BOT places! List them here!

You are equally obstinate Phil. Let's be fair in our accusations.

The SL system is much too small for it to have worked out any other way. Google's system almost completely screwed up the natural linking of the web - one of the key things that the Google system relies on. But the web is big enough to take it and still produce very good search results - nowhere near perfect, but very good. Small changes on the web, make miniscule changes in the results, but small changes in SL make huge changes in the results.

Quite possibly, although I honestly don't remember a point that someone has made that I agree with and haven't said so. I am obstinate in that a few people here are not going make any difference to what I do, but even then, I still asked a number of people in my shop about my traffic bots, as a result of some anti-botters here.

There are many things that are agreed on both sides, of course, but there are very good points made that are simply overlooked because agreeing with them would be agreeing with the scammers (in their opinions). E.g. traffic != popularity. You and I are in agreement on that, and yet you are dead against traffic bots. Why most of the others should fight tooth and nail about it is beyond me, when it's self-evident - except that they cannot bring themselves to publically agree with the 'scammers' on anything. How many pages of posts were used arguing that point unnecessarily? Their argument is that traffic was intended to indicate popularity, which I've never disagreed with. But, from that, they deduce, and argue, that traffic == popularity.

I believe that most of them, though not all of them, are intelligent enough to know the difference, but they can't bring themselves to publically agree. They can't even say something like, "Yes, I agree that traffic is not popularity, but the intention of it was to indicate popularity". They argue the second part, and get no objections to it from my side, but they can't bring themselves to admit that the point I made is true.

Yes, we are in agreement on that, but from rather different perspectives. Traffic is not a good measure of popularity precisely *because* it is misused. And now we're seeing the same thing happen with picks. The design intent for these metrics is pretty well established, and would work fairly well if it were not gamed to death by the "get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the can" crowd.

There is a historical record of Lindens candidly expressing their dislike for the practice of camping. The problem is that it is extraordinarily difficult to compel people to behave a certain way with respect to design intent of a given feature. You can't ban camping, because enforcement would be about as easy as enforcing a ban on plywood cubes. You can't code behavioral constraints into the software, because there's no practical way to identify Residents who are engaging in camping, vs Residents who for whatever other reason simply left their client logged in while they went out to dinner.

So the only thing left to do is lessen the influence of the metric in search ranking, and eventually eliminate it. Each major iteration of search engine refinement brings us closer to that day. It's pretty telling of what Linden Lab thinks of camping - that they would eliminate traffic entirely rather than allow the practice to continue to influence search ranking.

Apart from the reason you gave, traffic != popularity because it never did. I was never a measure of popularity, even though it was created for that purpose. I won't go over old ground though. It's aleady been done to death.

Using a search engine's ranking factors to climb the rankings is as old as search engines themselves. Nobody could or should have expected anything different in SL. There is nothing wrong with it in the view of any search engine, and they even provide basic intructions on how to do it. LL suggested optimising for the new search as it was being launched. In fact, it wouldn't work very well unless people *do* optimise for it - it relies on it. So doing things to show well in the rankings is good in everyone's book - everyone who gives it a moment's thought, that is. That doesn't mean that search engines accept anything and everything that is done - they don't. But they do accept and encourage many things. So doing (manipulating) things to climb the rankings is not in itself against any search engine's desires, including the one in SL. It's *what* is done/manipulated that is sometimes against their desires.

LL have said things that indicate they don't care for camping and such, but then they used camping as something positive about SL. They sing different songs about it from time to time. I don't disagree that LL sees it as a negative, although they may only say things like that for the benefit of people who object. We really don't know.

Assuming that the company's view is against camping and traffic bots, it isn't the concern of people who use them. If they are really against it, they could do something about it very quickly. It really isn't difficult. A simple blog announcement that camping and traffic bots are no longer allowed would do it. Does anyone think that any traffic bot / camping pad owner would keep them going if s/he could be ARed and penalised for it? I wouldn't keep them going, and I doubt that many would. Technically, the idea that the system cannot differentiate between camping and someone who has gone out to lunch, doesn't hold up, because logging out avs whose owners have gone to lunch isn't a problem for the owners. They just log back in when they get back.

My conclusion is that, if the company does nothing about it, and doesn't tell me to stop it, why should I stop using them and leave my competitors to use them against me. If the company accepts it, which they do at the moment, I'm certainly not going to change anything just because it conflicts with the thoughts of a few people in a forum.

