The Lindens Stealth-Remove Traffic and Close JIRA Web 1776

Many people think the Lindens are still using traffic metrics in Search, and that while lessening its role, are still somehow including it in their Google Search Appliance relevance in Viewer 2.x

You can still see it working in the old Viewer 1.23, and third-party viewers based on the old 1.23 viewer -- if you search under "search/places" the parcels sort by traffic.

But in fact, what has happened is that the Lindens have completely killed off traffic, stealthily, without telling anyone, to avoid a huge outcry among the user and particularly the merchant population.

Just now, the Search Times (whoever that is now) has appeared and shut a JIRA entry that had a huge amount of involvement for years:

 

WEB 1776 Meta-issue: Traffic (get rid of it, replace it, supplement it or change it

I remember what a fight we had trying to get this "meta issue," framed tendentiously by Torley to include "keep it" not just "get rid of it" and had to settle for "supplement it" or "change it".

The way to deal with gaming of traffic was not to heed a minority of people who were tired of being in an arms race with other clubs or furniture stores and thought other metrics would reward them in search; the way was to enforce the TOS and JIRA solutions that developed after much effort to get the Lindens to enforce action against the gaming of traffic.

They couldn't do this persuasively, however, not because they didn't have manpower, or the problem was too great (it really wasn't -- there are 32,000 islands, there are a dozen Lindens to work Governance, and the overwhelming number of islands have no stores on them, and the overwhelming number of stores did not game traffic with bots, camp chairs, etc.)

They couldn't do this because if they went after certain businesses, their own income would decrease, and their own favouritism system would start collapsing. They had to exempt some people from the rules (and I suspect even game their ranking through their own coding, as FlipperPAY used to do for his lovely wife Jenny-fur, who was coded to show up first on the old SL Boutique.

The Lindens spun a line for a while that traffic wasn't removed, but was less important. Now they are coming clean and simply closing the JIRA:

This is an old issue, but we wanted to close it appropriately.

In the past, we promoted and listed places according to their perceived traffic. This created an huge incentive to falsify traffic. Many systems for camping and fake "bots" were created that made systems report and boost an incorrect population. Having residents show up in places they think have people, but are actually empty is a poor experience and reflects badly on Second Life. Therefore, we have deemphasized traffic and do not plan on return to the previous system. We are continually evaluating better ways of helping people discover new places in Second Life and have ongoing projects in this area.

Let the record show that this isn't closed appropriately. It's closed by executive fiat. It is misrepresented entirely.

I can't even be sure that the new CEO, Rod Humble, even understands these issues yet.

To be sure, writing that they "de-emphasize" traffic doesn't sound like "removal," but I think we can conclude this is a euphemism if they are no longer willing to keep only a JIRA to discuss this issue.

The reality is that a lot of traffic is merited and useful and this idea that people go to empty sims that are gamed is not the norm. It does happen, but to claim this is only the experience newbies have, and a reason to remove traffic is completely tendentious and manipulative. Everyone knows there are authentically trafficked popular hangouts, and people can sort by interest and word and rating and see some that really have a marker for being authentically popular with their traffic.

It's not as if gaming of search in a 100 other ways won't occur anyway.

In a funny way, "1776" seems like a perfect number for this issue because it signals the independence of the merchant and user class from the game gods. Traffic, by being visible, is democratic and transparent. People rapidly begin to tell what is likely gamed and skip it. And what is deserved is there as a marker of attractiveness.

By having that marker that is resident-produced and resident-read, the game gods can't skew the search their way -- the way Google does for all of us, rewarding ideological brethren like Wikipedia and using secret algorithms that only they can ultimately make bank on.

Traffic is a system that enables people instantly to see something about a place -- information that was valuable even in a setting where it is gamed.

When you can't use traffic for a marker, and the ranking is based on all kinds of crazy shit like how many prims you put on your lot or how big your lot is, people feel they are manipulated and powerless. To be sure, there are those who have figured out this game and gamed it or worked within its rules legitimately and aren't bothered by it.

I've often thought, ever since the Lindens promised to remove traffic as an ideological matter, that what we needed to do is restore it as residents. To create kiosks that measured visitors and websites that posted leadership information from trusted sites that live inspections and reporting could prove were not gamed. This seems like a system that might be a bit difficult to set up at first but once set up could be an incredible boon for independent marketing without the Lindens. So I hope someone will do this. I'd be happy to work with anyone doing this and have ideas for it.

