Toysoldier Thor

commercial means your photos or derivitives of your photos (i.e. photo art, backdrops, textures, etc.) are used in some manner to generate some form of income for you. This could be selling backdrops of sim photos or SL photo art on the SL Marketplace or inworld galleries, or RL online sites or converted to rl print and sold. If you derive a form of value from the exchange of your photos with another - its a photo used for commercial purpose. Lets clarify that a Sim / Parcel owner (creator) often has a photo restriction that may only be a conditional use like "photos on the sim are allowed as long as any use of the photos in any way will include credit of the creator and the SLURL location". Many photo restriction on sims are quite fair if they state one and often these restrictions are not much different than RL conditions or restrictions. The only issue that Sim Owners should keep in mind when stating a photo condition / restriction is that SL Photographers and Photo Artists are often one of a Sim Owner's largest source of promotion. If sim promotion is the Sim owners objective - they they should be careful that their photo restrictions does not scare aware some of SL's most famous and quality photo artists.

If a Sim / Parcel owner decides to override the LL TOS, he/she must place the stated restriction in the COVENANTS section / tab of the Land properties. So when you arrive on a land and click on the top of the window and call up land properties... the second tab after general is Covenants. All rules stated by the owner regarding the land - including photography rules - must be stated here. IF it says the land has no covenants, then the LL TOS rules as I provided a link to - is in place. Basically this means photographers have a wide range of right to the photos they take and how they use it - including commercial, as long as all other copyright and IP rights are followed (i.e. you cannot take a photo of a copyrighted logo, etc.)

With a trend that seems to be growing in SecondLife regarding the number of SL's most amazing Sims adding photo restriction rules in their sim / parcel conenents, I wanted to post a blog on the issue in hopes that many of my fellow SL Photo Artists are aware of these legal restrictions that SIM Owners can place and override teh LL TOS. I also wanted to explain as fairly as possible to some of you amazing SL Sim builder / creators / 3D Artists how these restrictions might be doing your sims more damage than good by restricting SL photography for the the purposes of commercial use. I have posted a blog this past weekend on the topic and I tried to fairly portay both sides as there is no WRONG OR RIGHT answer. I even IM'ed two of my fave Sim Building Artists - the Looking Glass and the Calas owners to show them the blog and talk to them. I asked them both to comment on my blog to tell their sides of the story. Tymus Tenk from the amazing Calas Galadhon group of sims was happy I brought this to his attention and was not aware how his reent Covenent rules was actually impacting artist like me. I ask Ty if he could comment on my blog to tell his side of the story - and he did in great detail with a very positive response. You must read all comments including his on my main blog. This blog is also to spark greater awareness to the countless SL Residents that are taking SL snapshots / photography for both personal and commercial reasons. So many SL residents are not aware of both the LL Rights they are entitled to as well as the various level of limits / restrictions / precautions they should know when taking photos. I encourage all my fellow SL Artists to read my blog, post your comments / opinions, and tell your fellow Sl Artists. Main Blog on Growing Photo Restrictions on Sims Toysoldier Thor http://ToyTalks.weebly.com

