Is It Me Or Is Lots Of Sims Losing Traffic/People?

[Czari Zenovka]

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Griffin Ceawlin wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

I'm almost afraid to ask what "sectioned" is.

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Just a wild guess: Lobotomization?

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That was my first thought...although when I think of "sectioning" my first image is a grapefruit.  This might be one of those British English/American English things.

[Boudicca Littlebird]

I am sure if marigold was sitting there she would think, wow lucinda pulled them out of the hat again and they don't even know what is happening to them, do you think people will want to come here with bullies like you here, can't you see just how easy it is to get you to display your elitist behavior, insult me all you like, it just shows you are uncaring very particular as to who is here and will drive out people you don't like, it is all here in this thread sticking out like a sore thumb but none of you can see it,

 

sl will be a better place once all you have gone. But can't be while your here.

 

Why do you think the CEO don't come here or the lindens listen to what you want, THEY KNOW IT IS YOU KILLING SL, they have put most of you down as having personality disorders, and that's why they are moving away from this social network more to a game network, people that play games don't hang around long enough to get personality issues

[Porky Gorky]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

That was my first thought...although when I think of "sectioning" my first image is a grapefruit.  This might be one of those British English/American English things.

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I think the American equivalent is the 24/48/72 hour psych hold, There are various types of "sections" in the UK but in this case being sectioned means being put into a psych hospital and held there without consent being necessary.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Porky Gorky wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

That was my first thought...although when I think of "sectioning" my first image is a grapefruit.  This might be one of those British English/American English things.

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I think the American equivalent is the 

24/48/72 hour psych hold, There are various types of "sections" in the UK but in this case being sectioned means being put into a psych hospital and held there without consent being necessary.

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Ah got it.  Yes, those holds are called "Baker Acting" someone for a specified period of time, so named for former Florida state representative Maxine Baker who sponsored the bill.

http://www.bakeracttraining.org/history.html

Being a mental health professional I should have recognized that.  For some reason the word "section" threw me off but we use "section" as well as in "Section iv of the blah, blah code."

Thanks, Porky

ETA:  This term may just be used in Florida, although other states have similar laws but might call them something different.

[Hoshi Kenin]

Do you ever review what you have written in a reply and think to yourself..." I really need to stop joining in the 'playground-bully-LL-are wonderful" gang that attacks this particular person, tirelessly, and try and be more mature and not seek the approval of the clique, and instead  concentrate on the OP's theme"?  

[Boudicca Littlebird]

You are a really decent person, don't blame them I came here this weekend wanting pay back for the greifing I have had inworld this last week, 9 ar's and the lindens did nothing, how I punish the lindens is I show them the people they have and why they can't go forward, they are easy to play and get started you just have to say the name lucinda, you see lucinda predicted all this years ago, she is not allowed on the forum, she was very blunt with them and told the that most were mentally ill and needed treatment and some of their adult acts were not only illegal but show they are mentally ill, this debate got so heated that death threats started being made and the lindens had to close the forum for 3 days, never letting lucinda and lots of others back again, after 2 years they allowed lucinda back but the memory's of the old forum were so strong that passions were raised to even greater heights and lucinda again could not come here.

 

Now when the lindens piss me off I just awake that sleeping dragon that drives all away, you will find the lindens remove the thread once it shows just what a bunch of bullies they have.

 

In one of the post some one said about control, well in way they are right and wrong, not control how they see it as they are a bully they have no concept of how I see it, I see it more as giving them the freedom to really show who they are and display their real inner thoughts not the image they portray to all and that is what you are seeing them do.

[Pussycat Catnap]

What is popular changes over time.

Just look at fashion, music, cars, politicians, and well - everything else in life.

People move on.

So its only natural that a sim that was the place to be 3 weeks ago is not today.

Let alone for one x years ago.

I keep an object in my shop that shows current number of folks online, and its had a pretty constant set of numbers for the past few years. It goes up and down by time of day quite a bit, but is overall fairly constant. People haven't gone away, they've just moved around.

 

That said we are facing a decline in the overall number of sims. But its not as steep as some believe. It -IS- noteworthy though. Thanks to marketplace there is no longer any way to fund a sim. Merchants now need only extract from the SL economy, and no longer pay in their fair share in land ownership or land rental. More and more of them are choosing to stop paying in what is now a voluntary contribution. As they make this choice, sims that needed them to stay afloat dry up.

