Jump to content

New Rules on Bots


Innula Zenovka
 Share

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 2117 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Recommended Posts

People may have missed this -- I had, until Dari Caldwell pointed it out in another place -- but LL have recently changed their rules on what scripted agents (alias bots) may and may not do.

The main change seems to be that the number of messages and communications of any sort that a bot may make in a day is now limited to five thousand, and that if a bot sends a group message, or says something in a group, that counts as one message for each person in the group.   So if a bot sends a group message to a group with 1000 members, that counts as 1000 messages.

See Linden Lab Official -- Bot policy for more details.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

from the policy...

Sending an excessive number of messages with bots is not allowed.You may not use bots to send more than 5,000 messages in a calendar day. Messages to groups are counted as one message for every recipient in the group. All bots operated by a single user share a common limit.

Yup - Bots can foul themselves out if used to message a successful group - I like! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Innula Zenovka wrote:

People may have missed this -- I had, until Dari Caldwell
-- but LL have recently changed their rules on what scripted agents (alias bots) may and may not do.

The main change seems to be that the number of messages and communications of any sort that a bot may make in a day is now limited to five thousand, and that if a bot sends a group message, or says something in a group, that counts as one message for each person in the group.   So if a bot sends a group message to a group with 1000 members, that counts as 1000 messages.

See
 for more details.   

Also being discussed in this thread about Group Chat starting with post #10.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Marvellous :matte-motes-big-grin:

Am hoping that the 300+ individual bots that link to this thread (and that have recently gone offline) http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Curiouser-and-curiouser/td-p/953465/page/42  have done so because of this new policity regarding use of bots.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not so much a restriction on bots per se as limits on LSL intended to stop scripted objects from overloading the servers by sending messages too quickly (mostly greeters sending messages to arrivals in a sim).

The effect this has on spam bots is secondary but very welcome (though I seriously doubt any bot would spam a single group with that many messages that rapidly, I've certainly never seen it).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...


jwenting wrote:

It's not so much a restriction on bots per se as limits on LSL intended to stop scripted objects from overloading the servers by sending messages too quickly (mostly greeters sending messages to arrivals in a sim).

The effect this has on spam bots is secondary but very welcome (though I seriously doubt any bot would spam a single group with that many messages that rapidly, I've certainly never seen it).

The new rules concerning bots change nothing about the ability for scripts to spam individuals with functions like llInstantMessage, or spam local chat.   All they do is restrict all avatars that have declared themselves as scripted agents under a single email address from posting more than 5000 messages (one message to a group with 400 active members online would count as 400 messages under the rules).

There are legitimate reasons to have a bot post in group besides spamming.  It automates the process of making sure that announcements get to subscribers on time, it updates information on lucky boards or midnight mania for members who want that kind of information, and I was in a group who used a bot to relay local chat to group during evening discussions (so that members who couldn't be on the parcel were still allowed to participate).

I have a feeling that this policy wasn't changed as a reaction to spam, it was changed for the same reason the IM option was removed from my.secondlife.com.  Group chats are borked, and this is another method to lighten the load.

LL needs to be a little less vague on how they handle this.  If you're running and writing scripts for multiple bots, there needs to be more than a week's warning to make the necessary changes to make sure the bots aren't collectively exceeding those limits.  Although some bot owners have said their bots' messages have been capped, the revision makes it sound like warnings, suspensions and bannings will be the penalties for accidentally going over the limit.  If they have the capability to cap with a strict 5000 limit, then that's how the policy should be dealt with.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 years later...
35 minutes ago, FionaDrescher said:

Do all those Bot Prostitutes at AFK Sex Sims count as bots?

Look. A bot is a bot. All bots are bots. What else could they be? And bots are as allowed in SL as you and I are.

If you are wanting to know something specific about bots, you need to ask a more specific question.

Edited by Phil Deakins
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This never gets enforced, does it? I know some groups where the scripted agent breaks that rule on a daily basis... given the time passed is that rule even still in place?

Edited by Fionalein
Link to comment
Share on other sites

How do you know it's a scripted agent? They might just be people using alts to spam. And maybe nobody thinks to AR the practice, anyway, but, instead, people tell the group's owner so that the account can be kicked out of the group.

