Jo Yardley

Surely that is a perfectly normal time for people in SL to still be up

Right now premium accounts get; Weekly L$300 stipend* L$1000 sign-up bonus** for first-time Premium Account subscribers Priority entry when regions are full of avatars Linden Home or 1024m² tier allotment for use towards a parcel on the Mainland Expanded live-chat customer support Premium virtual gifts Exclusive access to Premium areas and experiences Increased cap on missed IMs Increased group membership limits Voice Morphing The only things that I find attractive is the increased group membership limits and only because SL groups aren't using sub-groups or even have the option to add more roles!! Please LL give us more roles, they're kind of important if you have a roleplaying region with 100 tenants! The expanded live-chat customer support is nice but I remember the days when we had chat support 24/7 and asking for help regularly resulted in an actual Linden coming over to fix the problem. I bet we can think of quite a few new and perhaps even better benefits that would make the premium account more appealing. I feel another blog post coming up.

Really great to hear that you've changed your mind and decided not to go ahead with some of the planned changes. Although personally would have preferred the new basic limit to be 40 or 50 in stead of 42 because of mild OCD I do hope you still reconsider the rather draconian increase in fees or at least spread this over a few years in stead of in one go. After all it will take quite some effort to get away with raising the rent in my 1920s tenements or increase the price of drinks in my bar. Last time I did that there were riots.

I don't care how many people there are in my group, I don't care about the colour of the carpet. But I do want a stroopwafel.

What about clearing inactive accounts? https://joyardley.wordpress.com/2019/05/31/what-about-clearing-inactive-accounts/

Go to the members & roles tab in your group window, select the members tab. You now get a list of all members of your group, click the 'title' button at the right to sort all members by the last time they've been online. Now select everyone who hasn't been online for a month, a year, years, whatever you think is too long to be offline. Personally I evict people who haven't been online for a year. Once you've selected the names, click eject.

PS it's Linden Lab, no s at the end. They only have one lab, not multiple. And technically they're not even one lab. They don't wear white coats and there is not ONE bunsen burner in the whole building! I checked. Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'll get my coat.

Also sim anniversary gifts Subtle hint.

I'm regular folk, I own two regions and 3 homesteads. But yes, it wasn't easy to get where I am today and it took a lot of work and effort. And of course it took me thinking of a theme for my sim that would attract shopkeepers, tenants, etc. My sim has been paying for itself almost since day one and I started small as a tiny skybox. But I could fill the forum with stories of how i did it and most people don't want to do all that work or own a sim like that and I can't blame them. Land still should be cheaper, cheaper land = more people renting land = more regular income for LL = more shops, communities, experiences & fun = more happy people, more visitors, more to do

I was kind of proud of our group having more than 2000 members now you've taken that away from me as well Mind you my sim uses about 40 groups so I can be proud/sad about that! Either way, at least I kick out everyone who hasn't been online for a year.

For me personally any sim/community/shop that manages to survive a few years under the same owner is doing well! We all know that places in SL come an go as often as I eat stroopwafels. Simply the fact that you've been in charge of a place, kept it running and kept paying Linden Lab for, is something that deserves a little recognition. Of course some places are more of a challenge to keep going, a private little corner for friends doesn't take as much work or effort to keep running as a full roleplaying sim, a big store, etc. But at its core simply surviving is already quite an achievement these days.

The 'My Second Life' pages? I understand that you'd need a lot of budget to make a Facebook clone but we don't need all the FB options to make 'MSL' more useful and turn it into something we would use daily. Especially in combination with groups. If we could move some of the things we now use inworld groups for to the website that would lighten the load a bit, not to mention improve communication. The most important thing I like about FB is the thing I miss with other social networks; group communication. It would be swell if we could at least get an online profile page for our sim, somewhere we can communicate, announce events, chat, etc. More about that idea here; https://joyardley.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/why-i-still-hope-ll-will-improve-my-sl/

I know but that's not really what I meant, that would only take communication options away in stead of adding them. Right now we need groups for everyone in my sim 1920s Berlin who at one time or another needs to communicate in private or who I want to send a note to without bothering all the other 2k members in our group. That is a lot of groups! I don't want to create roles that can't receive messages or chat, I want to send a note or message to just one role without sending one to everyone. Perhaps I've explained better here; https://joyardley.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/improving-groups/ If we could do this and add more roles to groups (much needed!) my sim alone would be able to delete at least 10 groups.

I know and it sure is an improvement.

Same here. Even with lots of people excited about my plans and ready to start renting homes and shops in the new sim, it is still more than I can afford to pay so for both my regions we first had to organise events for months, fund raising, auctions, etc, etc. Starting a sim costs a fortune. Not just the setup fee is something you need to make magically appear you also need to have enough to pay the tier for one maybe even two months while you set up the region. The cheaper they make it the more people rent regions, start communities, open shops, etc. All of that would be good for SL.

Bringing the buy down option back was one of the smartest things LL did in a while, I grandfathered two regions and if they would bring this back I might consider getting another region. Another thing they should do is just completely abolish the setup-fee for new regions. It has always been a hurdle for me and others who are considering getting a region.

I love the idea of people being rewarded for being in SL for a long time or having a business or sim that has been doing well for a while. Every year you've been in SL you get a discount or other type of bonus like extra groups, if your shop has been around for a few years maybe get some extra marketplace options, if your sim has been doing well for a few years maybe get a little tier discount, etc... And I'm not just saying that because my sim today celebrated it's 10th anniversary and all I got was a T-shirt

Can homesteads have a reduction as well please? I'll send stroopwafels to the LL offices if you do.

Write "fewer groups" in stead of "less groups". Sorry, couldn't resist. /me runs and hides behind piles of stroopwafels.

I also like the idea of different kind of premium accounts. Plenty of us have no need for 70 groups, Linden Homes, workspace, free gifts, the stipend, etc. The only reason I'm premium is because you kind of have to when you own land but also for the chat support, although I'm still upset about this service no longer being available 24/7.

There really aren't that many alternatives to SL. The few virtual worlds that are as good and offer as much freedom as SL lack traffic.

One does not exclude the other.

I miss homesteads in the land pricing changes.

As much as I love the other social media options we have to manage and run our SL shops, groups, sims, etc, we are technically breaking the FB ToS by having avatar accounts. It is a bit silly that we have to depend on that when we have groups. Of course it would be even better if SL offered us some sort of online alternative to both groups and social media. A Facebook clone on the SL website would be great and might also take away some of the pressure on groups.

That isn't really what I had in mind. I want to be able to quickly start a chat with only those who are admins, only those who are tenants, only those who are law enforcement, in stead of all the other members in the group at once without having to start deactivating and re-activating everyone's permissions every time. I think adding the option to have sub-groups and chat/send notices to just certain roles would be a huge group improvement and would cut down on the amount of groups needed.