Vlaanderen, all lies: Fake jobs and fake visitor stats
June 2, 2007 7:26 am
My jaw came down rather painful on my keyboard when I read the following in a promo-machinima for Second Life Vlaanderen: ‘dagelijks 15 000 bezoekers’. Fabrice Morreau - we know him in-world as Calibre Green or ‘the avie with the very boring bed‘ - claims to have 15k visitors a day to the ‘Vlaanderen’ sim he owns together with Jurgen Verstrepen. Like? What!? No way! Kiss my meta-ass, as this is an enormous lie.
I quickly IM’d Kean and she seconded me: ‘There’s no way he can pull that off without campers.’ So, mister Morreau? 15k visitors/day? All interested in what you and Jurgen have to say? Using your sim as a place of free speech to discuss politics? Back that up with some figures, please. Show us your sim is as popular as you claim it is. Or should I give it a try?
First we need to know what the ‘traffic’ figure is that SL allows us to see for land: ‘Traffic is a number for each parcel which is based on the amount of Residents who visited, and the time spent on that parcel out of their total time in world that day. It’s calculated using a complex algorithm.‘ (more information about ‘traffic’ at SLeducating)
Which makes that your traffic figures are always way above ‘unique visitors’ stats. Especially if you do like mister Morreau and create camping locations on your sim. Camping will allow people to earn Linden Dollars in exchange for sitting at a fixed location in your sim. Hence they spend more time in your sim, hence the ‘traffic’ number increases, which makes you end up in search better. Those poor campers camp their meta-butts of for L$2/10min or not even 0.04 EUR /hour. Is that how Lijst Dedecker plans to create new jobs? *grins* Fabrice Morreau offers ‘employent’ in that way to 8 campers: 4 dancing job, 3 sunbathing jobs (2 out of the 3 sunbathing campspots don’t work, and thus return no Linden Dollars at all, although they are advertised as camping spots!) and 1 sitting job.
Furthermore, the location in the Flanders sim ‘Lijst Dedecker party’ is advertised with the following words: ‘Vlaanderen - Media Vila (should be villa?) - VL - Radio - Free T Shirt - Tatoo (tattoo?) 3l$ - camper - Free SMS Gratis SMS versturen vanuit SL DancePad’. Not much about talking politics there, no?
In Belgium we have a rule involving a ’sper periode’ that states that political parties can’t give away free stuff a couple of weeks before the election. I know Linden Labs has made it awefully clear (in their TOS opposed to what they write on the website) that Linden Dollars hold no monetary value, but I still feel they are breaking this rule with the camping stuff and the freebies. But anyway:
Let us take a look at sim Vlaanderen’s traffic numbers, shall we?
sim Vlaanderen - Vlaanderen: 1443
sim Vlaanderen - Lijst Dedecker party: 8445 (region with 7 campers)
sim Vlaanderen - Lijst Dedecker: 95 (héhé)
sim Vlaanderen - Vlaams Freebie Shop: 3869 (region with 1 camper)
The traffic number indeed totals at +- 15k (13852 to be exact) but - again - that is no way near the ‘number of daily visitors’. At all. Yet another reason - besides the bed being boring - for me to not vote for this guys: if you don’t feel a bit ashamed for lying about visitor statistics to get some extra media attention, then why on earth do you think you’re capable of governing my country?
If any club owner or anyone elso who can compare with their own traffic ranks/visitor count wants to do some guessing at what the real visitor stats for Sim Vlaanderen could be, I’d be very gratefull! Take the following into account:
Total traffic: 13.8k
Camping spots: 6 working, 2 defect
Feebie shop: check (mostly giving away Agent Case stuff)
Content: almost none
Social interaction possibilities: almost none (8 campers, 2 freebie shoppers when I went to check)
Classifieds: one, for L$50
Update: Just look at this visitor count numbers for the ‘major sims’ and then tell me how Vlaanderen would ever get to 15k/day.
