MARKETPLACE SELLERS

[Freya Mokusei]

Well this thread got lively. I don't think it's too wise to throw certain words around. There's nothing "illegal" or "fraudulant" in how the Marketplace is run, that's silly and inflammatory and it absolutely will not help anyone to attack the problem on that level. I respect all the posters in this thread and their histories and perspectives, but I draw a line here in the language I'm willing to use. C'mon folks, LL has a legal team, they're not dummies.

I'm aware my posts can be confusing especially as they get longer, will streamline a few points in order to catch up. Apologies for delay in addressing - festivities persist.

Marketplace efficiency is not a problem for LL. If a customer loses a buck or two to a poor seller, it's unlikely that this will cost LL anything. The user will not associate their Premium membership or owned land as being related to the same problem. The user will almost certainly continue to purchase from the Marketplace in future, and continue to buy L$ and pay tier.

Marketplace only has to look good. There are no SL-managed competitors to Marketplace (even that company starting with C), and even if there were, they wouldn't be able to run parallel with the service provided by MP. With no internal competition, Marketplace only competes in volume and variety (not function) with other online services (e.g. IMVU - in my opinion the prime target of the entire Marketplace endeavour). In these battles over virtual warehousing space, quality of the products is not a guaranteeable USP and so all services of this type sublimate quality for quantity and assume that users are attracted to the place with the biggest possible variety. The logic behind this probably isn't far wrong; Facebook - friendship simulacrum - is popular because everyone is there. SL - shopping simulacrum - popular because it has 12 years of established content development.

Combining these two points: Trimming legitimate (but broken) products from the MP would only serve to weaken the offering SL has against its competitors. The biggest thing that kills catalogue sites? Searching something and getting no results - the same reason Google puts so much work into its "Did you mean?" feature. Trimming would directly harm the perception of SL in a way that broken products do not. This actively removes motivation for LL to reduce the size of the catalogue.

And the alternate solution: Policing the Marketplace. While it may seem fine to draw equivilence between MP and iTunes, they operate on very different levels. When your iPhone won't order pizza (and Android will), this makes Apple look bad - even if it's just the app that's busted. SL doesn't have this problem, since nowhere that competes with SL for eyes offers anything other than a Buyer Beware experience - it therefore maintains the standard. No UGC provider wants to police content because this costs a lot of money, Apple and others only get forced into it by headlines that terrify consumers away from their brands. By contrast (again), SL has had damaging headlines for years and yet people are still turning up on the regular - no harm done.

Could fill a whole other thread with the rationale behind this, but hope links/points of reference will suffice. Super-useful books that cover some of these points in more detail (though, they were written before SL's Marketplace existed):-

Julian Dibbell - Play Money

Ed Castronova - Synthetic Worlds

The best way to understand service provider decision-making is to take a look at the world surrounding SL, and not what's happening in-world. Users always complain, and will always say quality is not high enough, but if they don't go anywhere else  (and even if they did, they'd continue to have the same problem) then why change anything?

Hope this clarifies.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Freya Mokusei wrote:

Well this thread got lively. I don't think it's too wise to throw certain words around. There's nothing "illegal" or "fraudulant" in how the Marketplace is run, that's silly and inflammatory and it absolutely will not help anyone to attack the problem on that level. I respect all the posters in this thread and their histories and perspectives, but I draw a line here in the language I'm willing to use. C'mon folks, LL has a legal team, they're not dummies.

---

Yes, they have a very well paid legal team. But if you believe that they do everything their lawyers tell them is required by law, you have no clue how business is run.

Lawyers on retainer tell you what the law requires, what the penalties are for breaking the law, and also give you a rough approximation of your 'Legal Exposure' .. how much chance you have of running afoul of the law. They don't control you or your company, they only advise.

Yes, LL is committing fraud. The product mentioned earlier with the dead web site that prevents its use? LL is VERY much aware of that product. Have they pulled it? Nope. They are complicit in the fraud being perpetrated by the seller BECAUSE THEY KNOW that it is non-functional.

