Toysoldier Thor

Yes, but pretty much what Dart said. As for the "Freebie & Clutter tax," as I'm sure you'll remember I'd have been on the opposite side of that issue, so I doubt that a group comprised of those who opposed it would have been willing to let me have my say...which speaks to some of Dart's points. I'm not too worried what they name it...that part is pretty much semantics, and therefore a low-priority in the grand scheme of things. The point is that some interaction will happen. I just hope that part of the plan is not to completely abandon the open-to-everyone meetings without replacing that communication with something else that is equally public and accessible, in addition to any other discussions they have planned. As I stated, if all meetings become "invite only" then there will be a backlash, both against LL (for perceived favoritism) and against those who participate (for being cheerleading FIC scumbags). Been there, done that...brought back the scorch marks. Exactly my point Rachel regarding the Clutter Tax. You were very much for it - I was very much against it. So using the example I posted, you are in Focus Group #1 and when asked by LL you promote it, I get invited to Focus Group #2 and I express to LL how stupid an idea it was. LL has 2 Merchant Focus Groups, two opposite messages. So... how much guidance do they get from these two groups? Reaction - "Merchants are not commited to either dirction so we will make up out own minds. I am in agreement with you that even though for the most part - even on calmer days - the open invite OPEN OFFICE meetings are extremely limited in any effective communication that the LL staff could just as easily have posted as "down from the mountain edicts", there is some value in the form of optics that makes it look like LL is attempting 2-way dialog with the community. So, for 1 hour a month - why not run them. As for the past "invite only" meetings that caused a major backlash both both LL and yourself (and others that participated).... you are forgetting one major difference between the ones you attended last year and the most recent one that Brooke just held.... TRANSPARENCY. If your meetings with Pink or whomever from LL would have subsequently has the entire conversation posted as transcripts by LL for all the community to see, I can say that the backlash would have been minimal. I will give Brooke a lot of credit for how she handled last week's impromptu UG Meeting. She openly announced she was going to have it. She explained why. She invited a broad representation of merchants. The discussion was primarily on topic. AND... most importantly... it was subsequently posted for all to see. So... that is the difference between the Pink meetings and the recent Brooke meeting. If these User Group / Focus Group meetings are conducted the same way as the last one... I am ok with that as long as Brooke makes it clear how willing participants can be allowed their turn at the up coming meetings.

My understand from Brooke's few brief mentions of UG plan was that the User Group memberships should not be getting stale since there would be some turn over of invited merchants at each called UG meeting. To me this meant that each time Brooke calls a UG meeting, she would engage some magical process (using a selection process that picks from a broad spectrum of Merchant types based on sale volume on SLM) that would pick NEW attendees to meet with her. It would not be the same group each time. I am not sure that is what she meant. I also dont know / havent seen the process on how one volunteers to be called upon for these meetings. Where does a Merchant register to be open to be a spokesperson? My other concern about the "HOW" and "WHO" is that its become clear that Brooke only wants to call meetings within her "9-5" work hours window. That would eliminate a lot of us willing merchants - like me. So will Brooke be willing to be more flexible on UG meeting times? As much as I do see value in smaller UG meetings - I wouldnt call them that. UG means an open group of interested members that meet. What Brooke is really wanting to engage in is "FOCUS GROUP" meetings. This is a meeting called by LL of a hand selected target audience of their customers. Finally, I think there is value in LL having a rotating audience of Focus Group meetings, BUT, the disadvantage is that there is not a common and consistent message from the Merchants and the effect of what the merchants want from LL will be confused and watered down if LL hears at each FG meeting a contradicting message. EXAMPLE... FG meeting #1: "we clearly want to see LL address freebies from SLM and listing fee them out of existance" FG meeting #2: "freebies are a concern but not at the cost of imposing listing fee upon all listings - where did you get that idead from?" FG meeting #3: "freebies are good and do not hurt SLM traffic or sales. Leave them alone and focus on bigger issues" I still think there needs to be the establishment of some form of non-LL controlled SL MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION. Where interested merchants can join and topics of concern can be discussed and even votes to the membership can take place. Then this association could also carry these common issues and priorities to LL with a stronger confidence. We would also have more of a voice that LL would find harder to ignore. Yeah I know... many of you will say "there is no way we can get this flock of merchants herded together to establish this association.". We were close in late 2009 when the clutter tax fiasco cropped up. I still see value in this organized group.

Pamela Galli wrote: I hate to think you are serious. When a company's legal team advises them that X is a lawsuit waiting to happen, that's the end of discussion. I don't know what world it is that you are working in, but that's the way things are in the US. So pamela.... you think this is the best solution / approach that the legal team or sr. LL management could come up with? I am on a planet where a business thinks far enough ahead NOT to make stupid myopic decisions like "lets merge the teen grid to the adult grid so that we can save some operational costs and not have to manage and operate two production grids - think of all the money we will save". I live in a world that when my company makes such a dumb move, that the legal mitigation strategies to protect my company from the political and legal risks dont also damage my critical customer base and its revenue streams. As a solutions architect for base of companies that makes LL look like a corner drugstore, I can tell you that if our legal team told us the legal risks to the company, we would think deep and hard how we could protect ourselves WITHOUT impacting our customer base. Our primary objective would be to protect our current customer base and its revenue stream - and any legal protection solution had better fit with that objective. I am from a planet Pam that would say this SLM Maturity Filtering solution is a horrid idea, inaccurate, easy to get around, and damages the existing customer base. I dont know what planet you are on Pamela, but that is the planet I am on. But I guess since you say that is how things work in the USA - no wonder their economy is in the tank.

