Sheep Search
Interesting thing to have to read when my eyes are swollen and itchy.
From what I’ve read, people generally fall into the following catagories:
1. love the sheep and think they can do no wrong.
2. honestly do find the search a good idea.
3. hate the sheep and everything they do.
4. think the data mining is catagorically bad/ an invasion of privacy.
5. believe the implimentation of the search was bad.
6. unsure
7. haven’t heard about it yet.
As always since the world is full of greys, of course people can and do fall into multiple catagories.
My opinions:
1. Opt-in vs Opt-out
The sheep decided on opt-out. Big mistake in my opinion. See, not everyone uses SL to sell things. Actually according to LL, a higher percentage of people don’t. People use it in many different ways.
The spin they are giving this decision is that a search with everything would be better then a search with only 1/2 the things. Ok, the IW search places has probably every store in SL yet that is opt-in. If this search is the next best thing since toast, the sheep would have people lining up to be scanned. From where I’m sitting it just looks cheeky to scan first, inform later. Just like email spam opt-out.
At the very least they should have made an annoucement stating what they plan to do and let us opt-out before the first scan. Now it’s become a PR nightmare which may (hopefully) hurt them.
2. Myth: It only searches content set for sale.
Incorrect. According to the site, if you “opt-in” it will list every single object on your parcel. Now, does the bot scan everything on each parcel or just those who do “opt-in”? I’m going to bet you that it scans everything - sends to a sheep database somewhere - then posted depending on permissions.
3. What other data are they mining?
From what I’ve read, this bot was made from a joint effort between libsl (copybot creators) and the sheep. Neither of which do I feel comfortable with using a program to gather information from my land. On one hand you have a group of people who openly attacked content creators for our “greed.” Then started the copybot hysteria by talking with us as a group saying none of our content/IP is “safe,” releasing a product to prove it, only to find out later that it really didn’t. On the other you have a group of people whoring SL and its residents out to corporate interests for $ and whose egos have grown so big they probably do believe that they can’t be thrown off their high horse.
For all I know, they could have good intentions. But from past experience, anyone who has to tell me something that many times, it probably isn’t true. They may not be publishing all data and who knows what they would do with it, but knowing they have it doesn’t settle right with me.
So libsl has something against content creators and our “greed” called IP. Could they have sneaked in something that grabs all the paramaters of the prims? Ok, yeah bit of a stretch I know.
4. You can ban “grid shepherd” to not be scanned.
Odd thoughts on that. When it was first announced, I jumped on and did a search for poses. My name, oddly, didn’t come up. Anything that would help my business would attribute me to poses right? Ok.. so I did a search for my name. It came up with Lalique: *under construction* then about 1/2 of the objects I have for sale. So the tags are just the lame limited amount we get for the IW parcel description. Now, what worries me is that the *under construction* part of the sim - everyone not in the group is auto banned. Obviously it scanned the banned section enough to get and list the parcel description.
Is it a fluke? If I let them scan the sim, but not the corner my house will be on, does it really know the difference? What about people who don’t own the entire sim? If you ban the bot but your neighbour doesn’t can it still scan you?
I’m almost tempted to rope off a part of Lalique that lets the bot on, put a box for L$1 and test to see if it picks up my store.
5. 2 Different ways to opt-out
Ok.. so if you go to sheep isle, find the hidden box to opt-out your information will not be posted. But your things will still be scanned.
If you ban the bot, you may or may not be scanned (see #4).
That is completly unacceptable. This just proves once again the blatent disreguard they have for the rest of us. There is no way to spin this into remotly looking ok. They must, in no uncertain terms, find a way for each person to completly opt-out of this.
6. Incorrect parcel descriptions.
If you do a search for me, some of the items I sell at the animation warehouse shows up on the description:
Disco dance2Live T V and more…, club,hot,music,djs,dancers,jazz,Disco,Counrty,rap, R&B,rock,house,camping,video,bar,xxx,lights,dance (no)
This makes it look like I’m renting at a camping infested adult dance club. I do NOT rent at places like that and it really pisses me off to be listed as such. Yes I know it’s buggy cause it’s a beta, but they should have at the very least gotton permission for the beta because of this type of slander.
