagine that LL will jump on blatant attempts at circumventing the rules, like the store in question appears to have been, and not touch places that have genuine employees. If they start to touch genuine places, it would be impossible for anyone to employ anyone and knowingly stay inside the rules.

Which is, how?

So the implication in some of this - I'm not saying anyone in particular - just trying to understand the 'outrage' - is that some people hire employees to game traffic?

I think that's ridiculous. Some people might, but clearly (to me), businesses need actual employees in order to function. Even things like group officers. And then, sometimes people hang out in their own stores, or their friends do, because they like it there.

This claim by LL that employees should be registered is bull dunk. Once an avatar is registered none of their traffic will count anywhere. How hard is it to unregister a bot? I've never tried it but as screwed up as the rest of SL's features are....

If LL wants land owners to keep track of these issues they have to add the tools to do so.

1. LSL "llSetTrafficNull< avatar ID >" "llSetTrafficTrue< avatar ID >" ETA~For Time clocks

2a. Land Options Page "Do not count traffic for." List your employees here. Must have a Time column that has "clock in / clock out " options so that the avatar's traffic counts during non working hours.

2b. Make the traffic not count the land's group traffic at all. All employees must have group set to land's group. Owners simply make a new group for employees only.

3. New traffic rating in search stating employee traffic. Now we know how likely it is to have "knowledgeable" people greet us if we tp there. We could even check "Employees Currently Present." IF LL ever adds the protocall.


ETA~~~IMO As things stand with SL's traffic system employees should be counted in regular traffic. There is a valid reason for doing so.

It's a very rough measure.
Even if there is a completely transparent way of excluding certain avatars from parcel traffic, it's still a rough measure.

Nevertheless, it's a measure of people voting with their feet.
People have suggested weighting Search by transaction value or transaction volume - which would be applicable to merchant parcels. It would be trivial to game that, and the only possible way to detect it would be for LL to monitor and investigate the accounts involved. That's don't_hold_your_breath time.



20,000
Is that 1,000 genuine visitors who spent an average of 20 minutes each?
Is that 500 spending an average of 40 minutes?
Is that 40,000 genuine visitors who arrived and left after a 30-second rezz because the place was total crap?

That was for the old formula that basically amounted to one traffic point per avatar minute.
Apparently LL are injecting secret voodoo into the formula.


Maybe a weighting of each visit by the time spent on the parcel would improve it.
There might be an upper limit on the number of minutes taken into account, just in case to many people forget to log out.

Different types of parcels would have different norms for length of stay. Weighting by length of stay might be seen as giving an unfair advantage to those parcel types in which the normal stay is longer. However, things would tend to balance out between parcels of the same type. In general, if people are taking account of traffic ranking in Search, they are comparing them in a set of search results for a specific type of parcel - most of which might have the same order of expected length of stay.


I don't accept the theory that LL are keeping traffic because it encourages a significant volume of thinly-spread low-level fake concurrency.
Traffic - provided that is is recording bona fide visits as far as possible - is a good measure of relative activity when compared across parcels of the same type.


There is that classic example of a mixed function parcel that is a club build with a mall around the edges.
That might give an unfair advantage to the retail side *IF* the club was any good. But come along now - SL is wall to wall with empty clubs.
Even if the club is generating genuine traffic *with employees discounted*, people will learn that if they are following a search result for an apparently highly popular shoe shop - and they land into a club - they are being misled. So : Short visit and a minimal score for that short visit.

I think that puts the cart before the horse; a better principle would be, to my mind, that Linden Lab should count traffic any way it wants, if people actually want it to, so long as its counting methods don't interfere with how people run their stores.

And I still don't see why traffic is so important. Most of manage to buy clothes and furniture perfectly well in RL without the assistance of the competing stores' traffic figures to guide us. And most of my purchases in SL are made either on other peoples' recommendation (heavens, I've even visited shops on the basis of recommendations here) or after looking at xStreet to get an idea of the available products.

I certainly don't see it's important enough to start dictating where the models in a shop should stand, or how the shop should be laid out, so people can't mess up someone's carefully constructed algorithm.

'Scripted Agent' status, when more properly described as 'Non-Traffic Avatar' status would do away with all of that. The avatars could be static or freely roam over the parcel. They could be bots or live people. There would be absolutely no effect on how people organised their layout and operation.

The status could arise from a Status setting on the website and/or from the inclusion of the avatar name in a list in the About Land. The list would not have to be public.


ETA:
Ah! I think I see why you responded like that.
I wrote "...provided that these avatars are arranged so as not to affect traffic..."
I didn't mean *physically* arranged. I meant that the avatars would be flagged - as above. *Matters* could be arranged, rather than sub-parcels or restrictions on usage.

And what about clubs with security guards that they do not want anyone to know about?

Put them on dance poles and maybe even have them strip.

Undercover security!!
In SL, even a tiny can be an awesome bouncer....... eh... security operative and any weapon they need can be a hud.

