Eileen Fellstein

16 wrote: about locking people up. linden used to do that by sending offenders to the Cornfield. not anymore. became a badge of honor to get sent there for some people that did. is still on the grid tho and sometimes is opened up to the public. usual at Halloween. Cornfield went south about the same time as the linden Police Blotter I knew it! Lindens = Buck N Roy N Pickin N"a Grinnin!

Ceka Cianci wrote: you would think after 40 years old they would realize there is no easter bunny hehehehe I guess I can stop leaving piles of carrots on the porch? Wonder who been eatin em *sctratches head. My 1st go at SL, about a year before I made this avi, was not without incident at orientation island... I was doing the linden hair tutorial and a girl comes up and starts spamming friend invites to me, naturally interfering with the instruction drop downs because they were in the same place on the screen. After choosing no 3 times I finally turned and told her to stop it at which point she tried to shove me off the balcony. It was like "BE MY FREIND DAMMIT..OR I KEEL U!!' lol, anyway I sidestepped her next lunge and she plumetted over the railing. I finished the tutorials and explored for about half an hour, deciding I didn't much care for SL. About a year later I tried again and stuck around. I'm not sure why they don't just put a time limit on the beginner stuff.

Mayalily wrote: Venus Petrov wrote: I visit welcome centers 2 - 3 times each month to help new residents. Yes, there are regulars who hang out and help and others who are less helpful. I do wonder how many new residents might be turned off by the latter type of 'welcome' but it is what it is. I agree, however, if you see something that is AR-able, that you do that. It is very kind of you to want to help new residents. AR-ing is pretty useless in SL. For some people, hurting others is their hobby. LL should build like a trap into the AR mechanisim, and then the avatar would be trapped for at least 15 minutes. How about spinning their avatar around like crazy once inside the trap? If I were to build a game like this, that is what I would do. Or you build a looney bin sim and they have to go there and take meds, or they go to jail and are stuck there for a specific period of time until their griefing is investigated and stopped. LL won't do anything because it's money to them and not much more. lol, I like how you think. Actually most of that is doable on a private sim at least with the use of RLV traps and various modable game components that can be bought on the marketplace in conjunction with whatever other modable objectsyou choose. I have some padded cells but I haven't tried spinning them, lol.

Try inquiring via notecard to the owner of the prim with that picture on it (or whatever creator posted the other product that model was displaying on MP if that's where you saw it. They might be able to give you a lead. In some cases it could be a yet to be released style and you'd just have to wait but they will probably indicate that if so. I had a similar issue not long ago. I saw a wonderful hair on an add so I went to the store hoping they also had the hairs. I even bought the outfit thinking maybe the accompanying ducumentation told where the hair was from. It actually did except that it was errant, lol. I scoured the entire store credited in the notecard that came with the outfit but the style was just not there. The really cool thing was I found a better one! The one I have now 2 nights later I was at work and a collegue walked in wearing the hair I'd been searching for. I was like girl, where's that from?! So...I wound up with 2 cool styles and 2 LM's to great new hair places. Couldn't beat that

It's unforunate Amethyst. I doubt we will see active monitoring of those places however. I have never seen monitoring in any public areas since I started SL, at least not official SL monitors anyway. You could AR it, it may help some even if someone was only sent through once in a while. It really does suck for the real new residents. Most people will generally either rent or buy a place before long or at least find a friend willing to put them in their group so they can save to somewhere half-way private. With you being there to offer help, I'm glad you haven't let the bad apples discourage you. I'm sure there must be a few new people that appreciate it too. What I also find discouraging about what you just said is that if bunches of 'not new' avatars are hanging at the welcome center and being counter-productive, they are also being counter-productive to our inworld society. In other words they are not out supporting places with either their money or even their pressence. Basically just vagrants and when they opt to harrass innocent newcomers, then they could most acurately be described as hoodlums.

If you have existing ones that are supposed to have that function, try channel 1 and channel 8 with a show or hide command (/1show, /8show etc). There were many sold that opperated on those channels. It also helps if you can see where they are when you begin, lol, so ctl-alt T will show them in red on your screen. and if you already knew some of that sorry. Not trying to be condescending, just helpful

I noticed that a while back when I made a test alt for something. The avatar style I chose never loaded onto the avi. I had to manaually find it in the library and equip all the components myself. Maybe it's not a bug but a 'feature'? The new 'forced learning for new residents' or some such, lol likely the viewer times out and SL just gives up. I didn't think to look at any error logs at the time.

