Phil Deakins

Solar Legion wrote: By the by? Spam is defined as unsolicited mail/messages/calls, usually from a business. Like I said, you visited their shop .... Not spam until you ask them to cease and they continue to send. Wrong. Visiting a shop does *not* constitute permission to send communications. Sending IMs/emails solely because somebody visited a place is spam.

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: You seem to want it both ways. You want to be seen as a child and, at the same time, you want to be seen as a 27 year old adult. You can't have it both ways though. If you want to be a child in SL, then you should *be* a child in SL, and accept that there are things you cannot do and places you cannot go. Why exactly can't the OP have it both ways? Nobody can expect to *be* a child in SL and be treated as though s/he isn't a child but tha's what the OP seems to want. E.g. a child avatar can't do any sexual activity in SL, even though it's an adult at the keyboard. The OP seems to want people to accept that the "child" is an adult, and she can't have that. In her initial post, she wrote... I'm the CHILD not and adult looking to seduce children! (her capitalisation) and also... Its ok for a 16 year old to be there, but not a 27 year old to be there just because of their avatar. She's a "CHILD" and she wants to be seen as a child, but she wants people to view her as a 27 year old because that's what the person at the keyboard is. She wants it both ways but she can't have that. If she plays a child, she has to accept that there are some things she can't do and some places she can't go. Incidentally, I do know that those 2 quotes were in different paragraphs and refered to different things, but it doesn't alter anything about her wanting to be seen as both a child and an adult at the same time.

You seem to want it both ways. You want to be seen as a child and, at the same time, you want to be seen as a 27 year old adult. You can't have it both ways though. If you want to be a child in SL, then you should *be* a child in SL, and accept that there are things you cannot do and places you cannot go.

Thank you for the screenshot, Peewee. The cam controls do look acceptable - in spite of the extra buttons above them, whatever they are. I suspect they are extra cam controls that have always existed but I've never used, so they'll do

I've moved store locations in the past and, to do it, I kept both stores open for a number of weeks - about a month - so that as many visitors to the old store as possible got the opportunity to see that it's closing and to take an LM to the new one. Then I closed the old store but kept a small piece of land around the landing point for a platform (the store was in the sky). On the platform, I placed LM-giving signs, stating that the store has moved. After a few more weeks, I removed the platform and signs and sold the land. The whole move took a couple of months, but there was no noticeable drop in sales. When I did it, Picks were very important for rankings and the move killed a load of valuable Picks. But you've already got rankings sorted out so that won't matter. You'll lose people who try to visit your store from their existing Picks unless they find you in search again, but that's the way it is with Picks.

Paladin Pinion wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: I've never used the marketplace, or any of its predecessors, either for selling or for buying, and I never will. But you still feel a compulsion to criticize something you've never used? Interesting. Absolutely. I am a paying customer and I have as much right to question things as anybody else does. When LL ripped off some people with the Homestead fiasco, it didn't affect me financially as I never had a Homestead sim, but that didn't stop me from seeing what they did or from being angry with LL because of what they did to their own paying customers. In this case, I can clearly see that LL is not providing paying customers with the basics, and I'm questioning that failure. Regarding the rest of your post, the person who delists an item *knows* where the item belongs - otherwise s/he wouldn't know that it's in the wrong category. It's trivial to push an extra button to the correct category, and adding the code to do that is extremely trivial too. All it takes is an attitude on LL's part that customers actually matter, and a few minutes to add the necessary code. Both of those appear to be lacking. Time doesn't come into it. There's no comparison between the time taken to reply to tickets and the time taken to press an extra button or select a ctageory from a drop-down list.

Dakota Linden wrote: Hi Phil, At this time, unless the user contacts Customer Support directly, there is no way to advise the seller of the correct category. Don't you even let people know that one of their items have been delisted? If you do, then including the category where an item should be placed is trivial. It's known by the person who delisted the item, and it's trivial to include the category in the communication that tells them that their item has been delisted. If you don't inform people when one of their items is delisted, then I'm utterly gobsmacked, and it would take my opinion of LL as a company down even lower than it is already is - and it's already at rock bottom. So, do you inform people - yes or no? If you were with us back when the Xstreet SL web site was up and running I've never used the marketplace, or any of its predecessors, either for selling or for buying, and I never will. I have such a low opinion of LL as a company that I won't give them, or cause them to receive, a penny more than is absolutely necessary - which is their own fault. Darrius wrote an excellent post about people reading, so I won't repeat what he said, but the people who are responsible for the marketplace really should take notice of it because the way things are done alienates paying customers, which is a *huge* no-no but, unfortunately, it's typical Linden Lab. Twice in this thread you've said that "the categories need work", and I've seen you say it before. It's no good saying it, Dakota. Words don't change anything. It needs to be done.

