Phil Deakins

Maing and selling low prim furniture. At its height it was earning over a million a month.

The current search system. The "classic search" that Callum referred to is the original search from many years ago, but is still useable. It ranks places solely on traffic, which is why such things as camping and traffic bots came in in the first place. Then we went over to a Google search engine (the GSA - Google Search Appliance) and seo became the way to get places ranking higher. It still used the traffic numbers as a ranking factor, but only in a small way. You may remember places paying for Picks in people's profiles. That was because of the GSA - a Pick produced a clickable link to the place, and links were the most iimportant ranking factor. The GSA was very expensive to rent from Google, and LL couldn't modify it to suit SL, so they moved on to a free search engine, which they could modify. Because all the big search engines copied Google's methods, which were actually published, and because the Google engine produced far better results than any previous engine, the free one isn't too dissimilar from Google's engine, so, as Callum said, seo is the way to get places ranking higher. It's assumed that LL have included traffic and that it still helps the rankings a little. Where traffic does help a place is in the search results themselves, where traffic numbers are shown. The results are not ranked in traffic order, but it's natural for us to prefer a place with higher traffic than one with very little, because it 'appears' that people go to it. For instance, suppose you are looking for a nude beach. Which would you go to? - the one with very little traffic, or the one with traffic in the thousands. Even if we're not looking for people - shopping, for instance - higher traffic implies that the store is well used by people. And, of course, some people still prefer to use the classic search, and traffic is the only thing that matters in that one.

Nooo. I was an excellent traffic bot person - very considerate And nothing is totally free in a sim, but being way up in the sky made them virtually free. People in the sim never 'felt' their presence. If they could be 'felt' I wouldn't have used so many.

I used traffic bots on the mainland when they were allowed. The best system I wrote for them almost filled the sim's quota (I owned the whole sim except for 1½k). But they never prevented people from coming to the sim - both customers, and people using their own land - because my system always left spaces for that, by logging bots in and out when required. And their location didn't cause lag in the sim. I was a good traffic bot person

Not quite. As far as bots concerned, there is no difference between mainland and private sims. Mainland owners and private sim owners can fill their parcels/sims with AFK bots. That's not against any rules. BUT they can't fill any parcel/sim with unregistered bots IF the parcel/sim is set to show in search. There is no difference between mainland and private regions. as far as bots are concerned.

Sorry. I know that this threrad is for questions, but I just can't go away leaving the following garbage uncorrected:- Absolute and total utter rubbish.

@Qie Niangao Yes, it's odd that it's not available in any way. I can't readily come up with a reason not to show it. Maybe it's just that it was a rushed job and they got to the point where they thought, "That'll do for that. What's that other rush job that we have to do?"

I don't know why you're pulling your hair out just because you don't understand something you see, but... Traffic bots were around long before the cones were dreamed up. After some years they became illegal but I do believe they are still used. Bots are perfectly legal and do not need to be registered as bots, but bots that are not registered as bots, on land that's set to show in search, are illegal. Those are the only ones that are traffic bots. If they are represented by green dots on the mini-map, they are avatars, but not a new kind of bot. You know how to tell if they are avatars. If they are bots, one of two things could be going on. They are traffic bots or they are registered bots that are there just to make the place look popular. Those are very likely to be traffic bots. There is no way for we users to know whether or not a bot is registered as such, so we can't know if an avatar is a traffic bot or not.

BINGO!

Another very sneaky, yet very admirable person!

That does appear to answer one of the questions, Solar. I was premium long before Linden Homes came in. My premium started in Febuary 2007, and I've only ever had 300L stipend. I joined SL in late December 2006, so my join date missed the 400L Your experience shows that it's the join date that counts.

It doesn't surprise me

That's sneaky! And very admirable

I don't know, but my guess is that it's not an available option because of a lower end graphics card. Although my card is pretty low.

I think what SuperTom was saying is that (long) past posts won't hurt any more, and not that current behaviour will cause past posts to come into it, perhaps unless things are really bad. That's my guess, anyway. I don't know, but another guess is that BilliJo's SL suspension has been lifted. It would be interesting to know though.

