[Second Life Blogs Feedback]

Why am I "Honoured Resident" and you are only "Resident"? You're older than me.

[Child Avatars]

No.

[Meeting New Friends]

I think going on a round robin of all the welcome areas, infohubs and other Linden sites like the boating in Nautilus or the carnival game in Pyri are all good ways to start. It's good to get out beyond the original welcome area where you might have been set down on the first day.  If you type "welcome" or "infohub" or "Linden" into the search, you get a list of these places. From there you can branch out, as each of them has suggested locations, etc. There's also the Destination, but now the Destination list is getting so gigantic that it almost now needs to be curated into smaller chunks, i.e. maybe there needs to be categories or interests put into posters or something.

[Land Use Fees]

To undo that billing, there's another thing that has to happen or it will keep billing you even if you fix up your land/deed problem.

You must go into the group and take out the 512 you donated on top of that land that was deeded.

And make sure that in that group your contribution is only 512 with an excess of 512 showing (that's the 1024).

Then WITHDRAW THE 512 EXCESS from the GROUP -- otherwise it keeps billing. It doesn't know this is excess and not applied to land.

Then go on the website, and move the tier down -- check off 512, not 1024. It will say "512 available" but you must move the check-off in the box down so it stops saying that.

As long as you keep seeing "512 available" on your website account page, you are going to be billed. Make sure the land/tier deeded inworld is all that is taken by that group.

Indeed, the entire reason you keep experiencing this is that your land is in the group with its tier attached (512), and your donation of 512 is also made to the group on top of that to equal 1024 m2!

[Land Use Fees]

I realize with all your exhaustive ministrations, you believe the KB is "correct".

But it's wrong here.

You don't need to have the ability to deed land to deed the land.

You can CHECK THE BOX making the option to deed available WHICH GROUP OFFICERS can then use to deed.

So the contributor can set the land to the group he wants to deed to, check off the box, and leave it for the officer -- that way officers/founders of a group don't need to have each m ember be able to deed land -- which means they could steal any piece of land out of the group and deed it away elsewhere.

Furthermore, the contributor has to check off "make contribution" or the group has to have that tier to cover the land, one of the two.

[Land Use Fees]

No, that's still not the full story.

You have to use DEED to group AND contribute to group BOTH to send both your land AND THE TIER covering it to the group.

[Land Use Fees]

If you are donating LAND and not TIER ALONE to a group, you have to click on DEED TO GROUP and also the box ALLOCATE TIER WITH DONATION and then both your tier and that piece of land go into a group. You should not face any other charges then. (The reason you ARE facing charges is because you did both contribute/deed AND contribute via the about land contribution interface -- two separate actions -- and you have to undo the second in the group, and on your web page, or it will keep billing.)

The "known issue" sounds like some confusion to me. I haven't seen that. What I see happening is people donate tier they forget is "taken" already, or they deed land and it is taken by a group with excess tier, and they don't allocate their tier with it.

If the group you are trying to donate to doesn't have the tier to receive it, the system bounces it and it says "you do not have enough land credits".

By referring to both "tier" and "land credits" as if they are separate things (they aren't) the Lindens also ensure confusion with all this.

When the Lindens are ready to encourage instead of discourage the sale of land between residents and not just by themselves to residents, they will get rid of this confusion.

[Land Use Fees]

What likely happened is that you kept your 512 first land, and didn't release the 512 tier covering that 512 m of  land.

Then when you tried to donate 512 to a group on top of that, the system billed you for 1024 m2.

In order to donate land to a group, you have to first sell or abandon that first 512 you were using, or leave your Linden Home.

Then you have the 512 free and clear to donate.

I have numerous people who donate 512 or more in tier to my group to get a rental valued at $250 or a discount of $250 -- and nothing bills them any further. There is no mechanism to bill them further in fact.

So I think this is a function of the land not having been freed.

Tier and land are separate things, and confusing. Tier of 512 covers 512 m2, and can't be used anywhere else except on that 512 until that piece is sold or abandoned.

[I PAID RENT FOR 6WEEKS AND LOST EVERYTHING]

That's awful. And no, you can't get it back, unless you have a lawyer and determination and the willingness to pursue what is a relatively small amount through small claims court, but most small claims courts wouldn't deal with $18 US in a virtual world. So you should put the name out on Twitter, blogs, inworld groups, etc. to warn others.

I can offer you a free 4096 for 4 weeks if you like. IM me inworld. No purchases, just move in. I only rent land, I don't sell it, and I think that's really how it should be done. I also believe in refunds, and I find most landlords in Concierge dealing with islands will not give refunds.

