Anatomy of a Fail

In all those cases, though, they involve false reviews. Traffic figures only indicate false traffic. They give a false impression of popularity of the site, which is not the same thing as good products, good pricing, or good sales.

If a popular dance club also sold goods, they could have high traffic, but still have the worst products in SL.

What traffic *really* does is ensure higher placement, and thus a greater chance of lazy people shopping at that site. Is that really any different from regular advertizing, that likewise does nothing to prove quality and merely presents the owners' obviously favourable opinion of the products they carry and otherwise merely informs more people of a store's existance?



On the major engines (such as google or the yellow pages) those spots are disclosed by at least a dividing line. Any 'hit' based rankings though can and will be gamed. Go to a lot of lesser search engines out there and it is clear that the banner rankings are obviously gamed.



Discuss.[/QUOTE]

Wrong!

You can no longer have more than 5 account's per household. Try it and see

Oh...and creating alternative email accounts, false names etc don't work either if you exceed the limit. LL have closed the door......probably after the Bot policy announcement

[/QUOTE]

This would account for them being "lesser" search engines.

OK this is kind of a selective use of logic isn't it? What about the parts you left out;
"and that use bots to get above places that do have what they are looking for but rank low for it"
OR
"and that use bots to get above places that do have what they are looking for even thou the bot place does not have it"

In both cases I think everyone would feel CHEATED by that.

This would account for them being "lesser" search engines.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but even google does not always have the best sites at the top. It is a problem with sites using traffic based ranking. Even so, advertizing is still just advertizing. If the products or services advertized are shoddy, all the ads in the world will not save the business.

No, they don't. Is the distinction between good links and bad links really that difficult to understand?


So what? The legal or pragmatic definition of gaming for a particular search engine is separate from the general definition, which is the way other people are using the term here.


Then call it an isolated example. Either way, just because it's possible to come up with a particular example that may justify the results doesn't mean that the use is justified in general.


I think you and I are in agreement on this point.


I realize that, though at times I forget until reminded.

Unfortunately, you feel a need to be defensive about them. Your posts often give the appearance of being a supporter, forcing you to add disclaimers such as this. Ironically, this defensiveness obscures a point that I've just realized: From your point of view, your use of bots in SL is also defensive, in a different sense.

In other words, the Places search as set up by LL is inherently unfair. I accept that. Your response is to do something that many people consider unfair in an abstract sense, but your motivation is to defend against the inherent unfairness. I can't say that I would react the same way, but neither can I say that this position is as unethical as you sometimes appear to be. I suggest giving up your defensiveness in the forum, as it seems unnecessary and unhelpful to you.

You have a hard time thinking or maybe just reading, don't ya? ONLY if your CRITERIA for SUCCESS is PROFIT is that true. Not EVERY business uses that as a CRITERIA for SUCCESS. Not the LEAST of which are NON-PROFIT BUSINESSES. Dipshit.



I read exactly what you wrote, and it still stands. Thanks for the compliment, btw.



If there's anyone here that is lying to support his failing business model, it's you. How can I tell? You are responding.



Nope, I speak for others who have DIRECTLY authorized me to speak on their behalf as well as those who go "attaboy *thumbs up*" to what I have to say to you.



There are a lot more of us here than you think, but then again, that's a given.



Only an idiot like yourself would drive to a store to tell a sales clerk that he won't be shopping at their store for <insert reason here>. REAL people send letters in the MAIL to the people that MATTER, organize open letters, as well as boycotts to drive their point home. I don't suppose you've heard about the SUCCESSFUL protest efforts against many large apparel manufacturers as well as department stores over the use of what amounts to child and slave labor in 3rd-world countries making the products they sell? No, of course not; that's anti-business, and you can't see anything or anyone being anti-making-the-most-profit-to-be-successful. Sick.



If you had a dram of business sense, you'd know that EVERYONE is a "potential customer". That you would so callously write many of them off with your attitude speaks volumes about the kind of "business" you run.

