Polenth Yue

A griefer might be a negative experience too, but they're usually chat/particle spamming, so the settings in question do diddly for that. They're also so many times rarer than getting stuck in a rock that I'd rather settings were for the everyday experience. You don't have to agree, but that's how it's been for me.

The only use I've seen where I felt it worked are maze sims (and similar puzzle sims). They often turn off fly and set a landing point at the start. If you don't want to do a maze, you're not going to visit a maze, so that's not really a problem. Everywhere else, it's a nightmare, especially when it goes with no fly. I explore a lot and I walk most of the time. Teleport and fly are tools for getting out when I get stuck. They also mean I can mark how far I got in a sim and come back later. I do start to avoid sims on hunts and the like if they have those settings and are difficult to navigate, because it simply isn't fun. It's one of those things where sim owners make it hard for most visitors for the sake of a minority that might cause issues.

Another thing they added recently is that premium accounts can attach two animesh items to an avatar. Basic accounts can only attach one. Which might interest you if you're into follow pets, rideables, or anything else that might use animesh.

As others have said, the interest of the loan can't be enforced. But this does seem like a bigger issue with the friend rushing into big financial decisions. A policy of waiting a day and running it by friends might be one to suggest. It seems obvious, but not to the person who jumps from one scam to another. Sometimes it needs to be said directly.

It's one of those things that technically isn't against the rules, but is on the dubious side. Copy permissions weren't really intended so that one person could place copies of an item for everyone else. However, this has been going on since before Linden homes, and it's never really taken off in a big way. Most people want their own copies of things. You'd lose far more money from things like selling everything as no copy. Ultimately, regular customers outnumber people like this by a huge amount, so it's better to make decisions based on what works for those regular customers.

Note that the centre of the object doesn't need to be on your land to return it. The system used to work like that, but they changed it. All it needs is to be over the boundary.

You can't just nudge over the object... you will have to return the whole thing. When it's a really clear case, I don't send messages. I just return the thing. It's not like someone didn't notice the giant house they placed covered half my stuff. They were hoping I wouldn't log in and notice. The idea of sending a message is nice, but it's not very practical for most small parcels. I've had things cover my stuff that block access or cover my products for sale. That's going back the moment I find it, not after two weeks to see if they'll respond. So, if you need someone to say it's fine to return it, I'm saying it. If the system lets you return it, the item was where it shouldn't have been. Don't feel bad about it. Don't feel you have to put up with it being in the way for weeks whilst you wait for a response.

If your main thing is textures for items others make, you might want to take a look at horses. There's a big market for textures and accessories for those. Whereas a boat is more likely to be bought and used as it comes out of the box.

The adult content rules aren't really enforced anymore in my experience. The general sim I live on has public adult content on ground level. It had less adult content when I first moved in before the rule changes. However, assuming you would be reported and someone would do something, your friend is wrong to say that the sky is inherently public no matter what. There's no difference to a sealed box in the sky and a sealed box on the ground in terms of whether they're considered to be public spaces or not. The advantage of the sky box is that out of sight is out of mind. Most people won't know it's there, as long as you place it at a different level to your neighbours.

I wouldn't say I have any people peeves, because the things I don't like are about basic respect. As long as it isn't harming anyone, I don't see a problem. Wear whatever avatar you want. I'm a mushroom. I can't really judge. Places are another matter. No fly is my biggest one. I tend to walk if I can, so no flight wouldn't be a problem on its own, but you can guarantee this will be the sim where flight is needed to get around poor sim design. A classic is to not check under the water, so anyone who falls in finds they're in a deep abyss with vertical sides and they're completely trapped. Bonus points for places where the official landing point wasn't moved after a redesign, so all visitors teleport directly into the watery abyss.