A couple of days ago, I posted in another thread that, imo, LL should not move items to the correct categories or it would encourage some people to list them more or less anywhere, knowing that LL would sort them out. But that's not my question to Dakota. My question is, since the person who delists an item knows where that item should be listed, why don't they tell the seller? They tell the seller (I think) when an item is delisted so why not include its correct category in that communication? Or... don't they even tell people that their items have been delisted? Surely they do. If they don't, how does a person get to know?

Dakota. You are active in this forum, so here's a question for you... Why is it that your people delist items when they are in the wrong categories but fail to tell the sellers where the items belong? If the person doing the delisting does the job that you say they do (checking before delisting), and knows that an item is in the wrong category, then s/he also knows the correct category for it. But it's clear from a great many posts here that the seller doesn't know that the item is in the wrong place. So why don't your people save your customers from a lot of hassle and confusion by telling them where an item belongs while you are telling them that it's been delisted?

Melvin Starbrook wrote: I think LL should start making a 3.x viewer... A viewer that looks and works like a 1.x viewer and with the new things on the grid (mesh). I think 2.x is an dead end.. Its there for over a year (almost 2 years) and still not many people are using it because they dont like it... most people love 1.x.. wondering what you think Melvin Wondering what I think? I think that LL will never dare lose face over the V2. They created a poll, in which 95% of people were aginst it but they ignored the people. Knowing that population turns over continually, and that the V2 is the only one offered to new users, they'll press on with it regardless, knowing that there will come a time when it's used by the majority of people. Then they'll claim it as a popular success because most people use it. The bottom line is that LL isn't the slightest interested in what their customers think or want.

KeeperS Karu wrote: Well, I suppose I was incorrect in thinking that Linden Lab didn't care about what their customers think Not only does the LL management not care about what customers think, but they simply don't care about customers. They care about having enough customers to be profitable, of course, but they don't care who they are. As long as people are coming in to replace those who are leaving due to LL's bad management, they are content. They would like to increase the numbers, and they've taken failed steps to do it, but they are not concerned with the "people" at any time. That's the generally perceived view, which has been generated by the LL management over the years. Personally, I believe it to be the correct view. I've no idea how LL could go from an F rating to an A+ rating with the BBB but it's a smokescreen. If they managed it, it was for the sake of their reputation and not an indication of any change in attitude towards customers. An example (one of many):- How often do we see threads and posts about items being unlisted from the marketplace, where the seller isn't given any indication as to where the items should be listed? It's every day. And how often do people post that such sellers should be told where the items belong? Very often. If the person who unlisted an item knows where it belongs (and they must know since they could see it was in the wrong category), they would tell the seller where it beloings IF THEY WERE IN ANY WAY INTERESTED IN THE CUSTOMER (the seller). There are even cases where items are in exactly the right place, but there is more than one exactly right place and the person who unlists them decides that it belongs in the other place, but doesn't tell the seller. That's all been going on for so very long and what does LL do about it? Absolutely nothing. They don't even explain why they don't pass the information on to sellers. They simply don't give a damn. I've never used the marketplace so it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I just read about it in the forums and add it to the long list of why I would never lift a finger to benefit Linden Lab. The long list of not giving a damn about customers is the reason why I abandon land rather than sell it - to prevent LL from getting any tier on it for a while.

@ Knowl. I didn't realise you were just trolling. My mistake.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: No marigold was spot on. Your drama about viewers had and has no place in this thread. I don't believe you. Marigold was wrong. I stated a couple of non-drama facts about the V1 viewer, which were relevant to the discussion. The facts were, (1) V1 viewers still rank by traffic in the Places tab, and (2) the V1s are the most widely used viiewers and therefore traffic still matters for search rankings. Perhaps you'd like to show me where the drama is? Or is merely mentioning different viewers drama to you? You quoted that part of my post and pointed to a blog about the V2 viewer, in which the blogger rightly stated that she doesn't need to apologise for using the V2. Not only that, but you posted the identical post - word for word - copy and paste - in at least one other thread. Now, who did you say creates drama about viewers? According to your criteria, that blogger does, even though she doesn't. And *you* certainly do.

LOL. Darnit! I just had to see where the red line link in your signature went to

What I believe about SL: It is run by a company that doesn't care about it's customers. It is run by a company that's intent on extracting as much money as possible from its customers - while there's still time to do it. It is possible for users to make decent RL money from SL.

