Baloo: never resolve an issue as "misfiled" for being in the wrong category. Leave a comment on WEB-566 instead.

Gordon, I don't have a proposal here for filtering the results of traffic. I'm not interested in accommodating that very specific and not really needed interest. Make a separate proposal to do that if it interests you.

Automatic identification of bots is indeed possible. It requires only political will, and an end to extremism and 0/1 literalism. Routines to make relatively high percentage of identifications are entirely possible. The Lindens have enormous capacity to track log-ons and users, and this can be deployed to differentiate bots. They can ask for self-identification by insisting that all bots be paid premium accounts, and punishing those that don't self-comply, for example, to cite one of dozens of ideas of how the identification can be made. The idea that there will then ensue a bot arms race to create routines to defeat any identification of routines belongs to the same mentality as "if you can see it you can copy it, therefore we should cease creating permissions and cease attempting to prevent IP theft".

Every resident should have the right to ban bots from his land. Protection from data scraping and other intrusive routines should be paramount. The invocation of "witch hunts" regarding inanimate coded manifestations of one resident's will against other is patently false. A bot is a vehicle. It is not special.

At the core of any coded system must be a sacred principle: that human beings control code and machines, and code and machines do not control humans. Abdicating the world to bots and pretending they can't be controlled is death. It's religion, not science. The idea that you "can't mark bots" has to be dropped early on in the Metaverse or it will not be fit for humans and will not be free, as it will enable a select few humans to control others at their whims with unaccountable code.

Paging Dr. Turing.

Why would Second Life be special and able to promote the will of some humans with their bots, against the will of other humans either uninformed or exploited by them?

You don't need Dr. Turing. You need the average Linden liaison responding to an AR as they respond to them for ad farms. They go to a parcel, and if the find 50 inanimate beings in a box, they ticket them. If they have to run a script to monitor them for a day because they "aren't sure" hey, they can do that.

The issue is not going away and it is growing rapidly. Merchants are having to cast proper ethical behavior aside to compete in a contracting economy.

Has Linden Lab even considered what would happen if 2,000 merchants all started running 20 bots per parcel tomorrow? What impact would an additional 40,000 logins have on the grid?
And since this is an official arms race then next stop will be for thousands of parcels to escalate to compete by running 40 bots per parcel. Now we would have 80,000 bots jamming the system. Since bots are more efficient about connecting and remaining connected then before long the only accounts connected would be bots and Second Life would effectively be history.

I concur that harsh penalties in a rigidly enforced policy is the only solution. Find a parcel with obvious bots that is consistently operated that way? Send a warning. If it happens again then that account must be deleted and all assets forfeited with no appeal. Then there is no longer a problem with messing with search because they are not even going to be in Second Life anymore and there will be no prims left to index. Linden Lab would do well to make a first enforcement sweep and target the high profile merchants abusing the system with blatant traffic fraud as an example to the rest and to prove that money and inside connections is not a factor in TOS enforcement.

The reference to Turing is only by way of saying it doesn't take a live person long to identify a bot. We didn't need Alan Turing to perform the Turing Test, just to invent it. And that's done.

By "subvertable" I didn't mean unusable.

I agree the analogy to ad farms is very apt.

Prok, note that I voted for your issue. I think traffic fraud is a serious problem and I'd like to see something done about it.

Whether LL recognizes this and has the will to do something about it is another matter. Like ad farms, they'll have to see it as a threat to their profitability rather than an enhancement of the apparent popularity of SL first. The "bots have real uses too" handwaving points to the current level of denial they're in in this issue.

And not only did I vote for it, but I made a thread on SLU asking others to vote for it as well.

Of course all of these arguments have been debated in the forums for years and years. I'm voting simply because I do want something done, but I haven't seen anyone come up with a clear cut way to know when an avatar is a bot, and not simply someone afk. It's not realistic to go around giving Turing Tests to every avatar you meet.

It's kindof difficult to fake bot usage. People legitimately shopping in a store don't stand in one spot, AFK. People legitimately going to a club don't say nothing whatsoever. The Lindens would need to be a bit more investigative about this than other stuff, but I don't see how it can be faked very much.

If you use bots to get higher traffic, that's a metric that's in their database and they can just spot check the places with the highest numbers. Bots are pretty obviously bots. They stand around, they don't shop, they don't talk, they don't move, they have birthdays on a similar date, they're wearing noob clothes, they're not behaving like human customers.

Compounded with the fact that I'm pretty sure you only need to stand on a parcel for five minutes to contribute to its traffic metric (and after that, you're not contributing anymore, you've given your "vote" and it's done), these 24 hour bot farms are irrelevant already.

If someone rezzes 500 bots for five minutes to game traffic and then gets rid of all of them, yeah, they're still gaming traffic, but you know, the sim is now freed up of avatars for the next 23 hours and 55 minutes. The problem with bots and camping is the adverse affect 500 avatars has on the sim, and to the sim's neighbors and the other people who have parcels next to the assy club or store that's using that to get more popular.

Most smart people just pay others to use their picks now anyway. It's still gaming, but that doesn't affect sim performance. I don't care about the metric being gamed, personally, I care about how camping and bot usage disrupts normal sim activity.

Thank you and yes, thanks for moving to Service.

Enforcement will be interesting.

I recommend Linden Lab conduct a silent survey and catalog all the blatant offenders. Then publish the policy.

Then conduct surveillance to see how the blatant offenders attempt to obfuscate the bots.

Then systematically and without appeal delete all accounts that are still doing bots in a box as well as those that begin using bot obfuscation systems or techniques.

In addition delete the accounts of anyone creating bot obfuscation systems.

As for camping well camping is used to falsify traffic. If you have an urge to give money away there are other ways to do it that do not involve fraudulent behavior.

I think Second Life would be improved if the camping farm operations were eliminated since they add no value to the experience and are only taking money out of the economy.

As for people that make a living marketing fraud automation well they can just use their talents for something else and probably do better at it.

Now if all this is too hard then do the easy thing and disconnect traffic from search. That is an instant fix via code removal.

I agree that the Terms of Service should deal explicitly with gaming of traffic statistics, as well as other advertising abuse issues. Advertising abuse simply steals search users from content they actually desire, just as it does in any other search system. Systems such as Google have harsh penalties for gaming search results, which has kept the worst of the offenders (with varying results over time) from swamping real results off the front page. The benefit of staying on top of potential spammers and link baiters is the position as the number one search tool on the Internet. In Second Life there is no real competitor to the built in search, so normal market forces isn't going to drive one provider to the top over the others, so it would seem in the best interests of the Lab to make the existing system as good as possible, for the sake of customer retention (especially for new users, who find it challenging to find what they need without extensive gaming of the results pages).

Seriously though, I thought this change was announced many months ago. (Didn't Jeska Linden do a couple blog posts about it?) Is it still planned?

If the new Search All were more up-to-date, or if it didn't present confusing broken links when parcel status changed, I'd suggest removing the existing Search > Places altogether. But currently only Search > Places is "correct all the time" in terms of actual usable parcels. But the traffic-only formula really makes the tool less useful than it should be, and has a nasty economic and sociological impact.

Joshua, I've run a business in SL for about 2 years now. I can say you can't readily predict what customers will do. Some pop in, buy something and are gone, all in under 20 seconds. Some stand completely 100% stationary, and never say anything, as they Cam around the whole store, for 30 minutes or more. Some (and a great few it is) have stood in my store for more than 8 hours, doing god knows what, only to finally buy something later I would find in my transaction history. None of these were bots. When someone starts say "X behaviour = bot", they are treading dangerous ground.

Linden Labs has said over and over in blogs that they want to improve the mainland experience. They should take this feature suggestion seriously.

Rather than promote a business in an ethical fashion , some people have taken to "gaming search" as the only means of adding credibility to their crap products. There are many people that have designed products that stand the test of time and do not need any bots to draw people to their business.

An avatar standing around camming onto products isn't going to be AFK. When you click on something, a trail of particles goes from your avatar to the object you've clicked on. Your head moves to focus on where you're camming. Bots don't do that.

I can and do argue that they are bots. An avatar without a person attached == traffic fraud.

And they are there to game the traffic system, to create the appearance of activity without actually having any.

There was a time in the early days of the web when people would run scripts that would fetch a web page repeatedly to drive the page views up, or vote repeatedly on a survey. This is no different.

The issue is the way people use bots and the initial description of this issue by Prok says things like "use of camping and bots" even if there were 0 bots this would not change the camping situation. I can remember the days when camping was full of bored people (mostly, there were some bots) but people were mostly AFK but once in a while they would come back, they were not bots but regular users who were just AFK, and i think it was mentioned that AFK users of the SL viewer hammer bandwidth much more than bots do (for various reasons) and contribute just as little. But then also the camping can provide a very small amount of $L to those who otherwise don't have any and may for good reasons not be able to just buy them with there CC.

Some other points, i can be AFK for a long time, sometimes in vendor heavy shopping areas, i have had to leave my viewer for an hour to get even 70% of the textures to see what was there, some one passing may decide that i am artificially driving up traffic figures when in fact i just want to see what is there because i'm looking for something specific and its taking ages.

I also have a text only client i use for SL at work, for various business and personal reasons. This uses the same basic technology as bots do, and would and could fail many so called tests for bots, and i may be logged in places all day, in case i get an IM or some one comes to chat to me i get alerted immediately and can just jump in and start chatting.

So after that ramble by point is bots themselves are not bad, but can be used in bad ways much in the same way a normal user can be, well normal or a griefer.

The point of this jira is falsifying of traffic not bots, but probably more general i see it as the weaknesses in the current traffic system, but if any one actually has a sensible workable solution for replacement of the current traffic i would love to hear it. I've not seen any examples of WWW search engines that are immunine to some form of rigging. Replacing popular places with showcase i agree has been successful.

There is no law that says coders' will – as manifested through their bots – should be privileged over non-coders' wil.

You and others keep talking about bots as if they are separate, autonomous, value-free, inherently-good beings, like angels.

They're not. They are the concretization of the will of a coder – they are always and everywhere tethered to that will. That will can be ill – fraudulent, infusing traffic, or scraping data – or good – making NPCs, performing management functions like group invites. But by and large, the experience most people have of bots in SL is negative, because the human beings that guide them hide behind them, and pretend they aren't the issue, and that their will, trying to coerce others, isn't the issue, but that these value-free "inventions" should be extended endless freedom "in the name of science." Sorry, but that's crap.

It doesn't matter if bots "perform good functions". So what? That's not what this proposal is about. THIS proposal is about using bots to jack up traffic and create fraudulent search results.

In real life, out on the Internet, top web sites that report on tech news, say, or that aggregate news sites, have strict policies about not accepting for their rankings and search any sites that are fraudulent click-farms and link-baits. They police this rigorously, even being tekkies, and even loving bots, and even thinking bots are ok and have useful functions to spider the web and help create search. But they draw the line and restrain it when it is used for fraud. Why is SL any different?

