Camping Chairs are BS!

I need to vent!! WTF! I bought land where no one was and opened a little club for my friends. At the event last night a few people tried to port in friends, and here we go the freaken sim is full! So we followed all the green dots to find zombies. When the fuk are camping chairs going to be banned?

Death to traffic!

Hey LL, killing traffic would relieve a lot of database traffic. =^.^=

I guess the land really wasn't empty.

It was empty until 3 day's after I bought

Vent in the right way. Camping chairs aren't really the issue, it's how many people a sim supports that is the issue.

This happens a lot, Ive gotten parcels on great sims only to turn around a week later and have to sell them because a casino (not an issue now at least) or store with camping chairs pop up. Small 4096 parcels with too many people on it, its frustrating to say the least. Nothing can really be done and nothing can prevent it, its a risk unfortunetly.

Sims generally support enough people, I think the issue is how many chairs get rezzed. If a land owner rezzes 30 chairs, there's a high probability that they'll get filled, thus reducing the capacity of the sim. Land owners should limit the number of chairs to 4 or 5 at the most.

I've just hunted for a jira entry for what I understood to be a high priority Linden initiative to either replace traffic as the sole criterion for sorting Search results, or to augment it with something more meaningful. Finding no such entry, I created one: which takes the radical "replacement" approach. I don't really expect that LL would implement that (too many FIC with high traffic counts?), but wanted to make something specific and implementable.

Anyway, it's out there for consideration and comment.

With the top of most traffic searches being somehow related to casinos, sex, or camping I doubt that LL was holding off to protect the current winners!

Actually, I think camping chairs ARE the issue. If it wasn't for the bogus traffic they generate, there wouldn't be a need for higher numbers of sim resources for avatars.

And remember, the more resources used, the more bandwidth used, and the more it costs LL to run and maintain. Who do you think is going to eat that cost in the long run?

~Jessy

Hey Qie,
I just read your JIRA issue and I like it, but before I vote for it, can you translate it into something a little less scary, and add maybe an explanatory paragraph? The way it's worded now, a lot of people won't understand it, and therefore won't vote for it. Just my two L$.

Camping chairs are just a popular attraction, any sort of popular attraction can lead to a full sim.



Tier fees are going to go up, tier fees and land sales are the backbone of the whole place.

What it seems he's saying is that search should work by matching the keywords you enter, except that:

1) A venue should be marked down for having keywords that many other venues have;
2) A venue should be marked down for having keywords that are often searched for;
3) A venue should be marked down for having keywords that were _not_ among those searched for;
4) A venue should be marked down for _not_ having keywords that _were_ searched for.

Unfortunately, I can see there are a couple of problems with this.

1,2) I can see the idea of these is to stop there being "most popular keywords" (like "sex", "free L$" which everyone can put into their description. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact that if this is what people are searching for, they will have to be included in the description in order to match at all, and in that case "being marked down" will not matter as _all_ search results will contain the string.

3,4) These don't really fit with what people want... For example, if you search for "skin", by those rules any description that mentions anything other than "skin" will be marked down, even if it's "female skin" or "quality skin". Also these rules can be gamed by splitting a land area into 16sqm parcels and assigning each a different one-word search name, although this will cost a lot in listing fees!

its a load of bollox anyway, search doesnt work unless you pay or play the traffic game. So is it the fault of the land owners... I dont know, is there REALLLY such thing as 100,000 traffic. If you run a club you might get X amount of people for a couple of hours and quiet the rest of the time. ANYWHERE with over the average 8,000 traffic IS definately being gamed. If you search for clothes etc and find a place that DOESNT have camping then anything between 2 and 8k is about right.
So is it camping thats the problem ..... nope it isnt .. its DWELL!!!!! its getting 4 points for every X amount of minutes in the same place. They should gauge search based on indevidual vists... i.e TP's into an area as ONE POINT .... doesnt matter how long they are there.

