Polenth Yue

I got up early and managed to find Lulabell. She was asking about the chocolate, but I'd already used it in the mole traps, which are out there somewhere.

You'll need to make sure the protected land (not abandoned land) is right next to your parcel. When that's the case, nobody can block your access. Parcels that have both protected water and road aren't that common, but getting one or the other isn't too hard. Rather than rely on land listings, I'd suggest opening the world map and see what's for sale on the coast (make sure "Land Sale" is checked on the map options, so you see the overlay for land for sale). There are quite a few random water regions owned by the Lindens, so you can get parcels next to one of those (if you just want some water, not access to the main water routes). An alternative idea is to get a road parcel with a direct route to a coast rez area. An example is Chiffre, which has a public coastal rez zone and a road leading right to it. Many of the regions around there will have land coming up for sale. Or you can go for a Linden Home in a theme that often has water access. Houseboats have guaranteed water. Many stilts are by the water. Sakura and fantasy have a lot of waterside houses (and also roads, so a house with both is very doable).

You can ignore the official spikes, because it isn't a QA spike. You are in the sort of areas that Max works though.

Yep. Earlier in the thread he said "It is absolutely and definitively NOT a QA spike." Which might sound like a riddle, but isn't.

The new vendors where you can see what you're buying are called conveyor vendors (as an overall name, rather than individual vendor brand names). I've seen the transfer thing before. It's a weird function of the permissions system, where the original box looks to be transfer in inventory. It can be transferred and sold on the marketplace from the inventory. But the moment you wear it or put it on the ground, the system realises it contains a no transfer item, and the whole thing becomes no transfer. All you can really do is make sure you don't buy from that seller again. For unknown sellers, buy a sample item and test it before getting anything else from them. The most extreme I've had, the items turned to no copy / no mod / no transfer once placed on the ground, so I couldn't do anything with them.

No special tricks were required to get in the top ten. In addition to any places that were publicly posted, I did a grid search of every released region (going from region to region, then up and down the roads in that region). I wasn't working with anyone and all the candy buckets were public. What it did take was a lot of time. It also helped to be able to hyperfocus. Realistically, most people wouldn't have found that fun (I thought it was great though, as I got to see the whole continent). This year, I'll probably drive my tentacle car around and see if I can find any open houses. A list of open houses would be great (at an easy level, we could start a thread here for people to post their house links).

Baiting the traps as we speak!

Being armed with pointy sticks is a fine and noble tiny tradition. However, I decided that a ranged weapon might not be sporting, so went with my giant trident instead. I found a lot of moles this week, but for some reason, I can't find Lulabell.

Who is the everyone that wants the huge friends list? Not you. Not me. Not many people in this thread. Not the majority of people I meet at events. There have always been some people who send random requests to as many people as possible, but most people use their friend list more selectively. This isn't really something that's changed.

The rules can never list all the exploits, because the whole thing with exploits is it's unintended. People did something wrong, because they knew it wasn't how the game was meant to work based on the description of the game. It was made very clear that every bucket was only supposed to give candy once, even if moved or replaced. So figuring out a method to make the buckets keep giving candy was very clearly not how it was meant to work. They also knew they'd get into trouble if it was found out, because they hid that they were doing it. People getting precious about calling it cheating just get a hard stare from me. The people doing it knew it was cheating. They absolutely knew, which is why they tried to hide it. Even long after the event, the people involved still avoid admitting it in public, because they know it was wrong. It also got dealt with, so they wouldn't end up with all the prizes. If that hadn't been done, winners would have been set up for abuse (whether they were one of the cheaters or not), which would have soured the whole event a lot more than a few people outraged that using exploits was called cheating. As it was, I didn't have to worry about people cheating, because the Lindens/Moles handled it. I just got to wander around, collect candy, and enjoy my prizes. All that said, I've said from the start I'd rather see a set number for each prize. I wouldn't like the bears less if more people had them. They have the data now to set the levels at realistic values, so it won't impact anyone else if somebody finds an exploit.

People put out candy buckets at their houses. Hunters wore a HUD and could click on each bucket to get a candy. It was only one candy per bucket, so hunters needed to move around and find more houses with buckets. There were prizes (special bears) based on who found the most candy. One candy was enough to get the first bear prize, so everyone who took part got something. The top ten hunters got the top prizes (I was in that group... it took over 1000 candies). You didn't need to be a premium member or own a house to go around collecting candy. The security issue was mostly a crossover with people not following the rules. A bunch of us got autobanned from houses for stepping onto the porch to click a bucket. This improved later, presumably because the orbs were getting reported and removed. Allowed security was less of an issue. 15 seconds was enough time to reach a bucket and leave again (though a weird choice to have a big "Trick or Treaters Welcome!" sign and the security on). A few people were banning any hunters that got anywhere near their house, though I'd say that also improved as the event went on (I was banned for walking on public paths and visiting neighbours, but mostly only early in the event). There were also a few people using an exploit. I don't know in the end if they were disqualified or simply had the extra candy removed from their totals, but either way, it was handled. Some houses did extra stuff like offering gifts or having an open house with decorations. The buckets were obviously a good way to direct people to extras.