Please, spare me with the AFK stories. You are not AFK unmoving for 24/7 bobbing up and down and blocking passageways and exasperating newbies and falsifying traffic. You are just AFK for a long time. this edge-casing to death of every issue in SL has to stop. No witch-hunters are going to "get you" because you are AFK.

Rather, intelligent organic beings are going to examine the use of mechanical bots and rule that they are fraudulent and punish the offenders.

Going off on rants about "the good bots" is really a tangent for this feature request, because it is about the misuse of bots, making them bad. There aren't any good bots in this equation when it comes to faking of traffic.

The current traffic system is not weak. It's a great system. It's a democratic, free system that produces useful, valuable information for a free economy of informed users. Stop trying to harm that institution by hacking at it with such a blunt axe and demanding it be destoyed wholesale just to be able to keep inviolate your bots as a class. Sorry, but that's not on. I see absolutely no reason why the human institution of merited traffic, representing the creativity and sales efforts and news of humans in SL that helps the economy has to be destroyed in the name of mechanical bots merely for the extremist position of making invented machines inviolate so that coders have creative freedom uber alles. There is no reason to pit one set of human beings' creativity against another in this fashion, nor to allow one to prevail and destroy the other.

Your bots and anyone's bots have to be restrained in the interests of the public good. Bot coders do not get to exercise their will over everyone, chanting that they do good endlessly, when we see with our own eyes the wrongs they do.

Just because search engines on the web are not "immune" doesn't mean that website – and services starting with the great Google! – don't try to curb this phenomenon. The 0/1 all-or-nothing extremism is a great disservice to the public in Second Life.

Actually, a bot does have a person attached to it. A person who has chosen to replicate his will and coerce others with it.

Bots are not somehow untethered to human beings, or outside their control. Those coding them have a will, to do X, Y, or Z with them, and need to be called to account.

The only sensible thing for LL to do is get rid of traffic in search, but they won't do that, so you're just whistling in the wind.

I think a discussion regarding capcha or tests or whatever isn't even necessary. A human can easily enforce this, the same way gambling and ageplay was enforced. We've proven that banning things grid-wide does work.

Which of the existing AR categories do you think applies?

All there is, is a visceral, hysterical hatred of traffic. And it's the kind of hatred that people who want controlling, mechanical systems to override human freedom.

The overwhelming majoring of parcels have LEGITIMATE traffic. The overwhelming number of stores in search/places or classifieds have MERITED traffic. This is easily proved by taking 20 key words and studying them. The gaming of some sights can't negate the MERITED traffic. The idea that this is some "old fashioned" or "outdated" metric is silly. The Lindens' algorithm for this, based on log-ons and time spent across parcels per log-on is all good. It's free information freely created for a free economy. And that, I suspect, is why some hate it so viscerally. Because they'd rather have things work not by public metrics and free information, but by binding, loyalty-based word-of-mouth systems. It really is a great difference in cultures.

The fury and hatred stirred up by somebody gaming traffic is all out of proportion to the actual impact on the world. There aren't THAT many bots logging in. There aren't THAT many stores with bot boxes. Those that have them, get a pass. People skip down from that return, and go to the next one. Recently I visited some 200 sims, all the non-English language sims I could find. And while scanning to find the good ones to make up a list of recommendations, I merely took five seconds to pull up the map, and if I saw piled up dots in uniform rows, signally camping/bot boxes, I kept going down the list. It was not a problem.

The idea that the Lindens would be faced with some administrative nightmare is also bogus. There are 300 Lindens. Enormous numbers of them work inworld. They already pour out enormous amounts of effort cleaning up prims, removing casinos, removing ads. Huge amounts of labour that they do, like janitors, relentlessly, 24/7. By contrast with abandoned land clearing, tree-waving encroachment, violations like "ageplay" or casinos, or ad farms, traffic abuse is a negligibly small number of cases. After a few high-profile hits and a week off search, bots will dissipate.

Forums discussing something "over and over" are hardly a recommendation. The people who show up for forums are biased; the people who read them are a tiny minority; and most importantly, critical voices are banned from them for no good reason : )

Anyway i think some bots can have a constructive use, some clubs use one bot as a greeter, or i saw them even as "sculptures" having an artistic use. In this case i think is a fair use, but having permanently 20 bots rezzed is just overuse, like in Provincetown East (have a pic including SLurl here http://www.koinup.com/raulcrimson/work/101920/).

Then you don't read the forums enough, Prok. There are some very persuasive arguments there about the very thing that you propose. I'll give you some examples.

If using camping and/or traffic bots to improve a parcel's traffic figure becomes a ToS violation:-

1. Stores that use models would have a very unfair advantage over stores that don't. Example: I use 6 functioning models in my furniture store and I don't know of any other furniture store that uses models. So I would get a 6 x 1440 head start on the rest. That's a 6840 points start! - hardly what you have in mind

2. The moment that camping and traffic bots are banned, people who have bots will find other 'genuine' uses for them on the parcels, and people who offer camping will create avatars and bots to be 'genuinely' used on the parcels. The result would be that the numbers may be lower, but the influencing of traffic will continue unabated. Not only that, but it would make things worse because all the avs would be where people are, causing lag, whereas now the bots are well out of the way, not causing lag.

3. Clubs that offer a few things for sale in tiny shops adjoining the club, but sell precious little, will have a grossly unfair ranking advantage over specialist stores, because of their club traffic. If there is no influencing of traffic, the specialist stores will be pushed out of the way in the rankings by those little, rarely visited shops.

I used to push for the banning of camping / traffic bots. At the Future of Traffic meetings with Jack, I asked that they be banned, and said that it would only take a blog post to virtually kill them at a stroke, so you're not suggesting anything that LL hasn't already thought of. But, like you, I hadn't thought it through. It's only when I considered what would happen, that I realised that a ban on influencing traffic, which is what you're after, wouldn't have the desired effect, and would certainly make things worse than they are now.

I repeat, the only sensible thing for LL to do is remove the traffic rankings, but they have shown a great reluctance to do that, even though it is part of their own roadmap for search, so I say again that you are whistling in the wind.

A compromise would be that bots, when marked as such, would not be counted in traffic. Bots that are marked correctly, and are being used on land that permits such uses (such as models, NPCs, etc) would then have no impact on search, while still providing the function they were created for. Using unmarked bots would then be a TOS violation, while avoiding creating problems for non abusive uses. Likewise, using bots for abusive purposes (griefer bots swarming a parcel, for example) would also be a TOS violation.

The question about camping for traffic or linking plots for traffic is independent of the abuse of bots in world. While one could argue that camping creates bots out of normal users, the solution to that is independent of correcting for the bots.

(Funny, in a furniture shop, RL or SL I never felt the need to watch somebody else sit in the furniture, I just sit in it myself.)

And according to Phil, a shop adjacent to a club has an "unfair advantage" because of the club traffic?

Erm...the club traffic is actual traffic. People. People you might talk to or dance with.

The furniture "models" are unmanned, unresponsive bots. But the club is unfair.

Go figure.

Yes, I do use traffic bots. I was using them long before I started to shout for the removal of them, and later for the removal of traffic rankings. Furniture shops have furniture that you can do much more than sit in, Maggie How would you find out if the animations are to your liking if you are there alone? In my store, you can do exactly that, and people do use the models for exactly that. Go and see for yourself. So...

I have some well-thought-out opinions on the subject, Maggie, which I am stating here. It's better if we discuss the various views and opinions, and not discuss each other - not negatively, anyway.

Yes it is, Maggie. That's exactly the point I was making. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in writing it.

Wow. Thanks for that image, Phil. I bet it does generate a lot of traffic.

Do you have to inflate them? Or just pay them?

I would agree that yanking traffic as a ranking factor would pull the incentive to use bot farms to inflate traffic number. I also agree that the traffic number itself should be available to view on a parcel. As written, this policy would kill the use entirely, and make life a lot more difficult for those who use bots for a useful purpose, such as group invitations, as those bots incidentally increase traffic.

No they don't generate a lot of traffic, if you mean people rushing to use them for their jollies. People actually use them in they way they are intended to be used - to view or try the animations to see if they are suitable / good enough for them.

Now shall we get back to the subject of this jira?

There is a difference. I'm thinking from the wild tangent that has gone on with the comments on this page, that either people don't understand what the intentional gaming of traffic stats actually is or maybe have never seen what "bots in a box" actually look like.

Let me clarify my reply to that...

When a person does a Places tab search for, say, "female clothes", as long as the exact search phrase is contained a parcel's description, it will be listed, and its ranking will be according to the parcel's traffic. There are many stores that specialise in female clothes, and there are plenty of clubs with tiny shops attached that have a few female clothes on sale in the tiny shop(s). Sales are rare in the attached shops, but they are many in the specialist shops.

A specialised shop might have people coming and going much of every day, but it's traffic and ranking will be trumped by a club that has frequent events. The people at the event are not there for the clothes - they are there for something completely different, and many won;t even know the clothes are there. And yet those people cause the tiny shop that gets no visitors to outrank specialist shops where people do visit for the clothes. I've seen it in action - it was one of the reasons why I started to use traffic bots - to compete with a club that had a tiny store attached.

It's not a case of, as long as the traffic is generated by real people, it's ok. It is not ok. If those real people are there for something completely different, they shouldn't generate any traffic count for the tiny shop that has a few pieces for sale - that they are not even visiting because they have no interest in it, or don't even know that it's there.

A real people count may be better than a bots count, but it will give a huge advantage to those tiny shops that nobody visits or buys from, and put many specialist shops (proper shops) at a big disadvantage. It's not a solution.

Right.

Well, aside from the bad faith of that concept, I have to question this "models" stuff. We never used to see "models" until the traffic wars began among a few stores. It's just a way to make it seem as if there really isn't traffic botting, but "models". Screenshots of a live avatar in the clothing was always good enough, and no one demanded that they also have a floor-walking model (and actually, whenever I've gone to stores with these "models," I see them either Caspering or not moving, they never move and "demonstrate how the clothing flows".

Of course, there are any number of eager, live people who'd be happy to earn as little as $150 a day being live store clerks modelling clothes – but hey, why spend $150 when you can spend $0.

Seriously, it's bogus. They were introduced to be sort of elegant bots posing as not really bots to get rid of that slumped and crowded look that bots and campers created in a venue, and they definitely inject traffic. And that's duplicitous. You could make mannequins, really, or have live models.

This use of bots isn't acceptable to the majority of users. Says who? I've found whenever I go to a store and see those "models" that the owner is merely upping traffic and trying a ruse. It's annoying and unnecessary.

