Axi Kurmin

I think where I find the greatest cognitive dissonance is the notion that "it's only a couple of notecards", but that apparently filling them out is such a burden and a time sink that one needs to *hire someone else to do it*. Because if it's that easy, and "only worth" a dollar a week for "a couple minutes" of time, then surely there's no need for someone else to take on the task. And if it *is* such a time sink, and is such a pain to be bothered with, then guess what? It's worth paying more than a dollar a week for someone else to do it. But it's real hard for it to be both of those things at the same time. Real, real hard.

Brooke, Regarding splits: What's happened this week is you've made what was already an almost useless notificiation system fully useless. Let me explain. Let's say you have two businesses. One is your own-you get all the money from that. The other is split, between you and your friend Bob. Up until this week, you'd get a notification like this: Source: Marketplace Linden MKT2 Item Sale Dist Description: Order #9459290528, Item #592958929 (Bob Partner)  Now, this is *almost* useless. You have no idea what sold unless Bob tells you, but you at least know that something sold from your shared store. As of this week, you now get this information: MKT2 Item Purchase Description: Order #5820958287 (Some Stranger)  This information is *completely* useless. You have an order number you can't check. You still have no idea what sold, and now, you're given the name of the actual customer. Glorious, except since you get *NO* email notification of the sale. You have no idea who this person is, and you have no way of knowing if a) they bought something from your shared store b) they bought something from YOUR store, and you have no notification of it anywhere. Before you tell me that "if you didn't get an email it wasn't from your store" I would think about how many times the notification system has failed, or been extremely slow. This is now completely useless, and it wasn't much more than useless before. What is actually needed is *email notification on split sales*, and *what sold* in the transaction history. Really, this stuff is honestly important when you're running multiple businesses with other people. How confusing does this get when you share a business with Bob, and a *different* business with Cindy? Think about it.

RedZone and any other similar device of any kind are banned entirely and completely from Cursed (almost completely residential), and from Dark Eternity and Event Horizon(not residential) next door. That ban will never be lifted. -AK

@Lamorna < cynic > I think this has to do with pre-existing plans already in place (reminder, this is an M Linden project- this was in the pipeline AGES ago.) to support a business decision (no comment on the quality of it) made by the lab to tie in with facebook, twitter and open ID logins. I don't think this has anything(read:anything) to do with existing residents. The "alleged benefits" are (theoretically) to the lab, not to existing residents. /cynic

@Jopsy Woah there. Hangon one sec. "I haven't yet heard a compelling argument saying that the number of successful attempts is guaranteed to go up." Just a reminder that this particular brand of fraud is perhaps the least likely to occur (I agree, it's likely to be quite rare.) But that other kinds of damage are again, much more likely and can be *just as costly* to the person being impersonated. Like I said a bunch of posts back, SL is made up of small ponds. All it takes is for your name to be tainted in one or more of those ponds in which you swim (for lack of a better analogy) in order for it to cause serious consequences. The issue again, is not the person who *is* harassed(we've always had a solution for that. It's called mute.). It's the person the fraudster is *imitating* who incurs the damage.

However, their boondoggle with charging for SLExchange listings was quietly forgotten. But I suspect that it will rear its ugly head after they get through moving to the new site. Right now it's a complete and utter mess operationally speaking so charging for listings could still be years away. @FrankLee Don't. Get. Me. Started. I have over 500 listings, and fully half of them are so borked in the migration I will have to basically redo them from scratch, but I'm afraid to touch anything until after 10/6 for fear of screwing up the listings on the old site which WORK. (and about 80% of all my sales come from Xstreetslxwhatevertheyrecallingittoday.)

Hell, Im still trying to figure out what the pros are. The once a week limit completely screws this "feature" up for roleplayers, and the feature itself is irrelevant to those who wanted an actual name change. The only true pro that I can see is the Unicode support, which is valuable to those who use language characters other than western English. However titlers already did that. Oh wait, titlers did... all of this already. So gang, here's a little twist. It's been announced that Avatars United is being shut down. .....anyone wanna take a bet that that little announcement and this "feature" are somehow related (though not necessarily at the exact same time.). Cause for me? Survey says YEP. Also, I just am going to throw in and say that I am already confident that aside from Ann's suggestion about coloring display/usernames differently, this feature is going to roll out *exactly* as it currently is, and no matter what we think or say makes a kidney bean's worth of difference. Just sayin.

