Definition of Theft?

Dang! I just went to shop at another favorite store, and saw the dreaded clump of dots in the corner of the sim. The store was in the sky....the bots were ground level around a campfire. I messaged the people around the campfire, and it's been an hour, and no one has called me back....so I think it's safe to assume.....especially since their traffic count is 10,875 today....and I've never bumped into a soul, when I'm there.

Now, in this store, was one of those promotional signs about Content Theft...."stealing the clothes off our back" promotion.

How Hypocritical. Inflating your traffic figures with the use of non-people, implying to the general population that you are an amazing store, so that you have an astronomical edge in the search over your competitors....

So I thumb through half a dozen pages until I spot another favorite store with a traffic count of 72.....he has 2 people in his store, soon to be 3.......and the above store has Zero, so at this particular hour, Mr. 72 is more popular among shoppers. The majority of the general population is not going to know that, and find Mr. 72, and go to his store, using the Places search tool.

Theft.

And this is interesting.....when I look at the map....all those bots are gone, except one. Was it something I said? All I asked them was...."Are you Real? or are you a Bot?" So Sensitive! Maybe I can make them disappear by talking to them.

Type of store was it? Textures by any chance lol

I wouldnt discribe its as "theft" ...misleading ? yes.
But we have all done it ( figure of speach ) to some degree...is it misleading to entice ppl into a group because it increases your chance of being seen in the new search?
Google charge for ad words , website owners pay other sites to increase their traffic by getting ppl to click on their site for 5 seconds....etc etc etc

Thats business.

We had 5 campers at one point (not bots) but having said that they were AFK most of the time so they may as well been...had them mopping the floors etc..

Then an artist said her builder friends had mentioned they didnt like TRU "because" of the campers so I removed them. period.
Did it make any difference to sales? no.

I despise BOTS because of the resources they take from the grid and on a personal and selfosh level I despise them in my competitors stores because as you say it gives noobs the "appearance" that " wow this MUST be a GOOD store look how high up on the list it is!!"

But then I figure...we all get scammed a few times in SL..buy over priced crap because it was made to look good on the box and other such delights...people grow and learn and in time when SL eventually remove traffic incentives BOTs will be deployed.

Heres a funny thing...WOW bans peoples accounts for running BOTs same with EQ and EVE online ( and prolly lots of other "Games" )
They ban the account because it pisses "real" players off as it spoils the game...if everyone ran bots it would take away the object of the "game"
They have bots to do hunter gathering tasks whilst you sleep etc saving you hours of your life having to do it yourself.

So isnt SL a similar situation only the game isnt pretend..its about fairness and money.
Its about selling yourself and your products and having BOTs is a misrepresentation of what your trying to sell.

I am simply amazed that SL havent done anything about BOTs yet..the demand from ppl for them to do something is over whelming..because of the inflated registered users and the effect on the grid etc..but if LL looses all the bots makes them illegal then their "numbers" drop by god knows how much , which ppl have been accusing LL of inflating their number with all this time..they backed themselves into a tricky corner.

Personally I dont care whether we have 10,000 REAL registered users or 10 million.
Either way I would rather know that the figures represent a true amount and not alts and bots which in my opinion amounts for at least 50 - 60% of the amount of SL accounts.

It would be nice if shop popularity was somehow listed by sales rather than visits per day. I wish the search engine worked other ways than simply listing people visiting. They could be campers, etc.

I've found some pretty good places at the 'bottom' of the search list though - one problem is trying to find specific things, since the search engine seems kind of random if using keyword search.

I've found a lot of good places by looking at other people's Picks pages, which are what those are for anyway, so I don't feel TOO much like I'm snooping.

I agree
some kind of rating system based on sales would be nice
of course that could be abused just as easily as any other system

sadly there seems to be no fair way, as long as unfair players are in the midst

It couldn't be abused if based on the sales records LL has...data transactions. Unless, I guess, someone spent all day buying their own stuff but that would seem counter productive after a while, time being money and all that.

Ah another BOTs are bad thread lol

As many have said get RID of TRAFFIC NUMBERS as a metric and then BOTs can develop with SL. That in my opinion is the crux of the matter for most, while for others BOTs are just a reason to whine and troll.

