The Discussions on Traffic Reform with the Lindens

But you are missing the point, or I am. Yes traffic is unfair to those selling products. It however is not as unfair for social places. The old "places" search is an extremely convenient way to look for the most populous places. The new search is not.

That is interesting because from a consumer's point of view it is actually clunky and difficult to find anything. That is why I prefer shopping on SLX instead. If that sort of product search was available in world then I would be estatic and would shop more in game.

If people aren't using it then it's not a *much* better search tool. People would be using it if it were.

Someone earlier suggested some features for search they'd like to easily see, such as list by price. Improve search so that people want to use it, because it really does become feature rich and then you will see that traffic or any other bizarre ranking system isn't needed.

Search is low on richness.

But it's the exact same problem for venues as for stores: Search needs to offer alternate search orders chosen by the user. And for both venues and stores, traffic--even ungamed traffic--is at best a very poor proxy for anything anybody really wants to know about the results. It would be wonderful if we had some ungamed, unbiased product rating system--and even better if the same applied to venues. After all, the Michelin Guides were around a long time before Consumer Reports. Then maybe the default ranking for venues could be based on some AIA-equivalent rating of their build quality. That certainly would better predict the quality of visitor experience than does traffic.

(Hmmm... this gets me thinking about live performances: An individual event can't really be ranked or rated in any useful way, but certain performers--wherever they're performing--should be made easy to find. No clue how that could be done systematically, though.)

I don't disagree with a more robust search, but until the new search has these added features, it isn't right to just eliminate the other. As another pointed out, many do not use the new search because it is lacking in features and functionality.

To be honest, I only think about businesses - that's the reason why people are always shouting "foul" here.

Compared to SLX (and systems like Google's 'Products Search', which doesn't draw from the search engine), the SL search comes a very poor second. But LL isn't going to create a Product Search in the forseeable future, so these debates are about what exists now, and the All->Places search returns far superior results than the Places tab. The tab has one or two good/convenient features that the All search doesn't have, but which is better - keep the gaming, or lose a couple of features?

It produces much better results. They may not be as conveniently displayed, and that could be improved, but the results are far superior. Whether people use it or not doesn't reflect on the quality of its results - it reflects on people's unwillingness to change, or to lose a couple of conveniences. Again I ask, which is better - rampant gaming of the results, or the loss of a couple of conveniences?

Just because this keeps getting lost in all the arguments, the current places tab is already on the chopping block. In the future, it is going to run off the Google appliances. This was announced months ago, it's part of the plan to save the central databases from choking. That means its results will look a lot like what is given by the current All tab's Places pulldown. Effort would be a lot more usefully expended on looking at the quality of those results and not so much on the old search tab that already is going away.

Fine. I'll just sit back and wait for everyone to start crying foul about the new search being gamed as badly as the "places" tab was/is with traffic. That aspect of SL search will not change unless all rankings are removed and a serious search engine is utilized.

I know that, Viktoria, but I only learned it today after you posted it in another thread - ty

Even so, the fact that it's planned doesn't necessarily mean that it will happen, and if it will happen, there's no telling when. LL has asked for a discussion on the future of traffic, and I see it a being a possible opportunity for people to realise what they've been shouting about for ages - traffic gaming fixed. That's why I think it might be worthwhile to push for the removal of the tab at this time.

The new search cannot be gamed in anything like the way that the Places tab search is gamed. We could discuss that seperately if you like.

Incidentally, some people were shouting foul almost as soon as the All search was launched But it's not the same thing at all.

No need Phil. It has already been discussed, and will be discussed again in the future when traffic and the places tab are removed.

True enough

That is true, Dakota; the green-dots deception would still exist. The difference is, the load placed by 30+ campers/campbots on the sim and the resultant lag and crowding out of other parcel owners that drives people up the wall would not exist. A big improvement.

Even the deception factor would be reduced by eliminating this Traffic count. You have the green-dot deception with or without the traffic deception. Also an improvement.

Oh, it's a pretty sure thing that the old search will be going away, it's running queries straight off the same database borg that has all the trouble with L$ transactions and land and group and profile displays. That search system is past its scaling point already, it's done.

