Would an influx of users who joins primarily to earn money by doing services hurts SL's economy, or stimulate it?

[BilliJo Aldrin]

5 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

I'm sorry, but i can't see how this could possibly be a benefit to SL. People joining with the sole purpose of farming as any $L as possible just to cash them out without spending a dime can only hurt SL. If everyone who played the farming for $L games did nothing but cash out, why would the host of such games keep them going? Traffic is no longer a valid reason as it has no bearing on search anymore. And if they aren't buying things at the landowners store or their renters stores, why spend the $L? 

I personally feel anyone $L farming should not be allowed to cash out. Or their should be a minimum spent wither inworld or on the MP before you can. And not a pittance either. 

Everyone keeps saying traffic has no bearing on search anymore but any time I search something, the highest traffic places show up on top, and that includes places with the same 20 avis logged in 24/7/365.

The pennies that a few "impoverished" Venezuelans with computers probably better than mine could cash out from playing free games will have no effect on LL's economy.

[Solar Legion]

54 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Everyone keeps saying traffic has no bearing on search anymore but any time I search something, the highest traffic places show up on top, and that includes places with the same 20 avis logged in 24/7/365.

I am not sure which viewer you use nor how you have it set to handle search but the newer web page based search system ignores traffic when sorting and displaying results while the older version you often see in TPVs such as Firestorm, Singularity and even CoolVL Viewer as an option will automatically take the results the system generates and sort by traffic despite the actual search algorithm itself ignoring the amount of traffic.

In short they're saying it because it is true and the deviation is due to your personal preference where viewer and search dialog is concerned.

To be a bit more clear: While you can set the web page based search to sort by traffic that particular metric is ignored for the default and arguably more used sorting method, relevance.

Edited October 29, 2017 by Solar Legion
Clarification

[Phil Deakins]

Sorting by traffic and using traffic as a factor when determining the order of the results are completely different. I haven't looked at search for a number of years now, but I doubt that traffic as a factor has been completely abandoned. In the original search, the results were sorted only by traffic. Then LL got the GSA and traffic played a much lower part in the results, but it was a factor and it did play a part. Then they moved to a freebie search engine, which they could tailor to their own desires. I'd stopped taking an interest before that happened.

So what I'm saying is that, unless traffic has been totally dropped as a factor, then it does play a part in the reults, regardless of whether or not the order of the results is determined by traffic. I doubt that it's been totally dropped, especially since traffic bots are no longer a problem, but that's just my doubt, and nothing to do with knowledge.

Edited October 29, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Solar Legion said:

I am not sure which viewer you use nor how you have it set to handle search but the newer web page based search system ignores traffic when sorting and displaying results while the older version you often see in TPVs such as Firestorm, Singularity and even CoolVL Viewer as an option will automatically take the results the system generates and sort by traffic despite the actual search algorithm itself ignoring the amount of traffic.

In short they're saying it because it is true and the deviation is due to your personal preference where viewer and search dialog is concerned.

To be a bit more clear: While you can set the web page based search to sort by traffic that particular metric is ignored for the default and arguably more used sorting method, relevance.

I use Firestorm, so i use the in browser search function. When  I look for a place to visit, say a Blues club, I'll type in "blues Club" and the results will be listed with the largest traffic number on top. I'm not sure how else they can be ordered, but if you can rank them by the least number of annoying flashing, moving rotating prims I'd use that criterion.

[Solar Legion]

1 minute ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I use Firestorm, so i use the in browser search function. When  I look for a place to visit, say a Blues club, I'll type in "blues Club" and the results will be listed with the largest traffic number on top. I'm not sure how else they can be ordered, but if you can rank them by the least number of annoying flashing, moving rotating prims I'd use that criterion.

Which of the following does your search dialog look like Billi? One's the older version while the other is the web based. One defaults to a presorted display while the other shows you the results as the system itself factors them.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Which of the following does your search dialog look like Billi? One's the older version while the other is the web based. One defaults to a presorted display while the other shows you the results as the system itself factors them.