Everyone has made terrific points! I don't agree with everything to the letter of everything said but I think as a collective, it's been a pretty accurate assesment of the situation. In my mind there's 2 important angles that sort of clash and work against one another. The 1st is the use of these contests with the primary purpose being to draw traffic in the hopes that that equals profit. That usually collides head 1st with those looking for something fun to do that are optomistic that most things are reasonably fair. Anyone that knows me knows how fighting mad I can get over IP tracking. To me, there's not a single thing in this pixel prim world that excuses anyone but Lindens from using that information without the express written consent of the individual involved. So just for me personally, I'd rather see no contests than to have people resorting to that, especially over what is usually about 1 dollar USD worth of L$. I don't think measures that drastic are necessary though, nor have they ever been. I do think people were a little too willing to turn over a task that needs to be handled by a responsible and trustworthy person or group of people to a scrpted object. What I do think the answer is though is to put the focus back on fun long enough to see that it generates far more traffic in the end than any amount of gimmicks or gadgetry. Just an example. How many people love to take pictures of their avi or others? And there is without a doubt many wonderful photgraphers around the grid. Woudn't it be wonderful to spend time doing your best creative shoot for a contest with the confidence that your submissions are being judged fairly, whether you have the time or money to drag friends and neighbor there and fill up some contest board with lindens? I'm guessing even for those that didn't win, it would be a sheer joy just to go look at all the amazing submissions.

Seven Overdrive wrote: Just go to the clubs and venues you enjoy hanging at and avoid the contests since most will be won by the person with the most alts anyway. Contests are just tricks to get people to show up. I rather go to a place that doesn't need to rely on such things because they have the creativity and talent to make people want to spend their precious time and money there. Well yes...and no, lol I mean everything you said is true but some contests are fun and enjoyable and some of us still like them. Cheaters ruin them however and club owners that don't care enough to do what it takes to ensure fairness just agrivate the problem further. Contests are a money out situation more than a profiter in and of theirself. That I understand, so it's usually in conjunction with other things to make the money back and then some. But it's a destructive pattern I have seen played out a few different times. Contest attracts people. Traffic numbers enable sales/rental of vendor stalls. Pretty soon there's so much damn lag in the place that people give up and stop coming, regardless of any amount talent or creativity. So they shake the Etch a Sketch and start over somewhere else doing exactly the same thing. There has got to be more to SL than just being a laggy cash register for runaway venture capitalism or at least I hope so