7. Incomplete search
This only shows objects for sale. It doesn’t include boxed items or vendors. What about things that have split scripts? Not listed. Thats a lot of items for sale missing from their search.
The tags are then based on the limited space we have for the parcel description, avatar, and the name of the object itself. That’s all well and good if the places search is down, you know the avie, or whatever name they gave it. What if I’m looking for clothes of a certain look? Say female vintage clothes. Is the fault now on the creator because they don’t put that in the description field or would a search with a human tagging system work better?
Then the search brings up a long list of objects. I’m sorry but how is that going to help me? With the IW classifieds and places I at least get see the image they are trying to project. Its a fact that if the ad sucks, the product sucks. I have purchased many different things in the almost 3 years I’ve been in SL and never once have I found something good at a place where I thought the ad was absolute shit. SL is great that anyone can make content, I’m sorry to say it but not everyone has the eye, talent or skill. I’m not saying they should be left out, but the consumer needs the ability to decifer for themselves.
8. Myth: It’s just like google.
Incorrect. With google I can make the robots.txt file disallow bots/spiders to search the images folder. With websites I can put different parts of the site in different folders where it still looks like it’s on the same page. I can’t do that with different parts of my build. It doesn’t seem likely that I can allow the sheep to post my objects for sale while not grabbing the build info or anything in my studio.
9. Myth: Public domain
Yes and no. Eventhough we have no real sense of privacy, people do some very private things in SL. I do consider my studio a private space. I expect people to either stay away out of decency or leave after an explination. Odd thing is is that I have only had to ban 1 person from it in almost 3 years of SL. Believe it or not, people are for the most part decent.
The thing is is that groups (companies) as an entity in general are not. It is not surpizing that the idea of privacy probably didn’t even dawn on them in their rush of “furthering (corporate) SL.” The sheep have proven time and again that they can not see us as individual human beings. It is how they sleep at night. Just like the traders at Enron overlooked the devistation of the rolling black outs and skyrocketing electric bills. It’s the group think of “it doesn’t touch me so it’s ok.”
While the information posted is downloaded to everyone’s client when they tp to the location, not all of it is easily accessible. While you can cross ban lines, doing so is against the ToS.
10. Using a backdoor to gather information.
This bot, copybot, and landbots use a back door to gather information in SL. It’s the same as using GLintercept to steal textures. Its gathering information in a way not intended by the program itself. Doing this is shady no matter which way you spin it.
11. Lag
They have done sim tests and say that the apparant lag is no worse then when any avatar tps in. But what I’m curious about is the database lag generated. Thats the biggest issue right now and the reason why everything is just well.. broken. There are many times being a content creator is just unbearable when it comes to the database lag. I can’t upload animations or images, rez objects, retexture my build, ect. How many times per day do I get an IM saying they didn’t recieve the pose they bought from the vendor?
How can anyone say, with a straight face, that scanning every bloody sim every 24 hours and uploading that data to a server isn’t hitting the database more then a single avatar? Well, for one I sure as hell don’t tp to each sim let alone repeating it once a day.
12. Opens a can of worms
This is only the beginning of what is to come with bots. If LL wants SL to be web 2.0 or what have you, there needs to be a general robots.txt file that can ban every single bot from our server space. This not only needs to be generally accepted but enforced.
13. Doesn’t bloody work
In the sheep’s overzealous release, they failed to make a search that worked as intended. That is unless the intentions were to even list no mod purchased items with the for sale box checked but greyed out so the owner can’t change it. So lamps in private bedrooms are being listed even though its not actually for sale.
In short:
You can call me a hater, paranoid, moron, whatever you want to. These are my opinions based on various information I’ve gathered from both sides of the issue. Not out of hatred, jealousy, or whatever some people come up with to discount opinions.
I don’t actually think that the sheep are out to steal anything I’ve created. But I do not for a second believe they are as altruistic as it’s being spun. They are as a group, in my opinon, corporate whores - who pedals SL and it’s residents to corporate interests. As individuals there are some I like, some I don’t, and a few I hold high respect for. But the entire situation of corporate interest in SL makes me feel exploited for all the work we have done to build “our world, our imagination.” Then the shame I feel that the ones who do it the most are the early innovators.
