Why does SL not have this?

[AnimalChi]

I've been wondering for like 3 years now, why SL does not have a proper search function.

What I mean by that, Is a search that will bring up a list of every public sim that exists. Instead, we have to know key words to find the sims as it is now. So, for example, I don't have a specific keyword in mind, how do I find new places? I don't. I've tried the " What's hot now" section and I've gotta say it, that section is a stagnant pond. It never changes. It's always some 80s DJ club, skill gaming gamble sim, or a nude beach.

I just wish there was a way to see every sim in SL, in one big list, without having to know the keywords to find them. I feel trapped, stuck in the same cycle of sims that I know, because there's no way to search for new ones.

And yeah, I've seen people suggest going to "events" because those are active, but to me, it's just like the " What's Hot Now"  DJ club events, but in temporary form. And temporary gathering spots are disheartening, cause they move around or they only become active at a designated meeting time. Can't just save a landmark and go back at any time, like infohubs. Infohubs use to be a good spot to see activity 24-7 (Judge the quality of the activity yourselves) but I liked them. They seem less common, less active now days though.

It would be nice if as soon as you open "Places" a list showed up. Without having to search for anything.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2018 by AnimalChi
ehh

[Whirly Fizzle]

You can search the World map for A, B, C etc
Also there is the grid survey which lists all active regions: http://www.gridsurvey.com/index.php

Edited April 10, 2018 by Whirly Fizzle

[Cindy Evanier]

Maybe try https://places.secondlife.com/   I never use it, so I am not sure how useful it is

[AnimalChi]

3 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

You can search the World map for A, B, C etc
Also there is the grid survey which lists all active regions: http://www.gridsurvey.com/index.php

Is it me, or does every sim on that list happen to be a Land Seller? Private regions owned by residents. Those sims that have neighborhoods of renters. 

How could those be as active as public hotspots? Maybe I'm reading it wrong. I'mma go mess with that site more. >_>

 

I'm also getting this every time I click one.  (the unable to find region picture )

Edited April 10, 2018 by AnimalChi
ehh

[Klytyna]

2 hours ago, AnimalChi said:

Is it me, or does every sim on that list happen to be a Land Seller? Private regions owned by residents. Those sims that have neighborhoods of renters.

How could those be as active as public hotspots? Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

Pay attention...

Most "officially public" sims are not hot spots, they are places that LL runs, on the Madlands, like open water sims for sailing, etc.

The closest those ever come to being hot spots are the info hubs, the portal park/linden realms etc., and Noob Island.

Most of the places you think of as public hot spots are in fact, privately owned, by people who ALLOW you on their land.

2/3 rds of the grid is privately owned "island" sims, many of which are open to the public, so if you automatically discount island sims as public places, you've blinded your self to 2/3 rds of SL

DERP!

As for a list of all sims and parcels in SL, it would be so long  as to be meaningless unless sorted by some criteria. Best part of what, 24,000 sims, divided into hundreds of thousands of parcels, all in one list?

Sort on traffic guess what's going to come top of the list?

3 hours ago, AnimalChi said:

It's always some 80s DJ club, skill gaming gamble sim, or a nude beach.

If YOU can't think of a keyword to describe places YOU might be interested in, that isn't a failing of SL or its search engine...
 

[Callum Meriman]

6 hours ago, AnimalChi said:

What I mean by that, Is a search that will bring up a list of every public sim that exists. Instead, we have to know key words to find the sims as it is now.

The problem I see with a show all search is that it will return a list of the top AFK sex sims for 20 or so pages, then the non-afk sex sims for 200 pages, then the various bot infested clubs where you will be hardpressed to find people talking for 400 pages. Then the possibly interesting places at about page 600.

Most people will have a keyword or group of keywords they are interested in, then using that keyword will just travel down the list visiting each. This seems to work for targetted searches.

For anything more than that, a random teleporter device is a possibility, press the button and appear in a random region. You could also use the (I guess it's dying off by now) stargate network and see where that takes you.

Personally I follow certain blogs like Maddy Gynoid's great http://echtvirtuell.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Simtipp and head off exploring based on those posts.

[AnimalChi]

7 hours ago, Klytyna said:

 

Sort on traffic guess what's going to come top of the list?

3 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

The problem I see with a show all search is that it will return a list of the top AFK sex sims for 20 or so pages, then the non-afk sex sims for 200 pages, then the various bot infested clubs where you will be hardpressed to find people talking for 400 pages. Then the possibly interesting places at about page 600.

Most people will have a keyword or group of keywords they are interested in, then using that keyword will just travel down the list visiting each. This seems to work for targetted searches.

Yes, the same stuff will show up as the most busy places, but that doesn't stop me from skipping over them to find the other ones. Seeing all of these sims that are unlisted in the search, will open up the option to become interested in NEW key words, and that's what I like. Being able to explore different parts of SL and it's cultures. Not knowing the keywords is a limitation of my own, sure, but that's why I want to see them all. Expand to new horizons.

