Just a word of warning. Prepare to be banned from the land your reporting. Some of them auto ban when you hang around there bots to long, others just ban you for hanging around to long.

Happy to report this does work. Two of the Five places I reported yesterday didn't have bots today.

Yo Skidz Thanks for your curiosity and glad to see ya on Twitter — I don't know if your abuse reporting made a difference (I know it makes you feel good) but I was specifically referring to CopyBot and DMCA violations, not ALL bots.

Jack's blog posts you cite are still the "supreme canon" on the matter, so I hope I haven't led you astray.

Awww... really? I want to make sure I understand, since we had confusion last time. Your saying not to report abuse on people abusing bot for the purposes of gaining rank in the search?

I hope I didn't get you in trouble.

Hmm... Torley never responded.. I will leave the artical up, and let you all make up your own mind. But, Torley is right about one thing. Not all bots are bad. Only report bots that you think are being used for the purpose of unfair traffic gains.

Well.. Bent Melody..

Lets address each one of your questions at a time...

Q - Do you whiny little wimps cry because one can use search engine optimization on the internet to move their rankings up in the search results?
A - Search engine optimization on the internet is nothing like bots. Its more like those assholes that post links on other peoples sites to drive there site up in search ranking, spamming others.

Q -do you cry because a company can buy ad time on television and pay more for a better time slot to promote themselves?
A - Ahh, this is more of a good comparison the classifieds than searches.. so your analogy does not make sense. Bots for me anyway are free. They are opensource.

Q - Oh and by the way, if you DO have something worth selling on Second Life, why not get a bot and drive some traffic to your shop huh, smart marketing, like a good RL business operator does to promote his products?
A - What? how do they use bots in RL? I don't because against the the terms of service, wrong, causes lag, insults your customers intelligence, and many more reasons. Not to mention that I have all natural traffic at 21,000 right now on Skidz Isle. It would be better if you put forth effects to get real traffic, than spending time setting up bots.

Q-If not, then quit whining and why not get a real life eh?
A-Are you trying to insult me? It sure does appear that way.. hmmm.. I will remember that.

Q-Oh and BTW bots don't cause nearly as much lag as poorly written scripts with a bunch of listeners in them, sound familiar Skidz?
A-Actually not true. My scanner that can open 16,000 channels at one time, causes less lag then a bot.

Please don't insult me, or my readers anymore. If you want to have a civilized discussion on this, I welcome it. But no insults are needed.

First off, if your trusting an IP address to match to a user name, that's really kinda lame for a couple of reasons,

1. They aren't always static, however in my case it is.

2. More than one person can access the internet from the same address, you know, there's these cool things called routers and switches and hubs, which is also my case as with most people.

So therefore, stop calling me Abella Beck, if you wanted my inworld name you could have just asked, it's Bent Melody, I'm partnered with Abella Beck, we spend time in RL together (yes I have a RL too). Soooo, an apology to her is in order, she may not share my opinion on the subject. And i am not trying to insult YOU, just the whiners that continually cry about the use of bots in Second Life that insist on trying to insult the people that use them for ANY reason.

I personally use one to automate group invitations and to scan my sims for copy bots, which it does very well. They are also useful in other security modes. Bots are NOT against the TOS, excerpt from the official TOS:

"There are many amazing and useful ways to use Bots and the fact that in some circumstances they can be misused should not impact the more constructive users of Bots. We wouldn't remove Scripting because it can sometimes be used in bad ways, and Bots are no different in that respect."

The whining really begins with creators and shop owners claiming that the bots drive traffic to their competition, once again here I must point out that the same tools are available to marketing a produt on the internet, search engine optimization, push the rankings up, show higher traffic numbers, sell more product. This is the way business is done, not my choice, but simply the way it's done. Same goes for television advertising as i've said, buy the better time slot, reach more people, make it look like you're the busy company, equals more sales.

And lastly, the only real lag a bot causes is if it has loads of attachments, after all it's...

My apologize Abella Beck.. I will change to my message above to reflect the correct information.

If you have more than five bots on your land doing nothing but sitting there occupying your own camp chairs, or standing around idly to boost traffic, you're actually hurting your business.

You might get more people coming to visit because you're higher in the search, but they aren't going to buy your stuff, and they definitely aren't coming back.

Now just a few functional bots are fine. We have a couple that, as examples, add people to our groups and automatically ban people who flood chat. Doing this makes operations a lot easier for everyone.

just an avatar and the only real lag it produces is when it is entering the sim while it rezzes. Scripts are the real lag generators in Second Life, especially if they have lots of listeners or are "noisy". Particles also give the "illusion" of lag as the client has to paint them onto the users display and update them frequently, though they are truly no laggier than any other script. Even using the simple tools that SL has built in, you can see that a bot really causes minimal lag. Maybe we should post the numbers, same sim, 1 bot, 1 script, and see? (i've done it and know the outcome).

And FYI, i was definitley not trying to insult you, and my apologies if that's how it came across, I have told you before that you create excellent products in SL, and still feel that way.
Your input is appreciated.

We have filled our sandbox full of both builders and students (up to 50 people at a time). I will attest that this caused less lag (for me at least) than when I went to an area with a bot farm of around 25 avatars with the old, newcomer outfit (no prims attached).

These avatars were high in the sky, out of sight. I thought it might have been a club, so I went up to check it out (the longest flight of my life). When I got too close, I was banned.

The people doing this kind of thing know that what they're doing is unethical and hide it as best they can. In my opinion, they're definiely hurting their businesses not helping them, and I cannot stress that enough. Sure, they could have had everything I was looking for, but they banned me. And I will never recommend their location to my friends (word of mouth being one of the top ways to improve your business).

Bent...
If we are to compare SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to using bots, I am afraid I would have to classify it as Black-hat SEO. A good reference to what black-hat SEO is can be found here: http://websearch.about.com/od/seononos/a/spamseo.htm

You stated the same tools are available for everyone to use, and this is true, and the same is true with Blackhat SEO, but it is still frowned upon, & can get your site banned from many search engines.

I will say I have given up trying to fight this, since LL does not want my or others peoples help. But I won't go places that use them, and I won't buy from others that do either. I don't mean to sound sound judgmental on this, I just don't care for it and feel they waste my time, and others.

I also would agree that a bot, that logs in, loads no shape, and just sits there, does not cause as much lag as a badly written script.

What really bothers me about this, bottom line, is that because I have a bot (just one as i mentioned before, and NOT to inflate traffic metrics either), you and many others would blacklist my sim as being a bad place, and it's not, sure I use a bot to make my rental boxes easier for the users experience for group invitation upon rental, I have also used other services for this, but they cost too much, I guess I have to agree to a point that trying to use them for traffic metric inflation is shady at best, and to be honest it would take hundreds of them to even make a real difference as far as that goes so it's really not as big of an issue as it would seem as far as ranking. I'm just sick and tired of being targeted for using such a simple thing.

Bent

No, I won't blacklist anyone for using one bot. I keep one bot on my sandbox, which draws my highest traffic, but he is a return bot that returns items 20 minutes after you leave the sandbox.

Its really people that have 5.. 10.. 20.. I have even seen 50 bots on 1 sim.. that drive me a little batty.

One bot is not a big deal by any means.

Ughhh, 10, 20, 50 bots!?!?

That's just plain stupid

I've got WAY better use for my bandwidth, opensim for instance