The Discussions on Traffic Reform with the Lindens

As if Search isn't confusing enough for newbies.

Just what is a real traffic metric? Money trees attract people who go camping, so surely they have to be included in enhanced traffic, as do freebies, so put them in the same tab. Keyword spamming and using search terms that aren't relative, they have to go in there too and out of camping, money trees, freebies and keyword misuse, the latter is the leader in false advertising.

If you could program the system to tell the difference, you could just avoid counting the traffic from the bots and campers. To SL, bots and campers look like any other avatar.

Yep - one problem is that its difficult to compel landowners to use the correct search category(s).

Many will choose to select the category(s) that will give them the most visitors; rather than the category that best applies to their location

A great example is the events listing. Fixed categories were tried there - the hope was that it would help make sense of the cluttered events listing, so that folks could better find what they were looking for.

I just did an events search using the filter category "Live Music". Some of the results it returned included:

-BIG PARTY With Sploder. (No Live Music)
-Win 1000L in VOTE FOR ME CONTEST (No Live Music)
-**SEX AND CANDY** (No Live Music)

Half of the events in the entire listing contained no live performers at all, save for a "Live DJ". While a venue operator could certainly plead a good case that a DJ is Live Music.... from the perspective of the searcher seeking Live Music, it makes those search results less useful.

I don't think its viable to depend upon venue operators categorizing their location appropriately to allow folks to filter out camp spots

Agreed. On this first point, anyone who is responsible for filling a sim that s/he doesn't fully own is in the wrong, regardless of how they fill it.

The short answer is no, but that's an overview. There is a longer answer, but I won't give it, so we don't get into the camping/bot argument - especially as I'm pushing to get rid of their effectiveness for traffic rankings.

There should be difference, and getting rid of traffic-based rankings will deal with it.

Traffic is fine for landowners, and for the All search, but it shouldn't be used to rank places in the Places search. I think we agree.

That's a result of SL's very basic homegrown search system. Those results actually match "live music". Even Google would return them in the results.

It would be easy to make a bot buy things, and transfer the money back to the bot.

I doubt there is any way to measure traffic that can't be gamed. I've seen a lot of interesting suggestions, but all pretty easily fall prey to the inventiveness of the gamers.

The only way to get rid of the *problem* caused by camping is to get rid of the incentive for it: traffic metrics. The problem is lots of avatars logged in, doing nothing other than raising $L, generally unattended (i.e., afk). It's a waste of SL resources, causes serious problems for nearby parcels, and adds to problems for all SL users due to shared resources (e.g., asset servers).

Get rid of traffic metrics, and the *problem* goes away. Sure, there will still be a little camping, but more for "giving back" and helping newbies.

I agree with Travis that it's not a simple question and there are good arguments on both sides. Sindy is quite right that it would be disappointing for an owner of a well-attended business -- though how much so, I can't evaluate. Unfortunately, there is no practical way to avoid gaming.

I share Travis's concern that banning the behavior would be of limited usefulness, since it would involve (unscalable) support from the Lindens. It's just too big a world for them to police in this way, unless the practical repercussions are drastic (as they would be for other behaviors they've recently banned: gambling and child porn). Unless we can make a very serious bottom-line profit/risk argument for LL that they simply *must* ban camping, it won't happen. We can talk about it all we want, but it won't make it happen, because SL runs reasonably well regardless.

Finally, it would be difficult to pin down exactly what should be banned, without affecting folks who do things that seem similar but are not causing problems.

Get rid of the obvious profit motive for camp farms, and the problem will go away. The cost is losing a metric that's of only limited value due to the gaming anyway. The burden would be borne by honest retailers with high, ungamed traffic counts. We can't successfully argue that this cost doesn't exist; we can only argue over significance and justification.

This is an oversimplification. You seem to be ignoring us free users who work hard to create valuable content, enriching the SL experience for others, and often donating our work as freebies. You're also ignoring residents who may be living the free life, but contributing by being interesting and valuable members of the community, if for no other reason than that we tell good jokes and people enjoy our company. (OK, that's not me.)

Yes, it's true that SL is paid for by others, but it's insulting to be told that the only merits of free accounts is for newbies. I just released a nice little freebie poseball with 10 natural-looking, non-static animations for male and female sitters, full perms. It's called "jPose sit". Since you feel I'm a scum-sucking bottom feeder, please be sure not to take or use it. (OK, just kidding, go ahead but be more appreciative of us scum sucking bottom feeders!)

I think where Travis said "No live music)" he was explaining that there wasn't any at the site... I think.

Ah! I thought they were part of the listings. Sorry.

Yeah... that's what I meant

Pretty much, when you post an event listing, you can pick one of several fixed categories from a dropdown list.

These are events that selected Live Music, yet from their description, contain no live music whatsoever. About half of the events on the listing (filtered by Live Music), also contained no live performers, but employed a "DJ".

This is Standard Operational Procedure for Linden Lab. Rules passed to remove gambling equipment, outlaw child AV sex, outlaw adfarm extortion and outlaw offering interest from a SL'bank' are all enforced by trusting people to do the right thing and by the resident Abuse Reporting sytem. If I can identify a sploder I can identify a botfarm and a camping chair. There are enough concerned citizens and busybodies on the grid to make a reclassification of camping and botfarms enforceable.

