Please help fight camping

That's what I said, Ciaran.

Some people think that the traffic numbers are a ranking factor, but they are not. It is links from those pages that help the rankings, not the traffic numbers. All the traffic numbers do it determine how many of those pages a place is linked from.

Perhaps it is the terminology that's being confused, so I'll explain what is meant by a "ranking factor". It is a factor that is used by the algorithm when processing a search query. It isn't something that is used in any other way. Those Popular Places pages are made seperately. The links from them help rankings because links are a ranking factor. The data they were compiled from (traffic numbers) is not a ranking factor.

With all the recent talk about camping and traffic, people have sometimes written that traffic is a ranking factor in the All search, causing people to think that passing someone in the Places rankings means doing better in the All search as well. But it doesn't, because the numbers are not used in the ranking algorithm. That's what the text you copied said, and that's what the quote from my post said.

Not necessarily: One could float dozens of bots over ad-plots with 3-prim vendors, lagging-out 35 sims on the group-owned bonus tier of a single premium membership. That's *optimization*!

Phil. Clearly the number has something to do with it. It is not a direct factor in ranking, but if you make top 5000 (which isn't too hard, depending what kind of entity you are), you've got 4 links. 1800+ traffic will get you 4 links. So the number itself, which gets you into the top 5000, will get you more links. Shoot, top 50,000 only takes traffic of about 140 and is one more link. If that's one more link than your nearest competitor, you move up.

Stop trying to downplay the fact that traffic still matters in the new search. Between two equals with nothing else distinguishing them other than enough traffic to boost up one more link, traffic will make a difference.

I'm not trying to downplay it, Cristalle. I'm merely trying to have people understand that the traffic numbers are not used as a ranking factor, because some people write that they are, which is misleading, because the effect of traffic in the All search is small.

We are arguing semantics at this point, because they do have an indirect effect on the ranking. It is small, and designed to be so, but people who use any tool they can to get up the ranks are still going to use alt farms/camping to get the extra edge. Once new search replaces the old search places completely, camping/alt farming will not go away, so long as people remain ruthless enough to exploit every avenue they can to get to #1. If it means that 16 alts gets you into the top 1000 or whatever, they'll take it. Although not direct, it still affects ranking.

We probably are arguing semantics now, but I think I made the statement when someone had said that traffic is used in the All search. I wanted it to be clarified.

If Places is removed, I do think it will end a lot of camping. The maximum that can be gained by it is 12 IBLs. It would take a hell of a lot of camping to get all 12, which would mean paying out a lot more, and they can be acquired in other ways.

Right now, the Places rankings means that camping is worthwhile. Take that away, and the only thing that traffic is useful for is a few IBLs. I do think that people who operate camping will pull out of it because it needs to be continual to keep the IBLs, whereas getting into a few more avatar's Picks doesn't cost anything, and it doesn't need to be continual.

Imo, if Places goes, camping goes - on the whole.

But alt farming? It costs next to nothing, and edges out the competition.

How big a sales drop was it when you reduced your alt count?

They were offline for the best part of 2 days, and sales were down by between a quarter and a third. They are reduced now, and I don't stay in either, and sales are unaffected, but I'm still maintaining the #1 spot for that particular searchterm. Today has all the makings of a new record day, even with the reduced alts and me not being in and counting.

Yep, alt farms could still be done without cost, but even then it would still need a hell of a lot of them to reach the next Popular Places page, and then the next one, and so on, when all it takes are a few extra Picks and/or LMs to have the same effect in the All search. Personally, I'd drop the alts if Places disappeared, as I'd see no good reason for them. My guess is that people who kept them probably won't understand the new search.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, till they come out and officially say they like the Bot fiascos. Of course if they don't like it, they sure aren't doing anything about it and must not realize the damage it is doing to the credibility of their creation---or else they just aren't organized or strong enough to do away with it.




IMO they would have to be out of touch with reality to let this escalation of botwars happen.

Beyond the surface, there is really little difference between SL and WOW in the concept, but in terms of success and functionality there is a lot of difference.


Both are Virtual Realities, although their surface purposes and some of the technology differs....it's people populating these social worlds and it's all about how these people are allowed to act. SL's flexibility should not mean it should be a scammer's killing fields.

