Phil Deakins
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Posts posted by Phil Deakins
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First let me say "well done" for being able to cash out enough to pay an RL bill! A lot of SL businesses just make enough to pay their way in SL (tier and some shopping), and some don't even manage to make enough for their tier. So very well done!
My business has deteriorated over the last year or more but it still just about makes enough for me to live on, bearing in mind that I don't have a mortgage or rent to pay. In the past it earned more than the average UK person's RL wage so it was good back then. In the future, it will continue to deteriorate to the point of closing the business. But that's not a bad thing as I decided to let it do that about a year and a half ago. It's taking a long time but it's getting there.
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Another one that still makes me chuckle when I think of it ...
Later in the skybox business, I improved the skyboxes with a decor system. From the menus, tenants could change the texture and colour of every inside surface, including the ceiling and the floor. There were 2 small walls inside the boxes, which they could choose to make disappear ("hide") if they didn't want them there. When they disappeared, they became phantom so that they weren't in the way. But I made a mistake when writing the system and I put a "hide" button in the floor's menu. Clicking it made the whole skybox phantom.
It was in the system for quite a long time until, one day, a tenant IMed me to ask why he'd just fallen through the floor and plummeted to the ground. That's when I discovered the mistake. It made me laugh, and still does, when I think of unsuspecting tenants going through those menus, reaching the floor one and thinking, "I wonder what this button does" :smileyvery-happy:
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Hippie Bowman wrote:I found this in the Knowlage Base! I use a version 1 viewer but i think it is the same.Showing or hiding usernamesTo show or hide usernames inworld, both in chat and over every avatar:
- Log into Second Life.
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ChooseMe > Preferencesfrom the top menu.
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Click theGeneraltab.
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Select theUsernamescheckbox. If the box is checked, usernames are shown. If the box is not checked, usernames are hidden.
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ClickOK.
Peace!
That's for you to hide other people's, but you can't hide your own name from other people.
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I've written this down before but I can't resist writing it down again ...
My first SL business was skybox rentals. The skyboxes were stacked vertically although some were offset a bit. They had plenty of space in between. One day I rented one out to a guy and within 2 or 3 minutes of doing that, I had something to do to a skybox higher up than the one I'd just rented out. For speed in flying up, I put on my carbon rod, which allows you to fly damned fast, and I flew upwards.
I thought I'd set off up to the side of the skybox I'd just rented out but I hadn't. The carbon rod is so fast that I only stopped when my head and shoulders were up through the skyboxe's floor. As chance would have it, my head and shoulders were in the bedroom and the guy and his girl were stark naked, and banging away on the bed. Luckily, I was at the foot of the bed and they were concentrating on each other so they never saw me, or at least nobody said anything to me afterwards.
It still tickles me to think of renting a skybox, and being at it on the bed, when this head and shoulders mysteriously appears coming up through the floor :smileyvery-happy:
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Hippie Bowman wrote:Then I hid my name and group tag...
But you can't hide your name from other people. You can only hide it on your own screen.
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Darrius Gothly wrote:Wow .. how about that. When you click the link from the V2 web-based search page, it takes you to their my.secondlife.com profile page.I guess they really mean it about moving everything to the web, huh?
And in the process, do away with V1 bit by bit so that it will eventually become unusable.
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Darrius Gothly wrote:Try this experiment: Create a new parcel but do not set it to show in Search. Get the UUID and check the web page generated for it. It may take up to six hours for the page to be created, but you'll see that it has the "noindex, nofollow" meta tag once the page appears.Next delete the Parcel by joining it back into its original "Parent" parcel and, after the next scheduled HTML update, you will get a server error.
I don't need to do the experiment - I accept what you say. But just out of inteest, how do you get the UUID of a new parcel that isn't in search? It doesn't get listed on the region page.
A side issue: is it no longer possible to do an All search for a person in V1 and click their name to see their html profile page?
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Couldbe Yue wrote:Phil Deakins wrote:However, it takes sme time for Google to drop a page after it no longer exists and their crawler starts to receive 404s. Where have you seen the rel="nofollow" attribute applied?you mean this?