The top one. I go to clubs for the social aspect, so I'm interested in the largest traffic numbers.

Edited October 29, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
cut out an unnecessary line

[Solar Legion]

Just now, BilliJo Aldrin said:

The top one. It looks like the bottom one uses the SL viewer layout,

I'm phoenix layout all the way 

I go to clubs for the social aspect, so I'm interested in the largest traffic numbers.

That'd be why, yeah. The top one's the older search system that Hybrid and Phoenix layouts for Firestorm uses and only offers the ability to sort the results by name or by traffic.

The bottom screenshot is still Firestorm but using the websearch dialog. That's accessed through enabling the newer viewer system location and search bars at the top (not pictured as I don't use them myself and only popped them up long enough to get to the websearch). The websearch defaults to the raw factored results (Relevance) instead of the much older format.

It will still list traffic for you but as you can see it really doesn't factor in much anymore. Its essentially been reduced to a statistical metric.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

That'd be why, yeah. The top one's the older search system that Hybrid and Phoenix layouts for Firestorm uses and only offers the ability to sort the results by name or by traffic.

The bottom screenshot is still Firestorm but using the websearch dialog. That's accessed through enabling the newer viewer system location and search bars at the top (not pictured as I don't use them myself and only popped them up long enough to get to the websearch). The websearch defaults to the raw factored results (Relevance) instead of the much older format.

It will still list traffic for you but as you can see it really doesn't factor in much anymore. Its essentially been reduced to a statistical metric.

What is the relevance to a search for blues clubs besides the fact that its a blues club?

What other factors are considered in the web based search?

[Solar Legion]

7 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

What is the relevance to a search for blues clubs besides the fact that its a blues club?

What other factors are considered in the web based search?

I can only make assumptions from this point forward but I would think they factor Keywords, title, description, number of people who visit from the search page (a bit different than traffic) and potentially things like Classifieds and number of users who have the place listed in their Picks. On top of this they could use any weighted combination of these factors and there may be a few possibilities I missed. At one point they actually did put a lot of weight on user's Picks but that seems to have been refactored.

Honestly aside from the traffic being little more than a statistic these days the rest is up for speculation. May as well ask Alphabet how their Google engine factors relevance, you'll be in the same situation.

Its wonky as heck and one of the reasons why I rarely use search at all - new or old.

Edited October 29, 2017 by Solar Legion

[Qie Niangao]

18 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

What is the relevance to a search for blues clubs besides the fact that its a blues club?

What other factors are considered in the web based search?

The web based search of Places can sort by relevance,  traffic (ascending or descending) or alphabetically by parcel name (again, ascending or descending). You can see it for yourself in a browser without needing to fire-up a viewer. If you're not searching Places specifically, I think it always uses "relevance" however that's measured. (I think, in addition to factors Solar mentioned, there's a pretty heavy weight on the information-theoretic quality of the text match of query to listing -- that is, the prominence of the query terms in the listing text and the relative absence of other unlikely terms.)

Edited October 29, 2017 by Qie Niangao

[Solar Legion]

Thanks Qie - I had no idea how to phrase the latter bit there. Cloudy, rainy and chilly here so my head's a bit muddy.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

7 hours ago, lucagrabacr said:

There are places where that sort of income is more than good enough to make a living, Venezuela is one of them I suppose. (and according to Google Venezuela's average monthly income is $20 as of now)

I would love to know how many people making $20 a month actually have things like, electricity, running water, a credit card that LL will accept, a computer that could even run SL... Little things like that. 

[Phil Deakins]

As I said earlier, I haven't looked at search for a number of years, but if I could remember how to access the archived forum posts (RA specifically) I could point you at some posts that explain how search engines, from Google on, rank pages. But I can't find the way to access the archives, so...