The plain and simple facts are that I do not know the extent of the information they are mining and everything they are using it for. The opt-out decision and the fact that you will still be scanned even if you do opt-out. I believe it do be a blatent disreguard for my privacy, and as such I have estate banned grid shepard from the Lalique and Cappiello.
As with any controversial subject in SL there are the fanbois, haters, bandwagoners, and the rest of us inbetween. The serious problem that stems from this is the severe disreguarding opinions because of the all too common “for us or against us” crap. As always, it’s easier to find a new reason to blame people for disagreeing with you than it is to find out what they actually disagree with in the first place. This type of mob mentality has just plainly gotton old. When will these people leave high school?
As an example: Lordfly stated in his blog:
The people complaining about privacy and whatnot are missing the mark. Either they’re reselling freebies or they don’t grasp basic marketing principles….In short: Search good, technophobia bad.
I am against the sheep search. So I obviously don’t grasp basic marketing principles, sell freebies, and/or am technophobic. Real smart there. Wouldn’t a person who understands basic marketing principles want a search that will show their objects in a way that they decide? Or to show all their wares (animation vendors)? Or maybe even to not have to find them listed at a XXX place? Or know that consumers don’t want to dig through thousands of random objects to find ours? Even with sheep search talked about everywhere, my sales at the locations that are listed haven’t increased.
Advancement for the sake of advancement is not always good. Not liking certain “advancements” does not a technophobe make. Humans do have the ability to decifer for themselves on which are good or bad for themselves. Just like you say “just because it’s new doesn’t mean its bad,” I say just cause it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good. Including all land owners (without permission) in the experiments is rather daft especially given the large amount of kinks still needing to be fixed.
It is not a question of do we need a new/better/offline search. Fucking hell we do, everyone knows that. Sorry to burst your bubble but the sheep search isn’t that wonderful new thing.
My dream search:
1. Opt-in
2. The owner decides on the tags. Even with handy checkboxes for the basic tags. Then more indepth tags which can be typed out. IE - typical tags: poses, aos, dances, animations, furniture, vintage. Indepth tags: cuddle poses, cuddle furniture, belly dance, swing dance, deco furniture, ect.
3. Different ways to search. Say I want to find that all the stores that have at least 1 female vintage outfit. So I check those boxes and it searches all the listings that have it. For the indepth tags I can type it into the search box - belly dance - then click the animations box and it’ll list all the different stores that sell belly dancing animations.
4. A way to differenciate between mall and nonmall. I hate doing a places search looking for new hair creators only to find myself in a camping filled mall. Or a search for non XXX bars/clubs would be nice. Then a search for services like landscapers or builders would be nice.
5. People can have multiple listings/locations. For Lalique I can have it listed as my main store with the slur landing you inside, then as a shopping area landinging you in the middle of the square, then as a club landing you inside my eventual speakeasy, then maybe as a park landing you in the park. Now that’s better marketing.
6. The owner can then upload a 512×512 photo ad that will apear as a thumbnail on the listings.
7. You then click on Reel Expression and you get the full size picture ad, a listing of all my tags, all the slurs for the different locations, and even *gasp* a url to my website.
8. A way in which to report bad listings. Such as a hair store landing you in the middle of a casino.
-Luth
April 19th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
The spin they are giving this decision is that a search with everything would be better then a search with only 1/2 the things. Ok, the IW search places has probably every store in SL yet that is opt-in. If this search is the next best thing since toast, the sheep would have people lining up to be scanned. From where I’m sitting it just looks cheeky to scan first, inform later. Just like email spam opt-out.
There isn’t much “spin”, here. Opt-in would mean the results would be roughly 5%, not 50%. You’re off by a factor of ten. Opt-in stuff doesn’t work when it comes to “I wonder if this exists…”. It works great when the question is “I wonder if I can find that site I found 6 months ago”, ala del.icio.us
I’m just failing to see why it’s a bad thing that stuff people have set for sale can be seen in another way, via a very easy search.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Where is this magical 5% number coming from? The “spin” is using an arbitrary number.
The thing thats left out is the overzealousness of needing every single object prior to releasing the beta version. Instead of the appearance of helping the community, it looks more like another notch in the corporate belt.
What you are failing to see really, is that most of the issues people have is not that it’s “a bad thing that stuff people have set for sale can be seen in another way.” It’s the way in which it was done.
