Mickey Vandeverre

No, I don't ask for tips, but there is a price on the merchandise, and even though the amounts are small, well aware that every transaction is significant. I can't speak for a DJ , for the most part though, I suspect they do it for fun, or for the love of music and interactions with people, and not for money. I watch people's tip jars on amounts, and frankly it's rather slim. Hardly enough to pay for the skills required to run two avs that require major interaction! I think that you are getting some negative feedback because your mission is to "out" someone. That is not cool. And also there is some judgment going on about people who use alts. Or maybe I am imagining that. But that is touchy situation. If you have time today, click on my name on pic, to left, scan down a bit, and read the entries related to our marketplace review rating system. some of it is about people using alts to review products on the market place. I'm not sure that your situation is the same. That is why I am asking you a few questions. Quite possibly, we are coming from same angle, concerning alts, but for some reason your situation disturbs me a bit, and I think it is because of the "outing" threat, and also because a tip is voluntary. I'm trying to tie the two situations together, but I can't really see what your angle is clearly. There also might be a difference because I don't see any harm in someone running alts for a performance. Many people are performing and acting in SL. I don't think that anyone knows the stats on that, but suspect it is huge. Many are actors. And it is totally fine and encouraged. For some, it is a creative thing. If what you say is true, I find it quite creative and maybe even great marketing! Maybe. But you assume, or at least your comments imply that some of us have no morals, ethics, no willingness to stand up for something, and no that is not the case. During the current management though, it hardly gets you anywhere. I used to use alts, and deleted them for a couple of reasons. Mainly, because I thought that Linden Lab sucked on that day, but another reason was because for some players it became a mission or game to "out" people. And it became a dirty game. There are actors all over the Internet. It is flooded with them, and some are making huge money with it. In SL it is encouraged. If you can't grasp that people are acting, posing, experimenting, creating, than you are going to get a huge heart hurt, well beyond 2 or 3 dollars. And that is true across the entire web. Even those using alts and acting a character, with the kindest of hearts, will probably hurt someone who cannot grasp what is going on, someone who insists that SL = RL. That is why I asked you what your reason is for using SL. What is your joy? For some, their joy is to explore and experiment, and trying different characters is one of those explorations. I don't think that it has to be disclosed on a profile, or disclosed in a conversation, because the whole culture (unless Zuckerberg takes over) is inclined to accept that. Many years ago it was encouraged and perfectly normal. Not sure why it became so distasteful to people. If your joy is to go into SL and make it an extension of real life, that is perfectly fine, many do that, I do, but to do that without getting played or used as someone's prop for a story line, you have to get real hip that many others use it exactly for that reason, and that is just as acceptable as what you or I might use it for.

We are not at a restaurant. We are using a venue that suggested that we can use our imaginations.

EvaFord wrote: I do not have a problem with that at all. I never chat with the store owner or hear your real voice. Being a DJ is personal interaction. I think it is terrible rude to go to a venue and not tip the people who are working and the venue. But the assumption is that there are multiple people spending their time entertaining you. That is what you want to reward. And I think it is fair to ask if I am tipping ALTS Interesting. That doesn't really make sense. We do personal interactions with people all day long. What are you using SL for? what kind of joy? --||-

In the marketplace, they do not allow for us to have more than one store. To sell another product line, one must use another avatar and set up another store. How do you feel about that?

I was talking about this.... "Nope wrong again. Chuckle chuckle chuckle.... I learned of the Identity thru totally honest means. And my husband is an attorney and he assures me that this area of law is evolving. And yes, the definition of a Public Figure is just emerging in SL. " I slipped up on that once myself, but if I recall, got a time out for it, and it was wrong. but there is at least an implication there. "Maybe a better way to state it is that our community should be interested in all the fast changes in Computer Law and cyber crime." Yes, once again, very interested, and study it weekly.... so where is the current link that you are referring to. Will be happy to chat with you about "ethics"...there are quite a few levels and layers on that. But can hardly do that, unless I can read what you are referring to. Certainly have had some issues with that lately, but it concerns people paying for product and not the "tipping" issue that you are talking about. That is voluntary, as many people have pointed out. Not long ago, I was at a "New User" drop-off point, where there were several little tutorials on using SL, and there was one that addressed giving other users money. It was rather comical to me, because it was worded as if a five year old were coming in to roam about, but suppose it was a CYA kinda thing. You're going to have a heck of a time getting a decent discussion on this, because SL = RL is not a philosophy held by all users. In fact, quite the opposite, and I'm surprised you haven't noticed that yet. People are VERY clear in their profiles on how they attempt the adventure, generally. It is not fair to require that some give up RL information in a sea of avatars that are not required to, which is what you are asking. That is ripe for abuse on so many levels, not enough room here. Only once have I prepaid to go to a concert, and that is generally not the custom, and that was a live performance. You are talking about a DJ. Not the same. Generally, a payment to attend is not required. If you are talking about requiring RL info from every person that takes in money, than you've got a mess of other people to talk to, that take in way more money than a DJ and a hostess.

