Please help fight camping

I've been watching this thread get hotter and hotter and am pretty amazed at the level of acrimony the topic is generating.
OK - so I have to ask a newbie type question. What does the traffic number affect? Do land owners get paid for numbers or is it just the issue of ppl using search and the higher trafficked places getting priotity in the search results?
If there is no financial return other than pulling in more potential punters who use search and by consequence generating better profits, I can't see how it's any different from RL free market economy. Pay Yellow Pages or the like for a bigger typeface/box around the text etc etc.
Also, what about places like Welfare Island? Camping there surely does no harm to anyone or even causes offence.
Personally I don't quite understand why it's all so bad - at least to some.

Just thought I'd have my say as the Grid's down and I'm trying to avoid kicking the family cat for lack of better entertainment.

That's erroneous, I'm afraid. The new search doesn't use traffic numbers as a ranking fac tor, so the results are not "buried in the Traffic metric noise".

poor kitty........................

Hi Hiam.

The only significant thing that the traffic numbers affects is the Places search (searching under the Places tab). That's it. That's what some people are creating a fuss about.

Still could be that keyword spammage makes the new search useless. Rather than the traffic numbers.

Places is a significant tab though. I wonder which gets used more, that or classifieds?

For those of us around before classifieds I'd guess places is the more used.


I don't like the new search, I have trouble even finding my shop on it.

Guess to be "relevant" in todays world I'd need Trafficbots, high priced classified ads, huge keyword lists, etc.

QFT!

In fact, there used to be a payment to landowners, called "dwell", based on about the same thing as the current "traffic" measure. But now, yeah, it's all about search ranking. There's a straight pay-for-placement advertising option in Search, called "Classifieds." Right now, rankings in "Places" (and to a much lesser extent, "All" are affected by traffic.

Camping is just one way to move the traffic numbers. From the standpoint of a business owner, it's relatively L$-inefficient, compared to floating a box of trafficbots over your business. Either way, though, the landowner can no longer use that traffic number to gauge actual popularity, at least without factoring out the effects of camping or bots. That's not a big problem for businesses, though, because almost everybody is quietly collecting all kinds of demographic info about visitors and buyers, independently of the built-in traffic metric.

Other than the total uselessness of the Places search (and, mostly for other reasons, the new All search), I really don't see a problem with camping or trafficbots on Estates. On the mainland, though, the practice saps resources from whatever sim the parcel is located; it's a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem. There are lots of those on the Mainland, though; a batch of trafficbots is about the same as an adfarm, I suppose; they don't look bad, they just lag the sim some. Like ad plots, the more of them there are, the worse the effect on everybody else who owns land in the sim.

Juat saw yr post elsewhere:
"Well after this sign of how bad things are these days. I feel i can drink until my tail falls off now..........WAIT! it fall off by itsself...............sigh"

Understand the empathy now

Yes of course, but that wasn't the question

Of course we optimise for the new search. We have to. LL expects us to, and even mentioned it. And this time around it *is* the original intent In fact, if people don't optimise for it, it won;t work anywhere near as well as it could. Maybe that's the reason why some people seem to find it not much good - because too many people haven't optimised for it yet. They probably don't know how to.

My opinion/feeling (without any metrics) is that Places is used more than Classifieds, and that the new All search is used the most.

There's a JIRA meta issue that pertains to the new Search. JIRA being JIRA, I don't know if it's the best place for Search comments, but you can find it at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1011

And yes, the keyword junkies have managed to make the new Search completely useless already. Try finding The Free Dove with a search for "Freebies", for example.

maybe they should just have a field for keywords and limit it to say 10.

That's a grossly erroneous statement.

That's also erroneous. A stack of campers can lag a sim, but so can a stack of many other things. Go into a large shop or groups of shops, for instance, or go to where there are plenty of people. Go anywhere where there are plenty of textures to download, and you'll find lag.

ohh I dont know, the places search is becoming pretty useless.

Between the massive camping and the keywords spammage, its hard to find things now.

