scamming traffic stats

so is it acceptable for someone to run a outside program that logs multiple accounts on in order to bring up land stats for there sim/area. i am starting to see this all over the grid. On the other hand there are camping chairs but they are real people, were as these other accounts that are hidden underground in a pit or highup in the air so no one sees them, are logged on by one user for the sole intent of bring up traffic stats, to get in the top 10 to bring real traffic in.

is this really acceptable? is it right?

How do you know its only for traffic? On Dragon Isle the family's living/working area is on a platform high up in the air. you will often see several of us with green dots not moving as we work on something or visit with other family. I agree some places may well be doing this but you cant just assume a pair or even 4 dots high up are scamming traffic.

As for acceptable practice? Who cares anymore. Traffic has been useless since day 1. It has been permanently gamed in one way or another since I first landed in SL nearly 3 years ago.

Remove traffic numbers =)

Problem goes away

And make it so only the owner can see them.

hmmmm they are removing ratings because of the database load of maintaining them. I wonder what the load of maintaining traffic is?

Immeasurable

Traffic = campers.

Yes, I live to see the day when search instead brings up page upon page of:
!!!!!!!!!!!Aaaardvark MegaBUCKS CASINO***HOT GURLS***!!!

Gaming the alphabet is as old as the hills - now, if the listings had to be both spell and grammar checked...

I think we all have to sigh, shrug, and get used to it. Let's face it, Gamers'R'Us. If the gaming is constructive and useful, we call it a workaround. When its results are negative we call it harsher names, like gaming, scamming, etc. Same turn of mind, though.

More constructively, Colette is right: Death to Traffic Numbers (except maybe privately to owners).

dont see the qualitative difference between !!!!!Aaaaaaa

and VARIETY ONLINE CASINO AND STRIP BAR -SEX NUDE CAMPING MONEY that we have now.

Nearly every popular place has tacky ad copy and half have annoying names.

Also - wouldnt have to be strict alphabetic

The search could pick one name at random then go alphabetically after that name, wrapping after it got to Z.

Well, on at least one skin maker's store (who will remain unnamed), there are a cluster of 4 sealed boxes 700 metres up. Each one more or less permanently houses 4 avatars with default clothing and shape. Those guys never move or interact with anything or anyone, even each other. I suppose it is theoretically possible that its some weird religious cult being run by the skin maker above his store, but what are the odds?



Yes, traffic is useless, and no matter what you replace it with, the replacement will be gamed too. But I'd rather have it replaced with something that is gamed and maybe causes lag issues than with the something that is gamed and definitely causes lag that we have now.

This is kinda creepy and could make a good plot for a SLhorror movie

Traffic is inacurate almost across the board. I am a business owner and I maintain my vigle to avoid setting up camping chairs and other forms of useless traffic. If you work hard enough you realize that traffic can be created legitimately but it takes marketing, social networking and ingenuity to drive real traffic. It even takes money, in my case I spend over $100 USD a month on marketing of various sorts. My business brings in 7,000 to 12,000 traffic witout camping or "traffic scamming".

Even so, if you navigate around and randomly teleport to spots on the map that have lots of green dots most of them are dead and full of campers. No talking, no action, no real people. It's kind of annoying!

Traffic wasn't always meaningless. About a year and a half ago, maybe 2 now. Traffic meant there was stuff going on, was interesting to visit. That was before camping and before copybots. I think traffic has a place but only if campers and copybots are gone.

was naughtydog that did the first camping chairs .. lil over a year and a half ago.

There went the neighborhood.

Camping chairs maybe, but there were other free money give-a-ways before that. As SL grew, it became more and more of an issue. Somehow, I don't think that removing traffic will have the effect that you had hoped.

If land owners want to park their alts in boxes, then that's up to them. It's their land, after all, and not really a problem except when it denies other people the use of the region. Anyone filling up a sim with camp-bots who doesn't own the whole sim is already morally bankrupt so calling them names won't matter. But for a store on their own private island, then it's up to them I think.

Some use bots in cool ways though- like one that uses them to demonstrate the animations they sell. They're still basically traffic bots but they add purpose.

I can't see traffic being removed right now. Not many people like camp-chair casinos, but I bet that Linden Lab love the quotable concurrency and login statistics. They could switch off traffic any time, but they don't. There's a reason for that, I think. Meanwhile they "feel our pain" and "totally sympathise" of course.

Concurrency and logins will *plummet* if traffic goes. That's the kind of numbers that some wolves at the door would love to use to tear into Linden Lab to argue against SL's popularity or relevance.

the difference is not a qualitative one, but it is numerical: "!" is the first character in the ASCII collating sequence (well, almost, it comes after " " and therefore comes first in an alfabetically sorted list.

Well remove traffic and camping won't go away they will still use it to try and make the place look popular on the map.

Personally as soon as I see a row of camper zombies , I reopen search and go to the next place anyway. So no money from me for them.

Yes, I understand that White sorry to be confusing-

I mean that, I fail to see how the quality of the name are different

as in

!!aaaaaaasexherenow

isnt any more annoying to look at and wade through than

VARIETY ONLINE CASINO AND STRIP BAR -SEX NUDE CAMPING MONEY

and any other stuff you already see.

I disagree.

The map doesnt show up on the search places.

SO it WILLL reduce camping - flybye and map business is less than search related business.

anything that reduces the profit of camping reduces incentive to pay campers.

But by all means take the green dots OFF the Large Map. Theres no reason for them anyhow.

Im sure that would help reduce some database load somewhere as well.

This is the real issue. People basically did what LL wanted them to do - Log on more at once and made lots of alts to pad their numbers.

Camping is good for LL's marketing.

Thus those worried about it going away can breathe easy.

Doesnt mean camping has any real value to us as residents.

The dark secret of skins... you must never breathe a word to anyone or you will be captured too... my time is short and soon they will come with razors to harvest again...

Remove traffic and have it randomize the list when someone searches. Thus the business owner loses all control of where they end up in search. No gaming the name , traffic state or whatever. Vala problem solved , even help get the little new guy some extra traffic.

Popular choice ? doubtfull since business owners are outright despret to stand out in the crowd , but arguable the only replacement I can thnk of for the traffic stats that would have any real effect.

Copybot doesn't have anything to do with traffic stats, right? I have never seen a horde of copybots hanging out anywhere, have you?

When I first joined SL nearly a year ago, I used to check out large clumps of people on the map, to see what was so interesting there. Within days, I learned that a lot of dots meant a poor user experience because of lag, and on top of that it was probably something completely uninteresting like a casino or mall.

Traffic numbers have absolutely zero meaning, and even clusters on the map are an indication of somewhere *not* to go in many cases.

Many people do use the map to look for other people and places.