The problem is that any such system would rely on traffic numbers still rendering on parcels, even if no longer used in search. And the Lindens and their fanz who hate traffic might lobby to have this democratic marker removed from the parcel info, defeating any creative replacement of the system.

In that case, some other kind of visitor trackers and voters could be devised, and I hope this will happen.

Traffic is a great sweetener for people's day in SL, and a great boon. It lets them know if they have made/done the right thing that people like. When you see traffic fall off somewhere, it can be a signal that something is wrong on that parcel, some blockage or problem. Too much traffic can also be a sign of squatters or griefers. It's an important signal in any rental management operation, and I think probably there will be systems that spring up that help people track this, but it will be costly and burdensome -- right now it's right in the viewer and easily seen in 1.23; it's much harder to see but still there in 2.x; soon it may be deleted altogether.

Second Life has gotten so much less fun than it used to be.

Comments

[melponeme_k]

Well they seem to be methodically trying to separate people from the idea of a VR world as a place to run a small business.

I'm on V2 and I still see search in the land menus for my plots. But the traffic states 0 for all of them. Which I know is wrong. On one plot, I'm near a Linden attraction and I always got a stray visitor or two. I can tell I got one this week because my doors and windows were open. I'll keep my eye on the menu but I think the traffic indication will disappear soon.

[Amanda Dallin]

The traffic on my sim shows to be 0 or very low even though it is almost always occupied. It shouldn't be a hug traffic number but it's much smaller than similar actual traffic would have produced a couple of years ago. I can't think of a more fair way to rank parcels in search. Anything else is either purely political or even more prone to gaming.

[Laetizia Coronet]

How does this have an effect on rental pricing, or am I mistaken to think that a highly trafficked sim can ask for higher shop rent?

[Trinity Dejavu]

Things like voting has failed in SL from day one, they were gamed at the start and they will be gamed again. Vote for me and I will pay you, no different from traffic.

Loss of traffic kills the more fun things in SL like RP and hangouts where the use of bots are not common place.

LL can identity the bots, and who is active on a sim, track that and keep the traffic score.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

I still see traffic just like always. Traffic has been marginalized in the GSA for months. Right, wrong, indifferent that is how it has been for a while. And when LL cuts off the v1.x search then it is over as far as search goes where traffic is concerned. So people have to adapt to a different model whether they like it or not.

And LL seems to be proficient only at feeding hand biting. (Crap like SLM Maturity Ratings resulting in a continuation of forcing merchants to burn time fixing LL horse shit instead of contributing to the economy) All LL has been able to accomplish lately is causing damage to the people that pay their salaries. Country people handle hand biting dogs a certain way.

Whatever. Not going to get into this any further unless the Lindens are here to defend/debate.

[Prokofy Neva]

Ann, I realize it has been marginalized -- probably for more than a year.

But the closing of this JIRA signals that they will refuse to fix anything about it, i.e. the gaming of it, and refuse to entertain any options for improving it -- there are dozens of JIRAs there under this topic -- and it's basically a tacit acknowledgement that it will be deprecated, if it isn't already.

Seeing the traffic render on the parcel doesn't mean it is used as relevance. And looking at it day after day on my own data set of parcels, I would have to say that "marginalized" may indeed have yielded to "deprecated". I don't use any traffic gimmicks, I know which parcels actually have people on them, and they are no longer ranked first in my own set.

A problem with this discussion is that each time it comes up, each person clings fiercely to their own data set, and there also becomes an issue of pride and knowledge.

If someone admits they don't know, or don't do well in search (and some do), they are seen as weak.

Your data set of your own stores and perhaps a few other stores you follow is one data set, but it's in one realm, with one set of key words and one demographic, etc. -- my data set might be completely different, or somebody else's is completely different.

And what's very hard to get people to do is to take a look at all these different sets agnostically and see what they say.

It will not happen on the forums or on the blogs because of the egos at stake.

As for your pragmatic call to adopt or die, yes, I get all that.

The Lindens have continued to defend this basically with only one line, "This is how Google does it." Of course, it isn't even how Google does it on the actual Google writ large.

[Magnet Homewood]

A sad day for SL indeed. I think we will see a massive knock-on effect in the live music scene because I believe a considedrable number of musicians are hired for events precisely because of the traffic boost it brings to a parcel.

