Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Ok, it has been almost a year now since LL completely destroyed the inworld search. Currently, the inworld search is about the worst it has ever been. It's been a full year too, with absolutely no improvements at all. Again, A WHOLE F-ing year that LL paid people to do absolutely nothing. Seriously, I want a job as an SL search professional, so that I can sit and do nothing for a year.The search hit rock bottom when PICKS were removed. So, why did LL not spend the past year fixing the problems with PICKs? Or, should we go another year with a BROKEN inworld search?Sorry if I just pissed off a bunch of LL devs, but I evaluate things by the results.:smileymad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legend Hye Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Nooo.... they are not pissed at you. They are on a break at the moment so really don't have the time to waste their time here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Medhue Simoni wrote: Ok, it has been almost a year now since LL completely destroyed the inworld search. Currently, the inworld search is about the worst it has ever been. It's been a full year too, with absolutely no improvements at all. Again, A WHOLE F-ing year that LL paid people to do absolutely nothing. Seriously, I want a job as an SL search professional, so that I can sit and do nothing for a year. The search hit rock bottom when PICKS were removed. So, why did LL not spend the past year fixing the problems with PICKs? Or, should we go another year with a BROKEN inworld search? Sorry if I just pissed off a bunch of LL devs, but I evaluate things by the results.:smileymad: And just to dot the eye on how stupid the inworld search is.... Today I created a new CLASSIFIED in my profile for my new Art Gallery. The title of it is "toy's art gallery". I thought that no problem even if someone searches for "toys art gallery" it will still find it?? Right? NOPE! I got zero search results. Same when I types "toy art gallery"... NOPE. I had to literally type "toy's art gallery" for my classified to show up. So LL has downgraded Inworld search to be as dumb as a doorknob! Great work Team... I want a job at LL. Then to add to the absolute stupidity that proves Medhue's point that the LL Search specialists that have been working to improve inworld search have been doing NOTHING but actually making things worse... My classified ad that I pay 50L/week for... does not show up under ALL SEARCH. Doesnt ALL mean uhmmmm ALL ??? So unless someone is in search and actually goes to the CLASSIFIEDS tab and does a search (I know I never do - as I always use ALL or PEOPLE)... they would never find my advertisment. Of course inworld search also does not provide any stats to show if our paid ad is even being hit on. I know exactly what you feel like Medhue. Its totally frustrating how badly LL continues to never execute on the things that need to be fixed yet fully execute on all the things SL residents dread they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 In fact.... I just noticed one more thing about how broken and stupid inworld search is.... If you are an SL Resident and you call up Search and you want to get the widest breadth of search or you cant decide which tab to use in search.... like most normal humans.... you would select the "ALL" tab in search. I know I am not the smartest Toy in the Toybox... but I would naively come to the conclusion that if I select ALL.... I would get any search results from any of the other tabs... classifieds, events, showcase, land sales, places, people, groups. (of course there likely are those smarty pants veteran experts that will say... NOOOO but I am one of the normal SL residents).... So I type a search phrase like "black shoes" or "disco night"... Thinking if some one had a classified on black shoes or and an event for a "disco night" - it surely would show up in the ALL tab... right? Well glory be... I would be wrong as would the majority of SL Residents.... The truth is that the ALL Tab to LL only mean "ALL PLACES, PEOPLE, GROUPS". ALL to LL does not mean events or classifieds or land sales or anything else. As such, all I got back was pages and pages of LAND and People and GROUPs. If you happen to be a merchant that does not own land and only rents stores then your chances of being found in inworld search is pretty much ZERO unless you think a shopper will look for you in the CLASSIFIED tab. SO....... this is what the LL Search Experts have been doing all this time ? But as Brooke stated earlier... they need to study SEARCH more since they have no clue whats wrong. I hope when they figure out SLM search problem - they dont fix it with the team that fixed Inworld search. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Well .. to start with, I don't want Picks revivified .. at least not as they were. They were too open ended and found uses far outside their intended function of allowing people to highlight places they liked. However, since they were intimately linked with a place and could not be separated, the varied text that people plugged into them wound up adding nothing but useless noise to the Search Index. That was the primary reason they were removed. Now that we have Web Profiles with all their "potential", I would hope that LL sees this as the right opportunity to create a new type of User-Created "I like this place" tool. But there needs to be some tweaks to how they worked if we are to avoid (or at least minimize) the rampant gaming and "Paying for Picks" that caused problems before. 1. Everyone gets one and only one I Like This Place Marker Yup, only one. You heard that right. My theory is that by making them rare then people will use them only for things they truly like. If they do choose to sell theirs to someone they will be able to sell it only once. Anyone wanting to pay for that "Advertising" will have to pay a very dear price. The bidding war alone could push the price way out of the reasonable range and put it into the "not bloody worth it anymore" realm. 