Is using Unverfied Alts to boost traffic not allowed in Seocnd Life?

I recently came across a shop before with high traffic, the shop was completely empty but in the corner of the sim, several bots sat on the floor, to boost traffic. I asked the owner this and he said they are bots and not campers. Is this Illegal in Second Life?

no but its one of the reasons they are removing traffic stats from the system

LL should only count premium members in traffic.

It would eliminate camping as premium members rarely camp.
It would still give an accurate portrayal of which places are popular as premium members go to most other places in the same ratio as everyone else.

Unfortionately I doubt LL will think of that.
A one time they actually believed getting rid of dwell and payouts for the most popular places would eliminate camping - Duh.

LMAO

I logged in the other day and there were three girls all in a row ... and lined up at different heights like a plane coming in to land ... all lined up against the one camp thing at my place (which is to thank people for decorating the place as a 'barkeeper' in the coffee bar.

Well we realised these were bots so we had great fun ferrying them around the sim. We were playing 'battlebots' with them, hiding them in the corner etc ect ... they went for a ferry around the water on the lot too.

Wonder how miffed the owner of these dancepad-homing bots were when they found out no L$ at all for that day's 'botwork'.

Plenty of non-premium members spend money inworld, to just disregard their input would be just as misleading as camping is.

But premium members go to the same shops as non premiums who spend money and what counts is the RATIO between the numbers that 2 shops recieve, so the number is far less misleading than you may think.

If a shop A has more people in general than shop B, unless there is any other factor involved to isolate the type of people it gets, on average shop A will get more premiums than shop B
So using the ratio between premiums you can get an idea of the true number of people, yet stilll exclude exploits designed to milk the traffic system.

You cannot do the same with payment info on file or payment info used people since its easy to create multiple accounts, each with a single payment used for only a tiny initial outlay and no recuring expense.

I'd imagine that non premium members far outweigh premium members and you're comparing people with different overheads. I don't think it's quite so straight forward to quantify.

I can see where you're coming from regarding ratios, I just think it is important to involve all active members of the economy when trying to make comparisons like this otherwise there will always be accusations that it is misleading.

The key word you use is "active"

hehe

I like the idea of just counting premium members. I also agree that there probably are more non-premium members them premium....so the ratios may be skewed slightly.

But , People could see traffic numbers and know that the numbers are "actual" traffic.

I'd change 'probably' to 'definitely' more non-premium members. I'm not sure this is the answer either. *snickers* I know this will never happen (or if it has, I don't know about it) but it'd be kinda fun if LL went ahead and released how traffic is computed. Is it based on a percentage of teleport into an area vs how long they stay? What is the formula?

If they released that maybe the number-crunching types could come up with something that took camping into account. They've outsourced everything else, why not this?

"Premium" is not the same as "Payment info used"

Plenty of Basic Accounts have "Payment info used". They have to get their L$ somewhere or have a way to cash out their L$ to a RL bank/PayPal.

The days of segragting from Premium and Basic are over. No one can tell if someone is a Premium unless they see that person's account name on a piece of land as the owner.

Taking that into thought, using only "Payment info Used" accounts to render traffic would be acceptable, imo.

I would honestly prefer traffic to just be removed from using it to catagorize Searches as I never use the numbers due to the EXTREME gaming of the system with bots and camping.

~Jessy

i always fine the premium vs non premium funny

as a non premium i spent all the money i earned in game at jobs (dj'n, hosting, winnings from slingo) shopping all over and tipping hosts and dj's

now that im premium i almost never shop all my money i put aside to cash out or help pay for my premium membership

there is a part of me that almost wishes i had not gone premium but we shall see ive given myself till christmas to see if my lil shop will pay for itself if not i go back to non premium sell my land and just goof off again

When you factor in the stipend against the annual cost, a premium account is pretty cheap. A shop owner that has 5 camping spots currently would actually save money under your plan by having 5 of their own premium zombies hang out in the store.

Not a bad idea .. since it costs money to have a premium account it would make it less proffitable to run premium accounts as Camp zombies.

Though if you pay up front for a year its break even again I think as far as subscription costs and stipend.

This is still one of the better ideas to keep traffic but make it less problematic.

I still think we simply dont need traffic.