Not sure if an IM or email compaign to the new top Linden would help. We all know that Brooke is doing the best she can and is ad professional as I have ever seen a public facing Linden, but all her communications have made it clear that SHE is not the one calling the shots on this stupid blacklist filtering process and has no direct effective powers to negotiate neither its removal nor any fundamental changes of it (i.e. removing words like GOR and GOREAN from the keywords search). This is being significantly influenced by the LEGAL LINDENS that have no concept or care if LL loses current revenue or customers - nor do they show their face in publice to face the heat they have created. They have a stovepipe objective - protect company for potential litigation regardless of business impact. It is being dictated by the senior executives of LL - including the new CEO that is a brand new wet-behind-the-ears SL resident and has little understanding of a virtual world that has a strong significant business economy (not a bonus fake economy like sims). Maybe us Merchants need to get the contact info of CEO LINDEN and start expressing our concerns to him. Forget the small group meeting between Brooke and a sampling of us Merchants. This meeting should be between a sampling of us Merchants and CEO, LEGAL, COMMERCE. We need to talk with the persons that actually have the power to negotiate and make changes if they can be convinced that the BLACKLIST FILTER method is uttering lame and stupid and does nothing but hurt the economy and insult/blacklist a significant segment of SL customers that have been discriminated against because they are part of a community. I still think if the SL Merchants are going to have any effective voice, we cant be as un organized as we are now. We need some formal organization of a group where our issue can be discussed and structured into critical concerns and demands against LL and where we can set up a rotation of representatives. We also should meet and talk off the SL blogs/forums if we are going to do this. If you all think this is an idea, I got the place that I created in december 2009 with private registration and many of you are already members of this SL Merchants group of forums. Just some thougts.

So lets play devil's advocate now regarding this GOR GOREAN and all the other bad words on LL's SLM blacklist... Since it is so evil to even mention the word GOREAN in item listings because it might influence the children of SL, when will LL deploy the Forums/Blogs content filter to ban these same bad words from the forums? When will LL deploy a SL Forums Maturity System that will segregate SL Forums that have "G" Rated content versus the forums, threads, postings whereby these non-child rated words can be openly used? If LL is willing to damage the SLM marketplace and cause so much pain and disruption in the SLM because LL LEGAL says they must filter the chlidern from any mention / use / access to SLM mature items with these words, then why is LL LEGAL not concerned about these same bad words being mentioned openly in the forums without maturity filters?

Ciaran Laval wrote: Loving Clarity wrote: at today's Office Hours, it was made clear that anything Gorean was considered Moderate by LL and that would remain the way it is. This is very very silly. To deem an entire community of a large portion of the SL population to be evil and deserving of being hidden and shunned by LL, that is a sad reflection of the LL we are dealing with. IT shows how myopic and sheltered LL is and not caring / interested / respecting LL is of their customers (both those residents of SL that are part of this community as well as those that are dependent on servicing this community - the merchants). I know thre are merchants in our community that would facepalm me for saying this but this is discrimination of a virtual community within LL customer base. That is truly sad and shows how uncompromising LL is.

Brooke, That is a long list and I read in inworld group chat last night that you might set up a JIRA for all of these discovered features/fixes that Merchant have been asking for and some structure on how we all can vote for which ones LL should be focusing in on. I hope it wont be a structure in JIRA made up of dozens of Jiras that we have to hunt down and vote for. Some more centralized listing of all of these would be so much more effective. I would also like to see the LL mandated features, changes, required fixes that Merchants have not asked for but LL must do - also be placed in this list. This tells us how far down the list our Merchant priorities are with respect to the LL priorites (which have historically constantly trumped our requested improvements). Please advise how you will be letting us vote on these and insert new ones?

Pamela Galli wrote: Brooke has already said she will use only text at the next meeting. Honestly, I cannot see how anyone can expect her to do any better/more than she is. She is doing everything we have pleaded the Commerce Team to do, and more. That is not to say that she and the team will do everything perfectly, but she has certainly demonstrated that she will solicit and listen to feedback, and will adjust course when needed. I am sure the maturity settings were not her idea -- yet the almost impossible task of doing so is hers. I totally agree Pam. I believe that this bad maturity filtering solution was not thought up by her or her team nor did she likely want to put in her first major slm change that was assured to do nothing but be a Negative to the SLM Merchants. This change was purely a LL Internal CYA to protect them from their Teen Grid Merger decision and senior LL management is forcing her to execute an idea she knew full well was going to be hated. The fact that it was rolled out so poorly saldy does fall on her and her team. But regardless, for exactly the reasons you mentioned Pam, that is why I find it of limited value to spend too much time in the meeting to talk about solutions for child protection filtering with someone that has no authority to make any significant or "shift in direction" changes/alternatives. We merchants just need to be assured the bugs will be worked out, that we will be given the BLACK LIST that LL is using (so we dont have to create an underground version of it), and exactly how the filtering works so that the Merchant can do what they have always had to do - ADAPT to the new hurdles LL placed in front of us. Focus on other issues in the meeting - Maturity Filtering is here to stay and convincing her to change direction or even compromise is wasting time IMHO.