Phil:

they balance what they can enforce vs taking steps to make it a non-issue

the new search was supposed to be a way to get a less gamed system, didn't work.

Picks were gamed, prims with nothing but search keywords are used, etc.

So I expect lots of tweaks in the search tool.

I expect them to possibly just stop indexing picks, maybe limit the search keywords only to items for sale, etc.

I've seen the key thing in the blogs: they are trying to avoid a war where they are playing catch up with how the systems are being gamed. They are taking steps, but they don't want the we do this, they alter to do this. (IE: the piof only for picks, now they simply link the pick bots to the same paypal account... of course this would allow LL to look at the number of accounts linked to a single payment account. And they hold the power to censure for abuse of the alt creation rules)

This time they are trying to be at least two steps ahead vs two steps behind and reacting to how the systems are being manipulated

As for your impromptu query of your customers, put up the sign. See how many stay over a long period of time dude. Asking a few random individuals in anctedotes isn't going to cut it. But the sign for a month would let you know far better the real ideas of those showing up, by watching to see how your income stream holds up.

I leave you with this to ponder...

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-04.htm

LOL Phil.

You really need some lessons in how to ignore someone.

So I cant have opinions on this topic because I annoy you the most.

---------------

And Please, by all means, tell me when the formal debating society shows up so you can dock us points for not responding to each of your dubious assertions in turn.


Bit of friendly advice ...

If you don't like people responding only in part to your posts ..

Stop posting so much nonsense in the same post.

Traffic was used as a measure of popularity. It did correlate to popularity at one time. Your predecessors-in-the-cheat ruined it.

MortVent. I repeat:-

My conclusion is that, if the company does nothing about it, and doesn't tell me to stop it, why should I stop using them and leave my competitors to use them against me. If the company accepts it, which they do at the moment, I'm certainly not going to change anything just because it conflicts with the thoughts of a few people in a forum.

Whether or not *YOU* stop using Trafficbots has no bearing on whether the practice is fair and ethical.

You know I started looking for what you are saying and its true.

Even some old designer friends of mine cant just have their store name as their parcel name any more.

Seems a needless, ugly, cluttering up of the whole thing.

I dont think I am changing mine. Just to be obstinate.

As long as Linden uses visitor count for their search engine placement algorithm, the camping problem will always be there, be it bots or real people campers!

The one reason why there are bots and campers camping out is to fool the visitor count to get their placement on top in the search engine.

Suggestion to Linden:
(1) Get rid of that useless misleading visit count-timer in the search engine algorithm.
(2) Stop displaying that useless misleading visitor count-timer.
(3) Use a more meaningful statistic, such as "unique" visitor count instead of avatar-time-spend-in-sim-yesterday as a measure.

If Linden fixes this, all those bots and campers would simply be wasting the landowner's time, money and resources for nothing, and gain nothing from it.

It is more than likely I found myself in Phil's shop at some point and if I found what I was looking for, I would have likely made a purchase.

Do I feel scamed.......not in the slightest.

Phil has very nice stuff in his store.

I'm sure there's a reason for the way traffic is calculated, I just can't think of a good one. It seems more like something that was useful when they used to pay people for dwell. How long someone spends on a parcel is a silly metric.

Unique visitors never would have worked back when Traffic came out.

Back then we did not have Point to Point Teleporting.

So you had to TP to a telehub and fly the rest of the way (luckily stuff rezzed a lot faster)

There were times you would fly 1000-1200 Meters to get to where you were going.

Any Telehub and along heavily traveled routes would get tons of unique visitors.

I just checked and yes I have bought several items from Phil lol

Now that's a prime example of why I and others just pick out a few lines from one of your posts and take a pot shot at it.
You seem to expect that people would respond to every point you make. You seem to infer that if people do not do so then they have no counter-point.
For my part, I don't have the time or the inclination to humour you.
I just dip in now and again to see how the thread is surviving and occasionally take a shot at something.

You ask why people can't even say something like "Yes, I agree that traffic is not popularity, but the intention of it was to indicate popularity".
Why should anyone say that? The whole point of the anti-gaming side is that traffic has been destroyed as a measure of popularity by the activities of the gamers. When you come out with "traffic != popularity", do really expect others to say "Hey! Good point Phil!!!".
That would make about as much sense as you saying "Black = black" and others saying "Good point Phil."



