both camping and "traffic bots" (bots that do NOTHING but increase traffic) are a form of cheating on search rankings.

but we're doing something about that. What else?

landbots used to really make me mad

bots are OK as long as they are doing something useful and not interfering in activities or stats

adds that LandBots are NOT useful

my understanding is that most active landbots are run by honest businessfolk who buy ML at market rates and below. They handle a LOT of land

there are occasional problems with unscrupulous people who take advantage of user error (sell for $1L to Anyone despite HUGE WARNING) but...

those are the exception to the rule.

wonders if it's fair that someone can make money just by having a faster ML-buying bot than ordinary people?

almost *everyone* who's serious in the ML business uses landbots - they're open source, so it's not unfair

sorry, let me put that better. Anyone who's into large volume ML sales. There are lots of smaller serious Mainland vendors with no bots.

how you feel about search-bots running around the grid?

I would expect that any really useful user-agent running around the grid would do some level of searching.

what I have a problem with is any automated system that abuses the services - search, teleport, IM - and/or DOS's it for the users.

some really useful bots I've found: Mapping bots

there could be some very interesting future uses of bots. a friend was contemplating a large-scale sales training simulation, for ex.

bots that are being AI experiments an' stuff are cool (even tho current AI is lol incredibly lame).

, on the ML-land issue, that people using bots to buy land cheap and then sell to real people are Not Adding Value...

if they manage their properties well and treat their customers well, I respectfully disagree. That's the heart of the land business, no?

I think there is value in a land-seller/renter who can find a customer what they want and teach them how to use it.

Oh keeping the land and managing it is fine; I'm thinking of "buy cheap with bot, resell to ordinary botless folks for more money, all done"

irked by the much more intangible icky feeling that comes with a sim full of bots. If a newbie lands there and tries to talk to them...

this is IMHO, but makes "common sense" to me. When I started, I had a landlord that was very helpful.

...then it's not really a great ad for second life. I'd prefer them to have to have some kind of "NPC" tag. People already think SLs a game

bots should all look the same, or have big "BOT" labels or something.

and already often arrive assuming that they won't be looked after by real people, etc...

well, there's this other side: what about business owners who run Anti-AFK so their IMs don't get capped. They're bots 1/3 of the time.

the advantage: all IMs get logged, better customer service, etc.

But having a big BOT! sign isn't very easy to systemize, I suppose.

plus I guess you know that SLExchange and OnRez are using bots for their L$ credit systems

one bot/person is doable. but still weary. Why don't mark everybody that's 'idling' - eg. did not move for 30 minutes - with an orange dot?

Yeah, nothing wrong with bots that carry out useful functions, def.

ever tried finding a plot of land on mainland? or a store to rent? every place you TP to that has more than 10 green dots => bots location.

maybe if there were more readily available smart traffic tools (like the ones that can track movement) bots wouldn't annoy as much?

you should then not wonder that we start asking questions about the amount of bots in your stats

"sims full of bots" - particularly the Traffic Bots - will hopefully be solved by search changes

I've seen many of the Traffic Bot examples, we're measuring all of the types I can find, including testing them out.

we also run a small number of bots ourselves to test performance on the system "from a user perspective"

we collect data on time-to-teleport, % TP failures, time-to-rez-object, etc, on all kinds of regions.

a sim full of bots is dangerously close to Matrix Revolutions...

meta, so you must have a good idea of the % of the %'s Zee just published that are bots. We're curious.

I've seen people experimenting with NPC bots for the Role Play systems - looks fun

does not doubt that bots can be functional. Just want to know for how much of the 'growth' the account. =)

Z says himself the same figure I'll say - 10% overall of user hrs, occasionally spiking to 15.

it's really interesting the violent "Eugh! Bot!" reaction most resis seem to have, even though they'll admit they might be useful.

sorry! I missed that. (/me blames wrong timezone she's in). And concurrency? (We all got those 'grid full, can't login' messages recently)

yes, I *really* appreciate the ability to give some direct feedback! *more please*

it's easy to be all ZOMG Robot Rampage!

hahahaha i <3 Meta

Meta too

bots dont bother me at all but it would be useful to account them separately from regular users, if thats even possible. if you ask me...

...i hate even more that people have 3 or 4 alts faking the numbers of residents just to hold more damn groups. this is my #1 annoyance.

I have one alt for groups. No other option. (or I should leave girls with guns and sl bloggers :/)

there should be 2 kinds of groups: one just for notices (unlimited) and one like those used today

should open a Plurk thread to wish for more than 25 groups, and get massive Karma!

for one, welcomes our robot overlords.

people using alts are not my annoyance Vint, that we have to because the group limit is ridiculous IS the annoyance.

already made one !

btw the 10% number counts for concurrency as well - this does swell daily along with the concurrency "tides" but is consistent.

(/clueless) if a bunch of bots are less laggy than a bunch of "real" users?

totally depends. Most bots use much less resources (no texture D/Ls, etc) but some can be hoggy - those we monitor and fix server-side

swaps her husband for a bot

if bots aren't harming anyone and are not taking system resources and causing lag or preventing entry to sims, then I guess they're ok

I hate the spam bots that tp into Help Island and just stand there, doing their botty thing. There's usually 5 or 6 of them, just in the way

it's already very hard to keep in people's minds the idea that an avatar is a human being with real feelings. bots can add to this problem.

i think it'd be less deceptive to label them as such, so they are never mistaken for people.

also, complaining about capped IMs is silly; send them to email and have a record of them. isn't that better?