TriloByte Zanzibar wrote: ... I'd also like to see Traffic and Sales Reporting get covered this time. I know it was on the ambitious agenda from last week's session, but there wasn't enough time to get to it. Sales and traffic reporting tools were talked up early in the development stages, and we were promised better tools than XStreet had, and that those tools would be in place before the big launch. As data migration problems continued to stall development, reporting slipped from the site's initial launch with a new pledge that we'd have them within a few weeks. That was back in October, and we still do not have functional tools. Many of the current reports are flawed (only Transaction History and Orders are accurate, and with those reports we've got fairly limited sorting/searching capabilities). Please share with us the current status, and an ETA on when we can expect to get some of this functionality. I am 1000% behind this agenda item and all the background that Trilo mentioned in this point ! I have harped on this over and over and over and over in posts in the forums since I first saw the completely useless SLM daily traffic sales reporting that was first deployed - and is still currently in play. It is my #1 issue of an SLM feature that needs to be fixed. Right now I am pretty much selling blind in SLM. The top searched and top selling reports are still based on the "since slm inception" statistics! I dont really care that my #1 SLM item has been seen in search 145,000 since SLM came into play. I have no use for tracking SLM items that have long since been disabled or deleted in my SLM inventory. I need an SLM reporting system that at minimum tells me: Item TRAFFIC volumes (daily, weekly, or within a custom selected period) Item SEARCH RESULTS VIEW volumes (same options as Traffic) - Click Thru would be sweet Item SALES volumes (same options as Traffic) Histographs of the statistics The above is not much more than what we had in Xstreet and I am not saying this is a GREAT reporting system - but at least I can work with this. If LL really really wants to provide an awesome solution to its merchants AND doesnt want to do as much development work to provide it to us, maybe LL should consider Google Analytics integration. I currently have that capability in the awesome online merchant store site of zazzle.com where all I have to do as part of my zazzle store setup is click on enabling the google analytics button and providing the google analytics code. They then integrated the critical google code into the zazzle pages. Brooke... I would bow to you and your team if you could provide us Google Analyitics integration to our SLM store and item pages. Trilo.... I entrust in you to be my flag bearer at the meeting to make SLM Reporting a front and center item. I will buy you a virtual beer later.

Darrius Gothly wrote: Y'know Toy .. if Brooke had done anything the same as the Old Guard did, I might agree with you. But from what I've seen, she's done it a whole new way ... including changing the name of the Office Hours to User Groups ... and that speaks volumes to me. As someone that has stood shoulder to shoulder with you on many issues, I'd like to suggest you grant her the benefit of the doubt for a bit. It might open the door to benefits for all. At the worst, if everything turns out the "same as it ever was" ... you won't have lost a thing. As I have said, I see a different and more open and professional attitude with Brooke and a willingness to concede that LL screwed up and how could they do things better. The talk sounds good - regardless if she is able to have the power to effect/influence any significant old LL cultures and "policies from the ivory tower that the minions must deploy" practices. It is positive to see more communications from the SLM Commerce Team than we have not seen in a long time. But to me - painting a pretty coat of paint on a drunken pig and making due with it is not acceptable. We shouldnt have to compromise on poorly thought out and market damaging policies. What would have given me more hope that things will change with Brooke's team is if she said in the transcripts.... "We admit we screwed up AND we now see that we really need to some how figure out how LL can come up with effective solutions to meet the critical objectives / strategies that LL executives have placed on our team to carry out. If we can do it in a way that also works well with our Merchant's needs and objectives - that is our prime objective. As such, I am willing to sit down with a representation / "spokesperson team" of the Merchants to tell you all what LL MUST accomplish and then work out how best our team can reach those goals with the Merchant's agreement/blessing. If the Merchants have other solutions / ideas that can meet the goals I must meet then I am willing to consider alternatives to the maturity blacklisting filtering solution we just deployed and would consider replacing it if it makes better sense". NOW... if Brooke said anything close to that, I would be the first on the soapbox to cheerlead Brooke and her team because this message would speak VOLUMES to me. I would even put up my hand as a willing volunteer to be on this Merchants Team that works with LL. Until then Darrius, I will remain skeptical and we will see what comes out of this up-coming meeting's transcripts. PS..... DONT USE VOICE IN THE MEETING!!! It makes the transcripts utterly useless for us that cant attend.