@Insight One not need be famous grid wide. All of SL is in essence, a niche market. All it takes is to ruin that niche. It doesn't *need* to ruin the entire grid. It only needs to do it in one very small part to make a big difference to that particular person or their business. I know it may seem hard for you to believe, but quite a number of people, more than you imagine, use the money they earn in SL to pay *RL* expenses. It's not a small matter to them. ETA: (sorry FrankLee, I didnt mean to append this to your post.) Also @Insight - I agree, it's about big fish in small ponds. But all of SL is made up of small ponds. That's the point people are trying to make with varying success. Very few businesses are generic enough to cross over to having gridwide appeal. Most are operating within a small(relative) sphere of influence. Once that's been tainted significantly, the pond is poisoned.

@Insight The way it's meant to work is the Firstname Lastname convention that has been the norm so far will be abandoned in favor of Username Resident (where the word Resident would replace what formerly would be a last name.) So instead, for example of "Steve Homewood" someone would be "steve872.resident" (for example. That username (as terrible as it may be) is unique. It cannot be changed. In addition, current Firstname Lastname combinations would be changed to firstname.lastname. So your username becomes insight.homewood. That username cannot be changed. However display names can be anything at all. They are NOT meant to be distinct or unique. So as many people as want it, can call themselves Insight Homewood as a display name. I hope that clears it up. However no one is actually concerned about the people being taken in, as they are about who the person is imitating. Example: Someone is running around with a display name of Insight Homewood, and does something crummy. The person they behaved poorly toward was taken in, and according to you, isn't using too many brain cells. Now, that may very well be true- but anyone who has been in SL long enough can tell you that will happen with fair regularity- people are not always careful, observant or smart. That, IMO isn't the actual problem. The PROBLEM comes when this Not Very Observant or smart person runs around telling everyone they can about how horrible *YOU* (because again, they believed that person was you) were to them. Word like that travels quickly, and you find that no matter how hard you try, you may not always be able to correct this mistaken information. It's not the person who was fooled who ultimately suffers. It's YOU, the person that was being imitated. It doesn;t matter whether the person who was fooled has been in SL 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years. If they're running around saying *you* did (whatever it was) because someone was deliberately using your username as a display name the damage is still the same- not done to the person fooled, but to you, the person imitated.

@Phoebe Oh if only the new marketplace weren't such a complete mess... (that disaster may actually be worse than this one.)

@Jopsy I don't disagree with you at all on that, but you must admit that in this case, the lack of fairness in and of itself is not the issue. The actual issue is the lack of fairness illustrates a principle- that LL *knows* that this plan is problematic, for the very reasons people are objecting to it. That telling us (in any way) "oh no this will be perfectly fine" is false on its face. If it weren't this step to protect the Linden name would not be necessary. I don't care that it isn't fair. I care that there's a lack of fundamental truths being admitted to here.

@om Sorry om, I meant that in general to everyone who has put voting out there today. Unfortunately the way the blog/comment software works here there's no good way to indicate that. @Menolly (again, I always reiterate this because I hate to sound like Im defending this idea- Im not), but if they make this a paid feature, it completely defeats what LL is trying to do by implementing it. This is about new users, not existing users. New users don't want to pay for an account as it is- if they find out they will have to pay for one just to use a display name, there goes all those potential new user dreams up in particles, er.. smoke. The only way this is going to roll is as a free feature. Further, blocking existing usernames likewise defeats their purpose- it's why they didn't put it on the table to begin with. Jack made that point super clear in the last pose about this "feature". I agree with you- it's going to roll no matter what. But I think the only thing that might *might* (maybe, possibly) convince them is to make blocking a name from being used as a display name as a paid feature. Because that, more than anything else they've ever cooked up might actually get them paid accounts. With this, as in everything else... follow the money. Sad, but true. -AK

Cluephone, gang: Voting on this "feature" isnt on the table. They're not going to put it on the table. Removing this "feature" isn't on the table. They're not going to put it on the table. They have made it abundantly clear that this "feature" is going to roll out no matter what any and all current residents think because (I'll say it again) this has nothing to do with current residents. It has to do with potential future residents. LL believes that two in the bush is better than one in the hand. The only thing we can hope to do here is damage control. That's it. -AK

@FrankLee Pfft. Stop with your Earth logic and your making sense. We'll have none of *that* here, (obviously.)

@Ponsonby I think they're creating a PR nightmare either way. I don't think there's any way to spin this that makes them look good. I don't disagree with you at all- I just don't think there's any way to turn this sow's ear into a silk purse no matter what. At least this way we'd have the ability to protect ourselves. The other way the press is no better, and we all get screwed (except you know, if your name is Linden, because those got protected. Yeah right, there's gonna be *no problem with this at all!* *eyeroll*) -AK