Socially|Mundane

I've been thinking about my favorite pet-peeves of Second Life for a while now. No, I don't mean all the Linden Lab SNAFUs or the Second Life Viewer bugs or the general wonky nature of the Second Life Grid.

I'm referring to those things in-world, usually the cause of which are residents themselves. So I am going to work my way through my top-ten pet-peeves list. But rather than just plop a bullet lists here, I'm hoping to elaborate on each, so you know why it's a pet-peeve. And that if any apply to you directly, you'll understand why it's a pet-peeve and so irritating not only to me, but likely many, many others who come into your presence.

Number four my list are "camping bots".

I've written about bots quite often. And I love it when Garth Goode over at SLWTF finds them - always a highly entertaining read. What we need in Second Life are two things: a crusader who bounces throughout the grid the way Garth does, looking for campinjg bots, and a way to annihilate them and wipe the scourge from the face of the entire grid.

Okay, allow me to clarify that when I say "camping bots" - I am referring to both: the dumb bot that is placed on sims and parcels, usually under the ground or way up high in some enclosed box and the dumb, mindless camping-for-L$ kind, which are usually just alts, or worse: they are dumb bots that the owner places on campers to make it look like they are at least real people - and giving the appearance that they are awarding camping money - when they really aren't.

So, why are camping bots such evil? Simple: they jack traffic up in a false way. That sucks, yes. But what makes them really evil is when they appear on the map as a crowd and all you are wanting to do is a little sim-hopping. Not shopping, not really out for anything except maybe to meet new people all over the grid and explore.

It's one thing when a shopping mall or some retail place uses camping bots or camper chairs (or blankets or other themed prims) - but when a night club, or amusement park or romantic-garden uses them... a place that is billed as a destination and about meeting other people kind of location which is using them is outright lying to you - falsifying their population - all in the name of bumping themselves a few notches higher on the search listing in the places tab.

makes me wish Linden Lab would bring back the old voting option - and a way to vote negatively as well as positively.

I often click the name column to sort by name - so the traffic numbers column doesn't mean anything to me. If I am sim-hopping, I usually click the "view map" button for one of two results depending on my mood: hopefully empty or hopefully populated.

Often I can tell when the dozens of dots are campers or bots. Primarily based on the location of where they appear on the map based on the landing point. Especially if it is only one or two dots evenly spread around throughout the area in some bizarre, even pattern or shape. Those are L$ campers. But if there is a stack ridiculously tall - that's usually a botfarm. Even if it is a club and there are 40 people there, the stack would be spread out a bit - several tall stacks, not one or two super-tall stacks.

(Note how spread-out this gathering of live people is. First clue these are not bots.)

If I'm not sure, I'll TP anyway. I don't even wait for the rezzing to finish, often before it even really starts I'll hit the mini map and look for those dots.

Clue #1: if you land in a sky platform and the dots are above you: botfarm. if you land on the ground and the dots are below you - botfarm.

If you land in some "natural" environment like a beach or garden and there are dozens of dots spread out and showing strange looking clumps: L$ campers.

Yawn. Sim-hopping just isn't any fun any more.

I have a single bot who manages my merchant groups. Beyond that, bots are not used or allowed on my sim. I might not have the best traffic numbers on my sims, but at least they are genuine numbers.

Forget the land-baron bots. Forget the group manager bots. Forget the L$-camper mindless bots (the ones with real humans) - the dumb-bots bunched together in a box in the sky or underground have ruined the whole purpose of the little green dots on the Second Life map, altogether.

Linden Lab: How about we just go ahead and turn that feature off so the map loads faster when we look at it. Because 3 or 4 of every green dot on the map sure seems to always turn-out being a dumb-bot or a really stupid L$ camper spending more real life money camping than they could ever hope to earn.