Thank you for your post, SuperTom. It was already accepted here that LL owns both systems, and that they are also linked in that the one system (the forum) is specifically for the other (SL), so there's no dispute there, Tommy. (You know when I call you Tommy and not SuperTom that I'm being deadly serious ). But the point is that they are seperate systems, to the extent that they have seperate rules. Some rules apply to both systems, of course, but some do not, and those are the problem. People are sometimes suspended from one system because of a minor violation in the other, when, in the other, it would not be a violation at all. It just doesn't make any sense. And it's especially not the way to treat paying customers. I appreciate that you can't tell us whether or not any conclusions have been arrived at that might affect they way that suspensions are handed out in the future, but I do hope that what has appeared to be auto-suspension-coupling will be consigned to history, except, of course, for serious voilations.

Ok. Thank you, SuperTom

@Tommy Linden Would Ardy being told that he should have submitted an Abuse Report because it would have got a quicker response, and not that the person thought that an Abuse Report is the correct way?

It's not a case of "might be punished". It happens. That's the whole point of this thread.

Yes, I'm good at that. I don't seem to have it in me to allow the last word to be wrong information about me. Sometimes I manage to let it go, but only after a relatively lengthy back and forth.

I'm not one who thinks that people behave differently inworld. I think you're missing the point. The point being that people don't behave in the forum in any way that isn't allowed everywhere inworld. So, if anyone gets a suspension from the forum for posting something, it doesn't mean that, if the words were said inworld, it would merit a suspension from SL. Example: 2 people in the forum. One posts, "you are <whataver (without swearing or throwing insults)>, and the other posts, "no I'm not". Please explain to me why that little dialogue would merit a suspension from SL. Is it against some SL rule or other? Of course it isn't. So how about this. The same 2 people posting the same things 10 times in a row, in the same thread. And then picture it inworld - the same 2 people saying the same things 10 times in a row. Is that against some SL rule or other? No it's not. It's not even against any forum rules (there is no forum rule against being boring ). Is it allowed inworld? Of course it is. So does the fact of posting it in the forum merit a suspension from SL? I say no. What do you say? In case you agree with me, I can tell that that example is from reality, and it got suspensions from SL for both people. In forum posts, the first person told the other person that he is an active member of Bloodlines. The second person said that he isn't. And it went back and forth like that. If that dialogue was inworld, would it be worthy of a suspension from SL? Of course not, and yet both were suspended from SL - wrongly, imho. And that's the point of this thread. It's the coupling of SL suspensions with forum suspensions, when there is nothing in the forum posts that is against any SL rules. I do understand your point about the forum and SL being LL properties. But you've seen the result of coupling suspensions. One person posted that she will abandon all her land and go down to Basic if the suspension isn't receded, just to avoid the possibility of being actually banned from SL and losing all her inventory, due to forum posts, when she doesn't post anything that's against SL rules. And another person (Callum) has posted that sort of thinking concerning himself. Some people have become fearful for their investment in SL because of it. Apart from that, it's just not right.

@Solar Legion It's not at all surprising that the said poster would get suspensions from the forum, but nothing of what I've seen of her posts meritted a suspension from SL. That's not the point, Solar. There is nothing in any rules or guidelines against "going back and forth with someone". It gets boring for others, of course, but, as long as it doesn't turn into insults, flames, etc., it's not an infringement, and does not merit even a suspension from the forum, let alone a suspension from SL. At most, it merits a message saying, "Let it go will ya?" So that has nothing to do with the topic of this thread which, in my very firm opinion, is very important to the forum. There is no love lost between BilliJo and me, and my preference is that she doesn't come back to the forum, but the practise of coupling forum suspensions with SL suspensions is very bad indeed, imho, and that's why this thread was started.

I haven't given specific penalties it any serious thought, so I neither recommend them nor am against them. My first thought is that it would be difficult to formulate penalties for specific actions, such as how bad an insult has to be to merit n number of warning points. Right now, I'm all about not coupling SL suspensions to forum suspensions, except in extreme cases.

US$

I did say something similar to that - specifically "I don't think that specific penalties would necessarily be a good idea". It's not a cast iron view though. What I do think is a really great idea is us knowing that posts past a certain age won't be penalised by suspensions, but will be deleted instead. That would be a rule that the moderators could adopt, and I'd welcome us knowing it. Another rule that the mods could adopt, whether we are told or not, is that SL suspensions won't be added to forum suspensions, except in extreme cases.