Couldbe Yue wrote: @ Toysoldier Thor "Unless LL decides to fundamentally re-engineer the SL grid fundamentals - EVERY SL RESIDENT WILL NEED TO KNOW THE SKILL OF REZZING AND UNBOXING AND COPYING INTO INVENTORY. " the only reason this is a fundamental is because people use networked vendors or delivery systems. There's not too many web shopping portals these days and I doubt they're used by many, but the vendors are used and in many cases probably aren't the best choice when all elements are assessed. My main point originally though was that it shouldn't be a skill that newbies need to learn straight away. It can come later but it shouldn't be critical to whether or not they can surivive those first few weeks. The rest of your comments there are just your preferences. Unlike you, I choose to sell my items unboxed inworld because people can see what they are buying before hand and they have a folder sent straight to their inventory so they don't have to worry about unpacking, getting rid of the box etc. My choice for selling and delivering items comes from when I was a noob all those years ago. Whenever I bought something I had to find somewhere to unpack it (and I *hated* sandboxes because of the griefing), then I had to rez the thing and copy it into my inventory (and hope the auto return function didn't hit me before I'd finished - the first time it happened I had no idea what had happened). I didn't even know about the open function until I'd been here something like 6 months, so I used to create a folder and then drag everything in. It was time consuming and not much fun at all. When I finally got my first land, I bought a couple of items that I knew were low prim enough to go on the land - for both of them I couldn't even rez the box because the boxes were so high prim they were over the prim allowance. All I wanted was the damn items! I can still remember buying a rather fetching outfit and when I rezzed the box the asset server ate it (remember those days?). I never did get that outfit. You want to tell me how any of this was a positive experience? As for the box being marketing, I never do more than give a casual glance to the box - even if it's a vendor. I want what is inside. As a retailer, if I think they need pics I'll include one (always good practice) same with useguides etc. I'm sure some people do get excited at a nice boxed item but reality says they really are after the contents. If you've included a LM then the marketing is them using the item, loving it and coming back for more. A box they may see for a few minutes when they first rez it, it's really much more than a bit of reinforcement at the time. Some of you may agree with me and most wont - that's your choice. Call me old fashioned but I want people to have a positive shopping experience and if that means work on my part then so be it (with a lot of matyred grumbling though). I do think the unboxed delivery is a positive step forward and I think DD delivery folder is also a boon. Unfortunately though it's LL that's doing the developing of this so the actual outcome is indeterminable at the moment. As always, we'll work around the flaws in whatever they deliver and carry on doing what we do. I'm happy to join the v2 (or most other) luddite parades but in this case I think these changes are small in the great scheme of things but overwhelming a step in the right direction. ymmv You are correct in many of your points in that it really is your choice as a Merchant if you truly feel that your customers are noobs or just dumb residents that do not nor cannot grasp the basic fundamental concepts that are critical in SL of rezzing things inworld, knowing how to Open a box and look inside, and how to copy contents into inventory. Its also completely your choice if you believe as a Merchant that a box item has little/no value to you for labeling advertising branding your store or the items in your store. I personally belive it adds to my landscape sculpties when a customer opens one of my landscape packs and sees my large colorful TORNLANDS branding that they might belive there are other TORNLANDS landscape packs of interest to them. You are also correct that if you as a merchant have no need for rezzing triggered scripts to get actively in the face of customers to tell them something or make them aware of things - then dumping inventory right into a folder where no scripts can be triggered are of no value to u. And if you feel that its not an issue that a Merchant that sells packs of a 1000 textures should have these 1000 textures simply stuffed into a customer's inventory instead of an efficient single prim box with all the textures inside where the customer can rez the box over and over and only pull out the textures they need. With inventories already so massive - in the 10s of thousands of items - where residents frequently have lost items in their inventory cause you simply cannot find it, encouraging the sale of 1000+ unboxed items is not a good idea. And before you say "I didnt say that residents cant box large groups of items", you cant have it both ways. you cant say we need to encourage the demise of boxed items handling to make life as an SL noob easier and then say but its ok to box inventory to organize inventory. But, the skill of rezzing from inventory to inworld, or looking into a prim for contents or copying to inventory is a mandatory regardless of any MERCHANT / selling. You are correct that for the most part these skills are often needed when buying items from merchants. But if a noob came into SL and never bought one item from any merchant for 1 year, that NOOB would be hard pressed to live an entire year without ever needing these skills. As was said before, in this day and age most children rare pick up a pen and freehand write on paper and now adays it just makes more sense to enter written content right into a computer. But does that justify that the education system should abandon handwriting skills or moreso encourage the demise of handwriting? I have kids and I will tell you that that would be the day that I encourage that my kids have no need to learn handwriting and the skill should not be taught the skill. This is all a moot argument since regardless if Brooke and company do not understand why Merchant have strong legit reasons to keep selling items BOXED, and regardless if you feel that boxed items should be cultured out of existance by LL actions like DD, the point is that DD will allow Merchants to sell Boxed or Unboxed items. so we both will get our way. Its just sad that Brooke doesnt understand why Boxed items are of value to Merchants and Customers.

