Phil Deakins

Well, it *was* personal. I simply don't believe that anyone who was starting up a "low prim furniture" business in SL could do it without having a look at what already existed - by at least doing a search on "low prim furniture" or just "furniture". And, if a search was done, my Prim Savers name couldn't have been missed since it was always at and around the very top of the results in both the Places tab and in the All (GSA) tab long before he started up. In spite of what he claimed, I can't believe that his choice of name was not intended to mislead people into thinking that his business was the long-established Prim Savers. But, as you said, we'll let it go at that

I'm surprised if that's all you meant, Void - you made it sound much worse It really wasn't about "so much more" as you put it, and the only thing that could possibly be described as "dirty" on my part was something you didn't know about until I posted it here - keeping his search rankings below the fold, which is something that I don't feel was immoral or unethical, considering the fact that my business name should never have been listed in search as his business name and in the identical field of commerce. I didn't imply that he did anything illegal (although he did), or against the "rules of the moment". I have always said that he stole the name, which he did. Stealing can be perfectly legal, but knowingly using an existing businesses name, so that the business can be mistaken for an already existing business, is against the law. That's why, if you start trading as "CocaCola" or "Coca Cola", you will be taken to court by "Coca-Cola", found guilty under the law, and made to pay. It's civil law, but it's law just the same. A registered trademark isn't necessary - it merely makes it easier to prove the case. Camping has never come up in the discussions concerning this matter. I've no idea whether or not he used camping but I never did until earlier this year for a while, when it was perfectly in accordance with the rules - it was on its own parcel which was not listed in search. The use of bots never came into it either. I've no idea if he used bots or not. I used to use them when they were allowed, as you know, but the rules changed and I stopped using them before he started his business. So this matter is not about "so much more" at all. It's only about someone knowingly using my long-established business name to trade in the same field of commerce, so that his business could easily be mistaken for mine, and nothing more.

ditto The problem with going public is that the other side can enlist friends to lie, and there is absolutely no way that readers can know who is telling the truth, so the victim can end up smelling of as much s**t as the thief. For that reason, a blog is perhaps the best option if going public is felt to be a necessity.

You interest me, Void. What was dirty on my part? I'm not aware of anything that I've done that could be remotely considered as "dirty pool", unless you mean that starting a thread about it was dirty pool? If that's what you mean, I disagree. You say that it's about "so much more". Apart from the guy using my long-established business name to compete in the same field of commerce, what more is there? I've nothing to hide so please post the answer to these questions. ETA: I already posted that for a while I controlled the top search results so that his place stayed below the fold. Whenever he made a ranking move upwards, I caused him to make a move back down again, by pushing other people's places up above him. I suppose that that could be considered dirty but it was nothing that I feel morally ashamed of - and it was fun :-) Only two people knew II was doing it so I don't think you meant that.

Yes, it was discussed at length in the old forum and again in the Concierge group. The only couple of people who sided with him were friends of his (in the old forum but weren't forum users). Everyone else told him that he was doing wrong.

I'm not happy about it, but I'm not angry. He didn't steal my idea though - low prim furniture was made and sold by quite a number of people. he stole my business name which annoyed me at the time, but it hasn't bothered me for quite some time now. When I discovered it, I ARed it, but the AR ws ignored. As we know, they don't get involved in such things, which is to the detriment of SL, albeit only slightly because it's rare for people to stoop so low.

No. They never interested me because of the very low numbers of users/customers.

It's probably as I suggested earlier - that the people who created the new system are not the ones who would change what appears in search, and the people who do that would get round to it in their own good time. It just means that the system ought not to have been launched until it was *all* ready, but it's LL, and LL doesn't do things in a sensible way.

I never thought of that. If I had, I might well have done it.

He added "Prim Savers" (with the space) as secondary to his trademark application, perhaps out of nastiness but, more likely, because he knew the truth about what everyone told him. I knew that he'd added it from the start - LL emailed me about it and provided the URL to the application. I can't fault LL with regards to this.

That wouldn't do at all ... hehe. I still like the SL environment but I seriously dislike the way that LL runs it and what they do to their paying customers. That was the biggest reason for me deciding to close down. It's also the reason why I abandoned 3/4 of my land rather than sell it - specifically to stop LL getting tier on it for a while. The other reason was boredom with store stuff. I still occasionally get a twinge of desire/inspiration and I've added some new things since I started the closing process - even as recently as just a few weeks ago. It's in me to wish that I could get inspired again but, whenever it surfaces, I remember LL and it soon disappears again. I simply don't want to have any dealings with LL because of the nature of the company. Some of the empoyees are excellent people, but the company is extremely bottom drawer.

