Please help fight camping

What about a change that would limit the number of avatars on a parcel to a proportion of those allowed in the sim based on the amount of land? For a mainland sim, if you own 1/4 of the sim, you're allowed 10 avatars on your land. Would that be an acceptable solution?

Ohh I dunno

If you have a low quality product you are trying to cater to people that haven't been around long.

The same people who are going to get snared by this practice.

So much for trying to have any friends if you live on a 512

LOL

Not really. I mean, it's equitable, but it's too limiting. A sim's avatar capacity is kind of like network bandwidth: if everybody tries to run bittorrent at the same time, no network can handle it--to do so it would have to be over-engineered and cost at least ten times as much for each connection. Instead, the capacity needs to be shared allowing for fluctuations in the demand from individual users. The problem with traffic is that it is an incentive to consume resources *continuously*--which, if everybody did it, would indeed require than no more than 10 avatars appear on every quarter-sim. But you'd need more than 1500sq.m. (back of envelope estimate there) just to be able to have a single avatar in the sim, if it were really constrained to continuous availability.

If one of the complaints it that it takes an unfair amount of resources to have the extra avatars at a shop, it seems that the same complaint would be valid for other small places that bring in a disproportianately large number of avatars compared to the size of the land. When it comes to prims, everyone accepts that more land equals more stuff. Logically it would make sense to do the same with avatars, if the avatars really do drain the system resources so badly.

I knew that I was making a proposal that would draw that exact criticism. Thanks for jumping on it while I was still looking at the thread.

In this thread, I'm probably coming across as a camping or trafficbot supporter, but I'm not. I'm ok with the current traffic system because anything else that gets suggested would actually be worse. I'm just trying to point out some of the major flaws with what a lot of people are saying. As bad as people claim the problem is, there should be thousands of examples of places that are unfairly hogging sim resources and staying in business for a long time. I've been around to lots of places, and the bad ones (with regards to camping or trafficbots) are by far the exception.

Your new proposal has been suggested at least 100 times.

So Im not entirely sure what you are going on about.

The problem is that 512 becomes too small to hold one person.

since 512 is the premium default land holding size, it becomes an impossible concept.




Plus as Qie pointed out the SIMS arent designed around maximum avatar capacity 24/7.

They are however figured to be near prim capacity 24/7.

The prims tied to land size had to be instituted because the previous system was gamed. (not to mention too expensive.)

Exactly! (even tho we're on the opposite side of the fence). I want to see a sim where resources are used to the extent that it impacts on other users of the sim, but nobody has stepped up to show me one - and I've asked several times. I am becoming more convinced that the resources/camping idea doesn't actually exist.

Those who put it forward as a good reason for banning camping and such forget one thing. People who want to be found in search need plenty of spare sim resources capacity so that customers stay and buy, or whatever else visitors do. Overusing a sim's resources would be insane.

The relatively large number open listens in my place is because people sometimes buy more than one of the same item, and they used to use the same channel. So changing the color on one item, for instance, also changed it on another identical item that is within range. So I wrote a system where, on rez, an item polls for the channel numbers of other items within range, and then chooses a unique channel for itself. In a home, only 2 or 3 at the most are likely to be there, but in the shop there are loads of them.

I could have gone with choosing a random number for a channel, but, as a programmer, I like my system better

But on the mainland, what if your neighbor did the same thing? And your other neighbor. Well, heck, eight neighbors, each with an eighth sim. If they have businesses, they're just fools not to, right? Otherwise they're not optimizing that traffic metric as well as you are. But if all eight did that, just 5 bots each would fill the sim completely, with no room for customers--and crappy traffic scores all 'round. Avatar capacity is a finite resource, and using more than a fair share of it continuously prevents others from using it.

I've worked hard enough on this thread--I'm not going to scout the map for a Mainland sim that's lagged by campers or bots. We know they've existed because LL has forced residents to remove camp pads for that very reason. And there are certainly instances cited in past threads here of sim owners foolishly lagging their own sims to death with hidden bots, so it's not like they contribute no lag at all. (Maybe the lucky ones who are on a Mainland Class 5 would max the 40 limit before the lag got unbearable, I really don't know, but somehow I don't think LL would eagerly upgrade my Class 4 just because I'd floated too many bots in the sky.)

About the open listens: That'll work. The random would too: in a space of +/-2 billion, the likelihood of a collision is considerably less than the likelihood of an internal LSL bug Anyway, those open listens aren't making much of a dent in 120K ips. I'd lay pretty high odds on a bunch of identical scripts somewhere in the sim, maybe running sensors on tight intervals and sorting the results, or something equally silly. When your scripts start to time-out repeatably, a Linden can find the top scripts on a mainland sim, just like an Estate owner can on an island.

