Are your human employees registered?

They already replaced it once with something much better, albeit influenced. Their roadmap for search included replacing the traffic rankings with GSA Places search results - like they've done in the Groups tab search. They implemented it in a Release candidate, but removed it before the RC became the standard viewer. It's not that they can't find anything to replace traffic rankings - it's that, for some "pressing reason", they don't want to replace them, and so they've come up with all this 'scripted agent' garbage and caused even more problems for people.

Interesting, Phil. Maybe I should get a pager! My store isn't as big as yours, but it is certainly larger than chat range, especially my new Zindra shop. As for people with questions, I get those too -- but just a minority of visitors. Like you, I try not to hover; I'm usually working on something or other in the store anyway.

I think pagers around the place are good for when you're in the store. I wrote my own so I can't recommend anything to you. I made it so that the pillars are phantom, and transparent when I'm not in the store. They automatically turn opaque (green) when I arrive in the store. I can also turn the whole thing off and on, of course.

How do you **specifically** define "afk on an ongoing basis"?

I often log into SL in the morning and leave myself logged in all day as I come and go, shopping in SL, doing some RL laundry, doing hunts in SL, reading the forums, etc... I bounce back and forth a lot.

I would have thought 'ongoing basis' was a sufficiently specific definition. Even without the asterisks.

If you're suggesting that it would be ok to leave your av standing in a public place while you go do your shopping or whatever then, fair enough, that wouldn't make you much better than an unpaid camper or a scripted agent. How are folk supposed to know you're doing your shopping or bouncing around the forums? Have you no shame?

I didn't take your post as a swing at me.

You are wrong to equate the use of bots with the quality of merchandise. The quality of the merchandise speaks for itself (good or bad) and the presence of bots have no bearing on it. The reason that people "pump-up traffic figures" is for the money, and not to sell inferior goods. I would have thought that that was self-evident.

i've actually bought things because of that lol..
especially if i was tied up in IM's for a long time..i start thinking they think i'm a bot or something..so i buy something..
Not all places but the places i like ..so it's not like i wouldn't have bought it at some point anyways..

but i know that feeling you are referring to..I'm sure they are not being that judgmental but for some reason my mind at the time makes me feel like they are watching my every move..

Buy something dammit buy buy!!!

it's all in my head..lol
I always feel like..Somebody's Watching Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkf95onRgcc&NR=1

I actually will leave my avi at a store while I pop over to hang up clothes from the dryer or while I sit there and read thru group notices to decide where to go next. And yep, sometimes I think I'm taking a short potty break and something else in RL intervenes and I end up being afk for better than 1/2 hour. I do not leave myself logged in if I actually leave my RL house to do something.

Nope, I've no shame.

You are quite right - at least in my store, though I'm sure that there are store owners who don't sell too much who do think "buy something, dammit". I used to think that in the early days of my store. I felt like Arkwright and Auntie Wainright rolled into one (UK TV characters)

You see how ludicrous LL has made it all? Whoever would have thought that SL would turn into a place where some people are critical of others for simply being logged in, on land that shows in search, while they do some RL tasks. What an incredible place SL has become. But you might say that it's ok if it's in a shop where the landowner is a stranger, so traffic never enters your head. It's ridiculous, init?

At the risk of being contrary once again in this thread. What I see are mainly two contrasting ideas of what's "fair" and what's not. I'm sure most here know I really have no dog in this fight............I really don't care one way or the other. A "bot" is just that.......a non-human attended thing. Anything else that is not a primative, script, animation, texture, particle, or chunk of virtual land is a "resident" of some kind. Fighting over definitions using abstract meanings relavant only to one's specific point of view muddies the waters. The arguments over the years are what caused these bazaar policies dreamed up by LL. There is NO perfect solution......but with this continuing liberal use of the English language continues to hamper a reasonable solution.

If someone's avatar is placed on a pose stand to demonstrate a product, or someone contracted to be in a specific place to provide some kind of help, assistance or even simply to make the visitors feel welcome they ARE NOT a bot (AFK or not.........though if they are not then their "job" should be terminated just like RL). If that "avatar" is some artificial object (whether doing exactly the same things an attended avatar or not) then it's bot. I see a very valid purpose for the use of bots (yeah, I've read with some interest Phil's defense of his bots..........which he effectively lost his argument to LL). And I've seen (and experienced) the abuse of bots. As long as there are avatars (human or otherwise) there will be gaming of the system. LL has tried to solve the major abuse with some policy changes.........remember it's we who demanded those changes. Now's the time to live with them and offer realistic suggestions for further changes if we want them. Getting creative with definitions is NOT helping.

If we are going to argue lets define words in the context of universially accepted use of the words. "Bot" = "robot" = "artificial". It never equals human.

And yet sim owners who run massive bots have nothing done to them...

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kitchen%20Korner/17/87/23

Has to be favors and friends somewhere in this mess I think...

It isn't self-evident, Phil. The reason people pump up traffic figures is to garner a higher search rating. I guess you're right in your way because money is the ultimate consideration: everyone would like to turn a buck and attracting customers is the key to doing that.