"No, I stated that I know for a fact in this particular case about this one DJ. And this information was obtained legally. I also mentioned my husbands profession in response to another attorney. I never stated this was his field of expertise." I find that an anonymous avatar representing as if they are giving legal advice, is much more threatening to the "community." Also find that someone who is expressing that they know of someone's RL info just as threatening. "I think the whole community is interested in just how fast the field of Computer law is changing, especially where money is changing hands." maybe not the whole community, but a few have asked you for the links. I've studied enough, always willing to brush up on the latest, so yes, by all means, link to the latest that you are referring to. Any time that an avatar has shown up on my property representing as an attorney or anything even closely related, you can be dang sure I'm going to check that out, and I did. They did not represent who they said they represented. I find the "attorney" ploy much more menacing than a multi-tasking DJ that does not "require" a payment for services.

How you doin' on those links? I can't find anything that discusses that, as you are presenting. Are you including anyone who runs a business and collects money?

"And yes, the definition of a Public Figure is just emerging in SL. " How so? Do you have some links to articles? sources? Fascinating.

"A good way to fix this would be to show all the reviews that a person has written, similar to what ebay used to have." That would be ideal, I think, but need to think about it a bit. There is a way that you can check to see what kind of reviews an avatar is leaving, in a roundabout way. The other day I was checking some stuff on google search, and it appears that our names are being picked up in a search when we leave a review, those pages are indexing, as they should, I suppose, but not super pleased about it, as I would prefer to market for my own items and not someone else's. Fortunately, they sit pretty low in a search. Anyway, you can run an avatar name "Tiffany Delightful 5 stars" type it in like that, and some of their reviews will show up, then you can reference for a pattern. I typed in the guy who I was talking about yesterday, and sure enough, there he is, and I do not see that he has left reviews for any other merchant, but plenty for the one merchant. And they are all listed in a row, so it is a bit easier to check to see how they all sound alike or whatever, instead of having to go through the merchant's store and click on each item, then on each review. Google is probably capturing the most popular items first, the best selling, the most often clicked. So on that first item that comes up in google search, that's the item they are making their dough on. If you want to find one that is going around dissing, then you would type in "Joe Schmuck 1 star" and you will get a list. Some other stuff creeps into that search, because it picks up the enhanced listing running at the top of a category, and that gets thrown into the search jumbled up a bit. If you are searching through a store, then look for the reviews that have 3 or 4 stars. That means that at some point a merchant got a bad review. Look at the name of the person who reviews immediately after the bad review..... And don't ya know? guess who that is. The Bogus Reviewer Type that name into google and see what you come up with. If you type in my name "Mickey Vandeverre 5 stars" then you will see who I left reviews for, and they are scattered, all over several stores, so if someone shows up like that, that is not necessarily a bogus reviewer, but rather someone you might want to make friends with. (unless, of course, those are all stores that pay for a review) Another way to find a bogus reviewer is to check the store's first page for a 1 star rating. That is probably a new item that just hit first page, because the gamers generally have their Bogus Reviewer rate the new items with a 5 star review to get it moving up the ladder. Not always, but I often found The Bogus Reviewer on most of the 1 star items, just trying to get them a push up.

