The result is that the traffic stats will be relatively identical for the most part, with the exception being in sims which have tons of camping basic accounts, which will have their traffic stats destroyed since the basic-account campers will no longer be counted, and there is a much smaller proportion of premium accounts that camp than there are premiums to basics in total.

As for scrapping traffic; I agree, it's a rubbish system, we need real searching which returns relevant results. But this is much simpler to implement in the mean-time, and will combat the current problem of people using tons of free camping-bot accounts to camp for ZERO money to inflate their traffic result.

This is also anti-EU residents. Increasingly, they will not take out premium accounts to own land because they can pay private tier and avoid VAT of up to 25%.

Until there is a better reason than owning mainland for buying a premium account, there is little point in discriminating in their favour. If for example stipends were much bigger the ratio of premium to basic might increase, but simply voting for apartheid is not going to solve anything. The 88000 premium accounts should not be able to determine the direction of the SL economy of 9000000 any more than it was right that white South Africans were once the sole determiners of what succeeded in their economy.

Furthermore, just because premium members may go premium to buy land, does not mean that they don't go places! They still buy things, go to clubs, events etc.

If it's possible to implement then this could be extended to include basic accounts who have purchased some minimum amount of L$ on the Lindex, but this then becomes much more difficult than simply checking for premium status.

Alternatively, (again if possible) traffic should be given only for the first 5 minutes or so of a person's stay in a simulator, after which point they are added to a 'traffic-ban' list meaning they no longer count towards traffic stats. In this way a land-owner would have to boot users after 5 minutes, or else they will cease to do anything for traffic any longer, which will make it fruitless to camp and annoy people into not going back. Again, bigger implementation requirements than simply counting premiums.

This action would also improve performance of sims, because they won't be bogged down by all the bots.

I have one basic and 2 premium accounts. Lets say I was into camping (I am not) and this feature was implemented. To make things fair instead of just camping both premium accounts, I will camp just one. Previously (in this make-believe scenario) I camped my one basic account, thus affecting the traffic stats among the 45000 who log-in. But now that this feature is implemented, I switch to using my basic account for my in-world activities and camp my premium. Now there are to my knowledge no known figures for the number of premiums that log in at once. To be generous let us say that 50% of all log-ins are premiums, so 22,500 and that premiums are as likely to camp as basics (although the latter assumption undercuts the whole basis of this feature request). Now my camping affects the traffic stats twice as much as I am still camping once but only half the numbers are counted. Indeed, this is such a good racket, that store and club owners begin to offer to pay campers that they will pay them in Lindens what is costs to fund as annual premium account, i.e, about 1600L$ per month. Crazy? Not at all, I pay 1250L$ PER WEEK for a Classified that appears at amount number 300, the top advertiser pays 13000L$ per week for a Classified, so 1600L$ per month is nothing. And is someone does not camp in a particular month then they will not receive their 1600.

How ever you try to fix the system, it will be "fixed" by those prepared to find a way. And dropping traffic will not help because there are so many Places to search for there needs to be some way to determine who gets onto the first 100 screen. This feature request will do nothing other than destroy the SL economy by its apartheid policy driving people to more egalitarian metaverses. And when the SL economy goes down, the LL business model goes with it. Without a vibrant economy few can afford private island fees and the 500+ new islands per month is at the heart of LL's business model.

No matter how much you hate camping, this is not the way to go about creating a better SL, it is a way of emptying SL, especially of its EU citizens.

This would stop that and stop it quick.

Go for it!

The vast majority of camp farms would quickly disappear. However, those venues that have small-scale camping to attract newbies would not be affected.

Otherwise, we should get rid of traffic stats entirely. The intent of traffic stats is to measure popularity, but unfortunately, popularity is not directly measurable, and the traffic stats aren't a good substitute due to bot-farm camping.

Never mind, found it & linked it. I hope I did it right

Easy---they were crammed together in a sky box, None of they had clothes, all had neams like 1234XXXX
and oh yeah-----none of them would speak.

There is also zero evidence for the assertion that premiums and non-premiums visit the same places in the same proportion. How many premiums visit help or orientation islands, camper malls, educational facilities, Tower of Primitives? The list of obvious places where there would be differences goes on and on.

