Socially|Mundane

That's the name of my JIRA entry on the Second Life Public JIRA.

Most established residents of Second Life know where they want to go. They know how to shop and they know how to search and often know better than to put much stock in the "traffic" numbers for any particular region or parcel of land.

Established residents also enjoy sim-hopping sometimes. You know, just bouncing around exploring. Perhaps even meet some new potential friends, whatever.

The real issue with campers, bots and camper-bots is not so easy as simply "gaming traffic".

One part of the problem is the resources they use. Yes, they use Linden Lab resources, but so what? I'm speaking of your resources. You're in a dancing mood. You search in the Events tab of the search widget and find more yard-sales than there are parcels of land on the entire grid.

You're in a flighty mood and decide to do a little sim-hopping. You pop-open the map and do like newbies: scan for the dotpiles. You teleport. You wait for the region to rez for you. it's unusually slow. It's laggy as hell. Experience tells you it's because there are a lot of avatars present and their "Avatar Rendering Cost"is really slowing things down.



You pop-open the minimap - find the direction of the throng.

You head that way. But the place is empty, even though you should be in the middle of the crowd. You realize the minimap is showing all of them are above you. You fly-up, teleport up whever-up and find a box with a bunch of zombies.

You have found the bot-farm.

Or you are on the ground and the dotpile is under the ground. Instant notice that it is a bot-farm. Or, you find the throng, walk into the middle of the crowd, only to find a heap-load of avatars all standing around like idiots with little titles over their heads that say "Earned L$2 in 45-Minutes".

You roll your eyes, curse the damned place for wasting so much of your time... the time to rez the place. The time to locate the group of people which aren't, the time and effort to meet and greet and there isn't really anyone there to meet or greet.

You teleport to another location, rinse and repeat.

So, what if you could instantly spot whether or not that throng of avatars are even in a social mood? What if your minimap would show those yellow and green dots and you know those are good to go, but also show all the avatars that haven't moved in an hour in a different color or symbol?

What if you land on a region and see that of the 24 people on it, 23 of them haven't budged an inch in an hour?

You wouldn't have to rez the whole sim or waste time in the lagmire. You can instantly TP to the next location. At the same time, if you are there to shop or for some other reason, so be it. Drive on and suck-up the rezzing lagmire if that's what you're willing to do in order to find that vendor machine you're looking for.

Having the MiniMap distinguish between active, human-controlled avatars and static, unmoving 'zombie' avatars could prove to be hugely useful. Even newbies would figure out what those "zombie" symbols mean after only a few teleports.

Win, win, win.

The campers can keep on camping, the traffic-bots can keep on trafficking and the real humans can avoid them all far more easily.

So, I put in a feature request at the Second Life JIRA.

If you are tired of running into bots and campers, and also tired of arguing with the people who run them and their ridiculous, laughable justifications, then click the link below. Login with your SL account and VOTE for this feature.

FEATURE REQUEST: On the MiniMap, all avatars which have not moved coordinates more that 100-meters for a period of 60-minutes (or other timeframe) are represented with a different color and symbol.

Color and symbol suggested (just to suggest something): "X" (Color red)

[From [#VWR-13874] Visibility of Inactive Avatars on MiniMap - Second Life Issues ]