BOT places! List them here!

A lot of talk, considering what I made was a conditional statement which reflected exactly that - I simply said that if he felt differently about the impact of bots, then he must have a different idea of what SL was all about. What is your problem in reading comprehension?

...made by somebody who's already expressed his contempt for the average SL consumer and his apathy for any effect his actions may have on the grid.

There's a great forums feature called "ignore user." It's really nice when you find some drama queen who isn't interested in moving the conversation forward.

One could substitute "ad-farm" for (traffic) "bots" in that. It would make as much sense.

You say that SL is "just an environment", but you're wrong.
It is a community. By this I mean a group of people sharing a common space -- as opposed to a bunch of good ol' folks baking apple pies for each other.

There are loose Community Standards laid down by LL for people who share in the space.
These could be summarised as a need to respect each other.
Individuals are free to make "My World, My Imagination", but this freedom comes with responsibilities attached. It is not unconstrained.
Gaming search is dishonest and disrespectful. Land extortion ditto. Griefing ditto.

Well, as I indicated, my problem is with the impact on experience, especially the newbies, which means that I actually am for campers. I did appreciate the places that cut free anyone that went "busy" on them.

You seem to be caught in a fork here, though. Part argues that they don't represent much of a load - not enough to impact experience in the system sense. The other side argues they are a positive because they impact load for testing/experential purposes. To be positive, it should have the same metrics en masse as the customer, which we will assume are still not bots. To load the system with bots, which by those more experienced, including you, argue are not as much a load because they do not make the same set of system requests, en masse or otherwise, means that they are a poor load. Sort of like testing an IS by having someone type randomly into screens, when the issue is what, where, when and the update process (I apologize for the forgoing overly technical language, but it is at the end of the day and I'm trying to get the energy to go play in traffic). So I can agree with the system argument, other than maybe the instant of log-in for some unfortunates if bots auto log-in, but I disagree that they can in any way be a net positive.

OTOH, the problem lies with LL. They keep trying to come up with systems to do things that perhaps are best left alone. Any system that starts with a gaming structure (most popularity systems) will be gamed, sooner (usually) or later. LL should leave it alone. Bots are essentially an outcome of an unnecessary part of the SL system. Peel that away and you are left with the useful bots (mostly).

It was a genuine question. It sounded like you had a specific vested interest and I was curious what it is. That's all.

If I misunderstood what you wrote, I apologise. It sounded like you were saying that he must have a different idea a to what SL is about than the normal idea, and I pointed out that SL isn't about anything in particular.

That's totally untrue, and you can't find anything that I've written to back it up - nothing. I'm tempted to think that you are lying (shit-stirring), but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you are simply mistaken. What you have no doubt seen is my contempt for many of the people who post in this forum. That's because they ask for, and deserve, my contempt.

That's also totally untrue. I have no concern whatsoever about any effect I may have on many of the posters in this forum and, again, it's because they deserve that attitude. You are taking my view of some of the people here and assuming that I hold the same view for everybody. This forum is special - a fair number of its population deserve contempt, but it's only in this forum.

I have no interest in many of the people who post here, probably most of them, and I wouldn't lift a finger to help them in any way. I used to be helpful here, but that was killed by the people here, and I deeply regretted having written anything that was helpful. If I could get that sticky about search removed, I'd do it in a flash. You might even remember why. So kindly refrain from spreading gossip and falsehoods around about me. You don't know me at all.

No it wouldn't. I see what you mean but ad-farmers and traffic bot are vastly different. Ad-farmers are in the extortion business, and affect people who own neighouring land. If used correctly, traffic bots affect nobody.

The same could be said of a country or the whole world, and it would make the same sense. However, communities are populated by all sorts of people who do very different things. Some run businesses, some play sports and games, etc. etc. Each person in the community does his/her own thing to suit him/herself, and as long as they don't have an unreasonable negative effect on others in the community, everything is fine. I use the word "unreasonabale" because people do acceptable things that have negative impacts on others. E.g. a big advertising campaign has a negative financial effect on competitors, but it's totally acceptable.

Having said that, SL is not a community. It's a 3-D virtual environment - that's all. Communities have sprung in the environment, but a person's use of SL need have nothing at all to do with a community, or anything like that.

This would be an example of you showing your contempt for your fellow SL resident. It's not the only example, it's just the most recent.

The above quote could be very easily be interpreted something like this:
We don't have to lie but we choose to, because we make more money when we lie.

Sounds fairly contemptious of your fellow resident in general.

Fine, I don't like bots being used to artificially game traffic numbers, and using unnecessary resources.

But, I'm still not sure of the point of the bot blacklist.

1) Is the idea to education Linden Lab? Well, I suspect that most of the Linden Lab decision-makers spend very little actual time in Second Life. However, I'd be surprised if the widespread use of bots has escaped their attention. Even if it has, it is widely believed that Linden Lab does not routinely check the Resident Answers Forum to find out information and poll resident satsifaction.

2) Is the idea to generate data about the use of bots? I'm no statistics expert, but I think an informal thread without systematic procedures of accumulating and analyzing data is not going to provide any usable, credible data.

3) Is the idea some sort of consumer information? That is, by creating a "blacklist" of places that use bots, consumers like me who care can take the information and avoid the places that use bots. Well, that's the germ of a good idea. However, it's not usuable to me in this form. Now, come up with a reliable alternative to in-world search that incorporates actual bot data (see #2, above) so that I can manipulate results based on that bot data, then you have something that interests me.

4) Is the idea something aesthetic? Meaning, show-your-bot-pictures is something like the show-your-avatar pictures. Well, okay, I can see that. It's off-topic for Resident Answers, but most threads are. I'm not particularly interested in looking at the pictures, but maybe some people are.

