I’m not sure how long this has been going on for, but I’ve only noticed it today, I’ve also only noticed today a link to create classifieds that I thought had disappeared, so I may not have had my Sherlock Holmes like powers of observation on lately!
Anyway, it’s back … in places search at least, Traffic is rearing its head:
Beware of Bots bearing gifts!
Traffic is something that leads to arguments, because some people artifically inflate their traffic scores, this articial inflation of scores caused traffic to be hidden away and considered not very useful. There was a stage when I believed the stat should be made meaningless but I changed my mind on that quite some time ago, largely because I can see no better indicator of whether a place is busy, let’s remember that plenty of folk don’t artificially inflate their traffic scores. Traffic scores should be taken with a pinch of salt and if you’re thinking of opening a store somewhere or putting out an advert, visit a place to see if it actually is busy, but Traffic can be a useful stat too, so don’t write it off as meaningless.
As well as Traffic scores we also have these three button indicators, which I’ve only ever seen as one or three lights, they represent active, popular and busy.
Above we see an example of active locations and below is an example of a busy location:
Sorting by Traffic and Traffic scores seem to be unique to searching places at the moment, searching destination guide or Classifieds gives you different search options which don’t give any indication of Traffic scores. Destination Guide allows you to sort by name in normal or reverse order or relevance:
Whereas classifieds allow you to sort by name, like in the Destination Guide, normal or reverse order, price or relevancy. Relevancy is the default for all searches.
There will be disagreements from some folk about these changes and as I said at the start, I’m not sure when these changes happened. However, is there a more useful system than Traffic for counting whether a location is busy? It is not Linden Lab’s fault that people abuse the system, maybe they should remind people about Scripted Agents:
“Scripted agent status
If you own a Second Life account that is primarily operated by a scripted agent, or “bot,” you must identify it as a bot by setting its status on your Second Life Account page.
By identifying bots, you help us provide you with more accurate account statistics and inworld search results.”
Linden Lab could also point people to their bot policy, which mentions that using bots to artificially inflate your traffic scores is not allowed. We all know some will ignore these policies, but these policies do exist and it would do no harm for Linden Lab to remind people that these policies exist.
As an aside, last time I tried to add a classified I ended up go all around The Wrekin to find out how to do it, not helped by having two links to my profile. Today I noticed that the create a classified link is back where I thought it was:
I swear that link went on a holiday!