New SL site rankings may signal end to camping
By Eric Reuters
SECOND LIFE, April 29 (Reuters) - Linden Lab is working to revamp its current traffic ranking system, which has long been manipulated by landowners who pay users to camp out for hours or days at a time in an attempt to climb to the top of the “Popular Places” list.
“It is clear that the current Traffic system is not an effective means of determining the success or popularity of a parcel, nor does it provide useful information about Residents visiting those parcels,” Linden executive Jeska Dzwigalski said in a blog post.
The “Popular Places” tab is often one of the first places that new Second Life users look when exploring the virtual world. But the sites listed almost never offer the rich educational and social content beloved by Second Life’s dedicated users. Due to property owners gaming the system, the top results often offer “free money” or adult-themed content.
Linden is seeking input on how to change its site rankings as a first step in improving Second Life’s in-world search engine. Dzwigalski said Linden will offer a “Second Life Showcase” of content it feels best represents its virtual world.
The current system gave rise to the Second Life phenomena known as “camping”: in order to boost their listing on Linden’s traffic rankings, landowners pay avatars called “campers” simply to visit the sim and spend time there. Camping benches, which pay cash to an avatar simply for sitting on them, are ubiquitous at top ranked sites.
“The system was completely gamed and useless,” said Taran Rampersad, author of “Making Your Mark In Second Life: Business, Land and Money.”
Surprisingly, many owners of sites currently listed on the “Popular Place” list say they don’t mind the change.
“We all knew that the popular list wouldn’t last forever, and it will force some of the islands to reconsider their whole marketing strategy,” said Doug Sievers (Second Life: Doug Pau), whose “Freebie Island” currently ranks as the sixth most popular place in Second Life.
Sievers and other camping site owners complain that even as they’re gaming Second Life’s rankings, users are gaming them. The past few months have seen a rise in “bots,” software-controlled avatars that take up every open camping chair. The bots have forced camping sites into an arms race of open seats and pushed camping rates down from as high as L$24 per hour to under L$3.
“One of my associates and I worked out how much the ‘camping bots’ could be potentially making if they just ran 3 PCs on a 24 hour schedule and it was well over a few hundred dollars a day,” Sievers said.
While the absolute sums are trivial — L$24 translates to less than nine American cents — within Second Life’s economy they can represent significant pocket money. Many avatars have no access to credit cards and no way to purchase in-world currency, and in Second Life’s inexpensive economy, many virtual goods are priced from L$1 to L$10.
If the traffic rating is eliminated, one unexpected result may be a decrease in Linden’s population metrics. It’s impossible to measure how many of the roughly 60,000 avatars typically online in Second Life are campers or camping bots, but it is widely considered to be a significant component of Linden’s population. Second Life’s total hours may also fall sharply.
The camping sites say bots poisoned the old model anyway, and they’re ready to adapt.
“Things change and the system needs to be changed,” said Kenneth Boone, whose Second Life avatar Tray Dyrssen runs the number three and four ranked places in Second Life, “Money Island” and “Money Tree Island.”
“I am not worried about the popular places,” Boone said. “We are able to build interesting things to bring in the traffic.”
The camp and botsters take light of the fact that their numbers are a lie. Another scam amoungst the hundreds Linden has been cracking down on. I find it ironic that they can just blow it off as a traffic tool or “gamed”. They lied to everyone coming into SL and have no credibility in my view. They are not to be taken seriously for anything they accomplish in SL.
Certainly no trust there.
Tue Apr 29, 2008 2:04pm PDT–rjs
The problem with ending camping, is the economy in SL is al ready reeling from the the ban on in-world banking and gambling. If the residents have no way to acquire lindens without purchasing them through LL or other sources, this will hurt the business owners further. We already have felt the sting of lower traffic after the last to “manipulations” and another one this close on the heels of the last one will bankrupt many small business, driving users to loose interest and leave. I see this as the propagation of a downward spiral that started last summer after the gambling ban.