Have a look at this article below and get used to the idea that LL probably wont get rid of them while they are attracting companies like below

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/09/fairy-bots.html

Quoted from the page



Long live BOT development i say, if it leads to things like this and remember we are on an ever changing platform so always expect the unexpected

Yep LL will probably never get rid of Bots that's for sure.
Why not govern your own search by not using the places search and use the ALL search which does not go by Traffic count? Although some picks gaming does occur I think it would filter out the bot farms for the most part. Don't you think? Seems to work well for me

There are legit uses for bots, massbotting for extortion and goldfarming is the problem.
If all accounts were verified to real people the problem would be greatly reduced,

massbotting! i thought the correct spelling was masturbating?

There's still a way to see traffic in search? (O.o)

Although it does leave me wondering why LL can't just set "Avatar" as a prim type, so that LSL scripts can do the same thing - probably much less laggy than a connected bot, too.

Oh goody! An honest to goodness, genuine bots thread, and already some misinformation has been posted. This forum had become very boring, so it's appreciated. I'm in a hurry just now but I'll be back later to make the thread worthwhile

I still don't get how the OP is attributing the use of bots to theft?

Theft of proper position in search results.

Not theft so much as fraud.

In the OP's story, there were two legitimate shoppers in the no-bots store, and no legitimate shoppers in the bot-store. So at least at that particular moment, the bot-store didn't appear to be successfully diverting customers from the non-bot store.

(I'm assuming here that the stores are actually in competition, which the OP implied, but I am not certain it was stated.)

I'm not crazy about bot-inflated stats myself, but the OP's anecdote does seem to show that traffic ranking is not the whole story.

Hmm, not sure that is in any way theft though. They are utillising a tool that does not violate the TOS to achieve their search result. So in a way they have earned it via a legit method, rather than having stolen their rank form another user. After all, everyone has the choice of using bots to increase their rank. Although those who chose not to can take the moral high ground I dont think they could complain that their search rank has been stolen from them.

Now if the use of Bots was against the TOS then I think it could be called theft.

At the moment I think it's more morally fraudulent

That isn't actually true - some people just don't have the option of having bots hosted 24 hours.

That isn't actually true. Anyone who can log into SL can leave themselves logged in, in a strategic position, regardless of what the RL person is doing. And anyone who can do that, can also have more than one av logged in. It's available to all SL users.

Even if this were so I don't think it's a very effective argument against bots. After all, even if one's own internet connection and computer are not sufficient to run bots, better technology is only an infusion of capital away. Even if one lacks the technical skill to get bots running, one needs only buy a few hours of time from someone more tech savvy.

Sure, not everyone can afford to do these things. But not everyone can afford to purchase an expensive classified or buy a private island to host their shop, but we don't call those things theft.

This seems like one of the weaker anti-bot arguments I've heard.

This is not necessarily true, as there are some "force majeure" issues which may prevent bot running even by people with capital. Some countries or regions may not have ISPs which tolerate continuous use of a connection with the necessary bandwidth; some people may live in environments in which leaving a PC on and connected for 24 hours a day is not viable (eg, shared houses, apartments with fire safety restrictions, college computer rooms, etc). It's actually rather a surprise to me that there are no bot hosting services yet.

Also, I didn't say it was an anti-bot argument - only that it is an argument against the claim that "anyone can run bots if they choose to".

Hey, a new bot thread, fun

So now bots are compared to theft and called fraud. Both already were determined nonsense in former threads, but let's do it all over again for arguments sake.

Bots are allowed tools in SL. Several contacts with Linden representatives confirmed that. The fact the are not removed, not even when AR-ed, confirms it too. They are removed if they block other people from entering a Sim probably, but that. s beside the point and has nothing to do with whether they are allowed.

So, inflating traffic by using bots is allowed by the owner of Second Life. Doesn't it, in that perspective, seem quite stupid to call it theft or fraud? Because, as far as I know, theft and fraud are not allowed things, at least not in the part of the world I live in.

And no, I do not run bots not yet, anyway. We never know what the future brings, do we.

As far as I know, there are services like that.

Plus, the fact that some people are not able to run them, is not an argument against them anyway. If they really want it, there are ways (rent server space, for example), but that is not the point. We imply do not all have the same means, period.

Example: one of my major competitors has way more time to build and do his business then I have. So I am not able to put as much time in my business as he does. Is that a claim against putting time in SL? Or against putting more time in, then the average user?

You perhaps mean "not anymore," rather than "not yet," as the one time I visited your store I saw two bots there. (I do not know if you have any running there now.) Granted, they were not hidden away - they were in plain view and identified as bots - but they were there, nonetheless, contributing to your traffic ranking as well as demonstrating poses on your furniture (though certainly not so important for that purpose, as people can and likely prefer to try out the furniture with their own avatars).