Linden Labs has published a new policy on camping robots. (You need an SL account to access the page) If you don’t know these are robots that are used to make a place look inhabited and to pump up traffic scores for better placement on SL Search. Robots come in various flavors. Some have artificial intelligence and can even carry on a lame conversation.

Many of us think getting rid of bots would be a totally good thing, but not everyone. Some bots are hired to model cloths, hair and stuff in various stores. What about those?

Linden Labs has now clarified policy to set the limits and be clear on what they mean.

Basically if someone is using bots to unfairly inflate traffic for search results, it is against policy. They will be given a warning and on continued attempts to game the system, removed from the search listings.

So that eliminates camping bots. The model bots are another story. Lindens are going to allow them. They will however develop a system to ID model bots. Then those using them will be asked to self ID their bots. The idea being they can quickly check those accounts and verify and then get those bots out of the crosshairs.

Then there are Land Bots… Land bots have been used to unfairly grab land that is not for sale to most people. This is a matter of bots being faster on the trigger than human controlled AV’s, I think. But land bots have other uses in regard to managing property. Seems the Linden plan is to change how they do land sales and eliminate the bot advantage in land purchases. So, for now they plan to leave land bots alone.

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