<div id="language">
<arel="nofollow"id="language-drop"href=""><span>Language</span></a>That's the rel="nofollow" attribute. It turned out that Darrius meant the robots meta tag.
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That page "connot be found". Either you've got the url wrong or it deosn't exist. I was going to ask if LL actually makes pages for parcels that are not set to show in search but I can't imagine any reason why they would.
I think that LL can remove a previously indexed page from the GSA without waiting for the GSA to drop it, which I think takes a while even if it's no longer included in the feed. Knowing the Google will take some time to drop a page from its index after 404s start to be returned for it, perhaps LL add the robots meta tag to a page that was set to show in search but changed to not show in search, and leave it intact for a while so that the Google crawler will get in and the Google system will remove it from their index. After a while, LL can delete the page.
ETA: it was the url that was wrong - the page does exist.
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Quotes fill space, often unnecessarily
I only use them when there are other posts between the one I'm responding to and my response.Those who prefer not be found inworld usually use alts in the forum. Anyone not using an alt can be found inworld.
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Medhue Simoni wrote:The only picks that counted hadPayment info used in the profile.
It wasn't that. It was avatars that had an html page. Most html pages were caused by payment info used but not all. Some were caused by creating a group, regardless of whether or payment infor was on file or used.
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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:Most picks that I've seen in people's profiles were set at completely random spots and then overwritten with some "useful" information in the lines of "this is bubblegumgirl92 shes my main squeeze mess with her and ill bleeping brutalize u and ur SL family", or "RP Limits: no use of thread cutters, orbital sanders or power drills above the belt line". I'm not sure how relevant that kind of information could possibly be to anybody.
Those Picks didn't make any difference to the search results, and spoiled nothing. I'll explain why...
The reason why Picks were powerful in improving rankings is because each Pick in the person's profile page had a link pointing to the Place's page. But it was never a case of the one with the most links wins - it's wasn't a links count. The thing about a link that made a difference was its clickable link text, because that text was attributed to the page that it pointed to, and it had more power that the actual text on the Place's page. So, if a Pick's link text was, say, "low prim furniture", then that link would improve the Place's ranking for a search on "low prim furniture". If the link text was changed by the person who had the Place in their Picks to, say, "my sweetheart", then the Pick would cause the Place's ranking to improve for a search on "my sweetheart", but it would do nothing for a search on "low prim furniture".
So Picks that were changed by the Picker didn't change the rankings for the Place in either direction, except for the words that the Picks were changed to. And a Place having one Pick in someone's profile, with the link text "my sweetheart", didn't make a mess of the results for a search on "my sweetheart" or "sweetheart".
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"Foxdale" shouldn't be listed in the results on a search for "fox". They are two completely different words and "fox" is not the stem/root of "foxdale".
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Darrius Gothly wrote:You are correct, from what I know the links to Parcels not set to show in search are also not included on Region pages. If Region page links were the only method to "discover" pages used by Google, this would indeed guarantee that no parcel page would be indexed unless it was linked from a Region page. However, Google does not use that method exclusively. In my estimation, the 'nofollow" simply ensures it won't get indexed, even by "accident".
There are only two ways in which Google "discovers" pages. One is through links that point to them and the other is from sitemaps submitted to Google. For most of Google's existance, it was just the first - links pointing to pages, and you couldn't get a page into their index unless another page linked to it. Since Google introduced the submission of sitemaps, I don't know whether or not a page that is included in the sitemap will be crawled and indexed if it doesn't have at least one other page linking to it - probably not. So, unless LL creates links to no-search parcel pages that we don't know about, no-search pages won't appear in the Google index. However, it takes sme time for Google to drop a page after it no longer exists and their crawler starts to receive 404s. Where have you seen the rel="nofollow" attribute applied?