I don't know. that happened shortly after I exploited Stinky on twitter again.... http://mickeyv.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/greetings-from-the-etcetera-furniture-inventory-control-center/

On the second example that I gave, many of the reviews implied....oh no wait....it wasn't an "imply" is was an outright trashing of the other creators in that product line. So basically killing several birds with one stone on a variety of levels with those reviews. When the first example's bogus reviews were removed, many, many different creators finally showed up on the first pages of that keyword search. That benefits both creators and shoppers. I had tracked one of my products when that happened (and I had only a few in that category - others had many more), but once bogus reviews were removed from 40 PLUS pages, if I recall, the one product I was watching jumped up about 20 pages. Consider what that means to someone, to go from page 20 or 30 all the way up to proper placement on page one or two. It means a lot. I keep plugging away for same reasons that you do. My customers are awesome people. I'm also curious if a hard worker that plays fair, has awesome customers, can survive and beat that. I'm not sure. And also not sure if you can scrap and fight enough to keep it fair if the provider of the service does not take into account the damage. But here's deal.... same things going on outside of SL. similar stuff happens in several other pockets, if not all. take the Klout machine, if you're not familiar with that, it is a way to score "people" who participate in social media as "influencers" simply by others' giving them little clicky tid-bits all day long, in addition to what they tweet all day long, and a few other things. At first, it looked like a fun game, but then Real Life companies started using it to measure important aspects, like whether someone should gain access to a VIP room, whether they should get a discount, what level of customer service they should get, on and on, and recently a college professor used it to GRADE. not cool at all. And that is what our society is becoming. The clicks count, the gaming counts, and not necessarily the hard work and everything associated with how you got those awesome customers. Does the clicking and gaming Rule? not sure yet. it might.

The Good News (maybe) ....is that if you sell 100 without any reviews, and they sell 10 with a dozen bogus reviews, you will still probably take the lead. I've got several that have sold in the 100's that are leading over some that are chock full of gamified reviews, so I think that is possible. The Bad News ....is that more and more are gaming the reviews and it is hard to keep track of. I used to keep charts. The Good News (well, it used to be good) ...is that if you have an extra 2 or 3 hours a night, you can pluck the instigator out, by making a chart , write down the name of every reviewer. You will start to see just how bogus it is. put yourself a little checkmark next to every name, and count up the reviews. take the names of those with perhaps 35 checkmarks (yes, it is that bad)...and go inworld, find their profile. do some cross-referencing - they will all be in the same groups. Some will even have the same profile wording - how cutesy! In one instance, I found someone doing that on a very common item. By doing so, they dominated the FIRST 40 PAGES of that item's search. Yes, 40 pages of marketplace chock full of items positioned with bogus reviews. Just for one keyword. I stopped after 40 pages. I reported it, with names and had it all laid out, and those got pulled. The merchant did not get pulled. I did the exact same routine with another merchant's reviews, as they were so obvious, the cross-referencing was hardly necessary. This is not exact, but close enough to get the drift, but one "guy" reviewer was saying: "Amazing! I bought this for my wife and she loves it so much!" 2 pages later, same "guy" "Amazing! I bought this for my husband and he loves it so much!" then in some review the "guy" mentioned how faithful he was to his wife or something like that. Anyway, the guy had gone through and reviewed every single one of this merchant's items - and the reviews when matched together made no sense, totally bogus. This time I reported, and was told that situation was ok. That merchant has made a killing off of those bogus reviews, and sits in top spot on almost every single page. The irony of that is, that she had the audacity to come into this forum and complain about one bad review and how bad the review system was. Anyway, you watch, because when someone does that, and monopolizes 40 pages, that ain't right. Check your keywords, I know you do, but for the others, if you see your bread and butter items slipping off first page, you have a look-see and you start tracking. At minimum, at least you will know who is ruining the system (as if it needs any more help with that chore) I'll be checking some keywords, and if I see it, I will report it.

"and one last thing, I've just replaced my laptop - which is primarily business - and yet again decided I'd go for something that will allow sl to burn the vid card out again. After buying something reasonably specced (certainly more than if it were just a pure business laptop) I found it is only so, so running it. I probably spent double what I need to just to run sl when I'm working away from home and it's still not fantastic." Exactly. Even on a "gamer's" laptop (which is getting close to fried, for some reason) can't make it to a welcome hub to find out "who" is arriving any more, but I do catch comments on twitter, and watch the tech forum, and people are trying to get in, and get going on a laptop. For some, it takes a few days to get everything tweaked, and for current users it will take a new laptop to continue. Let's make a guess. I guess that 5% of those with difficulties made it into the forum to ask, and that 5% of those that made it that far, will spend the extra effort and money to stay. Of that remaining group, 95% will fry their laptop within 6 months to a year. How 'bout that math?

