MoiraKathleen

I agree the Linden Realms is the best bet. It seems like we periodically see posts either here or in Answers with complaints about several of the other "free lindens" activities.

inside their yellow ban lines

There is a difference too, between shopping at a general store that happens to be on an adult sim - for example, a house creator had one of his house demo sims as adult (didn't see anything visible as to why it would need to be, especially in the demo area) - and a sim that is not only adult, but has indications that it is an afk sex sim and that child avatars are not allowed. A child avatar that lands on a sim like that - and stays - you have to wonder about, and if something wrong happens you have to wonder about the child avi being completely innocent.

Congratulations, Skell!

Is the mesh head omega compatible? Look at the applier(s) for the skin you're using on your mesh body and see if has an applier for the type of mesh head you have, or if has an omega applier for the head. If the skin you're wearing doesn't have the appliers for the head, check at the store for your skin - sometimes they will have the matching skin appliers for heads as a separate item you can buy. Also, if the head comes with default skins, look in the info to see if it says what brand/colors the default head skin choices are, and then you can buy the matching applier for your mesh body, if you decide to use one of the default skin options that came with the head.

I'm just confused over how regulation or oversight would address what bodies creators choose to support in their clothing offerings. I think that people are going to create things that they enjoy or that they would want to use themselves or that they think will generate good sales for them and I don't see how that could fairly be changed and/or regulated. You can't "make" creators or designers produce items that may not be profitable or may not have much market share. Creators and designers can choose to do that if they want, so you would need to figure out how to influence creators to make that change. Gachas have had opposition since their inception, yet that has not been enough to either turn consumers against them or turn creators from putting them out. I don't consider it gambling, as you do always receive one of the items from the advertised set. As you are a content creator, have you considered making full-perm clothing templates for some of the other non-top mesh bodies? I've noticed a number of stores which use a lot of the full-perm templates, so it seems like more templates available for some of the other non-top bodies might help get more diversity in the amount of clothing created for other bodies. I'm sure more diversity in template clothing styles would be appreciated as well. I know that I often am not a fan of some of the current fashionable styles of clothing, but the good thing is that fashions do change over time. Events do seem to be a way to get more notice and attention. Perhaps you could work with other creators to sponsor a periodic event that showcases bodies, skins, hair and clothing with an emphasis on ethnic diversity (and with no gacha machines allowed).

@darkhairy I would suggest filing a support case anyway, particularly as you believe that you were full group owners, and there is land involved and tier that was, according to your response above to Phil, being paid by one of the ejected group owners. I would remain very factual in the support ticket explanation, and I would question how group owners could be ejected, given what is said in the Knowledge Base article on creating, managing, moderating and disbanding groups in the warning about not being able to eject other group owners, in the "ejecting members from the group" section. As far as I'm aware this should be the official policy, and personally I would expect that LL wouldn't be going against that on a whim or a one-side-of-the-story situation. I am sorry that the endeavor did not work out well for you. Any business partnership has some risk, and I think the risk in SL is higher, as you have less means of really knowing the person or people that are part of the partnership. It lends itself to these types of messy situations where it's not always clear to others what the full story is, nor how it should best be resolved. I think that this type of situation, as you described it, is in my opinion, one of the reasons why full group owners should not be able to be ejected by anyone, including LL support.

Out riding on my new horse (and trying to recall what the land covenant said about horses )

it's surface finally finished rezzing

Ah....thanks. I don't travel in the Open Collar worlds, so wasn't aware of that. It still doesn't seem like it should be the right thing to do, although I have seen posts in the past in the forums from founders of groups who have felt they should have the authority to eject non-founding owners...

I think the only thing you could try would be filing a support case about the issue.

That's what I was thinking, especially when one of them was 'asking questions in church' (I went very progressive, myself, and just about 'progressed' myself right out of church and religion.) I have many failings and one of them is not wanting to share what the others are - and I used to wear something that symbolized the keeping secret part. From junior high until my early 40's when I lost the chain, I wore a chain with a little padlock on it as a bracelet - everyday, all the time. Whether it was the right or wrong thing to do, it was my symbol for keeping myself safe by keeping my inner core self secret and protected from the world.

I was just curious as to how SL wasn't compatible with all ISP's and network types? Mainly when I've seen general issues discussed in the forums that are ISP or network related, it tends to be an issue where trace routes can show a node along the way that's being an issue, or it has to do with hard-wired versus wireless - which I know some people say isn't an issue anymore (but I had a work VPN connection that would often disconnect/reconnect/disconnect/reconnect when I was on wireless, but not when I was hard-wired, so I can see that as still being a possible issue). There also are places - schools, some work places, etc., that have made decisions on their end to not allow connections to SL. There are people in SL with businesses that do make money - all the way from just covering their inworld costs all the way to some who do make their RL living from their SL businesses. Enough time and turnover has probably occurred that I wouldn't be surprised if the current developers were not as inspired by the original vision as the original developers were. Having been a programmer as well, I don't expect that the original developers should have built the foundation in a particular way to meet a need that wasn't even on anyone's radar at the time they were originally building the foundation. It's even more interesting to me, because of most of the world being user-created content. I also know that even with new systems, unless you have a lot of funding/staff, there will likely be code debt, and that the older a system is, the harder it is to go back and retrofit parts of it for new functionality. Sometimes all you can do is to start over fresh. It's also interesting to me that (and I could be wrong) even OpenSim and other derivatives like Inworldz where the foundation and code are being maintained by other developers, haven't made strides of progress beyond what SL has done (though they have vari-regions, IW prides itself on its region crossing smoothness, and the sim costs are much less) to where people are flocking from SL to OpenSim or IW in large numbers any longer. I think there have been efforts - although not within criticism from users - to help educate/redirect content to being more efficient, easier to render. There was the education around avatar complexity values and the 'jelly doll' functionality. There are the new tools in the new FS viewer that provide more information about how mesh items have been built, particularly in terms of LOD and physics shapes.