The problem is though ... if you get rid of camping .... then a LOT of SL's user base would just disapear... the 20,000 alts that LL like to "boast" as being active people go ... then SL turns into the reality of what it is.... a VERY empty, large place with lots of land for sale at STUPIDILY expensive rates or Ad " land protection " rackets. Yes there are some creative interesting people in SL.... but there are far more people just in it for the short term crack.

How do I know this.....
Becasue I watched my partners money go down 10k in a month in camping fees..... why did she offer camping...becasue as a clothes seller she CAN NOT get on the list if she has under 16k traffic. Now she has removed that traffic... she has a traffic count of about 2k a day and yes its quiet.... but she would rather have an empty shop with REAL customers than a shop full of dead zombies. As for the effect we have on the SIM .... we own half the sim between us. Its just a real shame becasue I think it puts SL in a bad light that you dont really stand a chance. But .... its made her think about what she does and how she does it. I really dont think that the Lindens are EVER going to change the current system as it would impact the stats way too much... and with those stats they can sell the product. The product ultimately is YOU those active users. Its down to the Lindens as to wether they are happy with the current system.... The servers cant really cope very well with over 30 Avatars.... but if you look at a sim in reality its not THAT big, so maybe limit avarats to so many per sqm becasue for the life of me.... I cant see how you would end up with 30 avatrs in a 512 parcel disabling the rest of the 65........sqm.

I know this sounds very very whiney and in a way hypacritical but you got to ask yourself what keeps SL running ..... and it certainly isnt a dead alt sitting in a chair 24/7

This hasnt been clarified as yet ....

There talks of increasing Tier for Island owners becasue of voice. but other than that ...its been something thats been banded about for a while

The backbone of SL ... is....... CAMPING!!!!! its those people who sit in a chair and generate land traffic, look at it this way..

If nobody creates .... theres no need for land, Of course you can always play house in SL but SL is pretty expensive to just play dolls .....

In situations where they're causing problems like this, camping chairs ARE considered abuse, and you can contact support to help with the problem.

Yes, but in this case, it is a popular attraction that serves no purpose.

*shrugs* You can argue the merits of camping all you want. Those that do it for the good of the newbies can find other ways to be ncie and help them "earn" some starting cash.

Other than camping, only some clubs completely fill a sim. Even then, it's only at event times and even then, rarely do they hit the full 40 avatar limit per sim. Or if they do, they're gaming the traffic with camping as well.

Quite frankly, if I log into a store/club/whatever and see a mass of dots, I go look. If it's campers, I scratch that store off my list and never go back.

Why? Because if the store was worth anything, they'd not have to game for traffic (or more acurately 'dwell' as Marty pointed out). Again, if the landowner is just handing out L$ to help newbies, they can find a better way to do it that doesn't make their sim look like crap.

And again, Agreeing with Marty, if I do a search, I scroll DOWN the list until I come to places under 20-25k in traffic. Anything higher is gamed. Period. I actually will start a lot of searches at the BOTTOM of the traffic list. You have no idea of the amazing stuff I've found by creators just starting out!!! Getting there first usually lets me buy stuff when they are lower priced too *Grins* Though I have been known to simply give those creators more than they asked for in the price because I'd like them to stay in SL.

All-in-all, however, what I'd really like to see removed from LL is anti-idlers that allow a camper to sit and jsut go to work/sleep. These zombies are the real problem. Remove anti-idling as it ahs no purpose. If you have to be afk that long, let the system log you off, and log back on when you get back. Otherwise, sit at your puter like the rest of us lol

~Jessy

It's a business tool. I don't use them, I don't like them but I don't object to them because the way SL is setup, it encourages their use. Which is why I say the issue isn't the chairs, it's the way SL works in itself that is the issue and they are apparently going to change it and there will be changes to search and some of the suggestions I don't like the sound of but this might not happen for quite some time.

Take a deep breath now Ciaran!