Here we remain opposed. The results I see from checking Google do not reflect what I would "expect" to see .. for many reasons. Among those are of course the lack of Google's ability to consider the parcel listing as pertaining to a Virtual World with its own set of contextual indicators, but also because they do not have access to the myriad other details that LL could use to help assure relevant and honest results. (For example, Google cannot index the Asset Servers, the Sim Database Servers or even understand what "L$" means and why it is different than "L$0".) Google also does not index Parcel Pages on nearly the same schedule as does the GSA.I believe the peculiarities of Second Life, (as well as the peculiarities of many other businesses that use a GSA) are exactly why Google began the GSA project and why so many companies find them useful. Google does work, but only sort-of (IMO) and not in a way that helps or makes sense for the purpose of in-world commerce.
There is absolutely no need for Google to "consider the parcel listing as pertaining to a Virtual World with its own set of contextual indicators". Parcel pages are just html pages, and no different from any other html pages on the web, and the Google engine is perfectly suited to indexing and ranking them. It's exactly what it was created for. No search engine is suited to treating their content in a *special* way, of course.
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I'm sorry, Void, but I just don't agree with your reasoning. Of course most people would recognise the Coca-Cola logo - it's known throughout the world - but images in forums aren't remembered as a brand icon in anything like the same way. I've known your name for years but I couldn't apply it to your image if I only saw the image. And don't forget that a *lot* of people haven't got used to your image (or name). Apart from that, how would the many people who either never got to know your name or can't relate it to the image (like me) address you? E.g. @the person who saud "whatever", or "I'm sorry, whoever you are, but ..." Also, how can someone find a person inworld if they only have an image to go by?
Whilst I understand your thinking, I don't agree that it holds up. By all means, create or keep the "brand" that's associated with the image, but please make it clear who you are as well. I think that most people would prefer to see your posts and attribute them to "Void Singer" than to "the person with a particular image" . The Coca-Cola logo is recognisable throughout the world BUT it's attributed to Coca-Cola - a name, not an image.
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I'm sure that nofllow isn't necessary when a parcel/page is not set to show in search. Didn't they remove not-in-search parcel links from region pages a while back, and started only including pacrels that are set to show in search?
I disagree with the idea that parcel pages are different to what Google is designed to handle. Google, and all web engines, is designed to handle *exactly* pages like our parcel pages - html pages, regardless of content. Parcel pages are no different to any other html pages on the web.
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Yes, I realised that the "matching items" numbers in the main area (not in the sidebar) is a piece of bad design - wrong numbers for the category being displayed.
So it was LL who created the marketplace in a "hell of a mess" condition when they migrated stuff from xsl. It's just too shoddy for words. But it's Linden Lab so it's only to be expected.
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I don't agree with you, Void, although I do understand your thinking. While some people may well recognise your graphic as being Void Singer, many or most people won't. For instance, I've known your name very well for a long time, and I recognise your graphic, but if I only saw the graphic, I couldn't put a name to it. And don't forget that many people who use the forum won't even recognise your name so they've no chance with just your graphic. Forums are text environments where names are the main way of knowing who is talking and who you are talking to. In RL it's faces but in forums it's text - names.
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I've just had a look at the marketplace and I'd like to ask a question:-
I selected the Home and Garden category, under which are categories such as Furniture. Tthe Furniture category also has sub-categories such as Living Room Furniture. The top level category, Home and Garden, has 224884 matching items and the matching items numbers decrease as you move down the category levels. I assume that those "matching items" numbers in the main area (not the sidebar) are just bad design and that they don't reflect the number of items that are listed in the displayed categories. E.g. I assume that there are not 224884 items listed in the Home and Garden level category, but there is a total of 224884 items listed in that catgeory AND all the categories below it.
When I look in the Home and Garden level, I see a very large number of items listed that belong in lower level categories (I don't mean the Featured Items). For instance, there are two beds on the first page, plus several items of seating, all of which belong in categories below the Home and Garden one. And there are pages and pages and pages of them. I would say that none of them belong in the Home and Garden category according to Dakota's posts in this thread, and that all of them are guilty of not being as advertised.
Now the question. Have I understood those listings correctly or does the marketplace show some listings from categories below when there are none in the category itself?
