Large Crowds of Invisible Avatars

[Lelani Carver]

Earlier today, I noticed a crowd of about 20 AVs down the road from my mainland parcel. I have noticed small conducted "tour groups" in my area and wondered if this was another group forming, or perhaps they were waiting for a Yavapod or other road-based airship tour. Curious, I took a look.

Nope, they are completely invisible - no tags, no visible AVs, and they're not even visible in wireframe. So, I'm thinking it's bots, as there's a "vote" thing set up on the parcel.

Ignore it, report it, or live with it?

[Tattooshop]

Forget it?

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by Tattooshop

[Zack Massiel]

Offer them a tour of your home and when they refuse yell at them to get off the lawn while shaking a cane. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

5 minutes ago, Lelani Carver said:

Earlier today, I noticed a crowd of about 20 AVs down the road from my mainland parcel. I have noticed small conducted "tour groups" in my area and wondered if this was another group forming, or perhaps they were waiting for a Yavapod or other road-based airship tour. Curious, I took a look.

Nope, they are completely invisible - no tags, no visible AVs, and they're not even visible in wireframe. So, I'm thinking it's bots, as there's a "vote" thing set up on the parcel.

Ignore it, report it, or live with it?

Quote

Bots per se, are allowed and have legitimate uses, but inappropriate uses are violations of this policy.

Therefore:

Using bots to "game" traffic is not allowed

You may not attempt to gain an unfair advantage in search results through the use of bots to inflate the traffic for a parcel. This policy applies to both mainland and private estates since both are represented in search.

 

Sending an excessive number of messages with bots is not allowed.

You may not use bots to send more than 5,000 messages in a calendar day. Messages to groups are counted as one message for every recipient in the group. All bots operated by a single user share a common limit.

For example, the following activities are violations of this policy:

• Bots causing unreasonable load on search or the regions in which they operate.
• Bots causing a nuisance by regularly getting stuck at welcome areas or infohubs. This includes the use of large numbers of land bots to get around the throttling of search requests.
• Bots joining groups and sending group IMs or notices such that more than 5,000 individual messages will be received.
• Bots sending more than 5,000 individual messages in a calendar day.
• Using multiple bots to send an aggregate of more than 5,000 individual messages in a calendar day.

 

Using bots to purchase Mainland parcels is not allowed

The use of bots, autonomous software, scripting (manual or automated), scripted agents, or any systems or software internal or external to the Second Life service that circumvent, automate and/or remove the human interaction required to purchase a Land parcel within Second Life on the Linden Lab owned Mainland is prohibited.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Bot_policy

 

As any Linden would tell you, if you are not sure if you should AR something, AR it anyway and let LL decide if it is a violation or not.

[Qie Niangao]

18 minutes ago, Lelani Carver said:

Earlier today, I noticed a crowd of about 20 AVs down the road from my mainland parcel. [...]

Nope, they are completely invisible - no tags, no visible AVs, and they're not even visible in wireframe. So, I'm thinking it's bots, as there's a "vote" thing set up on the parcel.

So... how did you notice them, if they're completely invisible? Were they visible on the Mini Map, perhaps? And then, were you on the same parcel as the invisible AVs? (Could it be that they were just normal AVs, on a parcel that has visibility disabled across parcel boundaries?)

If you're checking that "visibility" thing ("About Land" / "Options" / "Avatars on other parcels can see and chat with avatars on this parcel"), maybe check (also on the Options tab) whether the parcel is even set to "Show Place in Search (L$30/week)" because if not -- or if the Traffic count ("General" tab) is too low to be the result of gaming, then it sorta doesn't matter whether the avatars are bots or not, at least as far as the "scripted agents" policy is concerned.

Frankly, I'm a little skeptical that they're really gaming traffic mostly because of that "Vote" thing: Those haven't worked in at least a decade.

[Jaylinbridges]

I suspect Visibility was turned off, and the OP did not actually walk on the parcel they were standing.

Another technical question though - How do you make your tags completely invisible to others?  (on the same parcel of course.)

Viewers have options for viewing name tags of others in General Preferences - but nothing about hiding your own from others.  You can still see the account name on Radar/People, and the letters are visible characters.  Is there a script you can wear that completely hides your tags from others?

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by Jaylinbridges

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

25 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I suspect Visibility was turned off, and the OP did not actually walk on the parcel they were standing.

Another technical question though - How do you make your tags completely invisible to others?  (on the same parcel of course.)

Viewers have options for viewing name tags of others in General Preferences - but nothing about hiding your own from others.  You can still see the account name on Radar/People, and the letters are visible characters.  Is there a script you can wear that completely hides your tags from others?

 

 

well there are certain ways to push your name tag up or down far enough to make it not visible to others. in fact the immersivity system by ~silenenced~ sort of does this when it transforms people.

it basically pushes your avatar far enough down under the ground that its not normally seen if you happen to be right near them and not zoomed in on them. if the ground is solid, you cant cam in on them that well then and thus cant see them or their name tag. but they will always still who up in nearby and the minimap radar.

I suspect what is really happening is what qie niangao said, that they have it parceled out and have that parcel set to invisible to outside people.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Drakonadrgora Darkfold

[Lindal Kidd]

8 hours ago, Drakonadrgora Darkfold said:

they have it parceled out and have that parcel set to invisible to outside people.

Or the parcel the OP was on is set this way.  The invisibility granted by parcel privacy works both ways.

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

2 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Or the parcel the OP was on is set this way.  The invisibility granted by parcel privacy works both ways.

that is something I didnt know. thanks for telling that.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

15 hours ago, Lelani Carver said:

I noticed a crowd of about 20 AVs down the road from my mainland parcel. [...] they are completely invisible - no tags, no visible AVs

[Lelani Carver]

Yes, I walked down there just now, and people were visible, enjoying a fishing event. I had only cammed in before, that was it. Thanks all! Nothing, or something, to see here.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Sounds like Tiny Empires bots.

I'd actually be glad if those started going invisible. It would likely reduce the lag issues they can cause, at least somewhat.

Tiny Empires bots like to park in places they believe are unused. Of course they get this wrong sometimes - I've found them on my own land years ago and more recently in the water outside my houseboat (but on the same region)...

I've reported them in past when I see them - but I'm not certain they're a TOS violation... when I report them I do so for excessive use of region resources. If they were all invisible that report at least would be harder to justify... they'd still annoy me, but it might then just be something I shake a claw at and yell "you meddling kids get offa my lawn!"

  

4 minutes ago, Lelani Carver said:

Yes, I walked down there just now, and people were visible, enjoying a fishing event. I had only cammed in before, that was it. Thanks all! Nothing, or something, to see here.

Oh I see... not Tiny Empires then. Which is lucky for you - it means you won't have them there all day long (except I see your OP was a whole day ago and they're still there...), and as real people you might even be able to socialize with them and join in.

 

Edited July 27, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[rasterscan]

On 7/27/2020 at 6:44 PM, Lelani Carver said:

Yes, I walked down there just now, and people were visible, enjoying a fishing event. I had only cammed in before, that was it. Thanks all! Nothing, or something, to see here.

dang. Removes tin foil hat.