Please let us see bots.

[Phil Deakins]

36 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Yes but, you effectively blocked anyone new from buying land on the sim, since no one would buy land on a sim that has 36 bots parked on it. With your system, you basically reserved the whole sim for your own personal use.

So, yes, I object to that.

Want the resources of a full sim? Then go buy a full sim.

 

You see what I mean about people not thinking things through? Nobody was ever blocked from buying land on the sim because I always bought it as soon as it was put up for sale, so there was never any land for anyone to buy. Guy Linden was so used to it that, when a piece was abandoned, he set it for sale to me personally, without even contacting me. I actually owned all but 1536 sqm of the sim, so your thinking was way off

I did. Except that the 1536 was never put up for sale or I'd have had it. I still paid for a full sim though. And resources? a few dozen bots very high in the sky use very little of a sim's resources.

My view about people who don't think things through or complain merely on principle was right, wasn't it?

Edited February 27, 2019 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

 

27 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

And that brings up my biggest beef about mainland. On my sim, there's my "club" which has never had more than 10 people there at once, there's a popular furry club which often hosts events which draw maybe up to 20 guests, usually closer to a dozen and the rest are private homes, or low use fetish clubs.

However there are parcels for sale, one being a 4096. 

I always worry that someone could buy it, build an afk s e x club, then fill it with 30 afk avatars, effectively destroying the use of the sim for me and for the furry club.

Is it fair? No, not really.  Is it allowed? No, not really. But to AR the club and get satisfaction would require a certain amount of concerted effort on my part and on the part of other parcel ownrs affected

That's just the way things are on mainland and it's entirely your choice to be there.

You want it different? Move to private estate

Edited February 27, 2019 by Phil Deakins

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

You see what I mean about people not thinking things through? Nobody was ever blocked from buying land on the sim because I always bought it as soon as it was put up for sale, so there was never any land for anyone to buy. Guy Linden was so used to it that, when a piece was abandoned, he set it for sale to me personally, without even contacting me. I actually owned all but 1536 sqm of the sim, so your thinking was way off

I did. Except that the 1536 was never put up for sale or I'd have had it. I still paid for a full sim though. And resources? a few dozen bots very high in the sky uses very little of a sim's resources.

My view about people who don't think things through or complain merely on principle was right, wasn't it?

***deleted***  so I'll just say.....

Have a nice day

Edited February 27, 2019 by BilliJo Aldrin
even that was too risky

[ChinRey]

12 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I really think there's maybe 10,000 "real" people logged in at one time

Without knowing for sure, I do actually believe the number is even lower than that.

[Ceka Cianci]

I could swear that back then they mentioned something about scripted agent bots dots, going to be yellow or something like that..But they never changed them..

I don't remember if it was in a blog or a brown bag meeting  or where..But I remember them saying something like that..

[Maitimo]

If LL just scrapped the (pointless) Traffic metric altogether and removed it from place profiles, the whole bot problem would disappear overnight.

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, Matty Luminos said:

If LL just scrapped the (pointless) Traffic metric altogether and removed it from place profiles, the whole bot problem would disappear overnight.

As long as you are not advocating removing legacy search altogether and the results would be returned, say, alphabetically, I would agree with this.

[Maitimo]

4 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

As long as you are not advocating removing legacy search altogether and the results would be returned, say, alphabetically, I would agree with this.

Yes, I wouldn't want to lose legacy search. It's just the traffic system that's so badly gamed it doesn't serve any useful purpose.

[Lindal Kidd]

 I see bots.  They're everywhere.  They don't even know that they are bots.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

18 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Thank you, that's my point, why do people go on and on about whether an alt parked in a skybox is a bot or not, both affect traffic counts in the same way, both are either allowed, or not, which ever the rules say.

Because it's generally not an alt, but a dozen. In an empty box. And it's very egregious.

See: Skybox at +1000 meters while the actual location is at ground level. Parcel privacy is set to hide avatars, so you can't see them unless you fly above ~80 meter. Flying is disabled. Most of these avatars are the LL starter avatars and/or empty profiles besides the land group.