It’s the lack of logical forethought about the community itself that’s really pissing people off.
Here’s the way I would have suggested doing it:
Do the beta as 100% opt-in. A large portion of the sheep have stores, start with that. Add their friends with stores. Branch out and personally speak with owners of commercial sims. The sheep tout about how rich they are becoming with corporate accounts, so they have the money to do a large advertising campagin. High placed classifieds, forum posts, you guys could talk about it on secondcast, take out ads in fashion blogs, IW mags, have a meeting with the seller’s guild, ect.
Ask for more people to opt-in on the basis that that more objects = more data to fix the bugs. Annoucing that after beta it will become opt-out and giving clearly defined ways of how to opt-out prior to release.
During this beta they would have found a lot of the kinks which are more reasons behind the outcry. Things like it searching the entire sim even if the bot is banned on 1/2 the parcels. Listing objects that the for sale box is greyed out. Incorrect parcel descriptions, ect.
Then listen to the issues the community has, like adding a 48 hour lag time between scan and posting for the offchance of catching a builder transfering a build by selling to the client for L$0. Or coming up with a better opt-out like robots.txt where the bot first searches for an object called I don’t know, sheep robot or something.
Doing a opt-in beta would have seiously lessened the public outcry. And most likely have ended with more objects to search because many of us opted-out based on the daft way it was handled.
What many companies fail to realize is that public transparancy goes a long way to easing the assumption that there is more going on than what is released in PR annoucements.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Opt-in also leaves a lot to be desired for testing. Yes, the Sheep could have just listed their stores, but that’s like, what, 1000 objects tops? From two dozen creators? People can hammer on that for about 15 minutes, and then it’s… well, pretty much hammered out.
On top of that, starting off with just the Sheep would have wild cries of favoritism and FICiness.
And, starting Opt-in and later going to Opt-out would cause the exact same public outcry and outrage.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. The SL community is at once a very liberal, free-wheeling place, and a very, VERY conservative/resistant to change place. You literally have to drag everyone screaming through new features to get anything done.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I disagree.
If starting with the sheep, friends and others who had been contacted prior then adding any parcel based on opting-in would have less of an outcry then what is currently going on. Not to mention having the clear ability to prove the non-FICness - “you want to be included? Go here (slurl) and opt-in.”
Yes it would start out small, but with the current amount of support for the potential of the search, I have no doubt that it would grow in a matter of days with good advertising and word of mouth.
The good thing about being transparant is the use of counters. Had the beta been opt-in, annouced upfront that it will be changed to opt-out on release any outcry for the change would be quashed with “we gave you x amount of notice and advertised it on every possible outlit available.” Instead now they are getting a much larger outcry because of no notice what so ever.
Not to mention a large portion of the anger is due to the greyed out for sale box that would have been caught and fixed before everyone was scanned.
Of course you are going to have the haters and technophobes no matter what you do, but winning over the inbetweens is key. If the haters have no validity to their soapbox rants, then herding people into the change is quite an easy task.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:23 am
Yes it would start out small, but with the current amount of support for the potential of the search, I have no doubt that it would grow in a matter of days with good advertising and word of mouth.
Disagree here. The SL community isn’t nearly as connected as people think it is; the folks who read the blogs, post on the forums, listen to the podcasts, etc. represent, at best, 1% of the active population.
As an example, my blog, impossibly, has a “subscribed” RSS readership of around 120 folks. I get another 300 unique hits whenever I post something new. Before it went down, Cleeker.com ranked my blog in the top ten of SL blogs. 120 people out of a supposed population of 5 million propels my stupid rambling webpage into a top ten list? That’s ridiculous.
One other minor point; the sheep really haven’t been proactive in advertising this search; it was a softly-announced message on Twitter that got the ball rolling. Double actually, they announced they were working on this something like three months ago.
In the end, nobody can please them all, especially “large” corporations. I find any arguments that a bot scanning stuff for sale as an invasion of privacy ludicrous, but that’s just me, someone who’s been here 4 years and has seen the community go batshit over every single new feature/proposal/design that’s ever come out.
April 21st, 2007 at 9:09 am
The connected part of the community is the only part you can reach. What you are failing to consider is the interconnectivity.