Yes, traffic should be scrapped, but you should not replace it with another flawed system that counts some people more important than others. Otherwise you might just as well cater to what the big players want (which is what LL seems to be doing atm).

A fairer count will help everybody, particularly new members opening shops. This is one more issue that discourages them from staying.

Think of it like the equivalent of the neilsen families. The assumption is that premium members are less likely to be bots and more likely to be actual active players.

New members frequent places like help or orientation islands, educational facilities, or the ivory tower of primitives... whether they're premium members or not. I'm a premium member. When I was new, I frequented these places. Now I don't. My friends who are not premium have similar habits.

I admit that I don't frequent camper malls, I only know a few premium friends who do. On the other hand, camper malls only exist to fake traffic stats, why would it be a bad thing if they dropped in the ratings?

On the other hand, I may be the only premium member who frequents bot skyboxes. They would probably drop a lot in ratings. Do you want to tell me that would NOT be a good thing?

Finally, I have never cashed out of SL, all the money I earn goes to tier and clothing and avatars. None of it goes to furniture.

The fact is, many business owners no longer have the confidence to expand. And also, consumers are not necessarily finding the best that Second Life has to offer.

Linden Labs needs to understand something fundamental relating to this:

Second Life NEEDS new members. And when a new member goes shopping for the first time, to spend money, and make us all rich, it wouldn't hurt if the first 4 stores that new member went into were legitimate stores. As it stands now, many new users are going to search "Clothes" for example, and stand a good chance of teleporting to a crapped-up camping sim. How many times have we all had our computers freeze up because theres thirty campers lagging a sim? Their computer is likely to crash, and they are gonna say: "This game sucks," without having seen the first product, and they'll likely not log on again. If Linden Labs fixed their search window in the manner I propose, that new shopper is going to find 10 Superb clothing stores all listed on the first page of search. We need new members, and the "All Tab" is not supporting this goal.

I've seen superb businesses listed 20+ pages down in the "All tab," and I'd bet that many of you have seen crap-emporiums listed on the 1rst. If I were a new user, it would appear to me that the stores were sorted randomly, and then listed.

The reason I think this is so important goes to the roots of what is going to make Second Life successful. Second Life has chosen to implement this fancy Google search function. I'm not familiar with exactly how it works and don't know what makes it so different from any other standard search engine, and frankly I could care less. What I do know is that it doesn't work right. Linden Labs has chosen this path and they need to get their philosophy in line to help business owners grow their businesses, and gain new members, instead having us focus on pulling our hair out trying to figure out how to get a good listing. In my solution, having a good store, will get you a good listing. "Sales vs. Traffic" speaks VOLUMES about the quality of a store.

Shoppers vote with their L$. If a store has crummy items and a lot of traffic, that store will sink in the rankings. A store with great stuff, a ton of sales, and LOW traffic will rise in the rankings.

The new "All Tab" needs to facilitate "Putting our best face forward" There are two reasons I specify that it is the "All Tab's" job to do this:

1.) The ALL TAB comes up first when the window is open
2.) Its the Search Window that Linden Labs seems to be most proud of, and is touting for its capabilities

Okay, fine! Lets put our best face forward and make it work!

Now, all that being said, yes, I thought about the system being "Gamed." Giving bots or alts money and having them buy stuff in your own store. I addressed this in my ticket, SVC-2685, and proposed that Linden Labs implement some Artificial Intelligence to scrutinize each sale, identify suspicious sales, then disqualify them. It is my feeling that this is not technically impossible. DIfficult, perhaps, but not impossible. People are always going to be thinking up new ways to game the system, which by the way, is what we have now. So we'd be no worse, and A LOT better off. I'd draw the comparison with the constant vigilance that must be maintained in identifying new viruses and worms. Maintaining a system to identify exploits and then preventing them is going to be an ongoing, never-ending job. It ALREADY is! So lets get the "All Tab" search function working right, and then continue our vigilance. And lets demand that Linden Labs do the work that we are paying them to do. Make the thing work and do what is necessary to KEEP it working.

At the moment regarding this issue; I'm currently in favour of seeing how the removal of traffic goes. I'm hoping we can get more space for descriptions for parcels (SVC-2354), this way we can focus on the Google engine's strengths.

As a result of the move to remove traffic this issue will likely become redundant anyway.