Perrie Juran wrote: Amethyst Jetaime wrote: Then the contest boards came aound which I hate because they just contribute to lag, but they are fairer in that no one can cheat that way. I puzzled over this at one time. When I first started SL I frequented one club where a certain individual kept winning and some of us began to get pissed about it. At the time we weren't able to figure it out. But recently a club owner told me how it can be gamed. Just a few seconds before the board 'announces' the winner, a host or hostess with edit rights will delete names from the contest. You don't see it happen because the board is cycling through names. How wide spread this is I don't know, but it is how it's done. Actually most boards can be completely over-ridden by the host/admin controlling it. They can simply select the winner and end of story. It's a feature programmed in to give owners a way to intervene when obvious cheating is going on. A novice host may not have received enough instructions to know how to do it and even the board owner may not be aware its there if they haven't toured the menu, but yea. That's how that's done. Going to machines didn't take away the possibility of corruption. It just sort of presents the assumtion that it's gone. I think it's important to stress here that this kind of thing (management rigging results) is not the norm and it's not something that plagues us en-mass. IMO it's more like one bad apple spoils the bushell basket full. One dose of that is enough to turn anyone off from participating in similar things. But what is all too common in my view is things being totally designed around venue traffic, venue profit as the top priority and fairness, fun and anything else is up for compromise. To me, that's the portion we need to really shake loose from. And it's in everyone's best interest. When your guests are happy, you stand to profit more I think.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: It used to be that for club events, the host would take and tally the votes. But, I know there were some hosts who were cheating and awarding the prize to friends or club owners were by picking someone that was planted to 'win' that they wouldn't have to pay. Then the contest boards came aound which I hate because they just contribute to lag, but they are fairer in that no one can cheat that way. Of course they still can tp in friends and alts to 'win'. Actually since traffic isn't counted toward search ranking anymore, I'm seeing less and less of them. Club contests may be good fof a new club to get people in the door at first.. The thing is though, from my own experience as a club owner, people that are attracted soley to win Lindens rarely spend them in the venue. Your much better off offering an quality experience and building your patrons that way, You more apt to get people with lindens to spend who will tip and spend money in shops. If you want a contest to attract people though, the best way is with a lottery script. You put it in an object that people touch to enter during the event, then the owner gives it a command and it randomly picks a winner at the end. The rules could be that the winner has to be present to win and comply with whatever the eligibility criteia is. If they aren't there or aren't in compliance,you just ask the script to pick another name. Since there is no voting and the choice is random everyone has an equal chance of winning. For contests involving skill and talent, obviously the best way is judging. (You could have a voting element and charge per vote to raise prize money, but the voting should only account for a small portion of the score with the judging a much larger part). Who the judges are though should be kept secet until the winner is announced to avoid bribery. The best way to do that is to pick judges who you trust and that may need you to recipicate and judge their contests. Yes Amethyst, that was my 1st SL job as well. To me, cheating or helping anyone cheat was out of the question and I can honestly say I was not aware of anyone in that crew I believed to be involved in something like that. For us, the human element was the insurance against people gaming a mechanical device. I hated any time I got a tie and had to pick a winner myself. I generally just paid the other out of pocket. It was worth it to me to help keep the place fun and good spirited. I don't own a club or even manage so my motivation in this topic isn't about traffic or making money. I'd like to think a new person could use the search and find an interesting contest, put themself together a look and go attend with a fair shot of winning. I did that my 1st day. I actually won twice just by making the effort to be in costume, even with the stuff being all freebies. I'm just really not seeing that sort of thing happening now, much if ever. Now, everyone's 1st thought seams to be' whose alt is it?'.

Bree Giffen wrote: How about making a voting booth that randomizes the order of the contestants for every voter? So someone can't tell all their friends to just vote for number 4. Maybe, if you have 10 contestants, each voter would be presented with just a randomly chosen 5 out of the 10. Well I'm not sure how many people actually vote by number like that but this does bring to mind part of an older way of collecting manual votes that actually worked very well in keeping contests fair. Everyone votes for 2 people. No exceptions. If you don't cast 2 votes, your votes do not count. Reason why is this nullifies vote stacking as well as can be possibly expected. Sure, vote up your freind or partner but unless you came with 2 or more friends, there's a much stronger chance that your 2nd vote went to someone that deserved to win the contest by the criteria. Votes are all given equal priority so that 1st choice-2nd choice does not matter. This approach could be programmed into boards actually though I have never seen it. Closest I have seen was girls on this side, guys over there.

Knowl Paine wrote: As mentioned, a panel of Judges would be a reliable method. The popular vote could count as 1 vote in the judges panel. Expanding the popular voting options to include sub-selections as to "why" the Resident voted, could provide valuable data about the contest content. The Judges should be Judged. Any "builder" Judge can meet me (and others) in the sandbox, and he or she can prove their worth. Show me what you know about building. A Bios on the Judges would suffice. :matte-motes-grin: I like your thought Knowl, though I don't think reasons are even necesary on the popular vote part as long as there are knowlegeable judges for the other 2/3 or w/e. I also like the idea of pre-testing the judges. I think #1 that would attract some people that had some amount of motivation to change the status quo with this stuff and could also instil a bit of confidence in the contest itself. The question is practicality. Is it really feasable for a venue that presents anywhere from 10 to 30 events a week to screen judges for all of them? Probably not but a place could probably staff a rotating panel with a variety of areas of expertise and do their best to match up events with the appropriate 'experts' when available. another thought is an additional wildcard judge could be added from the guests present by way of a quick vote. Might be someone good...might be someone bad...but it would make it interesting hehe

LoL DQ And Charlotte, a panel of judges was exactly what came to my mind 1st. See, when I was 1st in SL I discovered ice skating. The wonderful apparel and skates available and some very nice venues. I got myself a hud to skate like the proffessional skaters because someone told me come winter there would be competitions. I was so let down when the 1st was announced and it was done by popularity vote. I had practiced for weeks expecting it to be an actual competition. I never even bothered to enter. I understand the problem. As soon as you suggest judges, someone asks who can be trusted and everyone looks around at one another bewildered. yet... How the hell did we ever arrive at the conclusion turning it over to a scripted machine was prefferable? That's what baffles me to no end. And at this point even an intentionally currupt panel that were there to be bribed would be preferable to what we usually have now in my opinion. At least it would be good for a few laughs as long as the gist of that was publicly known. I still think with all the talented people on here, a solution is there somewhere. I just know there has to be a pony under all this horsesh!t!