 

As for how long people stay in SL, on average a year and a half.

As for the massive signups that never really join, see my recent blog entry on spam bots and having a community with no 'are you human' checks on the signup process... I would wager 99% of all SL registrations are bots, and the 1% that are real people actually do go all the way in and play this MMO.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I'm not sure what you mean by merchants paying their 'fair share' of tiers.  Most of them that I know have land in SL they use for the creation of their products as well as homes too.  Why should they be required to pay any more than anyone else?  

Only a very small percentage "extract" money out of SL.  Most spend the money they make in SL on other people's products or on tiers.  Many contribute to the community through sponsorships, freebies, hunts, charity donations etc.  Of the small percentage that do make enough to cash out regularly, they have to work long hours and very hard to do that .  This isn't lala land.   If someone wants to do it for free or next to nothing as a hobby, I have no problem with that.  However, that doesn't mean that other's don't deserve to be fairly compensated for the time and effort they put into creating content for SL and use the money they earn on RL bills.  Its not like any of them are making huge amounts.  Many rely on their SL income because they are unable to work in RL.

I know some people, yourself included, think that an inworld store should be required.  However the way people shop is changing in SL and RL with more and more people shopping on line.  Many virtual worlds have shopping ONLY on line and survive quite nicely.  So SL isn't going to end as a result of the online trend. People need to adapt and change their business model.  There are other ways of doing things.  No one is entitled to have a venue or be entertained without putting some of their own money into it.  So if venues are to continue everyone needs to step up and support the venues not just merchants.

If we are going to start talking about 'fair share', what about the land barons? What do they contribute to the community.  Most only contribute to LL's pockets.  Occasionally one or two make a sim available for a limited time for a charity event, but what else do they do?  Why don't they help the venues more by offering them discounted rent?

What about all the people that don't pay ANY tiers at all, live off freebies, never buy a dime's worth of L's but get linden's by camping, begging or entering contests and therefore contribute nothing to the economy? Most people, myself included, don't mind that.  However if we are going to require everyone to contribute a "fair share" they seem a more apt target to your way of thinking.

As far as bots, why on earth would there be a need to create 9,999 new bots a day?  Gaming traffic with them is illegal now and they have to be registered as scripted agents.  If there were that many created a day we'd be over run with bots and if they were being used illegally LL would be after them.  So what are all those bots doing?

Finally, I am not disputing what you say about length of time that is average for someone to play SL, but I am very interested where you got that information.  To my knowledge LL doesn't publish those statistics. No one else to my knowledge could possibly compile those statistics independently as accounts are not deactivated anymore unless they are cancelled by the owner.  No one has any way of knowing how active all the other accounts are other than LL, unless there is a serious breach of privacy.  Do you have a link for those statistics or are you basing that on antecdotal evidence?

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by merchants paying their 'fair share' of tiers.  Most of them that I know have land in SL they use for the creation of their products as well as homes too.  Why should they be required to pay any more than anyone else?

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That is a shrinking number.

More and more of them are pulling out their inworld shops and going MP only - at which point they contribute nothing into the economy, and only take out.

As each one does so, it becomes harder and harder for the places that used to rent them land to stay in business. Those are the places people enjoy going to to do... stuff... any old kind of stuff.

 

Used to be a circle:

Visit place and want stuff to show off or use there --- Pay merchant for stuff --- merchant pays place for land to have shop --- place used money to fund tier to provide place for people to visit --- people visit that place and want stuff to show off or use there.

Now a vital step in that circle is going away in pieces every day... the part where the merchant sets up a shop.

So now the money just goes:

Buy L$s --- shop with L$s, or pay someone you emply in SL who then shops with L$ --- merchant cashes out L$ for RL$s.

And land, which has the places we all go to, to do... stuff... has no revenue model left other than 'rent homes' which is also under attack thank to linden homes.

Only a very select few can survive under this model. People with an extremely dedicated theme and a hardcore userbase that is willing to foot the bill for them. Like Berlin 1920s. But the number of places like this is small, and shrinking - and if you don't already have such a place, there's now very little means of footing the bill for the year or two it would take to build up such a community.

As for land barons? They are the places... Traditionally they provided the entire underpinning of the whole thing. Money went into them which they used to pay tier to keep this entire world from vanishing as it is now doing.

