Scripted agents or bot farm as neighbor? - How can I tell and what can I do about it?

[Pussycat Catnap]

In Milu sim just across the road from my home is a 'pregnancy store' run by some guy who keeps a stack of 4 to 10 bots on his lot 24/7. They're hidden in a house on the hill, in the shop, or in a sphere up at 4000m parked right next to where I used to have my skybox before he moved the bots in.

How can I find out if they're allowed scripted agents or bots?

His traffic tends to be in the 4,000 - 20,000 range despite none of us neighbors ever having seen live customers (and I know the names of most of the bots so I know when somebody who's not one of them shows up) - so I suspect they're traffic bots.

What can I do about this, and what is the likely impact to my sim's performance of such a setup?

 

(EDIT: Today his traffic is very low, so I adjusted my number above.)

 

[Marigold Devin]

They're definitely traffic bots, if the traffic count is high. Someone informed me yesterday that when people register their avatars as bots/non-scripted agents, then they don't generate traffic, so that traffic count shouldn't be high.

AR them!

I'll come in and AR them too.

Grrrrhhh!!!! Traffic bots.

 

*****

I went, I saw, and the landowner is seemingly using the bots as demonstration models, but what a poor effort.  It is very obvious that all they are being used for is traffic. I've submitted an AR. Whether LL do anything about it, of course, I can't guarantee, but the more the merrier. Shame when people resort to bots to gain "popularity".

[Dilbert Dilweg]

I have noticed quite a big increase of bots at places again lately. I guess they all exploting the short staff at LL lol

[Marigold Devin]

It's certainly looking that way, Dilbert - and you know how it was way back when. One person got 10 bots, the next got 15, then 20 and so on. And the most I counted in one sim was 96 (no room really for regular avatars at that point of course), and there was a marvellous racket - a bit like a load of "mafia" people - renting out bots to different people around the grid.

Fascinates me to death

Using bots for traffic = pointless and not fun

Taking photos of bots used for traffic = pointless but a lot of fun for me

[Phil Deakins]

We don't have any means of seeing whether or not an avatar is registered as a scripted agent. What we do have is common sense so, if a pacel's traffic is unrealistically high, and the parcel has bots on it, then it's reasonable to assume that at least some of the bots are not registered as scripted agents.

 

@Marigold. A bot should be registered as a "scripted agent", not a "non-scripted agent". Real people avatars are non-scripted agents even though they are never refered to as such  

[Marigold Devin]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

We don't have any means of seeing whether or not an avatar is registered as a scripted agent. What we do have is common sense so, if a pacel's traffic is unrealistically high, and the parcel has bots on it, then it's reasonable to assume that at least some of the bots are not registered as scripted agents.

 

@Marigold. A bot should be registered as a "scripted agent", not a "non-scripted agent". Real people avatars are non-scripted agents even though they are never refered to as such  

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Thanks, Phil, for the clarification. I'm not much up on the "geekspeak", especially after 2am my time (which unfortunately it was when I was inputting my BS into the forums).  However, hopefully I am blessed with a decent amount of commonsense, and I take a lot of factors into account when determining if avs are traffic bots. 

All I want is a fair "game" for all - and maybe one or two photo opportunities for my SL scrapbook :smileywink::smileyvery-happy:

 

[Anita61 Anatine]

When in doubt, just send an AR and let LL deal with it. If they are unallowed bots, they'll be removed, If they are allowed they won't be

[Phil Deakins]

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Marigold Devin wrote:

Using bots for traffic = pointless and not fun

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Actually, using bots for traffic was never pointless and, at least in my case, was definitely fun. It was never pointless because the more traffic a place has, the higher in the Places tab search results it is listed, and, therefore, the more visitors and sales it gets. That's still true for all V1 viewers which are probably still in the majority.

Fun? Well, I definitely enjoyed creating my system, which was beautiful to behold It automatically logged bots in and out according to the number of people in the sim, always leaving a few spaces for more people to come into the sim, of course. If one or two people left the sim, it would log a couple more bots in and, when someone else came into the sim, it would log one out - always leaving a few spaces for more people to come it. It was a joy to behold - while it was running  LL changed the rules about gaming traffic the day after I'd completely finished the system and, soon afterwards, I had to remove the bots altogether, but I can assure you that creating that system, and watching it operating, was fun for me