"Bot" is just a colloquialism for "not being used by human." An alt used primarily to passively boost traffic is a "bot" just the same as any other.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Roxy Couturier]

There are lots of ways to gamefy the bot/not bot system. My mainland sim had a plot with bots for about a year or so. The thing is, the plot wasn't in search. They used the bots and built the traffic score 'offline' as it were. They removed most of the bots and put the plot into search for some gatcha reselling business with an insane and totally gamed traffic score.

[Phil Deakins]

7 hours ago, Roxy Couturier said:

There are lots of ways to gamefy the bot/not bot system. My mainland sim had a plot with bots for about a year or so. The thing is, the plot wasn't in search. They used the bots and built the traffic score 'offline' as it were. They removed most of the bots and put the plot into search for some gatcha reselling business with an insane and totally gamed traffic score.

That number would only last a day in the legacy search, and wouldn't mean very much in the web search, if it even made it there, because the web search spiders the pages of search-enabled plots at intervals. When it gets to the newly search-enabled parcel, the high traffic number may be over and done with. Or the web search system could index a parcel's page as soon at the parcel is enabled for search. Either way, the high number won't last long at all.

[Coffee Pancake]

11 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Because it's generally not an alt, but a dozen. In an empty box. And it's very egregious.

I wish LL would enforce the their own rules .. we could literally post pictures skyboxes full of parked zombie accounts all day long.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

On 2/27/2019 at 2:37 AM, Selene Gregoire said:

LL yanked the ability to see what clients others were using many years ago* because some jack@$$es kept hassling people over... of all things... the client/viewer they were using.

*8-10 years, somewhere around there. Not sure and I can't be arsed to go hunt it down this late at night. It's pushing midnight here. 

It was useful as a way of detecting people using illegal viewers equipped with copybot.  However, the illegal viewer developers found a way to make their viewer masquerade as Firestorm, which pretty much killed that idea.

[Selene Gregoire]

46 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

It was useful as a way of detecting people using illegal viewers equipped with copybot.  However, the illegal viewer developers found a way to make their viewer masquerade as Firestorm, which pretty much killed that idea.

You mean Emerald. Phoenix hadn't risen from the ashes quite yet and FS was just a dream.

Emerald wasn't the only viewer either.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Lindal Kidd]

No, I don't mean Emerald.  And I think your estimate of 8-10 years may be off.  I have seen material about Darkstorm and other illegal viewers that shows how they can be set to appear as a Firestorm viewer in response to a query.

[Selene Gregoire]

31 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

No, I don't mean Emerald.  And I think your estimate of 8-10 years may be off.  I have seen material about Darkstorm and other illegal viewers that shows how they can be set to appear as a Firestorm viewer in response to a query.

Not going to argue about it. I was on the Emerald support team before LL shot it out of the sky. Went from there to Phoenix and was one of the last team members to make the switch to FS. My memory isn't that bad. I didn't say there weren't any copybot viewers that could appear to be Firestorm. I was pointing out that the nerfing of being able to see other people's clients in the overhead tags happened before FS was released. Or about the same time. 

Let's ask @Whirly Fizzle what she remembers. Take it away Whirlz!

[Roxy Couturier]

1 hour ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Not going to argue about it. I was on the Emerald support team before LL shot it out of the sky. Went from there to Phoenix and was one of the last team members to make the switch to FS. My memory isn't that bad. I didn't say there weren't any copybot viewers that could appear to be Firestorm. I was pointing out that the nerfing of being able to see other people's clients in the overhead tags happened before FS was released. Or about the same time. 

Let's ask @Whirly Fizzle what she remembers. Take it away Whirlz!

You're correct. It was Emerald that had that capability as a feature. It was removed by direction from LL. Part of the whole Emerald debacle, iirc, was due to the proprietary module that was added by certain Emerald devs that created a hash that showed not only the viewer used, but also the computer path which allowed alt matching that only Onyx viewers could see. 

Emerald wasn't shot out of the sky so much as it shot itself in the foot.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Emerald, Phoenix *and* Firestorm used to have the ability to display client tags.
LL made the change to the TPV policy that forbid displaying client tags at the end of February 2012, which affected both Phoenix (not dead yet) and Firestorm.
Firestorm was on it's 3.2.2 release at the time, if I remember right.

It was optional for viewers to send their client tag data out to other viewers. If a viewer developer didn't include the code to send the tag information to other viewers, you would just see a placeholder name, I can't remember what that was now, I think it was "Loading..."
Viewers could also send out false information for their tag so could masquerade as any other viewer on their users name tags.
 