And the people who live on freebies or camping and so on. They provide the community, and keep brands visible by using freebies and visiting shops, and they don't exactly cash out those lindens they get from camping or SL jobs, they spend them - they keep the economy flowing. They don't take out, they don't put in - they are fish in the sea, keeping it flowing.

 

And for the year and a half figure - it used to be something the lindens mentioned often back when they were vocal.

 

 

 

[solstyse]

There are a lot of sims that seem to lack people. Maybe it's just at certain times. But if someone's logged in, they're somewhere. I guess the point is that the land that does exist in sl isn't by any stretch of the imagination "saturated."

I'm curious now, though. How many sims may have "merged" as a way to increase traffic? How many have downsized to reduce costs?

As for the mp, well, you can blame that on the inefficiency of inworld shopping. And the general attitude that everybody should be running a high end computer less than a year old even if nothing else they do taxes their resources the way that sl does.

[Canoro Philipp]

the situation is that Second Life is an always evolving place, and many new places are created daily competing for the attention of new people, if you have a theme, lets say Old West, you may get the attention of some people that could become regulars, but later, 8 new places open up with the same theme wanting to grab those users as regulars too, and the number of your regulars goes down because they are attracted to the publicity of those new places, and those new places can only hold them for so long until someone else open up a new place with the same theme wanting to have them as regulars, lots of sims lose people because the competition is constant,. its true that many users leave second life, but is also true that new accounts are being created every day. its a constant flow of renovation.

[Masami Kuramoto]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

More and more of them are pulling out their inworld shops and going MP only - at which point they contribute nothing into the economy, and only take out.

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They contribute nothing?

How about the time they spend to produce the content that keeps residents glued to this grid? If that is not a contribution, then Linden Lab isn't contributing anything either. However, I don't see anyone here disputing Linden Lab's right to "only take out."

The marketplace exists because most creators wouldn't be able to make money here if land ownership was mandatory. Without the marketplace, SL would not only lose land but content as well.

[Melita Magic]

Yes I would say anything that makes other residents buy Linden dollars contributes to the economy. (Even if the merchant cashes out, their customers are buying Lindens dollars at the exchange rate and the Linden co. profits.)

If everyone would start spending again in RL too that would or could cure the recession. Recession is fear in action...

But that's another topic.

[Porky Gorky]

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Hoshi Kenin wrote:

Do you ever review what you have written in a reply and think to yourself..." I really need to stop joining in the 'playground-bully-LL-are wonderful" gang that attacks this particular person, tirelessly, and try and be more mature and not seek the approval of the clique, and instead  concentrate on the OP's theme"?  

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I am sure I addressed this comment but the mods must have deleted it so I'll try again.

I did concentrate on the OP's theme, earlier in the thread I provided metrics for 2012 concurrency, answering the question, whether regions were loosing traffic? After that I was freed up to focus my attention on the troll. I didn't do it as part of a clique or a group, I am not friends with anyone who uses this forum and couldn't care less what they think about me or my actions. 

If the Mods are going to allow this troll to operate freely on the forums considering the way she and her alts have acted in the past, then I will continue to take it upon myself to address this troll in any way I please. 

From many people's perspective I am sure my comments towards Lucinda can be construed as bullying and she is very good at playing the victim in order to generate sympathies from naive parties such as yourself. But everything I have ever said to Lucinda using this account or any of my alts has been done to draw attention to this troll and not let her get away with her shenanigans without looking like the fool she is in the process. If this makes me look foolish too, or like a bully or a troll then so be it.

[Abby Heartsong]

I would say that there is more competition now than there was a couple years ago. And people are too lazy to advertise. I used to see many more adverts on the mainland, it was almost like spam. But then people started to remove them.

I first joined SL in 2004 and made new avis sometimes, just to move on and get away from drama. I am sure others did that too. Well, i know some people who did. So i believe that many people who supposedly "left SL" are still around. If a designer wants to quit and do something else, they could simply make an alt and move on.

And there was lots of bots in the old days, sometimes you never knew who was a bot and who wasnt. So yes, lots of places are losing traffic. Some places have closed, others have opened. Its just like in RL.

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Oh the memories.  My forum 'badge' is all down to Lucinda.  Bless her addled mind; when her highly eccentric orbit brings her closest to planet sanity she has some wonderful things to say.  Rest of the time - a stream of abuse and non sequiturs.