Why, exactly, is there still camping?

Makes good sense to me.

So a land owner would get 1 point for a player that vomits when they see an ugly build and instantly leaves, and they'd also get 1 point for a player that falls in love with the location and spends 5 hours there. And you think that system can't be gamed?

If I remember right, searching on the All page returns alphabetical results. I also think that ties get arranged alphabetically, but I can't check now.

Um has anyone ever tried to find camping spaces recently?
The most popular places that I have went too I found quite boring with no real personal interest. Most places do have bots. There is few places that contribute to anyone else except their own interest.
Any way in all societies that only provide the jobs for a few their will be those without.
Luckily though in virtual worlds there is few real needs.
But imagine a world where no one cared, only those with lots of extra money to spend were valued at all?
Oh I forgot most of all already live there.

but its still one point...... if the person loves the place .. they will come back again and again .... but apart form clubs ... why would ANYBODY spend 5 - 12 hours in ONE place unless they are campers. If somebody really hates the build .. they wont come back and that point is lost forever .... it might also encourage people to make attractive builds rather than horrible shit thats popular for 2/10 rather than its a nice place.
Sorry but if anybody can come up with a better way... EVERYTHING gets gamed .. of course it does... but in reality SHOULD there be a system that registers popularity for time of stay rather than amount. After all a RL shop owner and thier staff stay at the store all day everyday... doesnt make it popular, yet if they have 50 people visit it ... we would deem that as popular IRL. As I said its a hard system NOT to be gamed .. but you have to make it as difficult as possible.

How do places like T-Offline (typed with a smirk) benefit from their 20 or so dance camping pads? From what I can tell there is nothing for sale there yet they have good paying camping spots that always seem full. Is the benefit to them purely 'brand exposure'? The owners have to feel that setting up the camping dance pads do something for them....

I think they think if there is a Tie - then it goes alphabetical.

To me, those who use campers are more or less telling everyone that the services and/or products they are peddling have no real value, hence they have to employ camping to boost the traffic ratings to entice visitors.

I AVOID businesses who employ campers and many more are getting that way.

The money spend on camping could be spent in a variety of useful and productive ways to improve the business.

I regard it as a mark of stupidity and a good indicator of businesses I wish to avoid.

Sooz

I would love to join you but I'm finding it harder and harder to avoid businesses that don't have campers. I have found some of even the best shops have them. The best I can do is stay away from the malls.

Camping still exists for one reason, and one reason only: Linden Lab knows that if they remove traffic as a means of ranking searches, and thereby eliminate the reason for camping entirely, that concurrency numbers will drop by as much as half, and it will look like there was mass exodus from Second Life.

Linden Lab has stated publicly on many occasions that they understand the problems caused by camping and the have also stated that they do intend to make changes that will help.

However, I can tell you from comments made by Robin in Chicago at SLCC, that the scope of these changes will NOT include the elimination of traffic. Traffic is going to be used to rank searches for some time to come, though it may be deemphasized a bit when changes are eventually made.

i think that if you consider camping as part of the economy, it might not seem so useless. employers are willing to pay someone to sit at their property. and either those campers spend the money inworld or cash out. either way, it's the property owner who's using their own money to pay it. and where do those owners get their money to pay campers? from sales, or by buying lindens. and, i can't believe any store owner would pay campers if they weren't making sales to back it up. so..... deduce at your leisure.

Nobody has suggested camping is useless. It has great utility to the stores that install camping chairs, and to the people who want to sit in them. The problem is that all of this utility comes at the expense of other people (this has been well documented on the forums and I no longer have the energy to make this case).

Camping to generate traffic is just the other side of the coin to spending big bucks on a classified ad. It's just a matter of how you disperse your money for advertising purposes.

Neither are a true indicator of quality products.

All I have to say is, any noticable use of camping chairs and similar tricks to game the traffic numbers, is a certain way for a merchant to permenantly lose all my future business. I boycott any merchant that has camping chairs all over the place.

i'd like to note that i find funny those people who think THEIR opinion and debate history is the end-all authority on camping, or any other controversial topic. it doesn't matter how many threads or opinions there are, camping is something that campers want, and something that owners want. everyone else is really of no significance, regardless of sim lag or any other ridiculous arguement. it's part of the game.

how about an obscure system where linden labs do NOT explain how it work so crooks won't exploit it?

I`m sick of "designers" putting hidden camping chairs to raise their damn traffic. Cheaters.

I believe everyone is ignoring a major reason that camping us used by businesses. (Sorry if someone already said this and I missed it -- I tried to read everyone's posts).

I often do a search for some type of social venue, like a beach, or a club, some type of place to see and be seen, and meet people. I do the search, look at the map, and if no one is there, I don't drop in. If there are a lot of green dots, I drop in. They got me there, I saw their ads, stores, etc. Sometimes I can't even tell at first that it's all campers. Often, the campers drew in other suckers like me, and so it isn't all campers.

I can't be the only person who explores this way. Eliminating traffic stats will never eliminate the draw of "more green dots" in a social venue.

(P.S. I don't want anyone to think this is the only reason I visit a place -- but if I'm searching "nude beach" for example, and no one is there, then what's the point of going?)

Right, but are you going to be walking around with the campers and interacting with them? NO! Theyre campers, drones...... Theyre not there for you, theyre there for the money, they get it then leave.

I want to go somewhere with green dots because people are there to socialize or buy the products.

People need to let their products or event speak for itself, not set up a bunch of campers or (the worst) hidden campers to raise traffic count and try to make their product look good.

Jesseaitui,

I never said it's a good thing. It's just an answer to "Why, exactly, is there still camping?" And it's a reason that camping will not go away entirely if traffic stats are changed.

If you look for the dots like I do, then I'm sure you've been suckered by them just like I have.

-Avion

That is what we are trying to change.

Let's all be clear: camping in and of itself is not what gets everyone into a froth. What is wrong and f'd up is that "traffic" is a parameter that games the Search function. Most of us don't care if people want to hand out money and/or benefits to induce people to hang around - without this concept we would all be deprived of the beloved instition of "happy hour." However, it is just wrong that anyone can "buy" position on Search. It is nothing more than payola.

I would really love to see someone interview camp chair owners and camp chair users. Maybe a survey. Are store owners simply guessing that the chairs will benefit them or do they have some kind of solid proof that the chairs are helping them? Are the campers lazy slobs or are they enterprisingly thrifty? Who knows?

There are plenty of camp chairs with limits. When I started out, I danced on a camping pole at a club in Hawaii. It paid 2/5min but kicked you after an hour. Occasionally people would come in and tip. I made some really good friends there, because we were generally all THERE and talking. It was a good place if you wanted to actually talk to people while working and earning something. People DO make friends while camping, if it's done right.

I actually prefer to go to sims that aren`t crowded.

My problem is people using camping to jack up their traffic count.