Chelsea Malibu wrote: I have discussed this in detail with many of my creator friends and we have decided to declare an end to the summer slump. School is back, the weather is about to change and with meshes on the grid, its time to go shopping or get a new home. Some have already done this on their own and now it's time for the rest of you to shop. Get life back to normal so the terrorist don't win. :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: I sure hope you are right !! Since the first week of August when LL screwed up the SLM, my weekly sales have not recovered. The past 4 weeks my sales have steadily slowed from 50% down to now about 75% below my normal weekly sales. And as I have said before, over the past 1.5 years my weekly sales have been VERY steady - only changing about 10% at the most between weeks but usually less than 5%. I have talked to a lot of my merchant friends as well as inworld art gallery owners and the news is very consistent.... AUGUST HAS BEEN THE SLUMP FROM HELL ! And it almost literally started on the first day of August. Example, my new art gallery opened its doors on July 17th. In the remaining days to July 31 I had a total of over 500 visitor! Since August 1st to today, I have counted 180. I have also heard a couple big sims closing as well inworld. I sure hope this is only because of the summer slump that for some reason started in August instead of July. But I am fearful that its moreso because of all the changes to Search, the grid server changes, and the DD changes in SLM that we are not aware of. We do know LL is making changes to SLM because of the outages in the first week of August. Crossing fingers that when the kids go back to school next week / 2 weeks that SL residents will start getting back to building.

Darrius Gothly wrote: The customer placed at least one item in their Shopping Cart way back on February 27th, 2011. The cart sat unused from then until now. When they added your item today, they probably removed the old item from the 27th too. The Order Date and Order Number are derived from the date and time when the Cart is "opened" .. meaning at least one item is placed within. Since Marketplace does not do any stale cart routines, that order will sit incomplete until a purchase is completed. (I'm not totally sure about this, but it might even persist after manually removing all items from the cart too.) This is the same Stale Cart issue that leads to other goofy reporting and accounting issues and can be exploited by people to lock in Sale Prices until long after a sale is terminated. We have asked that they expire stale carts after some reasonable time period (typically a week or so) but so far that request has not been scheduled or (to my knowledge) accepted as a necessary fix. Come on Darrius.... what is more important for LL Commerce Team to fix.... A sales transaction bug / exploitable limitation in SLM (that xstreet never had) or to put a FACEBOOK LIKE button on listings (which BTW the German Government is now banning)? You need to get your priorities straight. Of course LL should first put in a Facebook Like button before fixing old bugs and SLM limits that hurts Merchants. (all we can do is laugh about LL Commerce Team's priorities)

voted & watched Made. PS... It would be good to put Dart's next to first owner permissions suggestion in there as well or another jira. That is a good and long overdue idea.

Arwen Serpente wrote: Thanks for the update Brooke. Since Mesh is so new to the grid and many many people don't understand the in's and out's of it, please add some kind of Global message regarding Mesh to the MP (maybe call it "Important Information Regarding Shopping for Mesh" as a banner link the same way other global messages have been added on the home page - the same way that the "how to gift" was added long ago, etc.). "Shopping" for Mesh and "Using" it inworld is very different from "Creating" Mesh - most information provided today has more to do with "Creating" Mesh than what an everyday user can do with it. I feel like this is like giving keys to the car to a teenager without first sending them to driving school. While the Merchants who use or sell Mesh will add information regarding their particular product to their individual listing, the Merchants can't be responsible for "global" education - it would never be consistent. For instance, LL needs to provide definitions of terms (PE, weighted, rigged...), what happens when a user tries to modify a Mesh object (stretch, shrink, link, add scripts, wear it, etc), advantages or limitations associated with Mesh, what viewers support it, and so on. Also, shoppers need to know how to differentiate "real" mesh from products that are already called "mesh" (and there are tons) - if a shopper searches for "mesh" they will get everything mixed together and only be able to determine what's real mesh from the listing (and old listings are not updated with the new partial mesh/100% mesh indicator - so if I'm looking at an old listing that calls itself "mesh" - how would I know for sure? very confusing). Mesh dynamics are not the same as sculpties or prims, so shoppers need the education directly from LL. Totally agree. As much as I am been reading and listening on the side and voicing opinions on Mesh.... I have purposely stayed out of the active Alpha Use and testing of MESH in SL. So I honestly do not even have a clue how one would go about buying and using a mesh in SL. Where are the instructions for noobs on how do u buy and use a mesh? And since I know there are more NOOB minded ppl that me on what sculpty vs mesh is (heck I still have to frequently give crash courses to some of my customers that buy my sculpty maps on how to build a sculpty from a map), LL should be providing a REAL BASICS promotion to the NON-MESH GEEKS to explain what mesh is how its used how its bought what are its limits etc. If LL and those that want to see Mesh get mainstream adopted fastert then Q2-2012.... major de-mystification of Mesh needs to be done by LL to the general SL public.

