Campers

[Tamara Artis]

Is it ok to create 10-15 avatars and leave them online standing on a platform to make traffic? 

[Tamara Artis]

Is it ok to create 10-15 avatars and leave them online standing on a platform to make traffic? 

[Kenbro Utu]

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Bot_policy

Policy

Bots per se, are allowed and have legitimate uses, but inappropriate uses are violations of this policy.

Therefore:

• Using bots to "game" traffic is not allowed. You may not attempt to gain an unfair advantage in search results through the use of bots to inflate the traffic for a parcel. This policy applies to both mainland and private estates since both are represented in search.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Absolutely not.

[Phil Deakins]

Just as the others have said - NO it is not ok - if they are scoring traffic points. But it is ok if they are registered as scripted agents so that they don't count for traffic, which, in what you described, is highly unlikely, although there could valid reasons to do it.

The thing is, there is no way for us to know whether or not they are registered as scripted agents.

 

ETA: What you described isn't camping, so they are not campers. Camping is quite different.

[Vania Chaplin]

I know at least one person who was suspended for gaming traffic, because he left his avatar sitting in a pose stand while lunching. No, it is not OK.

 

[Tamara Artis]

Ok so I visited this place to get something and noone from staff is online but I see tons of green dots near me, flying not allowed so of course I got all curious and stuff, went on the next parcel, turn on fly and fly to check them out, they were all 600 and something days old and just standing there in their noob looks. I remember this was quite common in the old days but thought its long gone now...

But you comment got me worried because I often leave my avi and go afk just bc I know I will come back soon and am too lazy to login/out often. 

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Tamara Artis wrote:

Ok so I visited this place to get something and noone from staff is online but I see tons of green dots near me, flying not allowed so of course I got all curious and stuff, went on the next parcel, turn on fly and fly to check them out, they were all 600 and something days old and just standing there in their noob looks. I remember this was quite common in the old days but thought its long gone now...

But you comment got me worried because I often leave my avi and go afk just bc I know I will come back soon and am too lazy to login/out often. 

 

---

I know people who go afk all the time, fall asleep logged in, forget they were logged in, etc and never had any trouble.  I suspect there was more going on than just an  "avatar sitting in a pose stand while lunching."

[Vania Chaplin]

Hehe, I cannot give you any evidence, just because I don't have one. That's what he said to me, saying that leaving the avatar afk on a pose was seem as a bot gaming traffic :-P

[Phil Deakins]

---

Vania Chaplin wrote:

Hehe, I cannot give you any evidence, just because I don't have one. That's what he said to me, saying that leaving the avatar afk on a pose was seem as a bot gaming traffic :-P

---

It might have been seen that way by the particular Linden who got out of bed on the wrong side that day, or was just dumped by his or her girlfriend or boyfriend, but it's an extreme punishment for what you described. So extreme that the very idea should worry nobody at all. I think it's more likely to be what Perrie suggested - something more than just being afk while having lunch.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I too leave my avatar sitting someplace around the house if I am just grabbing lunch and nothing of this sort happened to me.

It probably was a commercial site vs residential and maybe he had an extremely long 'lunch' hehe. Since it is legal to hire live models to model clothing in a shop, I'd score this as a nice try but I'm sure LL has heard it all. 

 

[Kenbro Utu]

---

Vania Chaplin wrote:

Hehe, I cannot give you any evidence, just because I don't have one. That's what he said to me, saying that leaving the avatar afk on a pose was seem as a bot gaming traffic :-P

---

There is actually a definition of a bot, from the wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Bot

"A bot is an avatar which is controlled by a machine, rather than by a human."

 

The page even has links to bot clients that can be run.  It is an interesting read.  

[Ceka Cianci]

i may be a little rusty on this but doesn't the land also have to be listed in the search to be violating the rules also?

or was that for camping devices?

[Phil Deakins]

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

i may be a little rusty on this but doesn't the land also have to be kisted in the search to be violating the rules also?

or was that for camping devices?

---

Yes. If the parcel is listed in search then bots that are not registered as 'scripted agents' are not allowed. If the parcel is not listed in search, then bots don't need to be registered to be on the parcel.

E.g. if the parcel that the OP wrote about is not set to show in search then the bots on the platform are perfectly ok, regardless of whether or not they are registered as scripted agents. It may be that the owner puts them there for their green dot value, or for some other reason, and the parcel is not set to show in search.

The rules are against the gaming of traffic. There are no rules against bots or camping.

[Tamara Artis]

The parcel is a business place and can be found in search but in "about land" I think only people with land rights can see is it "show in search" ticked. 

All avatars that stand there are members of the land group and besides that have no other infos, they all have one of the default avatars looks, one you chose when making a new account.

[Phil Deakins]

It's very likely that they are there to game traffic. We were just detailing the rules, that's all.