2. I Like This Place Markers are Perishable Once set to a specific location, they automatically time out and clear after a reasonable period of time. One month may be about right, but something as short as one week might work as well. The idea being that if someone still wants to feature that location when they time out, then they will have to return TO the location and set it again. 3. I Like This Place Markers have No User Settable Values, Image or Text People will not be able to add text, reviews, comments, images or in any way alter the values automatically set in them. The text and image that are set will be the Land Name and Image of the parcel where they are set and cannot be changed by the User. The User will only be able to mark a location as a place they like .. and that's it. This will prevent people misusing them by typing in unrelated narrative or worse, negatively affecting a location by putting crude, banned or abusive terms in the Marker. 4. Once Set, I Like This Place Markers Stay Set Until They Time Out This goes to raising the "value" of the Marker by making it important to use it wisely. If you waste it then it's wasted and you don't get to change your mind for another month (or week or whatever). If you sell it, you best sell it for something equivalent to a month's worth of advertising for the Buyer because that's exactly what you're providing. These ideas won't "fix" every possible way to game them; humans will always find a way to game things. But it will improve the chances that the incentive to use them for gaming will be reduced. Again, there just isn't a way to stop misuse, but you can certainly apply a bit of psychology and basic human nature to make it less than appealing to try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 No offense Darrius, but you sound like a coder.:smileyvery-happy: I don't think it really has to be that complicated. The whole issue with Picks can be solved by not allowing people to add their own texture to the PICK, or even text. That solves that. It was the ability to add their own textures that started the whole problem, because people had a place to display things, whether it was related to the place or not. I would hope that LL would add a new section to profile where people can post whatever they want, with pictures, but the fix for the PICKs is not brain surgery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zanara Zenovka Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Picks were useful to see which merchants had to resort to ludicrous gaming to promote their products, and were therefore best avoided. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 I don't personally know what you are talking about. No1 I know used any Picks services. Why? Because it was a scam. Most of the picks that were being used were not being counted in the system. The only picks that counted had Payment info used in the profile. All I know, is that all the top places to find what you were looking for, floated to the top of search. Picks made search relevant. Without them, there is nothing at all where the public has a say in what are the best spots. This is not what we want here. We need the masses to point people in the direction of the places that the most people like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishtara Rothschild Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 I agree that search is bleeped up beyond repair, but removing picks was a wise decision imho. They have been gamed a lot since camping and traffic bots were forbidden. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishtara Rothschild Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Darrius Gothly wrote: 1. Everyone gets one and only one I Like This Place Marker Yup, only one. You heard that right. My theory is that by making them rare then people will use them only for things they truly like. If they do choose to sell theirs to someone they will be able to sell it only once. Anyone wanting to pay for that "Advertising" will have to pay a very dear price. The bidding war alone could push the price way out of the reasonable range and put it into the "not bloody worth it anymore" realm. I'm afraid that this wouldn't change anything. Both land owners and hobos that are paid for picks would create an army of alts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishtara Rothschild Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Medhue Simoni wrote: I don't personally know what you are talking about. No1 I know used any Picks services. Why? Because it was a scam. Most of the picks that were being used were not being counted in the system. The only picks that counted had Payment info used in the profile. All I know, is that all the top places to find what you were looking for, floated to the top of search. Picks made search relevant. Without them, there is nothing at all where the public has a say in what are the best spots. This is not what we want here. We need the masses to point people in the direction of the places that the most people like. Most picks that I've seen in people's profiles were set at completely random spots and then overwritten with some "useful" information in the lines of "this is bubblegumgirl92 shes my main squeeze mess with her and ill bleeping brutalize u and ur SL family", or "RP Limits: no use of thread cutters, orbital sanders or power drills above the belt line". I'm not sure how relevant that kind of information could possibly be to anybody. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Darrius Gothly wrote: 1. Everyone gets one and only one I Like This Place Marker Yup, only one. You heard that right. My theory is that by making them rare then people will use them only for things they truly like. If they do choose to sell theirs to someone they will be able to sell it only once. Anyone wanting to pay for that "Advertising" will have to pay a very dear price. The bidding war alone could push the price way out of the reasonable range and put it into the "not bloody worth it anymore" realm. My theory is that it will bring back the armies of alts. When traffic was an important factor there were campingbots and botfarms, when picks were an important factor there were pickbots and pickbuyers. People are always trying to game the system, because gaming the system is profitable. So when you just have one voice, gamers will need a big volume of people to game the system. Accounts are free, so making alt farms is a very low cost (or actual no cost) way of gaming the system. They will arrive the day this 'I like this place marker' becomes reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 for inworld search .... including profile picks is not the biggest problem.... the critical search on assets inworld is the problem and a search engine and deployment more more stupid than a broken toater. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 Toysoldier Thor wrote: for inworld search .... including profile picks is not the biggest problem.... the critical search on assets inworld is the problem and a search engine and deployment more more stupid than a broken toater. That depends on what you think the problem is. My evaluation is that the GSA does not have enough relevant information to rank the places. Adding back in the Picks system, adds a relevant data set that is less manipulated than all other factors that the gsa uses to rank places. All other factors can easily be controlled by the merchants. Oh, I need more prims, no problem. Oh, I need more traffic, no problem. What we don't have the most control over is how many people picked us. Ok, some people are going to say it is easily gamed, but which search was more relevant? Is this current set of results from the search more relevant than when we had picks? There was even a brief periods where we had both the GSA6 and Picks, and it was all way more relevant than what we are seeing now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 Heck, why not bring in many different types of voting systems. Even from outside SL, say LIKEs from Facebook. The more likes you have in the destination guide, the higher you rank for your keywords in inworld search. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Ishtara Rothschild wrote: Most picks that I've seen in people's profiles were set at completely random spots and then overwritten with some "useful" information in the lines of "this is bubblegumgirl92 shes my main squeeze mess with her and ill bleeping brutalize u and ur SL family", or "RP Limits: no use of thread cutters, orbital sanders or power drills above the belt line". I'm not sure how relevant that kind of information could possibly be to anybody. Those Picks didn't make any difference to the search results, and spoiled nothing. I'll explain why... The reason why Picks were powerful in improving rankings is because each Pick in the person's profile page had a link pointing to the Place's page. But it was never a case of the one with the most links wins - it's wasn't a links count. The thing about a link that made a difference was its clickable link text, because that text was attributed to the page that it pointed to, and it had more power that the actual text on the Place's page. So, if a Pick's link text was, say, "low prim furniture", then that link would improve the Place's ranking for a search on "low prim furniture". If the link text was changed by the person who had the Place in their Picks to, say, "my sweetheart", then the Pick would cause the Place's ranking to improve for a search on "my sweetheart", but it would do nothing for a search on "low prim furniture". So Picks that were changed by the Picker didn't change the rankings for the Place in either direction, except for the words that the Picks were changed to. And a Place having one Pick in someone's profile, with the link text "my sweetheart", didn't make a mess of the results for a search on "my sweetheart" or "sweetheart". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Medhue Simoni wrote: The only picks that counted had Payment info used in the profile. It wasn't that. It was avatars that had an html page. Most html pages were caused by payment info used but not all. Some were caused by creating a group, regardless of whether or payment infor was on file or used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porky Gorky Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Zanara Zenovka wrote: Picks were useful to see which merchants had to resort to ludicrous gaming to promote their products, and were therefore best avoided. Maybe for you on a personal level that was the best use of picks. For allot of other people though, picks were used to dominate and dictate search rankings to great effect. Picks were one of the more easily gamed search factors and with a large L$ investment it was very easy to secure the number 1 rank on lots of keywords in a very short amount of time. I know, because I did it. The downside was it drove away a few potential customers (like yourself) who were apposed to paying for picks. The upside was it bought in thousands of other visitors who didn't care less about search gaming and went on to purchase products. So yeah, I say bring back picks. We cannot rely on Linden Labs to produce a set of relevant search results. We have to rely on ourselves to game search in order to get our businesses to show up in relevant search results (at least within the first 5 pages) and picks offered an easily understandable way to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 What I am saying is that - why not fix the basic functions of inworld search. When something as basic as the ALL TAB is broken and only provides results from places, people,groups (and does not even include results from the one tab that SL Residents are paying $50L a week for), then it says all about how bad a shape inworld search is. Since it is clear that over a year after LL made big announcements that they