Ok let me just air this out and get it out of my system then I'll get to the calm and rational explanation of what I am on about.. OMG CAN WE PULEEZE FIND A WAY TO DO CONTESTS THAT IS NOT A GLORIFIED VERSION OF A BOGUS POPULARITY CONTEST DESIGNED FOR LITTLE MORE THAN GETTING TRAFFIC ONTO SOMEONE'S SIM??!! GRRR!!! :matte-motes-evil: There, that felt better :) Alright. I've been in SL for going on four years. Something people do a lot of is attend or put on contests. Mostly dress-up contests with linden or merchandise for prizes. Also there are longer running contests like modeling/photography, DJing, skating, etc etc etc. Regardless of the theme, the vast majority of these contests, regardless of any claims or efforts to keep them fair determine the winner through taking a vote among the guests who come to that sim during the alloted time frame. It should probably be no surprise to any of us that in a world-wide arena such as SL, a person's friends are seldom if not rarely the most unbiased of critics when it comes to deciding who to vote for. In fact, in most cases, it's pretty much understood that the winner is going to be whomever drags the most avatars in to vote. Even if we survive such a thing without it lapsing into someone using a bunch of alts or just stuffing a hundred bucks worth of linden into the contest board to watch everyone scramble to keep up, to think for a second that these have anything at all to do with skill or talent of any kind would be entirely errant the majority of the time (with the posible exception of political talent - who can gather the biggest following) So, I guess I'm offering this up as a challenge to all of us as a community, to come up with a way to run contests in a different manner. One that actually takes into account the effort put into meeting the criteria or who really displays the most talent in whatever it is we are trying to do.

Some great replies. Here's my 2 cents. Responsibility to me is...If I give my word, I keep it. Whether it's committing to that late night shift at a friend's club or a commitment to an SL partner to be there with and for them. My word is my word. It doesn't matter that you all are down there in that dust mote known as whoville. You are no less important in terms of my word than anyone else is.

You're every bit as lovely already but I do agree it would be a very nice and logical upgrade to your current look. I can't say for absolote certainty but it looks very much like the shape and skin worn by the model who was often shown on the Kirsten's viewer login screens. (different hair though). Whether or not that was Kirsten, I don't know, and I don't recall her last name. Maybe it's a trail of peanuts if the other suggestions don't pan out. I understand that veiwer is no longer available however.

Beware the Ides of March hehe and happy april fools M ymother's b-day was March 13th actually so it wasn't all bad. She was indeed a beautiful soul

lol, well that may be part of the reseach. How many people are willing to blindly post a picture of themself in response to someone completely anonymous. It's not hard to find a place where thousands of people do that though. It's called facebook and I cringe every time I think about that to be honest. Sites used to warn aganst doing this sort of thing. Now it seems to be encouraged. I'm actually relieved to see how many people in this thread didn't jump to post images of their RL self. It doesn't need to be pedifiles and soap deprived gamers to acurately say 'not everyone is here to play nice', but that is actually true of any sort if internet activity that draws multitudes of people, even the ones where they are posting from their RL selves as opposed to a psuedo name or avatar. I've seen far more rude, biggoted and downright disgusting commentary in reply to you tube videos for instance than I have ever dreamed of seeing in 2nd life. (most of them mirroring their post on facebook and whatever else automatically) Just some aweful stuff on there. IMO piracy issues are the least of their worries. But anyway, I'm not sure you'll convince many that are resistant to try something like SL or some other virtual world/game to try it by pointing out the obvious fact that we are all people behind the avis. I think many people of that opinion have it because of some experience in their own life and it would probably be as difficult as trying to change someone's religeous or political beliefs to do so.