It was such a stupid solution that we TOLD them how bad it was when Jack was deciding on it.

The easiest and most effective solution is to simply disconnect traffic from search. No edge cases, no gaming, no enforcement, no problem. Done.

A possible solution would be for LL to add a new ability in the group roles where one could create an 'employee' role and check off the feature for the employee to be non-traffic counting. That tag would then be required for each employee to wear while working...and yet, it could still allow for various titles among the 'employee' roles to determine other functions such as manager, model, security, etc. with greater or fewer abilities within the role.

Doesn't sound all that difficult to me, but I'm not a business owner nor do I work for LL, so don't think they'd listen much to my suggestion.

/me shrugs...just a thought.

I totally agree. Traffic is no guarantee of quality, even if it is accurately measured: at best it is only a measure of popularity, which is not the same thing at all. From my earliest days in SL I have tended to scour search results for useful information about the various locations on offer. I know that a fair number of folk will tend to go for the top results but I can't believe someone who is prepared to part with serious spondoolicks will be very interested in ***FREEBIE WHOREHOUSE*** or ***FURNITURE ISLAND*** when it's almost a 100% certainty the location more closely resembles ***NOOB HAVEN*** or ***ZOMBIE HELL***.

It is truly amazing that most search entries are still so comparatively uninformative. I think it's got to be because residents are obsessed with traffic counts. Obsessed!

Probably 99% of those who made any sort of suggestion about traffic, for a long time past, has suggested that to them. They just don't want to know. To the population in general, it's mere common sense, and it has to be to LL people as well. But they have a more pressing reason to keep the traffic search in place.

Because you need them to help move furniture over to your house? To refold clothing after customers have tried them on? Mop the floors when it's raining and everyone walks in with muddy shoes? To walk behind customers like a puppy constantly asking if they need assistance?

Even modelling is an extremely poor justification for "store employees" because offering an actual demo is infinitely superior (ie if I walk into a RL clothing store and want to try something on then the sales person doesn't quickly change into it so I can see what it looks like. That would be unhelpful and rather silly; no different on SL).

For the handful of stores where staff actually might possibly be a benefit a little "who's online" or a pager is just as useful and doesn't need people actually hanging around hiking up the store's traffic.

You know I've been playing around with this thread. I have no vested interest at all in traffic, search, bots, campers, employees or anything else really. What I find interesting and, to a large degree, amusing is aparent outrage that LL does place some level of importance on traffic. Everyone quickly learns how unimportant those numbers are (just as they find how useless search terms are)..........let LL have their numbers. Let the gamers play their games. How much do those traffic gamers gain? A bot farm above their club, shop, RP sim gives them exactly how much in their pocket business? Sure it might get them on the top of the list (and keep them there for a while), but how does that pay bills? Same with false, or misleading, search terms. Let them play their games.........what harm is it doing each of us? What harm does it do the newbies? How is it important? Those are my questions.......and the reason I keep playing with threads like these. It's entertaining to me to see how outraged some become over a real nothing subject.

But, I do want to know what that "more pressing reason to keep the traffic search in place". Another metric LL can use to attempt to attract RL business to SL? That won't work in the long run.......especially with the economy as it is right now.

And for the record, if I do take that modeling job I mentioned earlier and I'm required to set myself as a "scripted agent" I guess I wouldn't mind. However, someone is going to have to teach me how to do that..........and how to get back to whatever a "non scripted agent" is. In the scope of things it makes no difference at all. You either play by the rules or you don't. Have fun or not........fight or play.

This is a great example of traffic being the problem not the answer. A well informed store assistant can provide a greater level of richness than store signs or awaiting a reply from a pager, yet, due to traffic, people object to the notion.

I really fail to see how?

Most in-store "assistants" I've come across fit what you'd expect: they're not chosen because they're particularly competent or know when not to impose themselves but rather because of their (over)eagerness to work for pennies.

Add the occasional less than subtle hint that you're expected to tip them for just saying hello to you - or butting in on "private" conversations - and I'm going to think less of stores with in-store "staff" than those who don't make me put up with them.

But, Peggy... the problem is that, as things stand at the moment, if you decide to open a small business and live in a skybox above the business, as many people do, then you and anyone who visits you in the skybox, is going to have to set their status as "scripted agent" for the duration of the visit or Frontier Linden will consider you, and quite possibly them, as being involved in scheme to "game traffic".

So if you throw a party, you've got to ensure to ensure you and all your guests have your status set as "scripted agent" or you -- and possibly they -- risk an AR.

Similarly, if you want to pop over to my building platform above the shop, to ask me about some custom building and scripting, in theory, I'll have to ask you to pretend to be a bot.

It's a nonsense. What'll probably happen, is that sooner or later, most people will set their status as "scripted agent" all the time, so they don't have to bother to keep on changing it.