Rachel Darling wrote: I read the Transcripts as well, Toy, and did not get the same thing out of it. I believe I saw an inference that they are looking at other ways to identify Maturity besides the present filter. Darrius and I have both suggested an idea for a more robust and accurate filtering system, and the group meetings (whatever they're called, I really don't care) are the place to weigh in on that issue, as well as the current decision to keep the Blacklist unpublished. What I read in the transcripted was Brooke saying (on a couple occasions) that although LL and the Merchants can talk about ways to improve things regarding maturity rating systems.... the maturity filtering system "is here to stay" and black listing related to it will not be going away. You just said it right "besides the present filters" - meaning in addition to the present filters that Brooke stated very clearly are here to stay and removing or replacing the filters are non negotiable. So like I said... Brooke is willing to make the filtering system less painful and maybe fine-tune it and maybe compensate the merchants that have been filtered into a poor SLM marketscope position and maybe release the blacklist (since Brooke is not stupid and knows we merchants will quickly create our own lists so that we can better adjust and avoid the blacklisting filter process), BUT, you are not going to convince her that there is a better system that would replace the filtering system. I also disagree that the new USER GROUP meeting is a place to negotiate and make decisions with Brooke and the LL team on matters like this. You have been to many of these meetings. You know yourself that these meetings take on 1 of 2 scenarios: Because of the severe damage the executed LL change has done so so many merchants, the meeting will become a forum of venting frustrated merchants that are still suffering from the slow response LL has done to repair the damage to their sales. The conversation will be a mass of intersecting and spawning ideas, conversations, conflicting opinions on ideas that it will resemble the "Tower Of Babble" and no effective ideas will be allowed to foster. Not to mention that the ideas brought up in this 1 hour meeting will be from a population of .01% of the merchant population whom would not have had any say or input into the negotiated discussions with LL. So... the meeting to me is only valuable for what LL has historically always used it for... to announce new initiatives and gather initial thoughts and to have a fireside chit chat on feelings from the Merchants. Nothing more. Changing the name of the meeting will not change the capability of getting any more from this meeting. We will see if you are correct when we all read the transcripts - if any effective negotiations are 1) willing to be entertained by Brooke, 2) possible at the towe of babble discussion.

I am not sure what the logic is for Brooke to change the long standing LL naming convention of an Open Office to a User Group meeting. It serves no purpose but to increase confusion and reduce effective communications. shrugs... but what ever. Rachel, after read the transcripts of Brooke's meeting with trilo and pam today, the message was pretty clear in that other than trying to make an ugly useless solution look more pretty and work a little better, she is not allowed to compromise on considering any better new solutions on maturity filtering. She made that point really clear. So LL filtering fields as stupid as the KEYWORDS fields is not on the table. Considering more effective establishement of maturity ranking items (like self assesment and policing) are not going to happen. It will be more - how do we make this ugly idea less painful to the merchants. Then the Merchant have to figure out for themselves what creative ideas they can come up with to find loopholes or re-enter their items to be seen by the entire SLM shoppers market if the filters are hurting business. I think we should discuss with Brooke the option of commissions compensation since LL "MUST" put this policy in place to protect themselves from their own stupidity of merging the teen grid with the adult grid. That should be an internal cost to their business. As such, reduce the commission to 4% for adjust for lost market reach and reduced sales that the policy has impacted the business. This wont help those Merchant that have lost a lot more but maybe the new slm commission model should be 5% commission on all GENERAL Classed sales, 4% for any MODERATE classed sales, and 3% for any mature classed sales. THEN Brooke and LL can keep their Child Protection Filter in place. I think the agenda should focus on more basic issues.... 1) effective communications with Merchants, 2) How will Merchants get more access, voice, input into future SLM decisions BEFORE they have been decided upon, 3) Can SLM Merchants see / hear further out into the LL future of what we need to be ready for and fearful of. What is LL's 12 month roadmap on SLM? What do they really wanna accomplish? Will SLM features ever be fixed like reporting?

Pamela Galli wrote: I am just curious how they are to determine ratings without using keyword filters at all. Pamela, How? Look at all the fields on a ITEM in SLM. If you remove "KEYWORDS" field which is a customer hidden field and who's objective is to be used to properly index the item in the SLM search engine, there are many other fields that would be much more effective to be used to TRY to assess an item as to its child friendliness. Fields that LL should have focused on are: FEATURES (since this field should primarily be used to talk about the technical aspects that describe the item - its an excellent candidate) DESCRIPTION which might still be using LL "censorship bad words" but at least they are visible for all to see and that an item listing can be openly reviewed and judged by all - including customers that would have the basis to flag a listing that is wrongly rated. TITLE which I would not leverage as much for item censoring / categorization but since the content of this field is visible - it is a candidate. But KEYWORDS are bad bad bad and a "NO NO" to accomplish this strategy. I want to state this again, I am totally against categorization of item maturity based on an arbitrarily created secret "Black LIst" that LL created and that Merchants will only be forced to guess what those bad words are. We all know that its only a matter of time before the Merchants begin creating TIPS and "how to improve your item's searchability in slm" documents and postings. They will be forced to. and as Rachel said, the bad guys are not stupid and they will easily get around your lame keywords censorship filter while the good merchants suffer. And since LL has decided to hide the keywords from the item listing display - it makes it even harder to review and report by other merchants and customers. BLACK LISTS have never been a good idea - specially if the list is kept secret. If Brooke really wants to show that she is willing to work with her Customers (us merchants) then she would be willing to discuss better approaches to CHILD PROOF slm for the few teens on the grid and that shop on slm.