The web search ranks HTML pages. An SL parcel's webpage contains only the parcel's Title and Description, which is the name and description of the parcel that the owner chose. I've just had a look (for the first time in years), and it seems that LL only puts the parcel's Title in the unviewable part of the HTML page. They are both put in the viewable part. Unless LL has radically changed the freebie search engine that they use, the Title (parcel name) is the most important part of a page's content as far as rankings are concerned. The Description plays a lesser part but is nevertheless important - because that's all there is.

The 'prominence' of the search term, and partial search term in those 2 parcel-owner generated parts is basically what the engine ranks the pages on, more weight being given the the Title. Prominence usually means how near the start of the Title and Description the searchterm is, and how many times it is repeated - more not necessarily being better - and what percentage of the total words on the page constitutes searchterm words. Exact searchterm matches are much better than partial matches, of course.

From a user's point of view, there's not much to rank SL pages on, so the results ought to not be very good. If only for that reason, I'd be very surprised if a parcel's traffic isn't a factor in ranking pages, and possibly given more weight than had been thought. I wonder if they still use the trick they used with the GSA.

 

ETA: I found it - http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/327/b1/252152/1.html

That applied when LL used the GSA engine but, even though the current parcel pages' content contains only the parcel's Name and Description, it still more-or-less applies. I don't think that thread mentioned traffic, but LL used a little trick to incorporate traffic into the ranking of parcel pages.

Edited October 29, 2017 by Phil Deakins
addition

[BilliJo Aldrin]

So anyway, if i want to visit a popular blues club, I'll search blues club, then visit the one with the most traffic.

[Theresa Tennyson]

34 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

So anyway, if i want to visit a popular blues club, I'll search blues club, then visit the one with the most traffic.

And then you'll complain about the bots. Or, under this plan, the people sitting around not doing anything but trying to "earn" a handful of Lindens.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

And then you'll complain about the bots. Or, under this plan, the people sitting around not doing anything but trying to "earn" a handful of Lindens.

Yes if it has high traffic because they have 20 bots parked on a platform, its really not a popular club, so I'll leave.

Not sure what your snide comment about people sitting around doing nothing has to do with anything. 

I suppose they could all be "working" at afk sex places, but I don't visit those anyway.

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Not sure what your snide comment about people sitting around doing nothing has to do with anything. 

 

It was about this entire thread - the only equivalent to gold-farming (i.e. unskilled labor) in Second Life is synthetically boosting traffic

[BilliJo Aldrin]

yes but how do they get lindens out of it? Most places don't bother paying for camping any more

[Tari Landar]

14 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

yes but how do they get lindens out of it? Most places don't bother paying for camping any more

That's where it comes full circle, they get lindens out of the games, offerings, whatever-and landowners get whatever it is THEY deem is worth their effort. It doens't really matter if everyone else thinks it is worth a landowner's effort, they aren't paying for folks to "farm lindens"

I could keep telling people for months, years, ad nauseam....that landowners ARE indeed getting something out of it(or they wouldn't do it) and that players CAN make such efforts lucrative, if they so choose....not so sure anyone believes it. But I'm pretty sure the xbox one my kid got for his birthday in august and the games I've gotten him since then, all with funds paid for by such games, is proof enough for me, that one CAN make money off it, and it hasn't hurt the sl economy for us(players) to so so, because we've been doing it since 2007 and we've yet to see that effect, regardless of influxes of new games, landowners, or players.  

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 minute ago, Tari Landar said:

That's where it comes full circle, they get lindens out of the games, offerings, whatever-and landowners get whatever it is THEY deem is worth their effort. It doens't really matter if everyone else thinks it is worth a landowner's effort, they aren't paying for folks to "farm lindens"

I could keep telling people for months, years, ad nauseam....that landowners ARE indeed getting something out of it(or they wouldn't do it) and that players CAN make such efforts lucrative, if they so choose....not so sure anyone believes it. But I'm pretty sure the xbox one my kid got for his birthday in august and the games I've gotten him since then, all with funds paid for by such games, is proof enough for me, that one CAN make money off it, and it hasn't hurt the sl economy for us(players) to so so, because we've been doing it since 2007 and we've yet to see that effect, regardless of influxes of new games, landowners, or players.  

