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New Feature: Scripted Agent Estate Access Discussion


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It's a great move, thank you LL @Linden Lab. We really, really need it at parcel level on mainland as well though.

@Extrude Ragu has an interesting point I hadn't thought of (probably because I've never owned an estate, so my knowledge of how all that works is vague).

Whitelisting is essential to still allow 'allowed' bots in the region. It had not occurred to me that a bot could join a group and get access... if those groups are free to join and if that group whitelist overrides the bot-deny, there's a loophole.

So... bots should only be allowed to evade the bot-deny if they are individually whitelisted, not just a member of a group that has access. Does that make sense to those who own estates? (I'm also thinking still of parcel-level control too... and how that applies there.)

Edited by Rick Nightingale
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5 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Question on adding exceptions - If a bot belongs to an 'allowed group' in the region access tab, will the bot be able to enter the region?

It looks like it's at the estate level.. This was from the blog.

"Scripted agents that have Estate Manager privileges for an estate will also be able to access regions inside the estate. regardless of the estate's deny_bots setting. "

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This is a good step, but how do we make sure a bot is actually properly flagged as scripted agent? It's the same problem with traffic farming bots that don't have themselves set to scripted agent, so their time spent would count towards traffic.

 

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3 minutes ago, Zi Ree said:

This is a good step, but how do we make sure a bot is actually properly flagged as scripted agent? It's the same problem with traffic farming bots that don't have themselves set to scripted agent, so their time spent would count towards traffic.

 

This is for the FAQ, which shows what to do with the unregistered bots still getting passed  the deny_bot setting.

https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000169561-scripted-agent-estate-access-faq

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I wonder if Belinda will react in this thread too, that this is old news.  :)

A bit more serious:
It's a great first step, thanks for taking that swift action LL.
I doubt it will be enough in the end, but one has to start somewhere right?
It is a complicated matter that probably will need a lot more back and forth and adjustments over the time.

Edited by Sid Nagy
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12 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I just linked the page rather than the section..I figured in case someone else wanted to go there..

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18 minutes ago, Yoofaloof Pacer said:

I'd wager the estate managers aren't usually logged on. It's the parcel owners who suffer.

Statistically, you might be right if you focus on the giant estates. There are some big ones out there. Most of the people I know who are estate managers, though, live on estates with one or two regions.  I'm guessing -- based on the preponderance of isolated regions that I see on the world map -- that most people on private islands have a nearby EM.

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I think whether the Estate Manager is nearby / easy to reach does not matter so much because: the settings change is a "one time thing"!

Get the EM to change the setting ONCE for the entire Estate - and they are done. (Until LL changes how it works and it's not just a "Debug Setting".)

 

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12 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I think whether the Estate Manager is nearby / easy to reach does not matter so much because: the settings change is a "one time thing"!

That much is true. I suspect that the comment was meant to suggest that most people who live on private estates can't easily contact an estate manager to request that the Bot Off function should be turned on. He might be right, but I suspect that most estate managers live on very small estates, where they log in fairly often and aren't all that hard to find.  We're both guessing, based on tenuous statistical analyses of non-data.

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1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

That much is true. I suspect that the comment was meant to suggest that most people who live on private estates can't easily contact an estate manager to request that the Bot Off function should be turned on. He might be right, but I suspect that most estate managers live on very small estates, where they log in fairly often and aren't all that hard to find.  We're both guessing, based on tenuous statistical analyses of non-data.

Yep! But on the other side - agreeing - if there is no available EM and you rent - that's not good! How do you get help in case of issues with your rental? 

Goodness!

 

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9 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yep! But on the other side - agreeing - if there is no available EM and you rent - that's not good! How do you get help in case of issues with your rental? 

I send in a support ticket on their website, and they promise to reply within 72 hrs.  And they usually wait until 71 hrs and 58 mins to answer.

It's a 2 person operation, and both work in RL, and tell me how busy they are...

(Sort of like LL for non premium peons)

 

 

Edited by Jaylinbridges
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5 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yep! But on the other side - agreeing - if there is no available EM and you rent - that's not good! How do you get help in case of issues with your rental? 