I''m with Blaccard on this. People are edge-casing and thinking of special pleadings that aren't rational. A bot box has 60 bots crammed in it. A camping station made up of bots of feeding AFK newbies isn't going to be confused with a) one group greeter b) one NPC RP character c) 6 models "showing off outfits". Any organic intelligent being can understand the differences, and can put through the AR with the bot box and leave the 6 "models" alone – although any more than that would begin to be suspicious.

Cristalle, there is no need to rewrite this proposal by fussing with various definitions and exclusionary clauses about "good bots".

The accent on this proposal is the offense of traffic fraud and the punishment of traffic fraud. That's where the focus MUST stay to get out of the endless good bot/bad bot loop. It's about faking traffic. That is done with bots and camping. One greeter bot, 6 mannequin model bots, they aren't going to be jacking up traffic much now, are they?! Please.

If mannequins then become the new "under the radar bot" just the way campers went from being real people to being bots, then the TOS can be applied against them when the offense of traffic fraud occurs. Somebody AFK for 6 hours who logged on their alt to have it try permissions on objects who gets traffic of 250 as a result isn't obviously going to be targeted for committing traffic fraud.

Once again,as we saw with that awful Traffic Discussion Group the Lindens made inworld, we are seeing a hugely paraodixal phenomenon. Those most against traffic and who want to pull it completely are club owners who hate competing with other clubs. They are in a bot arms race and see the only way is to remove all traffic, not remove the incentive to use bot for traffic. Then they turn around, once you say, oh, bots are the problem, and suddenly demand protection as a special category using bots. One suspects that even if there were no bots, the problem of having to compete is what would bother them most at the end of the day.

I'm sorry, but I don't think the entire world's economy, and all the sales people make from MERITED traffic in search/places, get to be hijacked by a few insecure club owners angry that other clubs get more traffic. Put on events, sell interesting stuff, TP in your friends, stop making the world adjust to your problems and harm their own sales just to make you feel good.

As I said before, the brush is too broad. Things like mobvends and lucky chairs would also be considered artificial means. That's the whole point of these things. You get people to sit there for however long until they get what they want for free, in exchange for their traffic. Excessive bot usage should be something that should be regulated anyway.

As I explained, the focus of this feature proposal is on traffic fraud. it is not merely limited to "boxes of bots". If somebody deploys 20 bots and calls them "models," that is traffic fraud, too. There is no way they can pretend that they need to have logged-on bots filling up a sim and actually make it hard for a large number of shoppers to really come. It's an under-the-radar sort of fraud that is meant to merely engage in an arms race in efforts to stop gaming. It's not performed in good faith. Nobody needs to see 20 models of clothing. There are many other ways to display clothing.

The same goes for camping. Camping is a real bane to the mainland, when it prevents people from even coming home to land they bought, because a neighbour even on far less meters of land than you is able to grab all the avatar slots. More and more, I see clubs and malls putting out "campers" who are in fact bots – and they admit it that they are merely the owners' bots logged on to appear to be camping to attract visitors. That way they get traffic, they pay less, and perhaps pay out a little just to a few real people just to stay in search. It's stupid.

Camping is traffic fraud. Therefore it should fall under the TOS for this as indicated in the feature request.

If you merely say "bots in a box," then users will scatter the bots around the sim on various poses pretending to be gardening or playing music or whatever, and claim they are "greeters". No, you have to focus on fraud of traffic.

And you have changed your tune about camping, as far as I can tell, because you used to sing a different tune. Looks like you have some editing to do: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1213.

You also haven't addressed the mobvend and lucky chair issues, which are "artificial means that inflate traffic." Mobvend especially. By your definition, almost anything other than a classified ad will artificially increase traffic. You can't be so vague about it and your obstinance about it doesn't help.

The old "the majority of people are against it" plea doesn't hold any water, and it never did. I can equally well say that "that majority of people don't mind one way or the other" and my statement would be much more realistic that yours, for two reasons. (1) The majority of people in the forum, who have cast opinions, say they don't care one way or the other, and (2) I did a little survery in my store and, after telling people there that I use traffic bots to get high in the rankings, I asked them what they thought of that. Not one of them expressed even a single syllable of disapproval. They just don't care either way. On the other hand, you wrote "This use of bots isn't acceptable to the majority of users. Says who?", but then you didn't tell us who - except you, which is nothing to go by. So it's best to forget what you imagine the majority of people think, because it's just your imagination, and to stick to the subject of your jira.

Your jira rightly finds fault with people influencing the traffic rankings by influencing their traffic counts. That's the issue - not how they do it. I pointed out several reasons why the solution you put forward isn't a solution at all, but would merely change the methods used, and all would continue unabated.

There is only one actual solution to the problem, and that is to do away with the very reason why people influence the traffic numbers. If there is no reason to do it, it won't be done. It's as simple as that. Your 'solution' falls a long way short and, if implemented, it won't change things much at all. The traffic rankings will still be intentionally influenced, as I've pointed out, plus it will cause even more skewed rankings, due to other reasons that I mentioned earlier.

Your jira does point out a real issue. It's just that your solution isn't a solution.

Btw, it doesn't matter how many models places use. If they serve a useful purpose, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using them, as long as they don't have a negative impact on users in the sim, which is already a ToS violation for mainland. In SL clothes shops, they serve a similar purpose to cubicles in RL clothes shops - they allow people to see what the clothing looks like when worn. The fact that you are satisfied with pictures is irrelevant. We do know, from forum posts, that some people find clothes models to be very useful, especially so that the clothes can be seen rather than having to rely on Photoshopped pictures, which are sometimes touched up to hide any flaws. And I've already described how useful they are for animated furniture. It's not for any mere user like you or me to decide how many is acceptable, so your argument about that doesn't hold any water either.

I think you should leave me out of it. I run a business, which is aided by visibility. That's all. Nothing needs to be changed for my sake. I fit in with they way things are, and will continue to do so when things change.

You are wanting something that you can't have, Prok. You are wanting the traffic rankings to stay, but not be intentionally influenced by people. You can't have that, as has been clearly pointed out already. That's why your suggested solution isn't a solution at all.

Having them influenced by daemons, disconnected processed, gold pharmers. and NPCs is quite another.

A model who is walking around a shop interacting with customers while demonstrating wares is one thing, as is a club hostess doing the same. There's a difference between that and a mannequin or a script-driven automaton.

When people see a green dot, they should be able to expect a real live person to be directly operating the avatar associated with the dot, not an entry in a task list.

Anything else is deceptive and fraudulent.

Green dots represent avatars, which usually have someone at the keyboard but, as we have seen, there are perfectly good reasons why they don't have to have someone at the keyboard - reasons that are beneficial to SL users. There is nothing deceptive or fraudulent about my models or about clothes models, for instance. The tags on mine state that they are models, and there are signs there that say exactly what they are, and that they can't respond. There is nothing deceptive or fraudulent about them. What they are is stated right out in the open for all to see.

Your argument is that, as long as they are real people, it's ok to count them for traffic, and it doesn't matter if they are wrong people or not (club goers counting for a tiny nearby clothes shop are wrong people). This jira is about 'wrong' rankings in the Places tab, and your idea would still result in 'wrong' rankings, so it doesn't address the issue.

Simply give the people a client-side option to mark an account as a bot. This setting is stored server side in the db and cannot be changed in smaller intervals than a whole hour. Bot-marked accounts don't create traffic. On-purpose Traffic-creation via bot accounts could then simply be made an ARable offense, as obvious traffic bot farms could be easily identified.

Simply mark those 'bot' marked accounts differently on the minimap as well, as Maggie suggested.

That way, if one sees cleary botted models without this special color, they can be ARd, or at least the owner can be notified to change the setting. Due to the only-hourly (daily?) switching of the bot mode, the bots couldn't be coded to switch their status instantly as soon as nobody is around.

That way, store owners get their model and greeter and group invite bots, without affecting traffic statistics, while at the same time obvious bot-farms are harder to create. Traffic gaming would be reduced to 'drivebys', in a way.

Those who have purposeful bots win, those who are annoyed by bot-based traffic faking win.

You are willing to stop at nothing to get rid of such competition, even entering into arms races with other bot-handlers, and even destroying valid indicators for everyone else.

This is a JIRA about the fraudulent jacking up of traffic statics. Everywhere else on the Internet, large Internet sites, and companies like Google, take all kinds of steps to thwart, curb, reduce the use of such fake clicking, link farms, fake traffic. They don't remove page rankings completely – which is what you are suggesting the Lindens do. They don't remove people's traffic reports on their websites. Instead, they go after those who abuse such systems.

It's not rocket science, and it isn't some huge administrative task, and it is nowhere near the review load of the ad farms issue. Despite the hysteria

Once again, I want to point out the irony here of those clamouring the loudest to remove bots: those who use them, but only to fight other bot users, who are primarily club owners. This is a tiny, tiny minority of the SL population, it is a highly selective interest group, and it can't be allowed to hijack the entire public on this issue, destroying all the content of other residents with their MERITED traffic.

The idea that there are "wrong people" is a curious one. If club goers swarm into a tiny nearby store as a result of originally going to a high-traffic club side, what of it? That's still legitimate traffic. That's a tiny store that has either paid bunches to buy land next to an infohub or high-traffic venue, or a tiny store that the owner of that high-traffic venue has rented out or runs to supplement his business. It's entirely fine, normal in commerce, and not "wrong". That it could be construed as wrong is part of the curious allergy to commerce you find in SL, which is a substrate of furious, Puritanical demands to ban all forms of commerce and its markers like traffic.

I'm all for marking bots differently on their profile, and come to think of it, having them a different colour on the map is a great idea, too, but that's a separate proposal of mine, not this one.

Models and greeters shouldn't normally affect traffic that much. If there were so many of them packed on a sim as to significantly jack up its traffic, then, yes, that owner is guilty of traffic fraud and gets a warning. Pretty simple stuff.

Chalice, I'm not for atomizing the world by making different views of it. I don't think you can run an integrated free economy by making different viewers for different people. My solution is so much simpler, and add human discretion to what might at times require a legitimate judgement call. The reality is, the overwhelming majority of people will not bother to go get another viewer, and fiddle with it to get settings that erase out the view of bot-generated traffic – too many steps. So they will be stuck still using a gamed search/places. And it is at that level it needs to be tackled.

Then if anyone ran bots that didn't opt themselves out of traffic counting, that would make it clear cut what the intent of the person running it was.

Even without this though, I do agree this isn't a huge administrative load. Camping bots are extremely obvious and can be found and enforced against pretty easily.

"An avatar is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego,,. It is an "object" representing the embodiment of the user." --Wikipedia

"Embodiment of the user". Not manifestation of a shopkeeper's mannequin.