hi Porky! it's a suggestion, an option. that's why I asked how much time she had. you also have to work it right. some will get it, some won't. she said she's been gone for a year, and has to start over. if I had to start over, that would be the quickest way, knowing what I know now. If you have to build your customer base again, it's a way to reach quite a few with a few simple steps. When you and I started we had some inworld tools that worked. classified ads, labeling product for an inworld search, marketplace search, etc. When I started, all I had to do was to set stuff out, and they arrived, and then you worked with those customers, building. I don't think it's that easy anymore. I have also learned over the last year, not to rely on an SL tool, but to take it out of game, and put effort into something more reliable. There's a lot more to making it work, than what I laid out. But that's true in any business. You dip your toe in the water, see if it's something that will work for you, or not. you try everything, or at least I did. Learning the process is a decent education that will transfer to any other business. for me, it transferred immediately, overnight, to using etsy and ebay again, when I sensed that they were going leave marketplace neglected. Agree, that it's some work. I got a bit carried away, and am reducing the time spent, to work on some other projects, and not using what I built there. Shame, would be inclined to use it for someone else, but no one ever asks, or it always get poo poo'd. But it reminds me of real life, when people always asked how are you making all of those sales? I would sit down at their desk, jot down the steps for them, and then they would say..."but that is too much work, I can't do that.." ok.

Excellent video! great way to showcase your creations. How much time do you have? If you have an hour a day, set up a twitter account, and a tumblr and flickr and pinterest acct. take a ton of pics and post them every day in all of those places, then tweet them several times a day. be sure to use the #secondlife tag. tweet for others, and they will tweet for you. if you are just starting on twitter, you need to follow everyone in SL. make sure you use the proper LM as suggested. people want to do it all in one click. attach that LM to all your pic posting, make sure your store name is on all the pics you post. link from twitter any time you are featured on blog. If you have two hours a day, set up your own blog, and do the same with the blog. post daily. tweet daily. learn how to use keyword phrases, many people shop SL using google search, and they like to do it fast, which means.... If you have three hours a day, then load a bunch of stuff to marketplace. keep fingers crossed that it loads for you. Cool stuff you have.

"A creator that makes items only for low-end computers, is guaranteed to sell less and make less money. Why? This should be obvious, but a person with a low end computer is going to have much less cash to spend than some1 with a high-end computer. Now, of course, there are exceptions for every rule, but on average, this will be true." Not sure where to start on that. you might pick up a copy of an older book "The Millionaire Mind" and review on how people with money spend cash. when I arrived here, everyone I met was on a laptop. I generally made friends with business people because I was selling luxury homes. 200 bucks to 400 bucks. (that was 2007) They were on laptops because they were busy people and mobile all day and into the night and while traveling. I'm sure some were on laptops that you would call "low-end"...because they were "playing." They've all moved on, and doubt that they could function at all now, mobile. SL has become very difficult for a laptop user. Shame, that. Large population. and large population that you sort of insulted. where did you pull those stats from?

@Kampu Kampu, you run a great business, you have great customers, great product, and have The Key. As I said earlier, I've read all the observations. For 4 years, I operated in "build" mode, "grow" mode. I don't think you can do that anymore in some areas of the Internet. Perhaps you cannot do that in any area of the Internet. Because once you get built it, rug gets pulled, someone else gets to profit from your building. Gamification is huge. Aspects of that keep the worker bees very busy hustling, developing these platforms for those who actually ARE building with a darn good result, the corporations. The worker bees build it for them. Then they sell it. And profit. It's not just SL. I'm watching it on Twitter. Boy, do they have the worker bees hooked on that Klout machine. wow. And well, that Facebook thing. All the other places have them working, too. Letting work go undone on marketplace was huge message. Pulling Jira is huge message. What do you suppose is next? Don't care much for the way they sent the message, no sir, not one bit... but seems that most companies do it that way now. On this Gaming stuff: Definitely getting an education on that. Some day soon we will chat about the New Key. Among friends. Not here.

