Darrius Gothly

I have been getting duplicated emails for new posts because I am Subscribed to the Forum and I have participated in the Topic. If you are getting the same, please look at and Vote (for now) and Watch the following JIRA entry: Receiving duplicate emails for posts to Forums

Torley Linden wrote: Is there an aspect of community.secondlife.com you're curious about? Chat with me in the comments! Yes, most definitely. A complete table of places where images may be uploaded and the expected/allowed/maximum/minimum sizes would be wonderful. Also information on how to remove the "artifacts" that are left over on an Avatar Badge when using one of the provided Badge images. When uploading one of our own making, there is a middle layer left behind that is not accessible to us. TIA

Suella Ember wrote: The more specific to the SL implementation of the software and it's features is here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/help/faqpage You can access this from the 'Community Help' link near the top right (on the white part of the page not the black bar). It's fairly comprehensive although I don't think it covers every single feature. Thank you.

Suella Ember wrote: ... 3. Ok, now you need to create the image you want for your background. Make your image in a program such as Photoshop or Gimp with dimensions of Width=170pixels and Height=195pixels. These are (roughly) the right dimensions for the badge. ... Those dimensions appear tied to which "Stats" you choose to display on your badge. Suella, you only show two of the available four, so the 195 pixel height works for you. But I chose to display all four and the image was too short. I had to increase it to 230 pixels to get it to cover the entire height.

Has anyone been able to find online documentation from the "Customer" (end users .. us) perspective? Docs on how to use the various features, how to configure your profile, what some of the choices mean, etc.? I went to the Lithium website, but they don't provide any end-user documentation. They did offer me an opportunity to log in, but I think that's for THEIR customers and not LL's.

Agrona Longfall wrote: Do you mean take it all out and put it all back in again? I'm not exactly computer savvy, so I want to be sure I know what you mean, LMAO Sorry, no. Often when SL is misbehaving like that, it's because of problems on your computer that can be cured by restarting it. Exit all programs (including the SL Viewer you are using) and then restart your computer. Once your computer boots up again and is ready to go, log into the SL Viewer without starting any other programs and then check the Inventory of each Magic Box .. just to make sure the contents are listed as you expect them to be. If everything checks out there then open the SL Marketplace website, log in and do the "Sync Magic Boxes with Marketplace" step again. (If you're a smoker, this would be a good time to light one up.) After a few minutes, close the Marketplace website, count to 10 then open it and log in again. Check your Inventory list. If none of these steps gets you there, you might want to ask your Sim Owner (Landlord or whatever) if there are any problems with the Sim. As a last resort, get a brand new Magic Box from the Marketplace, rez it out and put your objects into it in addition to the other boxes you already have.

Agrona Longfall wrote: I've done everything you suggested and still nothing but I've also noticed that some items in my inventory, specifically belly chains and piercings, are not rezzing at all. I wonder if it's an SL problem. My items still aren't loading for me. Time to reboot. Like the old Tech Support Truism ... "If at first you don't succeed, Ctrl+Alt+Delete"

Agrona Longfall wrote: Is it possible that there is a limit of 107 items in your market place?? No, there are many people with way more than that. Did you remember to click the "Sync Marketplace with Magic Boxes" button on the Manage Inventory page? If so (and even if you try it again just for S&G's and then it still won't updated after a few minutes) then "Take" the new boxes back into Inventory, count to 10 and rez them out again. Wait for them to do their color changing thing first, then once they return to their normal whitish color do the Sync, Wait, Refesh procedure again. You may also want to totally close your browser (all windows and tabs) just in case it's keeping a cached copy of something too.

Faithless Babii wrote: testing hmmm I cant seem to get the big pic thing going...okkk starting againnn On the "Create a Profile Badge" page there is a checkbox labeled "Display your profile badge on your posts". Make sure that's checked or nothing shows up at all.

Pamela Galli wrote: Oh I imagine you won't be the only one. On SL Exchange we had a thread where we critiqued each others' siggys, so we all pretty much had them. But now I see mine has the bottom sliced off of it. I did a screencap and found that the ideal dimensions for an image are 480w x 33h. And by "ideal" I mean the dimensions they either crop or resize images into. I'm not exactly sure where those numbers came from, but "non-standard" is clearly the goal.

