Persephone Emerald

Imagine a newbie coming to the forums and seeing the amount of nonsense and bickering here.

If this is a store that's been in SL for a long time, they might have decided on their own to use bots to inflate their numbers, because this used to be a more common practice. It's a shame, but I think often the creators who complain most about falling sales or their competition making more sales than them, have actually done this to themselves somehow. They might have been popular in the past in part because they had a big freebie section, for instance, but then they decided to change their whole store design and make it impossible to find their freebies.

B I wouldn't suggest telling people to move out of a home they already have (except for in the old Linden Home regions). Setting up Linden Home regions takes far too much work for temporary regions to make any sense for Linden Lab. Maybe adding a few new house styles will be enough for those who chase the new shiny? I don't think increased Premium sales will be enough to sustain more than a couple more Linden Home themes.

I wonder if some stores like that have lost much of their real traffic because of poor choices in the past, so now they feel a need to artificially inflate their traffic numbers?

How is a worn bicycle any different from a worn horse? Neither is difficult to use, and both are fun to use.

Do you go shopping? The only bots I ever see at a store is one standing behind the counter with some scripted responses to common customer questions.

How can we tell if a dot is a bot? One indication might be where it is. There's no reason to have one or two bots in a Bellisseria Linden Home. They're against the covenant as well. So very few of those green dots in Bellisseria would be bots. There are unlikely to be bots at shopping events or many stores (unless that store has a CSR bot or sells bots). So few of the dots in store and event regions would be bots. Roleplay and AFK sex places probably have some. What percentage of regions are RP regions? What percentage of green dots in Adult regions are bots?

With over 2500 empty Chalet parcels, I'm starting to come around to the idea of converting some of them to 2048 m parcels with a couple new house styles. Would this even be possible though? Would the LDPW be able to convert 2 existing 1024 m parcels in existing regions into one 2048 m parcel?

Yes. They are north of the Welcome Hub, which is just north of the Log Homes.

If you have your Build tab showing in your viewer, you can also see when it goes from being greyed-out to being lighted.

Have you been to the Welcome Hub? There is already a whole region of demo Bellisseria Linden Homes, including a furnished one right in front when folks first step into the region. From the opposite end of this demo region there is a very long bridge into the Log Home regions. Newbies can fly or walk over the bridge to see what is on the other side of it. (They can't ride the rails or a boat because they don't have a train and probably haven't picked up the free sailboat at the Welcome Hub.) I did see one newbie riding the Linden horse from the Library into my north coast Victorian neighborhood, though, which I thought was very clever of her. 🐴

There is already a railway line straight from the demo homes into Bellisseria. The only problem with it for newbies is that they can't rez a train, because they don't have a train in their inventory. The Valentine's train was a great idea though. I hope LL keeps something like this going with a rezable train, maybe just an engine and one open passenger car.

Body-shaming, especially of overweight people, is too.

Cinnamon has such a cute smile. She looks like she's a very happy dog.

Even an old-timer disguised as a newbie can help with new user retention if they bother to chat with the newbies. I had a couple of new guys chat with my newbie alt. One was apparently trying to form more of a relationship with her and even seemed jealous of the other. He was saying she was cute and chatting her up, which I found kind of cute myself rather than desperate. Maybe he was used to the chat-oriented experience in IMVU? Say what you want about IMVU users, but at least they they know how to chat in more than monosylabic text.

I don't think it would be economical to rework existing parcels. It's obviously economical to add home styles, texturing options, and items in the content packs, because they've already done these things. I think it might also be possible to create new regions with 2048 m parcels within the existing themes. For instance, there is undeveloped coastline NW of the Newbrook regions which could have 2048 m Houseboat parcels. These could be the same depth as the current rectangular parcels, but with double the width. People seem to like being on water, but sometimes complain that the Houseboats feel too close together. The Houseboat theme also requires less landscaping than themes on land, so this means they'd use fewer mole-hours. They still need someone to create the coastline and piers, but they'd need less plants, soundscaping, and maybe less intensive QA work.

This one is my favorite.

Ok, @Zalificent Corvinus What's your sign? I'm sure you can contribute to the thread with a humorous example, rather than just mocking other people's posts.

I think it's fine for us to be anywhere except inside the landing area, in front of the passageways into and out of the landing area, or sitting, standing or hovering over the landing area as if we're looking down at the newbies or stalking them.

Actually, we can copy and paste some notecards and scripts. We can upload some textures and photos. And we can make and save our own meshes. Most items, however, can not be taken out of SL or copied to another platform.

Absolutely. This is one of the weird but amazing aspects of SL for me. I think it's kind of like playing a roleplay character, in that we allow different aspects of our personality to be expressed through different avatars or characters. At first they might seem like they're just a fictional character we've created, but after awhile we realize that this alternate character allows us to express feelings and behavior we might usually repress. It's pretty common for people in SL to express a different gender with an alt. I don't really identify with my male alt, but I found it interesting to feel a different personality come through my female alt for whom I'd invented a traumatic backstory. She speaks her mind and doesn't care if anyone thinks she's weird or crazy. She's also a survivor who's been able to reinvent herself the way she wants to be, rather than how I originally created her to be.

I agree it can be irritating when companies put on a Pride or Black History event one time each year, then ignore those people the rest of the year. The last company I worked for had hardly any black employees, so their Black History treats seemed kind of tone-deaf, with red kool-aid, banana pudding, and ? (I don't remember if they had fried chicken too.) On the other hand, I enjoy hearing about black history and culture on NPR. There was a interesting show on this morning about a black lonely hearts magazine in 1937. The black journalists on the show read some of the letters from men looking for a wife, and one of the ladies picked which one she thought sounded the most promising. They were discussing the shift in black culture when many black people had moved to northern cities, created communities there, and were thinking about their life opportunities, love and dating in a more modern way than their parents had done. Actually educating people has to be more than just mentioning the few famous black people from history who always get mentioned. I think real history should also be about understanding the lives of everyday people, their challenges, but also their successes and joys.

This brings up an interesting idea, though probably too controversial for this forum. Is being black or a "person of color" about more than just skin color? Your avatar could be any color, but that doesn't change who you are inside. I obviously don't stop being white just because I'm wearing a purple or teal skin in SL, so an avatar's skin color isn't what makes them part of a racial identity.

What would be a good sign to put on your T-shirt or property in SL? For instance, on your property a funny sign might say, "Derender neighbor's build for a better environment ->" A T-shirt might say, "It's not lag. I just like walking into people 😁 "