Safehubs and Infohubs - Haven of bots?

[Mr Incognito]

Now then, I am not much of a complainer.. But ever since the Lindens have turned voice off at these places... They are turning into bot infestions. 

People camp their land bots, and sales bots, and other bots there because they can. I never seen LL disperse them or anything, but it's cluttering these newcomer places up.

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Can anything be done?

 

/end of rant.

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Mr Incognito said:

Now then, I am not much of a complainer.. But ever since the Lindens have turned voice off at these places... They are turning into bot infestions. 

People camp their land bots, and sales bots, and other bots there because they can. I never seen LL disperse them or anything, but it's cluttering these newcomer places up.

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Can anything be done?

 

/end of rant.

Can you set home on an abandoned parcel?

[Lyssa Greymoon]

18 minutes ago, Mr Incognito said:

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Can anything be done?

I think they do, but if that region goes offline and isn't back up when the bot tries to login, it gets shuffled to a hub automatically. Restarting the infohub might kick them back to where they're supposed to be. I don't know if residents can request a region restart for a hub, or maybe LL could schedule more restarts for them.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Lyssa Greymoon

[LittleMe Jewell]

16 minutes ago, Mr Incognito said:

Now then, I am not much of a complainer.. But ever since the Lindens have turned voice off at these places... They are turning into bot infestions. 

People camp their land bots, and sales bots, and other bots there because they can. I never seen LL disperse them or anything, but it's cluttering these newcomer places up.

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Can anything be done?

 

/end of rant.

Often this happens during rolling restarts.  When the land that the bots are usually on restarts, the bots get sent to the closest safehub/infohub location.  Then they typically don't get back to their home land until that info hub is restarted or the owner notices and pulls the bots home (or restarts the bots again).

Edited January 12, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Marigold Devin]

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Can you set home on an abandoned parcel?

Not usually. 

13 minutes ago, Mr Incognito said:

Now then, I am not much of a complainer.. But ever since the Lindens have turned voice off at these places... They are turning into bot infestions. 

People camp their land bots, and sales bots, and other bots there because they can. I never seen LL disperse them or anything, but it's cluttering these newcomer places up.

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Can anything be done?

 

/end of rant.

Often those bots land at the newcomer places/infohubs because their home location isn't available and they're set to relog when a region gets restarted, so come on line and get diverted. 

I don't think anything can actually be done, I am sure Linden Lab are aware of this. The bot owners - if they're advertising bots - aren't going to care either unless someone takes to submitting abuse reports about them and Linden Lab does start to care, but what category can be used - unfair use of region resources perhaps?  

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

A fairly simple solution to the problem of misplaced bots is to have a scripted prim on their home location that detects when the sim has restarted and calls the bot home.

[Hunny Bunny]

17 minutes ago, Mr Incognito said:

Not sure why people don't use their own land 

They probably don't have any as they're not here to "play" SL at all but just make whatever money they can however they can.

[Maitimo]

28 minutes ago, Mr Incognito said:

Now then, I am not much of a complainer.. But ever since the Lindens have turned voice off at these places... They are turning into bot infestions. 

People camp their land bots, and sales bots, and other bots there because they can. I never seen LL disperse them or anything, but it's cluttering these newcomer places up.

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Can anything be done?

 

/end of rant.

They aren't put there on purpose.

When rolling restarts happen, the bots get booted offline and they automatically re-log. If their home region is still offline they get dumped in a safehub automatically.  They'll move back once their owner notices and brings them home.

There isn't anything that can be done from Linden Lab's end*, but bot programmers could assist by setting a delay of about 10 minutes before attempting to re-log a bot after it goes offline. That way, the region they're attempting to get into will (usually) be back up.

(* besides banning bots altogether and annoying everyone with captchas to prove you're human and still paying attention. Which I am pretty sure that absolutely no-one wants.)

[Phil Deakins]

25 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

A fairly simple solution to the problem of misplaced bots is to have a scripted prim on their home location that detects when the sim has restarted and calls the bot home.

I wrote my bot system so that, if a bot didn't land in the sim it was supposed to be in, it logged out, waited a while, and then tried again. That was way back. I don't use bots these days. Any bots that don't do something like that were probably not written by the people who run them.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 minute ago, Phil Deakins said:

I wrote my bot system so that, if a bot didn't land in the sim it was supposed to be in, it logged out, waited a while, and then tried again. That was way back. I don't use bots these days.

