Phil Deakins

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: You'll have to move to Paris. There's good money to be made there indeed Phil... on top its surely less hot than here... :smileyvery-happy: /me starts to get ready all packages in prevision of a moving to Paris ... /me starts packing too - to welcome you to Paris, and to audition you for the job

They may have posted by hand, but... The auto-posts that are most likely to be successful are those that don't get right in the users' faces - like the Paris ones. The 'mumbai' type would fill many pages of threads if they weren't stopped in their tracks. No active forum would let the posts stay so I can only come up with 2 reasons for them:- 1. In the hope that search engine spiders will crawl the forum's pages before the posts have been removed. 2. Many forums are inactive but they still get crawled. Perhaps the target is those forums, but they post to as many forums as they can, hoping that some are inactive and the posts won't be removed. But, even then, the creators of search engines are not stupid, and they won't index all of the repeated links on a page.

You'll have to move to Paris. There's good money to be made there

Melita Magic wrote: According to documentary television (which we all know is true), here are a couple of random facts. The battle was going in King Harold's favor, when one of his soldiers decided to show off, and run after the retreating invaders. That broke the infallible line, and the battle turned. William the Conqueror's coffin exploded inside the chapel, during his funeral, and showered the attendees with goo. I never heard about the coffin explosion, but the Brits going against orders, by breaking ranks and chasing the Normans, is reflected in the monologue. And it is the cause of Harold's defeat because, until that happened, the Normans didn't have much of chance of winning. The monologue is quite accurate about things - the slope of the ground, for instance, and the breaking of ranks. Another fact: Normandy, where the Normans came from, was set aside for the Vikings to live in. 'Norman' means 'north man' - men of the north - where the Vikings came from. I didn't know that until relatively recently. And yet another little known fact: After Harold got the arrow in his eye, one of his officers rushed up to him and said, "Keep blinking, Harry. It'll work its way out." Some of the U.S. people probably won't understand all of the monologue but probably realised that the battle is being described as though it was a game with the rules of football - proper football, not American football - including the offside rule, which is mentioned.

You'll put in a good word for me, won't you? I'll throw myself on your mercy and do whatever you want.

Oh no! Oh no no no no no! I'll get a warning and I couldn't bear that, It will upset me for a week, or even more. I won't be able to sleep or do anything. It doesn't really matter whether or not the so-called mod can tell the difference between humour and a true dispute. If someone RICs it, the post is an offense. You're in trouble now girl

lol. I was about to reply that it would prevent 99% of genuine posts too, and then I read that you'd covered that It would certainly get rid of all the posts by those whose first language isn't English

Did you start this thread? lol Sowwy

Innula Zenovka wrote: I realise things can go, and have, in the past, gone, badly wrong with Resident Moderators, but all I can say is that Cristiano's system seems to work. This may surprise people who know SLU primarily by reputation, but... If people over there had the power to do anything other than remove posts that were obviously spam, then I agree, it would be potentially a disaster. But, as it is, everyone knows that the only thing anyone other than Cristiano can do is remove obvious spam, and people trust him to run his policy fairly. That might, I suppose, partly be because he's running the forum because he wants to, and presumably is monetising it somehow. In contrast, these forums sometimes feel as if they're there simply because LL feel they're expected to provide the damn things. In any case, people here wouldn't necessarily need to know what's going on. If LL simply approached some of the saner regulars in these forums and asked them if they could help by hiding obvious spam, provided they didn't let on to anyone that's what they were doing, then all the rest of us would know is that LL seemed to be dealing with spam far more promptly than had been the case. I can't really argue against you points, Innula. I've no idea if this software allows for such a low-powered moderator. I would be very much against fully fledged resident moderators though, and I am very much in favour of putting a CAPTCHA in the SL account creation process - not in the forum. If it stops some spam, then it's well worth doing, even if it doesn't stop all of it. Anything that reduces the spam is well worth doing, and adding a CAPTCHA is very very easy. There's another thing that would stop some of the spam, and proper forum software has been doing for many years. It's a timeout so that posts can't be edited after a certain amount of time has elapsed - 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever. An example of the type of spam it would stop has just resurfaced. It's where a post is made (usually it's a new thread but not necessarily so), and later, when it's scrolled down out of plain sight, it is edited to contain links to other websites. Mostly, that type of spam is never spotted because it doesn't usually resurface. It stays down/hidden and the search spiders index it. I've no idea if this software is able to set a timeout on editing posts, but decent forum software has been doing it for many years. If this software can do it, it should definitely be turned on. Not turning it on is very irresponsible.

Coby Foden wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: A standard rule in forums is that moderator decisions can't be questioned or discussed (in the forum). I think this forum has the same rule, or one very much like it. Yes, the mods are protected from any possible criticism arising if they happen to make a simple human misjudment error. :smileyindifferent: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official-Discussion_guidelines

Why have you put a link to the Employment sub-forum instead of to the release notes?

