Hunter, Traffic and Myths

I confess, I am not a huge 'hunt' participant. However, I do recognise the appeal and the fun of the 'hunt' and I hold a view that when there is fun involved in something, and gifts made with care that it all helps create good feelings that get carried along to the next person one encounters. To me this makes sense, so it was not a difficult decision to share some of my textures in the Building Blocks Hunt, and an outfit for the Ostara Hunt. I also expect that there will be a degree of mutuality in terms of good will and pleasantness. What was unexpected was the sheer, unadulterated rudeness of many of the hunters to the vendors participating.

The Building Block hunters in particular contained a particularly ill-mannered group who seemed to feel that whining, whinging, bitching, complaining and generally dribbling was their right in exchange for the 'traffic' they brought. To me, anyone behaving in this way should either not go in a hunt or simply be given a chock for their trailer wheels. ... I need to be clear here, I only encountered one rude person and that was nothing the eject button couldn't solve swiftly. However, some vendors giving freely to the hunt were harassed and abused to the extent that the hunter group was disbanded and some vendors removed themselves and their gifts from the hunt.

Now I have heard this word 'traffic' used like some form of gold nugget that people hold up to sim owners but I never understood what they meant. Here's a tip ... 'traffic' is neither here nor there for many of us. I do fine out of my little 'artistic' ventures, I don't use 'bots' (whatever THEY are *makes note to look that up*) and there are many ways to feature in the 'search' menu without having people tp-ing in clicking and tp-ing out. I never really understood the 'traffic' thing but listening to other vendors, this seemed to be a constant justification for ill-manners and general naff-ness. I decided to find out more about it

It seems that at one time, traffic on a sim had two benefits:

1) Ranking in Search results (under popular places). .... In 2010 the 'traffic' influence on this is less clear. It seems that satisfied customers having a place in their picks, or paying for a classified seems more helpful; and
2) L$ payments based on the number of avatars on a sim and some form of additional L$ bonus for the highest ranking sites..... However, this practice ceased in mid 2006 - almost four years ago! The following statement from LL clarifies the situation to date:

"There are currently no official Traffic incentive programs in place; owners of popular parcels do not receive any Linden dollar bonuses based on their Traffic scores."

It seems clear that sim/business owners do not get some kind of financial recompense for traffic. OK - that's THAT myth knocked on the head. So now we know those that hold the 'traffic gold nugget' up as some form of 'I'm entitled to be rude and naff' talisman - are also hopelessly out of date.

So then I decided to see how, IF traffic WAS important, how it was in fact, calculated. It appears from LL that traffic is one point per avatar per minute but only for avatars that do not move to another parcel for at least five minutes:

"In 2006 traffic was changed to be a minute an avatar spends in a parcel but only for avatars that do not move to another parcel for at least five minutes"

Now looking at the average hunter, the use of 'wireframe' to search, the presence of 'cheat sheets', 'official' hints and people tp-ing their friends in and pointing to the item and then tp-ing out again, the chances of anyone apart from the noob remaining long enough to register as 'traffic' seems to me in the words of the Great John Cleese.. 'to be an act of the purest optimism' - if indeed traffic IS meaningful at all to anyone other than the LL statisticians.

In reality, people either like your creations or they don't. They either buy things, or they don't.

So as a content creator that owns a class five sim at almost $400USD/month, enjoys pottering about making stuff and sharing it, and one who has the ability to pay for a classified ad.. I remain bewildered at why 'traffic' for the sake of 'traffic' is supposed to be a Good Thing. I'm even more bewildered as to why anyone would think 'traffic' is the magic word to somehow 'justify' poor behaviour.

What I DO know is this, people who feel they are entitled to whinge and whine can get out of my 'garden' - the virtual roses don't need the horsesh**t.