I think they are making a classic case of how to kill a developing and striving economy, are they taking lessons from the US government, or the other way around?
Tue Apr 29, 2008 6:04pm PDTGaming the Traffic system with camping started in 2006 and was never considered a positive part of the economy. The camping actually killed a major stipend paid to real content providers and killed many business and wonderful attraction sites. There are as many jobs in SL as there are camping opportunities. The lure of easy money and easy traffic is the culprit here and must be dealt with accordingly.
Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:04am PDTAny objective metric of popularity can be gamed, and any subjective metric is, by definition, a form of favoritism. I have my doubts that any measure exists that is fair, uncorruptable and useful to citizens.
That said, I think the “Showcase” would be a better tool than “Most Popular Places”. I like freebies and sleeze as much as the next decadent libertine, but I suspect I’ll be able to locate as much as I want without it cluttering up a tab on my Search window.
Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:04am PDTIt used to be there were voting points one could put on their parcel and the residents themselves voted for what they felt was a worthy place to visit. People found a way to game that system.
It used to be that people could vote for each other - with regard to personality, look, building skill, et al. People found a way to game that system.
It used to be that traffic played an even heavier role that it does now with regard to “ranking” or position in the find results of a search. People found a way to game the system.
Wherever people find a way to game the system, there’s really not much choice but to either completely remove the system or make it irrelevant.
I hope Linden Lab does something with traffic that forces the gamers to stop gaming it. It’s a useful statistic for the parcel owner, even if not for the parcel-hopper (shoppers, etc.)
However, the number changes so eratically day-by-day, it’s useless as any kind of dependable counter because of all the algorithms and weird formulas used to generate it.
If I were in charge of what to do with “traffic” - I would make it real simple: first, traffic has nothing to do with your ranking in search results.
Second, all avatars that enter your parcel are counted once per hour. That’s it - just like those little thumb-counters you used to see back in the day - avatar enters - “tick” that’s one. If that avatar returns within 60-minutes - no “tick” - already counted.
If that avatar is absent for an hour (not an hour since last time they were counted, but rather they are off the property for an hour and then return) - they they are counted again.
No, it doesn’t answer all problems and my solution isn’t perfect. But hey, it’s something - even if only an idea.
Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:04pm PDTI think the choice by Linden System to build a traffic profile promoting an undiscriminating use and tolerance of bots is wrong.
Its wrong for Second Life Economic System, extremely wrong for Linden business,
decisely wrong for Sl investors.
bots and camping build a false profile of the real traffic and network use.
Such method would work if we do hypothesis ‘Internaut people’ is not attentive, but superficial, distracted,
internaut people is not sleeping people.
Internet reality is really different, very attentive, very dinamic and ‘plastic’.
Some good internaut understand that traffic is ‘manipulated’ and after some weeks looses to totally interest to explore or
invest in SL.
Increase traffic dont increase any selling but produces 5 things:
1 High lag > visitors go easily bored.
2 reduction of Sim Resources> minor chances to create functional virtual worlds.
cannot properly use and dont buy anymore.
3 reduced selling> investors closes sims.
4 Loos of value of network.
5 reduction of Investements on SL
I buy and HUD, but i cannot use it.
All resources are blocked.Occupied by Bots. imagine you how energy, how many resources
occupied by Bots.
I wont buy one new later > the shops closes, minor lands occupied, minor investemnts,
minor itnerest for SL.
Most important REAL investors are really attentive to such kind of things.
before to buy 20 SIMS, tis more easy pay soembody analize real SL life, before to invest.
“Bot Boosted Traffic” produces just advantages in a very short term but in along terms leads just
to extremely negative results. consumes alot of enrgy, money and resource without produce real advantages.
Consequence is many investors feel trapped and strongly demotivated to expand with money and mental resource
investements.
Basic users instead abandone defintively Second Life use after a short term of intense emotional involvment.
