[Looking for social event finding resources]

One of the issues I'm running into when looking for events is the flood of shopping events and clubs using the system to advertise themselves or what they need.

 

Are there any third party website that circumvent this and focus on actual gatherings? I get lucky here and there searching for them with normal google since find the second life search tool rather useless and tiresome to sift though, though I do try at times.

 

Even if the resource isn't grid wide, it would be nice to have some places to start looking. 

 

Sim websites. Facebook groups. Discord. Really, anything would help at this point.

[Where to rent just prims?]

I have a hell of a time sifting through sources to find rentals. Its pretty overwhelming without any systems in place that can group it together and let me compare it seems impossible.

Can someone tell me where I can look to rent prims to build my own skybox? And then where to find their competitors for a comparison?

I've looked at a lot of skyboxes, so I'd rather stop and build my own on a preferably less laggy sim.

[Second Life Search Engine Complaints]

I'd just like to take a second to complain about Second Life's search engine. In a word it, sucks. It is the main conduit for entering locations and connecting with people outside of your personal networks. And in every aspect, it has design flaws.

People flood their sim descriptions with tags to get picked up by it and so can't give a proper synopsis about what they are about. The search engine gives equal priority to any words in that description. Modern search engines have evolved far beyond this kind of searching and are intuitive. There is no personalization or thought in the advertisements as a result, just people scrambling to get caught by the engine. Each sim puts down the same 20 tags, and the engine croaks as a result because it sees the same thing over and over. It does spit out information, but its illogical, messy, and misses a lot which leaves the user to scroll through it endlessly to hopefully find that needle in the haystack it has provided.

Its nice that we got a new environmental system to play with, but people make the place. An influx of people coming and going is needed to keep any place alive and without a way for them to get there... It all dies. It doesn't matter what toys you put out if the people aren't there to appreciate them. Second life has got to make more bridges between communities to keep itself alive, and the search engine is the biggest bridge of all. Creating more land does make more money, but people with money to buy it are typically smart with how they use it. No people, means no place, means no reason to keep investing in that land. Money is made off of keeping people in secondlife since the money they spend initially is likely offset by the advertisement costs that it took to get them there.

People still play board games, they still use text based games, and mmo's have been riddled with microtransactions and self destructive power dynamics aimed to lure in whales that will destroy them. Second life still has its place in the world as a massive online community, there is still nothing that competes with it.

😎 So basically, fix the dumb search engine please. 😎

❤️ What? It's my annoyed kitty face! ❤️

 

[Looking For Group Homes]

On 6/14/2020 at 9:48 AM, Alwin Alcott said:

there are several RP and non RP communities, you only have to find them
Premium homes dó allow scripts, not sure where you got that from.
I think you idealize community a bit. SL has a worldwide userbase, with corresponding timezones where people come  online, this is what you will see everywhere.
I reccommended Belliseria because there is a load of things organised, where you can meet others. Your real neighbours might be in asia, russia or chile.. so not online while you are.

My previous home when I was premium had scripts blocked. This was the one you got for free for having premium. Of the options I had, they all had the same conditions. A friend still has premium, and it is the same.

[Looking For Group Homes]

On 6/16/2020 at 12:57 PM, Marianne Little said:

I believe you have tried an older Linden home? Did you have a home that was named one of the following:Traditional, Houseboat, Camper, Victorian or Log house?

I second the suggestion of joining the Bellisseria Citizens group. You can join the group without a home in Bellisseria. It is always chat in the group and it was driving me bonkers. But I believe it is perfect for you. Start to talk in the group chat, ask for advice, ask if there is a party going on. Sometimes they meet to drive or sail around. Ask if someone want to show you their home for inspiration. I am certain you get in contact with people that way.

I've hung out in the group for a week now. Nice people. However, it reminds me very much of any discord server that's become popular. There hasn't been much of a connection to the virtual aspect of Second Life from what I've seen. I'll keep an eye on it, but is my opinion so far.

[Looking For Group Homes]

Every difficulty can be overcome with proper planning and considerations. Need somewhere to start though.

[Looking For Group Homes]

I can see the logic in that. But I don't see any communities with homes incorporated and I've experienced premium. Premium homes don't allow scripts and barely anyone stays in them, let alone visit other people nearby.

[Looking For Group Homes]

I'm not really a fan of owning homes on my own. It tends to encourage isolation and time spent not working on your relationships with others. Its also costly to do it yourself and it can be a strain on friendships to share the burden. Many already have a set up too to be honest, I'm much younger then most since I haven't been around as long which I find doesn't really help.

 

Any ideas on who to ask or where to look?

 

[Most crowded clubs in SL?]

The old sims are very simple none the less and easy to load. Straight edges, flat surfaces and not a lot of both overall. So there is that since you either go in the direction of aesthetics or performance. You can't beat things performance wise when they are built out of cubes and spheres.

Its just my impression. Custom mesh objects tend to take longer to build and load when they aren't based on standard shapes and vertices. 

[Most crowded clubs in SL?]

I think the most successful clubs are ones that haven't updated their graphics and kept things simple. SL has been around awhile and it helps people load onto the sim when the graphics are as potato as the 15 year old+ potatoes that have to load them.

Making things look new/ big looks nice, but there's a huge operating cost. Nobody is going to buy a new computer simply to get a better experience in SL.

Kinda unfortunate because a fresh new look is likely what would help a new club open itself to new people, and what a lot of sim owners fall in the trap of doing. In reality, your looking for old, reliable, and stable sims.

[Proper Destinations ~~ Please help me out. ~~]

Oh well. That doesn't really help me build a new destinations guide though.

I was hoping for something a bit more data oriented.

[Proper Destinations ~~ Please help me out. ~~]

One things I don't like about SL is the 'Destinations' tool. It is so derp. Save 'Newcomer Friendly' its really useless in my opinion.

So I was hoping to start something here, a member built destinations guide. It may not be accurate, but would at least be far more useful then what is present. There are a lot of sims out there that are much larger and with higher activity then what is listed here, and that would be a big help for people who don't know where else to get this information.

So please Link a sim, a category and what rank it should hold like this:

~~New Citizens Incorporated,Newcomer Friendly,1~~

~~The Shelter,Newcomer Friendly,2~~

Like I said, I agree with the newcomer portion of it... Just not anything else. And its been like this for too long.

Hopefully with enough replies, I can just dump the replies into a document and separate the data with the special characters ~~ and , which would leave me with something concrete to build upon at some far off time in the future. Anyone else could too if you know how to separate text in a string to column by targeting certain aspects.

Knowledge empowers. So lets share what we know and make SL better for it.

PS. Active map links listed at the bottom of your post would help, but most sims can be found by searching their name... So just watch your spelling. 

[Is SL's Player Base Declining?]

It is.

Its the simple strategy of divide and conquer.

What keeps people in SL is their emotional attachment to others. Memories, experiences, engagement, and other things like that. With SL's main attraction being the sell of land and having your own personal space, the number of connections made and the chances of doing so dwindle. As a result, the attractive force to draw in new individuals or keep the ones they have disappears. 

I'm sure SecondLife has realized this and is just coasting on its former success to milk from the system what it can. Any business only wants to make money in the end, a board of directors will only ever make business savvy decisions. If they want to experience humanity, they can do so when they go home with their families. Every corporate business is like this. That said though, its still a nice place even its decline.