Darrius Gothly wrote: You're very welcome. As usual, any good stuff that happens at LL is directly my responsibility. Anything bad, direct those comments to Brooke. (sits back and waits for his account to suddenly vaporize .. LOL) ROFL.... tick tick tick.....wow you are still here Darrius. I have a strong feeling that Brooke has very thick skin dealing with annoying Merchants like you and me ..... ohh and Josh too

Madeliefste Oh wrote: As a seller of building components with full perms, I would like to see better protection of my IP rights. A lot of people still think that despite an user license or eula comes with a creation, they can ignore this and use the permissions that SL states. To make more clear that this is not the case, and the buyer is hold to an users agreement, I would like to see a new feature for this kind of items on the marketplace. It can be full perms meshes, but it applies also for full perms sculpties, textures, scripts. All items the help the builder build and must be full perms for this reason. This new feature will contain an 'I agree' button. The object can only be sold to the buyer, after het submits that the has read the terms of use and agrees on them. It will both make more clear for the buyer what his rights are; what can and cannot be done with the object, and it will give more protection to the IPright holder because there is an agreement about the use. I cant agree enough with this! The SLM Listing as well as even inworld permissions and rights are antiquated and need to more "in your face" push the Merchant/Creator's IP rights in the face of each buyer as a condition of sale - just as Made says. This may be much more difficult inworld but on SLM this would be a relatively easy (as Dart says ... "a 5 minute change"... of course I am jesting to the amount of time) feature to put into the listings. If the Merchant requests via a checkmark on the listing that the Full Perm item must have a pre-acknowledgement-to-licensing popup show up in front of every customer prior to completely the sale, then this is what the SLM service would do during the checkout process. IF the buyer does not agree to the popup agreement, the purchase is cancelled. Not to hard AND it start educating some of the customers to the importance of understanding, honoring, and protecting the IP rights of the Creator's items that they have been licensed to use. Most of my Sculpty Builder Customers are 100% honest and understand very well that they are only buying a right to USE my sculpty maps on the SL Grid. There are a rare few that believe by buying my sculpty maps, they own them for what ever use they see fit.... even though I include a license notecard in each pack. BUT, with the SLM feature Made suggests, that license agreement is now a precondition of sale.

Darrius... you know that was one of my biggest public gripes about the DD Beta Team and that LL felt it was critical for them to GAG them. I shake my head as there is no logic for them to be gagged when there is no competitive edge for them to protect. In fact, by releasing the gag and letting the beta merchants talk - we all would likely have been able to voice our concerns and added missing functions to the DD that is being built and tested right now in secrecy. There is no logic to this. It just LL being too scared to deal with the PR when their likely bad solution design starts hitting the rocks. They could contain the bad messages and lost confidence. Best to keep it a secret.

following is the actual LL announcement of the release of the grid to get ready for MESH. Not for mesh itself. The best news about this main grid prep for the MESH is that we finally all get to see the return of REAL modifiable MegaPrims! The new prims will now be 65m per axis scalable. This was done as a direct required change to deal with Meshes that will eventually someday replace my sculpty versions of landscape items. You can use a sculpty to make a 50m mountain from my rock sculpty maps - but you cannot do this with Mesh on megaprims. So they had to address the 10m prim size limit for sculpty makers like me Glad to see that it took Mesh to finally remove a long held stupid limitation of 10m max prims (which most other grid have never had this limit). http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2011-08-22/m-p/1054099#M1896

MESH is too new on the Grid (day old), and 99% of residents do not have the viewer to see them, and none of the REAL initial release bugs have even had a chance to show up yet (ohh and they will), and with the current PE costing rules, most MESH objects are simply not cost justifiable when competing with SCULPTIES. I would predict that Mesh will not be mainstream popular until Q2 2012. There will be a few brave and hyper-excited Sculpty makers that will be slamming new mesh models into the grid for the few customers brave enough to risk buying a model that might break as LL potentially makes fixes in the up coming months. And I applaud these Mesh Merchants for all their time and effort and frustration in finding these bugs for LL. As a Sculpty Maker of Landscape maps - MESH has ZERO value for me and my customers. No customer of mine will opt to buy a pretty 500-1000 Prim count Mesh of a hill or mountain when 2 or 3 sculpty maps would be almost as pretty and almost no impact on their Sim Prim count. So.... its exciting to see the REAL BETA of Mesh hitting the grid but mainstream acceptance of Mesh as a viable selling and using function of SL is 6 months away.

