Persephone Emerald

I haven't had anything that interesting happen, but I do see odd dark shapes at the edge of my camera view when I move it sometimes. I wonder if those could be some kind of SL ghost? Maybe the spirits of residents who have mysteriously disappeared without a trace?

There are two reasons for me to be friended to people in SL or on FB, either I actually know & like them or they're part of a subcultural social network I'm involved with. Because of the latter reason, I tend to aquire some "friends" who I don't really know well. If I like how someone thinks and/or care about them, I'll want to read their FB posts & talk with them there or in SL. But I don't want a huge collection of "friends" either in SL or on FB. Too many is just annoying. I don't generally want to be friended to my friend's friends, since I feel I have enough of my own. My SL frienships tend to be just as deep as those I make elsewhere online or in RL. I'm fond of many people, but only a few friendships develop into deep & lasting ones.

Thanks, Lexi. I was confused too. :smileyhappy:

@ Mags Indigo I agree completely with your OP. I liked how in the old forums if I were confused by a post, I could click a link to find out who & what it was referencing. Limiting threads seems like a possible solution to the spam problem, but then I imagine the spammer would just post to other people's threads instead. Limiting posts would be a disaster, especially when an OP provides insufficient information about a problem, so someone is trying to get him or her to explain it in more detail. I haven't seen the spammers myself since the first evening they appeared. Could my blocking them actually have done some good? (for myself at least) Since they are trying to fraud new users out of their money, there existance on these forums does nothing but hurt LL & its customers. Note: Just address the person you're responding to in some way in your response & everyone will know who you're responding to. This is how many online forums, elists & Facebook works anyway. It's old-school, but it works as long as you can tell who posted before you. Can we please have an option of either black or white for our names on our badges, so the name doesn't blend into the background? Thanks I also want to be able to "Like" or "Dislike" comments.

This link was posted in the Role Play forum, but I think it should be posted here too. It goes to a website with an extensive list of Historical & Real World recreation sims. http://nmsua.edu/tiopete/sl-register-of-historic-places/ One of the listed sites that I recommend is Paris 1900. It has a very good recreation of Notre Dame, the Champs Elysees &, the Eiffel Tower. Inside the Sarah Bernhart theater near where you rez in are many pictures that give LMs to otther interesting sims. The kiosk in front of the theater has free outfits you can wear to feel more at home in this period sim as well. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Paris%201900/33/142/27

Ideally, each continent should have a rating of either General, Mature or Adult. Unfortunately, large portions of the mainland are a hopscotch of General & Mature regions, which only serves to anoy both those who want a Mature region & those who want a General one. If your teen is in SL, you can't protect her from seeing or aquiring Mature content. Adults bordering a General region can't protect their Mature content from being viewed by teens either. Adults & teens can choose where they make their homes in SL, though. They can also choose how to behave toward other residents. It's obviously not a neighbor's fault if your teen can see inside their sim or house. What can she see from her land anyway? Naked cartoon people aren't any worse than what's on cable TV. If you want her to have land that's not bordering a Mature region, you can take some time to find a lot that has more General land around it, sell that plot, & buy or rent her another one. There are nice areas with several contiguous General regions, but even if she owns land on the old teen continent, she can still travel to areas that border Mature ones. I think you'll either have to ask your daughter not to spy into Mature regions or accept that she will & learn to be ok with that. Even if you were to forbid her from using SL, you couldn't stop her from logging on outside of your home. It's the same problem a parent has with the rest of the internet. You do your best to remind her not to go to sites she's too young to be exposed to, then you cross your fingers & hope she stays out of them.

Porky Gorky said: "Remove peoples ability to vote and they will make their views known in more extreme ways." - I can see it now. In-world rallies with residents burning Lindens in effigy & reporters filming it all for the 6 o'clock news.

Relm Foxdale said: "I suspect our spammer is practically doing it out of principle now, laughing the whole way. Posting to abuse and griefing must have caused their sides to hurt. :smileyhappy:" - At least no one can say the spammer was "off-topic" there.

Abbot has a boat & submarine area as well. If you can find it, I think that would be where you can board a sea plane. Btw, I think this thread should be in the Destinations section.

My main avatar (Persephone) is most an extension of myself & even has some work to do in SL (community building, content creation & sales), so I think she desearves a premium account & land of her own. My favorite alt (Alycia) enjoys fishing for outfits at DV8, so I've decided she can sell some of what she catches to Persephone, who's been giving her rent & spending money ever since Alycia's old house burned down. (We don't discuss how that incident happened.) My other alt (Tasha) doesn't seem to care much about having a house or apartment (she's more lone wolf than human in some ways), but she's free to come spend time on Persephone's land or hang out at Alycia's place whenever she wishes. If my avatars really need anything, I make sure they have it, but I don't like them spending my money too frivolously either.