Loving Clarity wrote: I would like to also add..this is not only to Brooke but to the commerce team, and especially those who oversee them... Please don't mistake the results of your actions as general merchant hatred/distaste for LL in general. It's just that we have been shouting issues at LL for months now. Since MP went "live" (I use the term loosely as it still operates as a beta product IMO) we have filed jira after jira. We have begged and pleaded with any Linden that would listen to fix known issues that are plaguing the merchant community. We have begged and pleaded for known issues to be examined and fixed. Yet the first public act of the "new" commerce team has just added to our issues. We are fed up, frustrated, disillusioned with the whole thing. Had you fixed MP search, come up with a short term fix for delivery failures, made adding listings easier, addressed any one of the numerous other issues/complaints about MP (publicly) before swinging your mighty filter around, we might be a little more inclined to say "ok, this was a MAJOR screw up but at least they fixed XYZ." Instead, your first public act was to reign down a mess eqaul to the initial migration from SLX. And "sneakily" too, I might add. I, for one, do not recall ANY mention of a filter being used when the new system went into effect. You were clear that anything marked "mature" would be moved to adult. That didn't seem unreasonable to us and we all were aware we might have to go in and fix anything that was mature before and decide if it was moderate or adult. We were given NO indication there would be a filter put into place. Nor was it indicated that the judgements of this filter would be irreversible without the hoops we have had to jump through. Bad form. And shame on you all! It's as if we are kids who have been left home alone countless times then all of a sudden, mom and dad have decided we need a babysitter. We didn't do anything wrong. We've done well at keeping the house clean, didn't throw parties, didn't eat everything in the fridge. But now we have a babysitter telling us what to watch on TV and when to go to bed... it's insulting, quite frankly. The merchants have always had the ability to police their own items. And for those who tried to "cheat" the system, we've been able to flag them and have action taken. Peers policing peers has worked up until now. I could understand if this came after a public request from LL to properly rate our items "or else". But there was no indication in advance this would happen. And it's just a shame that this is our first experience of the "new" MP team. Loving, I could not have said this any better!! You are dead on! We have been waiting and waiting for LL Commerce and Development Team to fix the missing peices of the SLM like poorly deployed SEARCH RELEVANCE, and EFFECTIVE REPORTING & USAGE ACTIVITY. And what does the new LL team do.... deploy a solution that makes the weak SLM service even more ineffective and problematic to the merchants. Brooke, do you not see why we are so utterly frustrated with what your team deployed? You state you will listen... but what your team deployed last week just shows that YOU HAVE NOT BEEN LISTENING. So we are frustrated Brooke... and skeptical that your promises will be nothing more than "how can LL stroke you better and still be allowed to accomplish our objectives and ignore the Merchant's demands"

Brooke, Moviing Moderate items to General is a start - helps my items that were flagged to moderate even though they are completely G Rated. Hopefully this "bug fix" fixes things.... but i cant see how if you are using the basis of flagging/categorizing items by their KEYWORDS... its just a wrong strategy to start with. That is the bug - that you are using keywords. As for email issue... I and many others asked to be taken off LL's Spam Marketing email list when in 2009 they were using our Customer Email Contact info to promote 3rd party merchant and vendors to promote their events. This should not have taken us off legit LL important customer email communications. And... it doesnt seem it has in some cases. Your team sent out an email to merchants in early January and I received that email - so why not this one? Are you switching between lists? Your customers should not have to endure LL Markeing email spam in order to get serious important customer service email communications. I am glad you are trying to address these issue and I really do hope you follow up with action on addressing this terrible deployment. Here is hoping your team recover the damage from this one. Sadly I dont think LL will allow your team to stop this Child Protection Filter strategy. Its wrong and LL will lose the larger population of their customers to protect a very small fraction of teens who should not have been allowed to enter. Thats another story and before your time. Good Luck. Wish I could attend your open office but not if you will be having them all in mid day North American time.

Brooke, Whos schedule are you accomodating if you have only moved the meeting time a couple hours from last time? Are you referrring to accomodating Lindens attending or SL Merchants? Accomodating different Merchant schedules would mean to me - making it a North American mid-day one week then a North American evening the next? Shifting it a few hours in mid day still means I am at work RL. As for suggestions on how to improve future rollouts... How much more can be said in User Group meetings that wasnt already said in the post Change postings from your last week deployment? I think its quite obvious what your team needs to do. You know it, your team knows it, we all have said it in the forums countless times. So it shouldnt be taking up 30 minutes (except for the anger your team has generated from the most recent disaster to the SLM). More importantly.... how do we get ANY assurance from you that the LL Commerce Team will actually change their ways? What your team bombshelled us with last week is what LL has been doing to us for EVER.

Example: I have several dozen listings for gowns which can be used for medieval / gorean freewoman / fantasy rp wear. There is nothing whatsoever 18+ about the content itself or even the listing text -- the gowns do not meet the published criteria for Adult or Moderate content -- and yet the listing has been flagged Moderate. I am presuming it's because the gown is also suitable to be sold to Gorean RPers, and that Gorean has been blacklisted as being, in and of itself, sexual (not true, btw - but you'd have to know the Community to understand that) -- but I don't actually know that "Gor" and "Gorean" is on the list, because you won't tell us. Be that as it may, Gorean RPers are a large target market in SL, as are medieval and fantasy RPers. By blacklisting "Gorean," I can now only reach half my target demographic when marketing my product, unless I list the product twice with two separate ratings (which I assume is still against the SLM listing rules). I would like to ask that please help us address both of these issues. The first can be addressed by publishing the list of Flagged/Blacklisted words. The second is more difficult -- at this time it seems you've painted both the residents and yourselves into a corner by trying to apply a black & white filter to a situation that is many shades of grey, at best. If LL insists on defining certain content as Adult or Moderate, despite it being legally available to minors in RL, then the only solution I can think of at present is to allow multiple listings for the same item, so that it can be marketed to the applicable audiences separately. Alternatively, you might reconsider your definitions of Adult and Moderate to more accurately reflect the legal and commonly accepted standards we live by outside of SL. Or you could get rid of the Teens -- which would be unfortunate. Thanks Rachel... This is the actual real example of what I have been trying to say in my posts. The whole strategy of black word listing is wrong and doing it on the most critical and hidden KEYWORDS is even more wrong. LL has absolutely no clue about their own customers. I am not Gor nor follow or participate in thier in-world activities... BUT I respect them as critical base of customers of mine even though I do not sell ANY items that LL would have categorized my items as sexual, kinky, immoral, etc. I sell sculpted landscape terrains and shapes and it is well known that some of the most beautiful landscaped sims/terrains in SL are in the Gorean & Medieval sims. For me to ignore marketing my ROCKS to the Gorean population would be utterly stupid. But now with LL black-balling major SL cultures like the Goreans, they hurt many of us Merchants in our ability to sell to them effectively in SLM. As for LL itself, they are giving the Gorean cultures yet another big reason to leave SL and set up their sims, lands, shops, and all their spending on SL competing grids. This is already happening now and we all know which grid is growing fast because of LL's policies and failings. I set up my shop in this competing grid as did many of you fellow merchants as we want to follow our customers. Again LL - yet another wise move by you on finding more ways to write your own demise - your compeititors could not do more to help you.