I don't need to open that URL you linked to because it's a quiz question - what was Thomas Crapper famous for?

Wildcat Furse wrote: my respect for this tough decision .... no doubt success will stay at your side Phil!! *meows* With a wildcat on my side, how can I fail?

If I'd thrown the money at it and prevented him from getting the mark, I'd have gone the whole hog and got the mark myself - and then asked LL to stop him using the name. But I stopped having an interest in search rankings in December and I guess that was when I stopped having an interest in his trademark application. Since then, I've abandoned 3/4 of my land because business has deteriorated, which is what I've been aiming towards, and I don't think the store will exist for many more months, so it doesn't bother me at all. The worst thing that could have happened would be if his place outranked me in search, but he wasn't up to achieving that until I stopped taking an interest in search last December. A recent search shuffle got him above me but, by then, it really didn't matter to me.

Linda: Both Prim Savers and Prim Misers are very good names for low prim furniture stores. Prim Saver is a very good name for a temp rezzer, which is a product and not the name of a store. There are 2 types of business name - descriptive and pure brand. I prefer descriptive, which is what I chose. Linda Brynner wrote: Be creative Phil, there are many alternative that will help you to be unique in Search. Not gonna tell you though :smileytongue: I have a list of at least 5 perfect alternatives. Having been a seo expert since '98, I've always been at the top of the in-world search results - until recent months when I stopped taking an interest in it. At one time I was responsible for the top 7 or 8 rankings for 'low prim furniture'. As well as my own place, I pushed other people's places up the rankings, to intentionally lower the ranking of the place that was using my business name - so that his place was always below the fold. The other places didn't know I was doing it - it was beneficial for them so there was no need to tell them.

Luc Starsider wrote: Good luck with the new business name! You're not thinking of leaving SL when Prim Misers stop generating money, are you? - Luc - Yes. That's what I've been aiming at for a year and half now.

Ty, PeeWee. I certainly would have been spitting nails if I hadn't already started the process of letting the business fade when I first came across him using my business name.

I have been trading in SL as Prim Savers for almost 4 years (since 2007), in the low prim furniture field. About a year ago, someone else decided to enter the low prim furniture field and he used the name PrimSavers. When asked about it, he claimed that PrimSavers is a different name to Prim Savers because it doesn't have a space in it. He thinks that CocaCola is so different to Coca-Cola that it can be legitimately used. :smileyvery-happy: Following a number of public discussions, he decided to apply for a trademark on PrimSavers and, for good measure, he included Prim Savers. As soon as he applied for the mark, he naively asked LL to stop me using my business name but, of course, LL wouldn't do that because he'd only applied for the mark - he didn't have it. I could have prevented him from getting it due to my proveable prior use, but for a long time I've been allowing the business to fade - my intention is to close it completely when it's no longer making worthwhile RL money (it's taking a very long time to fade to that extent) - so I chose not to spend the money it would have cost. The mark has now been granted and he again asked LL to stop me using the business name, "Prim Savers", that I've been using since 2007, and I have no choice but to comply. So, as of May 12th 2011, the widely known "Prim Savers" is trading in SL as "Prim Misers". An aside: when I started the store back in 2007, I would have much prefered the name "Prim Misers", but I'd mistakenly thought that U.S. people would spell it "mizers", so I decided on "Prim Savers" :)

I use the Lindex - time doesn't matter to me. Ziggy21 Slade wrote: Ai Velde wrote: Virwox because it's instant. Ditto Plus I just could not bring myself to reward LL with extra conversion commissions, when they 'improved' their service to us by increasing the cash out time from instant to 5 days, its so astoundingly pitiful, it's almost unbelievable. I bolded the bit that I'm responding to. It *is* believable because it seems to me that LL doesn't want to operate a cashout system at all, or they want to hang onto as much US$ as they can for as long as they can. Increasing the time from instant to 5 days isn't the first indication. Some time ago, they stopped sending cheques and they will only pay a minimum of US$10,000 into a bank account. The auto-creating and sending of cheques (minimum US$1000 or US$5000 if my memory is correct - I've forgotten) doesn't take many minutes once a week so there is no reason not to have continued doing it, but they stopped, claiming that the time it took was the problem. Every other company that sends cheques to users manage it just fine, and their minimum is usually a mere US$100. So, imo, LL didn't tell us the truth about why they stopped doing it, and for increasing the minimum for bank transfers to US$10,000. Changing from instant to a 5 day delay may well be for the same sort of reason and, to me, it's not "unbelievable".