[Buying land using viewer 2]

Instead of driving people to the wonky, tendentious, hateful battleground of the JIRA, Ellen, where a bug that is actually stopping people from buying land gets a yawn from the devs because they hate land buying, and no votes from the largely geek population of JIRA users who have other arcane priorities, you should tell this user ONLY  the workaround that the reporter of the bug found, and baby-step them through it if necessary:

Namely, that you need to make sure that your preferences for content are set in ME to MATURE, and not GENERAL, or you will be unable to buy land in MATURE. That seems to be what is triggering this.

[sl key shown in emerald viewer]

Keep asking questions about the Emerald viewer, and do not be dissuaded by the propaganda.

The issue of scraping the avatar key needs a lot more debate than it gets from the cheerleaders here.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/12/the-key-to-avatar-keys.html

[Sexually Harrased :(]

This sort of harassment is unacceptable, and I take it seriously as a rentals manager and I don't trivialize it, as some do, by saying "it's only pixels" or "RL sexual harassment and rape are worse and therefore put it all in perspective."

 

Well, we are supposed to be making a better world, and online people are supposed to have freedoms without being able to take them away from others -- which is what happens when you don't take this problem seriously.

 

So here's my advice, in addition to what others are saying here, as not all products are configurable and when you are attacked in this way, you can't always get your wits about you to go into "edit" mode and start trying to fix things.

 

Locked doors and security orbs can't prevent something like this from happening, as there isn't any true privacy in SL given the capacity of camera zoom.

 

You can take a preventative measure by using a free avatar radar hud that will show on your screen whether avatars are in range -- and then you can see if strangers are approaching. You can also use a visitor list script in your home to see if anyone is using your furniture while you are away, and then ban them next time you are online.

 

If you are attacked, while it can be hard to do and you feel angry and entitled to your time online, especially if you are paying for a rental, you must log off. Even five minutes will help break the chain of attention that griefers thrive on. If you are not there to react, they will move on. It helps you become composed and realize that while your avatar is an extension of yourself, it's under your control and you can use log-offs to stop an attack like this. Another option is to teleport away to a landmark in your inventory or to another place on the sim.

 

When you log back on, change the log on place to a generic welcome area like

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Waterhead/128/128/23 r

ather than your own land so you don't land back in the middle of the harassment. Then approach your land and ban the person harassing you. Be sure to abuse report and include the chat history.

 

Although sometimes griefers are day-old alts, if you find a sexual harasser like this who isn't a day-old then it's good to publicize the name in groups so that others can ban the person from their land and that some sort of community condemnation might work.

[It seems like there is some abandoned land in SL. What happens to that land?]

If you see land inworld that appears to be abandoned:

 

1. Click to find the owner or group and its officers, and see if any of them are missing from the People List. That's an indication that they may be gone from SL.

 

2. If they are still in SL, they may not have payed tier for a long time and the land may be reclaimable.

 

3. File a ticket with Support indicating the exact coordinates and ask Linden Lab to check whether it is abandoned. Usually Lindens answer within 3-7 days on such abandoning questions, and if they can put it on the auction, they will.

 

4. Then be sure to keep a hawk eye on the auction, because the Lindens often get the land turned around quickly, i.e. in days and not months. Then you can bid on it if it is of interest, or perhaps buy it later inworld if a land dealer bids and gets it.

 

5. It's always a good idea to check with all your neighbours to see if any of them are bidding on the auction just to save the land for the neighbourhood, just to make sure you won't be bidding against each other needlessly.

[How long can I exceed my land tier before the fee goes up for that month?]

Even one second of usage of land tier over your current level will make you bump up to the next level. That's why you can't make an overage purchase even temporarily, with the intent of fixing it -- the Lindens will not help you on this (you can petition and beg, and sometimes on a first-time newbie mistake, they will fix it as a courtesy one-off offer, but it is not their default.)

There is absolutely no reason why you cannot undertier your group temporarily to make the purchase, then purchase it, and then deed it to the group  -- if you've done the math.

 

The reality is that there is a window of about 24 hours before you will get messages from LL about needing to add tier to your group. Indeed LL does seize land (the latest land to be added to the group) if you are undertiered. But it is a process where you get a warning first, and there is a window. It is not worth risking more than a few minutes, in my view, but I've seen it go to a day or more when I've accidently had a group under tier.

 

There is no stated rule about this anywhere, it is a discretionary and manual process. But you shouldn't be forced into upping your tier level, or renting tier at much higher prices, merely for a transaction like this IF you have determined that you can add the tier in through the group bonus or other residents helping you.

 

BTW, you can "buy for group" to instantly make use of the group bonus -- again, if the math is working out.