"Green dots: Other Residents of Second Life. You may want to go over and say hello!" --SL Knowledge Base

I'd say it's you as an admitted bot exploiter that holds the minority view. Unless you expect to have a vote counted for each drone you rez.. Maybe the tag on them should read: "Ha, ha, fooled you. You thought this was a real person but it's just a ghost, consuming resources as if it were an actual person. Thanks for visiting Phil's shop. Next time logins are restricted, remember I'm in here posing away..."

You are mistaken that the ones suggesting the removal of traffic rankings are those who have something to gain by it (my paraphrase). I think I'm the one doing most of it in this thread, and I have something to lose by it. Also, everyone, but everyone, in the forum who has cast an opinion, wants to see the end of traffic rankings. That's those with businesses that do absolutely nothing to influence the traffic count, me with a business and I do influence the traffic count, and lots of others who don't even have anything to rank in search. You really should read the forums more, Prok, and stop making things up.

If club-goers swarm into a nearby little shop as a result of going to the club, fair enough - for the time they spend in the little store. You missed the point again, which was that the club-goers count for the little store all of the time they are in the club. They are the wrong people to count for the little store when they are in the club. It's not rocket science, Prok - it's simple common sense.

As I said more than once, your jira is about a real issue, but your solution would do nothing to change it. In fact, it would make things worse for users.

Avatars are avatars in SL, and that's all they are. You are welcome to the bee in your bonnet about them if you like it. This jira isn't about that, so why do you keep harping on about it?

"A green dot on the SL map is an avatar...You seem to changing your argument from green dots to avatars." So are they the same, or are they different? If they're the same as you claim, then my arguments haven't changed.

On mini-map and main map a green dot is clearly intended to represent a resident, and traffic counts are intended to show places residents have found interesting enough to spend time in.

Bots subvert that. Markets are conversations, and bots are deliberate noise.

>You don't get to make them up to suit your purposes as you go along.

By the same token, you don't get to make up ideas such as, all avatars must have a person at the keyboard, and foist them on people just because you want it that way.

You've decided what is intended now? You're going a bit too far aren't you?

"Green dots: Other Residents of Second Life. You may want to go over and say hello!" --SL Knowledge Base

Would you like to discuss the jira now?

Instead of discussing your four sex bed models, let's discuss the bot box you're running at Seymour/16/232/4075. Dozens of bots, all with your shop in their picks ten times. Tucked into a sim corner so three other mainland sims are carrying 24 child agents to represent them. Kinda hard to "walk up and say hello" with a ten-second trigger security orb TPing the curious out.

That's a "legitimate use of bots", eh?

The reason we got onto models and such, is because I said what would happen if LL implemented the suggestion of this jira. One of the things that would happen is that traffic bots would be replaced by other things, such as camping and models that store owners don't particularly want, but they count for traffic. Things would get worse for users because the bot replacements would cause lag for them, whereas most (probably) of the current traffic bots are well out of the way of people and don't cause lag. That's what the discussion of models is about - it's nothing to do with whether or not they are essential.

That said, it seems that soon there will be an announcement of something new concerning traffic - sometime after the 13th of this month - so it seems a bit pointless discussing it in depth here. I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion following the announcement, when we can all argue our points of view

Why do want to discuss my bots. I said I use them - it's no secret. I think you just want to find fault rather than discuss the jira. You can do that but would you take it to the forum please and start a thread there? This is a jira discussion, not a forum thread to be sidetracked - or maybe I don't understand these jiras.

Byw, there are 13 bots there - not dozens. And they don't have my store in their picks 10 times. I don't think they even have it once, but there may be a few that have it. For your information, only the alt on top of the box has picks that count in search, so doing what you fabricated would be rather silly. 10 times indeed! You're starting to stoop a bit low

[added]
I see you've added a screenshot of them Does that look like dozens to you, Maggie LMAO!

And no, Phil doesn't game the picks system. He doesn't pay for picks, and doesn't need to.

As I stated before, the excessive use of bots is the one thing that should be targeted. Camping injects money back into the system and spreads it around. Why do you think most businesses saw a bump when LL opened the gates to free accounts?

This requires a more thoughtful approach than "ban anything that is artificial" because lots of things we like are "artificial" and increase traffic.

[added]
> "Sorry I didn't have time to read every"body"'s profile to find out how hard you were gaming the picks system. "

So you chose to lie about it then? Well, well, well.

Will we be seeing your bot avis march in here one at a time to defend your POV too, now? Maybe they do all get a vote after all...

Phil appears to be gaming the system, which is why he doesn't like this feature proposal.

The alt on top of the box and I have several picks though - one to each of several different parcels - not exactly duplicate picks, are they? Go and see for yourself before you post stuff that's embarrassing for you again. They are all logged out now, as I told you they would be, but the one on top of the box is called Wicked Leigh. You know my name, so you can see where both our picks point to.

You really should stick to discussing the jira, Maggie

But you are wrong about why I don't like your jira suggestion. If you care to read and think about the reasons I gave as to why it won't work, you might be able to discuss them, which you haven't done yet.

Your jira points out a genuine issue, but your suggestion is not a solution to it. You should invest some thought into the reasons that I've given, but you don't seem to want to do that..

Oh, well. I'll bid you all a fond farewell. A blog post on the subject is due after the 13th, so it's just a waste of time posting about it here.

Thank you

Positives:
-Increase the mainland ownership experience. Users who buy plots on mainland won't have to worry about resources being sucked up by bots in the same sim.

-Enhanced ability to connect with others. If you open the main map and scroll around the mainland or private sims, you'll see lots of clusters of dots. Most of the time these places just have loads of bots, and absolutely no actual users to interact with. When exploring in such a way, the best technique is to look for small clusters of green dots (but of course not two dots close together with nobody else around.) If bot use and other forms of traffic gaming were banned, it would, without a doubt, decrease green dot spam. The probability of finding actual people by randomly exploring the map would greatly increase. This would benefit the entire user experience, most importantly the "first hour" experience. When I was new, this problem was a great difficulty to me.

-Reduced resource strain on SL. Less illegitimate, useless presence to suck up resources, less asset server strain, and less scripts. This reduces in less operating costs as well.

-Better search results and ability to find people and places using the search tool. The search results are filled with spam in the form of low-quality establishments that have high ranking merely because they are good at gaming the system. This obliterates meritocracy in search results. By banning traffic gaming, it will make finding places that rank high based on their merit a lot easier, retaining new users, making SL better for existing ones, and encouraging quality by creators and establishment owners.

-More accurate concurrency and user-hour numbers that aren't obscured by bot usage.

Negatives:
Reduced concurrency and user hours, which are marketable pieces of data.

Development resources will be initially needed, and additional staff will be needed to police the new TOS policy.

------------------
If anyone can think of any other negatives, please list them. However, it's obvious that the benefits far outweigh the costs, and hiring a few staff to police will be offset by cost reductions. I can't think of anything LL can do immediately that has such a high benefit/cost ratio, and absolutely everyone would benefit.

But it's pretty creepy saying the JIRA is merely "an engineering tool" – in fact, that's exact what IS creepy about the JIRA, and why I've proposed it be merely a bug tool, and that feature proposals be put on a different platform completely, to essentially create a system for parliamentary politics, making proposals, having people join in on them and vote for them, having the ones that are feasible move into law.

Features do indeed require discussion and debate (for that matter, so do bugs). It's not like it's a mere mechanical thing that you can only make 'scientific" pronouncements about.

Phil, you haven't provided any reasons why this "can't" be done, except to repeat that you believe it can't be – because you obviously don't want it. It's one thing not to want it, and to find that it impacts some interest of yours, and to advocate that. It's another thing to proclaim "it can't be done" because you don't want it to be done. Of course it would be a trivial matter for the Lindens to override search for parcels found to be engaging in traffic fraud. Easiest thing in the world.

I've already answered your points, and you continue to think that if someone rebuts your points and disagrees with them, that they "haven't read them"

1. No, stores that have too many modles are gaming traffic. One could arguee that 6 models so gaming traffic would lose their search appearance. It's a double offense on the mainland especially, because it uses up resources and takes up avatar slots, so people can't get home, and it jacks up traffic. The "model" thing isn't at all persuasive to me as "legitimate."

But let's say the Lindens, under this proposal, accept that "six models" isn't too many. Sure, a store that has 6 models will have an advantage of one that doesn't. Then they either a) live with showing up 1 or 5 spaces down from the one with models or b) get models. But models are just an attempt to go under the radar. You don't need so many models, truly. Everyone knows that you can try out the furniture, your sex beds for example, by just going on them yourself! Many stores save on prims and lag by making either dummies out of prims or using pictures. That's fine!

2. If people have "genuine" camping, i.e. live people behind all the avatars, or one person running multiple instances of SL, that is traffic fraud. You seem to be so wedded to the idea that traffic is only caused by bot boxes that you forget that even having 50 live humans camping is STILL a traffic fraud offense in the sense of this JIRA. This is EXACTLY what the Lindens ARE prepared to deal on.

Influencing traffic is an offense under this JIRA, Phil. Live, dead, bot, alt – all the same thing.

3. As I already said, your notion of "wrong people" going to small stores that wouldn't have traffic unless they were next to clubs doesn't hold water. It's a normal natural feature of commerce. It's not gaming the system to put a store near a club. Other stores should seek out clubs to join, too shrugs. Location, location.

The Lindens will not be getting rid of bots, and while they might introduce an "abuse of resources" AR tool (or may have already done so, it seems), that is a separate issue from traffic fraud.

The Lindens have never made a roadmap for search that included removal of traffic metrics as a goal. They have merely discussed it. Point to any link you can that would prove that claim.

Perfectly fine search results already exist. 1) in search all, where traffic does not order them 2) in search/places, where most returns are NOT gamed.

So it merely needs to be cleaned up, to satisfy mainly the screamers, and that can be done by punishing fraudsters.

I personally am happy to go on living with the system exactly as it is, as it works fine to find things and make purchases and sales. People who put bots on their sims will find they won't get visitors as there is a natural antipathy to it. Consumer boycotts already happen. So in time, it may well wane of its own accord. But meanwhile, it's good to get in on the ground floor of this proliferating creation of bots, and insist that they have restrictions – or they will take over.

Additional staff are not needed. They coped find dealing with numerous ad farm requests – and now that problem is subsiding. They can move on to this now. They are dedicated to improving the mainland. I think the Lindens will be doing something about camping and bots. I haven't heard that it will involve removing traffic. So it's a question of making proposals to them that are reasonable and effective. This one is.

Next stop get rid of profile pick payola. Gaming search relevance by paying or compensating for profile picks needs to be against the TOS as well.

Next stop is bogus keywords in descriptions clogging search.

This can go on and on. The point it search is a problem and is increasingly ineffective. This is caused by unethical and deceptive behavior. The only solution to this issue is removal of unethical deceptive people from Second Life. Good luck with that lol.

But at least a well written policy on loitering is a start in the right direction.