Camping Enanched traffic reduces drammatically SIM resources and reduce the chance by users to
use what they buy.
Who buys want use also.
Who build a SIm for use Sl creations has to earn too.
Moreover many resources come drastically subtracted to a real social interaction virtually mediated, perhaps just real resource promote
the formation of stables group users deeeply motivated to use and spend in SL.
when the mean attractor is money done trough camping an user log in,at beginning they
try to find a way to make easy money, after a week discovers is not true, its’ impossible
then he or she abandone SL.
Moreoever, the real virtual navigator ignore totally these pumped traffic sites, learn really fast
to discriminate, she of he dont buy anything really.
Its easy these big shop chain crack after some weeks, prefer few real loyal creators and artists.
the artist knows if he want she want his or her own creations has to invest too much money
in a jungle without any real security of own investment.
then they renounce to invest.
Habit is well known like a decrease of answers and then produces loss of interest.
Its a costant ‘injeell of news’ produce expansion, rela competion, use and investement in SL network.
then this means big and middle artists would have a strong motivation to invest in virtual worlds.
then we have another problem: security.
security is not that to be pushed or hit, the true security is an artist would be really protected in own copyrights.
The artists are more great resource strongly penalized by SL by various security isssues.
pushing, attacks defence can be part of a virtual game tolerated within some civil limits.
but it can be tolerated by a civil world that one artist, after invested so much money, has to look own product cracked,
copied, undervaluated? theres a similar logic in the real world then?
its absurd a virtual damage counts more than a real damage.
a funny cage can let ban, a money crack or copyright crack can be tolerated…aghhh.
then i ask to myself… how is just possible hope Sl could grow and convince others investors to enter in?
third and last great problem.Pornography and similia.
we dotn use other terms are just a justification.
Imagine you a dad or a mother, after looked looked at SL, if then later, they promote or approve their children to use SL.
A network filled of sexual references everyway, totally ocupied by ’sexual activities’,
until to bore same passionated people, milions of prims
occupied ever by same penis box until to risk you can dream about it even the night…
most part of population dont come, dont use SL becuse siply dont all population is
itnerested to have penis and butterflies in face all the time.
it’s really boring.annoying for many.
many odnt have itnerest to write it, but theyare really annoyed until point to remove Sl client
by their PC.
then if we respect the rights of a minorance we must also respect the rights of a majorance, the great public
its a question of loyalness and clearness. thats all.
how respect the rights of all?
well we trasform the Sl in a Universe, where itnernally subnetwroks from so many planets.
theres a sex planet, a BDSM planet, a music planet a sci fi planet, all with their SIMS, their maps and their network.
Jut inthis way SL will be accessible by all, really all, and the real great public will enter.
if I want to look for penis i go in sex planet then, but if i i dont want see penis all the time
and If I like to see, for example, all artistical creations of all cultures of world represented virtually in SL
and I dont want have a penis crossing necessary all the time my way i must have this freedom.
exactly like who wishes look at penis and simila is not obliged to meet a weapon, a sword or a spaceship.
Viceversa Linden lab has to be delighted of this little public virtual, boosted by virtual Bots
consume resources, time and money for themselves.
Perhaps for earn 2.000L more and buy a new skin. or a new penis.
tehre are other factors are ignored.
there are SIM come occupied 4 weeks by a mega shop. traffic:250.000, 75% BOTS. sex, penis, skins, clothes, same of everywhere, you cna find in
other 12.000 shops.
no one buys.
5th week….disapperead all, the SIM is empty. Investors continue to pay, nobody buy the SIM. 80% of lands without rent.
but who really come to invest there?
Its a wrong method to build economy this. Endures really little and dont grows really.
the risk is all network looses value and cracks. it ends, simply. Is not able to grow really.
crack after crack…
The Usa crisis ius hard.
SL is much sensitive to Usa crisis because come considered one of uneuseful things if life can be cut away.
it costs and dont produce any earn.