That's very true. What I was thinking about was Valentino's suggestion (way back on page 2!) of combining this "transaction-only traffic" with a "unique visitors" filter, and the likely way to game the latter of having armies of rent-a-bots that would flit around the grid, servicing everybody's parcels with traffic for pay. If those rent-a-bots had to conduct a transaction at each stop, then the prim they paid would have to funnel its pay back to the bot owner, so either the prim would have to be owned by that bot-owner (and not auto-returned, etc.), or owned by the parcel owner and scripted to pay back the bot-owner (with an opportunity there for thieving from the crooks). But certainly surmountable by the dedicated rent-a-bot runner.I think "disappointing" is quite apt here. This Dwell / Traffic thing has been around a long time; folks think of it as an entitlement now, and even (repeatedly in this thread) refer to abolishing traffic as a form of *punishment*. I understand the disappointment, but it's very difficult for me to work up a lot of sympathy for it. It's not that I want the successful businesses to be displaced, but right now they have a stranglehold on new entrants to the market simply because traffic affects order of Search results. There are many new places (shops *and* venues) that are superior in every way to their established competitors; all but a few of them will vanish simply because of this enormous barrier.

Businesses that have earned the business of their customers are great--and they're well-situated with a strong customer base that gives them free word-of-mouth advertising. And they have cash flow from which to draw for placing paid advertising. It's not necessary to also artificially perpetuate that success with Traffic-based rankings. Not necessary, and not smart, either.

I think we need to be careful what we wish for over this, we're in danger of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Traffic has many faults but drastic and radical change could upset the applecart a bit too much and we've had enough of that recently.

As it stands improving the search functionality and improvements to the classified system are the foundations for the future of traffic, and we need to know Linden Lab's intent for them before a sound judgement on what can be done with traffic can be realised.

The applecart was upset two years ago. Track real traffic ONLY and then we can make informed decisions about the future of Traffick.

Here's the rub though - all residents can do is file an abuse report. Its Linden that has to do the enforcement.

Maybe I'm wrong on this - but I was under the impression that enforcement of the gambling ban was spotty at best; much to the chagrin of gaming operators that have voluntarily chosen to abide by the rules.

If traffic abusers are going to be enforced in a similar way, I'm not sure how useful that'll be.

Define real traffic.

Yes, enforcement is important. But the most important result would be the MESSAGE that Linden Lab sends out to traffic abusers. This is not acceptable behavior. It is not ok to game traffic and you will not be rewarded for it any longer. This message would go far in dictating the behavior of future parcel owners.

That is why I am advocating that retail be strictly seperated from entertainment in the listings. A product ranking would be much more effective a tool for those that sell items in SL than abolishing traffic for entertainment places that do rely on the traffic metric. The goal for anyone selling things in SL is to sell their products. Demand a ranking for products. That is what is badly needed for both the consumer and the seller.

Shopping in SL is a complete nightmare and something I never do. It is like trying to find a needle in a haystack when you are looking for something. Product searches with filters for top products, new products, price high to low, etc... would be a more valuable tool.

I also completely agree that traffic is fine for looking for places with people. So advocating it's removal for places designed for groups of people or even the removal of the "Places" tab altogether makes me scratch my head. Those ideas will do nothing to help anyone sell more things.

Why? Why does the places tab need to be removed? You sell things. Demand better search tools to bring attention to your products rather than your place. No one cares about your store, they just want your product.

It's redundant to the places search in search all. Granted, it has a different layout. To be honest, I could live with the Places tab if it kept the same layout but used the more sophisticated operators with the all search. I do actually prefer the old layout for search results for classifieds, places, etc. But if Places continues to be a reason for abusing traffic, it should go.

But as another person pointed out, it is mostly businesses selling products that abuse the traffic listings because they go by the logic if their store is full of people then others will be drawn to their products. This is a completely inefficient way to sell things in SL for both the gamers of traffic and the ones that can't seem to climb the listings. Traffic is useless for retail business. It is not useless for places designed for people to hangout or those looking for social environments populated by people.

I still don't see how abusing the profile picks and object listings in the new search to affect rankings as any better than the current traffic metric anyway.

Bingo! It's not traffic in itself that is the issue, it's the ranking system and to change that we need a better search facility.

What Cristalle said, plus...

There is no need for me as a seller to demand better search tools because we already have a *much* better search tool which, for some reason, some people prefer not to use.

With all the suggestions for change that have been posted, there hasn't been one that won't/can't be gamed, and with all the shouting about traffic abuse that's gone on here and in the blog, I'm staggered that people here want to keep traffic when removing it from the Places tab (which means removing that tab) will solve *all* the objections to traffic bots etc. that have ever been raised. If Jeska/LL got the idea that the overhwelming opinion is to remove the Places tab, it might just happen - and quickly. Instead, what all the suggestions are suggesting is to keep ways of gaming the tab with bots etc., and to keep a reason to shout foul for the forseeable future. There is an exception - making traffic bots/camping 'illegal'. That would work as long as LL acted on it.

Most of the suggestion would take significant programming time to implement. Removing the Places tab could be done in minutes. If you want the gaming to stop, push to remove the Places tab.

I can assure you, as one with actual experience of it, that arranging for higher traffic figures is currently *great* for business, and a very efficient way to sell things in SL.