I'm talking about the time before land was Adult and when it was just land that had adult content on it. I joined in 2006. Age verification was 2007, back when land was split into PG and Mature. Zindra and the Adult classification were 2009. The teen grid shut in 2010/2011. I had to look up those dates, but they sound about right, and are the context for my comments. Before there was a proper rating for adult land, people could set that the parcel contained adult content. The result was that people had to verify to enter (after verification was introduced). It wasn't the case that all Mature land was off-limits without verification. I could walk along a mainland road and pass through Mature sims without any issues, but needed verification to enter any parcels marked as having adult content. When Zindra/Adult was introduced, the rules changed for Mature to remove the adult content and it became the Moderate we have today. Adult land required verification by default, unlike the old Mature. The child age restrictions for land never applied to child avatars. They applied to actual legal minors. When the teen grid shut, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds were transferred over to the main grid. They couldn't leave PG/General areas until they hit 18. Child avatars, as long as they're controlled by an adult, can go to any rating of land as long as they follow the content rules.

People come and go so often that you can't really guarantee that a nice sim will stay nice. Mindulle wasn't bad when I first moved in years ago, but it's currently not that great and my next door neighbour has an adult property (it's a general rated sim). I used to have a pretty open shop, but I put a box around it so customers teleporting in won't see out unless they want to go outside. There have been other phases, like the person who put up some poorly-made prefab gothic cathedral things everywhere. And the chicken farmer with a bunch of dead chickens in the sky taking up resources. You have little control over what neighbours do, even when they are breaking rules, as it's hit and miss whether anything will be done about it. Sometimes your best bet is to just wall yourself in. Outside of attempting a report, there's not much you can do on mainland other than to make sure you can't see whatever else is there.

I remember having to give my passport number to be verified. It was a pain not to be verified as someone who liked hunts, because it'd cut a bunch of locations out of the chain. This was before the scripted hunt idea really took off, so if a location wasn't accessible, you'd have to find the main list of all the locations to skip ahead (and hope that list had been updated properly). It also had a similar issue to today, in that a lot of places requiring verification were not really what you'd think of when someone says it's an adult area. They might have some adult stuff hidden away, but the main public areas weren't, so there was plenty that someone might want to see that had nothing to do with adult content. Not being able to visit random landmarks wasn't fun. I'm glad it's easier for people now. I've been able to go wherever I want for years, but I do still remember the issues before I was verified. "No, you can't visit that magical unicorn garden." "Is it a sex garden or something?" "Well, no, it's just cuddle poses, but only verified adults can see the majestic wonder of unicorns!"

I'm all for clear signs and it's worth considering that what's clear to one person won't be to another. But I'd rate my worst experiences as things like vendors who think anyone who stands still for a few minutes or examines an item in edit is copybotting. Or that visiting a shop a few times without buying anything is copybotting. Or that all non-human avatars are evil perverts and should be banned. Or the box is actually empty and the seller doesn't reply to messages. Things like shops with poor layouts and bad signage doesn't get close to the worst I've seen. In other words, a discussion on signs and labelling likely would have gone down better if it wasn't presented as the absolutely worst thing that could happen. The example shown seems about average, as the information is there, but it wouldn't hurt for it to be visible without having to click the demo. It's not the best and not the worst.

If you define success as earning enough that you never need another job, then most people aren't successful. That includes most people with old accounts, rather than being something that's only true for new accounts. But I'd argue that replacing the day job isn't the goal of most people with businesses in Second Life. I pay for my premium account and have money left over to spend, which is successful for me.

I can see too many cases where this would go horribly wrong. A full perms item that's already been transferred to another person is one of these. Anything that stops copy items being immediately copied is another. This would basically make everyone wait to use their new items, just in case they might want a refund. It would be hard to implement without it impacting the people who didn't want refunds, which is the majority. I'm not against refunds when an item has an issue or wasn't what the customer thought, but I'd rather the customer contacted me and I gave the refund. That way it doesn't cause any issues for anyone who didn't want a refund. The problem is more a social one, in that Second Life has developed an anti-refund culture, which means a lot of merchants refuse to give them in any circumstance. That's something I would like to see changed. A merchant can obviously use some discretion if it looks shady, but I've only had to refund because someone hated it a few times in some years. Most customers aren't looking to scam. To see what I mean about the automatic system, don't think about that time you bought something and it was terrible. Think about all the things you bought that were great. Imagine not really being able to use them properly until the refund timeout. There would be more than a few complaints on the forum if that happened.