I don't really mess with them myself anymore and only have experience using one in particular, but the problem isn't too hard to solve with a little effort.  Another option, if you prefer the bot not to log in until the sim it's meant to be in has restarted would be to have the scripted prim send a message via http once the sim restarts and have that message trigger the bots attempt to log in.

[Maitimo]

13 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

I don't really mess with them myself anymore and only have experience using one in particular, but the problem isn't too hard to solve with a little effort.  Another option, if you prefer the bot not to log in until the sim it's meant to be in has restarted would be to have the scripted prim send a message via http once the sim restarts and have that message trigger the bots attempt to log in.

I have a lagmeter on my land and one of its functions is to send me an email when the region has been restarted (I don't really need this feature, it just does it anyway).  I guess a clever scripter could use that email to trigger the bot to log back in?

[Quistess Alpha]

15 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

I guess a clever scripter could use that email to trigger the bot to log back in

It's easier to be stupid. If I had a bot (which I don't) I'd have it wear a scripted attachment that checks say every 5 minutes: "Is the region name for where I am what I expect? if not, teleport home."

It might fail several times if the 'home' region is down, but that's a lot simpler than trying to configure a system (that's outside secondlife) to try and respond to emails and perform an action (logging the bot in).

[animats]

This has been a big problem with the Zindra safe hubs for years. At one time, so many bots piled up at one hub that they were forced through walls by the physics engine. Here's my solution.

Waiting Room Manager. "Please have a seat."

This is a demo I have set up at my workshop at the southeast corner of Vallone. It's a simple experience script. If you stand within 10m of the bench, and don't move or chat for a long time, it displays "Please have a seat" and sits you on the bench. That's all. You're not stuck; you can stand.

The seating at safe hubs and social islands should be set up like this, with the timer set to an hour or so. (For demo purposes, the bench above is set to 30 seconds.) That would gently move bots and AFKs to nearby seating, getting them out of the way and making it clear they're not active right now. It's a polite way to deal with the problem. Forcing a logout or ejecting them would be overkill.

As a user thing, it's not very useful. because you have to accept an experience, which bots and AFKs would not do. So I don't sell it. LL already has experiences into which everyone has been opted, so, at LL-owned locations this can be applied to all avatars.

Edited January 12, 2022 by animats

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Mr Incognito said:

it's cluttering these newcomer places up.

I don't think newcomers have been auto-deposited at infohubs for a long time. I guess some may stumble into an infohub on their own, and even set it to "home", but they're not very appealing places (and were worse back when voice was enabled), so anything to keep newbies away from those locations would be a boon.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

Bring voice back to the hubs! 

[Lucia Nightfire]

Infohubs are more griefer havens than bot havens.

[Nick0678]

7 hours ago, Mr Incognito said:

(Not sure why people don't use their own land or a abandoned parcel for parking accounts)

Most bots usually go there due to region restarts, etc

 

7 hours ago, Mr Incognito said:

Can anything be done?

Yes, you can avoid going there, (those places are pretty useless anyway)

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

10 hours ago, Maitimo said:

I have a lagmeter on my land and one of its functions is to send me an email when the region has been restarted (I don't really need this feature, it just does it anyway).  I guess a clever scripter could use that email to trigger the bot to log back in?

If you aren't bothered by the idea of the bot temporarily being on a different sim while it waits for its home sim to restart the process of calling it back home is as simple as sending it a command via IM, for most scripters it would be far easier to write a simple script that uses the changed event and CHANGED_REGION_START rather than set up automatic login attempts in response to an email.

Yet another alternative would be to have the bot monitor region messages for sim restart warnings and teleport to a different region to avoid logging off entirely, which is how this system works https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/WaS-Corrade-Region-Restart-Evader/8323879

[Lucia Nightfire]

4 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

If you aren't bothered by the idea of the bot temporarily being on a different sim while it waits for its home sim to restart the process of calling it back home is as simple as sending it a command via IM, for most scripters it would be far easier to write a simple script that uses the changed event and CHANGED_REGION_START rather than set up automatic login attempts in response to an email.

Yet another alternative would be to have the bot monitor region messages for sim restart warnings and teleport to a different region to avoid logging off entirely, which is how this system works https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/WaS-Corrade-Region-Restart-Evader/8323879

It would be great if users could get scripted access to the countdown status so AFKers can setup a TP HUD to send them somewhere else depending on what day it is and what region channel they are on, but then LL would have to also fix the bug where teleporting while your viewer is minimized doesn't allow your attachments to load in the destination region.