Should bots be allowed?

There's a lot of gripage about people using bots in the game--programs that move avatars through certain functions without a human in attendance.

Do they ever serve a useful purpose? Or, at least, a purpose that benefits the larger community?

What if they amended the TOS to make the use of bots illegal?

What would the impact be?

They don't seem to have much useful purpose. Most are a variety of search bots I believe, built to profit their owners only.

Depends on how they impact the grid. If they cause any grid problems or prevent us human run AVs from enjoying SL, they need to go. If not, then a mention of bots could be part of orientation so people are careful setting land for sale.

I don't think an outright ban on bots is a good thing as there are several good uses for such autonomous agents. But, the unethical use of such should have certain, well-thought-out, and decidedly serious repercussions.
After all...it's the person using the bot that's causing the problem...not the bot itself.

Personally I find them distasteful, I would only use them if I was the only person left not using them. However I don't believe that just because I find something distasteful it should be banned.

I would however like to see the land system refined to make the use of bots less effective, whether that be the seller having to click again to approve the sale after someone decides to purchase land or a delay in the sale so that either party had a chance to pull out or a "do not sell to this person" option, something that marginalises the use of bots would probably be effective.

What are the "good uses"? I'm genuinely curious--I've yet to hear of any, only of the outrage when one is used. (Electric Sheep, for example.)

the only good bot is a row bot

I'd imagine it's a pretty effective way of scanning the market whilst you're away at work.

Bots consume an inordinate amount of resources -- constantly pulling and updating searches -- and therefore do already violate the TOS by intentionally placing a too-large load on LL servers. People running excessive mainland camping clubs have been held in violation of the TOS for example.

Bots are also a form of griefing. And for anything else, the TOS basically says LL can pull the plug on anything they want any time they want.

People make mistakes. With Visa, I can dispute mistakes. With LL I can't. This has happened to a friend of mine, so it is close. She is no dummy. But it completely took the fun out of SL for her. Bam, LL you lost a customer. Sure, you can blame the victim, doesn't change the impact it will have on your business.

Bots are destroying the place. Greed is now scripted. LL will lose their entire business in one day unless they take responsibility for the customer experience.

Oh, and those tiny chopped-up ad parcels destroy the mainland experience too. No parcel smaller than 256m should be sellable.

About the only good use (ie. one that can benefit a community) for a bot I can think of is as a chatterbot/greeterbot, provided it was programmed sufficiently well. Unfortunately, not one programmer has effectively developed a SL bot in this direction.

Should land bots be allowed?

Nope. They operate too quickly and losing hundreds or possibly thousands of dollars in an online game because we're not as fast as robots isn't acceptable. There should be a little more wiggle room for human error and our clumsy, fat, slow fingers.

Destroying the place? Oh come on. I have used bots to my advantage several times. I would buy a piece of property cheap, pretty much worthless property, then when the average price went up, I sold it to a bot for a nice profit.

Ad farms destroy the mainland? Well I only buy mainland property, I happen to enjoy freedom. Zoning and building restrictions would destroy my enjoyment much quicker than an ad farm.

Quite frankly, the landbot is an excellent example of how a good tool can be ruined through misuse. A bot that scans available lands in certain price ranges, then notifies its owner of the land's availability isn't an inherently bad thing (aside from the lag it creates while running). It's when the bot is allowed to complete a financial transaction to actually purchase the land that problems begin to arise.

Greeter bots are also useful, but as mentioned before, a bit limited in their development at this point in time.

I think there is some really interesting potential in allowing development and testing of bots to continue in SL. The greeter/shop bot could use some serious work, but once that's done, the ability to create and deploy those artificial agents could be really cool...again, in certain circumstances.

Since my scripting ability is on par with my RL ability to magically fly while monkeys crawl out of various orifices, the task of building one is far beyond my reach. But...inevitably someone will create something very cool...and someone else will get hold of it and use it for mischief. So...I guess I'd have to say I'm rather ambivalent about the situation.

That was quite possibly the best comparison to anything ever.

Well said.

On one of the other hundreds of threads on this subject someone mentioned a delay when putting your land up for sale so you have a chance to realize you are selling your land for L$10 to everyone instead of for L$1,000 to your buddy Dave and change it.

But honestly, it's nothing that can't be countered simply by paying attention to what you're doing when you sell your land.

They don't make it impossible to sell land at a high price. They do, however, do a good job of making it impossible for a mere human being to find a good deal on land, since all real bargains will have been taken before a human can even finish reading the screen.

A confirmation dialog sent to the seller -if- the seller is online might be nice. That is, log off, and your sale goes completely automated as it is now. Otherwise you get a yes/no/let me check some things kind of dialog.

