As far as buying a 512 and plunking 40 chairs on it… I like the absurd example. I dunno if prim limits would allow so many. But if LL says I can do it, I would. (I don’t own my casino anymore so don’t worry). However, if I noticed that the Sim was getting too laggy, or the neighbors were complaining I would certainly oblige them and cut back to a degree. What would make my business any more important than the neighbors, or visa versa? This is where having good community comes in.

However, who are my neighbors that can tell me how or how much income I can make in my business. Just because say, yours is a clothing biz or whatever. Not that I wouldn’t come to a mutual agreement. But to say that my biz is any less important because I have a different mechanism to bring in the monies.

All that said, maybe the Lindens need to reconsider prim limits or tier fees. It seems we all agree that the search feature could be revised. Or better yet scaling the servers to where they should be so we can ALL do what THEY say we can do

“Immoral” - Strongly disagree.
“Dishonest” - Strongly disagree.
“Fraudulent” - Strongly disagree.
“Ruthlessly one sided” - (No more than the SL TOS is hehe)

And there are yet even more examples of things that are clearly not right that have nothing to do with camping (will you retort again that you didn’t intend these as camping comparisons?): “throwing litter on the neighbor’s lawn” (wrong) and “shooting someone dead” (wrong again). This is silly, Ordinal.

Chronic - yes, campers buy something (keep reading).

JohnnyRS — good to see you weigh in with a pensive response. Although I must respectfully (and I am respectfully disagreeing with everybody taking the anti-camping position in this thread and elsewhere including Caliandris, Ordinal and Chronic — which is another reason that I made this follow-up comment after I said I was done) disagree that camping is “borderline dishonest.” Your comment, JohnnyRS, assumes (yes/no?) that the whole point of getting campers to the property is to make it look like the place is busy.

I realize I specifically mentioned that as one possibility and as it is echoed back and I think about it more if it is for that reason alone, it does seem a little questionable (and “a little questionable” is the best I’m going to offer, lol) to me. Like bringing in shill customers and calling them real customers. Then again this is the virtual world, and most residents learn quickly what campers are doing and aren’t the same as somebody that is at the site and not camping, whereas outright deception would be having people milling around the store not camping, giving the illusion of shopping.

However from what I’ve heard a percentage of campers do spend money, so it’s not a total loss leader. I don’t know what the percentages are though since I’ve never had any camping chairs. Mostly loss leader from what I understand yes, but there are some non-zombie shoppers in the mix. Also it remains advertising because with all the times that SL crashes, these campers still need to physically login, return and resit (or stand on dance pads) at the place where the chairs/pads/etc reside. Something that draws people to a location is by its very nature advertising. It is possible that while the campers are rezzing back in that they see something else, stop, and buy something. There is a sale opportunity, however brief, and I’m sure that is calculated into the mix.

Interesting comment though that you indicated that you started spending more when you stopped camping (as much), JohnnyRS.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts folks, I have enjoyed this conversation, even though it veered almost completely away from how 2D would help, or rather not help, SL database scaling woes. Please keep the conversation going if you like.

It’s borderline dishonest in my opinion. If you had a rafle and contest to get people inside the store then that is a way of advertising but paying people to actually inflate the look of your business is not a very honest way of doing things. When I started in second life I looked for camping chairs and made some money from it but started not liking it because I found it boring. So I started visiting the places that had events, games and contests. I made more money from that then camping. Because I was having fun I bought more stuff too.

Now get back to the real life clothing store example. Let’s say all these friends that you are paying to look around your store all day have cars. Each friend has to park their car in front of other businesses making the other businesses not able to get customers in. In real life a business can restrict cars for their business only but camping chairs take resources away from neighboring places in second life. To me that is big problem for businesses and regular people who mistakenly bought land near a camping site. Yes someone camping in a chair does take resources away because the servers still have to send lot of info to that person who is doing nothing.

So with all that said I am not a big fan of camping chairs. I have made money from them in the past. I might use them in the future but only if there was something to do at the same time like play a game or slots. There still shouldn’t be a rule against a business who uses this advertising technique but the neighbors should have a way to fix any problems that they are having.