Couldbe Yue wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: LL didnt understand why we wanted independent inventory from main inventory when they first started the idea of DD. I still think they dont grasp the risks. I have to agree with this. There's a couple of issues that I'm not too comfortable with and past performance indicates that it's most likely going to go horribly wrong but for better or worse we're stuck with whatever they deliver. Since this is already running a couple of months late obviously there's major issues on their side. LL aren't usually shy about dumping sub standard rubbish on us and calling it beta just to make their project delivery dates, so I'm assuming that it's not a bed of roses in NDA alpha test land. I'd like to say that they're trying to get it right before they inflict it on us but we know that's not true, don't we? I do agree with you here. I think the fact that it is now end of August and we still have heard VERY LITTLE from LL or the brave DD ALPHA Merchants about how DD is progressing or its details even how it works tells me that they are encountering a lot of the "OHHH DARN - We didnt think of that during the architecture and design of the DD solution". This is an all too common situation with LL's development history. They are well known for spending far too little time understanding the actual requirements / problems they are trying to develop a solution for. They dont think of the impacts and ramifications of the solution because: 1) they have little actual real experience being an SL resident, customer, or merchant so they only rely upon what they witness from an outsider perspective, 2) they do not have a mature Systems Analysis/Architecture skillset to leverage who would be able to look at the larger picture and design for longer term viability. They see an immediate problem and they design a solution to solve the immediate problem. Then they find out later that the new solution causes more NEW problems then the original problems. A common problem for immature development shops where the Analyst and Archtect of the solutions are the software developers (code writers) themselves. This is bad news for solution development. Anyway, I suspect the public release of DD is delayed because they ran into a lot of these ill designed glitches coming to burn them now... AND sadly for us Merchants... we will experience the ones that even the Merchant Alpha Team didnt catch. That is why I will be one of the very last Merchants to transition my items from Magicboxes to DD. The true Beta Testers will be those Merchants that start transitioning their SLM items from magicboxes to DD the week after LL goes production public with DD. I am not stupid... I will let the brave and the foolish merchants that jump into DD on week #1 be the ones to work out the bugs of DD and take the risks. I will step in when its proven to be running smooth OR more likely when LL forces me to transition.