Porky Gorky wrote: Has search changed then Darius? Looks the same from where I am sitting....prefabs houses keywords etc. Massively changed, back on Feb 15th. There are a handful of Parcel/Stores that are at the top of their chosen keywords despite such things as not having the keyword in the parcel objects anywhere or having a Boost of -1. Some of those niche leaders were already well established in their niches, but a good number suddenly vaulted to the top out of nowhere. Actual "Spammers" .. those that toss in every word under the sun to gain an advantage in Search ... have with the latest update found themselves at or near the top for each of their spammed words. However legitimate merchants with either very large variety and those that specialize in one or two products lines are virtually locked out of search. The GSA Search Dev team has found an way to rank "Golden Children" top of the list while effectively removing anyone else that is trying to rank appropriately for their actual products or services. Some of my clients are among those "Golden Children" and they, like you, are doing quite well. But a majority of folks that were not #1 already and weren't selected by the Search Dev Team to win have either dropped completely out of search or so far back in the rank that their business has dropped to zero. In the last week I have been contacted by two clients that have left SL completely and one that has tiered back from owning two Sims to a medium-sized parcel and is now just a "money sucker". If other legitimate businesses were benefitting from the change in fortunes, it wouldn't be so bad. But sadly the holes that were created when the new Search knocked legitimate businesses off the first page have for the most part been filled with spammers and totally unrelated parcels. In short, this latest change has done more to damage overall income and disillusion residents about its usefullness than any spammer alone has ever done.

Pamela Galli wrote: How did you get your logo there Darrius? (And I see you have had no ideas either. Could have sworn you at least had had some.) Ideas .. as in "How Search works now?" I have a line on something, but it's a bit early yet to tell. The past few days the GSA index spider has been so erratic that I've been having to wait 12, 18 and sometimes 24 hours to see if my test changes have the desired (or any) effect.

Agreed .. good post. I wound up using a background image of 164w x 218h .. and then had to slide the logo a bit to the left to compensate for the way it cropped the resulting image. Now we just need a Blue Hash Eraser...

Basic Rules of Thumb for Magic Boxes: Keep the total number of items in any one Magic Box fairly low. The reasonable maximum is 100, but even less is recommended. If your items have high delivery rates (like Freebies or popular items) then even lower is recommended. Rez multiple boxes to handle extra items that won't fit in a single Magic Box. You can rez as many Magic Boxes as you need to hold all your items. Rez Duplicates of your Magic Boxes on other Sims. This helps prevent delivery failures when one Sim is offline of experiencing problems. Triple or Quadruple Magic Boxes that hold your High Delivery Rate items. It is best to put very popular items into their own Magic Box and then make multiple copies of that box. When you get all done spreading your items out across multiple Magic Boxes on multiple Sims, make sure you use the "Sync Marketplace with Magic Boxes" button on the Inventory > Manage Inventory page under the Merchant's Control Panel in Marketplace. Click the button, wait a few minutes, then refresh the page again to ensure all boxes have "checked in" and are operating properly. Remember: You CAN have more than one Magic Box. In fact, it's BEST to have more than one.

Pamela Galli wrote: Yes! Now I can link my siggy to the MP instead of Xstreet. It does seem as though they've given us a lot more control over our appearance options. Yay!

TatianaDokuchic Varriale wrote: Look here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants-Roundtable/bd-p/MerchantsRoundtable That's nice .. except it's not visible to me. Did others get access? Did they choose to forget I had access? ETA: Okay, I can manually go there, but the link doesn't take me there. *scratches head*

Rya Nitely wrote: yes, I agree with Ami. It seems a very complicated business, all that. Nahh .. that's the easy stuff. My wife does cross-stitch. Now THAT's complicated ... and time consuming too. (ducks and braces for flak from the crafting community on SL ... )

I guess what I didn't make clear is this ... Most of the delivery failures are cases where the Magic Box is part of the problem. In many cases, it's the biggest part too. If a Merchant "fixes" their Magic Boxes using the tips I provided, they won't "Fix" the whole problem ... but they WILL fix it enough to stop getting so many delivery failures. It's like a car with both the front glass and the back glass missing. Without the glass it is very hard to drive fast (use the cart). We Merchants can at least put the front glass back in the car. Yes, the back glass is still missing, but now we can drive fast again .. and wait for LL to finish building our new Ferrari. (Delivery from Inventory)

Darren, After doing some extensive polling of fellow Merchants, asking questions and checking behavior of Cart purchases .. and after some good feedback from the former Brodesky Linden, it appears that most Cart Purchase failures can be fixed by simple fixes the Merchants can perform. Those are: Keep the number of Items in your Magic Box low. Put high delivery rate Items into a special Magic Box just for them. If a product has a high delivery failure rate, rez out a New Magic Box then put the items in that. Use Duplicate Magic Boxes preferably on separate Sims. Try to make sure your Magic Boxes are located on Sims with low lag. If you cannot do that then at least put more boxes on other Sims. It won't fix every problem. but from what I've learned in my study, those that follow the above advice have reduced their failure rate.

