A Blog in Search of Second Life Bots

The Bot Zone is a Second Life blog devoted to tracking down SL bots created to game Linden traffic metrics or attract visitors with their green dots and simulated presence. Despite being officially banned by Linden Lab, they still exist, often in blatant forms, like a store where you can apparently purchase bots as a "Traffic Injection". Created by a New World Notes reader known only as "Little Lost Linden", The Bot Zone culminates the anonymous Residents' obsession with exposing unauthorized bots. Part of me wonders if doing so will only make bot creators more inventive, giving their bots some basic AI features to seem more and more human. But then, that'd be kinda cool too.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

If bots were in any way entertaining and interesting, I would have no problems with their presence. But as long as they are just standing idle, or, more usually, 3000m up, deformed, and smashed inside a tiny invisiprim, they couldn't be more unwelcome on this grid.

[Viggo Recreant]

With viewer2 and the new search, traffic is irrelevant anyway, which is probably why concurrency is falling since the reason to run traffic bots is all but disappeared.

[Bob L]

If we could have bots doing cool stuff then that would be great for sim look. Stop that deserted city feel SL gets.

[Annechen Lowey]

The Really Useful Robots such as greeters, models or desk clerks can be registered, and I have no problem with someone using them to perform actual functions.
Having enough to make the sim seem loaded, even if the traffic readings are no longer used, just to make the place seem popular enough to catch the attention of the green-dot surfers is still wrong. It is worse when you cannot get in if there are more than three active residents for all the bots one club might leave active when they are not hosting an event.

[Angela Talamasca]

My bots did far more that sit scrunched in a little box or even on a scripted object, for that matter. I had sentries, that patrolled the perimeters, as well as a greeter that wandered around the main area to greet guests and answer their questions. The latter involved doing a simple look-up in the sl knowledge base & wiki, and responding with a "sort of" answer.

Nonetheless, the auto-navigation was the biggest challenge, imo. In fact, just prior to deciding to downsize, I was working on what I referred to as a maze runner project. Which I still am. Just not in SL. In fact, the primary draw to my forensic sim (apparently) was the bots as opposed to the forensic projects. No matter.

While I have a rep in the real world for creating bots that are... um... less-botty, so to speak, they still do not fall into what I would even remotely define as true AI. Whether you're talking about those programs that simply scour terrabytes of data in search for an answer or the canned stuff, such as ALICEbots.

As for those obsessed w/hating bots? I am not the least bit surprised. The bots in a box are but one example. *shrugs*

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Bots that are simply to boost traffic stats are annoying but not a big problem to other residents (except competing sellers) if you own the whole sim. If not they can cause lag increasing exponentially with number. If you must run bots on a shared sim please make them small, cover them in one texture, hide them out of the way and stop them moving - rather like dead Sion Chickens.

[soror nishi]

mmmmm.....chicken... tastes a lot like bot.

[Ziki Questi]

Bots are not "officially banned" by Second Life, but bots that are intended to game traffic are. Otherwise, it's perfectly fine to have them on a parcel as long as they're registered as scripted agents. There are plenty of good uses for bots, from fashion models to greeters to land sentries.

[Adric Antfarm]

There was a time I was up for a good bot hunt, but with the current state of affairs and fewer Lindens to police things, I have lost the fire and actually see bot dealers as having a part to play in the economy like anyone else.

The fact is no one can figure search out now much less game it making this more a case of aesthetics than real evil.

I would like to see a day when this issue is back in my top 20, but it's not going to be any time soon as bigger things confront us.

[Little Lost Linden]

I agree having less Linden's around to police things will make it more difficult for things to be enforced, especially non-AR policies like the bot\camper policies.

I think the search must still have some traffic numbers in the equation though. I still see some of the top traffic sims listed high with viewer 2 depending on the keywords I use, etc.

Did anyone ever publish a clear-cut search function doc for viewer2? If so, point me to it. I'd like to read up on it.

From what I've heard it's a mess but there must be some logical document for it somewhere.

Speaking of bigger things, SL7B starts in about 12 hours or so:

http://thebotzone.net/2010/06/20/trojan-extra-large/

That's something we can all look forward too.

[Pussycat Catnap]

OMG, Traffic Injection as the screenshot. :)

I spent the last year of SL living half a sim away from that shop, and telling people about it - getting nowhere.

I even had the lindens drop by it and put up all the abandoned lots around it up for auction, and nothing. Also submitted an AR...

Granted, I should have done more ARs, but I kind of gave up.

[Little Lost Linden]

Yeah, I've witnessed quite a few bots and many that stay year after year without leaving. Until it becomes an AR, there isn't much we can do except try to get the policies changed.