[please sign] LL get rid of current traffic system.

If it were a "money spent" rating, I could just give my alt $L1000, they go in world, spend it on my stuff, I give it back to them, rinse and repeat 10,000 times. Hey, I have LOTS of money spent on my items, and I haven't actually "spent" a single $L to do it!

Won't work.

so maybe NOT replace traffic with monetary amounts, maybe with the quantity of goods purchased or something else that will indicate just how "active" someplace is. a bunch of avis on dance pads or camping chairs surely isn't very "active".

and if a seller has his alt coming in to buy stuff from his main, that's fine with me. that actually takes some effort on the avi's part and he might get tired of doing it. it's not like plunking yourself on a dance pad or camp chair and then going off rl shopping.

but i'm just brainstorming here.

and i do realize that i'm now more sensitive than i used to be about the uselessness of "traffic" since a casino (regardless that they call themselves "games & more" since they can't use the word "casino" anymore) has opened on the sim i own land. counted 13 dance pads there the last time i looked. there have been two previously at other locations on the sim. both have failed and sold their land. i assume this one will also.

ps> hi jesse <3

How do the money trees know who has premium accounts when theyre 'premium only allowed to pick' trees?

Now it's gone and still camping goes on and all.

Getting rid of it hurt more then it help now we have the spam farms because there is no traffic rewards. for them to get E Z money. I believe if it would have stayed the spam would not be so prevalent.

I would support the removal of traffic entirely, with no replacement. It just doesn't seem at all useful. I understand that I'm probably in the minority with that opinion, but I just don't see the value.

.

The problem is, Search results have to be sorted by *something*, and if it's anything that the parcel owner can directly control, it will be gamed.

I would love to see it eliminated completely to be replaced by...nothing.

Would love to have a list with the most beautiful places.

It took 3 months for me to find such beautiful places like Apollo Garden, Avillion, Lily Pad or other beautiful places because the search is full with this damn high traffic camping stuff People who spend so much time and money in creating places like Apollo or the Pot Healer Adventure should get a top Place in the search as reward for their lovely work.

well as a store owner - who do not use camping - I find that anytime I have higher traffic number, I in turn get more traffic, and more sales.

I use other ways to increase my traffic - host fashion shows, have interesting layout and things to do and see in my store aside from shopping and so on.

I also do "office hours" spend as much time as I can actually in my store, to help customer if they need it.

it is pretty likely that anything that can be replace, or that we can come up with will be gamed, but as an earlier poster said - traffic numbers ARE usefull to those of us who do not game it, and who run businesses.

On the days I am not able to be there, I can check my traffic number the next day and it give me a good sense of how things had gone the day before.

I liked that idea about counting traffic in unique visitors. I think the gaming part come in, because traffic is measure a lot by how long someone stay in a particular place.

Like if it could be count by each visitor who stay for at least 5 minute. anything more than that is not factor in raise up the traffic number.

Maybe if time frame did not matter so much, there would be less gaming.

well one can hope at least LOL but that is a great idea. I would hate to see traffic go altogether, without something well thought out in it place.

I would like a list of 10 places drawn randomly every day.

That way I could visit places on the list, especially at odd times when I have nothing to do. Looking at the list might even become a daily ritual. Maybe I'd try to visit one a day or several a week, or something.

I agree with your points for the most part. Just writing to say that

While an unusually high traffic count does not neccesarily mean I had unusually high sales the day before, I truly believe traffic is helpfull to businesses...and that is why businesses use campers to try and boost their count.

I have never used campers but my traffic has its benefits. If i were a sim with maybe 300 traffic i dont think id get as many visitors as i do.

Like you, i earned my traffic count...and I guess my products keep people returning and in turn keep the traffic count up.

While i can see how smaller shops could want to do away with traffic in hopes of getting more visitors (Eg no one going to their shop due to a low traffic count)...but it wont do them good if they have nothing to bring people back to them.

So it starts from square one....let your products do the talking....earn your traffic. dont use campers to try and make your #s rise.


I most certaintly oppose doing away with traffic altogether, there could be better ways to do a more accurate count ..while getting rid of it may get rid of the campers, its not so good for the people who earned their count #.

We've had traffic for a while and some people have benefited from it. It seems as though it would be good to try something different now and have a different set of people benefit.

signed. Signed. SIGNED. S I G N E D ! ! ! !

"Traffic" may be important to land owners trying to lease space to merchants...
but it's so distorted with camping chairs as to mean next to nothing.

Dump the deception.