Thanks for your input. I'm sure glad to know that it's not just in real life that business owners have such a jaundiced view of their customers.

When I'm looking for stuff to buy, incidentally, I generally prefer the results sorted by lowest price... not highest. I appreciate that business owners might prefer things the other way around, of course, but I'm not sure that "ordering listings by the most overpriced products" is really in the customers best interests.

If I am "jaundiced" about anything, its that Linden Labs needs to DO SOMETHING! Linden Labs needs to fairly rate businesses on the "All Tab", or become a purely social site, because at this rate, that is where we are headed anyway. Thats all I'm saying.

Now that being said, I see your point about how my proposal might tend to favor stores that have higher-priced items. In my ticket, I propose a two-pronged approach to level the playing field.

First, <TOTAL SALES/PARCEL TRAFFIC>

This part of my proposal takes total purchases at a store on a given day and divides that amount by the parcel traffic for that day. Yes, the result would favor stores that have higher-priced items. I totally agree, this is not good. The way to correct this is to EQUALLY favor stores that sell a lot of items at LOWER prices.

So the second part of my proposal does this by:

<TOTAL NUMBER OF SALES/PARCEL TRAFFIC>

This component simply takes the number of sales you make, regardless of price, and divides by the traffic for that day. Say you sell 10 low prim tables, and 14 T-shirts at your store for L$ 25. You get a total of 24 items sold that day. Divide it by the traffic, and the equation will favor stores that sell in VOLUME.

Some folks are going to try to argue that these two components are going to cancel each other out, and will therefore be totally useless. They will not. These two components will compete against each other, and in the end, there will be some high-volume/low-price stores mixed in with low-volume/high-quality stores. What my proposal will do will allow the OVERALL quality of the store to be determined, and if a low-price store has enough volume, they can beat out all the competition and be the first listing on the search tab.

So you are pitting VOLUME against QUALITY. They are competing concepts for legitimate business philosophies. I have provided the solution, and if implemented, Linden Labs can choose whether to assign more, less, or equal emphasis to each. My feeling is that they will have to tinker with the balance for a while and keep tweaking it until they get the best results in the search window. Please remember that the two components that I propose here are also going to be pitted against the existing ranking parameters, such as "Picks" and so on.

My proposal will punish places with low sales and high traffic. This is the hallmark of a camping farm, but not necessarily an art museum. Yes, my proposal will tend to have a negative effect on places that do not sell anything, but those places will still have the benefit of the existing ranking parameters already in use.. I say, implement the fix, watch what happens for a week, then make the adjustments. Perhaps museums and places that don't make money can be handicapped in some way, or designated as "Non-Profit", giving them a leg-up on stores. I'd LOVE to see this, as it will encourage stores to get even better, and will further make it impossible to run a camping farm. The important thing is that the first 10 stores a newbie finds are going to be the best that Second Life has to offer, and he or she is free to browse beyond that point.

Why do people buy stuff in your shops? Because shopping is fun? Maybe, for some of them, but for most it's to get stuff that makes their social experience better. It's the "just a social experience" people who are your customers. businesses are not going to disappear, and the "social experience" is not your competition... it's what drives your sales.

The problem isn't some kind of competition between "stores" and "not stores", it's people using lots of free accounts to cheat on the ratings. THIS proposal is about eliminating that, but making cheating expensive. Your pains are not our pains, apparently, because your solution won't do anything to heal ours.

When it comes to Shopping, then either amount of sales or number of sales would be a great way to tell which stores are popular or not. I would suggest confining it to only stores, though, because every other part of the search is not about sales in any way, shape or form. Therefore, it would be best on a sort of "Shopping" tab, rather than an "All" tab.

The main issue that I see is that it relies on LL coming up with some way of determining what sales are legit and what are done by bots. You've not been able to tell us exactly how this should happen and this issue is one that causes the current system to fail - LL can't put stuff in place to tell. So really unless you can come up with a more detail around that part, your idea would just make the problem worse, rather than better. Please tell us how this could work.

I'm saying "this proposal is not the place to discuss your proposal".

I'm saying "these are different proposals".

I'm saying "these are solving different problems".

Really, they are. You're improving search. you're not doing anything about campers or bots. If LL was willing and able to detect them and eliminate them from the traffic calculations... they could do that without changing the way search reported results.