Darrius Gothly wrote: Linden Lab is a US company. As such, they are more likely to obey the laws in the US ... and the morality laws too. The diverse population of this country ranges from exceedingly liberal to incredibly restrictive. You can witness an incredibly wide range of moral guidelines just by driving the short distance from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, Utah. Sad to say but the US is also incredibly litigious. People file lawsuits for the craziest things, but when they feel their moral character has been threatened, or worse when they feel the moral character of their children is under attack, lawsuit is usually about the first thing out of their mouths. It doesn't even have to be someone that is technologically literate. Quite the opposite in fact, a lot of people that haven't a clue about technology and Virtual Worlds like Second Life fear it greatly. Toss the gasoline of a perceived moral threat to their "innocent and manipulatable children" onto the bonfire of fear and ignorance and before long you have a heyday for lawyers and a nightmare for Linden Lab. In this country, until a person reaches the age of 18, they are (in most locations) considered a minor. Consider the so-called "Sex Offender" who, at the age of 18 had consensual sex with a person under that age and subsequently wound up convicted of a felony and marked for life with the stigma of the label. There are many cases of youthful couples who made the mistake of having sex on the day of one partner's 18th birthday, only to find out their innocent act of celebration has now turned one of them into a life-long felon ... unable to enjoy a normal life ever again. Yes Lasher, most of us on SL, and for that matter most parents in this country recognize their children are much more grown up at age 14 and up than the laws seem to indicate. But all it takes is a few extremists that garner the spotlight to ruin the freedom we now enjoy in Second Life. I don't like it, and every chance I get I take exception to having to live under the mandates of the least common denominator extremists in this society. But Linden Lab is a company with a lot more to lose and really not a thing to gain from making a stand. I for one would prefer that they take a conservative stance, enact rules that keep them out of the courts and off the news, and allow us adults to continue enjoying at least one safe haven of somewhat more liberal relaxation. Now excuse me while I go enable Advanced Physics and engage in some mindless wobble-watching. OK Darrius - I cannot agree with you more about our assessment / description of the US personna and how the US population handles their affairs. You were dead on in your assessment. So now... being Devils Advocate (as I am just like Lasher and love voicing my opinions with no expexted end result from my comments but will offer it anyway) I will pose a very simple question for you to answer on behalf of what logic was in LL Senior Management's head for the decisions they made... QUESTION: LLis a US company - started, established, and operating in the US. As far as I know almost ALL of the Senior Management are US Citizens and have either worked for, headed up, managed, and even founded US Operating companies. As such, they are 100% fully aware - maybe even moreso than you - the US culture of being law suit happy and mixing often ultra-conservative moralities with their passion to litigate. Knowing all this, WHY WOULD A COMPANY THAT WANTS TO PROTECT ITSELF FROM SUCH OBVIOUS MAGNETS OF LITIGATION AS MORALITIES AROUND MINORS/TEENS/CHILDREN PUT ITS COMPANY OPERATION IN RISK BY MERGING A SEPARATE TEEN GRID WITH AN ADULT GRID IN THE FIRST PLACE? If as you imply, you prefer the actions LL is taking now by taking a more conservative stance in order to keep it out of the court system, news, etc., then why was LL so NOT SMART as to put their company into a situation like this in the first place by forcing this condition and impacting all the adults in the grid (mechants, customers, residents) for the ultra-small population of teens that were on the grid (I understand it was only around 1% of the adult population) ? The LL situation is akin to me taking my shed full of fireworks and storing it now with my closet full of Lighters & Flame Throwers and then taking measure to make sure that no explosion happens or that its perceived by the local community to be a bad idea to store them in the same shed. LL made yet another bad strategic move by merging the Adult & Teen Grids and now the tactical changes to everything in the grid and SLM to protect them from bad publicity and the courts is doing NOTHING but hurting 99% of their customer base. Categorizing Listing by Keywords is a smaller scale bad idea used to protect LL from their massive scale bad idea of merging Adult & Teen grid.