Nope they've said that tier fees will go up for old islands that had been grandfathered in when private island tier fees changed.



Lol it's going to change in one way or another in the future, how long in the future is a different issue, but search, what sort of ads we see and how it gets categorised and listed is all planned to change.

The idea is to try to make the matches heavily weighted in favor of how *specific* the match is between the listing and the query. And there are some pretty standard, formal measures of "specificity" in the sense that I mean: the information value of the match. An example might help:

Say I query for "pretty pink flowers."
Oryx Floristry's description is "FLOWERS for the discerning avatar. Special: anything PINK!"
Yumi's Flowers' description is "PRETTY FLOWERS for the discerning avatar. Also taxidermy supplies."
Qie's Sex Emporium describes itself: "PRETTY girls and boys for every fantasy. Large pendulous breasts and disproportionate PINK pudenda! Sex, kink, bondage, fetish, sleaze."

Oryx wins over Yumi if "pretty" is a lot more common in queries and listings than is "pink" equivalently, the information value added by "pretty" is less than by "pink"--it's more redundant--it reduces less uncertainty--it's less *specific*).

But Qie loses to everybody because his description is full of (we assume) very high-frequency naughty words, even though it contains the very specific "PINK."

If the search is for "sex kink bondage fetish", even though they're all very common, Qie's listing will at least match the words, and fare on a par with all the other listings of the same length matching those same words. But if the search happened to contain the very low-frequency word "pudenda", Qie's match pops way to the top.

One correction to Yumi's explanation of #1&2: It's not so much that *venues* are penalized for having high frequency words. Rather, it's that *matching* on the high-frequency words isn't valued as highly--isn't as informative--as matching on rarer words. (There is some "venue penalty" because those high-frequency words add to the total word count of a listing, so it costs something for them not to match, but that's not the main effect.)

As for #3&4: The idea is still specificity. If the same search words match two venues, I'd want to favor the one for which that match is the higher proportion of the total listing description. Single-word listings wouldn't be successful in gaming the system because they'd only match at most one word, compared to a real description that matched multiple search words and was reasonably on-point.

I have no idea if this explanation is helpful at all... I'm eager for any improvements so at least folks know what they're voting on in the jira.

Because this is really a very specific discussion, I'll copy this to a comment in the jira, and suggest further discussion on this might more productively move to that site.

That's not correct. I know a number of places with legitimate traffic far about 8000. NCI/New Citizens Incorporated regularly exceeds 20K at two it is locations, for example.

Agreed. Which is why we bring up Traffic which is the real problem. With the way LL has it, it doesn't work. Traffic in-world is just a big a lie as the population numbers LL posts on the login page.

Anyone here believe those numbers are not lies?

Camping might be a tool for buisnesses, but it is a bad tool. Good buisness need to stop competing with it and just let it go to the bad buisnesses. Spread the word that Traffic is bogus and that those at the top of the Popular lists are gaming the system and Traffic becomes worthless and a drain on LL. Then maybe they can get up and actually change it to a system that works as needed.

~Jessy

*moves*

Interesting topic.. Im sure i read something on the blog about LL are looking into new ways of prioritising search results a while back so see what the future holds.

I personally think camping is a tad cheap. If your work is good and your designs are nice then over time word of mouth is what will bring people to you not having lots of traffic to entise them in. If you cant back that up then its not going to last.

Having said this there have been times when ive thought should i but ive never come close to doing so i just thought its up to me to actually make my SIM a pleasant place to be so that people will choose to remain there and also come back...Simple i know

As mentioned in a previois post it does come down to either your here for a fast buck and are not really contributing anything of value to the developement of SL or your here for the long term and want to give qaulity content and help push things forward in a meaningfull way. Im fairly sure i know which will work best in the end

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camping is not the backbone of Second Life ...


it is the constant reminders of how shitty Real Life can be,
and how poorly Second Life functions that is the
backbone of Second Life.


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