I have a suggestion for OpenSimWorld which will also involve the beacon, namely to sort avatars on sims into three categories.


One, staff and residents. These are the avatars that represent the sim owners, residents on homesteads and everyone else who lives and/or works on a sim. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a notecard. The UUID of the owner of the beacon should automatically count as staff.

Staff and residents should count as activity so that you know that someone is on the sim, but not influence the popularity.


Two, bots and decorational avatars. These are the avatars that are mere decoration and that serve similar purposes as NPCs, but that aren't NPCs for whichever reasons. Their UUIDs have to be listed on a separate notecard.

Bots and decorational avatars should be treated the same as NPCs. They should neither count as activity nor influence the popularity. (Downside, admittedly: They could be used as flies on the wall to monitor sims.)


Three, visitors. These are the avatars that aren't on any notecard.

Only they will influence the popularity.


This will require new beacons. But this could be done in such a way that OSW will treat all avatars detected by old beacons like staff and residents. Activity will be shown, but it won't have any impact on your sim's popularity unless you replace your beacon. You want your popularity ranked, then get a new beacon. You can't be bothered to replace your beacon, then say buh-bye to your popularity.

The sim entries on OSW would require another change: The avatars graph would have to be split into two colours, one for staff and residents, one for visitors. This would show if staff is present (not whether it's AFK, though) if a sim isn't a homestead, and it'd also show whether staff and residents are correctly listed as such.

In order to enforce the correct use of the new beacon, each sim that's caught not listing staff, residents or bots as such will have its visitor count set to Inaccurate until it has proven to have fixed the issue.