Yes, menchor you're right that this is primarily a mainland problem. This entire model caper sounds like a form of deliberately under-the-radar gaming, however. Everyone got along without any such "models" for ages, using either live avatars or pictures or mannequins. It seems bogus, demanding suddenly that they be accommodated.

It seems to bring in more problems in the manifestation of exactly what IS allowed, so with this proposal, camping, camping for items, freebies (drawing attention to shops), contests and other things which would "artifically" attract avatars could be mistaken for "bots" due to the sudden high numbers. It can also be abused in the sense that people feeling hostile and intolerant of furries or nekos or other subcultures of SL may actually create on a private sim which allows itself open to the public a false "positive" of bot detections.

Please consider this when considering what may seem to be a "sensible" proposal.

Thank you all for your time,

AlterEgoTrip Svenska

Your attempt to play the intolerance card makes very little sense to me...wouldn't the enforcement be against the sim or parcel owner?

"I think we can tell the difference between freebies (OK) and camping (not OK). Camping for freebies is...camping.
Your attempt to play the intolerance card makes very little sense to me...wouldn't the enforcement be against the sim or parcel owner? "

And why should camping for something be, NOT OK? Why shouldn't someone get paid to visit a sim as long as they are a person who has an account, why should you be bothered with how they should spend their time?

AS far as intolerance goes, I have seen intolerance in spades on various sims, and these are bickering neighbours who wish to aquire the other's properties, make the other move out, and if not, then they bash the area with "visits".. either by loitering or other methods to annoy the parical or sim owner. IF this were to pass, this proposition would open the door to would be harrasers of various owners.

I have rarely run into bots anyway, and its true, most are used by people who want to do something MORE with their day than camping for a prize or waiting for a lucky chair. I feel I am very in touch with the mainland issue since I see the degraded state most places on the mainland fall into when the traffic stops flowing and Lindens don't answer questions or problems concerning these areas.

This proposal would also get rid of "lucky chairs" which are great for the flow and attraction of buisness. I think freebies and camping for freebies (Items which normally cost something more than a noobie could afford) should be quite ok. So why spoil the way traffic flows within these systems? Bots don't go camping for a pair of boots.. and buisness owners who have such options shouldn't be considered as attracting buisness by unethical means. I get the impression that the next proposal would be "getting rid of free accounts" which WILL kill commerce and flow of traffic as well as the virtual ecconomy. I believe that the "free accounts" should even allowed to buy land and pay teir with no discounts.. but also be accountable to showing proof they are accounts that are attached to an individual and not just an epost address, but this is way off topic.

Us Premium accounts, well, I feel we should be encouraged with discounts on tier that gives a bit more land, perhaps twice as much...but that's just me.. and its off topic, but would make it easier for more money to flow into SL without having the fear of "fraud by unaccountable bots".

• make it a TOS offense to inflate traffic figures through artificial means such as camping and bots, and accept abuse reports on that basis

• punish such an offense by removal of that parcel found guilty of traffic inflation from the ability to appear in search with those traffic results."

This a pretty straightforward proposal. Its easy to understand and even easier to implement and enforce.

Just like ridding my mainland home sim of adfarming parcel abuse was really. The Linden inworld team have to make judgment calls sometimes on what is and what isnt parcel abuse, but they doing a pretty good job overall with this. So ya I dont really see why this cant be done equally as well.

Voted for.

We care how people spend their time because camping (or waiting for your letter to come up on a freebie chair) is insanely boring...which is why people make camping bots.

Traffic is intended to reveal the places real people have found interesting, not some dreary half-empty shopping mall the owner is willing to spend a few Lindens to fool people into visiting.

If someone wants to play Lady Bountiful and hand out free money to newbies, which they hope the newbies will spend on their vendors who rent space on their sim, they can do that – but just don't jack up traffic then. See how long you last being so generous, when it doesn't yield you a traffic windfall.

While there are some sims with neighbours who use abusive tactics to force others to move out, this isn't the norm, isn't widespread, and in any case, is harassment that you can report to the Lindens and get traction on as they see chat logs and such. In any event, it isn't a reason not to prosecute traffic fraud.

Lucky chairs don't significantly raise traffic unless there is a row of 10 or them. Then they could qualify for traffic abuse. They are more about getting somebody into the store to see and buy the merchandise, by sampling the freebies offered on the chair. The same with money trees – most people can't afford to put more than one on their properties, avatars coming to pluck from them have to hang around while the money rezzes, and the idea is they see the merchandise and activities on that sim, but it's not enough to significantly change traffic metrics.

Traffic is intended to reveal the places real people have found interesting, not some dreary half-empty shopping mall the owner is willing to spend a few Lindens to fool people into visiting.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Maggie Darwin- I can see you don't understand any of it and I can't dig up anything to prove to someone who really thinks that this is a REAL issue is a problem, unless you have proof of Bots.. its not a "simple issue" as Prokofy sugests, if it were simple issue, why not just cut to the chase and get rid of all free accounts. No you have to cultivate users, bottom line. People who have become "good little spenders" are cultivated and educated. Its not about anything more than making a "win-win" situation. I don't think that any buisness IRL can survive without the "win-win" being fulfilled. And its NOT our buisness what people do when they are online and keeping track of them 24/7 to see that a real user is camping or what ever. Camping should not be considered TRAFFIC Fraud. A free item suddenly picked up by a blogg, which brings a sudden spike of costumers to a shop (and BUYERS) should not be considered TRAFFIC fraud.

_________

Prokofy Neva wrote:.........."If someone wants to play Lady Bountiful and hand out free money to newbies, which they hope the newbies will spend on their vendors who rent space on their sim, they can do that - but just don't jack up traffic then. See how long you last being so generous, when it doesn't yield you a traffic windfall. "

Its not about "handing out freebies to newbies" its about cultivating potential buyers, community, and ultimately people who become members and pay for lands and tier, thats the bottom line. And unlike WoW the objective is your own. So should this be about your motives or should this be about understanding what makes a good LL customer/resident.

Prokofy ADDS: ......"While there are some sims with neighbours who use abusive tactics to force others to move out, this isn't the norm, isn't widespread, and in any case, is harassment that you can report to the Lindens and get traction on as they see chat logs and such. In any event, it isn't a reason not to prosecute traffic fraud...."

even if its not the "norm" the traffic fraud "lable" is a great coverstory for annoying your neigbour if you are a nasty person and choose to bully people into leaving because you don't happen to like them... plus the way your proposal is written, it lends itself to be ASSUREDLY abused in this way. One doesn't even have to be a neighbour, just be loitered; framed.

Prokofy LASTLY ADDS ..."Lucky chairs don't significantly raise traffic unless there is a row of 10 or them. Then they could qualify for traffic abuse. They are more about getting somebody into the store to see and buy the merchandise, by sampling the freebies offered on the chair. The same with money trees - most people can't afford to put more than one on their properties, avatars coming to pluck from them have to hang around while the money rezzes, and the idea is they see the merchandise and activities on that sim, but it's not enough to significantly change traffic metrics."

Prokofy, I believe you know nothing about lucky chairs.. nor have you seen it when a shop is really moving and brings in customers and how suddenly a times an hour how it suddenly spikes.. no people are not "waiting around for their letter", that is definately "uninformed" to believe so - some people have friends who happened to notice and or groups which help them make the call on what letter..(is this wrong?)

This could be considered "traffic fraud" and this JIRA proposal, as is written, will definately see lucky chairs as "offenders of the TOS". Not just "lucky chairs" but chairs where people can camp for items, items that are usually sold for 100-300 lindens sometimes. Not just "freebie hunters" (as you love to classify them) are to "blame" for enjoying these camping chairs. And these can and do increase the signifficantly change traffic stats, only that these are only for the whole "week" and not for the long term. (I have seen the "power of the freebie" on my own sales, please don't tell me that I shouldn't use them because you wish this to be considered traffic fraud)

Then there is another issue not brought up, for example if you are an inshop model, and you are "AFK" is your employer going to be considered to have their land in violation of this "traffic fraud" law?

These are only some of the various reasons why this JIRA should not be enacted. I

f this were to be inacted, a few buisnesses created based upon the idea of camping/ traffic flow will naturally disappear, I don't care about them much anyway, but the did scrutinize the people there to make certain there were no bots by EXTREME measures but they did also PAY. I wouldn't wish LL to take up measures such as this. I wouldn't wish for everyone looking around zooming their cameras at whatever they wish to suddenly be interupted by some message saying "click this or be logged out or in violation of TOS".. So in a way this idea of "artifical traffic" which may be mistaken as "traffic fraud" is actually very good and healthy for the market place. Remove some things from the market place and bring back OLD policy and maybe these measures won't be needed for buisnesses.. HOWEVER there is no time machine to go way back and fix it to the "good old days" today is what we have, grow and change.

There won't be "click this or be logged out", because that can be programmed into a bot.

As for bullying neighbors, just look at the abandoned land adjacent to Phil's bot box...they got tired of the lag. Look at NEED4SPEED in Atropos, 32 campers and the lag is so bad it crashes viewers on the protected land road

Nobody camps because they enjoy it. They camp because you pay them, either in cash or in merchandise.

Well, what you could do is just read the proposal at the very top of the page, and comment just on the technology involve, whether it would be possible to override search check-off boxes on land parcels, or whether that would create a database load, and then for extra credit, a reading on whether monitoring abuse reports on parcels using bots and camping for traffic fraud would create any kind of administrative load.

Most of the discussion here is based on one special interest group – clubs using bots to stay in an arms race with other clubs – arguing that it's not bots you should get rid of, but traffic, because they've found a way to disguise the bots as models – and everyone else trying to point that out.

No need for a wiki.

Did you know that Lindens have bots themselves? And accounts that perform automatic functions? These accounts spider around and gather information. It's not a problem for a Linden bot or a live Linden to figure out whether the same accounts are sitting on a parcel 24/7 and therefore likely bots, or people come during a spike in a sale, or just during prime time. It's not necessarily to hobble progress on this issue.

Obviously sites like techcrunch and technorati and Google and everything else out there fights traffic fraud, and they don't do it by becoming paralyzed with literalisms and edgecases, they do it by taking care of the 87 percent they can take care of, and not letting the 23 percent get to them, as they work to decrease it.

In a way, your proposal is a much like the your personal statement there, as I repeat I am not a part of any special interest bot owning group, and the people who use their alts for camping, well in your little world camping on one chair or beach towel. I have in fact never heard nor seen 32 camping chairs in one place. Can you provide more than two or three examples of this extreme if it exists at all?

I personally have never seen more than 2 -5 camping chairs on a single property, and I have seen way more lucky chairs, but still no more than 8 in any given place. Even land owners or renters probably can't afford such lag or prims. Proper buisnesses such as "She's So Unusual" have item camping chairs, as well as Teagan Blackthorne's shop (even if she removed them she still had them and they attracted my positive attention as a new member of SL).