However, I wasn't suggesting that the goods on sale would be necessarily inferior. I was making the point that it doesn't do much for my opinion of the merchandise - whether it be of good, bad or indifferent quality - if I find the store is pumping traffic figures with campers or bots.

I know plenty of stores and creators in SL who manage pretty well because the quality of their work gets them talked about. Their business is promoted by happy customers and the visible quality of their work. 'Right-click > More > More > See Creator Profile' is probably the most efficient promotional tool in SL: it has nothing to do with traffic and everything to do with customers using and wearing your products and friends and acquaintances, passers-by even, seeking to do likewise.

ETA:

SL hasn't become like that. SL has been like that for the two years I've been in it and most probably longer.

From my earliest days as a newbie I found unattended avs depressingly dull and annoying for their very presence. I don't think that I am in any way odd or unusual to take this view. Zombie avs are just more of the same bull that SL's detractors are so quick to criticise.

And rightly so.

I don't want to get deeply involved in what is and isn't a bot as it's all been done to death in the past and the one thing that's certain is that different people have different opinions, none of which matter as far as LL is concerned. But I'm curious about this bit:-

What argument did I lose to LL? If you're refering to my sex bed models being banned, then you must have missed to result. They are all back and with LL's blessing. All it needed was one Linden to actually use his head

Theres a smart linden???? WHO??!!

i think it doesn't hurt the numbers as much going for the parcel owner more than it does someone paying tier for a sim or sims..

imagine what would happen if they started to take out the ones doing this at the top of the traffic lists..word would get around and people would take them out before they were visited by the G-Team because it would show they were actually serious about this..

it wouldn't take months to fix the traffic manipulation by bots and camping..it would only take them showing they are serious..since thats doubtful.this is all just a waste really..

It's actually done for the money. Higher rankings = more sales = more money.

We've heard all the "word of mouth" stuff time and time again, and it's never won a discussion. Of course word of mouth sells - that's self-evident too - and high rankings add to those sales. I've no doubt that you know creators who do perfectly well by word-of-mouth, and I say that they would do a lot better with high rankings plus word-of-mouth. The only way that the word-of-mouth argument can win is if it can be shown that it produces as many sales (money) as word-of-mouth plus high rankings, and that's something that can never be shown.

I beg to differ. SL may well have had what you call zombie avs when you joined, and you may well have found them depressingly dull, but all the shouting about it, and the idea that people can't leave their avs logged in while they do RL tasks or they are effectively bots, came after that.

lol. Harry.

*tattoos Harrys name on the back on his hand*

Haha I love customers like you It happens more often than you might think, too. The other day a woman stood in my store for like 4 hours...my friends alt was modeling that day and from time to time he would look in on her. He thought she was waiting for the lucky board to pop her letter and messaged me saying 'wow she sure has a lot of patience'. I said no, she's probably doing the laundry or RL shopping haha

Hehe............maybe I did miss that part. But that stems from my relatively low concern on the subject I guess. The point I'm trying to make is that there are legitamate uses for bots or automated means to either gain eyeballs, or to demonstrate a product.........and along with that there are abuses that will definitely occur. I've yet to hear (or read) a workable suggestion to solve the problem........short of discontinuing traffic count completely. That would solve that problem........but something else will crop up that will take it's place (and will certainly be abused). That's the long and short of my opinion on bots.

But we are talking about two things in this thread. Bots and human controlled avatars. Somehow, through creative thinking, a human is considered by some (possibly LL) a bot ("scripted agent". And all that comes about because people redefine words to further their arguments. An avatar that originates from a computer attended by a live human being is never a bot (scripted agent)...........but now it's possible? Bazaar........unbelievable. But we caused it by not offeing up anything reasonable to the people tasked with developing policy. Bitching is not offering suggestions

ETA
Phil I've been getting those IM's but you are a hard one to catch. Got a race to watch now so maybe later.

It isn't even true. There were plenty of "bot stores" full of reboxed freebies (set for sale at nontrivial amounts) and other stuff which was barely even usable.

Bots drive traffic, which results in sales; the quality of said products is independent of the use of bots, but I think it was a lot more common that they were used to drive sales of crap simply because crap is common and easy to produce (especially when it is someone else's free crap reboxed and priced).

Whatever was or was not common doesn't come into it. What I said (that you quoted) it absolutely true.

For sure. I've left keyboard for what I thought was a couple minutes, then the phone rang, someone tugged my sleeve, I saw something needed doing in the kitchen, on and on...

So in future we AFKers might get some poor shop owner in trouble?

(Before anyone says anything about 'chicken little'. I'm joking.)

Happens to us all. Thing is the guy referenced in the OP was afk all day. Down with that sort of thing, I say.


Neither have I. Funny enough, I just took a look at your rez day in-world and whaddya know? We have the same rez day! We could be twins separated at rez!? Gemini avs. Did you first log on in the morning or the afternoon? I think I was sometime around midday.