I don't enjoy seeing animated badges, tags or signitures either. It's distracting & I imagine it uses unnecessary bandwidth. I doubt that someone who jumps up & down, saying "look at me", "look how cute & clever I am" is much appreciated in any situation, least of all when others are trying to read a post. Perhaps it would be useful for the moderators to poll forum users about issues like this, so they can see how many people are truely annoyed, how many like it, & how many are indifferent?

In general, I like the new forums. I enjoyed reading the sometimes rambling discussions in the last forum because they showed humor, creativity & a sense of community. However, those threads sometimes overshadowed ones in which residents were looking for serious answers to problems they were having. I'm also very happy to see the old spam monsters are missing from these forums. On the downside, I think both residents (customers) & moderators (employees?) are experiencing a learning curve as to how to use & control these forums to maximum benefit for all. We residents are still figuring out which areas are best for our posts & what is considered unacceptable to post. The moderators are also perhaps still figuring out where our posts really belong & what words & ideas should be censored. I can't see any other reason why the word "gay" is allowed, but "les.bi.an" is not. This word is not profanity. It is frequently printed in newspapers & spoken on network television. It is also the least offensive, most politcally correct word used to refer to a fairly large number of women who are romantically & sexually attracted to other women. We all know SL is first & formost an adult playground, where adults can express themselves in a wide variety of ways. One of these ways is in romantic encounters, of which - if we believe statistics -10% are same-sex relationships. Assuming 5% of romantic relationships in SL are male-male and 5% are female-female, it makes little sense to exclude 5% of the people using & putting money into Second Life by forbidding references to them with a non-offensive word. Similarly, many people who use SL sell, buy & use adult products & services. I understand & agree that discussions of such things should not be done in front of minors, but these discussions still need to be made. I think we should thus have an age-verified area in these forums, where we can have such discussions responsibly. Finally, these forums provide 4 major services that I can see. 1.) They provide a place where LL can explain changes in products & policy to its customers. 2.) They provide a place where residents (customers) can voice concerns to Linden Labs. 3.) They provide a place where residents can get advice from other residents about how to better enjoy their experience of Second Life. 4.) They provide a place where residents can form friendships & a sense of community. This last function mostly took place in the old forums in the GD area & now seems headed for the "Off- Topic" area. Friendly banter may sometimes seem stupid & senseless to those who are not part of the group doing it , but it serves an important social function of making those within the group feel connected to each other. (This is true in RL as well as in any virtual forum.) If moderators feel they have to regulate such banter to the point of locking threads that go "off-topic", they'll end up stifling the free expression & commeraderie that such banter normally fosters. The environment becomes rather like a workplace in which coworkers are used to bantering playfully with each other while they work. Then an over-aggressive supevisor, in an effort to increase productivity, tells them they can't talk to each while they're working. Resentment toward the supervisor bulids, moral & cooperation between employees goes down, until eventually employees hate their job & higher turn-over rates become a problem. The differences here are that in a workplace there can only be a limited number of employees & the promise of a paycheck will keep the ranks filled even with higher turn-over rates. With Second Life, on the other hand, anoying customers by telling them they can't speak with each other about some subjects or in certain ways can only result in a loss of customers & revenue. Segregate discussions that might not look good to parents & corporations if you must, but don't ban these discussions completely from our forums.

I wonder why the moderator moves this thread to "Off Topic" when it is clearly an effort for a newbie to Find Friends in Second Life ?

Thanks, Niki. I'll check it out. (Edit added 3-4-11): Niki's sim Aphrodite's Fantasies looks very nice & contains a several sections ranging from a non-adult Carnival & romanitc Fairy Forest to the Mutant Jungle & Dungeon area. The Mutant Jungle was my favorite, with very attractive landscaping & well-made creatures. I think Sensual Stoneworks makes some of the best erotic creatures, but there isn't much privacy on their store sim. Electric Pu_sy (aka kitty) also makes some nice toys for reasonable prices. Sensations makes several good tentacle monsters, but their top-line Monster Under the Bed is quite expensive. With the cost of these items being fairly expensive, I think visiting someone else's sim that has them in an attractive setting with a bit of privacy is the way to go.

Ah, my favorite combination would be vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate sauce, fresh strawberries & champage. What fun is it without a buffet of goodies to choose from?

I admit I haven't been to many adult sims in SL. I used to like The Abbey when it had monsters in the dungeon area, but they're gone now. The confessionals are still entertaining, but only with an amenable partner. Now I guess my favorite adult sims are Sensual Stoneworks and Ecstasy (I think that's the name), the one that has UFOs that transport you to an alien world hidden inside the moon. I'm monogamous in RL & SL, so I like animated creatures (not animals) that allow solo play. (I'm curious how the moderators will handle this topic. I haven't used any profanity or explicit descriptions.) ( 3-4-11: Message edited for more delicate language.)

If moderators will delete posts & close threads for profanity & "mature" subjects on a General forum, how can people advertize sex clubs? We need an Adult, age-verified, forum for such topics.