This is the proposal as WRITTEN:

"In order to put an end to the practice of falsely inflating traffic figures on land parcels through the use of camping and bots, the Lindens should:

o make it a TOS offense to inflate traffic figures through artificial means such as camping and bots, and accept abuse reports on that basis

o punish such an offense by removal of that parcel found guilty of traffic inflation from the ability to appear in search with those traffic results."

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

Even if the language is simple and supposedly "clear" it leaves much open to interpretation. So even one camping for one item chair is an offence, even one LUCKY chair is an offence (because it INFLATES traffic readings) having freebies to increase traffic flow and shop awareness would also fall under this catagory of "artificical means".. and unless this proposal excludes these various traffic stratigies, I believe this is an area where reporting members supposedly "creating" traffic could easily be abused without a clear definition of what it exactly IS that is "trafic inflation" and EXCLUDE what it is NOT, then you have a proposal that even I could vote for.

The definition of Bots must also be defined.. not just "alts" or even possible alts but rather missused free accounts seems to be Prokofy's definition of them and even this definition MUST be examined so that LL's reputation doesn't become tarnished and that LL doesn't lose a potential customer and possible land owner and someone who pays tier by overreacting to a report, wether false or true.

To cut a very long story short, common law basically says, "Whatever is not prohibited, is permitted".
And civil laws basically says, "Whatever is not permitted is prohibited."

So when the common law mind approaches a problem like traffic fraud, a simple, brief, all-purpose rule of law is devised, as follows:

o make it a TOS offense to inflate traffic figures through artificial means such as camping and bots, and accept abuse reports on that basis

o punish such an offense by removal of that parcel found guilty of traffic inflation from the ability to appear in search with those traffic results

Common sense – that is, if you use the common-law mindset – tells you that "inflating traffic figures" means inflating them such as to make a difference. Inflating them grossly (you could add the word "grossly" but you don't need to". Obviously traffic increased 100 or 200 or even 1000 isn't at issue; the issue is 30,000.

Common sense under common law says that if you set about going to get rid of traffic fraud – people inflating their statistics to award themselves the number one through ten spots on the search returns – you are not going to be picking on one AFK alt account that you can't tell is a bot or not. You aren't going to be picking on 20 people who rushed to a half-price sale. Because you're there to tackle the abuse that leads to outright fraud, not the presence of one Lucky Chair.

But that's not how the civil law mind works, always looking for the magisterial code book with elaborate exceptions preconceived and pre-ruled upon in advance.

The civil mind says, OMGOD, what about this? What about that? What if you don't predict this, specify that, foresee the next thing? And that mind says:

"Write a rule that is very long and detailed, that tries to encompass every situation in advance, so add this:

"make it an offense to inflate traffic figures

o except when the bots are used as models in a furniture or clothing store, and then, in no greater than 6
o except when there are sales and 30 people might rush to the store
o except when the owner has a special event such as a product demonstration
o except when the bots that are models malfunction or aren't deployed across several parcels correctly so it appears as if they are bunched up on one place so it was an accident
o except if there are campers who are legitimately earning money the owner freely gives, and then no more than 10, who stay no more than 30 minutes per 12 hour period

etc. etc. – and once people get into that mindset, they can spin out 50 of these sorts of rules.

But...it's not necessary to sit and spin out scenarios, edgecases, usecases for every interest group, exceptions, what-ifs.

You have a basic over-arching principle – common law that is a general rule of thumb or common sense that most people can understand. That rule is "when used as traffic inflation" – and "traffic inflation" is understood to mean not what happens with one Lucky Chair or 3 campers but happens when you inflate traffic significantly.

So you don't sit and write endless long rules – unless of course, you are trying to defeat the purpose of this JIRA, and also the purpose of creating a feature that requires organic human intelligence to apply a principle. Lindens administering the rule can tell the difference. If they somehow mess up, there are appeals procedures. It's not the rocket science imagined.

Once again, the focus here is on the act of traffic fraud. That means inflating the traffic metric through artificial means. It isn't important HOW that is done – by bots or camping or logging on your alts simulatenously in different sessions. It isn't about "wrong people" or "misused accounts" because the focus is on the action of fraud and not the fraudster and his method.

We really don't have to fear that Linden Lab will lose any customers over this – unless, of course, they lose customers who have used traffic fraud to stay in the public eye, but now lose out as they are removed from search.

Be postive that someone would actually take the proposal seriously if written AS IS, which I feel, ok if I were to sugest how to work it.

when it says "traffic inflation", be concrete, say "gross traffic inflation USING bots numbering more than 4 AND/OR camping chairs MORE Than 3" as an example, nothing about HOURS because camping chairs already have those presets to how many hours one Avatar can spend before having to either A) reafirm that they wish to continue camping or B) limits set by land owners and this should be the land owner's/ renter's rights to do so, but "no more than" is the word phrase which would satisfy me.

I've worked in various law offices and had many members of my family involved enough with law to know that loop holes if not clearly "removed" come back to haunt you within the wording. This is definately true when dealing with RL real estate, in Sweden AND in the US and UK. So there is no need for blanketing definintions that are not concrete such as "traffic inflation" because AS I said, that is too generic a term.

Leave sales out of the situation as well, I have even captures showing that more than 30 avatars can rush in to a shopping space and continue to do so for more than 2 hours. Take for example hunts on the grid, take for example events such as "Lemuria's Haunted Hollywood" as an example.. the flow during a weekend hunt would read under these terms of "Traffic Inflation" as "traffic fraud" if not redefined.

Models in shops should be "registared" if you do not allow for them, and possibly consider them "bots" when they are either "avatar customers" or "alts" employed by the shop/land/sim owner, and there should be LIMITS then. Limits of 6 for example. ( of course people will go so far as to say, this is not enough, thats not where MY POV comes in, I am just asking to set limits to certain issues that may be claimed as bots so that the detection of "Bots" would be fairly noted. Bots in a box, ABUSE. 12 Models which are all ALTs to one person in an empty shop, ABUSE. Two Models that are Avatars, NOT ABUSE, but the way this is written, it would sugest that all are the SAME.

Prokofy, do not claim that I am trying to defeat the purpose of this JIRA out of special interest. Let the TOS be written so that it can be easier to determine what exactly is "inflated traffic" or what a "bot" and how many IS defined as "abuse".

I believe after wasting your words you can come up with a better written JIRA that doesn't catch everything into the catagory of "traffic fraud".. Just focus on the BOTS and the number of Camping Chairs, that will, as you say, significantly change the "landscape" of Second Life, but even you admit on your blogg that the issue is much less of an issue than that of adfarms, and somethine has been done about that. Lets try to work together on this rather than always be at odds because you have no ablity to cooperate within the bounderies I set which was mearly defining the word phrase "INFLATE TRAFFIC" and "TRAFFIC FRAUD" into something every shop owner and land owner can see as concrete and clear.

on the other hand.... goldilocks and sn@tch each have two chairs, and i rarely see less then five people standing near them. the chairs don't bother me at all...

the bots standing around lagging up a sim really do though...

i actually am voting for this. i do hate the traffic manipulation that goes on, and long since gave up on my stre ever getting any traffic because i don't use chairs or camper slots or earn2life. I can't afford them and i REFUSE to use a bot. completely and utterly refuse.

The truth is... the people who complain about this are too lazy to think. I'll demonstrate:

Simply put... The ability for people to make their virtual places appear filled with virtual people is a necessity. The amount of actual people who will visit these places or know about them is limited. The interest in looking at pretend architecture with little to do is also limited.

So... The truth is, everyone needs bots.

They need bots to compete with the other bot farmers. If you are unhappy because your neighbors have bots and you don't, just buy some.
Don't condemn them for their success and prosperity at making boxes in the sky filled with cloud people who sit there and do nothing.

Or, if you would use your brain... Do BETTER. Have someone write bot software for you that does something. Juggling bots with their heads on fire that speak swedish. Then, you can tell everyone that your bots are more interesting. If your bots are interesting, actual people will come to visit your bot farm and to interact with your bots. Your traffic score would dominate that of the horde of cloud people in the sky. So, you could have a horde of cloud people in the sky, AND a bunch of juggling acrobatic ninjabot combat, AND real people would come to watch them. You'd make millions.

But instead, you try to make the rules. You want to tell other people how they can't have fun because of your limited imagination. That's lame. You've missed the entire point of Second Life, which is to watch 70 juggling ninjabots speak swedish. Because it will never happen in RL, and it won't happen in SL if you aren't willing to fund the adventure and use the imagination to create excellence.

Quit whining. Build your bot army. Beat the bot hordes with cooler, smarter, and more innovative ones. Then EVERYONE wins.

Your rules do not apply to my virtual world. BUY BOTS OR MELT INTO GOO.

It's about connecting to real people. I would rather meet the real Swedish people or the real flaming sword-swallower.

SL is about real people.

The truth is... the people who complain about this are too lazy to think. I'll demonstrate:

So... The truth is, everyone needs bots. {you're just too dumb to realize it}"

Your logic is stunning.

In Second Life...

Those are not real trees.
Those are not real buildings.
Those are not actually girls [or guys].

Second Life is not just about you.

Second Life is about what people want it to be.

Obviously a large number of them want it to be about having a large number of cloudy people in the sky, so they can get high score. I say, if that's how they want to express themselves, more power to them. It is a new and unique art form. If you object to the fact that those cloudy people get high score, you need to come up with a draw that gets high score and is more interesting. Thus far, you've not managed to produce an alternative. You are losing the war.

In your case I can only assume it is about determining new ways to report people for violating rules you seek to make for them and to tell them what they can and cannot do. I say, if that's how you want to express yourself, go for it, but don't expect support. Complaining may be an art form, but it is akin to sculpting dinosaur feces.... an ancient sport that no one plays with any originality.

For me, it's about finding people like you, the enemies of fun for other people, and telling them they are wrong, pointing out clearly why, and then reading them retort with weak positions that are indefensible or ludicrous. In my case, I am nearly omnipotent, and my powers are beyond your understanding.

Now, to further obliterate your four sentences:

Real Swedish people are in Real Life. Real sword swallowers are in Real Life. Your retort to that statement can only be ludicrous.

Second Life is a virtual world. it should go without saying that to participate, to look at the virtual trees, you might have to look at some virtual people. If virtual people are offensive to you, you are certainly welcome to complain. If complaining is all you are good for, I would prefer the company of virtual people.

Long live the bots. Damn those who abuse them. Praise those who make them interesting. Screw those who try to make rules in an entertainment medium that fuels my imagination. Glorify those who make the next generation of them that complain about the other bots and abuse report them.

Bring on the Bot Wars. The Time Is Now. THE OMEN HAS SPOKEN AGAINST YOU. IT IS EXACTLY AS THE OBELISK HAS FORETOLD.

