Traffic Bots suck. There’s no denying that having an army of undead avatars constantly logged into the grid puts unnecessary strain on the system. It’s obvious that something needs to be done about these kinds of bots and I think the best way to get rid of the problem is to make them obsolete. Stop tallying Traffic numbers.  Do we really need an arbitrary, easily manipulated number to tell us where the supposed ‘good stuff’ is?

I suppose this wouldn’t get rid of zombie bots altogether. Some would still constantly run bots to give the appearance of a busy sim, but I think without traffic rankings the number of these bots would be drastically reduced.

So how many traffic bots are there? Estimates range wildly – and are proposed with much conviction. In other words – lots of arguing about these numbers :) Check out this forum thread for a sample.

Linden Lab estimates that bots make up about 10-15% of the total User Hours, others have estimated up to 50% of the population at any given time consists of bots. I’m of the opinion that the number is somewhere between these two figures, most likely closer to 15%. Here’s a little experimental formula that I came up with while reading the forums tonight.

+ LL estimates 10-15% User Hours are racked up by Bots.
+ Most traffic bots probably run 24/7
+ 34,800,000 User Hours in August

So a bit of math might produce an interesting figure. 15% of the monthly user hours divided by 31 days divided by 24 hours.

34,800,000 * .15 / 31 / 24 = 7,016 full-time traffic bots?

Accurate? Probably not, but I bet it’s somewhere in the ball park.

However many traffic bots there really are, it’s too many. There are plenty of legitimate uses for programmed avatars, but clogging up the grid with thousands of lifeless zombies is not one of them.