Used to be much better.

I'm beginning to think Jira is as useless as Traffic numbers.

No, sorry Phil. but no. You know damn well this isn't true. Search all uses traffic as a ranking factor. It may not be the only factor, but it is most definitely a factor.

I stand corrected: "Places" identifies which businesses are most adept at manipulating the Traffic metric. That may be useful to some searchers, I suppose.Where's the error? Like I said, lots of things on the Mainland are examples of the tragedy of the commons: Load a parcel up with multiple 1024x1024 textures and your neighbors won't be able to rez for minutes. Temp-rez non-phantom scripted objects and the whole sim will slow down. Enable physical on a mega-prim. Host an adfarm. Run trafficbots. It's all the same, so far as I can tell.

Although this may be true, it would be foolish if it is. Tossing out those who violate a TOS, which prohibits botting is simply sensible and would ultimately be good for SL and LL.

If LL is so absurd as to favor botting, then it will not last anyway and some sensible company will create a Virtual World like SL that will protect the regular residents and businesses.




Why not? Blizzard does it without batting an eyelash and their success speaks for itself.





I have mixed feeling about eliminating the traffic metric altogether, although it would certainly be better then having bot wars, there is a easier way to do it, by simply making it a bannable offense to use bots or use other unsavory tactics and enforce it as Blizzard does. Then the traffic metric would actually mean something.





The focus of banning, would not be "businesses" but individual Master accounts. No serious or legitimate business person in SL is going to risk being banned for exploitation of the economy after spending money and time creating a business.

***Notice of Account Closure***

Greetings,

Account Name: XXXXXXXXXXx

This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation investigations, reoccurring trends in exploitative endeavors on your account have ultimately resulted in account closure.



As a result, this account will no longer be able to access any aspect of World of Warcraft. This action has been taken in accordance with the Terms of Use and our game policies. According to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, to which all players agree when installing World of Warcraft, Section 3, Paragraph C [Rules Related to Game Play] states that you may not do anything that Blizzard Entertainment considers contrary to the “essence” of World of Warcraft.

Thank you for your time and understanding of our position in this matter. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

Regards,

Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment


An 'account" means something in Warcraft and LL should make "accounts" in SL worth something as well. Clearly tying alts to the master account would solve a world of problems.

No it isn't. It's being said that the traffic numbers are used as a ranking factor, but they are not. The traffic numbers are used to create 12 lists of Popular Places, and each of the places in each of the lists is linked to the place. So a place can acquire 1 - 12 links from traffic. They don't use the traffic numbers as a ranking factor. Some people write that they do, but they don't.

Then according to your interpretation, where traffic means so little, you don't need to make traffic bots do you? Sorry Phil, but your arguments are rationalizations.

You are confusing the All search with Places search, Rebecca. This bit of the discussion is about the All search. Camping and such is used to improve the Places rankings.

Well I just e-mailed the Search Team:

"Hello again, valiant Search Team!

We've having a major debate over in the forums as to whether or not Search/All includes traffic counts in its metrics. Can you please either pop in to Resident Answers/Please Help Fight Camping and explain this to us, e-mail a reply here to me, or put it in the blog? PLEASE!

Cheers,

Oryx Tempel

p.s. I still think you should take the top paid classifieds off the splash page. Those spots should be reserved for educational or recreational parcels."

LL most certainly does favor botting in general.



And since the TOS is subject to LLs interpretation its up to them to decide if traffic bots are violations.

Best we can do is AR them

I suppose if enough ARs clog up the works about traffic bots they will at least come up with a policy.

Because this isn't WOW and each user doesn't represent $20 a month.

Business owners represent much more

and the big camping deals considerably more.

Sorry Phil but you're out of date, from the FAQ:

"10. Will traffic play any role in the new search rankings?

High traffic somewhat increases the relevance of search results, because we provide inbound links from traffic pages with top-10, top-20, top-1000, etc. places. The place listings do not sort strictly by traffic, however. It's only one of many factors considered by the search appliance. "