I don't like the idea of bots used solely to game traffic, or using up vast, unnecessary amounts of Second Life resources. However, I don't think that simple "I hate bots" threads really do anything to address the issue on any meaningful level that would result in an improvement of Second Life.

aww Phil did we make up you going all soft? I just may add you to my friends list when I am in world if you'd have me
ty sweety

i go to that shop very often and never saw any bots....*cleans her glasses and TP to check*---

So, I wonder what percentage of customers are bots?
Could be important to adjust our sales demographic towards them as they become 50% of the population. especially when the servers are at max on weekends.
What type of land do bots prefer to rent?
What are their prefered colours?
Do they like Timber or Brick?
Period furniture, Modern or Futuristic?
Bots in general aren't the problem, but the fact anyone can run infinate numbers of them is.
Some bots once hammered the grid so hard they had to slow TP down for ALL residents, of course botrunners won't let that slow them down, they just run 100 bots instead of 10 to get around that.

I leave the seat and lid down all the time, though my last GF for some reason used to keep leaving the lid up.
I can't see the reason in having a lid on a toilet and not closing it.

I didn't knoiw we'd fallen out

My whole idea about starting this discussion is, that I'm so fed up with places, that run dishonest trafic due to bots. After I started this I've seen several places, people have IM'ed about others too. The trafic is what people look at, espeacilly when they rent shops or land. We in Denmark do NOT use bots to pump the numbers. So I wanted to hear what others had to say, and I'm really surpriced, and also very happy, that so many came with input.... Only one thing... No one has the ball to say:"YES, I like like shit to my customers" which I think they do. When I'm at a place with huge traficnumbers I allways check for camps and bots... If they're there, I'm gone. I prefer 700 in trafic that's real than 70.000 made by bots in a skybox.
You asked, if it was to educate Linden Lab... Hmmmm, personally I don't think they read this, and if they do, I don't think they give a BEEB.... For them, trafic is trafic, and it looks good at the frontpage with 60.000 logged in... only sad, that 40.000 are bots

Checked Skin Oasis.

Around 90 bots (591m high on multiple platforms) there, hardly any people (2/3 real avies)

Time dilation was around: 90-97 (standard = 100)
Sim FPS at 44
Agent updates sec. was at 96
Total frame time at around 13-14ms
Sim time (other) at around 5ms
Agent time at 2.5ms

All bots were sitting, so physics time was fine.
There was a pretty high amount of scripts running (1935 scripts), which could cause some of the time dilation too.

General conclusion.
Bots do lag a sim, but not in an amount that will seriously affect the sim performance.

I haven't tried any major tests, like purposefully crashing the sim to check how this would affect performance when it would come up and all the bots would log back in. As that would be unethical.

I have to correct that. Bots don't lag a sim, and you're numbers show it. Bots have a minor effect on a sim - *everything* has some effect on a sim - but when you're talking about lag, you're talking about noticeably slowing things down, and you haven't shown that anything was noticeably slowed down. With a Total Frame Time of 13-14 ms, you were lagged??? LMAO

Ah well, you see that's because the use of bots is not shitting on customers. Clear now? Good

You're right Phil, the use of bots in and of itself is not shitting on a customer. However, lying to your customers by using bots to boost your own profit margin thru the blatantly gaming of the traffic system is not only shitting on your own customers, but on every honest merchant trying to run a business on this platform.

For 90+ avatars on a sim, those are pretty damn good stats..

Are they inflating your traffic numbers? Yes or No? Would you be as high in the listings without them inflating your numbers? Yes or No? Is lying to your customers the same as shitting on them? Yes?

Pretty simple Philly Boy, you are a liar.

Traffic was initiated as a system that would allow Linden Lab to reward residents who created places of interest in Second Life.

One way was through direct payment from Linden Lab, which Linden Lab abolished after camping was developed.

So the primary victims of cheating from the first camping bots were Linden Lab.

Traffic also has a use in the Search function (more so in the past, less so now maybe though the details shrouded in mystery). Traffic is supposed to measure general interest in a build, and Linden Lab apparently assumes that residents using the Search function care to have their search results ranked by this measure of other residents' general interest in a build.

One point that merchants continue to overlook again and again when debating the fairness of Traffic and camping bots is that the popularity of a place is not relevant to a resident in every single Search. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

If I am searching for a place to go to socialize with other people, I may very well care about popularity (which Traffic measures), because I want a lot of live people at the location with whom I may socialize. In that case, I feel cheated when I use Traffic to gauge popularity, check the map to see lots of residents there, and then I teleport and find that all those residents who are supposed to be there are actually bots, not live people.

If I am searching for products, Traffic is absolutely meaningless to me. I don't go to a store to socialize with people, but I go to a store to view products.

I see no information anywhere that suggests that Traffic was in some way implemented to be a proxy for product quality at a store.

Using camping bots to game Traffic is only dishonest to customers when customers have some sort of legitimate expectation that Traffic yields relevant Search results to them.

It may be the case that one merchant's use of camping bots to game traffic may be unfair to other merchants. About that, the consumer does not care. The consumer's interest is primarily in finding what the consumer wants.

Same here. I ignore traffic numbers completely. When a search list comes up, I alphabetize it and go from there. I've found marvelous things in stores that had low numbers, and absolute shit in the high traffic places. As to the concept of using traffic bots, I can understand both sides of the argument. I am pretty much ambivalent to it, personally as i amtoward bots in general. I don't know enough to know if they drain resources or not.

Even for social venues, I don't go by traffic. If the place is in a genre or music style that I like I will go, even if it isn't full of green dots. In fact I usually go to a new place when it is empty, to check it out for the first time. So all in all, traffic is meaningless to me.

I've been using Second Life for 18 months now, and this is the first time I've ever read that I could alphabetize Search results.