I learned long ago that people with different value systems can't have a debate because they will always talk past each other. Very few people will truly be objective and be swayed by the other's argument.

Demonizing Phil isn't going to change him, because he's taking advantage of a legal process and has not seen proof that what he does hurts anyone. In his particular instance, he truly isn't hurting anyone. The only thing mildly deceptive is a traffic number for popularity, but it gets him seen ahead of someone who uses any keyword willy nilly to be found. So be it.

Vote with your feet. The people that buy from Phil obviously do.

My partner gave up. She has sold Low prim furniture for over a year. She was happy and having a ball. She never made huge amounts of money she just sold enough to be proud of herself. We would work all night on things sometimes--It was fun.

She did'nt have any money in RL, so I bought 16000 square meters so she could expand about the time the new search came out. It was ok at first, but then her real traffic dropped down to 25 or 26 people a day. I watched with anguish for over 6 months. Same stuff, same or lower prices as before...everything was the same except a much nicer store.

To even get back to where she was----she would have to start loading the place with alts too. It just went too much against what she is made of--and too far away from the SL she trusted and believed in.

I will leave this thread with one last thing to say. There are people here that don't give a damn about anyone else-or what an honest little SL business could mean to someone. But I do. Yep, I sure as hell do.

God I will miss her.

I can't speak for other people, of course, but personally I take account of what's going on around me. In another thread I mentioned that I know there's a club opening in the relatively near future, and that I've no intention of hogging the available agents for myself. At the time I wrote about it, I said that I was considering my alternatives, and since then I've decided on an alternative and taken steps (been buying land) to move my shop out of the sim.

Of course, if everyone around did the same thing, it would use up the sim's agent resources - and we'd all be stupid because there would be no room for shoppers, or clubbers, or whatever. No doubt there have been some such stupidities, and maybe some still exist, but I don't believe that it's the problem that the 'resources' people claim it to be. It can't be - there aren't that many stupid people about

Thinking about it some more, someone in another thread recently mentioned that she couldn't get home because someone else was using all the sim's allowed agents, so it can be overdone by a single parcel owner - removing the campers for the times when an event occurs. That's flat out wrong, and I believe that LL dealt with it. But it must be quite rare - an exception - and is no reason to throw a whole concept out. We don't throw a bag full of apples away because one of them is bad.

she left God?

the new search has only been in effect a little over 2 months. if her income started deteriorating over 6 months ago, then she is in the same boat as everyone else. search the threads for tons of "has your business slowed down?" type threads....

not that the new search didn't affect incomes too... just not 6 months ago.

also, most of us have NOT upgraded to the new viewer. i can't even access the new search to see how it works. i must completely rely on the old method to search for stores. however, having said that, i go to the 2,000 or less traffic and begin there. anything more is gamed, even for the most popular stores in all of SL, IMO, and it represents lag and i stay far from lag when possible. (edit: plus, you can't iamgine the incredible freebies you get from original content creators by going to unpopular shops. i almost enjoy the game of 'gift' shopping.... and i accidentally find so many cool places in teh way i search. it's actually fun, and i prefer to go alone.)

how many avatars stay at the same place more than 20 minutes? no way there are more than 3000 visitors even to the freebie places... every single day? not buying it.

too bad she gave up. it sounds like she was only in it for the money, so maybe now she can have peace of mind... and you too.

best of luck.

Amen. There's so many things to worry about in SL, Phils business practices should be the last concern anyone has. Start a revolt against adfarms and I'll be first in line to sign up.

Any duplicate links in a accounts picks should not be counted really.

Unfortunately you can't make that a 'hard and fast rule' because there are legitimate reasons for exceeding that 'proportion'.

For example, I was at one of the few in-world places that got the SLCC 06 video feed working. 27 people on a 4096 plot. Clearly an over-stretch of the fair resource use, but this was a) temporary, b) a legitimate event that was hosted, and c) every one of those avatars was a real person who was there specifically for that event. I would add, however, that there were no other events going on in that region at that time, so nobody who lived there was denied access, and the host did regularly monitor the rest of the sim for activity.

Therefore you can't really justify a blanket ban or hard-coding more than a set amount of people per sq m - but as a result of that, those who want to fill their land with bots to artificially inflate their popularity can exploit that same reasoning "just in case" they get real visitors.

I don't think anyone here would really complain about a neighbour with an 'excess of visitors' if it was a real, genuine event going on.

But many of us agree that the 'excess of visitors' being zombie bots, run by a store owner to artificially inflate traffic figures, is not acceptable.

Very few people are ever swayed in any debate. Even with similar value systems.

------------------------

Bottom line is .. to state the PAINFULLY obvious...

The Traffic system was not intended to be gamed.

It is being gamed.

Phil is gaming the Traffic system.

Thus he is wrong.