Same response.  We're talking about private estates here.  In my pseudoanalysis, people who rent there are generally living on one- or two-island estates with a resident EM who is as likely to log in regularly as they are.  The question you raise is a good one for people who live on one of the mega-estates, but not a particular worry for most people, like the tenants on my own small estate.

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6 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I send in a support ticket on their website, and they promise to reply within 72 hrs.  And they usually wait until 71 hrs and 58 mins to answer.

It's a 2 person operation, and both work in RL, and tell me how busy they are...

(Sort of like LL for non premium peons)

 

 

Sorry that happens to you. I would definitely rent from @Count Burks or someone with a better presence if that happened to me! But moving is hard.

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This is a great step foward bravo !  however i would like to see this go down to the parcel level, because many land owners  section off their full regions into parcels for their uses. ALSO will this be implemented across Bellisaria? mainly because Bellisaria is RESIDENTIAL in nature which should be even more of a reason why you would want it at parcel level or at least across the entire continant of bellisaria.

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Awesome, gonna enable this on my estate. And maybe the policy change to further increase the requirement to have bot accounts flagged properly actually has some affect.

I hope something like this eventually comes to the parcel level. I have some mainland which has been seeing exponential increase is roaming bots visiting with unknown purposes. It's nearly useless to ban them individually as repeat names rarely are seen. One of our rental parcels has seen over a dozen bots in the past 24 hours, this was typically 1-3 per day max just last week going back over a year. No clue what's with a recent massive uptick in bot traffic. And this is just what's our parcels alone are seeing, the regions themselves might be getting even more bot traffic that we're not checking for. :s

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28 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Sorry that happens to you. I would definitely rent from @Count Burks or someone with a better presence if that happened to me! But moving is hard.

They have been in business continuously since 2006, and other than those damn bots every 10 mins, the 12 regions they own pretty much run themselves.  No ban lines allowed, but security orbs are recommended. They also provide security if you don't have your own orb.  They also have a dozen or more bots to run the business. I don't know if they are registered agents. My guess is they will never turn on the anti bot flag, because nobody complains loud enough. 

I stay there because they have a reasonable policy for breedables on a sky platform, unlike all of the mega land companies. If the breedables cause no or insignificant lag, like one avatar on a region, there is no limit.  The bots hitting the sim cause more trouble as they land.  There are seldom more than 2 avatars on this private region,  even though they rent out 12 parcels, and another 14 stacked parcel homes.

Another issue if you add your registered agents to the region admin list, is that list is limited to 15 avatars.  A club I work at has 14 slots already used up for the staff and owners, to give them region ban rights. There is no more slots to add the registered agents that have been in the club as a band, for the last 15 years. So the bots will keep visiting the club, causing lag to an already crowded region, because the owner will not ban his own AI bots and has no room to add them to the region admin list.

Parcel ban rights might be nice, but most bots land at the region center, or the 0,0,0 corner, so banning by parcel will not stop them from visiting the region.

Edited by Jaylinbridges
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10 minutes ago, Moose Houston said:

It would be nice if LL would just ban all bots PERIOD. Allow places and clubs with raw real traffic to succeed over those big bot clubs and malls.

I think you are confusing two different things: Accounts that are operated by computer programs and, which, therefore, meet LL's definition of bots, and accounts that are logged in by human operators who are usually AFK. The latter do not meet LL's definition of bot.

I guess we mainland-dwellers are second-class citizens. I cannot imagine that enabling it at the parcel level would have been substantially harder. The code should be very similar.

On the other hand, I never understood why people had their panties in a wad about information-gathering bots like bonniebots. As Facebook told me years ago when they closed my account, SL avatars are fictional characters. As such, we have no need to keep information about ourselves private. The human account owner is who needs to safeguard private information, and the way to do that in SL is to not leak any information that connects them to the avatar. Bots have no access to information about the account owner.

I think the information at bonniebots.com is interesting and useful, and I frequently look at it. I just don't get why anyone would object to it or want to impede its gathering and publication, other than that there is nothing somebody won't object to.

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This is an excellent option for estate owners, and I'm glad to see the clarification of the scripted agent policy.

When may this appear as an option on Mainland, as someone who owns a mainland region? The enter/leave spam is rather annoying when I'm sitting and working on something and keeping an eye out for newcomers who may have questions or need help with something.

Edited by Galaxy Littlepaws
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