Edit to add: Found a copy of the old client tag list, for old times sake 
https://pastebin.com/JXYNiyRf

Also to note - the displaying of the client tags was nothing to do with the Emerald debacle.  Emerald was long dead before the tags had to be removed.
LL requested TPVs stopped displaying client tags because users were being bullied in some locations because of their viewer choice.

Edited March 1, 2019 by Whirly Fizzle

[Selene Gregoire]

7 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Emerald, Phoenix *and* Firestorm used to have the ability to display client tags.
LL made the change to the TPV policy that forbid displaying client tags at the end of February 2012, which affected both Phoenix (not dead yet) and Firestorm.
Firestorm was on it's 3.2.2 release at the time, if I remember right.

It was optional for viewers to send their client tag data out to other viewers. If a viewer developer didn't include the code to send the tag information to other viewers, you would just see a placeholder name, I can't remember what that was now, I think it was "Loading..."
Viewers could also send out false information for their tag so could masquerade as any other viewer on their users name tags.
 

Edit to add: Found a copy of the old client tag list, for old times sake 
https://pastebin.com/JXYNiyRf

Also to note - the displaying of the client tags was nothing to do with the Emerald debacle.  Emerald was long dead before the tags had to be removed.
LL requested TPVs stopped displaying client tags because users were being bullied in some locations because of their viewer choice.

That's how I remember it. I didn't want to go into much detail though, just in case my memory regarding that time was a bit faulty. And I wasn't off on my timing (the 8 - 10 years) by much! I was thinking it was closer to 8 than 10 but I hedged my bet anyway. 

Hopefully I didn't unintentionally imply that client tag displays had anything to do with the Emerald fiasco. Most of that blame can be laid on one certain person's shoulders. It was a huge red flag when said person insisted that they be able to see when I am on and WHERE I am at all times. Bastage damn near killed the computer I had at the time with all the... well... you know.

It's all water under the bridge now.

At least I was pretty dead on about the reason for client tags going the way of the dodo. 

Edited March 1, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Shudo]

11 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Edit to add: Found a copy of the old client tag list, for old times sake  

Thanks Whirly

I guess the original suggestion could carry some of the problems of this old list. At the viewer level they are trivial to alter or misreport so it needs to be done at the server level, and that requires people be honest with their use of the scripted agent flag.

I run around with it on so I don't mess up people's traffic with my own dwell... so bah, I would be marked as a bot.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

How about if avatars are color coded on the map according to how long its been since they changed location.

green for active, moved in the last hour

yellow not moved in two hours

orange not moved in three hours

red not moved in a day

brown not moved in a week

black not moved in a month

 

 

[kali Wylder]

10 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

How about if avatars are color coded on the map according to how long its been since they changed location.

green for active, moved in the last hour

yellow not moved in two hours

orange not moved in three hours

red not moved in a day

brown not moved in a week

black not moved in a month

 

 

There are lot of things an avatar could be doing while appearing not to move for ages. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

15 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

There are lot of things an avatar could be doing while appearing not to move for ages. 

for a whole month?

 

[Tari Landar]

8 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

for a whole month?

 

Avs must "move" at least once a week, unless there is a week with literally no restarts at all. Even when using a program to log an av (scripted agent or otherwise) in, movement would be detected when they came back online. Yes even if the av always came back online in the exact same spot and a human, or program, never really moved the av out of that spot, it would be initially detected as movement on login. This would be as easy to "game" as anything else is, so I'm not sure how effective it would be, unless one is only interested in the number of hours an av was in one place. But then. I've seen people who play TE have their av(s) stand in one singular place for literally hours and hours on end, lol. 

At any rate, it's pretty easy to tell when a parcel/sim is using a horde of avs to make a place seem more populated, it takes very little time to tp in somewhere and one can tell if there are actually people at the location. I have tp'd into countless places that LOOK like they have loads of folks-all those green dots. Then I land and..not a soul in sight. If my goal was to find other people, I'd leave, and I have. More often than not my goal isn't to find people,  though, so it doesn't bother me in the same way it does others. I get why it does, I'm sure it can be a nuisance for them. However, it's just as easy to tp back out as it was to tp in, so I would consider it a minor annoyance, at best-if I were looking for other people anyway.