My powers are beyond your understanding.

if your neighbor buys a gun, and you stand by the morals of peace, who will win in the gunfight?

I stand corrected, there are more fake people in SL than there are bots!

There are plenty of other legitimate things for me to do, but few of them are as interesting.

It's like people in SL want to play Pac Man without the ghosts, just pac man versus pac man. Just munching dots all the time...

Not everyone likes anchovies on their pizza, but that doesn't mean that they should be illegal.

If you outlaw coloring, only criminals will have crayons.

Anchovies on pizza are not illegal. Selling plastic anchovies by making them look real and putting them on pizza is.

You haven't bothered to state your position on the matter of bots since I piped in, but I'll go out on a limb and figure you don't think other people should have them.

That said, let's reverse your logic, and say, since you might not be able to handle a virtual world with BOTH virtual and real people, maybe YOU should get OpenSim and sit in a region that isn't Second Life where you can make the rules and decide what other people can and can't do, instead of trying to join a crowd that wants to make the virtual world potentially less interesting, and take things away from other people.

As to being able to make money with OpenSim, it's debatable. If someone produces an interesting product or service which leverages the platform, bots or not, the possibility is there to generate revenue. Only people of limited capacity would assume that it's not possible to do so, when there are several grids with currency. But, your attempt to make me 'move out' is absurd.

Lastly, the plastic anchovy metaphor might make sense, EXCEPT, like I said, those aren't real trees, and you can't buy an actual pizza in Second Life. Selling virtual anchovies is not illegal, and neither is providing software for virtual people, and it never should be.

Ergo: Second Life is a virtual world, there are real people who interact with it, and virtual people go with the virtual territory. Other virtual worlds exist with fewer features and are probably free from bots or other interesting things that might cause you to think or have fun, maybe people will find it useful to go to them. I am prone to believe these people would never do so, because the only contribution they could possibly make to any world whatsoever is to try to rule and regulate fun out of other people's lives.

If Second Life ever takes the possibility of bots or third party clients out of the equation, it should instantly burst into flames. The vision of Linden Lab to provide a platform for innovation on this level represents something truly great. The unfortunate side of it is not that the bots exist or take part in the world, the unfortunate side of it is that few people are willing or capable to make the leap necessary to make the bots interesting and fun beyond their current implementations.

No one will be amazed or impressed by people who proclaim that virtual worlds should only be inhabited by 'real people', and no one at Linden Lab will be amazed and impressed by 10,000 abuse reports against something with the potential for coolness that bots have. You cannot fight this particular tide, you can only try to innovate a better answer than those cloudy skyboxes.

The truth about bots is that with one word I can point out their true value, and no one can doubt that potential: machinima.

My powers are beyond your understanding.

If bots are the answer, can we have our question back, please?

There's a common misconception above that, since it's easy to spot a bot, we can make a TOS change, spot the people using bots, and enforce it. The problem with this idea is, the reason why it is easy to spot a bot is because it's not a TOS violation. If you make it a TOS violation, bots are very quickly going to become indistinguishable from real users.

It's trivially easy to make a bot walk around the store, click on things, and teleport out after 20 minutes or so. Heck, they can even "buy" a thing or two while they're there. And alts are plentiful, so one just needs to have another "customer" teleport in do the same, except this time click on a few different things, spend 25 minutes, or whatever. Again, this isn't a major chore, this is trivial stuff. Anyone who already has the skills to make a bot can make one that's impossible to tell from a not-very-talkative person (or even one that talks more understandably and coherently than a lot of SL residents these days). There's no technical hurdle to making bots that you can't tell are bots, the only reason people don't bother is because there's no reason to do so. Give them a reason, and they'll do it.

The main difference, then, will be this: by virtue of being more active, the new generation of bots will not be as gentle on sim resources and performance as the current generation. That most bots just sit around like a bump on a log is a blessing, it means they don't use much in the way of sim resources. Make them more active, walk around, click on things, teleport in and out, and they'll consume more resources. So, the only real effect of the proposed TOS change will be to further hamper sim performance.

There's no TOS solution to traffic bots, and there's no technical solution to traffic bots. You either have to remove the incentive (take traffic stats away) or live with the bots. I don't want to see traffic stats go away – they're far too useful, even when being gamed. They'd be less useful if it was made less obvious that they were being gamed (which, as noted, would be effect of this proposed TOS change), so... this just seems like a bad idea all around. Keep the traffic stats, and keep the bots obvious. It may not be the ideal world, but it's the best achievable world.

Good old phil deakins, a clear abuser, taunted me with "Go ahead, AR me [for resource abuse]. They don't enforce it."

This constant invocation of technology as technology's own enemy not only isn't credible, it isn't human.

Just because we ourselves are mechanized because we must manifest in this world as mechanized avatars only extensions of our humanity is no reason to then subject us all to the mechanical will of a view coders and law-violators who arms-race to find away around the code of other tekkies. It's not acceptable. If the Metaverse is going to be filled with nasty robots that only fulfill the will of some people and not others, people will not show up for it. You geeks can play it by yourselves. Make it human, or don't see it populated – it's that simple.

Of course human will, human intellect and common sense can prevail over a set of damn bots.

Bots are not the 'answer', but neither is trying to control what other people can do. The answer is to come up with other mechanisms to draw people. Create something that is interesting and people will come. People will not come to your anti-bot show more than they will go to a store which appears higher in search. They will look for things they are interested in through search, but if they hear from a real person they find credible that there is something more interesting to be found, they will go. So you could choose to spend your time debating creating more and more rules, or you could develop something which is more fun, and people would likely be more pleased to go towards that which is fun than they would to go to that which is inane repetition of the lives they already live, ones with imposition of rules and responsibilities for every activity.

THAT is your answer, but it would require you to change, to find other ways to promote your endeavors and to work actively to get people to participate. You do not do this, you instead chime in on forums and represent that 'things suck'. And they will continue to suck. This will not change, until you do.

(from prokofy) "Of course human will, human intellect and common sense can prevail over a set of damn bots. "

Perhaps if you were willing to leverage that intellect and use that common sense, it might be true. Unfortunately, until you figure out how to market through word of mouth or other means versus those who market through numbers and systems, it's not. And since you are so convinced of your own greatness that you spend your time complaining about the world instead of trying to better it through creative means, the likeliness that this will change is nil, until you change.

The answer, at present, appears to be: Not in a world where the government approves of them, and more people want them than just you.

It also further appears to be: Those who are most opposed to bots are those who are so unimaginative as to be easily defeated by them, and would rather complain about them and try to destroy them than to find their own successes.

It is much like Microsoft in the computer industry... Many people complain about their success and their products, but they continue to buy them and they do not make an effort to produce an alternative which is preferable. So long as that sentence remains true, the likelihood that Microsoft will continue to be on the majority of the computer systems will not change.

So the choice again comes down to continuing to complain about it, going to a "parent" that is indifferent or disagrees with your point of view, or innovating a better solution. Since you lack the technical skills and the willpower to deliver services which provide search facilities that have 'merited' traffic or non-bot entertainment that is a greater draw than a store which has artificial popularity, you're stuck, and it's not likely to change, until you do.

My endeavors are well-enough promoted, and others are indeed participating, thenkewveddymuch. (And those participants? They aren't even scripted, imagine that)

I make time to participate on PJIRA and the Forum because I happen know a bit about software, and use SL a lot.

Drop the chalupa, and back away from the personal attacks...

I do not need to tell you that you can't do it, or to make rules to prohibit you from doing it, and that is where we differ, and wherein your activities are flawed. You apparently want a world where people have to conform to your criticisms and requirements, and I want one where they are free to defy such limited thinking and explore their creativity.

If anyone is 'attacking', it is you and this sort of JIRA entry, which is about 'attacking people who don't do what you want'.

If you knew anything about software, you would realize that there will always be the potential for automated clients in SL and there will always be ways to defy detection mechanisms, and as such, your efforts in this area are wasted.

If you were ever to succeed in eliminating bots in SL, camping would take hold, or other promotional mechanisms which reward wealth and wield no MERIT whatsoever.

I support liberty and freedom and I take offense to the notion that you or anyone else should be able to take them away.

I also do not follow your orders.

It is really too bad for you that you want bots to go, and yet, they outnumber you.

Pick the winning side.

The bots may outnumber me, but they don't get a vote, you see. Thank you, Fword...that content and creators should stand and fall on their own (rather than be hyped by traffic fraud) is exactly the point of this JIRA.

The point of this JIRA is for Prokofy Neva to get attention by rehashing a debate that isn't likely to be resolved by insulting 'tekkie wikis'.

As for traffic fraud, getting rid of bots won't resolve a score shift through means that lack 'merit'. Some people pay for 'Picks' and they pay for 'advertising' or classifieds.

Though I doubt this Jira will go anywhere, if it did, it would only shift the mechanism by which cheaters cheat into one without such a readily identifiable enemy, and stifle innovation in areas that could actually make Second Life more interesting.

If you are going to want to increase the costs on the part of Linden Lab to handle more abuse reports and do further verification on the people or accounts used in this service, then the resolution will require a form of recompensation to LL for the additional costs.

This is a key reason why I proposed an alternate grid with more scrutiny on avatar accounts specifically for your requirements, which you sneered at. That resolution would provide you with the world you seem to desire and would provide Linden Lab with the means necessary to fund and support it.

People seem to like to complain about the resources that bots put on the system, but truth be told, the resources used by filing of a considerable amount of abuse reports, some of which might have malevolent or political intent rather than beneficial objectives, would represent a strain on the human resources of the company.

The resources required to process and verify every account for every person who logs in to verify they are not a bot, or the resources required to create technological or legal remedies to determine who or what is a bot, could represent a considerable cost to Linden Lab, and there is no discernable benefit.

You want more services and assurances but you are unwilling to pay for them. You want to restrict the way other people can access the system, but you are unwilling to pay for the additional resources that would be required to facilitate your demands.

The costs for the business would have to be pushed to the consumer, the residents, and the notion of which would likely create another 'Linden Lab is fleecing us' round of protests.

I don't think you understand the business impact of all of this, but regardless, I did propose a viable alternative with the needs of people who want such specialized attention.

As I read it, this JIRA does not call for any "service" beyond a change to the ToS/CS. I pointed out that no code is necessary to implement it, only a change that recognizes traffic fraud is a CS violation. We didn't need code for the ad-farms change, and clearly it was highly effective.

Linden Research might very well like things just the way they are. But they won't be able to say nobody ever complained about it .

And after Sunday's massive outage debacle, which occurred right after a peak 80k concurrency, they may actually be ready to recognize that all this pointless infrastructure loading is not actually in their best business interests. Processing a few ARs for this might well be highly profitable, all things considered.

To be clear: I do not own a sim, I do not run hundreds of bots for traffic purposes, nor do I misrepresent anything I do in any way whatsoever.