Kampu Oyen wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: 1. What bunch of ppl? I can think of two. And hardly a big surprise to anyone. 2. I bet I am not the only one who has only the vaguest idea what this conspiracy is that you harp on in every thread, and wishes it would stop. 1) The one someone apparently had banned opportunistically for being their competitor and at least 3 others unrelated, if they might like to come forward since th ban has been lifted. 2) You're the one talking about a conspiracy. I'm talking about one bad egg at LL gradually infecting everyone around her with complicity in her bad decisions. Probably because the revenue losses she has caused puts them in a bad place to try to contest her legal position with them; a legal position in which she "owns" a bunch of code on the basis that she has decided how to make them try to modify it for her after it she decided to buy it off the rack, either without really thinking things through like a mentally healthy tech professional, or with an intention to do deliberate harm to LL. Why are you continuing to subtly side with this person instead of with her critics? What's in it for you, exactly?

Frozen. it seems longer than a few weeks, though - Christmas setting still on page 2.

I support what you've stated, Anaiya. one can read the Jiras to interpret. There is a belief here, that "if it is not happening to me" in general....".then it is not happening." Although there is phrasing going on such as "a few merchants'...a "limited number of merchants".... sure doesn't read that way in the Jiras. eta: added quotation marks

yes, I know. that was in January, before direct delivery. suppose I should put another edit up at the top of that Jira, but it all seems so futile.

llyra - that was happening to a few of us back in January - and we were told by other customers that it was our fault. I'm not sure what happened to those Jiras - got banned during that time frame, and gave up. Did try to collect payment for just one order, before submitting an entire month's worth of orders, and it was fail. here's the Jira for that: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4441 they closed a rather important Jira today, and shuffled everyone into The Basement above.

I've been watching your process Arwen, and I'm really sorry. it reminds me of January, and the other Jira we are sitting in since then. things were working pretty smoothly, this time around, with a mix of magic box and DD - but today had the first failed delivery on a DD related listing. I did get paid, but there is no notation on the transaction list, that there is a possible delivery fail. She was online during delivery time, and notified me. I did check with her, to ask her to check the "received" folder, and she knew how to do that, not there. I have not checked with each customer on deliveries - since the transaction list notations looked good. Suppose that will become routine again, regardless of what the delivery notations say.

Couldbe Yue wrote: I know. I just hate to think you're right with this one as the only people who can identify the true extent of this problem is LL and we know that the chances of them acknowledging something like this, let alone remediating it, is miniscule. It's this kind of defect that shows LLs true colours and it's not pretty. but it's ok. For a long time LL has behaved like a pimp - they take your money and guarantee nothing in return. It's the chance we take when we deal with people like these, so there's nothing surprising there. As always, the people I feel desperately sorry for are those who actually make their main living from SL. I'd hate to be beholden to these people to put food on my table. Debating during the current management's run. Do they have a responsibility? Pretty much covered in TOS, that you are up a creek, no matter what kind of consistency you can prove over the years, prior to the current team's run. Also debate...(in my own head)....is commerce allowed? is profit allowed? Heck yeah. They provide a "market" place - a "commerce" forum - they call us "merchants" - they charge a commission - they charge ad fees - there is a charge to process funds - the funds go to Pay Pal which is highly regulated - a "commerce" team rules. They have implied with that language that it is acceptable to carry on as a merchant making a profit, and that the "game" has not changed significantly, in that commerce/profit/cash-out is no longer allowed. Whatever language is in the TOS limiting responsibility - it sure is at odds with the language and practices that are in place concerning the "market." When I personally build consistency - and see it in place 25 days out of a month - then watch them tweak as announced, and see it nosedive - I have not doubt, that they hold a responsibility toward paying customers. sorry, can't put that into fancy speak, but bet someone else could.

hi Parrish - I am running both magic box and DD and I have no problems at the moment. I took my marketplace store down shortly after DD was introduced, because I did not want a repeat of January (hand delivering all day long - and other stuff) But then I checked my first page google keywords one day, and realized that 2 years worth of marketing is going down the drain rapidly - the word might be "hemorrhaging"..... ....as all of that marketing was leading into a taunting bear with no pants and a royal Tude. So I started putting the store back up again, and tried it both ways. For now, ok, except that in the process, I lost some best selling listings and can't find them, they will not relist either with magic box or DD - just lost. Bread and butter listings. But I understand what happens when all your stuff is borked, as I dealt with that in January, and just because some people are having no problems, does not mean that there is not some really damaging processes going on for many others. That plays out across the board.