As someone who has been running a venue for a good few months now, apart from the excitement and fun of hearing someone play for you, the traffic boost was one of the only other reasons that made hiring a live musician worth while - spending $5000L and only getting $200L in tips or sometimes even $0L kind of sucks with no other benefits from it!

[Darien Caldwell]

"Traffic is a great sweetener for people's day in SL, and a great boon. It lets them know if they have made/done the right thing that people like. When you see traffic fall off somewhere, it can be a signal that something is wrong on that parcel, some blockage or problem."

Traffic is still there, for everyone to see. It can still be used as a yardstick for measuring your e-peen or whatever.

Traffic just doesn't count toward making your parcel turn up in search results more prominently. As it shouldn't, since it's univerally gamed, and there is no way to prevent that.

LL should have closed the JIRA, it's impossible to fix, LL's not going back down that road, so what is the point of keeping it around?

[Darien Caldwell]

In fact the name of the Jira Is: "Traffic (get rid of it, replace it, supplement it or change it)"

They got rid of it. just as asked.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Darien. Traffic isn't universally gamed, and it's retarded to claim that when a search on 20 or 50 or 100 key words as I've done many times to illustrate this point always and everywhere turns up gamed parcels only in the first few returns, and numerous non-gamed, merited parcels that impart useful and good information to shoppers that are beyond the Linden-manipulated and gamed-anyway *search itself*.

Traffic sorting, which visibly occurs after search in viewer 1 and which is hobbled in viewer 2 (it's still accessible, but you have to move the slider and click more) is so heavily used by people with real money to shop (as distinct from newbies using search/all) that people take it for granted.

When we moved to a coerced viewer 2 regime, and the economy is further harmed, then perhaps people like you may get it. But you'll likely blame it on something else.

The problem with a stupid Meta category like that which gets votes is that people voting on it aren't necessarily voting to "get rid of it," but may have wanted to change it or supplement it. So it's terribly skewed, and in my view, meta topics shouldn't be voted on at all.

[Amanda Dallin]

What can be used that won't be gamed? Even if the Lindens picked the top stores it's going to be political and not merit. Traffic has worked for a long time. you have to use your judgment when looking at the lists. Software can't do this on it's own.

[brinda allen]

@ Ann Otoole InSL

"Whatever. Not going to get into this any further unless the Lindens are here to defend/debate."

Likely the best response...
For *The Benevolent Monarchy* to defend or debate would be to accept us as equals... Does anyone believe that?

[Darien Caldwell]

"What can be used that won't be gamed?"

That's probably the best question, and recently I saw something that ties in to this nicely I think.

It's no secret I'm not a fan of Facebook, but even Facebook can teach lessons:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/01/27/facebook.spam/index.html

The Juicy part is:
"Interestingly, Facebook decided not to go the law and order route. They didn't start writing out long lists of rules about what kinds of messages would be allowed and what kinds wouldn't.
Instead, Taylor told Fast Company in an interview following the talk, they built an automated system that monitored each individual message -- and then took action, again, automated, against the specific messages that seemed to be bothering users.
Specifically, the system tracks whether recipients hide certain messages or mark them as spam, or whether they click "Like" on the message or comment on it, or whether they actually click through to see the application itself.
"Using a bunch of signals like that, we're able to infer the likelihood that something is a high-quality message," Taylor said. Or, alternatively, if it is low quality.
If too many recipients hide a message or mark it as spam, Facebook automatically starts blocking it.
The application developer is notified -- also through an automated system -- and has to go back to the drawing board to develop something recipients respond to more favorably. And if an application sends nothing but low-quality messages, Taylor said the system simply turns the application off altogether.
"What's great about this is that we no longer need to micromanage every interaction," Taylor said. "We just measure the output.""

While at first blush this may seem suseptible to gaming, it's less so. Someone could down rate something, or make 100 alts to down rate it, but that would still be a drop in the bucket compared to the actions, or inactions of tens of thousands of other users. For something to be considered 'unworthy', it would have to be downrated by nearly everyone, and if that many people are truly not liking it, or willing to pretend not to like it, something must really be up with it.

It's akin to what Prok mentioned about voting stations for areas. But it does require a few factors LL may not be willing to implement. Biggest being the ability to vote No/Against/Not in favor of a place. We know from JIRA that LL is not keen on people showing their displeasure. But doing so is necessary to make such a rating system work.

[Dave Irvine]

This is so bad,it will kill E-commerce,looks like the Lindens don't want anyone but themselves to become rich.