I never said camping chairs did not attract people to a business. But it’s pretty sad that they have to exist in order to solicit visits as opposed to having something unique enough that people don’t need to be sucked in by camping chairs or by the drooling-zombie-inflated traffic numbers that put your business at the top of the list. As for the “loss leader” explanation, OK… it would be like McDonald’s offering their sludge to the masses for free. The camper would be like the fat guy who elbows everyone out of the way to eat all of the free food himself, leaving nothing for anyone else. I’ll go get a nice steak at a place that relies on quality instead of big spammy promotions, thanks.

When I started SL, I would visit a lot of the businesses at the top of the list. Almost all of them had zombies, and almost all of them were not worth visiting. I learned very quickly that these numbers were not generated because the business was a good one. I consider it cheating your way up to the top, which is just my opinion. Now I avoid all of the top businesses and tend to go for the ones with a bit less traffic. And what do I find? No parasites, and excellent merchandise.

I am wondering - do the campers actually BUY anything? If they are so broke that they have to sit there for an hour to make $10L or whatever, I am thinking that it’s not likely. They are simply pawns used to falsely inflate the numbers.

Immoral? Come on. Definition of immoral:

depraved: marked by immorality; deviating from what is considered right or proper or good; “depraved criminals”; “a perverted sense of loyalty”; “the reprobate conduct of a gambling aristocrat”

This whole discussion is becoming silly, don’t you think?

You really feel that way? And what do you consider a “campsite”? A store with a couple camping chairs is a campsite? A casino like the one Lestat used to have with 8 chairs? No need to answer these questions I’m being rhetorical now. The point is that this is a very slippery slope.

Chronic -

I currently pay for an $8/mo. tier and prior to that owned $25/mo. tier for nearly a year and never put even one camping chair on it, so please don’t tell me what you think I WOULD do unless you actually see me do it or I admit that I WOULD do it.

The reality is I would NOT put 40 camping chairs on a 512m property and as I said in my last comment anybody else who did would border on something I’d think was “abuse report” worthy, but strangely you ignored my questions about that (that wasn’t sarcasm, those were legitimate questions)?

As for your comment about “business actually worth visiting” — you should ask some business owners if they think that having the camping chairs makes their business worth visiting. The vast majority of them will likely tell you that they are proven loss leaders. The same thing countless retail and grocery stores do through couponing every day across the world.

If they didn’t work then why do you think they still exist?

In the console video game sector the hardware is commonly sold at a loss with the hope of making it up in games. The world goes round with loss leaders and it’s a very real part of business. I suppose it’s possible the virtual world could or might be different, but I think most virtual business owners treat the basic business the same, for better or worse.

Then again, maybe Ordinal would thinks this is immoral too for the hardware companies to do this to each other. Ha, it’s business, and they all do it to each other and plenty of people support this “immoral” behavior.

Promotion. Get people to the store to buy your goods/services. If camping chairs drive them there, I see nothing wrong with that, even if I personally choose not to employ this type of promotion in my business, I don’t begrudge others who do.

As for there being some point where reasonable promotion becomes unreasonable, I think the example above of 40 camping chairs in 512m crosses that gray line. It’s not up to you or I to define those rules, it’s up to the hosting company — Linden Lab — since they are the ones selling the hosting services.

It’s really no different than any hosting on any website anywhere. You use too many resources, the host takes action on you. I can get behind that It’s not immoral though.

So many severe words being tossed around in this thread. ‘Dishonest’, ‘fraud’, ‘immoral’ for what, camping chairs? LOL come on.

Linden Lab needs to get their shit together. That means buy better hardware and really go through their code. It would make discussions like the one we’re having moot.

I’ll let you folks have the last word on this, if you want. Thanks for the discussion.

I very much agree with Chronic that until sims can handle that sort of load, to run a campsite in the knowledge that you are harming other residents is immoral. People _do_ get shut out of their own land because of camping. They complain about it frequently.

I’ve also laid out my reasons for saying that camping is not advertising, in that, well, people sitting on a parcel is not an advertisement; I’m not sure how I can be clearer, but do advise if there are any questions.