Now, those top 20/200/2000 etc. pages are still lurking out there and salting the results, so sure there is value in getting the numbers more into line with reality. But going forward, those green dots are already losing their magical powers as a sure way to move far up the list. It is going to give everybody a little breathing room, new traffic measurements can be looked on as a way to get better information and not so much as a way to eliminate a threat. It would be really cool if traffic discussions could proceed with that environment in mind.

Sort of on a tangent, new builds keep putting up those long-abandoned Linden voting stations, not even the clones that send votes to little substitute web sites. I have to wonder if that same kind of cargo cult thinking would keep campers around even if traffic measurements were to disappear completely.

I would love to know if the decision to leave the map link off the new search pages was a way to interfere with that kind of trick. I suspect that the reason is more that the map is resource heavy, but either way there aren't going to be as many people even seeing those green dots.

I've seen this sort of argument recently on ebay, ebay's new search is technically superior, the users don't seem to agree and that's the crux of the issue, a better search needs to be better for all parties, but most importantly those who are searching need to feel that it's better than other methods or they won't change and that's the case here.

Search and ranking are the centrepoints of this whole issue, the bigger picture is that improved search capabilities will make gaming a lot less appealing.

So.... let me get this straight.... Lost Gardens of Apollo is 99% entertainment and 1% retail sales (yes they do have a few items for sale down at the bottom.) Greenies is 99% entertainment and 1% retail (yes they do have a few items for sale in the "mother ship." So how would you classify these? Stick them in Retail merely because they do sell stuff? Or entertainment, where they rightly belong?

No. Not saying that at all. Implementing a better search designed for the selling of products would be a much better solution. My own place has things for sale but the mall is on its own seperate parcel and I utilize the classifieds to advertise it. The club however depends on having people in it and I know the impact the places tab and traffic does have for social places.

We started at the bottom of the rankings and slowly but surely worked our way up regardless of the cheats out there. The places tab for those searching for a social venue that is populated is relevent and still widely used, because it is quick, convenient, and does give a fairly accurate result to which places are busy and which ones aren't.

I learned first hand that this is the case when LL borked the search and all mainland listings suddenly became invisible to any searches done from private islands. Our level of visitors dropped for those few days and I recieved many IMs asking what had happened to the club because it was no longer showing in the search. The club was still showing in the new search as one of the top listings for the relevent keyword, but that made little difference because many were still using the old places tab. This to me seems like people just want to force the new search to be used rather than try to get the new search to become more appealing to use and give people the choice. If something is truely superior, then naturally they will use it. Apparently many still think the new search is not superior in its current form or they would be using it. I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say it doesn't meet my needs, yet.

I agree. Categories do not suffice, because no matter what the categorization, there will be things that don't fit the categories. Even if one of the categories is "none of the above". (This is a corrolary of Goedel's incompleteness theorem, btw.)

good grief. all LL has to do is discipline parcel owners that clearly abuse bots/campers to game traffic. this is a people problem and only a people solution will fix it. sl is no different than rl in respect to people problems. LL needs to delete the accounts of obvious bots in a box and the parcel owner that put them there. the problem will fix itself real fast. as for camping? fine. help newbies. but make it so campers are not counted towards traffic.

Lots of people keep saying this, and will continue to keep saying this. It still won't change the fact that it's impossible for the system to know who is a camper and who isn't.

ok so apply the same filter used for eliminating profile pick abuse. make it so alts/bots/whatever, is not counted towards traffic. they already filter them out of the search index so they can filter them out of traffic. problem solved.

Lukily thousands of us CAN tell what a camper is.

Are you suggesting that LL hire people to sit at every location with a bunch of stopwatches to calculate the traffic number? If it can't be programmed, it doesn't really matter.

Interesting presuming that "mature" should automatically mean "not real content". Sure Rezzable and some other would love to hear your explanation of that one... But yeah, I tend to agree otherwise. I even said so, indirectly, suggesting that we really need "better" search categories, instead of the limited ones we have now. If the "Top Traffic Sites", also provided a filter for those categories, it would help too. Or, just let people list "all" sites in a category, without having to put in some search term. Lot of flaws in the design of "both" features imho.