In an earlier thread, someone pointed to a link about setting up bots that resembled and mirrored the musicians in a band giving an SL concert. They took their places in several mirror locations in other sims when the "real" musician avatars did the same in the home sim. Result: a simultaneous "live" performance in many SL locations at once. This effort addresses the problem of limited access to sims by avatars that puts a severe damper on SL events of many kinds.

So they can potentially be useful, even valuable.

Problem is, the best-known and most widely felt adoptions of bots have been exploitive of fellow Residents, often egregiously so. There have been several good suggestions in these forums for mitigating or ending such exploitation. Some Residents can do themselves, but most would require some fixes by LL - akin to bug fixes, really. It could be done, if the will was there. Mostly the bad actors (except copybot) have been spybots of one kind or another, cruising SL for data their owners can exploit. It is spybots that especially need to be curtailed, and the concept of Resident privacy that needs to be developed and augmented.

i wish i knew how to be a land bot.

i'd buy all the land for cheap and then sell it at a really high price. oh wait, that's bad.

That's awesome! Where was this mentioned and was there a web site corresponding with it? This is the type of thing that open source is supposed to be about!

Yes. Right!
But wrong!

The system does not appear to be working ( in the community sense as opposed to the technical sense)
It's hurting the innocent.

Speaking as a programmer:
At the very least, a dialog that says something along the lines of -
"You have set this plot of z m for sale to *anybody*, for xL$ per m , when the current average price is yL$ per m.
Be aware that unseen automated systems can buy this plot immediately at that price before your intended buyer can complete the purchase.
etc... "

Such a warning would appear to be necessary.


"...paying attention to what you're doing"
Yes. I'll drink to that!
But I do believe that we techies have a responsibility towards the non-techies in this environment.
If we want to embrace the wider world of people into the tech-based world, then we do need to look after them.
It's NOT a game - or at least it's not a game in which Landraper Moron was part of the game that they signed up to,

If I ask to have diesel in my Toyota Corolla and ruin the engine can I blame the guy that pumped my gas because he didn't say "that's the wrong kind of gas for this car"? (in Oregon they pump gas for you) Am I innocent because I don't understand cars yet ran out and bought one anyway? If that were to happen and I sued the gas station the court is likely to rule against me because my property is my responsibility even if the guy at the gas station encouraged me to get diesel.

To me it looks like the same thing.

Its obvious the revamp of the land selling system isnt working for its target audience.

Thus it needs a new revamp.

While no system is foolproof, its possible to be more foolproof than we have currently.

Obviously if you read the other thread, people are still under the false assumption that if no one is around they can transfer or make changes, because "no one" can buy it.

If Linden Labs does not wish to crack down on Landbots for whatever reason - then the onus is on them to make their system safer for those residents who are not aware Land Bots exist. In addidtion, it is beyond time Linden Labs made some sort of effort to let Residents who sell land know that landbots Do exist.

row bot pwns!

I think the land bot issue could easily be solved if not reduced by having a pop-up box with all the sale peramiters that needs to be confirmed before the land is put "on the market" and buyable. The people "losing" money seem to be the ones making typos/mistakes, otherwise they would have no reason to complain as they are paid what they wanted for it, and will have lower tier the next billing month. Perhaps there could be an option to sell only on seller approval as well, I know that potentially if subdivided my land and wanted to sell part of it, I would want to be sure is was not to some one that would build an eye sore, or be able to choose to sell that land only if the company, baron, reseller would honor and impose that on their buyer.

I think you could indeed sue and win if the guy at the station filled your car with the wrong kind of fuel. He is a professional with fuel and there is a reasonable expectation that he should know that such an action was destructive.

Anyway, more to the point, I believe that the nozzle for diesel and the nozzle for gasoline are not the same size; I think the diesel is larger, preventing completely for gasoline cars to put diesel into their tanks. The reverse is not prevented, but should be obvious to the gas attendant from things like, the wrong size opening, the cap being labeled 'diesel only', the car being labeled diesel.... the point being, that YES in the real world, there are laws and regulations and product designs that prevent people from doing stupid things that will hurt them. This is why 120 and 220 volt plugs are different shapes, why 9V batteries are not cylinders, and why you can't stick a diesel nozzle into a gasoline car.

Changes to an automated interface are much more comparable to different shaped plugs preventing consumer accidents. They do these things because the accidents persistently happen, and if making a simple change can prevent the accidents and save people from hurting themselves, then you do it. Of course there has to be a threshold at some point; but at the point where we are now, accidents are still happening persistently. I've only been reading the forums since... whatever my date says... and I've already seen some half-dozen of these 'Zomg my land!' threads. That's a chronic problem.