What's Hot Now -- not so hot

[Qie Niangao]

Because LL's involvement in SL9B and pretty much all else that might be confused with "community" is reduced to curating the Destination Guide, it sort of matters what shows up there, and specifically, in the "What's Hot Now" banner on the login screen.

As I type this, the first 3 of these are for the same place ("GNC newBerlin", "newBerlin", and "German Newbie Center") followed by another pair of listings for another place (I won't name them; they're already pretty notorious for trafficbotting - which I'd thought was a lost art), and further down at least one other duplicate pair.

Do we know how that list gets populated?

[Ann Otoole]

I do not know how the list is populated. I do know that in world on the destination guide the what's hot selector seldom, if ever, functions. And when it does the number of avatars is usually totally wrong. I do think this what's hot concept is a good idea. However it must be a challenging programming scenario.

[Electronic Mode]

everything is hot if you enjoy it

 

 

[Cerise Sorbet]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

Do we know how that list gets populated?

---

We know some.  The raw feed that fills in the widget can be seen at http://ws.world-ng.agni.lindenlab.com/destinations/busiest/0

 

To add, with the query options on the login page, it is http://ws.world-ng.agni.lindenlab.com/destinations/busiest/0?callback=whats_hot_now&format=jsonp&maturity=gma&pagesize=32&maxpop=25  Notice that there is a cap of 25, probably to avoid sending people to laggy places.

 

We can deduce from there that current and average avatar count in the last half hour is used for the population figure, and also comparison against the three hour average helps yield the traffic trend.

Somebody with extra time might be amused to compare the avatar counts against independent measurements for selected parcels, this should be much easier work now that llGetAgentList is on the way. That could at least confirm if the averages resemble reality in some form. A second amusement could be to check the supplied numbers against the supplied heat and trend tokens.

[Qie Niangao]

Thanks, Cerise.  I'm reminded of why I was so eager for HTTP_MAX_BODY_LENGTH.

[Cerise Sorbet]

I encountered an interesting thing today that is a little relevant to all this, I think. Somebody at an infohub was frantically spamming me in IM with a SLurl, then with copies of a landmark to the same place. I recognized the name as a location that is usually stuffed with bots. Curious, I looked in search to see what traffic was like at the moment, and the whole region was missing from search. I popped over, and found that the land was not marked to show in search at all, even though both owners were online, right there in the sim. The place was still neck deep in bots.

When the new bot policy first came out a few years ago, forced removal of the search flag was one of the penalties used, but I had not seen it happen for a long time. I guess we will see if more like this happens, it is not easy to tell from the one sample if search removal was forced or an accident.

[Phil Deakins]

What's hot now? Me, of course. Ask any of the girls around here :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

[Clarissa Lowell]

No idea how they choose what is hot. I hope it involves actually going there first. I hope they have alts that go to a lot of places and list what they liked best. 

I  hope it isn't based on traffic because there are still a lot of places with bots running. Or tons of "models."

[Coby Foden]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

What's hot now? Me, of course. Ask any of the girls around here :matte-motes-sunglasses-1:

---

:smileytongue:

[Dilbert Dilweg]

I have been seeing a lot of bot infested places in search lately. Some with 129,000 traffic lol

[Perrie Juran]

---

Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

I have been seeing a lot of bot infested places in search lately. Some with 129,000 traffic lol

---

Is there a way to recognize when an Avatar is registered as a Bot (the  lawful way so as not to game traffic.)

I did have fun once at a once club that appeared to have about a dozen bots standing around.  I pushed them all into the club entrance, blocking it.  When I came back an hour later they were still all there in the doorway.

Another friend I used to have would wear a long mega prim and sweep through a place knocking them all down.

Ah, the fun we used to have.

[Phil Deakins]

There isn't any way to discover whether or not an av is registered as a scripted agent (bot).

[161488303349]

if search removal is being forced then thats good