16 Responses to “Vlaanderen, all lies: Fake jobs and fake visitor stats”
[8:50] Vanny Richez: Mhh very hard to say.. Maybe I give you a comparison:
[8:51] Vanny Richez: The place I am working at have about 80k traffic atm. And we have 24/7 at least 70 ppl at the sim. The traffic don’t go up by one time TP only, it depends on how long the people are there too.
So. 80k = 70 ppl in the sim 24/7
So. 14K = 12.25 avies in the sim 24/7
But as campers don’t do much other stuff on SL and spend a large time of their SLives on their camp spot, they count ‘more’ for traffic ranking. So let’s take 10 avies in the sim 24/7.
Out of those 10 avies 8 are campers and 2 were the ones I met that were shopping for freebies. 10-8-2 = 0. So zero avies there for Sim Vlaanderen’s message and talking politics. Hmm. I love it when my math checks out. =d
LMAO vint haha , knew u would write this post ! ;)
Why giving them so much attention? That is just what they seek.
Glad your calculations were correct.;)
Because I hate seeing people get away with telling such obvious lies.
Good thing you exposed this blatant lie. On the other hand I tend to agree with Looker… This bunch of dissatisfied and ex-”vies blok” nitwits doesn’t deserve your time nor effort.
What I find amusing is how many of those “visitors”, be they campers or not, are actually citizens of the country he’s running in. But then again, if there’s not political content there to begin with, it doesn’t really matter. :P
So, the longer a camper remains in the sim, the more traffic it counts? I did not realize that. That’s pretty lame.
Can’t wait until LL does away with the traffic count, anyway. Casinos/malls/clubs will have to find a (hopefully less laggy) new way to attract crowds.
Vint, you could just move to the US where we like our politicians to lie to us. In fact, we like it so much we re-elect them.
Green Hybrid: Good point. I could have limited my blogpost to your two sentences. *scratches ears*
Wrath: I think the ‘camping’ practice mainly comes from the time when LL still payed land owner money L$ according to how high their traffic stats were. Officialy they quit that because it made the Linden Dollar’s value decrease. :p Now the only benefit is that you rank higher in search. So if those casino owners were willing to pay more on classifieds, they wouldn’t need the campers?
Drut: Nah, I like it here. But if you want to invite those two politicians over or send them green cards, feel free to… ;)
Vint,
don’t spend energy on this. It’s a typical example of ‘Panem et Circenses’, ‘Bread and Circuses or ‘Brood en Spelen’ like we use to say here.
From Juvenal, Satire X, line 81. Originally described all that was needed for emperors to placate the Roman mob.
Today used to describe any entertainment used to distract public attention from more important matters.
When will it ever change.
well, Vint, I think you base on some wild assumptions to prove your theory..
And then you even have the nerves to mould it in an mathematical equation in order to give it some scientific back-up…
This hurts my sence of justice..
So,I took the liberty to re-analyse your figures and re-calculte the result (as irresponsible younster I once studied during some months engineering.. so I guess I am good with numbers..)
I concluded that your next estimation is wrong:
“But as campers don’t do much other stuff on SL and spend a large time of their SLives on their camp spot, they count ‘more’ for traffic ranking. So let’s take 10 avies in the sim 24/7.”
You should take as a correction factor : “2″ , not “2.25″
So the math must be : 12.25-2-8-2 = 0.25 !!!
That leaves us with the question : which quarter of the avie exactly is interested in the message, or.. where can they put it? :-)
(found a link to this post in an newspaper archive.. (http://gva.typepad.com/stemmengegons/2007/06/morreau_en_vers.html)
At least my maths doesn’t dismember avatars. :d
mmmmm
Personally I drop an big and evil Vindaloo fart in the middle of campers and scarper.
Archie
[…] course I had to ask this question: What about using camping spots and freebies to draw more people to your policital sim? Allowed, or should people focus on the […]
Where can I get a RL sunbathing job?
Gaynor, try either Playboy or Club Med? :D
Care to comment?