 

I'm willing to browse 600 pages instead of thinking " Welp, can't find a new place. Better log out of SL.". lolol Besides, I'm not saying to take away the keyword searching. It should still be available , of course, I just think it would be nice to also have a list of existing sims. 

Because believe me, I've tried tons of keywords. I've even tried keywords I wasn't exactly interested in, just to see what comes up, and the results are slim. Or completely unrelated, irrelevant, used as a way to pull in traffic to a sim that has nothing to do with the keyword, etc.

Edited April 10, 2018 by AnimalChi
eh

[Claireschen Hesten]

If you are looking for new places to try there is the world map you can pan out and around and find places to visit through https://maps.secondlife.com

[AnimalChi]

3 hours ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

If you are looking for new places to try there is the world map you can pan out and around and find places to visit through https://maps.secondlife.com

Yep. I know about it, but it's a shot in the dark. Look for gatherings of green dots and jump in at your own risk.

Unlike sims/parcels in a list, that have descriptions on what the sim is about :'D.

I actually do the world map hopping a lot.

Edited April 11, 2018 by AnimalChi

[Penny Patton]

Way back when LL introduced "interest tags" I thought they were going to tie those into search. As in, if you own land you can apply a limited number of interest tags to that land. (It would have to be limited or it would end up being useless as landowners spammed every tag they could think of, regardless of whether or not it applied to what was on their land.) In addition, back when these tags were introduced, the web profiles had another icon on the left hand sidebar, it was a star icon. I forgot what they called it but if you clicked this you'd get a random list of other SL residents who shared one or more of your interest tags. At the time I thought LL would expand this to include stores, locations, groups, all relevant to your personal interest tags.

LL had other plans. They kept it limited to other avatar, did nothing more with interest tags, then quietly phased out that profile panel altogether. To this day, interest tags are useless. LL seems to have adopted a new attitude and may actually be delivering on long promised features. Maybe they'll revisit interest tags and actually do something useful with them? I'm not holding my breath, but it would be nice. The web profiles had other great features that LL quietly killed, too. Like being able to leave feed comments linked to the land you're on. So you could open up a panel to view all of the feed posts made from that location. Like a shout board for in-world locations. I was sad to see it go.

 Anyway, as others pointed out, you can search every sim in SL by name from the World Map. But the OP is right, the SL search tools are not great. If you're using web search you can't search by partial names, there's no "closest match" if you misspell anything, if you try to search for a specific theme, activity, whatever you're going to get a list of completely unrelated results.

And if you want to be found in Search? That's a whole other headache. You have 255 characters to describe your land, less if you use the Firestorm parcel windlight feature. It's really no wonder most land descriptions are gibberish word salads.

Here's some other ideas to make it easier to find places in SL:

• Include a "Locations" or "Hangouts" tab to groups, and let groups link to multiple locations.
• Expand what landowners can do with https://places.secondlife.com/ and include that information in searches.
• Give land a Calendar feature where upcoming events can be listed.
• Give groups that very same Calendar feature and set it up so events from all locations associated with the group show up on it.

Making it easier for people to find content and activities in SL is good business for Linden Lab so if LL really is serious about turning things around, like they seem to be, hopefully we'll see them start to address this shortcoming. They seem to be tackling a lot right now, so I'm not going to complain that they're not on it RIGHT NOW, but I hope it's at least on their radar.

[Bree Giffen]

It would be nice to have such a website that cataloged all the places in SL where a search for like "photo op on horse carousel' would bring up slurls for carousels around the map. I worked for a website that I think was trying to do that, where I would take pics of places and then make a short description, it paid well but the website has been gone for a long time. Maybe there is a blogger or group of bloggers making a curated list of SL locations? 

[AnimalChi]

On 4/14/2018 at 10:08 AM, Bree Giffen said:

It would be nice to have such a website that cataloged all the places in SL where a search for like "photo op on horse carousel' would bring up slurls for carousels around the map. I worked for a website that I think was trying to do that, where I would take pics of places and then make a short description, it paid well but the website has been gone for a long time. Maybe there is a blogger or group of bloggers making a curated list of SL locations? 

I've seen many blogger's list of sims, and they're usually outdated :<  . .. No longer exist, etc.

[Blush Bravin]

I like using this flickr stream, https://www.flickr.com/groups/exploresecondlife/pool/, to find interesting places to explore. 

[Penny Patton]

Third party sources are a good resource, but they're also limited to the scope of the people running them. I use a few of them myself. They can compliment a broader, more comprehensive search function by filtering them through the specific interests and themes of those the blogger or flickr stream or whatnot, but LL shouldn't rely on them to be a replacement for better search tools.

Back in 2010 Philip said SL needed to be "Fast, easy, fun". He was absolutely right, but then not much came out of it at the time.  LL seems to be moving in a better direction right now, I'd love to see them strive for this again now that they seem to be making real progress. Better search tools would definitely go a long way towards achieving that goal. Better social features, better group features, better land features, a better avatar customization system, and a heaping helping of polish to the overall SL experience are all things LL should be looking at to make SL fast, easy and fun.