1.7 mil logged in to SL in the past 60 days, not 5mil. For the month of March, 31,929 had a postive linden flow discluding land sales. Since the search is supposed to be for helping sellers, that 31,1929 people are who you need to connect with first.
How many of those scan the forums, read the blogs (especially the fashion blogs), read the news, visit SLB, visit snapzilla? Add a meeting with the seller’s guild, thats a possible 392 members (as of 14:00 GMT). Might be a stretch but a one off notice in fashion consolidated - 888 members.
Lets say you only reach 10% of that amount. Content creators hang out with other content creators. If each if that 10% spoke to only 1 person, that doubles the number. Then they tell one of their friends and so on.
During the opt-in beta it would grow in popularity or at the very least knowledge it exisits. While giving time to fix the nasty bugs.
I’m sorry but no you can’t please all of us underlings when you treat us like morons and technophobes and push us into something because you obviously know what’s best for us.
Speaking of which, calling the idea of possible invasion of privacy ludicrous proves you aren’t actually listening to what people are saying.
1. While ban lines do not actually stop people from entering your land, last I checked it was a banable offense to circumvent the system. It is a form of invasion of privacy that LL acknowledges. Last I heard the bot scans an entire sim and not per parcel and does scan places where it has been banned.
2. As the bot does not distinguish between parcels, it is probable that it’s not coded to tell the difference between default scan (for sale only) and opt-in (all objects). How then is it a stretch that somewhere on a sheep database is a list of every object people have out in the world?
3. The number 1 reocurring privacy issue I’ve read is the fact that it still lists objects purchased with the forsale box checked but greyed out. This didn’t happen to me, but I’d be bloody well pissed off if someone publically posted a direct tp to the middle of my studio. While I have no expectation of complete privacy, I haven’t seen one uninvited person up there in the past year. That gives me a level a comfort to be able to work in peace while in the nude searching for tears in the skin.
If SL didn’t have so many broken/partial working features, or LL didn’t break already working things with every fix or feature would there be such an outcry? Nope. Or the fact that many of the new features seem to come from no where and the features voting system is largly ignored. The majority feel pretty shafted when month after month, year after year instead of things being fixed it just gets worse.
Animations haven’t gotton any love since they came out. They said they’d fix the way SL “optimises” (aka deletes keyframes) back in ‘04. 2x now they’ve given us the hip bug that means a lot of the time you move the hips, they don’t move but the rest of the body oddly does. Fixed it over a year ago, but it broke again last Aug and still is. Or the fact that the only way we can do anything with the face and hands gets overridden by the default stances.
When they put in animations (1.4?) I don’t remember people going batshit. I sort of remember excitement to be honest, but then again I was just a noobette back then. When Flip rolled out SLB, there might have been certain haters, but the general feeling of the community wasn’t “omg he’s evil.”
Name me 1 feature that didn’t have direct consequences (ie p2p & teleport landowners) or the general concensus wasn’t based on “fixes before features” that the entire community whet batshit.
And can you possibly tell me that you believe the sheep did everything 100% correctly in reguards to the search? I can tell you there is at least 1 overopinionated nobody who would have been a lot less angry at them had there been even 1 annoucement that every parcel would be scanned by x day. That would be me.
One further question… when did my little blog get on the FIC search? :P I checked, it’s not on google since I turned off that option until it’s moved to the new site. I’m pretty certain you aren’t a customer of mine. And my random forum poses (link in sig) has thus far kept me under the radar. Just curious is all.
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
You’ve made some good points Luth, though I was one of the people to that told Prokofy Neva that it wasnt’ the end of the world.
It’s pretty obvious to me that Sheep Search was/is a PR mess. I personally knew the sheep were working on something of the sort but didn’t know it was being tested until Prokofy posted about it.
I may not create much content at all, but the Sheep folks should have done more outreach, especially with uber-connected fashionistas. Some of the big fashion blogs have much higher readership than your blog Lordfly. Telling Second Style, Linden Lifestyles, Appearance MOde, Style Disorder will reach lots of content creators, as would have mentioning it on Fashion Consolidated.
And Luth, the purported FIC know about you and your blog because even the purported FIC needs poses. And I believe Lordfly there has hung out with certain fashionistas at times. You’re famous and well regarded among the fashionistas.