SL has to decide to be reliable if it wants really Great Public logs in. Seriously.
Involve great investors and larger public means to make SL reliable and really creative.
It means copyright protection, less furbices running inside, less lag produced by BOTS,
less repeatitive virtual sex shops why annoy who instead wishes spend and consume really,
reduction of fraud risk, erase totally Copybot.
the real lag is not produced by super prims or HUDS, its reduced by AV bots, by a pumped traffic
consumes reosurces, by uneuseful flashes
blinking all the time of sexual stuff. Without to sell anything really.
If not, we keep all these prims occupied by milions of uneuseful ‘virtual penis’ and keep these results.
Real SL creative attractors come seriously damaged by a ’stereotyped system’, repetitive, weak and boring.
they are obscured by thousand of pornographic stuff is expensive to compete.
Who want come really invest money seriously?
I think the best solution be create ‘planets’, make functional subnetworks with their maps and their indepedence.
Who wishes yet fill the network of millions of penis can to do but who want to be creative in other ways
has to be put in condition to have results, to be visible, not necessarely forced to destroy all own money
in BOTS, penis and all their time to compete with a real improductive passive world.
until works like this Sl can just to dream to have the great public daily.
1.5 milions of $/day money flow then its already a miracle.
they could to be 10 milions/day for sure wiht different criteria, lsitening really opinion true and real of most.
The real opinion of most is that SL is not really creative or educative.
Its real opinion of many counts, not that virtual of really few, in a good growing stable Economic System.
When an economical system is not really free but it becomes hostage by a part, where all parts cannot anymore compete freely,
Wed Apr 30, 2008 2:04pm PDTmotivation is lost, creativity is ended, simply it dies.
Changing the way Linden Labs ranks the popularity of locations throughout SL is a welcomed change. The current data is useless and misleading. I have created a more accurate ‘traffic report’ aggregating the 500 most popular locations and then weeding out any location that artificially boosts it’s ranking by paying campers or bots. You can read the article here - http://www.slentre.com/slentrecom-traffic-report-%e2%80%93-weekly-top-10-destinations-in-second-life/.
Also for those worried about residents making money to spend in shops, I am always hiring writers for my magazine. (http://www.slentre.com/second-life-jobs-slentrepreneur-magazine-is-hiring/)
Thu May 1, 2008 10:05am PDTThere are several other types of jobs in SL that are far more rewarding than campaing and pay a much higher wage.
Why does traffic even need to be reported in Second Life at all? We have a search engine already so users can find what they are looking for. The popular places tab simply refers to “popular with bots” not with humans. Word of mouth will always spread news of what is genuinely popular.
Fri May 2, 2008 7:05am PDTThis in encouraging to hear. In my business, appearance is everything - if one firm misrepresents themselves by using campers as a base for metrics; it hurts the industry, as well as being an out-right lie to RL businesses present in our world.
There’s no interaction. Only the gaming of the system. To claim “I’m in the top two popular list” is like saying “I have 20 bot scripts running 24 hours a day, look at my 50k traffic rating, advertise with me.”
I don’t think we’ll ever see camping go away - and it shouldn’t for reasons already pointed out. What I see here is a shift from camp sites claiming overt success to just a place where pseudo-avatars can gold-farm.
In my humble opinion; camping in advertising is a scam; a farce and insult to those of us actually putting in hard work and expense to bring real & relevant experiences to the Second Life Community.
Fri May 2, 2008 8:05am PDTEric, you really should have interviewed a wider range of people than a Linden, somebody flogging their SL book, and Popular Places owners who are merely skilled SEO artists who will try some other thing once this is closed down.
Traffic is NOT widely gamed. It’s gamed in Popular Places — which is going to be removed completely. It’s gamed only on the first few slots of some returns of search words — not all!
Keep scrolling down the list, and you will see a huge world of thousands of entries where the traffic is honest and people make most of their sales from search plus the places tab.
