Definition of Theft?

I can go out right now, and find 3 dozen other Striking Sets that are just as pleasing, or more pleasing (no offense, but purple is not for everyone). Easy. There are multitudes of Very Talented Creators designing them. But I must say, there is something to be said for your Confidence, Phil.

BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!

xP

The quote "that Striking Purple Leather living room ensemble, that was to die for!" were your words, Mickey, not mine.

I'm bored too, so I read this entire thread. I don't see any theft. What property was illegally taken from someone? I don't even see fraud. As store that sells furniture is advertised. The store exists. And there is furniture for sale. If you pay your money, you get the furniture. At best I'd say there is some deceptive advertising, I'll even grant one could say it's unethical, and I wouldn't argue their opinion. But no matter how you got to the store in question, the customer still has final say on whether or not to spend their money at that particular establishment.

Are those who use the methods in question gaming the system? Probably. And those who choose not to do so can be commended, I guess. But speaking as an average shopper, I really don't pay attention to all of it. I don't look at traffic numbers, I alphabetize search esults and start at the top and work my way down. If an item is of acceptable quality and price I buy it. RL stores try all sorts of gimmicks to get you in. This isn't much different to me.

That was an example of how it works, Phil.....explained rather "colorfully" and dramatically, and I made it specific to you, so it would be easier for you to capture the point.....and used rather generously for you, I might add. I see that you didn't capture the point. Understood.

There are dozens and dozens of other things to "die for" in SL. You really should get out more.

I'll do my part to get people directed to the people designing those things, who might be on the sixth page of the search, and often missed, but who deserve to have the fame and glory and potential for increased sales that you have. Just directing it in a way that does not rely on manipulated and inaccurate figures, and directing it toward people who have similar business policies.

I would think most of us do that. We recommend people to those we like, personally, and to those we approve of on business practices, because after all, that is a reflection upon us. Very Simple.

My original point, was that someone was using the promotional tools for fighting content theft, which is an excellent awareness promotion.....however, this particular consumer views bot use as equally detrimental to other businesses.

I've got no problem posting about my bot finding adventures. I learned about bots from a similar post a while back. It was a good education....very informative, and very helpful in a number of aspects. Don't assume that everyone knows about them, and just accepts them. They simply don't know.

the Bot Whisperer

Mickey...the reason i do not use camping, bots, lucky chairs, camping chairs, etc. is because i really do not find the need. I do not think they are the most effective way to market yourself. I do just fine without them. And when i teach my class in "how to increase traffic" i dont recommend them. I think they are an unneeded expense, a pain to use and the return is not that great for most people. To me traffic is completely irrelevent. However, that does NOT mean that i condem people who think that it is relevent and who choose to do things differently than i do and are within the TOS.

I dont have an issue with anything except considering using bots to maximize traffic numbers as "theft." I love your store Mickey and just because you do things differently than i do, i am not passing judgement on that. I also dont feel in competition with you even tho our product lines overlap. I dont feel in competition with Phil either even tho we both sell low prim furniture and couches. I think phil sells some of the absolute best stuff for his catagory out there. We all have our niche....to me it is better to be supportive and share ideas than make judgements. I just dont see it as productive so i dont spend my energy there. I get more mileage from sharing and building up than from tearing down.

again, just my measly two cents...

The answer of course is to allow people to just type in their traffic value manually, then no one will need to run bots anymore saving the whole bots argueent and a lot of mucking around for those trying to run 80 bots on their spare 4yo wordprocessor.

Wouldn't that lead to er, fraud?

Jojo: I think lucky chairs work, but not so many that the place crashes/lags visitors. One or two per shop is plenty. But there are groups who tell each other when a lucky chair has their initial for example. I've not joined them and been told by someone still, and bought other things while in the shop. Maybe not everyone does, but I think it does lead to sales. If someone likes what they see while waiting around for a lucky chair change, too, they will either buy or tell someone else about the nice things. JMO.

No, traffic botrunners all agree that falsifying traffic isn't fraud of any kind.
Besides it won't take a genius to spot work out how honest or disillusioned merchants with a 9,999,999 traffic count are.

Yup! Just like Enron's books.
The numbers were genuine and true, no matter that the true numbers were manipulated to give a completely false picture. It's just numbers.



Has someone started a Jira asking for the ability for parcel owners to enter their own traffic figures? (Up to the time that traffic is completely removed from any ranking mechanisms)
It would save a ton of grief if we could.

Well isn't that something. Jojogirl does not have an issue with bots, and she is competition of people who do use them. Myself I do not have an issue with bots, and I am direct competition with people that do use them (hi Phil ).

This something important: people that are supposed to be hurt and cheated from their rightful position, do not feel hurt and cheated. People not hurt and cheated by this all, feel hurt and cheated. At least, I did not see anyone saying that their own business suffered from a competitor with bots.

There is only one thing to vote for that makes any sense: Remove traffic from metrics. No need for manual number entry, just get rid of it. This will get rid of the bot issue, and make this forum get a lot less postings

how else do you suggest the system should figure out which are the most relevant results?

Same as yellow pages, pay for the biggest advertisments.
Because thanks to massbotting the current system isn't accurate.

The system in question is the Places tab results, and it figures out the most relevant places by exact matches of the search phrase in the text associated with the parcels. The system includes no other relevancy checks. If a parcel's text doesn't contain an exact match, it doesn't get listed. So the question should be about how to sort the list.