Clearly the real life businesses and corporations that came into SL some time ago, expecting something good for their business, changed their minds pretty fast after they saw what was happening here. It's just not a credible or secure place for business as it is and is more akin to boiler room businesses, spam businesses and scams in general, that has taken over SL.

SL is viewed by scammers as a place to skim off money, so naturally real business is going to suffer or be forced to become corrupted to survive. It's very dumb.

The legitimate SL businesses having to focus on competitive bot tactics etc. is just not what most real people want with SL.

The few apologists for this kind of tactics, really should rethink their overall position. Just because some humans can be corrupt does not mean one has to join them in the dirty deeds to keep up with the Jonses (not naming names )

I agree that getting rid of the places search would probably kill most of the camp/bot zombie places. I'd like the places search to be left in, but with an option to have the results listed by traffic, alphabetical, or random. Why would somebody run 20 alts online 24/7 to get 12 inbound links when they could make 6 alts, each with a pick and a landmark, and get the same 12 links?

And who speaks for most real people?

Of course I've no idea who you could be refering to , but the words "corrupt" and "dirty deeds" are very far fetched, and only show a lack of knowledge about the real world that we all inhabit. If search engines like Google advise me to go and get more links so that my website will go up in the rankings, pushing other websites down, then I'll go and get more links, regardless of what some people might think of it. And Google DOES give that advice. As a matter of fact, Google's head spam catcher says exactly that.

We are not living in a utopia where everything is as a handful of people would like it to be, and SL is no different. SL is the same as RL - it contains a whole mix of people, each of whom would like it conform to their own ideas and ideals. It's a very selfish attitude that says it should be how I want it to be and anyone who thinks or does differently is in the wrong.

"It's your world, it's your imagination". That applies to each one of us.

i don't care one way or the other about the camping, but if you think this attempt will striclty affect bot camping, you are misguided.

i dont see anything wrong with working the traffic count. most people saavy enough to read the traffic count know how to view a place on the map, and therefore can deduce that camping is what is boosting the ratings by the visuals.

we all know to stay away from places with over 10,000 traffic, so it's ultimately hurting their business anyway.

if you want to campaign against bot traffic, you need to begin a campaign of information intead of one to stop it. it'll never happen.


good luck.

HUH?


Sorry there is a lot of difference between WOW and SL.

The primary similarities is they are both online, they are both 3D animated cartoon worlds,, and a fraction of the user base is the same.

And specific to this discussion, their economic models both in-world and the company business models are entirely different.


Its like comparing apples to geraniums.

Just because the real world has a lot of crazy things in it, doesn't mean you have to add to to it, or that SL, which was supposedly begun as a visionary experiment to create something similar but different from Real Life, has to turn into a commercial sludgepit.

It's hard to believe you defend this nonsense, and can't see how ridiculous traffic bots and other forms of bots and scams are? How could it be more absurd, then to have to create Zombie Bot farms in order to compete? Its just nutty and unnecessary.

If you can't compete with your good creations, because some scammers start making bot farms to increase traffic, you don't need to join the dark side. Instead campaign to get LL to make it bannable.





And this is precisely why google and the internet is now a sludgepit of scammers and it gets worse every day. You will not be able to compete with people who have less scruples then you have and there are plenty of them. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg as to how bad it will get.

One use to be able to search the internet and get real results, nowadays you have to wade through so many scam websites, keyloggers and duplications, that the power of the internet is going the way of the scammers. In China they have sweatshops of poverty stricken teenagers working 10 hours a day farming virtual worlds for two dollars a day----mostly going after Warcraft gold. The spamming in Warcraft got so bad for a while, one was spammed in chat every 20 seconds, till Blizzard put their foot down and the problem is nearly non-existent today. Bots are much harder to find---they get busted.

SL being so inherently insecure, will go down the tubes because of scamming, hacking and botting. It's like killing the goose that lays the golden egg to participate in this sort of thing. These people do not care to make Wow or SL, or other virtual Worlds, a good thing. they are living in the moment and have no loyalty to it at all.

Everything is about resources and sustaining resources not just pillaging them.




Do you really imagine many millions of Bots?? Is this something you like? A good thing? Do you not understand the Law of Diminishing Returns? Or is this just a opportunity for a quick buck and then you're out? Don;t you see that for evey business owner they would have to have the ridiculous baggage of hundreds of Zombies like an albatross around the neck?