We can't know for certain that they are gaming traffic because we can't see whether or not they are registered as scripted agents, but if the parcel's traffic count is much higher than non-bot visitors to the parcel would suggest, then it's a very big clue.

Incidentally, you should AR the bots because LL won't find them on their own. When the gaming traffic rules came out LL said they don't want traffic gaming to be reported and that they would find 'offenses' themselves. But that was years ago and was probably said to avoid an absolute flood of reports. I am sure that the only way that LL will ever know about traffic gaming these days is if people report it when they see it.

You could land on the platform and push the bots off, of course. If the parcel is small enough, the bots might land on adjacent parcels and stop counting for the offender's parcel A while ago, I did that regularly with a traffic gamer in the next sim - until the bots were no longer there. Either LL took notice of the reports or the parcel owner decided to stop using the bots.

[Rhys Goode]

I know of a mainland sim that keeps a stable of about 15 inactive bots off in a closet, far removed from everyone else, as a way to reduce lag for other users.  They are registered so as not to increase traffic. They give indirect control over how many active avatars can be in the sim at any time, and so the peak lag is less than if it were full of active avatars. 

[Tamara Artis]

Ok thanks for the advice:)

[Phil Deakins]

---

Rhys Goode wrote:

I know of a mainland sim that keeps a stable of about 15 inactive bots off in a closet, far removed from everyone else, as a way to reduce lag for other users.  They are registered so as not to increase traffic. They give indirect control over how many active avatars can be in the sim at any time, and so the peak lag is less than if it were full of active avatars. 

---

That's a very good method.

I used to control the avatars in a mainland sim but I did it for my traffic count. I wrote a system where my bots would fill most of the available avatar slots in the sim, leaving just a few for real avs to arrive. When one arrived, one of my bots logged out. When one left the sim one of my bots logged in. And so on. So there were always a few available spots for avatars to arrive. It worked perfectly and the very day after I decided that it's perfect and needs no more tweaking...., LL announced the banning of traffic gaming!

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Rhys Goode wrote:

I know of a mainland sim that keeps a stable of about 15 inactive bots off in a closet, far removed from everyone else, as a way to reduce lag for other users.  They are registered so as not to increase traffic. They give indirect control over how many active avatars can be in the sim at any time, and so the peak lag is less than if it were full of active avatars. 

---

 

This may not be fair to the other landowners there, unless they all agreed to it.  To be a good neighbor you should only use resources in proportion to the land you own. So for example if you want to have 20 people on your parcel, bots or not, you should own a half sim or better since sims are set at 40 people by default.  The exception might be an occasional big party where you have notified your neighbors that you are having one and asked if it was ok with them (and probably invited them).

Its not up to that landowner to police the number of people that other landowners can have just so he has less lag, which is essentially what he is doing.  Nothing is more frustrating than paying for land and not being able to access it or have friends over because your neighbor has a crowd on their parcel and would be even more so if the crowd is bots.  It isn't as rare as you might imagine that this would happen with regular avatars.  When I owned a large estate I got a complaint about just this type of thing several times a  year.

 

[Phil Deakins]

That's an old argument, Amethyst, and one that was never valid and cannot work. According to that argument, a person who owns a 512m mainland parcel can't go onto his/her land because s/he would exceed the number of avatars for a 512. And the same is true of a 1024m mainland parcel. So it's obvious that there is no need for mainland parcel owners to limit the number of avs on their parcels in proportion to the land they own.

All that's needed by a parcel owner is to be sensible about the resources that are used on the parcel.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

That's an old argument, Amethyst, and one that was never valid and cannot work. According to that argument, a person who owns a 512m mainland parcel can't go onto his/her land because s/he would exceed the number of avatars for a 512. And the same is true of a 1024m mainland parcel. So it's obvious that there is no need for mainland parcel owners to limit the number of avs on their parcels in proportion to the land they own.

All that's needed by a parcel owner is to be sensible about the resources that are used on the parcel.

---

Some of that goes back to the old problem of a lack of any sense of zoning on the Mainland. 

People used to be virtually forced off their parcels when someone would open a Club rendering the SIM almost unlivable because of the lag fest.

I believe in being a good neighbor myself, but not everyone does this.  Can really suck at times.

 

[Phil Deakins]

That's true, Perrie. It also came up with the arguments about temp rezzers back when temp prims counted against a sim's 15,000..

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

 

Some of that goes back to the old problem of a lack of any sense of zoning on the Mainland. 

People used to be virtually forced off their parcels when someone would open a Club rendering the SIM almost unlivable because of the lag fest.

I believe in being a good neighbor myself, but not everyone does this.  Can really suck at times.

 

---

I had that happen on the mainland sim where I live back in 2007.  Someone opened a club on the sim and during the peak hours for the club which, unfortunately were also the main hours I was in SL, I could not tp back to my own home and got the message "Sim full, try again later."  :matte-motes-sour:

 

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

LL would have done something about that if you'd asked them.