Couldbe... regarding your arguments on why BOXED items are old and passe and should be considered SL's version of the Spitoon, I think my other fellow Merchants have very well said everything I would have said. Unless LL decides to fundamentally re-engineer the SL grid fundamentals - EVERY SL RESIDENT WILL NEED TO KNOW THE SKILL OF REZZING AND UNBOXING AND COPYING INTO INVENTORY. There is no two ways about it and LL's process of making the Magibox extinct will not end this fundamental requirement that ALL SL residents will need to learn. In fact, your argument that DD will be delivering a great tool to help noobs by taking this utterly confusing UNBOXING process away from them has little merit either. Since most NOOB's first purchases are likely inworld freeby sim purchases where they will receive their first BOXED item and wear it on their heads - DD will not be there to save them from this funny but all to common right of passage most of us SL Residents had to go through. Why? Because they didnt buy from SLM and they have no clue yet that there is a website called SLM that you can buy and have delivered all these items. So in summary, the #1 argument which Brooke very clearly was promoting at the SLCC when her first slide to explain the benefits of DD was to show a photo of an avatar with a Magicbox worn on its head is actually the least important reason for DD. Sadly, the fact that Brooke promotes UNBOXED SLM Sales as a major benefit to DD and that when she was asked the question in the Q&A if Boxed items would still be supported she answered yes but her face and expression clearly showed a message of confusion as to why Merchants still want to sell Boxed items, this is exactly what I was saying earlier. Brooke and much of the SL Commerce or Development team have no real actual experience being a Merchant. She doesnt even understand that BOXING an item has many benefits that far outweigh her team's promotion of moving to UNBOX SLM delivery. (BROOKE - read the following paragraph so you can understand why Boxed items are a value add to delivery and not a tool that you need to destroy like the Spitoon - and stop listening to your small inner circle of Merchants that are telling you otherwise) I dont sell BOXED Landscape sculpty packs because I am a lazy Merchant. I sell and deliver my landscape Sculpty packs despite the fact that its a major pain to create a BOXED PACKAGING of my item. Why? Because of the benefits of a Boxed delivery. Same reasons countless other Merchants go through this pain. - The outside of the box is used as promotion and general information (i spend a lot of time creating the graphic photo work that goes on the outside surface of these BOXES that my customers rez) - Organization of my items in my customer's inventory. Many of my customers KEEP the delivered Box in inventory and rez / copy to inventory the contents when they are working on projects where they need my rocks/landscaping items then they delete the folder in inventory and go through the process again next time they need my sculpties. This reduces their inventory size dramatically and keeps my packs of sculpties well organized. If they have all six of my packs and only received them unboxed, they would add about 500+ items into their inventory for something they only use ocassionally during build projects. Let me see - 6 boxed items vs 500+ unboxed items.... which seems more organized? - Many merchants can add instructions or On-Rez scripts to a boxed item that can accomplish countless things... including to help the customers with the product they just bought (i.e. an overhead text). With DD delivery of unboxed content to the Customer - this valuable option for merchants is now GONE. - By rezzing a boxed item and having the customer manually copy it to inventory, they have more involvement of what will be entering your inventory BEFORE they copy it to their inventory. this sounds trivial to those that are proponents of UNBOXED delivery but I love this feature as a customer. When I buy a boxed item from a merchant, I often first review all the items in the box before deciding to copy to inventory. Heck, sometimes I just copy the item in the box right to REZ and not to inventory (we dont all buy boxed clothing or wearable items). - Since DD is only for SLM, by keeping my Boxed items BOXED, my delivery to the customer of sales inworld and in SLM will be consistent. I will not be selling a boxed item inworld and unboxed in SLM. - My Boxed items often are my single prim vendors inworld. The very BOX is used many times as a self-promoting selling / delivery vendor prim filled with my license notes, demo photos, demo prims, and the actual products. - Many of my customers, even after they rez and copy my items into inventory, still keep the delivered BOXED item in inventory as a backup incase something goes wrong with the folder or they do a booboo. This not an option for all merchants but it is for me and my products and to the customers I sell to since I sell full minimum copy-trans items. I am sure my other fellow merchants will have other reasons why BOXED ITEMS will never go away even if Brooke and company feel it is one of the main reasons NOOBS log in one time into SL and never return. So, DD will now provide us the option of selling our items Boxed or Unboxed. Great. For those Merchants that feel it is important to spoon feed noobs from SLM sales that Noobs likely wont use prior to their first freeby-bought avi-worn boxed experience - Great. They now can deliver unboxed SLM sales and boxed inworld sales. Hows that for confusing your customer. Toy http://ToyTalks.weebly.com

Lasher Oh wrote: Good succinct explanation Toy, that is exactly how I understand the proposed change as well. When the Direct Delivery idea was first mooted a year or so ago I thought then it was simply just a case of placing the packs we already have in our magic boxes into a new dedicated folder. Which would then send the item direct without the need for a third party not so Magic Script to clog up the works during lag storms. Simple easy done no fuss no bother - carry on trading as normal. I WAS all for it! But then someone in their infinite stupidity thought that it would be a cute idea if we just deliver our customers already opened folders. Thus denying them the handy and important pop-up notecards we include and doing away with all those nicely crafted boxes and packaging that made so much difference to brand presentation. That for me is like handing over a birthday or Christmas present without any wrapping yeeeeeeuch! how tacky is that! I'll give the commerce team top marks for consistency though. Ever since LL aquired and created their marketplace monopoly, they have periodically forced us down the road of perpetual time wasting revisions and alterations to our listings. But then as Couldbe said in her post LL are "not in the business of making life easy for us" ^L^ That is just my understanding of it since it hasnt been explained by LL Staff or Beta Merchants in detail. And u r right Lasher.... LL comes up with these grand new features and concepts because most of them have NEVER been an actual merchant. They only know about the life of a merchant through what they think they see we do. They dont understand the importance nor feel the real impact of the features we ask for that are missing or the changes they put into play because they THINK its a good idea. Brooke to this day doesnt understand why merchants would want to continue offering BOXED items to customers. Likely because a few of her inner circle merchants told her it was a cool idea or she didnt know why things are boxed now. LL didnt understand why we wanted independent inventory from main inventory when they first started the idea of DD. I still think they dont grasp the risks. I was going to create a new thread about this topic..... HOW MANY LL COMMERCE STAFF have ever run a SL Merchant operation? Created and sold on SLM and Inworld?