I'd like to have a like/ dislike button for comments (like YouTube has). I'd also like ot have an Adults Only, age verified section for discussions of topics that affect residents but may not be approriate for minors to read, Examples would be problems merchants & users of adult items have, land-holder & renter issues for residents of Zindra, and determining age appropriatness for displays by arttists & merchants. Datango Vale said: "The General Discussion forum acted as a focal point for the community, like a clubhouse. By removing the clubhouse, the community is fragmented into a wide variety of sub-fora. There is no center, no heart. Admittedly, there were two problems with the old GD Forum." If "Divide & Conquer" is LL's goal , then this move makes perfect sense. We like to view these forums as places for expressing our "Freedom of Speech", but Second Life is not a democracy. It is a generally benevolent dictatorship. We have no citizens "Bill of Rights" here. The govenment of SL controls its press & media. We have no "writ of habius corpus" in its legal system. We have no elected representatives or unbiased judiciary. We residents are at the complete mercy of a govenment that can take our virtual possesions, land, voice & freedom at any time it wishes. Much of the RL world lives under such conditions & has for thousands of years. We must learn to do the same if we wish to live in this particular virtual world. Luckily we still have access to the rest of the internet to share our views. LL can never tell us "No Internets For You.". We also have the freedom to leave for other lands whenever we wish.

Thanks.That worked.

I know this problem has been discussed before, but I couldn't find the previous threads on it. I took my house back into inventory because there seemed to be a phantom prim blocking movement through my entry hall. The invisible "object" was still there after the house was gone, not visible with Show Transparent on either. Also, when I go into About Land to see what prims are present, I'm getting a descrepancy of 2 more total prims than all the others that are accounted for as being owned by me.  How is that possible? Does something like this require a region restart?

Thanks. I already increased my tier & transfered the all the group land to my own land group, then divided it in half & set the half I didn't want for sale. This way, when it sells all the dividends go to me & my partner, who I can be sure will transfer the money back to me. Thanks to both you & Cinn for speedy replies. This whole group land thing has been a fiasco.

Cinnamon.Lohner wrote: Well, at the point in time when the group tier cannot cover the land it owns, Linden will take the land. So you are probably going to have to assume a higher tier for a month to keep the land. It's hard to move land directly from one group to another. The recommended procedure is to sell the land back to yourself and then deed it to a new group (See article linked below). Off the top of my head, I would think the best course of action is 1) sell the land back to yourself. 2) Sub-divide the land into 2 parts. 3) Deed the part you are keeping to a new group and then 4) Sell the other parcel. --Cinn http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/How_do_I_reclaim_group_land%3F Thanks. Sounds like I need to up my own tier to keep from losing the land, then sell off the portion I don't want before reducing my tier again. Funny how trying to help my friends have group land turned into so much of a mess for me. :-/

Do you have any members that are premium & are not using their free 512 allowance (even for a linden home) ? If so they could deed 512 to the group and cover the difference until your co-owner gets his account back. You can also sell off his land from the group without having to add it to your own tier. Check that only the owner role has "Pay group lianilities & receive dividends" checked or any money that goes to the group from the land sale will be divided between everyone. If only the owner role has that ability all the money will be sent to your account the day after the sale. In the group that currently owns this parcel, we had about 6 co-owners, but only myself & the owner who is now suspended were paying tier out of our PayPal accounts, thoough others were giving him money in RL to pay their share. I don't think I can come up with enough tier from other people to cover his share, which was an 1/8 of a region. When I do sell off the portion of this land that I don't want to keep, the sale dividend will go to all owners, even though I paid for the land myself. I expect the other co-owners will refund me the money, though, even without me asking them to do so. Can I sell off group land while one of the owners is suspended, then?

The problem is even worse when you search on the word "Torture" with both Mature & Adult boxes unchecked. There are many, many items available to teens under this catagory. Below are just a few of them. (I didn't know if I should flag these because I think torture devices are considered Mature in SL, rather than Adult, another case of American culture being truely screwed up.) https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Blood-Driven-Impalement-Spike-Female-Scream-Boxed-tagGoth/1268971 https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/REPULSE-Bloody-Eye-Face-Tattoo/1561066 https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TORTURE-EQUIPMENT-PACKAGE/1221442 https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TT-TBite-Me/1748309

I'm a co-owner of group land that I bought for the group. I was paying half the tier & another co-owner was paying the other half. I recently found out his account has been suspended for not paying his tier.  The whole group is fine with me selling off half the land & keeping the rest for myself. What should I do first to clear up the mess with Linden Labs, though?  Should I put $40 into this other owners PayPal account, so his tier will be payed & his account will be reactivated? Should I up my tier to $75 & transfer the group land to a group I own myself?  I'll need to sell off half the land & then reduce my own tier to $40 after this is done. The land is in a very nice Mature region, next to a cliff with an unobstructed ocean view, so I want to keep the ocean-view part for myself.