This thread is mainly the same old stuff over and over, but occasionally some new little item comes up.
You say above "Their argument is that traffic was intended to indicate popularity, which I've never disagreed with."

That's feels new to me. You've argued vociferously that traffic NEVER indicated popularity.
I don't remember you accepting that *the intention of LL* was for traffic to be an indication of popularity.
If you accept that, then you must accept that any actions to increase traffic that are anything but the result of the popularity of the parcel are actions that work against the intention of LL in creating the traffic metric.


Ah! But I can see the flaw in my argument.
You haven't accepted "that traffic was intended to indicate popularity". You only said that you've "never disagreed with" the position.
As an aside, your saying "never disagreed with" is a tad ironic in the light of your complaint that others won't agree with things that you say.

Do you accept that the intention was for traffic to be a measure of popularity?

This probably is going to be the last post from me in this thread. All has been said, the only thing I want to do now is to wrap it up from my point of view.

Bella's reaction show perfectly what I said all along: why should anyone finding what they want, care about what the owner did to make themselves easy to be found? You search a low prim sofa, search for a shop selling it, and buy what you needed. Yes, you know there are more sofa sellers. You may even check out a few more. But in the end, if you find the product you were looking for, you tend to be glad.

As for me, when I look for a store, I am glad when they optimized for search. After all, it makes it easy for me to find them, which is what I am after. Whether they run bots high up in the air, pay for picks, use a good parcel description, I don't care I just want to find them.

For me, the only real scamming on this topic is false advertising. Using the search parameters to attract people even when you do not sell what they are coming for. Using sex beds for example to get people, where you only sell couches. Using high end skin names where you only sell your own creations but want to benefit from their name. If I search for something, end up at a spot where they do not even sell it, then I feel scammed into the place and will never return.

So from the total user base, a few people do have problems with this search optimization/influencing/gaming/cheating. So be it. You are entitled to this view just as much as the people speaking out either in favor or neutral. Call it unethical, call it cheating, but keep in mind that the majority doesn't agree with you. Your point of view is as valid as mine, but not more important, or better. Don't think that having a more idealistic opinion makes you a better person.

Traffic bot use will end one of these days, because traffic as a metric will be less and less important in Search. But, as you can already see with Picks camping, other methods will arise. People who are in SL to be in business, will always keep trying to get the best results with the tools they are allowed to use. It is up to the owner of the platform, to decide what we are allowed to use though.

Marcel

Sling - read my posts. Don't make things up - you're not very good at it. What am I talking about? Your assertion that I haven't accepted that traffic was intended to indicate popularity. It's a fabrication, which of course you know - *if* you actually read my posts. Making things up isn't a very good way of discussing something. I refer you to the post that mentions "argument from fallacy".

Sling - I never expect people to respond to everything I write (another of your arguments from fallacy). I do expect those who are arguing a point to respond when their points are answered though. But they often don't, because they can't without being seen to agree - and that's something that they are very reluctant to do.

The flaw in your arguments is that they respond to your own fabrications.

Thank you Bella. It was about a dozen items

You know, I do think that Search Gaming will end in Second Life at same point.

Of all sorts. When we are speaking about the "official" Search.

Because I think at some point the Lindens will decide keeping up the infrastructure of the search system is simply not worth the trouble and the performance-related hit.

They will just let 3rd party searches take over.

You're not really the one being scammed, Bella. Those who lose their rightful place in the search listings to unscrupulous bot runners are, as are those who share sims with them where half or more of the sim capacity is being taken up by bot farms. Imagine what the grid would be like if every parcel was playing host to twenty traffic bots. Every sim would be full and no real people could go anywhere or do anything. That's where we'd be if every business owner operated like Phil and all the others who exploit the system for personal gain, which is why the justification that "my competitors are free to use the same method to 'optimize' their search listing" is such a stupid argument. The more people who feel they have to resort to running bots to get noticed the more absurd it gets. If you have no qualms about buying from people who show such disregard for their competitors and neighbors, that's your business, but it's ultimately in everyone's best interest to fight against such blatant selfishness. If you reward that kind of behavior with your business you become part of the problem.

So Phil,

The implication of what you are saying is that you accept that the intention of LL was that traffic == popularity.

If you accept that then it should logically follow that you accept that gaming the traffic metric runs counter to LL's intentions.

Would you accept that despite the absence of an explicit "Thou shalt not game traffic" in the TOS, that such gaming is not legitimate?