LOL

Giving regular users the power to do something can go very wrong. There's an LL-owned group that was sometimes spammed, as groups often are. A few users asked to be made moderators so that they could deal with the spam, and they became moderators specifically for that purpose. The moment they became moderators, they suddenly saw themselves as running the group, even to the extent of telling people to stop discussing RedZone because it had been discussed earlier in the day (when the current people discussing it were fast asleep in bed). I was actually ejected from the group because I politely, but continually, refused to accept that decision by a spam-moderator. One of them even said, "Do you think we should let people talk about whatever they want to talk about?" Remember, they became moderators specifically to deal with the spam. People can get dillusions of grandeur given the opportunity. On the other hand, RA had a resident-moderator who was very good at it. Not everyone gets corrupted by a teeny bit of power but too many do.

Ok, I'll accept that. Nevertheless, a CAPTCHA system would prevent some spamming, and it wouldn't interfere with users if it were part of the SL registering process rather than on each new thread. There are other methods too. If LL had any interest at all in this forum, they would do something about the spam. It can be done quite easily if they want to do it.

lol - stubborn as hell A standard rule in forums is that moderator decisions can't be questioned or discussed (in the forum). I think this forum has the same rule, or one very much like it. It means that the so-called moderators don't have to explain a decision to you. The so-called moderators we have here are particularly bad because they don't moderate. They only act on RICs with the assumption that an RIC is correct. It's possible that they may sometimes look at a post - give it a cursory glance - but they don't moderate. For instance, I might post that "you are talking out of the back of your head", and you might RIC it. A cursory glance at my post would indicate that I insulted you and I would get a warning. What a cursory glance at my post wouldn't show are the myriad of insults you threw my way before I resorted to saying that you are talking out of the back of your head - a very mild statement considering all the insults you threw my way. A cursory glance would not show that you are incredibly guilty and I am the innocent and injured party. The so-called moderators wouldn't know anything about that because they don't moderate - they don't look. If they did, it would be you who got the warning, and not me. But that's not the way it works here.

It just occurred to me that, if the managers are not LL employees, then it's in their own interests not to inform LL of the amount of spam. Perhaps it's time to continually inform the top man about it.

I didn't know such a nasty thing was available. Even so, the spammers don't use browsers, so that extension wouldn't help them too much. They don't target this forum. They target as many forums as they can find that allows them to freely post, and this forum is just one of many. If LL took steps to prevent the auto-register-and-post, like most forums do, the spam would be a thing of the past. The sort of bulk threads that we get here is not common in most forums, so it's easy enough to prevent it.

There's an SL lookalike (reverse engineered SL) that you can make money and cash out from. I forget its name but it has a 'z' in it. InWorldz? Something not too dissimilar to that. Someone will know it and hopefully post it. It doesn't have many users though, so there isn't much money to be made there.

I've also recently said that a CAPTCHA system is easy to implement and would prevent all the spam threads. (I spelt it CAPCHA though - without the T) To the OP: A CAPTCHA system isn't needed for every new thread. It's only needed when a person registers with the forum. But I don't think we register for the forum, so it's needed when a new person creates an SL account. Having it for every new thread is overkill. It's only needed once when an account is created. It's just too easy to implement.

I keep telling you that the managers here don't put any thought into the accuracy of RICs. They just assume them to be correct, and they won't even know what part of your post was supposed to be wrong. I've asked myself in the past but they can't answer. If they did go to look, they'd be embarrassed so they simply don't tell you. Someone RICed your post. The managers don't follow the forums so they don't find wrong posts themselves. If they did, they'd be moderators, and we don't have any moderators here. They rely on RICs, and someone who didn't like you or your post RICed it. When they get an RIC, they merely assume it's right, and deal with it as though it is right.

I beg to differ with you Qie, which is something I rarely do. I don't think it would be difficult at all for some people think that the offer is for multiple quarters. Not permanently, but more than one quarter. I do think it's misleading. It would have been very easy to change the word "per" to something that's actually true. At the very least, the way they've done it can be misleading.

Good enough. Ty,Coby.

Just out of interest, is there anything in the forum's rules or ToS that says that threads must not go off-topic? Does the forum actually have a ToS? Or is that a figment of the 'managers' imaginations?

I haven't been reading this thread but I just read the last page and I agree with what you posted on the page The graphic shows that the wording is definitely wrong. The word "per" means "for each" - always more than one. The bubble, although technically correct, could very easily be misunderstood as meaning that the offer of a discount is time-limited - encouraging people to grab it while it's there.. At the very least, the two of them together ("per" and the bubble) are confusing, and could very easily lead some people to believe something that isn't true. Is it intentional? Imo, it probably is.

That's a gloomy outlook. It's not true either. The part that's are not true is, "There might be a very few exceptions, people who invested a large amount of money and effort in running a business in SL and after years of doing so are now seeing a positive income flow," Making worthwhile RL money in SL doesn't need to take a large amount of investment money, or years of effort.