A suggestion with this is to test what's actually going on. Use search to find a place you wouldn't usually ever go. If you're not social, pick a club. If you never do gardens, go to a garden. Wait. See if they appear. This will show if they're following you or if they're simply set up to visit a certain theme of sim. If you're now certain they're following, replace your current outfit with one of the newbie outfits. Use replace, not add, so that you're wearing nothing other than the newbie gear. Now go to another sim that you'd never usually visit. Hopefully they won't appear. You can then start putting your old outfit back on, one piece at a time, and seeing when they turn up. The end result is you might find they're not following you, but are visiting places that match your tastes. You might find they are following and will be able to identify how. Either way, ban them from your skybox.

I'm running a mushroomy sim hunt for Hallowe'en! Ten letters are hidden around Aquila III, a tropical steampunk sim. Each letter is a piece of a short horror story. There are also fungal gifts with some of the letters, with colours and styles aimed at the spooky season. The hunt runs until 10th November 2018. You can find the starting point, with the instructions and hints, at this location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aquila%20III/230/101/105 This hunt is free and doesn't require any sort of HUD. You just click the letters to get the stuff. You're looking for envelopes surrounded by mushrooms with glowing orange gills (it's easier with the region environment settings, as the glow is more obvious in the dark). The first item is in sight of the landing point. Have a great Hallowe'en!

I never found the big merchant groups very useful. They only appeared to contain other merchants wanting to send messages, rather than customers. About the only thing that's consistently helped me is taking part in Fantasy Faire. It provides direct sales, raises awareness that the shop exists, and sometimes means I get asked to do other stuff.

Most of the more general hunts I've done haven't had a fee, but do ask for a new gift for the hunters. A fee isn't immediately a red flag though, as it depends on the hunt system. One system has land owners buy the items to hide. In return for that, the organisers supply all the hunt gifts and have an established group who'll do the hunts. What is a red flag is contacting people out of the blue with no proven track record of hunts. A lot of the hunts I've done haven't really attracted many people in. It's not a problem when it's free entry, but you don't want to pay to be someone's guinea pig.

Most mainland areas are so quiet that you'll rarely see someone even if you're standing on the ground in plain sight. I wouldn't worry too much that people will be sneaking a look at a skybox. The big issue here is not wanting to use money to cover land for a skybox, because you're not going to get land for free. You can pay for SL with things you do in SL though, so that's an option to consider.

I don't mind suggestions, but I'm not the owner of this store. You might get a good response. You might not. You're not going to know what that store owner is like until you send them a message.

Back when I had more funds and was slowly buying up land in my sim, I did a lot of requesting abandoned land. It's always worth asking. The worst that'll happen is they'll toss it up for auction (and you'll know it's about to happen, so this is good... you can watch for it). But chances are they'll just sell it to you, especially if it's a small plot.

It's probably my author background showing, but I leave negative reviews alone. Reviewers get to have their opinions, even if it's really bizarre and off-topic. I had someone assume one of my decorative mushrooms was a chair once (it was pointy, so it'd be the worst chair ever). Technically, the review could have been reported because it clearly wasn't a chair listing, but it means other people aren't going to make the same mistake. It's also not going to stop someone who wants a decorative mushroom. Anyway, I can see why someone might take the statement of placing them around the home to mean it's either copy or there's more than one in the box. It's also a weird item to have as no mod / no copy. It'd be nice if customers read listings carefully, but most won't, so it's a mistake that's going to happen to you again.

I guess that means we can be neutral or wonderful, but no one can have a negative reputation as there's no way for it to go down.