As Talarus says, the sensible solution is to disconnect traffic from search completely. I manage perfectly well without traffic indications when I'm looking for stuff in RL shops or on Amazon or xStreet or whatever, and so do most people.

I've actually had the opposite experience in most of the stores I've found with inworld assistants, I've found them very helpful and knowlegeable on the stores products, often actually displaying the product for me inworld too. And I've tipped them for that too.

I don't believe that anyone asserts that Traffic is a guarantee of quality.
I don't believe that anyone asserts that popularity equates to quality.

Traffic - if not gamed to excess - is an indicator of where live avatars spend their time.
Whether they spend their time contemplating the creativity of inworld artists , going "WOOOOOT!" in clubs, buying stuff, or hopping on sex balls in a laggy warehouse of sex is irrelevant.

There is - believe it or not - a large body of people whose prime question are "Where is everybody? Where's the action?"
Only traffic (ungamed) can give them the answer.
To depend completely on blogs, media, etc. is to put parcel owners at the mercy of the tastes/drama of a small number of individual bloggers etc who in any case can not possibly have a good overview of everything that is out there.




Que Phil to recount the tale of how he withdrew his traffic bots as an experiment - and put them back when his sales dropped significantly.
We can say "Oh everybody knows that the high traffic places should be avoided" until the cows come home. The fact is that enough people use Places search and visit the top ranking places.

"A bot farm above their club, shop, RP sim gives them exactly how much in their pocket business?"
Apparently enough business to make it worthwhile.
This has brought the Traffic metric into disrepute.


Ungamed traffic metrics would be of value to people.
They certainly are not any guarantee of quality. Ungamed, they are simply an indicator of what numbers of people consider worth their time.

And this is exactly why I find these threads so intertaining. You know that is not going to happen. It's a far fetched "what if". Everyone knows bots used for gaming the traffic is done by a few.........and those few will be subject to such restrictions. I won't since I have no business. A small business near the bottom of the traffic count won't either. Two, three, or even half a dozen avatars "partying" in the skybox/shop above a place of business once or twice a week is quite different than a place of business with a sky platform populated 24/7 with 20 bots/avatars. The only reason LL is even meddling with traffic is due to the whines for the past 3 years about campers and bots.........those whines were/are mostly from small businesses feeling left out. Instead of working to make their shop or business truly worth anyone tping in to actually do anything they screamed about being cheated...........demanded LL do something. Well, LL has done something but evidently we don't like it. Sometimes it's wise to to be careful what you ask for. As is often the case when a community asks for "government" intervention, we get much more than we ever bargained for.

Oh, and my vote? Get rid of traffic all the together. Instead focus on honesty in advertising.........that will help new businesses untold times as much as revamping traffic. But I don't know how that can be accomplished............probably we'd get something else just as bad or worse.

Again, it's not an overwhelmingly important subject for the vast majority of SL'ers.

That was specifically pointed out as being "fine":
(As far as I know Harry is in charge of governance and handles all appeals so it doesn't get more definite than that)

The entire back and forth on the ticket was solely about this:

I have no idea what Phil even sells or the nature of his business. I do know he has run bots..........and, in my eyes, he successfully justified his use of them. If the bots got them there and got them to purchase or pay for whatever it is Phill offers then bots are not a bad thing (evidently the product was worth it to a good percentage of the people who came to his place of business either by traffic or search terms).........it's like those successful commercials you see on TV. What I am talking about is the less than honest users of bots (or any other method of gaming the system). As a community of consumers we control the success of any business. When we demand someone to "level the playing field" (as we've done with traffic) we always get something we don't like.........and a lot of the time it's worse than the "problem" we want solved. Over time the less than honest will fall..........the people like Phil will continue to prosper as long as his product continues to be what his targeted base wants. It's just not a bad thing. What's bad is the meddling we demanded LL do for us.

@Peggy and Kitty.. I wish I could share your faith in the common sense (and, indeed, knowledge of the rules) of some of the Lindens engaged in enforcing this. Unfortunately, at least in my experience -- which, admittedly, is mostly to do with Zindra and adult content matters -- members of the Resi team tend to act pretty whimsically at times, often in a way that suggests they have only the vaguest grasp of the rules they're supposed to be enforcing. Some of them are keen to jump on what they perceive as the slightest infraction -- even when, after a deal of correspondence, it turns out not to be -- and others ignore completely flagrant violations.

If there's room to get something wrong, in my experience, sooner or later one of the Lindens will, and spectacularly so. Combine that my general view that -- in life generally, but in SL in particular -- people should be allowed to get on with things in their own way, so long as they don't make too much of a nuisance of themselves, and rules and regulations should only be there when there's a clear need for them, and my other view that traffic is a pointless metric, and maybe you can see why I'm less than impressed.

I see enough in my RL of the consequences of people not understanding the rules they're trying to enforce, and I don't want to have to put up with it in SL more than is really necessary.