----------------------------

Of course the system will still be gamed regardless of what Phil does.

And if he doesn't game it, he will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Thus he decides to compete in the gaming.

Still is wrong, just like all the other people gaming the system ..

------------------------------

Does that mean he should stop?

Who cares? Its not gonna fix the system.

That's the real bottom line. We can't force people to change, as much as we can re-educate them into the proper ways of doing things.

Only Linden Lab, by changing the way "search" works, removing traffic from influencing anything, and have harsh penalties for people that use bots/zombies to artificially inflate their popularity, are able to force people to change.

Which then results in people finding new ways to get around the system, and so the cycle goes on.

Pity really, that with the opportunity of a new electronic frontier, all people can do is find ways to cheat to get an unfair advantage over others.

As much as I hate what they did with the new Search, I feel some need to speak up in a kind of "defense" (!) of it here. Once LL decided to outsource the Search algorithm, Google was a reasonable choice. The problem is that it comes with features that fit really well with web and other hyperlinked text bases, but that don't make much sense in SL. Now, what they could (and IMHO should) have done was to just leave all "inbound links" unpopulated--text match would have worked just fine. But instead they gave us the ability to very artificially "tune" the search by making IBLs of stuff like Profile Picks and Landmarks. (Anybody who's languished long and hard over the decision to denormalize a database should be feeling queasy about now: we're sacrificing semantics for the benefit of the algorithm's limitations.)

In contrast to traffic, LL makes no pretense of this having any validity *except* as manipulated. Only by accident would pre-existing Profile Picks, etc., contribute anything useful to Search; they are merely programming tools for training the search engine to do what it was intended to do. This is silly, but it's not biased. And in particular, it's not biased in favor of anything that competes for sim and grid-wide resources. (Well... except for the extra assets people will have to create to feed the IBL monster.)

I echo the chorus of moans about the vast opportunity LL has squandered with this new Search. They have access to so much dynamic info that could set a new standard for Search of the 3D Web, and instead they settled for something that could be almost completely emulated by an outsider crawling the webpages LL has created for Search. I understand the appeal of outsourcing solutions for well-known problems, but this force-fitting of an exciting problem into a mundane solution is sad; it makes me worry that LL has lost any ambition to do more than survive.

I agree with your post, and this is tangential, but I think that your statement above is NOT an important thing for sellers to understand.

Merchants who profit in real money from SL may be "taking money out of the SL economy" in the short run, but what's far more important is that they're adding value to the economy. They're creating goods or services that are of value to people who do bring real money into the economy. And by taking their money out, they're doing no more "harm" to the economy than someone who just sits on a pile of $L. (The latter is probably better for LL, of course.) More importantly, by creating valuable goods or services, they're drawing people and real money into SL. I see no harm in merchants taking a real profit from SL and don't want to discourage it. (Personally, I put no money in and take no money out. I'm adding no real money to the economy. But I do create goods of value, and generally spend the money I make.)

This quibble doesn't take anything away from your point, though.

Right. Fix the system; don't waste too much time trying to change the behavior of those who take advantage of its flaws.

I absolutely agree, and am grateful for the clarification. What I was trying to say (*grabs feet as they veer towards mouth again* ) is that the whole macroeconomics of our micro-economy stems from buyers willing to spend real currency (one way or another) in order to get stuff and do stuff in-world. Definitely, merchants must have an incentive to offer stuff that buyers want to buy.

(It follows that forward-thinking merchants are right to be concerned with SL's overall appeal to the base of customers who bring that RL currency to the table.)

I prefer the word "shortcomings" than "flaws"

I decided to go look for myself and yep...I even took a picture. I went to a Brazilian resort (name withheld for TOS reasons) and went to see why all those green dots were in 3 nice neat rows. I did not count them but there were a LOT! It reminded me of a sci-fi movie. They all had the same last name...2/3 were nude noob avi's, most of the rest had on the same noob outfit. there were about 3 or four who were added in there who looks less noob but all had the same birthday I saw a few 'real people' stop by looking for a place to sun themselves...no beach towels were available, so they eventually left. I spoke with a chick from Chile who did not understand what was going on there, and a noob guy who just laughed at the whole scene... (It looked as though he was trying to pick up several of the nude bot chicks laying there sunning)... the place right next to the bots was selling some very familiar products, very suspect. well being I am not able to post pictures yet in this thread I'm going to ask any of you who are able to, if I can forward it to you... I suppose awareness is the first step in the war against camping bots, I am not sure if voting will work, nor if anyone cares...but I found this very interesting to see it first hand. While I was there I was only able to talk to 4 real people who ALL were not aware of what was going on there until I pointed out the same last name, and the noob clone look on them all.
I can only say that I didn’t buy anything while there.

does it change what it is?

No.