I'll be sure to pass along your sentiments to them, though.

Yes, it is different. With most advertising, most people understand that it's advertising, and hence biased. With search results, users typically don't understand how the rankings were made, but will make some assumptions about the higher ranking being "better" in some way.

Why, from YOU, hence:



What part of that did I miss? As people teleport in/out of the sim, you dynamically adjust the number of bots you have logged in / present in the sim, RIGHT?



Whatever that means.



If you're going to try to twist my words, you're going to have to try a bit harder than that.

The sense I mean is by people LYING, CHEATING, SCAMMING to make their "profit" in their insane drive to define their "success" in terms of it. Something you are intimately familiar with, since you are the one of them.

In a way, I'm genuinely sorry we won't ever do business with one another. However, I just can't take the risk of the knife sticking out of my back and the general slimy feeling I would get dealing with you afterwards.

Would you like to place some RL money on that?

I can create 100 SL accounts right now. It will take a little time, but it's still quite doable.

Now, LL can still detect that they are being *used* a lot from the same location, but there is no way they can prevent mass signups.

I didn't leave anything out. I addressed what had been posted. I didn't write an all-encompassing piece.

I addressed the second of your additions in my previous post. The first of your additions is fair competition, and there's nothing wrong with that. In your second addition, people would rightly feel cheated, but not in your first addition because nobody would be cheated.

Could someone explain to me how Traffic actually measures popularity. I know it is "supposed to" measure popularity. But how does that actually work?

I have a few concerns about how Traffic supposedly measures popularity.

a) A parcel that is slow to rez is going to have more traffic than a parcel that is quick to rez (people have to wait around longer to see if the place is where they wanted to go). Are places that are slow to rez more popular than places that are quick to rez?

b) A big store, or one more difficult to navigate, is going to have more traffic than a smaller or easier-to-navigate store. Are large, confusing stores more popular than small, easy-to-navigate stores?

c) Since traffic perpetuates itself, stores with high traffic today are likely to have high traffic tomorrow, while stores with low traffic today are likely to have low traffic tomorrow. Are stores that were high traffic the past going to remain popular forever? And are new stores inherently unpopular forever?

d) Traffic does not account for differences in time of day. A place with that has very high traffic, but only 2 hours a day (because of an 8 - 10 pm event), gets a lower traffic score than a place with a slow trickle during the day. (In traffic math, 1 avatar over 24 hours = 12 avatars over 2 hours.) So for someone searching at 8 - 10 pm, is that place with 1 avatar more popular than the place with 11 avatars?

e) If one plants a Zyngo machine at ones shop, does that make the shop more popular because people come to the shop to play Zyngo? Does the person searching for a product care about the use of the Zyngo machine at the shop?

f) A big, successful clothing store branches out. It hasn't sold "goth" style clothing before, but does one or two new pieces. Is the big store with one or two pieces of "goth" style clothing more popular than a dedicated niche store for "goth" clothing, because the big store can live off success unrelated to "goth" clothing while the niche store's traffic is based solely on people searching for "goth" clothing?

g) Traffic does not distinguish between employees and customers. Are stores with more employees more popular?

I know Traffic is "supposed" to measure "popularity." When un-"gamed" Traffic actually has some reasonable degree of accuracy measuring "traffic," I will become concerned with the ethics of "gaming" Traffic.

Traffic never did measure popularity. It was intended to measure it but it never did. It simply couldn't do that job.

Wrong.

2) Hotel pays reviewers to submit positive reviews of a hotel stay they never had. They glowing reviews help them sell more rooms.[/quote]

Wrong.

3) Computer equipment manufacturer makes a deal with a online retailer to provide an "incentive bonus" for favorable reviews of their products and first placement on product lists. Manufacturer sells a lot more products.[/quote]

Wrong.

4) Search engine takes money for "premium placement" on results for specific items and fails to disclose the top level result was a paid placement.[/quote]

Wrong.