They have full power to pull it, full knowledge that it is not functional, and full authority to return all funds paid to the purchaser. They have done none of those things. Now, anything else you need to prove the point?

End of argument.

[Freya Mokusei]

You seem to have a very different objective in this thread than I, and was clear that I wouldn't be discussing further. Never was no argument, and there's no proof you can provide - short of a willing prosecutor - that this is anything but a junk line of reasoning based on assertion and an appeal to a morality of some nature that isn't legally binding.

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Freya Mokusei wrote:

You seem to have a very different objective in this thread than I, and was clear that I wouldn't be discussing further. Never was no argument, and there's no proof you can provide - short of a willing prosecutor - that this is anything but a junk line of reasoning based on assertion and an appeal to a morality of some nature that isn't legally binding.

---

My objective is to convince, by whatever means necessary, Linden Lab to "do the right thing." For years now we have seen a pattern of behavior from LL that is much too close to the "we can get away with it" line .. and much too far from the "because it is the right thing to do" line. In my opinion. (Although I feel very confident that I am far from alone.)

You have exactly described the points made when justifying edgy (in the legal sense) behavior. The "Worthless Coupon" argument, the "User vs. User Disagreement" argument ... these are all points brought up any time this issue is raised. They are also quite effective as it would take a truly willing prosecutor and some serious digging into financial records and corporate communications to prove.

But I ain't no judge. I ain't no jury. I am just one of the people that works here daily to keep the platform running. I don't get a paycheck .. unless I manage to make one for myself. But my involvement is just as important as the next person's.

Linden Lab can operate any way they want. They can stay just a hair's breadth above that line that should not be crossed. But there is no reason they NEED to operate that way. Their own actions, or lack thereof, are what is ultimately charting the long-term path of the company.

They could operate above reproach. They could implement decent and reasonable fixes for a lot of the problems that are brought to attention here and elsewhere. They would go a long way to assuring long-term success by doing so. But they choose not to .. for whatever reasons they have ... and thus IMO also assure an outcome that is less than successful.

People, not just me but the whole range of people that come here expecting to have a good time and be treated fairly, are often times finding they are not treated fairly. When another player here does someone wrong, no I don't expect Linden Lab to make it right. But we are not discussing a situation where LL is a bystander; we are discussing a situation where LL is THE primary actor. And still?

You are right Freya, there is no proof. But last time I checked, people don't need "legal proof" to vote with their wallets .. or their feet.

ETA: Internal spell-checker still out for repair

[Freya Mokusei]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

But last time I checked, people don't need "legal proof" to vote with their wallets .. or their feet.

---

For clarity: Agree, but I don't feel this is the conversation we're having. It is at least, not the conversation I am having. If only because opens a wierd nest of vipers that we as SL users cannot close. Not diminishing your efforts, they have a place in the wider virtual economy. IMO until the other actors are brought into line, it's unlikely that LL will be a special case.

Apologies for missing some likely edits and the brevity, am short on time.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

---

Freya Mokusei wrote:

You seem to have a very different objective in this thread than I, and was clear that I wouldn't be discussing further. Never was no argument, and there's no proof you can provide - short of a willing prosecutor - that this is anything but a junk line of reasoning based on assertion and an appeal to a morality of some nature that isn't legally binding.

---

My objective is to convince, by whatever means necessary, Linden Lab to "do the right thing." For years now we have seen a pattern of behavior from LL that is much too close to the "we can get away with it" line .. and much too far from the "because it is the right thing to do" line. In my opinion. (Although I feel very confident that I am far from alone.)

You have exactly described the points made when justifying edgy (in the legal sense) behavior. The "Worthless Coupon" argument, the "User vs. User Disagreement" argument ... these are all points brought up any time this issue is raised. They are also quite effective as it would take a truly willing prosecutor and some serious digging into financial records and corporate communications to prove.

But I ain't no judge. I ain't no jury. I am just one of the people that works here daily to keep the platform running. I don't get a paycheck .. unless I manage to make one for myself. But my involvement is just as important as the next person's.