Note: bots aren't 'scripted agents' and scripted agents aren't necessarily bots. Anyway, scripted agents aren't a part of this discussion.

Edited by Phil Deakins
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Quote

Bots, or scripted agents, are avatars controlled by computer programs rather than people.

The prohibitions are:

Quote

You may not attempt to gain an unfair advantage in search results through the use of bots to inflate the traffic for a parcel.

Quote

You may not use bots to send more than 5,000 messages in a calendar day. Messages to groups are counted as one message for every recipient in the group. All bots operated by a single user share a common limit.

Quote

The use of bots, autonomous software, scripting (manual or automated), scripted agents, or any systems or software internal or external to the Second Life service that circumvent, automate and/or remove the human interaction required to purchase a Land parcel within Second Life on the Linden Lab owned Mainland is prohibited.

So if you are operating bots on a searchable parcel:

Quote

If you own a Second Life account that is primarily operated by a Scripted Agent (a "bot"), identify it as a bot on the Scripted Agent Status page. By identifying bots, you can help us give you more accurate account statistics and inworld search results.

(There's a lot more discussion of all this on the page, of course.)

Edited by KT Kingsley
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

Note: bots aren't 'scripted agents' and scripted agents aren't necessarily bots.

I'm assuming this is simply your opinion and you make some sort of distinction between those two terms, because LL does not seem to consider them two different things (at least per their wiki page).

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh yes, there's definitely a distinction between the two. It's not merely opinion.

Bots don't have to be registered as scripted agents, so bots aren't 'scripted agents', even though they are run by programmes. The words 'bot' and 'scripted agent' aren't interchangeable. They can be scripted agents on a voluntary basis, but they don't have to be. Of course they must be registered as scripted agents if they spend time on land that's set to show in search.

For the reasoning why a scripted agent isn't necessarily a bot, I'm going back to when scripted agents came in, and people were publically wondering whether or not they should register themselves when they want to leave their avatars on their land, which plenty of people do, including me, some even going to bed for the night, but the land is set to show in search. They didn't want to get into any trouble. Some may have actually done it, and maybe some still do. I never did, but I never left my avatar logged in when I went to bed or went out. Going to watch TV for an hour or 3 is different though. I stay logged in for that, even though I'm in another room. An avatar doesn't have to be a bot to be registered as a scripted agent. Anyone can register themselves as a scripted agent, for whatever reason they choose.

So a scripted agent isn't necessarily a bot, and bots aren't 'scripted agents', though they often are. A 'scripted agent' is an avatar that is registered as one, that's all. Very few of my bots, for instance, are registered as scripted agents, and I have dozens of them.

It all makes sense :)

Edited by Phil Deakins
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought these were the new bot laws:

  1. A bot may not injure a resident or, through inaction, allow a resident to come to harm.
  2. A bot must obey orders given it by residents except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A bot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
  • Like 3
  • Thanks 2
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

So a scripted agent isn't necessarily a bot, and bots aren't 'scripted agents',

This statement on LL's wiki page seem to imply otherwise - at least in LL's eyes (which really is all that matters in SL):

image.png.2315c13241013d64829e9ae37059d755.png

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

This statement on LL's wiki page seem to imply otherwise - at least in LL's eyes (which really is all that matters in SL):

image.png.2315c13241013d64829e9ae37059d755.png

I think I've explained well enough why a 'scripted agent' is not necessarily a bot. It doesn't matter what LL write on their pages. As long as I can register myself as a scripted agent, 'scripted agents' are not necessarily bots - and that's all that matters.

Of course LL would write that, because the 'scripted agent' flag was brought in specifically for bots, to curb the gaming of traffic. They didn't imagine that non-bot avatars would register themselves as scripted agents, and maybe none did, but that doesn't take anything away from the statement that scripted agents are not necessarily bots. The terms 'scripted agent' and 'bot' are not interchangeable. It's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact.

 

Edited by Phil Deakins
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Hell, even my infamous neighbor has a bot to bump the traffic on his land and keep the temp rezzor running 24/7 ... 

Is his land in search? If it is, you can report it, and keep on reporting it until the bot disappears. BUT make sure that it's actually counting for traffic first. It may be registered.

Edited by Phil Deakins
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 2117 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...