The Discussions on Traffic Reform with the Lindens

Aardvark would become a very popular parcel name .

Random listings would be better.

I love Qie's idea of ranking performers (this would include DJs, photographers, dancers, live musicians, etc as well, I'm assuming) in Events, as opposed to places. I know that this gets back to the old ways of rating people (jeez, remember that?) somewhat, but if we limit it to performers, it might have some weight.

I had to go back to find out what the idea actually was, and what we're talking about lol

It's basically a human edited directory, with resident volunteers as editors. It adds that the editors could give ratings to places, as well as list them in the right categories. The biases that you mentioned aren't really biases - they are preferences. The sort of biases in SL, amongst those who are likely to volunteer for the task - some of the more active people here for instance, often have huge biases about certain things. Those are not the same as preferences for particular restaurants.

The idea includes keeping the current traffic-based search, and I can imagine how huge biases could come into play. They come into play now, without the new idea. Plenty of people have shown their willingness to 'get involved' by ARing my place. They've never got anywhere, of course, but it does indicate the sort of huge biases amongst many people who like to get involved.

The idea doesn't include the resident editors writing titles and descriptions, but the chances of many of the people who would get involved having a bias against what they often wrongly see as keyword spam in the descriptions, and reviewing accordingly, with non-inclusion or low ratings, are very high, imo.

That's why said that it wouldn't and couldn't work. In a nutshell, many of those who would volunteer to be involved are those who have strong views about some things, and they would do a very bad job for SL and its users.

Thank you.

The last thing we need is another "clique" based system determining were we should shop. Lord knows we already have enough of that on these forums. No doubt many on these forums would love such a system. I have come to the realization that many on these forums simply trumpet the same creator's and shopping preferences that they've heard on these forums for years. That would be a thousand times worse than what we have now. Does anyone remember the old "New Products" forum? They did away with that system for a reason.

I gotcha Phil, yeah you're right. The thing is, an SL Zagat would have to be announced SL-wide, to give every single resident a chance to input an opinion. Zagat itself started out very small, covering only restaurants in NYC. The original editors, the Zagat couple, interviewed their friends. Their friends.... hmmm. Then they opened it up to anyone; you eat at a restaurant, you complete a survey for the guide. Obviously it started out being extremely limited and biased, but with input from around the globe, it became a survey of hundreds of thousands of people.

I understand your concern about the SL Zagat (I know, I'm stealing a trademarked name, but I'm just using it for ease of understanding) being run by basically an FIC of like minded people with particular biases, but the very nature of Zagat means that eventually all biases must eventually erase themselves. If anyone in SL can rate any place in SL, the SL Zagat people MUST allow all opinions to be seen. If they didn't, then it wouldn't be a true and honest survey.

Unfortunately I think a zagat style system would be just as corrupt as the old ratings system was. Under the original leaderboard system you could give people a rating under various categories like building. The more outgoing and popular a person was the higher they rated in all categories. You had people who could barely rez a cube ranked way above incredibly talented builders. No one used the ratings objectively or in the way they were supposed to be used. There were rating parties, rating beggars, and so on, until the results were as meaningless as traffic is now.

I don't know what kind of resident rating or reputation system could be created that wouldn't end up the same way - favoring those with the most friends, often used as a weapon, and ultimately providing nothing remotely resembling an objective metric. Every system LL has tried thus far has been gamed into uselessness.

Reading this thread exemplifies why it's so difficult for Linden Lab to just do away with traffic, every alternative suggestions has had its flaws pointed out. With the traffic meetings coming up it would be useful for those who attend to have viable alternatives, no system is going to be perfect that's for sure.

No matter what happens the listings have to be ordered, everyone can't be the top listing. Someone is going to come bottom, whether someone should always be bottom is the issue and of course they shouldn't, but how to ensure that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip is undoubtedly problematic.

I'm starting to side with random order.

Why? There is an existing Places search in the All tab, and it produces very good results, so what's so difficult about removing the Places tab (traffic-based results), and dealing with the gaming at a stroke?

If when we joined SL there were no other tabs - only the All tab - we would happily use it, and nobody would be shouting for a seperate Places tab. We may be shouting for the facility to search for different types of places (improve the search facility), but we wouldn't be asking for a seperate Places tab. From a search point of view, I see nothing difficult about removing the Places tab, or replacing its content with results from the new All > Places search. Traffic-based rankings don't have to be replaced with anything.

Places isn't the only traffic based result, any search has traffic based results, even the new search uses it as a metric, it's not the only metric, but it's one of them and the old search certainly uses traffic.

I have an idea, which I assume must not be feasible else it would have already been considered, but I'll just throw it out and see what someone says about it.

When it comes to advertising in Search, why not give every listing a limited number of keywords (let's choose an arbitary number- 30 words). When the Search engine is ranking for relevance, the first key words get more weight than the last keywords. So, just throwing out arbitrary numbers, the first keyword gets a weight of 30, the second gets a weight of 29, the third has a weight of 28, and so on.

Keep the "description" field separate from the keyword field. The Search engine only uses the keyword field for returning search results.

Now, every single listing is equal in terms of the amount of weight it can give itself in a search (465 points, based upon my arbitrary numbers). It's up to the creator of the listing to choose the ways in which the points are spent, by prioritizing the keywords.

