The Discussions on Traffic Reform with the Lindens

We already have the 'All Search' for residents to do their searching. We don't need the "Places" tab to do the same. It is repetitive and unecessary. As you've mentioned, the 'Places' can be a directory. It could be broken down by category, Ie., Homes, Furniture, Clothes, Shoes, Hair etc. All residents would be given the option of being listed on it by their primary business offering, and perhaps two or three other choice offerings, prompted by the completion of pre-set blank category fields in their description. Merchant's primary business offering would be given higher listing priority over all others second and third options in each category. Like the Yellow Pages, the alphabetical orders would be of little if any significance. The important thing is that customers would have an alternate mode of search that would bring accurate results for the items they are searching for, as opposed to the 'All Search" which is a gamed system, yet deem viable by some.

The Places tab already has a Category pulldown field. Would you suggest making that much more extensive?

That's a very interesting page, Viktoria, but it's about biasing the ranking order of the results set, and not about the weighting of links from various sources.

The Places tab already has a Category pulldown field. Would you suggest making that much more extensive?

That logic can be applied recursively if you think for only one moment about it, and that is only one of the biasing options available to them. Other hints: GSA is not limited to crawling web pages, and it can be made to crawl duplicate data without any of it presented in the search results.

Explain please.

We already have the 'All Search' for residents to do their searching. We don't need the "Places" tab to do the same. It is repetitive and unecessary. As you've mentioned, the 'Places' can be a directory. It could be broken down by category, Ie., Homes, Furniture, Clothes, Shoes, Hair etc. All residents would be given the option of being listed on it by their primary business offering, and perhaps two or three other choice offerings, prompted by the completion of pre-set blank category fields in their description. Merchant's primary business offering would be given higher listing priority over all others second and third options in each category. Like the Yellow Pages, the alphabetical orders would be of little if any significance. The important thing is that customers would have an alternate mode of search that would bring accurate results for the items they are searching for, as opposed to the 'All Search" which is a gamed system, yet deem viable by some.

The categories aren't enough - rather, there needs to be subcategories for "shopping." Shopping is just too broad.

Agreed. The only problem I see is having a massive pulldown list. If you tried to put all the Yellow Pages categories into a pulldown, it'd run off the screen. Of course, we don't need Plumbers or Veterinarians or Doctors or (god forbid) Attorneys or 99% of the service categories in the RL Yellow Pages.

So perhaps give us TWO fields. One for the master category list, then if the chosen category has subcategories, a pop-up field for the subs. All Places in the categories and subcategories should be listed alphabetically, with no traffic metrics.

slexchange tries to use the category tree thing. It's mostly voluntary, and sort of works. Do people find themselves using that way to drill down, or is it easier to skip over to the search box?

I have no problem with getting rid of the places tab. And I have very little problems with the all search, for the most part. The argument about "gaming" it really doesn't hold up well with me. I believe that people that pay through the nose for picks and don't have the quality to back it up with sales will eventually go away.

As a directory, places is fine. But as a tool for finding relevant places, it's woefully anemic.

I would be more in favor of getting rid of the 'All Search" as it stands, and replace it with a 'Places' directory based on pull-down/fill-in blank choice description fields. Again, this type of search would bring in more accurate search results for the shopper looking for items. Which would accomplish the main objective of a search, rather than pandering to the needs of any particular merchant's listing preferences.

You do not know all the data sources used by the Second Life search servers because they are not required to be available or visible to you. You are guessing just as much as everyone else.

But search is not just about shopping. That's the thing. Newbies use it for all kinds of reasons, and shopping is just one. Why shouldn't a search for sculpties include educational links to the wiki, classes by NCI, and a texture shop to buy some sculptmaps? Search all is trying to be all things to all people. By necessity, so will places, since not every "place" is a business. But places needs a little help to provide more relevant results, and by all means it should use the google search tool to help in that endeavor.

A directory would be fine except who would enter the details? If it's the place owners, you can be sure the details will be tailored for search. LL won;t do it because of manpower, and resident volunteers are sometimes too biased to be reliable. We went through the directory idea in some detail earlier in the thread.

An organic search *must* come up with results for all the different reasons that a person types something into the searchbox, or it's a bad engine. The sculpty example is a good one. People may want to learn about then, or buy some textures, or whatever, and a search should include them all for such wideranging searchterms.

Read my post above. Merchants would list their top three offerings via pre-set fill-in/drop down blank-space menus. All a customer would have to do is type in the category for the item they are searching for, Ie., Furniture, Jewelry, Clothes, etc, to get a listing of stores offering those items. I don't see were anyone would have to enter any details. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

This is only true if we are to be limited by only one search engine. Is there anything anywhere stating there can't be more than one search engine? We seem to have more than one now. Why can't we have one search engine for Shopping/Commerce and another for Places of Interest/Education?

Read my post above. Merchants would list their top three offerings via pre-set fill-in/drop down blank-space menus. All a customer would have to do is type in the category for the item they are searching for, Ie., Furniture, Jewelry, Clothes, etc, to get a listing of stores offering those items. I don't see were anyone would have to enter any details. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

For SLx I personally do a search, and then use the categorized results within that search.

That is, I search for let's say 'bed'.

And then look over on the left and select 'bedroom furniture' and then look around in there.

You mean top 3 items for sale? If you mean that, then I'd be dead against it. We'd all have most of our items unlisted, so it would be bad for sellers. It would be bad for users too because they wouldn't have most of the available items listed for them.

Cheyenne, have you actually LOOKED at the categories in the Places tab?

and I disagree about Search/All being unnecessary. I use it nearly exclusively now; if I search/All on "widget," it's handy to see a widget place listed in someone's picks, or a group dedicated to widgets, etc.

You mean top 3 items for sale? If you mean that, then I'd be dead against it. We'd all have most of our items unlisted, so it would be bad for sellers. It would be bad for users too because they wouldn't have most of the available items listed for them.

I have. It is infested by entities woefully gaming traffic. Is there anything in particular you wanted to direct my attention to?

I am so happy you like the 'All Search' Oryx

But this isn't just about personal preferences. It's about finding a more fair and equitable search engine for all residents in Second Life. Including those that do not know how to gam ... er ... are knowledgeable or have the time to gam .. er .. learn or have any interest in gam .. er .. going through the geeky techincal ritual that would place them on the first page of the 'All Search' engine.