although the changes that are coming (long over due like 64M prims which other grids have had since inception) are going to be good in the long run after the transition is in place.... these changes are very significant and we all know LL's history with development deployments..... (not a good history). As such I would have to predict the risk of unforseen and bad impacts to the sims (i.e. rezzed inventory on the sims) could be at high risk. So the question to ask LL is what warnings and safety precautions should LL be telling ALL RESIDENTS before preceding with these serious changest to the grid? Also, will LL give ALL RESIDENTS enough notice of when these changes will start to happen, the risks, and the precautions LL Customers can take to protect their assets, builds, IP, etc.? A posting here is not effective notice. This should be posted on the MOTD for all to see and link to a blog post to explain everything. AND it should be done at least 3 or 4 days prior to the first changes..... not a couple hours. I sure hope LL will be doing this... and not doing the typical "OOOppps sorry for the inconvenience of wiping out that unsaved rezzed castle you were working on for weeks - we bad" message after the first unforseen problems show up on the grid from this change. Toy http://ToyTalks.weebly.com

The People that know for sure are the LL Staff and the DD Beta Merchants that are in a GAG order and cant tell you. Apparently LL thinks is so crucial that their work on DD needs to be a secret that they gagged the Merchants in the Beta. The way I understand the way that DD works is that there will be a SPECIAL new SLM DD OUTBOX Folder. In this folder will be a FOLDER for each item you plan to sell as a listing. If you want the listing to deliver a complete set of UNBOXED individual listing items (i.e. like 25 textures, license note, demo poster, index texture, etc.) then you can place all these items unboxed into this folder. IF you currently sell your items as BOXED set of these items, then the folder will only have 1 item in the folder that will be delivered to the Customer as 1 boxed item. The customer will then need to rez and unbox the item as they would normally have done with magic boxes. Personally, my strategy will be like many other Merchants I have talked to - they will continue to sell their items as a BOXED set as they have done prior to DD. for many reasons. There you have it. If I am wrong.... then its up to LL Staff to correct me. If they dont correct me - then this is how it works. Toy http://toyTalks.weebly.com

Ahh the commerce Slides !! Now i can actually see them. So Brooke, since I suspect Jeff does not read the forums and since after this presentation it seems clear that he was the author of the heavy SPIN DOCTORING that occurred on this Q2 Economic Results (since his actual presentation was just as positive is the LL interpretations on the Q2 Wiki), how can us that were not at this seminar ask Jeff the tough questions he or Rodvik should step up to and explain? Many outside LL looked at the numbers and saw a blurry black scene when Jeff and the Author of the report saw Whiite and pretty roses. I have posted my blog here in the forums and to Rodvik which clearly points out how clearly bogus most of the charts were. Even one of the people in the audience (the person that introduced you all) saw what we saw and challenged Jeff that the chart and economic summary of SL is chaulked with vague charts that need much more clarity and breakdown of details (exactly what I pointed out in my blog of the results). Then in Rodvik's Keynote Address I was a bit confused when Rodvik tried to explain off the most disturbing of the charts (which of course the summary dismissed as not that bad but at least Jeff admitted this was not good news) - the continued drop in LOGGED IN USER HOURS over the past Q's. He said that LL has noticed that a significant part of the reduced horus is that the new users that new registering into SL (16,000 a day - snikker - I laugh since of the 16,000/day about only 1 in 100 30 days later continues to log in) are a much younger crowd that has a shorter attention span and doesnt spend as much time in SL but.... according to him - the good news is that they spend more time in main social netowrks ... socializing SL. My question to Rodvik on this fact and observation is..... SOOOO WHAT??!! Is Rodvik saying that even though the next promising generation of users for SL is admittedly not staying logged into the Inworld Grid... this is still great news for the SL Economy that they are spending more of their time talking about SL to their friends in FB? Exactly how does this help the SL economy if they are not logged in and spending time and money in SL??? Sorry... but the whole SL Q2 Economic Summary screams of bad news getting worse and Sr. SL Management playing the role of the 3 Monkey "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil". ON ANOTHER NOTE.... The slides of DD causes me more stress when I see the details of how this will work. This is too complex a financial / ecommerce solution for LL Developers to deal with safely. Based on strong historical evidence - I can see a lot of rough waters ahead for us Merchants when LL forces us into this DD. The concept might be good but as is the case time and time again - LL Commerce & Development will screw up the implementation. And when Merchant content gets sent to the entire community by accident or when it gets lost or when unbox folders entering into customer inventory screws up .... all we will get from LL is "we are working on the problem - sorry for the inconvenience". I so hope that they leave Magic Boxes live for Merchants as an option for a long period - like 6 months or more. I would like to stay using Magic Boxes for at least 6 months AFTER DD goes production live. I would rather other Merchants experiment with LL's DD solution for the 1st 6 months. If there are bugs - they should show up within the 1st 6 months after Production (not beta). FINAL NOTE... During the Commerce SLCC seminar - no one asked Brooke or Jeff or the other two LL Staffers a tough question that so many of us Merchants have been asking sin SLM showed up...... WHEN WILL THEY DEPLOY THE MISSING FEATURES FROM XSTREET & THE BROKEN FEATURES SLM STILL HAS? Jeff, Brooke and team are just like all the other LL Staff Culture - they want to save the the world of SL with neat new shiny big-splash feature like DD but none of them want to address the growing list of Merchant requests to fix the critical but continually ignored SLM functions that Merchants keep asking for but LL keeps ignoring. There you go... I was driving for 12 hours crossing 3 states today.... now that I caught up.... time to rest a bit