I'd think it would be a difficult system to game, because any choice to load up in one kind of search has the consequence of knocking the listing out of a lot of different kinds of searches. One could load up with using each keyword for "sex," and be assured to be near the top of any search that consisted only of the keyword "sex." However, that listing still couldn't be guaranteed of topping the search on "sex" (since anyone else could load up with using all 30 keywords for "sex." Using all thirty keywords on "sex" would guarantee that the listing did not show up in any search that did not include the word "sex." (And of course, any searcher can use a "NOT sex" search option to kill the listings with the keyword "sex."

The description field is separate, simply so someone can do a nice, plainly written description without having to worry that a helpfully-written description would kill the listing in the Search engine.

Since options for searchers are nice, you could have an option to use "Keyword Relevance" (searching just based on the keyword field and returning rankings based on the keyword points), or turn that off and just have the standard search like now (free-for-all search on keywords and descriptions with no particular ranking ranking system of word placement).

So why not do something like this?

There are only 2 traffic-based searches - Places and Popular Places. The All search uses traffic in a small way, but it's not traffic-based. Traffic is fine in the All search, because its effect is so small.

No there aren't, every single search uses traffic in some way, with the exception of the old classified search which is sorted by who paid the most.

I'm not so sure about that. In my primary search category I can't get myself above page six, even though I have a larger selection that many of the places above me. The only thing at this point I can figure that's holding me back is traffic and inbound links, both of which are gamed and provide an artificial measure of popularity that has nothing to do with relevancy. I think the formula still needs some considerable tweaking.

Me too. Relevence with completely randomized results. The only fair and un-gamed way to do it.

If its so small then it wouldn't hurt to remove it.

No because if you are looking for something you kinda know the name for you can find it on an alphabetical list.

In fact alphabetical would work BETTER than even ungamed traffic in some ways

The whole worry over aaaaaa names is just being paranoid - people have been using phone books since gradeschool - they know how that nonsense works already, they will recognize aaaa names for what they are immediately.

In this instance, I would keep it, as it would be the un-equalizer between a place that works to get people via good word of mouth and customer service, versus the person who merely copies their parcel description.

Because the usability of Places is far superior to the usability of the new search for specific places.

I simply don't use landmarks, they're clumsy, clutter up my inventory, and I clear cache with every login and don't feel like waiting 10 minutes for it to finish fetching.

Search / Places - type store name, hit enter, click teleport... that's only two actions (hitting enter is simply a part of typing)
Search / All - click the drop down, pick Places, click the search box (three clicks), type store name and hit enter, click the result, click teleport.

That's six distinct actions with the new search vs two with Places, the actual amount of time spent accomplishing the same thing in All vs Places is orders of magnitude worse.

Both are equally gamed, whether you choose to acknowledge that or not, but at least Places gets me to where I want to go much easier and much quicker.

(Edited to add that I'm ignoring the fact that the in-world browser has been broken for a lot of people ever since 1.19 and won't scroll which makes it useless as-is)

No Colette, I'm sorry but no. Nobody will want a parcel name starting with Z, it's the rocky road to ruin, people will not search through umpteen pages to find that store. A store with a Z as the start of their name will never be found, no if's, no buts. no why's, no wherefores.

"traffic-based" means based on traffic. There are only 2 of those - Places and Popular Places, and they only use traffic as a ranking factor. The All search is "links-based", although it uses more than just links. I'm not saying that those 2 are the only ones that use traffic - just that they are the only ones that are traffic-based.

Incidentally, traffic isn't a ranking factor in the All search. Traffic is converted into links.

But Traffic doesnt mean anything.

Its just a number that reflects how many accounts are logged onto a parcel within a certain amount of time.

The accounts are not limited by real people involved in any way.

So it wouldn't be un-equalizing anything.


Traffic is a indicative of how popular a place is in the same manner that 8 people in a phone booth for a college gimmick indicates how popular that phone booth is.

dunno my phone book has lots of Z places.

Inbound links are the soul of the All search - it's a links-based search system. If you haven't been aiming at them, that'll be why you're not yet above page 6. Traffic is converted into IBLs, but not enough IBLs to make all that much difference. A few extra Picks is enough to match the effect of traffic.

We went through that before - either in this thread or another one. Yes, it takes a few extra clicks to reach places from the All > Places search, but I don't think that's a sufficient reason for keeping the Places tab. The results in the All > Places search are superior to those in the Places tab, so if LL is going to put any effort into it at all, it would be better to put it into the various suggested improvements to the All search than trying to come up with an equivalent/alternate Places search to replace the traffic-based one.

I disagree that they are both equally gamed. Traffic is straight forward to game and the effect of doing it is massive. Links aren't anywhere near as easy and straight forward to game, and the effect for those who are doing it isn't anywhere near as great as in the Places tab - imo Not only that, but encouraging Picks is something that everyone would be happy with, whereas traffic bots in their various forms is something that generates a lot of opposition.

That's what I figured, and it makes sense for web pages, but not for SL search. That's just another form of the old vote boxes. People are already paying for picks. Relevancy shouldn't be determined by something so arbitrary and open to being gamed. Do we have pickbots yet?