What is there to discuss, really? In each and every instance, the company is lying and/or cheating in their advertising. Now, people can say "Well, that's what advertising is all about! People expect companies to lie in advertising! Embellish away!". However, when the truth is exposed to the consumer, almost to a one, they feel cheated and outraged to the point of not doing business with those companies anymore. Some will justify it by saying that it is "over nothing important", but they fail to realize that encouraging that behavior becomes infectious and will eventually occur where it is "over something important". At that point, they have no one to blame but themselves for supporting it.

Wrong- had 3 people tell me that in last few days, they were unable to make an additional alt from their same household.

I tried it myself yesterday and could not either as i already had 5 accounts.

Sure if you do it on another computer from another location......but not from same household location you can't. ......also someone tried opening another Alt on alternative household computer in the same household and it still would not allow it as it was using same ISP connection.

The reason that Phil is/was against traffic bots what that he didn't have a private island, in which he would be free to run 80+ bots and always be in #1 of page.1.
He rabbits on about how much money he makes, and how he doesn't really need it because he's so well off in RL.
He says he pays a sim of tier, but he doesn't own a whole mainland sim.
He complains about a neighbour putting up a huge build that makes him think again about his current build.
With that sim-neighbour grief, and all of his riches, and the ability to run megabots in a PI, you'd think that paying the extra tier for a PI would be a no-brainer --- but he doesn't make the leap.

Instead, he stays in Mainland, sharing a sim with neighbours who not only have builds that cause him angst, will likely AR him if his bots interfere with access.
What does he do?
He writes a system that will optimise his traffic bot count. It is designed to leave avatar slots available in the sim. On other words, it is designed to maximise the number of bots he can run in a mainland sim.
He's to cheap to buy a PI. So he's "against bots" because a PI bot-runner will always beat him in Places Search.
This hurts him
He tried removing his bots just to see the effect -------- and his sales dropped by 25%. He put them back and developed a system to increase his bot count as far as possible.

The thought that his system in a PI would ensure a permanent #1 placement in Places really kills him, because he's to cheap to take the leap into the costs of a PI. End of.

They do prevent mass signups, this has been a complaint from teachers who arrange a class for students and then find they can't all signup, if they notify LL ahead of time they can do it.

As I said, would you like to put some money on that? I *KNOW* I can do it.

There is NO WAY they can detect what "household location" I am using. They only have two ways of knowing that it is me. 1) IP address, and 2) Browser cookies. 1) is solved (for me and many others, anyway) by resetting my internet connection; I get a new IP every time. 2) is solved simply by clearing the cookies for all secondlife.com domains (or all cookies, if they try and be crafty).

No, it is STILL quite possible to create as many alts as you want.

No it's not difficult to understand, but you seem to have difficulty in understanding things. Which part of "get good links" don't you understand? Which part of it means don't get links for ranking purposes to you?

People can use it here any way they want, but it still only matters when a search engine says it matters, and, so far, this particular search engine has said nothing against much of what people include in the word "gaming".

No. I call it an example that proves the supposition to be wrong. If people want to make such suppositions, they need to be a bit more specific about it. But they don't want to specific. they just want to mouth off about their own desires, regardless of anything else.

It's not that I feel the need to defend traffic bots (I don't even use them any more). It's that I sometimes feel the need to put liars in their place. They have no scrupples - they post lies and such just for the sake of poking at people, and I sometimes feel the need to respond to it.

TRUST me; I CAN do it.

@Kidd.

You see what I mean about people posting lies just for the sake of poking at people? Here's an example:-

And the rest of Sling's post is no different. Sling reads my posts so he must have read the actual reason why I've been against traffic bots and camping for a long time. He also knows that, with the money that I make from my store, I could have paid for an island without any noticable reduction in profits. But that doesn't suit Sling, so he invents lies to try and make me look bad.

Most people who are REALLY "against" something don't go out of their way to use/abuse said "something".

Your cries of dissent are mute in light of the fact that you became the thing you are against.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that they are outright deceitful in a gross way.