Popular Places tab goes, but the Places tab remains

I've always thought it would be cool if there was a metric for how many people's inventories hold items created by a specific person.

Neither does traffic, with regard to quality. Nor does ~~AAA1111!!! If you want to search with relevance, use the new search.

Danielle gets little traffic. Does that mean she sells crap? No.

There is no other objective measure you can use to rank (that I can think of), nothing that cannot be artificially produced. Using this method takes a lot more work to game, considering that much of the oldest land is already residential. And parcels change hands frequently. Maybe LL has some other metric that is completely unable to be manipulated. That would be great, if they'd use it. But if you use places search as a directory, a white pages, looking for skins, traffic isn't going to help you find quality. Nor is the alphabet spamming. Nothing, really, is relevant to helping you find any particular place in the places tab unless you already know the name.

People bitch about gaming the system with traffic. People bitch about this suggestion, which makes gaming the system much harder to do by using something that cannot be artificially manipulated. I don't hear any other solutions.

For people to blog about each other - or have a network of business people that help one another - this is one thing.

For the Lindens to start picking out businesses to favor with special free spotlighting and advertising, in a place they control and design to grab eyeballs, is quite another.

coco

Then, since parcel acquisition date doesn't provide any suitable information to 'rank' places on, the answer is clear - get rid of the Places tab (and let those who still like to use it do those 2 extra clicks and use the better Places search instead)

I have one Get rid of the Places tab (and let those who still like to use it do those 2 extra clicks and use the better Places search instead)

Tell me something please. If you are one who wants to keep the Places tab, why do do you want to keep it?

I know about the possibility of some places not being listed in the 'real' Places search but, that aside, why do you want to keep the tab?

You forgot this, Phil.

Ah, but you said that you didn't hear any alternatives

Traffic was a good metric to use for ranking places, but that ended the moment the first camping appeared. Since there is no other suitable metric for ranking places, there is only one good solution. But I'm very curious about why some people want to keep the tab. I've seen some people write that they don;t want it to go, but I haven't seen anything about why they don't want it to go (apart from the possibility that some places aren't being listed in the good Places search).

I only ever use Classifieds, Places, Groups and People.

When I want to find a product I use Classifieds, when I want to find a place then I use Places, etc.... It is rare I cannot find what I need when I need it.

I rarely, if ever, want to search for something and not know whether it is a product, place, group or person. That is why I never use All (old). I don't want groups and people mixed in with my place search or product search. It is the same reason I never use All page, although I must admit I hate even the presentation of the All page.

I would like to see Places stay, I would just like to see those who game it blacklisted from Search. I never use Popular Places and would like to see that gone. It does not sound as though the recent Showcase would appeal to me either though if it is targetted at new people then that is not really surprising.

For those who think that the Showcase is for new residents, these are extracts from the Showcase FAQ:-

So it's for everyone, and not just for new people.

LL doesn't view it as being for new people. They view it as being for everyone.

So you have no reason for keeping the Places tab except that you prefer to use it. Interesting.

Incidentally, the new search doesn't mix the results like you said it does. Select the type of results you want, e.g. Places, and you'll get what you're looking for.

If that's the case, then why showcase large designers? The oldbies all know Calla, for example. Showing Calla doesn't impress me at all. I am not inclined to visit Calla. Honestly, the Fashion recommendation should probably go by the wayside and be left to the classifieds. But the other recommendations, I am game to hear.

One thing the old Places tab has that the new search sorely needs is a link to the map, or even a parcel description floater. I often end up running a Places query after finding something in the new All, just to size up what I'm jumping into. Other than that, a replacement Places run off the new search would be just about right, preferably with a few menu options so that people don't need to memorize the semi-documented query language.

But you've really hit the nail on the head, the old places tab needs to go away. Any new effort should go into making the new engine work more smoothly.

It should all go by the wayside, imo, except non-profit places.

And the reason I prefer to use it is that it makes finding the things I want to find easier - quite a good reason I think.

Edit: Actually I did not realise you could narrow down the search to just places or classified but that still does not help with the web style interface which I dislike tremendously.

Yes, but it's personal preference rather than the tab producing better results or anything like that.

I want to keep it because if i am looking to find a place to hang out, I like being able to pop in the keyword for the type of venue I am looking for and have an instant list of the top places. Typically the higher the traffic score the busier the place. Now go to the new search and do the keyword search and you MAY get top listings for dead places and have to dig going back and forth from the map looking for a busy place. Not very efficient.

If i am looking for something by a specific name then yeah the new search is fine. but if i am just looking by a keyword search for somewhere to go be social, I want a list of the typically busiest places. Not the top places that have successfully gamed the search with profile picks and objects on their land.

That sounds like a rerasonable reason although, depending on the type of place that's being looked for (a club, for instance), I imagine that most of them will be empty of real people most of the time.

Considering that it will no longer pay to have campers or bots, that will make the task a lot more difficult. How many of the large popular clubs are also propped up by camping?

Nevertheless my personal preference may the preference of countless people and people's preferences are important on things that are about usability. It is not just about the results, it is about the whole experience of using search to get what you need. It does not matter if the All page produces better results if those results are presented in a way means people feel disinclined to use it.

If the Places tab had been updated to use keywords or whatever the new All tab uses rather traffic then that would have been a case to remove Places. That was not done, I use Places because it gives me what I want in the format that makes it easy for me to scan and find what I need. There may be many other people like me.

Phil, you asked:

I gave you my reasons which obviously you don't agree with or view as relevant. Well I would assert that nothing is going to shake your belief that the Places tab should go - so why bother asking?

For the record I think your inference that there is only one who wants to keep the Places tab is wrong - how can you possibly know how many people still prefer to use it? Yet again this is a subject where you seem to think you know the what many, most people want.

I still use the Places and Classified tabs most of the time because I like being able to see the picture and description all on the same page, and having a lot more search results per page is great too. You can scan through the descriptions of a lot of places very quickly on the old pages, but the new search requires a lot of tedious back-and-forth clicking. I still find traffic to be a useful metric in the search results. It's easy to skip past the places with 60,000 traffic and start with the places with high but reasonable numbers.

Gabriele: Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not criticising your reason at all. I'm wanting to know if there are 'technical' reasons why some people prefer to keep the Places tab (e.g. it returns better results), or if it's just personal preferences (e.g. I'm used to using it).

It's possible, but there's a sort of positive domino effect there, too.

If a location uses camping to obtain high traffic, then others will assume it's busy and go there - with the result that it actually _is_ busy.

Well, um.. if you are just going to pick any variable that's hard to game, irrespective of relationship to quality or otherwise, and sort based on that - then why not just randomize the order of search results every time?

Isn't there a concern that new people will be shopping at the Showcase before they even find out that there are fashion blogs?