Brooke, Forget the matter that your team deployed these changes using poor ineffective communication strategy to those of YOUR customers (PS that would be the Merchants of SLM) that rely upon SLM as a major or even critical revenue stream to keep their SL Business running inworld. Also put aside the fact that your team's deployment strategy seems to have been thought out over a coffee break since its clear there was no thought put toward: 1) when would be the best date and day of week to execute this change, 2) what will be the backout plan if things go bad or the change has unexpected bad results, 3) what staff will be around in the days after the change to provide the critical support or fix bugs or backout. The evidence is clear on a poor failed deployment strategy - regardless of the change. This is BAU for LL. But lets focus on the actual stategy LL is trying to execute on SLM and the solution your team has come up with. You are using SLM Listing Keywords a primary method of identifying what might be moderate, mature, adult content that TEENS shouldn't see? May I ask who in LL came up with this horrendously stupid and inffective idea? Keywords are not listing descriptives or features. Are you aware of that? Most in the industry know that keywords are not descriptives of the item. I can understand how some might think they are - but they are not. KEYWORDS are search relevance keys used to help a merchant/advertiser get his/her product in front of customers that are looking for something of which the product could be relevant to their search. A strong evidence that keywords are not item descriptives is the fact that keywords are not even displayed in SLM to the customer. Secondly, maybe your team has the notion that "we are not de-listing any SLM listings - we are only categorizing them on SLM". The problem is that as soon as an SLM Item has been deemed ADULT or MATURE or basically non-G items, the item has lost a massive potential marketshare since LL SLM's search and operations will make default customer experiences be G-Rated unless explicitly re-configured by the customer to change the setting (if they are even allowed to). So basically LL has black-balled a large portion of Merchant items - many of them unfairly - into obscurity. THIS MEANS LOST SALES... this could also mean for LL - LOST TIERS as some merchants will not be able to afford their stores / sims. So, by your team coming up with this - quite frankly - hair-brained concept of categorizing and black-balling SLM listings using an ineffective method of creating a Blacklist of bad keywords, not only have you impacted the sales of countless merchants (many of them that wont even know since they read the forum and didnt get the emails you said you sent), but, LL has now always turned many of its SL Resident Shoppers into SecondClass SecondLife residents that LL is discriminating against. SL is made up of dozens of weird, wild, and wonderful culture, beliefs, practices, role plays, communities. Most of us would not agree with all of them, but living in SecondLife - one must be tolerant of them even when they dont agree with us. LL more than anyone must not only tolerate them but openly accept them all equally as uhmmmm THEY ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS & PAY YOUR BILLS LL ! Basically LL is executing a form of Virtual Culture Racism since LL has labeled SL cultures like Gor to be non-acceptable and to be suppressed/hidden from normal SLM opertions. i.e. any resident shopper from the Gorean lifestyle that wishes to shop in SLM and look for items that could have some Gorean relevance will likely not find too much. Why? Because Merchants that sell their items are being punished to use search index terms like GOR and GOREAN in their listings... even listings that are 100% G-Rated items. Merchants are already responding to LL's discriminating actions by going through all their listings and removing any keyword indexed words relating to Gor Gorean etc. in order to make sure their listings can stay a G-Rated listing. Also, even those merchants that have items in SLM which would be deems potentially non-G-Rated, they will do whatever they can to clean up their keywords to avoid LL's discrimination keyword filters. Brooke.... THIS IS A HORRIDLY BAD IDEA and it was HORRIBLY COMMUNICATED & EXECUTED. If your team truly wants to show they are not like all the previous lame LL Commerce Administrations, admit your team was wrong and back out this strategy.

omg Pamela.... I soo soo soo dread LL's attempt at replacing Magic Boxes. That truly scares me. I might liquidate my account after 10K instead of 30K as that approaches. I would rather the evil we know with magic boxes vs the impending evil we dont know with LL trying to integrate SLM right into our inventory! And... contrary to Brooke's statement... I dont have a spam folder or filter on LL. This one just didnt arrive. And likely many other didnt. In 2009 I asked Colossus to have my email removed from their Marketing spamming emails - when they were emailing the SL residents with advertising of 3rd party merchants. Remember that fiasco? Maybe them removing me from their spam list makes me lose some of LL's informative emails. Many of us demanded that LL take us off their marketing spam list.

I agree Trilo, I will go one further... LL Commerce Team not only didnt think through the deployment plan (i.e. when it should be deployed, how to back out if the change screwed up, etc.), but the whole concept of using keywords to identify evil naughty bad immoral listings for the under-aged to avoid seeing in slm was an utterly bad idea in the first place. KEYWORDS are not feature descriptions of the listed item! Keywords are used to make sure potentially relevent search terms by a customer can help them find what they are looking for. There is a difference. So example.... if I were to make Mens medieval Shoes and in my keywords I put GOR because I am sure those looking for Gor related accessories might find my shoes of interest, I would end up making my innocent shoes now a mature product. WOW Brooke... where did your team come up with this brainchild. Your team doesnt know the difference between keywords and listing description and features? BAD BAD idea... flawed from the beginning. And then as Trilo says, they deploy this change with little initial notice nor detailed info of what their change intends to do and what merchants could do ahead of time to avoid pain.... and then execute the chang just before the weekend when their staff takes the weekend off. WOW Brooke... your staff would be fired at my company for impacting that many users with such a flawed implementation plan. But dont worry Brooke... the SL Merchants are used to this level of service from LL so its not as if we are too shocked... just disappoined that this Commerce Team has learned all their skills and communications culture from the past generations of LL Commerce teams.