Its pretty rough and the video is horrid (screen shots that Brooke and others were showing are basiclly unreadable) but make sure your flash player is completely up to date.

This was the perfect Stream I wanted to see. Jeff Linden (Sr. Director Business Products @ Linden Lab) spoke first and he went thru the actual Q2 2011 charts and spun the Q2 Economy with a lot of positives on numbers that were vague or incomplete at best. BUT even Jeff gentle admited that the User Logged in Hours was an issue to be addressed. But basically the analogy is that we all looked at the same set of stinky smelling dung laying in the field - most of us know what it is ... we can see it we can smell it and its not pretty. But Jeff tries to tell the community that it actually smells like roses and this is awesome and its actually chocolate cream pie not what we all know it is. So instead of Rod Humble answering my Blog post questions and concerns on the Q2 charts being obscure and misleading and the bogus spin doctorinig.... maybe it needs to be Jeff Linden. So Jeff - if you are reading this thread ... please read my blog posting assessment of your Q2 Economic charts and respond in this thread. Tell all of us how you could actually interpret good news from these vague stats or spin them as good news? http://toytalks.weebly.com/1/post/2011/08/ll-q2-11-results-bad-hidden-news-with-sugar-on-top.html

I just heard in one of the other streams that a Linden said Brooke spoke about DD at another session but I could not find a stream where she spoke. Does anyone have a link to this stream or have details what she said. She doesnt like telling us Merchants any details in the Merchant Forums but maybe in the presence of cameras and her senior management she might have been more willing to reveal some details. ANYONE?

Josh Susanto wrote: I'll withdraw my own interpretation when it's been conclusively demonstrated that it's any more shamelessly spun that LL's. They're the ones producing the data, so the burden is on them to show that the data say what they say they say. Absent that, I'm just applying Occam's Razor. The Lindens have been either incorrect or dishonest about almost everything they've said so far this month, so it's a huge leap of faith to think they wouldn't be incorrect or dishonest about this, too. Its not that the LL Q2 report is lying.... as my assessment shows many examples of, the report is a mix of reporting "trivial classed" data that without deeper details provides very little to get an accurate TRUE assessment of the sistuation. Then where the stats show GOOD or BAD news, the Author blatently spins his/her interpretation of the results... jumping from Current/past Q deltas when bad news and Current to Last year results when the results looks good.

I will believe you when you can show me the stats.... and since you are there - ask them the details like Merchant Abandonment and reduced Merchant activity inworld. I have Tweeted Rodvik directly and asked him to read my assessment and to talk about these poor and sugar coated numbers while he is at SLCC. This is a BAD NEWS report and it shows that with Rodvik at the helm... the ship is not showing any signs of turning around.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Think I've got a pretty good idea actually, yes. Not engaging in camel spotting personally though, means that I don't need to be concerned with it enough to not take it at face value and can stick to the business of doing business rather than something that can't. In fact, new unique Merchants are also on the rise as well. Put something resembling science in that scientific thinking. This is business, less need for conjecture and more dealing with facts. Dart... show me the report pr stat that there is a growing number of new Merchants and that report better also show the number of Merchants that have abandoned the role and stopped being Merchants. I have not see this stat anywhere - show me.