Linden Lab can operate any way they want. They can stay just a hair's breadth above that line that should not be crossed. But there is no reason they NEED to operate that way. Their own actions, or lack thereof, are what is ultimately charting the long-term path of the company.

They could operate above reproach. They could implement decent and reasonable fixes for a lot of the problems that are brought to attention here and elsewhere. They would go a long way to assuring long-term success by doing so. But they choose not to .. for whatever reasons they have ... and thus IMO also assure an outcome that is less than successful.

People, not just me but the whole range of people that come here expecting to have a good time and be treated fairly, are often times finding they are not treated fairly. When another player here does someone wrong, no I don't expect Linden Lab to make it right. But we are not discussing a situation where LL is a bystander; we are discussing a situation where LL is THE primary actor. And still?

You are right Freya, there is no proof. But last time I checked, people don't need "legal proof" to vote with their wallets .. or their feet.

ETA: Internal spell-checker still out for repair

---

"Linden Lab can operate any way they want. They can stay just a hair's breadth above that line that should not be crossed. But there is no reason they NEED to operate that way. Their own actions, or lack thereof, are what is ultimately charting the long-term path of the company."

And this ^^^ is part of what to me falls under the category of 'Superior Customer Service.'

Having worked many years as a Sales person my job as defined by my employers was to get the customer to buy whether they needed the item or not.  We were taught to create a need in the Customer's mind even when none existed.  And if I could boon swaggle them into buying it was not my fault but theirs.  Personally I bucked against this a lot.  But it could feel like an uphill battle when surrounded by many other Sales people who only cared about the sale and not the customer.  

[Darrius Gothly]

I'm not so comfortable as you Perrie with the state of things. I understand how many other companies operate these days. I know that the mantra preached to many of their employees amounts to nothing more than "screw them first" .. as a vulgar synopsis.

But here we are, in the season where we are called upon to show our better human qualities, once again facing .. and accepting .. of a widespread attitude that "it's what everyone else is doing, so why not me?"

Being better, doing better .. doing RIGHT .. is not an easy path. Never is, never was, never will be. But is that the excuse we lean on to justify taking what isn't rightly ours. We are only discussing small amounts, this isn't a Wall Street collapse by any measure, but does the size of the wrong somehow make it right?

I look at my Man in the Mirror every day. Some days I curse at him for having failed to do the right thing. But most days, I look at him and smile, at ease within my own skin that I have done everything possible to treat those around me with fairness, honesty and dignity.

If you are okay with forgiving LL for this behavior because others do it too, or because it's nothing big .. then that's okay. You look at your mirror-man on your own. But me? I can't. And I am very uncomfortable that it has somehow become "okay" for many people.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Darrius Gothly wrote:

I'm not so comfortable as you Perrie with the state of things. I understand how many other companies operate these days. I know that the mantra preached to many of their employees amounts to nothing more than "screw them first" .. as a vulgar synopsis.

But here we are, in the season where we are called upon to show our better human qualities, once again facing .. and accepting .. of a widespread attitude that "it's what everyone else is doing, so why not me?"

Being better, doing better .. doing RIGHT .. is not an easy path. Never is, never was, never will be. But is that the excuse we lean on to justify taking what isn't rightly ours. We are only discussing small amounts, this isn't a Wall Street collapse by any measure, but does the size of the wrong somehow make it right?

I look at my Man in the Mirror every day. Some days I curse at him for having failed to do the right thing. But most days, I look at him and smile, at ease within my own skin that I have done everything possible to treat those around me with fairness, honesty and dignity.

If you are okay with forgiving LL for this behavior because others do it too, or because it's nothing big .. then that's okay. You look at your mirror-man on your own. But me? I can't. And I am very uncomfortable that it has somehow become "okay" for many people.

---

I'm not saying that I am comfortable with all of it.

And I'm certainly not comfortable with everything LL does.

But we both know that until this gets before a judge beyond speaking up there isn't much else we can do other than to try and live our own lives as honestly as possible.