And one would assume that Brooke knows what she is doing, but ... The same Brooke who said "Here's the text of the email. We sent it to all merchants who currently have an active listing." yet many merchants have still not yet received it. Or the same Brooke who said "This is just a quick reminder that this migration will be occurring starting tomorrow, 1/11/2011. We expect this migration to last several days and will update this post once it has completed." and still hasn't bothered updating nearly three weeks later. Yup... I have active listings in SLM and in-world... I have not yet received this email. I only heard about it because of all the discussions about it on the inworld Merchant Group and now the commerce forum threads. So... as I have already known, LL Commerce group does NOT have a comprehensive list of who they send important Merchant email notifications to. Some times I get an email.... some times I dont. And yes.. the moving of this thread into a restrictive and and widely unknown secret MERCHANT ROUNDTABLE forum has been frustrating to many merchants and continues to be as this new LL Commerce Team is performing the same "discussion censorship" as all the previous administrations have. "ohh ohhh - what we did was a bad thing and is causing a lot of egg to be thrown on our faces - lets now deem this conversation to be a merchant only discussion and hide it off the general forum". Even though the thread was created by a Linden... it shows the real reason why threads are moved to this secret forum. Remove the restriction of this group from the general commerce forum and allow ANY ONE THAT IS INTERESTED IN THESE DISCUSSIONS TO ENTER THIS FORUM. Stop the restrictive censorship games LL.

Ohhh... I guess this topic was getting to sensitive for the general commerce forum to see as this topic was moved to the secret ivory tower of the Merchant Roundtable for none but the "in the know" merchants to see. As for this Maturity schmozzle.... I went to check if my sculpted landscape rocks and water (and even a few of my non sculpty products) were censored by this Maturity scan. You never know... somehow maybe LL might think some of my landscape rock shapes / designs .... in the wrong hands... might be perceived to look like some sexual, immoral, kinky, lowbrow, deviant shape. So far - as far as I can see, my items have no MATURE flag on them. WHEW! but i guess its more of a "please stay tuned" as it could still happen as LL Commerce Team cleanses the SLM of bad suff that children shouldnt see. hmmmmm.... Exactly what percentage of the entire SL grid population (and all of our marketplace) is made up of minors that we all must not cater to because of the teen grid merge? Thank goodness I make Kid Friendly rocks!

So this "new edition" of the LL commerce team seems to have cleanly taken the baton from all the previous Commerce Teams - following all the well known practices and skewed priorities that we Merchants have suffered through from all the previous administrations of the LL Commerce Teams. Once again, THIS commerce team feels its of a higher priority to deal with the SLM item maturity rating system (which does absolutely NOTHING positive for Merchant nor Customer - and is only a legal CYA for LL internally since they have now allowed children onto an adult grid) then to finish of the SLM deployment that they rammed on to us Merchants last year. We Merchants are still waiting - and will likely never see - the finishing touches on some of the critical features that xstreet had (even though it was limited in xstreet) and were removed or rendered utterly useless. Yeah - I read this past weeks mutated and hard to read Commerce Open Office meeting transcripts where Brooke mention features like SLM Reporting is of interest to them to tackle.... blah blah blah... same thing the previous LL Commerce Administration promised and never delivered. So while all the important tools, functions, services, features that Merchants need to generate more sales and better service to our customers continue to sit on LL's backburner "Honey Do List" of never completed deliverables (like overhauling the uselss SLM sales/traffic reporting), our new LL Commerce Team is focusing on delivery of the same market destroying and non-productive features to SLM. Nice to see LL has placed another shiny coat of paint on this same old dog. LL Commerce Team = New Faces slapped on the same LL practices.

Maurice Linden says in response to Chariclo Dezno: Chariclo, I'm sorry to hear about the delay in responding to your tickets. Those sorts of issues are exactly what we are looking to address with the series of changes we are kicking off. We have been having challenges with our livechat service today and have been working to resolve them as quickly as we can. You can keep track of the live chat status on the Status Blog (http://status.secondlifegrid.net/), which is linked from the right-hand side of the Support Portal. The examples and frequency of New support tickets are few to many to count. It is currently more common than the exception that new tickets are not even assigned for weeks or even months. So, sorry for being skeptical Maurice but your team has a lot of HORRID REPUTATION to reverse regarding LL's customer support. It basically doesnt exist at this time. What really bothers me about your future plan is that as bad as the current support is, you are making it known that for a huge population of BASIC account holders (like me), its only going to get worse. I would like to hear a few examples of SELF SERVICE tools you can provide us that would avoid us making support calls. I dont submit tickets to LL support because I am too lazy to do it myself or generally dont know the answer. In fact, filing a support ticket with LL is a DREADED LAST DESPERATE step I need to take to get a problem solved that ONLY LL cant solve by taking actions they have authority to take outside of normal available resident available tools. So, please elaborate exactly what tools you are going to give us to do such things as: - review and modify my Lindex credit rating - deal with lost transactions / money - file an AR for another resident's abuse of TOS - Not being able to log into an account - Lost or corrupted inventory issues - SLM merchant issues For almost all of these, I need LL to take an "exception" special action to resolve which LL cannot feasibly assign authority to us residents to resolve ourselves. Finally.... STOP OUTSOURCING YOUR SUPPORT. These generic on-shore or offshore 3rd party service desk companies cannot match the unique support incidents LL need to address for their customers. I do not see Customer Support and Ticket Handling getting better from what you are saying.... specially for us BASIC ACCOUNTS.