It was a nice way to get people to visit the decorated houses. I'm still decorating and putting out a gift whether anything happens or not, though I've not finished yet. I would like to see set prize tiers though, as that'd solve a lot of the issues from last time and fit better with how people played the game (most people wanted to help others find the buckets, rather than competing).

It's rare for threads like this to include a set of rules that'd allow my mainland build. Which is interesting considering my neighbours are fine with it and buy things from me. This is less about being a good neighbour and more about wanting taste/style restrictions. (Keeping in mind there are already rules for things like encroaching and following the age ratings, which are aimed at being a good neighbour.) I like having a Linden Home as well, but I won't post pictures of it, because I know some people are looking for things to report. Often just things they find ugly ("not in theme" does a lot of work here) or don't really understand (thinking something is commercial when it isn't). This is the worst part of the Linden Home community and not the bit you want to be exporting. Basically, unless you want the fence police going out with measuring sticks to see if a wall is slightly too high, then sending angry IMs to the owner, you don't really want this. That is exactly what it'd mean.

So, you're saying the person who did this was a stranger and not a regular, but they had full edit rights. You really need to take our advice on the security here. Yes, people can be jerks, but no need to make it easy for them.

I don't have any interest in the bigger homes. Plus made sense as it saved a bit of money, along with free texture uploads and being able to put in a ticket for a house. The earlier release of plus was useful for people in my situation. There wasn't really much point in making everyone wait until the big houses were done when not everyone wanted one.

It's always weird to me that many people in Second Life don't consider the actual creation of the world to be art. Outside of Second Life, artists are encouraged to notice how art is in everything. The design of this forum, that flatpack furniture, the menu in the fast food restaurant... it all requires art. The question isn't about where to find art in Second Life. Simply log in. Everything around you was created by someone. It's more about whether you can find art you like, which can be trickier.

I'd strongly suggest you lock down permissions as you rebuild. Keep ownership of the objects and simply set them to the land group. Don't share or deed them or anything like that. Only give group members the minimum powers they need for their role. You can lock out the ability to return objects set to group, for example. Outside of some people being jerks, some people are prone to randomly causing disasters, so the fewer build rights they have the better. You won't get anywhere with a report as you can't demonstrate that it was done maliciously and it's not part of ongoing harassment. Most likely the support people will explain what I've just said about the permissions system. What you might be able to do is get the region rolled back if you own the whole thing (if you just have a parcel on it, you're most likely out of luck).

Autumn started in September for fantasy. I think that means it'll be September, October and November. With the winter switch at the beginning of December. We get reminders for when to decorate!

Animations don't require anything special to run. No scripts, no different viewers... you can just run them directly from your inventory. The other stuff is just to add a shiny interface to it, but isn't essential. (I never went to this place, but it's handy to know if you hit the issue in the future.)

The community places in the Linden Home area can be hired for events. You wouldn't really want a hundred bots landing in the middle of your wedding because some of the grid went down. A lot of people don't seem to know they can hire those regions, which might be worth pushing a bit more to get more activity. The only IMs I've had at infohubs are begging for money and random spam. I was sent to one when I first joined and sometimes when things go wrong. I've only stayed there for the time it takes to teleport out. They're not really great social places. That includes the one I first landed at all those years ago, so them being terrible is not a new thing.

Plus people find an empty released house and send in a ticket with the location. It's then manually assigned. So it proves the region is released. It bypasses the land page system, so isn't impacted by any errors with that system. This is a recently released region (a few houses claimed by the railway, presumably by ticket, but mostly empty): http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Allrutti/149/123/23 This is a house on an older region that's stayed empty. According to the stats, it became empty on 20th September (the claimed date), so should have been showing on the land page through all this: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mycroft Homes/119/31/21

They're not all claimed. Plenty free on the new regions and some on the older regions too. The ones that have been claimed look to be plus ticket assignments, rather than from the land page. If it were me looking for one, I'd ticket under the Linden Homes category and state that there are many unclaimed newbrooke 1024s, but they haven't appeared on the land page for some time. I'd then ask for clarification about what's happening with them. It's possible there's some issue that means they've closed them off for now, but it'd be good to at least know that (this happened with stilts at one point). It could also be a mistake (it happened with fantasy at one point). Either way, it'd be useful to know the answer. (One thing that's come up inworld is people considering just quietly dropping their premium instead of asking someone... you do pay for the support service and they're not going to be upset if you ask politely. Much as I'd like to see it sorted, it doesn't directly impact me, so I can't really ticket it.)

*grabs harpoon* Let the hunt begin!

Nothing the moles said suggested that they were upset at the people reporting stuff that needs sorting. I'm not sure how what I said was taken to mean that, but that's really not what anyone was saying. It's more that if more people followed the rules, there'd be less that needed sorting. I don't think a global message will help much, as people who haven't read the rules think they don't need to read them (and the message didn't include the main problems), but I guess we'll see in the following months.

Lucario and Pokemon. Remove all mentions of those and anything similar. In future, don't use names from books, toys, films and games unless they're in the public domain (usually very old things). Be aware that sometimes things will still be removed for looking too much like someone else's copyrighted/trademarked stuff, but they only asked you to remove the words, so you might get lucky. It doesn't matter that other listings haven't been taken down yet. Forget other products. Just focus on sorting yours.