If all those listings have been placed IN those categories, then the marketplace is in a hell of a mess and I couldn't criticise anyone for placing their stuff much higher up the category tree than it belongs, although, if I were shopping there, I'd drill down the sidebar categories to the things I'm looking for, such as Living Room Furniture or Bathroom Furniture, so the design of the marketplace doesn't really suit placing stuff in higher levels, unless it's displayed on the first page.
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Rhonda Huntress wrote:Phil Deakins wrote:Judging by the posts in this thread, hiding the name isn't generally intentional - it's a "I like my graphic and I don't care that people don't know who writes my posts" attitude. This is a forum and that's not impressive.
Really? That's how you feel about their comments?The impression I got was that people are using a feature so useful it even has its own sticky right at the top of this very forum. You can't claim people are intentionally hiding from you because you keep your eyes closed.Yes I do. There's one coment, for instance, that says that people can look at her profile if they want to know who it is, and there are others that say that hiding the name wasn't intentional but they like the graphic so they leave their names unreadable. There are suggestion as to how to see names, of course, but they are neither here nor there. Those who have posted, whose names can't normally be seen, are happy enough to have it that way because they like their graphics. So yes, that's what I gather from this thread and I don't find it impressive in a forum.
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Darrius Gothly wrote:@Phil - At least with an AR they take the time to email you.
That's true. There is no excuse at all for taking money to list an item and then unlisting it without informing the customer. But it's LL and LL is very good at doing wrong things to customers.
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Chelsea Malibu wrote:They claim they base this off Google Search Algorithms however, Google by their own admission changes this over 300 times a year and per an SEO expert I spoke with, there is no way to match the Google system to SL as they do not share common characteristics that can be leveraged.
Your seo expert doesn't know the facts, Chelsea. LL doesn't "base this off Google Search Algorithms" - it IS Google search algorithms. It's a Google search engine. It's not a copy of the Google web search engine but it *is* a Google search engine.
Not only that, but LL can't do anything to change Google's algorithms. They don't have access to them, and they don't even know what they are. LL is no different to the rest of us in that respect. By research and experiment, we, and LL, can know some things about the algos. What LL can do is affect the input to the engine when it indexes the pages (daily) - LL creates the pages that are indexed. They can also arrange the search query in ways that influence the results. Both of those are external to the search engine itself. The search algorithms (those that produce the results) can't be touched or affected by LL.
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Anyone who knows me knows that I have no time at all for Linden Lab - none whatsoever - but I have to say again that I honestly can't see a problem with the flagging system. An item isn't automatically delisted and, if the reason for flagging it is incorrect, then nothing will change. That's the system. I do know that we people don't like faults found with us and flagging an item is finding a fault - we put it the wrong place or some other thing. But we sometimes do get it wrong, intentionally or unintentionally, and the flagging system is excellent for putting things right. However...
I can imagine that the LL people who deal with flags will do the same as the AR team, who often don't even examine the facts of an AR, even when the facts are in plain sight, but, to save time, they accept the AR as being true and blindly issue penalties or decisions accordingly. I've had that happen to me. An appeal upheld the decision and it wasn't until I contacted the AR team's boss that truth prevailed and the decision was overturned. Neither the Linden who made the decisions, nor the one who looked at the appeal, bothered to take one minute to actually look at the facts. Their boss did and the decision was overturned. It's the way that LL works, and I can see it happening with the flagging system. The flagging system is excellent but I have serious doubts about it in practise, simply because it's LL.
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Judging by the posts in this thread, hiding the name isn't generally intentional - it's a "I like my graphic and I don't care that people don't know who writes my posts" attitude. This is a forum and that's not impressive.
I only use them when there are other posts between the one I'm responding to and my response.
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Your SL business revenue and the real world.
in Merchants
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No I'm not suffering because of it. It's what I've intended for a year and a half. I'm surprised it's taking so long - and it could still take quite a few more months.
There are a number of people who make RL livelihoods from SL - it's not a rare thing. I think there were more before the financial slump though but I think that, even now, new businesses can grow to make good money from SL if a person puts time and effort into it. There isn't any successful SL business that can't be competed with successfully, imo.