Adam Spark

Fear will kill us before any illness ever should. Practice social distancing, wash your hands thoroughly and often. Get lots of rest and look after your general health. Covid-19 is potentially deadly but it doesn't have to be. I have Spina Bifida so I am high risk. I'm not worried, but I am informed and doing everything I need to do to avoid this. All the best to you and your nana. I hope you stay safe.

Which was my entire point. You play games IN SL, but in and of itself, SL is not a game.

No offense taken at all. I'm not convincing anybody with entrenched attitudes. Its tiresome at best, and likely an exercise in futility as you imply. But there are plenty who are not entrenched in their attitudes but do things they may just not think twice about. Its so easy to remove an issue with a quick ban, even I am guilty of it as a venue owner. So while we may all agree, it never hurts to see a reminder, or perhaps another way we can do what we are doing already. Besides that, I tend to get on my soapbox on certain issues I strongly agree or disagree with haha 🙂

People want to use THEIR dance huds, regardless of what the club has, even if they have the same dances. They leave before even looking at the quality of dance machines a lot of times, because regardless of what the dances are, they aren't interested.

Maybe so, but I am sure the forum has a lot of lurkers, and we certainly see a lot of newbies who may pick up on some things said here for their future on the grid. Having said that, I was merely voicing my agreement with a previous post and expanding on it, not really trying to convince anyone.

I'm not just talking about mentoring, although mentoring is part of it, for those who want to be doing it. I wouldn't want to be mentored by somebody who wasn't passionate about doing so, so I would never suggest we all do that. My point was in response to the idea that one problem is how newbies get treated in here, such as the age minimum for entering some areas. I get the point behind it, but we need to stop painting newbies with a single brush, and when they do wrong, we need to ask ourselves "is it possible they just don't know any better and just need to be told what they did wrong?"

Amen. We as a community need to look to ourselves to curb problems, and this includes educating new users. I cannot tell you the number of new users I've seen mess up only to be educated on how they messed up, apologize for doing so, learn from the error of their ways and become great residents. Some people just don't know any better when they get here. Every time we ban someone, we burn a bridge with somebody that could one day turn into rule/etiquette abiding, contributing residents of SL. None of us can say we were never a newbie, so why do we treat them so badly?

The idea of optional gaming is a good one. Linden Realms was a great idea for giving gamers something familiar to them to do in return for prizes. It was an example of catering to gamers. The problem with introductory gaming mechanics with signs pointing elsewhere as Bitsy put it is it would only serve to drive home the highly incorrect assumption that SL is a game.

Same thing for me. The fact that it is so much more than what any game could ever be has kept me here. SL is no more a game than Facebook is.

This would only work if SL was, in fact, a game.

There are no storylines or quests in Second Life because it is not a game. What to do next is completely up to you. Linden Lab seriously needs to do a better job of letting users know what they are signing up for.

I have friends who have female avatars yet make no bones about the fact that they are male. I don't pretend to understand, but I highly respect the honesty. Be what you want. You owe no explanations. Just be honest.

Nobody is saying games are bad. One of the beautiful things about SL is you can play games within it. Linden Realms, hunts, Greedy, the list goes on. Gaming in Second Life is huge and that is fantastic. Second Life, in and of itself, however, is not a game.

THIS. The biggest difference in 2007 and now is there was a clear vision of what Second Life is/was in 2007. The vision for the future changed and the waters got muddied horribly. Linden Lab has done a great job in a lot of respects recently, backing away from gamifying (yes that is a word dangit) and focusing on community again to a degree (Bellissera is a step in the right direction like we haven't seen in years, in my opinion). But one major failure? New users have no idea what they are signing up for. They see 3D graphics and some of the other tech behind games and they assume SL is another one, and in turn try to "play" it as such, getting confused on what to do next, when the beauty of SL is the lack of a "next". How do you play SL? You don't. You reside in it. There is a reason why we are referred to as residents. We aren't players.

Hopefully seeing the Lab get involved will send a message to them, regardless of them knowing it was you or exactly what they did. Having said that, I know most nefarious individuals couldn't care less, but there is always hope. And if nothing changes, file another. Had they been warned the first time, consequences will escalate. If nothing else, it will send a message that you are dismissing (for lack of a better word, perhaps) their harassment personally and letting the lab deal with it. They might just go away at the implication that you are doing something about it as opposed to letting them win.

I'm reminded of a quote. "Don't tell me what others have said about me. Tell me why they felt comfortable telling you" Or to paraphrase better for this situation: "Don't tell me what others have said about me. Tell me why you seem to believe them." Another quote: "Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter". So yeah, people think you are so-and-so. Remind yourself that changes nothing about you and your life and keep being you. Last quote: "Let em talk"

I HATE the soon thing, but I also get it. LL: "We hoped to release this feature by 3rd quarter, but we've run into asteroids and we're now targeting 1st quarter of 2021." Most residents: "Yeah but you said 3rd quarter so where is it?"

This. Just this. The Coronavirus is good for absolutely, positively nothing. Over 2,000 deaths and we are discussing a benefit to business? Really?! Nascar driver Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500 after fellow driver Ryan Newman was critically injuried. He stopped celebrating once he learned of the severity. Some folks need to take notes. Some things matter. Some things...just don't.

Yep. And Linden Lab's mantra is to always take the easy road by patching the current mess with so called upgrades, so that won't be happening.

That last sentence speaks to the possibilities of where SL can go one day. Technical limitations kept SL from being that game-changer as long as those technical limitations existed. Linden Labs refusal to solve them is what is continuing to keep it from becoming that game changer. VW and VR will be the future if we commit to that and get through the technical hurdles. SL could have been a part of that process, with long-term commitment to do the same.

Typically they contact the performer (usually at a show). As a venue owner, I contact musicians I know. Musicians rarely advertise except in profiles, from what I have seen, in terms of looking for booking. The only exception to this, at least generally, is we may get notecards from them or their managers. Word of advice: Don't hire via ads. Go to shows. Contact the performer or their management (usually found in performer profile). Get their pricing and check your budget. Check crowd level. Balance cost with potential return.

Trying to be the future of the internet. They envisioned a 3D web. They even experimented briefly with a hypergrid project several years ago. Unfortunately it was ahead of its time and discontinued. There is still work being done to create a 3D internet by quite a few companies, but somewhere along the way Linden Lab got out of the space and SL became just another "game".

I respect that opinion. One hill I will die on, however, is that it should have been, still could be and should be that game-changer. It was destined to become that until they stopped trying (likely listening to doubters or electing a shorter term strategy because hey, thats easier). It stopped trying to be the future of the internet and its number of concurrent users has been declining ever since. Not a coincidence in my book. As for not standing next to WoW or GW, I fully agree and that was my point. The tech is its only link to those. My point is that it is largely considered by many of its users to be in that category, and LL does nothing to show that SL is entirely different from those (or any other) games.

You make a great point. It is definitely user-driven, to an extent. I feel like that is partly on Linden Lab, too, however. Take Facebook. Everyone knows it is a social media platform. It won't be user-driven to become anything else, unless the owners of the company open up those floodgates, likely by announcing they are coming up with new ideas outside of the social media space. Linden Lab has failed, in my humble opinion, to explain its platform. I hear too many examples of "how do you play this game?" for a platform that isn't even a game to begin with. That's on you, Linden Lab. Second Life used to have a voice (Its founder, Phillip). Now it has a support system.

The tool I use is my arrow keys. 99.% of places will have more than adequate space for you to be 2m away from the nearest avatar. You can also derender anyone too close to you if you must, and everything will be just as if they are not there.