You sound like a smart person, why not use those smarts to make a better world? .... not campaign for a sludgepit of phoneyness and endless greed. The darkenss of scamming and greed or the law of the jungle is not something to be proud of. Does it all have to be gamed? Imagine a family where all the family members are in competition with each other------or maybe you don't have to imagine that....i don't know?

It's like missing the point, to add to the rampant animality in the name of a "free market." or "your imagination."

You want to campaign for Social Darwinism in SL? It's a fallacy and the lowest common denominator.

I don't believe you really view SL with such indifference like those who set up shop just to skim what they can out of it, and be damned to anything that gets in the way.





They are gonna haunt your dreams.

I can't answer logic like that

Good.....

Google advises you to make your site known among people/sites with the same interests. A comparable SL situation would be for instance Goth shops joining up in one sim.

The comparable situation of using SL bot alts, would be creating a lot of fake sites linking to each other. Google actually forbids this and actively scans for it. When caught, the culprit is removed and banned from the search results and pagerank. Google realizes that if their search results become unusable, their business will falter.

The issue is LL isn't in the business of search results. Although anything that makes their world a little less usable and lowers player retention, should be something LL should actively try to prevent.

It's the main reason they introduced the new search, for that matter. Just like the previous 'traffic' based search replaced the 'voting' based search, after it was gamed to death. (That's what those 'voteboxes' were for...)

So besides making the world less usable, bots/campers and the resulting search spamming forces LL to continuously redefine the parameters, and build new search solutions. This is taking away valuable LL development time, which could be used to stabilize the world.

Actually, Google advises all sort of ways to gain IBLs, and not just the one that you mentioned. And you comparable situation isn't really comparable, any more than acquiring RL IBLs from choice directories is comparable, and Google does recommend that.

There isn't really a comparable thing in RL except one - when the engine says, if you do it we will penalise you, then it's spam for that engine. The engine here in SL hasn't said anything like that, and it's not because they don't know about it.

It seems to me that a few people here want to make SL into something *they* want, even if the owners don't want it. I suggest that their energies would be far better spent in enjoying the place instead.

I agree, actually. The problem with camping and bots is that it basically does the same thing. It makes SL into something *they* (the camping chair/bot owners) want.

For those that don't want a world like that, there is no 'fighting back', except by venting our opinions and trying to making a reasonable case against these practices. To both the bot/camping owners, to LL and to the general public.

And IMHO, spending energy to stand up for your beliefs, trying to change a situation, is a far better way, than to just mindlessly accepting and 'enjoy' the status quo.

Originally Posted by Phil Deakins
It seems to me that a few people here want to make SL into something *they* want, even if the owners don't want it. I suggest that their energies would be far better spent in enjoying the place instead.


Me:
You have shown signs of brilliance here-----and even some leadership. Teaching people about google is one thing. But making it appear that 16 people have actually voted for your store is another (and as you say all with pics and landmarks so the impact is multiplied by 10 or 20 for each alt.)

If real customers had done the voting it would be a lot different--and that is what is'nt right about it.

Keep voting people: The jira vote to get rid of the alts and bots is now 40 up from 17 friday night and 40 is quite a few here inspite of what has been said to discourage you from thinking so.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1052

This statement finishes up really snooty.

Basically in my head it translates into

"You shouldn't be Idealistic and care, cause you are going to lose anyhow, so shut up and do something else"

Originally Posted by Phil Deakins
It seems to me that a few people here want to make SL into something *they* want, even if the owners don't want it. I suggest that their energies would be far better spent in enjoying the place instead.

Oh---I think there are more that a "Few" that don't like it Phil.

But we'll see.

Here's the link again folks:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1052

Maybe I am confised when it comes to jira, but the one you pointed to was about getting rid of traffic, not getting rid of alts and bots. Alts in and of themselves arent the issue, there are many legit reasons to have alts. Accounts in order to generate traffic or bot in camping areas are different.

To the thread in general; There needs to be clear definitions when these things are on jira I think. Still, the jira posted was about just traffic. LL isnt going to get rid of alts, they want the high numbers of accounts. If you get rid of traffic, people wont need them to bot up traffic, well...most at least. Been trying to keep up with all of the bot/traffic threads, not sure if I am doing a good job or not as I get em mixed up lol

Isnt that what you are doing, as well? Working to make SL what you want, even if others do not? You cant tell people to stop fighting for what they believe in while you are doing the same exact thing, its just silly lol