Quite a list, but I wouldn't consider all of them as sins - some of them are quite laudable, in my opinion anyway

, let me rant about that,

Maybe I should go take a look at the five word story thread also - some of the other threads I'm reading today are giving me a headache.

My alt (who owns our land group) just tried in both FS and SL viewer to delete me from a true owner role - she wasn't able to (the eject button was not active) nor was she able to remove me from the default owner role. As both Phil and I have mentioned, if someone creates a new (non-default owner) role and gives that new role all the permissions and settings that an owner has (and even names it owners) then you can be ejected. In practice this is actually what I would suggest for someone setting up a group who has non-alt people that need 'owner' permissions. I'm not aware of anyone who has been able to 'pull strings' with LL to eject group owners, and it seems like this would be something LL would consider as a personal dispute and therefore would not get involved with it.

As far as I'm aware, owners can't be ejected from a group, even by the group owner. However, it is a suggested best practice, to only have one's alt as an additional owner, and if anyone else needs the level of permissions that an owner would have, to set that other person up in a new (non-owner) role, but with all the settings that an owner would have. In this case the other person would look like (and act like) an owner, but could still be ejected by the owner. However best the initial intentions are, having non-alt owner(s) in a group often lends itself to drama.

I don't usually post in the threads in this section of the forum, because I am not a creator - though I do read them, as I find them interesting and I do try to understand the how and why of content creation. Three were some comments earlier in this thread about "what the consumer wants", so I thought I'd give my perspective on that as a "somewhat educated" consumer. When I was new in SL, I often bought products with the NC's about setting the LOD value in the debug settings to 4.0 (or higher), and I used to do that. Over time I began seeing posts in the forums regarding how that was more of a "work around" to compensate for how it was being created and that it was not necessarily the "only" way to address the LOD issue (that it wasn't something the creators had NO control over). So I started reducing my LOD values and found that there were items that were made in such a way that I didn't need to use the high LOD settings and those items were often still low or reasonable LI. I've since lowered my default LOD setting a little further (2.5) and I've begun replacing items that "fall apart" too soon with other creator's items that have stronger LOD's (and often the same LI +/- 1 or 2). If I have to choose, I would prefer stronger LOD's than the absolute minimum LI. I would choose a house where the exterior walls are solid when looking at it from my neighbor's parcel, even if I can't rez mesh items on the floor (which I also understand is something that creators CAN address in how they create the house). As I've accumulated things over time, I'm at a point now where I don't HAVE to buy things, so I'm more interested in the overall quality of items I buy now. I like threads that show examples, because it's easier for me to understand the overall concept. Because I'm not a creator, I don't always understand what the various values mean (in terms what is a good value or what is not) when examining something with the edit tool, so the examples I see here help me to begin to correlate values with how something will appear or will hold up, and hopefully will help me to be an even better-educated consumer. When I find that there are steps creators can take - or not take - when building and uploading, and I get a NC with the product explaining that some issue is "just the way it is" or suggest changing debug level settings to "see" the product as intended, because the creator did not take all the steps that they could have, I start to lose respect for that creator. I also figure that if I can read here and learn about avatar complexity, LOD values, alpha blending vs. alpha masking (and how to change an item from one to the other to avoid conflicts), that creators can also. I really appreciate all the creators and scripters that participate here in the forums, not only their patience in answering questions that others have, but also in helping educate others in how to best use the tools to the best advantage and in helping to formulate best practices for dealing with the "quirks (the good and the bad)" of SL content creation.

without a care in the

/me looks for the "I'm a fan" button to click on lostsoul's post.

"Just where do you think

Property lines appear on the sim terrain, so if you have turned them on but are not seeing them, is your parcel covered with a prim or mesh platform or other terrain type structures? If so, those could be hiding the property lines from view. Also, for a water parcel, or a partial water parcel, you need to derender the water temporarily (or just go under the water) to see the property lines on the land under the water. For the camera issue, take a look at http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_camera for some troubleshooting/resetting tips.

Whoever owns the parcel has the right to put whatever they want in the air, at any height, over their parcel. The parcel owner does not have to allow anyone to fly through their parcel's air space. People who think that they have a right to fly where ever they want have been a chronic cause of irritation to many parcel owners. You are free fly above linden roads, protected (linden owned) waterways and often can also fly above abandoned land - when flying in those areas, you shouldn't run into any 'sky junk' but if you do, you can report that if it is over linden owned land/water.

I had forgotten about MetaChat. After going an looking at their web site, I do remember reading there when they were still working on getting the app approved in the App Store. Glad to see that they were able to get it working and approved.