There is a hugely blind prejudice about this concept of “broken traffic” that is spread by people who a) don’t have businesses b) don’t like commerce c) have only a few bot lots they can point to d) want SL to be “fun” and not about business, etc. All those points of view have their place, but not in order to destroy the economy by the vast majority of busineses that get sales from search plus the places tab with traffic as a relevance sorter.
I’d be happy to give you a tour of the rest of the world, beyond the gamed few top spaces, so you get what is at stake here.
If the Lindens and their fans really cared about getting rid of the gaming of traffic, they would ban bots or license them only to paid accounts, and they’d deprecate the camping scripts. But they won’t. They’d rather, once again, to put the burden of the problem on the backs of the tier-paying businesses of SL.
Most of the people on forums and groups complaining about traffic do not have businesses in SL.
There is a huge number of us who do not use camping, gimmicks, bots, or any kind of fakery, come by traffic honestly, and fail to see why for the sake of cultural and ideological aversion of a few geeks the world has to die.
Fri May 2, 2008 8:05pm PDTEvis,
Do me a favour: type any search word not into “search/all” but “search/places”. Go down a few spots, and start to see the normal parcels not “gamed”.
PK O’Toole, “Word of Mouth” is a village concept that can’t be a sole element of commerce in the modern world, especially in a large, international space like SL.
Avarie, your picks aren’t that different than Popular Places — sex joints, BDSM lots, etc. No thanks, not a substitute.
Fri May 2, 2008 8:05pm PDTThis will give an advantage to established vendors making it extremely difficult for new entrants to compete. It will certainly spell out the end of SL and hurt LL’s revenues derived from camping.
Sun May 4, 2008 12:05pm PDTIf word of mouth is a “village concept,” with the Internet the village has gotten very large. Anyone can start a blog for free and gain a considerable audience–and blogs refer to other blogs, so that word spreads. Yes, language is a problem… but online translators, bad as they are, help to an extent.
Mon May 5, 2008 6:05am PDTI’m amazed it took Linden labs this long to address this problem, in my own personal view this has what has been killing off Second Life. Hopefully soon we might see the return of areas that have life and entertainment going on.
Mon May 5, 2008 6:05am PDTOne thing that would be more relevant to me as a business owner would be a composite of transaction figures rather than, or in addition to, raw traffic. For those contemplating rental locations, those figures would be more telling than whether a mall utilizes camping or houses a popular club. Something like the number of unique transactions and average amount spent per visitor would tell me more about the best place to locate a rental outlet than traffic ever could.
But perhaps that’s too “geeky” for persons who prefer broad, unsupported assertions about the nature of anybody who disagrees with them.
Mon May 5, 2008 10:05am PDTLias Leandros “There are as many jobs in SL as there are camping opportunities.”
Ya if you don’t mind working in adult entertainment. I’ve been on SL for over a year now and thats the only other “work” really out there. You can be a Striper or an escort, any other work out there you need either special skills and/or equipment. Such as DJ, you need software and to pay a site to pipe your stream thru, of buy you own server with a T1 or better connetion, or you can biuld things, wait good biulding/scripting/texturing skills takes time to learn and most people in SL can’t do these thing. Fact is you get rid of camping and I say about 40% of SL will stop playing, And new players will not stay long. Is camping a scam, yes it is; But so is RL advertizments. I’ve know a lot of now business owners that started out by saving L’s from camping. Fact is with out an easy job anyone can do to make simple money in SL most players would leave, and new ones wouldn’t stay. If you want to fix the biggest problom with camping BAN BOTS!! Its not hard for a company to see whos running what from what IP and you don’t ban accounts you ban the IP, or they will just make a new account. Remeber this is a game, we all have RL’s too with real jobs, we can’t spend 40 hours at work and put 40 hours into an SL job too. Camping is not a bad thing BOTS are.
Tue May 6, 2008 12:05am PDT