I DO provide the service of software development for managing automated avatars for a variety of purposes, some information gathering, some entertainment, and some for population of events, business presentations, wargames, or many other interesting concepts.

This software can be used beneficially for machinima as well as for enhancing the interactive experience for people who visit a sim.

It could also be used to have a horde of cloud bots in a skybox which increases traffic scores. It is not my choice how people choose to use the software I provide.

I do not condone hordes of cloud bots in skyboxes solely for traffic purposes, I would PREFER that people think and determine innovative and interesting ways to leverage the technology to make Second Life more interesting.

It is beyond my control how they choose to use it, and it is beyond my control how the Linden traffic system works.

Providing a hammer that someone uses to build their treehouse or providing a hammer that someone uses to brain a squirrel does not make the hammer manufacturer bad.

Thanks for the opportunity to clear that up.

In order to determine who is violating such a new policy, there would need to be means, technical or personnel related, for handling the related abuse reports. The funds have to come from somewhere, there have to be systems in place to accommodate the requirements, it is not something that will occur magically.

Will the lindens randomly accept the beliefs of the residents, some of whom might be politically or financially motivated to run around and send AR's to every business that may or may not be populated by bots?

What you are supporting now is solely a change in verbiage to a document, and effectively, there would be no resolution to come from that document change alone, there would simply be more people sending more abuse reports and further confusing the governance teams with both valid and invalid claims of bot activity or system abuse.

It is one thing to write down a law, another to enforce it, another to prosecute it, and another to adjudicate it's continued viability. In order to facilitate the requirements needed to make these changes effective and not prone to abuse in and of themselves, funds and motivation have to come from somewhere, which is specifically why I proposed a premium service for those who want an exclusive, extremely scrutinized community with a different set of circumstances than the main grid.

Killing ad-farms leaves businesses with fewer opportunities to reach people through Second Life. With fewer opportunities to leverage Second Life as an advertising platform, Second Life land sales are reduced and there is less business interest in the platform. Less business interest in the platform means fewer customers in-world, which means less revenue for Second Life businesses altogether. Your sim might look pretty, but fewer people will buy land and start up businesses.

Killing the casinos took a large number of interested gamers out of the platform and destroyed a lot of the cash flow.

Killing bots and software development possibilities will ensure that the platform becomes stale and the likelihood in the long term is that innovative technologies will eventually shift to newer platforms.

Those people who were interested in Second Life as a technology platform are now looking into OpenSim and investing money and time in it's development, which will basically create a fragmented virtual platform.

The addition of more and more rules and causes for abuse reports undermines the profitability of the Linden business model and likely will be a contributing factor in turning it into just a fad.

Congratulations, you may achieve your perfect world where nothing happens. It will last about three months before it gets dragged down by the weight of it's own boring infrastructure. Walmart Life, anyone?

And there's absolutely no shortage of "software development possibilties".

If you're hungry for "software development possibilites" (and nobody wants your bots after traffic fraud is recognized in the ToS) then apply your burgeoning software creativity to scripting mannequins, as Baloo suggested upthread. That should relieve some of the "boring infrastructure" without being deceptive or creating unnecessary load.

I'm sure you'll keep me reading the nonsense forever if I let you.

Last January there was a nice LL Traffic Future group that got started, and 50 people proclaiming the evils of bots and how this should become a ToS offense, and there were 10 people who wrote notecards with their big plans and solutions (none of which were business or technology minded, but raved about how their solution was the best), posted JIRAs, and IM'd daily about how the end was near for the bots and I or anyone else who made them was doomed to failure.

That was last January. This JIRA seems to be an indication that those people were wrong.

Talk to you next January.

/me turns off the watching on the thread and chuckles.

I await either your proof or pseudocode showing an algorithm for doing so. I am not holding my breath.

"The rest of the Internet controls bots with CAPTCHA and robot.txt."

Baloney. For the latter, see
http://forum.httrack.com/readmsg/1129/index.html
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/google-spiders-sometimes-ignore-meta.html
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/robotstxt.shtml

For the former, see
http://www.dragoslungu.com/2007/04/25/how-to-defeat-captcha-systems/
http://www.clearswift-blog.com/how-botnets-defeat-captcha/
http://futurismic.com/2007/07/10/spammers-defeat-captcha/
http://www.messagelabs.com/resources/press/11657

Maggie:

I didn't tell you that "they don't enforce it" because there is nothing to enforce. You do have a skill for untruths, don't you? I probably told you that they won't do anything, but that's a little different.

Traffic bots are not a "resource abuse". They would be ARable if they impacted other people - by filling the sim, for instance - but most don't do that, and mine certainly don't. I want people in the store and still leave plenty of space for other people, so it would be a bit stupid of me to use too many.

Prok:

I didn't say that your suggestion "can't be done". I said that it won't work - it isn't a solution. If LL did it, it would make things worse for users, as I've explained. I wouldn't put it past LL to do it though, but I assure you, if they do, it will make things worse.

The only sensible way of dealing with the issue is to do away with traffic rankings altogether. Traffic will be kept for land-owner use, but traffic-rankings are best consigned to the past.

Maggie:
Your imagination knows no bounds It isn't passive, out of the way, traffic bots, or high concurrency, that cause the database problems - it is active avatars that cause them. The problems occur during high concurrency because there is a high number of active avatars hitting the database during those periods. Traffic bots don't hit the database. It isn't just my opinion, and if you you want confirmation from LL, read the forum thread that is linked to from the blog post about Sunday's massive outage debacle. You'll find it there - about page 7 or 8, I think.

Refresher:
There are a number of reasons why the suggestion of this JIRA will make things worse, and not better, but the main one is that it will bring traffic bots, that are currently well out of the way of people, down to where the people are and in other forms, which will cause a considerable amount of additional lag for users. There are also other compelling reasons why it is not a solution to the issue that have been described above.

Server load created by an avi is not dependent on the position of the avi in the sim (except where a change in position would add or remove collisions). And traffic bots load the infrastructure in other ways than direct database calls. Having an avatar, even a clouded one in a box, creates load.

If you're still using traffic bots after implementation of this JIRA, you'll be just as much a traffic fraud violator regardless of where they are located (or how they are dressed), so there's littlle point in moving them.

'Server load created by an avi is not dependent on the position of the avi in the sim'

This is wrong, as depending on the position of the avatar, the client makes requests to get details about the avatars, textures, sounds and objects in draw distance (tho I have no idea what the 'draw distance' for text-base bot clients is before they sit down and turn it to 0). In turn, avatars seeing the bot client also get data about that avatar served. Name, appearance, shape, textures. All of this goes through a central point: the sim, and all of those make DB calls.

However, at the end of the day, normal users cause 99% more system load than the traffic bots. Don't get me wrong here, I dislike traffic bots. I loathe them, think they are just unfair business practice along with simply faking and gaming a system, which should be removed or deprecated in the first place, and they tend to get glorified by bot creators. But as much as I dislike them, as a techie I can't just ignore the hard fact that they have minimal impact on any resources if skyboxed, text-cliented and drawdistance 1'd compared to even a simple SL user walking around and chatting.

I personally want the traffic system removed as it is totally gamed and useless by now, a course of action which will also solve the traffic bot problem in turn.

I do agree that as long as bots and camping are not discouraged, the current traffic system is broken. If it were turned off, that would be an improvement.

But I bet if traffic is removed, that people will fall back on green-dots-on-the-map for finding activity, and you'll still see bots and camping chairs still running, just to generate green dots.

"I suppose you're referring to "peak concurrency is not necessarily the main contributor to our current issues". I see why you don't quote it yourself, it's full of escape clauses."

No Maggie. I'm referring to this statement by F J Linden (page 7 of LL's forum thread - I told you where to find it):-

"First, we are looking at the affect of bots on our load. Right now there is no immediate indication that bots are a major contributor of load, but we if we find bots that are especially bad, we'll deal with them."

"Server load created by an avi is not dependent on the position of the avi in the sim".

Oh but it is. If an avatar is out of range of other avatars and other things, then it doesn't need to download anything about anything else - no textures, no movements, no prim shapes, no nothing. That's well-arranged traffic bots. People avatars, on the other hand, move around and constantly need to download all of those things, as well as perform other things, like TPing.

"If you're still using traffic bots after implementation of this JIRA, you'll be just as much a traffic fraud violator regardless of where they are located (or how they are dressed), so there's littlle point in moving them."

There is nothing new about the suggestion of this JIRA. The very same thing has been said, shouted, and discussed everywhere for a very long time, including in the SL forum and in the SL blog, office hours, the "future of traffic" meetings, etc. etc.. Prok didn't come up with anything that LL hasn't known about or thought of. It may be new to you, but it's as old as the proverbial hills.

I stand corrected.

So now we have a new-feature JIRA. As more and more people reach the similar conclusions, they can be linked to it, instead of p*ssing away their energy in that Memory Hole that is the Forum (as you invited me to when you weren't busy counseling "lay back and enjoy it").

You may get your wish by having traffic turned off. If so, we'll see if you and the other botmasters don't keep bots around anyway just to have some green dots on your map.

Nobody can make Linden Research care about the issue, especially since they may well be regarded as traffic fraudsters themselves...after all, bragging about their traffic is how they get people into their store; obviously they're not above inflating it with bots either.

You may have missed it but LL is about to make an announcement concerning bots, so this JIRA was a waste of time. An announcement about land cutting is due tomorrow (Wednesday) and an announcement about bots is due not too long after that. It may be that they just announce that traffic manipulation is now a ToS offense, in which case they'd be stupid because it won't work, but this JIRA won't play any part in what they announce - they've considered it all for a very long time.

If LL makes traffic bots a ToS offense, they will allbut disappear virtually overnight. Mine certainly will. But they will be replaced by alternatives that are not traffic bots, and that's one of reasons why it won't work. Those alternatives will cause lag and load, btw. Anyone who supports the simple outlawing of traffic bots hasn't thought it through. It's not the traffic bots that need to be done away with - it's the reason for them that needs to be done away with - the traffic rankings themselves - and that's something that I've been shouting for for a long time.

Incidentally, my traffic bots are not there to make the store look populated, and green dots are of no interest to me. You've seen yourself that they are not even above the store, so they can't make the store look busy.

Dealing with traffic bots will not correct the practice of paying for profile picks which has more weight in search relevance now. So coming around shuffling feet saying "Oh this traffic thing is bad" after they set the system up to be gamed in a different way is pointless.

BTW some of us have real traffic for actual popular attractions. We will be penalized because of the few abusers if traffic is killed. Not such an easy situation is it?

Yes, according to Jack, they will post a blog announcement about bots not too long after the land cutting announcement which is slated for tomorrow (Wednesday). Of course, what they say and what they do may be two different things, but it is believed that they will do it.