We've gone through that many times, and no suitable method has emerged. To get rid of traffic bots and camping, the only effective thing to do is remove those listings altogether. LL's roadmap is/was to do exactly that, and replace them with results from the All search. Until they do that, SL has traffic bots and camping, and no amount of forum threads is going to change it.

Although removing the traffic listings is/was part of their roadmap for search, it does seem as though it's not high on their list of priorities. Earlier this year they actually did it in a Release Candidate, but they undid the change when it was realised that the HTML "All" system is unusable for some people. That was a long time ago, and the HTML system is still unusable for some people, so they are not exactly rushing full steam to deal with it. It's not as though they feel they must get traffic bots out of SL come hell or high water. Whatever their reasons, they are not moving swiftly (and maybe not at all) to deal with traffic bots, and the best thing that residents can do it get used to them.

To both of you the same question: Do you ever use Search All, and are you able to find what you want to find? Because I do, so it cannot be that hard. The results are the most relevant, and they are pretty accurate. So TigroSpottystripes: I suggest LL keeps it as it is, maybe finetune it a bit.

Sometimes I feel that in the anti-bot arguments people are so focused on their hatred against bots, that they forget what it really is about. And that is good serc results. Search All is the best, most relevant search SL had up to now. Yes it can be better, yes there are flaws, but it is the best way to find stuff. Maybe they should educate people how to use it though.

And Tegg: Massbotting hardly has any effect to Search All, only to Search Places. And the yellow pages system is already available: Search Classifieds.

ok...we have beaten this one to death...can someone please revive the thread about how the new showcase is going to destroy everyone's business??? ...giggling. Oh, wait...it didnt.....heheheheheheheh

I may be mistaken, but I'm sure I captured your point, Mickey. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were saying that someone like you is very worthwhile to businesses because you put the word out there (my paraphrasing). I understood what you were saying, but I didn't want to give a blunt reply - but I will now. Mickey, I don't need you to put the word out there. You are not important to me. I do very well by running my store on my own, thankyou. I make things that many people like enough to buy, and many of them tell their friends and send people to the store, and so on. I give excellent customer service, and I try to help people when I don't have exactly what they want (many of my products were created that way). So you see, one person putting the word out there isn't worthwhile enough for me to change my methods just to suit that person's preferences. So yes, I have the "confidence" to manage without your recommendations.

Don't misundestand that. I appreciate it when people recommend my place - I really do. What I'm saying is that one person recommending it is just a drop in the ocean, however influential they think themselves to be.

You can also correct me on this if I'm mistaken, but didn't we have a dialogue a few months ago - when you were "wow" about the purple furniture? If that was you, then you were so very impressed by that purple furniture. At the time, you didn't say that you could go to many places and find such purple. What you said indicated just the opposite.

I'm sure there are, but I don't get out much at all. I just do my own thing and, if I may say so, I mostly do it very well - read JoJo's post - and she's a competitor.

That's a very good thing to do, Mickey, and I'm sure that it's appreciated by people. If you choose to bias your recommendations because of your personal feelings about something, it's ok. If you choose to not point people at my store, it's perfectly ok with me. Getting back to your "point", I don't need your recommendations. From your post that contains numbers, you appear to think of yourself as being influencial enough to make a difference, but any sales you could send my way would just be a drop in the ocean. I'm sorry if that puts you down, but you have been making yourself out to be influencial enough that businesses do better with you on their side, but you're not that influencial - not to me anyway.

We all know that. And by the same token, don't assume that people care one way or the other. The indications are that people don't care either way.

My dislike is not bots but massbotting in general, yeah search all is better to use if you ignore the first page of junk, search places could nearly cease to exist because it's gamed to death by people with dozens of bots in a pond or box in the sky. It should be renamed Search bots

Okay, far enough. Give me an example of something you want to search for, and that gives back a first page of junk. Because it never seems to happen to me.
The fact Search places is not relevant is already known indeed, but no one forces anyone to use it. I dislike it too, for that matter.

Search all does not return junk for me either when i use it. In fact, my listings are at the top for my key sales products and i have consistent traffic below 200...LOL So, traffic does not put you at the top of all search which for me is where i want to be.

I'm with Lilybeth...ban the bots and let the registered users and concurrency figures be honest for a change.

But it's simply not in LL's corporate interest to do this...and wont' be, until the paying customers start leaving and hit them in the bottom line.

@Lindal: banning bots would do not much good, as they would be replaced by camping pads, which are contributing a lot to lag for example. If camping pads are banned, traffic will be inflated by using Zingo games, lucky chairs, just name it. "Banning" traffic would work much better.

@Jojogirl: That is why I challenged Tegg. Search All does work, and does not result in junk. Of course there are a lot of improvements possible, for example more results per page. But saying the first page contains only junk, makes no sense.

I'm not so sure that traffic bots would be replaced by camping pads...those cost money. But even if they are, I would rather have campers, even AFK campers, sitting around inflating traffic. Those bot compounds are just creepy.

Still, I take your point, Marcel. Perhaps traffic count should be eliminated as a search ranking factor. But, "true" traffic...if we could figure a way to count "real" customers...would be a very good ranking factor.

We've tried voting. That didn't work so well. We tried a traffic algorithm. That got gamed by camping, and then by bots.

Is there any way to measure traffic that cannot be gamed?