Knowl Paine wrote: The greatest fallacy of modern economics is the belief that perpetually accelerating growth is possible. Linden Labs Can do anything they want. What LL should do is absolutely nothing. Resident created, the good the bad and the ugly. The thing is, LL have been trying to increase usership. That was the purpose of the failed display names. So they *want* to increase it, and this thread is about ideas of what might work. The idea that "LL should do absolutely nothing" doesn't come into it. When a business is struggling, regardless of the reason (such as the global economy), it has to take steps to try and improve things. When the economy is really bad, it isn't the businesses that save money by not spending on advertising that survive - it's those that keep on spending on advertising, even though they can barely afford it. The SL system can handle a lot more users - it did in the past - and LL have been trying, and failing, to increase the usership. Imo, there are a lot of non-users who would take to SL if they got into it. For me, that means making SL more attractive - more desirable. The initial time (when a person joins) is paramount, and some great suggestions have been made. I particularly like the idea of small "quests", designed to teach new people about SL and how it works, and going up beginner levels when completing the quests so that new people can start out being quite familiar with what SL is and the way that it works. After that, it's making full participation more attractive by greatly improving the land ownership system., plus a huge change in LL's attitude to users - support, etc. It's common knowledge that LL doesn't care about their customers, and new people no doubt soon discover it. It's a big reason why many people leave (including me when I go in the not too distant future). Without putting that right, their attempts to increase usership is like running as hard as you can but staying on the same spot. Getting people in is good, but not so good when you are leaking people at the other end all the time.

Astonishing. Incidentally, scripts do run even when nobody is using them - they have to if they are to perform when someone wants something of them. But they shouldn't be chewing large amounts of time.

Luc Starsider wrote: But you can't really blame them for trying using FB and Twitter as venues for attracting new users. Both are important tools for reaching a huge amount of potential users that was not available a few years back. Whether the result is that the population grows is another matter, and it is not easy to get statistics for it, but the potential is, in my opinion, to great to ignore. - Luc - I don't blame LL for trying to attract people from Facebook and Twitter. I criticise them for trying to increase usership to SL as it is now - presumably because they don't want to risk even a small temporary reduction in income. They've given it their best shots and it hasn't done anything more than hold the decline at bay or slow the decline. They really do need to wake up and make SL more attractive to people. They do need to deal with a new user's introduction to SL, as has been stated here. But what did they do not too long ago? Ditch the mentoring thing and greatly reduce customer support. They go in opposite directions to what's actually needed if increased usership is the goal. When I joined, there was live help from the viewer menu, and they weren't all Lindens. Users were also helpers. They could do that again with just users doing the help. Instead of adding things to help users, they remove them. They do need to do something about land. My view is that users should either pay for the land they actually use, or the tier levels should be evenly spaced, in small increases, all the way up. Either way, full participation in SL would be much more attractive. Added to that, they really should sell homesteads to anyone, without the need to own a full private sim. Imo, it's stupid not to. It would make SL much more attractive to many people, and it would make more money for LL. They do need to make their website mall (marketplace) work. They've been at it a long time and they haven't succeeded yet. Older users may accept non-deliveries and such, but newer people are more likely to find it a Mickey Mouse operation and simply disappear.

Thank you, Arrehn. The V2 does have a couple of excellent features the favourites bar and the outfits system) so, since the cam controls are dealt with, and the sidebar is also dealt with, as mentioned in this thread, I'll download it and give it a go.

I've never looked at Firestorm and I won't look until the cam controls are very much like the V1 cam controls; i.e. translucent when not in focus, moveable, and small. Has that been done in Firestorm?

Your friends can run WoW but not SL? I'm amazed. That really is a biggie. SL can't avoid some lag like WoW does but I'm astonished that system that can run WoW can't run SL.

Randall Ahren wrote: Phil Deakins wrote: Most of the excellent suggestions from users fall on deaf management ears, and the suggestions in this thread won't be any different. Rod our god listens, cares, and answers prayers. We can trust him and put our faith in him. He's for an SL world that works. See his tweet to Ina Centaur. Alright. IF the management "listens" to this thread, then they won't "hear" anything - they never do. But I don't believe they'll even listen. *They are just not interested. The vast SL experience of users weighs nothing when compared to their own miniscule experience of SL. Or they listen and hear and ignore, because it's what they traditionally do. You mentioned Rod tweeting. That's brings up an example of how out of touch LL is with their own customers. Most people don't use Twitter or Facebook but we are told by LL to look in those places if we want to know about what's going on here, How utterly stupid is that? *Yesterday I was talking with a customer. I told her that I've been letting the store run down for the last year and a half and, when the earnings are low enough, I'll close it and leave SL. I told her the two reasons, the biggest of which is LL themselves. She started in SL just before me but she told me that she'd left SL for two years because of LL. There are various reasons why people leave SL and one of the big ones is LL themselves. They really don't have much of a clue about running SL for customers. They literally cause people to leave.