Why not add (just a few) other metrics under which to search? In other words - keep traffic, but add a user rating, alphabetical, etc. With a few different sorting abilities the importance of any one metric is reduced, a notion of interactivity can be gained (user ratings) and a potential source of income can be generated (i.e. the SLex Featured Items).

Getting rid of traffic and replacing it with only one sorting method doesn't do much beyond creating anther way for hackers to game, IMHO.

I must admit i agree there has to be a better system in place. I do use campers at my location because i feel i have to to stand a chance competing with the really high traffic counts of other regions. You would never find me or my products in the search otherwise!

However i do believe it should be about the products and about people wanting to spend time in your store/club whatever without the draw of camping.

Im afraid i dont really have any better ideas than the ones already posted in this thread but i wanted to make it known that there are shop owners out there who use campers because it seems to be something that is needed to attract custom and have a successful business. (Using the current system of course!)

But i do believe that it is generally a false impression - hence the reason i am using events and promotions more and more to increase my traffic and peoples interest in my store

Signed. Traffic has long since outlived its usefulness. As another poster says, its only utility is for knowing where *not* to go.



Absolutely agree: the only third-party solution that seems viable, either for residents or merchants, is a system of ratings from a staff of credible raters, a la Zagat or Angie's List. An automated, objective rater credibility metric that can't be gamed would be a huge contribution to the SL economy.

Actually, anyone can vote on Zagat.

Excellent thread.

The existing traffic count is one of the most misleading features in SL. Land owners use higher traffic figures to justify higher rents / ad space. Just about every one of the top 20 places in SL use camping to jack up their traffic count, and campers are for the most part either people with no money, zombies or roboavs - either way, no one who will ever buy from the shops or view the ads on that land.

Getting rid of the current traffic metrics in favor of a more qualitative system will favor shop owners, advertisers, and those land owners/developers focused on creating quality environments.

Sounds good to me.

SIGNED

Cristos

How about if we simply ask SL to ban camping chairs, camping dance pads and any other variety of camping gizmo people can come up with?

I dont think banning camping is a solution because most new folk need ways to get some money to BUY things in the shops.
But I am all in favour of getting rid of the traffic system all together. High figures are normally gotten by camping so just making traffic will remove 60% of camping anyway and Age Verification will get rid of campbots leaving the camping that IS left available for the new users or in deed make the campchairs like money trees and only available for 30 days.

Lets not also forget the Lindens "other" way of gaming the search which is "list by CASH"
you see SL businesses paying 100,000 lindens a WEEK for the search, is that also a way of gaming the system.

I can only recommend that the SEARCH system get replaced by catagory and then listed alphabetically excluding the likes of "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA womans clothing" rather than who has the most campers or who has bribed the search system.

I think EVERY business in SL should have the same opportunities based on reputation and qaulity of product or else SL becasue just a wasteland of "Land for Sale" banners, porn add parcelss and campchairs.

Me myself...... I have my own store and my RL wife has hers, neither of us use camping to increase traffic and I am considering using a money tree for new folk. Seeing SL has new sims being built every day.... pres Ctrl, Alt, Shift +9 and see where the people ACTUALLY are... most times sims are DEAD....... *lol*

Anyway count me in .... get rid of traffic both camped and bribed and replace with something that people can search for.

off-topic

*moves*

As I posted somewhere else a while back (I think in response to a thread by Argent Stonecutter?), a selection of states would be more useful. For example, knowing how many people have stayed in a store and for how long is useless, as a good store loads quickly and is organised well enough that products can be found quickly.

Thus for stores a better value is perhaps a measure of sales per day, with some kind of weighting to avoid L$0-L$1 purchases being counted and such.
There are other examples I'm sure but I can't think atm. But basically, a selection of stats that a user can then sort by would be much more useful.

I'll Attach my Betsy Ross to this.

Without traffic, nobody would be prepared to pay for camping. The only economic value of camping to the provider of the chairs, is in increasing their traffic rating.



When classifieds were first brought in, they were alphabetical, and every single listing started with AAAAAAAAA... or !!!!!!!.... except for the few people who hacked into the client and had \0\0\0\0\0\0\0 instead. The "sort by cash" option was deliberately put in as the only thing the Lindens could think of that *wasn't* easily gamable, because you have to actually be earning the money to afford the classified. Of course even this has now become a problem when you have RL companies coming along and buying the top classified with money purchased on LindeX, which I'm sure wasn't the original intention, but LL are not likely to complain.



If you base things on "reputation" then you give newcomers a substantial disadvantage. SL also used to have ratings for locations, but they were gamed too, since anyone could simply ask all their friends to rate the location no matter what they actually thought.

Or pay a newb rating_cost + value to rate the place.

Done. Small amount of cash out, you have a higher rating.