AFK Timer for Traffic Generation
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Magician Vacano
Currently Traffic Generation for sims is broken and a misrepresentation of activity.
To improve upon this, there is the following proposal:
- An invisible timer that counts down since the last non-scripted action (Talking, moving, clicking, etc.) after 10-20 minutes of inactivity the avatar will stop generating traffic until an action is performed to reset the timer once more. Promoting active communities and social activities and draw individuals closer together.
- An additional counter next to traffic in the search function showing how many avatars are on-sim at the moment. This allows individuals to look for active sims that work within a resident's timezone.
Traffic generation this way should have the intention to draw the social and active parts of second life closer together and reward active social spaces more. Traffic should be an indication of social hotspots and active places within second life. Feedback is appreciated and I'm hoping to open a discussion on this topic.
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jackiewallace Resident
I understand what you're aiming for, and I think it's a good idea, but we need solutions that can't be exploited by abusers. It should start with introducing a new rule that only those who rent a full private region are allowed to set up AFK areas. There’s also a need to develop a new algorithm to prevent traffic-generating games and the excessive use of alts from putting genuinely popular locations at a disadvantage.
Magician Vacano
jackiewallace Resident
I'm personally OK with people going AFK even for long periods of time, I simply do not want to see them affect traffic as a representation of activity. Traffic-generating games and the like are fine as it promotes interaction to some extend. Using alts to populate an area. Using Alt accounts and/or bots to artificially inflate traffic is already a violation of the terms of service.
It's also not a perfect solution, but it is a step in the right direction. Proactive measures with extra rules is another such step. And can be introduced side by side. If anything it can promote parcel/sim owners to be more proactive in encouraging social activity. Though that only glances towards the AFK part of the suggestion.
Another side of the suggestion due to the vague interpretation of presence from traffic is that it's difficult to read for new residents to find where people actually are, making SL far less attractive to engage in due to the feeling of isolation a non-responsive crowd can bring. If it represents activity rather than presence it will more readily bring new residents to make new friends, and engage in social activity as a whole.
Toothless Draegonne
The problem is systemic, and I honestly don't see any fixes that don't involve the Lab getting all jackbooty about it.
You have inconsistent enforcement of traffic bot rules. Many people know the regular offenders that get away with it, and nobody is going to do anything about it. The regions which get away with traffic bots, will get away with traffic bots that have mouse-jigglers attached and a bunch of LLM or Markov Chains word salad.
You have "games" where the sole purpose is just to click a button every now and then. This defeats any AFK timers, but doesn't turn a region into an active chat zone.
You also have regions that are intentionally more chill and relaxed and don't want 6 different dumb arguments about baby daddies and who did what, shouted over redlined voice connections while 50 people sit around sipping tea, munching pop corn and throwing peanuts. They will be penalised down to the bottom of any search lists that sort by traffic count, in favour of drama central, every single time.
There are already tools in at least some viewers that let you have a region tracker, showing a somewhat-accurate headcount of regions you're tracking. People interested in head counts can use that.
There is already an editor's choice section of the destinations list. That could be utilised if the Lab want to spend the effort to have it updated more than once every blue moon.
Until then, the old-fashioned word of mouth works. Newbies have the welcome hubs to wander around, assuming the mentors don't push too many older residents away so the newbies have people to talk to and bootstrap their initial networking efforts. Nothing beats actually exploring the grid and finding places that aren't bot-filled. If anything, it makes traffic count almost irrelevant, so less of an issue as far as "finding fun stuff to do" is concerned.
Magician Vacano
Toothless Draegonne
inconsistent enforcement of punishing the use bots/alts to inflate traffic is, while related, a different problem to this. Though that should be adressed nonetheless. That said, most sims that game traffic don't even require these to do so, as AFK residents are practically "legal traffic bots" with the way traffic works at the moment. On the note of mouse-jigglers and LLMs for word salads however, I can say that mouse-jigglers wouldn't per se work and LLMs are both more easily recognizable for analysts and residents as well as being far more costly to upkeep on a large scale.
The "games" to click a button every so often is something that would also be far less effective than one might think as most AFK residents just keep SL running in the background and likely would ignore such pop-ups. It would garner SOME activity, sure. But far less than expected.
As for more chill regions, you have a fair point there. Though with the inclusion of avatars present at the moment (See point two of te suggestion) you can find these more chill regions as well. Plus low activity "chill" regions would also be recognizable through the search. Low activity does not mean no activity after all.
As for tools being in some viewers, that is fine. Though they are a step in the right direction, it's best for it to add up to a whole. With no reason these sort of tools can't work alongside other suggestions. I've also seen a suggestion about an traffic graph to see active hours of a parcel or sim. One thing on its own is unlikely to fix the issue at hand however.
Finally both the editor's choice and word of mouth are excellent ways to find new places, I use them myself as well. But they are far from perfect on account of the editor's choice being accessible through the website primarily and word of mouth generally being inconsistent, especially for new residents.
Miles Doge
Good grief, yes please. I need to see more stuff like this to actually INCENTIVIZE people to move around and engage with each other, & the sim in general.
It becomes rather depressing/uninspiring to want to make cool gadget stuff that people can run around and play with, when the only thing anyone seems to want to do on SL these days is log on and forget its running in the background of their PC (for whatever reason)
Giskard Triellis
Perhaps add a limiter for IP address. If you have 5 avatars all from the same ip address and at the same location, it may be likely they are accounts just there to generate traffic.
Magician Vacano
Giskard Triellis
A great idea, though I am not sure how that will work out in terms of VPNs. Though it's still something that can be kept in mind.
Giskard Triellis
Magician Vacano I suspect the occurrence of say 5 accounts with the same VPN IP on the same SIM would be rather low. This might be part of the formula used to calculate traffic. Let's say after an hour those five accounts all go afk then it would be a safe bet to assume they are not active and to give them a lower weight in count.
What I would like to see is a function which reflects on the map to show Avatar activity in the last hour. Click a box and the afk accounts vanish. This would allow real time determination of active spots. Imagine using the region tracker and glancing at it to see when your favorite spots have people currently engaging as it reflects that function.
Logan Elf
Giskard Triellis It's not just VPNs though. Increasingly more and more ISPs are implementing CGNAT or MAP-T on non-business connections. A consequence of these technologies is that IPv4 addresses are NOT guaranteed to be unique.
SL Feedback
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SL Feedback
Hello, and thank you for your detailed feature request regarding the AFK Timer for Traffic Generation. We appreciate your thoughtful proposal to improve the accuracy and relevance of traffic metrics in Second Life. This topic has been brought up before by another resident, and we are merging your comments to expedite our review process. Your suggestions, such as implementing an invisible timer for inactivity and adding a real-time avatar counter, are valuable and align with our goal of fostering active and social communities. While we cannot provide an estimate on when this might be implemented, please keep an eye on future updates. Your input is crucial in helping us enhance the Second Life experience, and we encourage you to continue sharing your ideas. Thank you!