Ceera Murakami wrote: Quite probably the reason you percieve so many 'cheaters' in Linden Realms is that after the firsrt few hours, when you've completed every possible quest, there's nothing to do there except swoop around and collect crystals. The Residents that aren't into doing that leave after a day or less, and have no reason to return. The ones willing to spend lots of time scooping up crystals for minimal rewards are far more likely to try to do that as efficiently as they can, by any means that they can. What amazes me is that anyone at all spends more than a day playing Linden Realms. I've heard claims of upwards of 100L an hour farming those Linden Realm islands. I don't see that as being feasable by any means I personally consider being fair to others, or not 'cheating' as OP asserts. ( I agree also btw. to me it is cheating). However, if there are no clear rules posted and no one enforcing those rules and no steps taken to limit this behavior - like I don't know, maybe coding in and instant auto eject and 30 minute penalty to people that override flight constraints - then really there is nothing to be AR'd when people do this stuff. As far as more than a day, with the one quest that always glitches and takes 40 to 300 attempts to turn in before it actually works, anyone with their mind set on finishing the game is pretty much committed to a full week, most of that week spent running through differnt portals in an attempt to find an instance that is working correctly. But I guess that helps keep traffic numbers up. I was excited when this was released, but I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in what I am hearing to be a lack of maintenance and lack of monitoring of the project. I would guess any hopes for it eveloping into an actual smoothly running adventure game is probably completely out of the question. but yea, pfft. even if the claims of 100 linden an hour or more are acurate, a person can make a whole lot more by simply finding themself some employment.

Psifleur wrote: I simply could not find a bird/avian avatar that suites what I am after. I am sure there is an abundance of them floating around. I have nothing to add but looks like they have it covered. Just had to giggle at the unintentional pun Godspeed

lol! There used to be a web page around with a translation to jive speak app. I had it saved on an old pute but I don't recall what the name was. It was too funny for words though. EDIT: Found it. It's called the dialectizer. Easily searchable through google and now contains many options for translation to slanguages. (My word, I call it! 'slanguages' lol) Anyhow, here's the above text translated to jive... lol! Right on! Dere used t'be some web page around wid some translashun t'JIBE rap app. Jes hang loose, brud. ah' had it saved on an old pute but ah' duzn't recall whut de dojigger wuz. It wuz too funny fo' wo'ds dough. Lop some boogie.

"Walking around pants-less on the mainland could be inappropriate." This is why I always ride a horse when I travel around mainland nude. Besides, it's quicker

I'd be happy to post the pic except for one little problem... While the real life me looks exactly the same, I have yet to be born into the tangible world in the flesh and grow into an adult. Check this thread in about 30 years. I'll try not to forget to post.

Ceka Cianci wrote: i'm waiting for the day when me and my husband go to a club and someone calls me a bot or my husband a bot and tells me he is my alt or tells him i am his.. i'm not gonna make a big deal of it right then and there..i'll just make an AR and right after that get with the GZ group to check the place out and make sure they were guessing from the stream ..because if there is a scanner there..we will find it hehehe lol, that''s the point where you jokingly suggest that you are actually the alt of the clown accusing you and just let everyone wonder. See how the hell they like it. Yea, IP's are integral to the internet and how it works. The problem with it in SL is that the possible negative reprecussions can be much more serious than having a bunch of unwanted spam in your email if you happen to browse the wrong site. We're in an envorinment where people get to know one another and details of their personal lives get shared, be it a little or a lot. I used to admin on a fairly popular furum for a video game. Naturally there were griefers or people that got disgruntled and returned with a different user name to cause trouble now and then. The site owner would sometimes advise 'remove all posts by 'turbo99' or whatever and keep an eye on that IP. (wasn't the actual name, just throwing something out there as an example) but neither of us had any clue who Turbo99 was or even where they were. They were just a name on a forum. Here, it can be a lot different. If you've ever been stalked or recieved threats of violence extending to your family members, maybe you understand a bit better. Or if you had to pack up and move to some scrubville town in the sticks that had no internet and spend 2 months with no net access while the cops have your former residence under surveilance, only to return to SL and find that the person is still here, with all their own alts, still involved in the same club. Any self appointed cop can abuse this stuff here, and in the end, no one knows for certain who is at the keyboard unless they are standing in the room watching them right then.