Brooke Linden wrote: Hi all, I just wanted to let people know that the gifting updates have been released. Here is a summary of the changes: We have a new button: "Add To Cart As Gift" New Residents are giftable right away Giftee now visible in the order history There is also a link to the Merchant's store in the order and order history now. For more information, please see the wiki page on this update. Please let us know what you think of these changes. Happy gifting! Brooke Excellent news .. thank you. Do I also notice that the new gifting button only appears on items that do not have Transfer permission? If so, that's a very good nuance behavior that makes perfect sense AND is something we've not seen from the Dev Team before. VERY good work. Now THAT is what I call "thinking ahead."

These are very promising steps toward improving the two-way communication that must occur between Linden Lab and their customers. The old Office Hours were throwbacks to a time when LL was small enough that one person was able to oversee an entire product, department or community. Time has moved on though, and while Linden Lab has grown for the better, some of the old ways have been left as anchors that held both LL and SL back in their success. I like the sound of the changes. I'm starting to like a lot the shift in attitude and communication between all parties. Not that long ago the skies were looking very dark. Today? I think that's a sunrise peeking just over the horizon.

CrashOV Uladstron wrote: "PIOF to sell inworld and on SLM"This would be GREAT. I would imagine less people would dare sell stolen content or content FP when they have no right to if they have to have their data with LL. This would be awesome. One of the things I truly enjoy about SL is that it is based on "Inclusiveness". No person, gender, race, species, planet of origin or biomechanical formulation is blocked at the door. We are ALL allowed here. That's one of the reasons that having to have PIOF (Payment Info On File with Linden Lab) concerns me. I have a number of friends that either cannot (due to personal matters) or will not (because of personal preference) place their personal payment into into their SL accounts. Yet they sell some of the most beautiful things. HOWEVER ... The way day-old accounts continually show up selling boxes and boxes with 100's or 1000's of items stolen from other hard-working and earnest creators is appalling. There MUST be a way to stop them or slow them down. So I would like to propose the following: Marketplace Selling Requirements I - Accounts with full PIOF will be allowed to sell without restriction. Monies paid to purchase their products will be credited to their account balance immediately. II - Accounts without PIOF will be restricted in two ways as follows: New Sellers will be placed on Seller Probation for 14 days (two weeks). All monies paid to purchase their products will be placed in an Escrow Account pending completion of the Probationary period. New Products will be placed on Product Probation for 7 days (one week). If a Seller without PIOF places a new product on the Marketplace, all monies paid to purchase that product will be placed in an Escrow Account pending completion of the Probationary period. Note that Seller Probation takes precedence over Product Probation, in that a new Seller without PIOF must still wait the full 14 days to receive their money even though their New Product may have completed its 7-day Probation period. Marketplace Support will be allowed to designate a Seller without PIOF as a "Trusted Seller". This designation allows the Seller to place new products without incurring the 7-day Product Probation period. Marketplace Support will be able to remove this designation at their discretion and without warning. Sellers without PIOF may request the Trusted Seller Designation by filing a special Support Ticket, much the same way as Merchants now request access to the Merchants Roundtable Forum. In the event a Seller is determined to be selling stolen content and the Marketplace Support team must remove their account, any monies in Escrow will be returned to the Buyer and the products purchased removed from their Inventory (following standard DMCA procedures). In the event the money is no longer in Escrow and has been paid to the Seller, the Buyer is still subject to product loss under DMCA procedures but without restitution. Caveats As there are already a large number of Sellers without PIOF selling legitimate products on the Marketplace, conversion to this system can be done by automatically assigning "Trusted Seller" status to any Seller account with one month or more of sales history on the Marketplace or a minimum of three months age for their Second Life user account. This will be a one time assignment done only to minimize disruption of the existing legitimate Sellers already using the Marketplace. Summary The above restrictions will impose some hardship on new Sellers. However it will encourage them to either register their PIOF or simply wait the initial 14 days. I believe this is not an unreasonable amount of time to wait as most new Sellers do not get immediate sales anyway (unless they are selling obviously stolen content). New Products placed by those Sellers with PIOF will still be held in suspension for a short time, but this restriction will prevent someone planting a "Sleeper Seller" long enough to outlast the Seller Probation then use that account to sell a Blitz Box of stolen goods.

Pamela Galli wrote: Rya Nitely wrote: Payment Information On File I think that would be awesome -- fewer day-old alts selling stolen stuff! How about with PIOF you are paid for sales immediately. But without it, proceeds of sales are put in Escrow for 7 days and then paid out. Sort of an MP Risk API type method.

Brooke Linden wrote: ... Here's the agenda I've pulled together: ... *blink blink* That has got to be the most exhaustive and comprehensive list of issues I've ever seen from anyone. AND this one was put forth by the Linden in charge of fixing those issues. Oh yeah, I'm feeling a LOT more confident that I'm backing a winner in this race. And that's no bull. Thank you Brooke!

... signs the "No Voice, Only Text" petition.