What's the purpose of the big green VOTE BOX?

[Markie Macpherson]

I'm curious as to what the purpose is behind the green vote box I've found at many locations. I've heard they were used for ranking in search sometime ago but that has changed. So I'm wondering what they are for now? Just to show the owner of said box how many people like their place or is there another function? Do they help draw people to a location? Can anyone answer this question?

[Argus Collingwood]

 

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Markie Macpherson wrote:

I'm curious as to what the purpose is behind the green vote box I've found at many locations. I've heard they were used for ranking in search sometime ago but that has changed. So I'm wondering what they are for now? Just to show the owner of said box how many people like their place or is there another function? Do they help draw people to a location? Can anyone answer this question?

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I took ours in a while back. Yes it was used and yes it did show the box owner how many folks clicked on it. No, they did not draw folks to the box location. I decided that the emails from the box  were just not a good measure to justify the prims and the "please vote" gesture any longer. Hope this helps answer your questions.

 

[Honey Puddles]

Long ago, LL used the vote boxes to determine a parcel's popularity, and thus it's ranking in search.. If you got a lot of votes, they would (it is said) lower your tier, thus encouraging people to buoild popular places, clubs, and hangouts.The vote-boxes were gamed, when roving parties of avatars would hire themselves out to come vote for your location.

Then along came the "Traffic" calculation (also known as "Dwell"). This was an automated process, that counted how many "minutes" each avatar spent on your land. the more minutes, the more avatars, the higher your traffic score. The traffic score was used to determine a parcel's popularity, and thus it's ranking in search. The traffic system was gamed by camping sites who encouraged people to park their avatars for long periods.. and then later by armies of bots squeezed into remote skyboxes.

Then along came a massive rethinking of search relevancy, and all sorts of attempts to obfuscate what made a parcel "popular" as far as the search engine was concerned. Each time, people have figured it out, and gamed it.. from parcel sizes, to profile picks..

The Vote boxes today, do almost nothing. The data sent from the boxes is no longer received or acted on by LL. They do however do 2 important things. 1, they're a common enough item that people feel happy to click them as if they're "helping" the place remain popular.. and 2, each day they IM the owner with the total number of votes received that day.

I placed a vote box by my freebies area, since it's like a way of saying "thanks"... it's nice to see a few people clicked on the vote box after a difficult day.

There have been some attempts to make new vote boxes.. third party sites DO exist that track location popularity, but as a business owner, I question whether any customers care about my store's popularity ranking on those lists.

I keep the vote box rezzed, because I can spare the prims, and it's nice to get a little reminder now and then that people appreciate the freebies.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

Wow lol you still seeing those boxes around?

 

Old Programs bring back good old memories

[Torley Linden]

Here's more historical info on said green voting stations you may find enlightening.

[Dorientje Woller]

Additional question : Is it allowed to turn out lindens to obtain votes, and such keeping the popularity of a place in a rather doubtfull manner high ?

[Ceka Cianci]

i see those boxes used a lot still..i just don't have the heart to tell them they don't work anymore..

most seem to enjoy feeling like they are contributing when they are clicking their favorite places box..i figure why wreck a good vibe  =)

[Qie Niangao]

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I suspect places with the vote boxes are fully aware that they don't serve their original purpose, but having them there still gives "voters" the illusion of contributing to the tribe.  I bet those "voters" are several times more likely to return than are folks who never saw a vote box.  Cognitive dissonance FTW.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Dorientje Woller wrote:

Additional question : Is it allowed to turn out lindens to obtain votes, and such keeping the popularity of a place in a rather doubtfull manner high ?

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If suckers want to pay lindens to people who click on something that's been more or less non-functional since 2005...

6 years of going at it with no results and you gotta wonder.

I did put one on a lot I had last year, not to pay out, but just to get a certain ambience with the theme I was going for. That's all they're good for now - achieving a particular visual.

 

[Dorientje Woller]

Ok, might be that those people are "s**kers", as you call them, but nevertheless a bunch of alt accounts are created to obtain those free lindens by this vote box, which is resulting in an increase or altered image of the real traffic numbers of that place. Is it allowed to increase or alter the real traffic numbers of a place/region/sim by artifical means ?

[Qie Niangao]

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Dorientje Woller wrote:

...  a bunch of alt accounts are created to obtain those free lindens by this vote box...

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Whoa.  That's a whole different kind of vote box.  Does anything like that still exist, given that Traffic has nearly zero effect on Search ranking?

I understood the whole rest of this thread to be referring to the old green vote boxes that were part of an ancient, Linden-run system that paid out to the landowner, not to anybody touching the box.