will be focusing on inworld search once and for all and put an expert staffer in place to fix SEARCH (both inworld and xstreet/slm) and that is in fact in worse shape now then it was before they started.... LL should just admit they do not understand search. LL should hire an outside expert that understands search ... maybe they should hire some of us as well as a GUIDANCE COUNCIL to work with this Search Expert and get this fixed. I mean its mind boggling that something as somple as ALL tab doesnt work and that my classified ad cannot be found in classifieds because I didnt type my search to exactly match my Ad title. I just started two ads for my scupty store and my art gallery but with this borked up inworld search.... I am just throwing $100L a week away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 I gotta point out Toysoldier Thor that classifeds ads show in every search result, no matter what category you are searching. They just show on the side, instead of in the main results area. The only place classifieds do not show in the search, is in the Destination Guide section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Medhue Simoni wrote: No offense Darrius, but you sound like a coder.:smileyvery-happy: *GRIN* I am a coder. And no offense taken. Coding / Programming been berry berry good to me! LOL Medhue Simoni wrote: I don't think it really has to be that complicated. The whole issue with Picks can be solved by not allowing people to add their own texture to the PICK, or even text. That solves that. It was the ability to add their own textures that started the whole problem, because people had a place to display things, whether it was related to the place or not. I would hope that LL would add a new section to profile where people can post whatever they want, with pictures, but the fix for the PICKs is not brain surgery. My concern is more that changing Picks will "break" millions of existing profiles and Picks. LL is already very good at breaking what already works ... I prefer not to give them more things to hit with their hammer. Ishtara Rothschild wrote: I'm afraid that this wouldn't change anything. Both land owners and hobos that are paid for picks would create an army of alts. Madeliefste Oh wrote: My theory is that it will bring back the armies of alts. When traffic was an important factor there were campingbots and botfarms, when picks were an important factor there were pickbots and pickbuyers. People are always trying to game the system, because gaming the system is profitable. So when you just have one voice, gamers will need a big volume of people to game the system. Accounts are free, so making alt farms is a very low cost (or actual no cost) way of gaming the system. They will arrive the day this 'I like this place marker' becomes reality. Yes, I agree .. and sadly there's no way to defend against the use of FUDA (Free Unlimited Disposable Alt) Accounts. Their use though is one reason I included the automatic timeout of Markers. It would be fairly easy to look at the "Creation Date/Time" for each one and, upon spotting that they are all within minutes of each other, disqualify them. Also anyone hosting an army of FUDAs would have to routinely log each one on and make sure to update the Picks every month or week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 Darrius Gothly wrote: Yes, I agree .. and sadly there's no way to defend against the use of FUDA (Free Unlimited Disposable Alt) Accounts. Their use though is one reason I included the automatic timeout of Markers. It would be fairly easy to look at the "Creation Date/Time" for each one and, upon spotting that they are all within minutes of each other, disqualify them. Also anyone hosting an army of FUDAs would have to routinely log each one on and make sure to update the Picks every month or week. That is the way to handle all abuse concerning gaming of the system. You make it so time intense to do, that no1 will do it. The 1's that do, will waste so much time that other merchants gain an advantage from the time they save not gaming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrius Gothly Posted March 27, 2011 Share Posted March 27, 2011 Medhue Simoni wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: Yes, I agree .. and sadly there's no way to defend against the use of FUDA (Free Unlimited Disposable Alt) Accounts. Their use though is one reason I included the automatic timeout of Markers. It would be fairly easy to look at the "Creation Date/Time" for each one and, upon spotting that they are all within minutes of each other, disqualify them. Also anyone hosting an army of FUDAs would have to routinely log each one on and make sure to update the Picks every month or week. That is the way to handle all abuse concerning gaming of the system. You make it so time intense to do, that no1 will do it. The 1's that do, will waste so much time that other merchants gain an advantage from the time they save not gaming. Bingo! Don't make it technically impossible, just make it so annoyingly time consuming that people either give up, or waste valuable time gaining .. not much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyra Blackthorne Posted March 28, 2011 Share Posted March 28, 2011 They haven't done "nothing" ... they keep working on it to make it even worse A few months ago it was hard to find the products you wanted, but now it is hard to also find a person or place by name in ALL too. I think they are soooo focused on ending search gaming they have forgotten the product needs to work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyra Blackthorne Posted March 28, 2011 Share Posted March 28, 2011 oooh no, I dont want just one "I like". I want many many lol. I agree with Medue,just give residents a tab where they can put pics and coments on their friends and family and then have a tab for merchant picks that are not modifiable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
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