 

Your kid plays second life? And who

cares if people log in just to make free Lindens, I don't.

  

[Tari Landar]

Just now, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Your kid plays second life? And who

cares if people log in just to make free Lindens, I don't.

  

Lmao, no way in hell would I let my kids play sl,  lol. I'm not that nuts  

I play, and the money I get from my extra endeavors, whether it's earning money through games, selling products or services (no, not those  ) whatever have you, goes right into a fund I use for things for my kids...or bills/emergencies, if absolutely necessary  

(that's what I do with most "extra" money I get, outside of my primary income in rl, actually..but that's besides the point, lol)

I didn't think you cared, most folks probably don't, to be honest, but reading this thread, it seems some folks are hell bent on caring and insisting it's a negative thing for the whole of sl. I disagree wholeheartedly with such assumptions, wouldn't be the first time I've been the odd woman out on a subject though, haha. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

Lmao, no way in hell would I let my kids play sl,  lol. I'm not that nuts  

I play, and the money I get from my extra endeavors, whether it's earning money through games, selling products or services (no, not those  ) whatever have you, goes right into a fund I use for things for my kids...or bills/emergencies, if absolutely necessary  

(that's what I do with most "extra" money I get, outside of my primary income in rl, actually..but that's besides the point, lol)

I didn't think you cared, most folks probably don't, to be honest, but reading this thread, it seems some folks are hell bent on caring and insisting it's a negative thing for the whole of sl. I disagree wholeheartedly with such assumptions, wouldn't be the first time I've been the odd woman out on a subject though, haha. 

Its fantastic that you can make enough money here to cash out, and its nice you use it as an "extra's fund" for rl purchases.

[Chase01]

As a player of one of those MMO's you can see the impact the farmers have on items, currency and your gameplay experience. Outside of them coming to SL for humanitarian reasons, I can't see how this would benefit our economy, or improve the experience for SL users.

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

The concept isn't the same as gold-miners because the Second Life economy isn't completely built on scarcity; there are things like gatcha rares built on scarcity but experience shows that selling gatchas seldom pays off enough to profit.

The cost of Internet connection and time might outweigh what could be made in Linden dollars, but maybe not.

I wouldn't shortchange Venezuelans, like Brazilians and Poles and Russians and many more from countries with large classes of poor people, perhaps they will be designers and content makers, not just bouncers and pole dancers. But the factors that made it possible for Brazilians (heavy social network culture) or Poles (entrepreneurial and service culture) may not work for Venezuelans, who knows.

Also, don't assume $3-5 would be enough to live on, given the cost of living.

[Tari Landar]

3 hours ago, Chase01 said:

As a player of one of those MMO's you can see the impact the farmers have on items, currency and your gameplay experience. Outside of them coming to SL for humanitarian reasons, I can't see how this would benefit our economy, or improve the experience for SL users.

 

 

So do all game(the games within sl, that is) players have to come here for humanitarian reasons in order to benefit sl in some fashion? If not, why should those that want to enjoy some entertainment AND perhaps make some money for their families as well? 

I know that sounds snarky, it's really not, or at least my intent behind the questions is not...I'm honestly curious what you really mean with humanitarian reasons, mostly because I can't think of a whole heck of a lot of people that ever came, or come, to sl for that, in fact, I can't think of a single person, ever, since 2004 my very first encounter with sl, ever finding anyone that came here for humanitarian reasons. Perhaps you have a different definition for humanitarian than I do, though.  Heck even LL isn't in it for humanitarian reasons, lol. 

Edited October 30, 2017 by Tari Landar