If Pussycat had intended to respond to my remark that you said she responded to, she would have quoted it, but she didn't. She specifically and intentionally quoted another part of my post that mentioned some facts about the V1 viewer (requoted in your post, incidentally), and the blog she pointed to bore no relevance to that part. So, according to the posts, you are wrong. Marigold. But that aside, judging by Pussycat's identical posts (absolutely identical) in this thread and in another one - and maybe more instances that I haven't seen because I don't read most threads - it does appear as though she is plugging either that blog or the V2. Either way, it's not good practise to be posting identical posts multiple times like that. ETA: Even if Pussycat's post was a response to the part of my post that mentioned the V2, which it wasn't, the blog she pointed to would still have been completely irrelevant. The blogger wrote about how she shouldn't have to apologise for using the V2 - and rightly so. By the same token, nobody needs to apologise for disliking the V2 and not using it, or for writing about their dislike of it.

Wildcat Furse wrote: Phil I fully agree to both points! I bought more land yesterday on the mainland sim I live on (note: very rarely people are selling land there, because it is a nice and well maintained mainland sim, I took therefore the offer before it was sold to someone else!) and by this action my landownership increased from 16387 ->23424sqm and my tier went up from 75->125US$ /month. To benefit from the tier I will pay now, I need to get more land so I can reach my maximum land allowance of 32768sqm, but I already know that this will take me ages. Yes LL needs to do something about the tier system :smileymad: *meows* From LL's point of view, your 7k land purchase that will cost you and extra US$50 a month is a plus - they are quids in, as we say in the UK. But how many people don't buy that extra bit of land because it would cost too much more each month? After the first few tier levels, adding land becomes unattractive due to the large increase in monthly tier for even a very small addition, and I'd guess that far more people decide against it than decide for it. Usually, it will be only those who have significantly bigger plans who will move up those larger tier levels. After the first few k, most people will stick to the land they have rather than incur a lot of extra monthly cost, imo. Generally speaking (imo), after the first few k, the attraction of additional land is outweighed by the large jump in monthly tier. Oddly enough, although I often said that "Jack is waste of space and the sooner he goes the better", he was one Linden who used to plug for lower tier costs. He didn't get anywhere with it, of course, and that's really my point in this thread; i.e. LL keep trying to increase the usership but they do very little to improve the attraction. They want the usership of SL as it is to increase and they can't see that SL needs to change and become more attractive for usership to increase significantly. They did do one positive thing - Linden Homes. Although it stepped on the toes of people who rent out homes, it did make premium accounts more attractive, so it did make SL a little more attractive. It may have increased the number of premium accounts but it didn't improve the overall level of usership. Imo, more drastic changes are needed for that to happen. The SL system will only ever be attractive to a minority of people but only a minority of that minority actually stays. As SL is now, it *is* attractive to some people - that's why it has a continual level of usership. But the level is stagnant and, if LL wants it to increase, they really do need to consider some significant changes. Lag will always be with us because of the stream-like nature of SL. Games aren't the same. LL have always tried to reduce it, and I'm sure they'll continue with those efforts. But lag can't be eliminated, so the attraction of SL needs to be great enough to overcome the negativeness of lag. The first and second visits have been rightly mentioned, but then what? Improving those times isn't improving SL itself and people who survive the first few visits are left with SL as it is now. For so many people, fully partaking in SL means partaking in what the SL world actually is - land. But, for some reason that I can't imagine, LL decided to price tier in such a way that, after the first few k, the tier increases are more than many or most people are willing to part with every month. The jumps in tier are just too big. If the jumps were much smaller, then I'm sure that people wouldn't balk at buying extra pieces of land. Oh well. Most of the excellent suggestions from users fall on deaf management ears, and the suggestions in this thread won't be any different.

Vendors don't cause huge lag. Each vendor necessarily has a script running, and they do have textures, of course, which need to be downloaded on arrival, but after the texture downloads vendors won't cause lag. You must be attributing other lag sources, such as people, to vendors.