Inworld stores are suffering due to a number of things, but not lucky chairs and things like that. Imo, the biggest cause is LL's unscrupulous activites with the marketplace. In spite of the fact that, technically, the marketplace continues to be a complete joke, LL push it everywherre they can - all over the website, people's account pages, bulk emails, etc., and they do it at the direct expense of inworld stores. The SL population continually turns over so a large chunk of the current population, perhaps most of them, don't know a time before the marketplace and, to them, it's the standard way of buying things - with inworld stores probably being something of a novelty or merely a secondary method.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: I've always been told you could only have the land put into the auction queue, and not request it specifically - unless it was a micro lot next to you. Most of these are full lots of the 512, 1024, and larger size. It's the opposite. You couldn't have land once it was in the auction queue but you could have abandoned land that hadn't yet made it to the queue, provided that it was 512 or less and you already owned the land adjoining 3 sides of it - unless it's a corner plot, of course. It looks like they have increased or abandoned the maximum size for acquiring via a ticket, which does make sense considering the amount of abandoned land these days, and the new system.

Tari. It seems to me that you are tilting at a windmill by finding fault with someone who chose to get some facts about the topic of this thread. Whether or not you would choose to get some facts doesn't matter. The fact is, it is *good*, and preferable, to have facts when discussing something, and Ai did a very good job in getting some which, as someone said, threw a completely different light on the matter. You said that you prefer to look at the problem than the person. That's exactly what Ai did.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: The LL process is automated, not manual. Did any of you think to file an AR and support ticket before calling LL's out here for not doing anything about something nobody told them about? Don't you think that they *should* have thought about these things before implementing the new system. They shouldn't need anyone to tell them, as possibilities like this one, and others that have been mentioned in this thread, would cross the mind of anyone with even a small degree of competence as they were creating the system. That being so, those who created this new system either lack competence (highly likely) or they realised the possibilities/probabilities and decided that they don't care.

Before tearing all of your hair out on it, you do need to know whether or not your parcel is being listed in the top 1000 - for each of your searchterms. I assume that you got the tool from Darrius, so ask him. If the tool doesn't search all the way down to 1000, then you need to do it by hand. If your parcel isn't in the top 1000, then you need to filter the searches until your parcel *is* in them. In other words, you need to do the tests that I described in my previous post so that you know whether or not there is actually anything you can do about the problem. If it turns out that there isn't anything you can do with that parcel, you can stop tearing your hair out and resign yourself to the situation. It's pointless keeping on trying if there really isn't anything you can do with that particular parcel. Reminder: If the limited-size results set gets filled before the whole of the index has been looked at, then the matching/relevant pages in the part of the index that hasn't been looked at are left out. If your parcel's page is in that part of the index, there is nothing you can do to change the situation for that parcel. In that circumstance, the obvious question is, how do I change my page's location in the index, so that it get looked at sooner rather than later? The answer is, you can't. LL feeds the pages to the search engine (the GSA) and that must be done is some order or other. That's the only place to make an effective change, but we have no ability to do it. What we can do is change the parcel; i.e. get a parcel that will be fed to the engine in a very different place in the order. Experimenting with different parcels, NOT in the same sim, ought to be worthwhile. ETA: I'll give an example of what I mean by filtering the search, etc. Some time ago, I had the situation where one of my parcels wasn't listed in the top 1000 for its main searchterm. But when I filtered the results, so that only Mature parcels were listed, my parcel's page ranked on page #1. The pages around it in the rankings also ranked on page #1 when the results were not filtered, but mine didn't even get into the top 1000. In other words, my page outranked those others when it was in the results set - when it had the opportunity to compete with them, but that only happened when the results were filtered. When I filtered the search, my page got into the results set, but when I didn't filter the search, my page did not get into the results set. The effect of filtering the results is to leave out many relevant pages because they don't match the filter; e.g. they are adult or PG, but the filter selects only Mature. It means that the engine goes much further into the index to fill the results set and, when that happened, *my* page was included. Without the filtering, the engine filled the fixed-size results set before it reached my page, and my page could never get into the results. That could be happening to your page and you could tear your hair out for a long time without any possibility of success. That's why you need to to find out if your page is in the top 1000 and, if not, you need to do the tests - so that you know what you are dealing with. NOTE: The fixed size of results set is almost certainly larger than 1000. When Google started, they used a 40,000 page results set, ranked them and returned only the top 1000. The engine that SL uses is a Google engine (the GSA) which definitely uses a fixed-size results set but, since it's only a mini-engine, it's like to be a *lot* less than 40,000. It could even be as low as 1000, but it's most likely to be a bit more than that.

hehe. Maybe they did. I just couldn't believe that they put most of their remaining money on that particular answer, but they did. They lost their remaining £25k on the next question and they ended up with nothing.