Kampu Oyen

I have long used both Firefox and Google Chrome for the Marketplace. They each have their own disadvantages. Firefox seems to take longer loading product images, which is bad. So I have come to prefer Chrome, which tends to either open the Marketplace page or not open it. If it does open, it will usually then work better than Firefox.

>I thought we were calling it the 14XXXX club Am I still a member if my items that LL borked were later permanently removed by LL from the Marketplace for having the wrong pictures?

Come now - there's no need for conspiracy theories. You people in here can be really paranoid sometimes.

Wow. Back in August who would have thought there could be this much negativity just around the bend?

There is currently no date by which we have been told to expect it to be fixed. There IS a date on or after which we have been led to expect the box utility to be shut off. So, by simple deductive logic we should think... what should we think?

With the level of sales shown, I think it may be potentially possible to simply correlate the sales to user concurrency. Whether concurrency "should" also be up and down, though, I also consider to be a fair question. When my prices were lower, I would get 100 orders a day or more, so if it dropped off to nothing, that was a lot more statistically significant than what we're discussing here (and, yes, that DID happen). Even since slightly raising my prices, I normally sell not fewer than 30 items a day, so I'm still into the sweet zone for harder statistical patterns. If I sell only half of an average daily number above 30, it actually has a different type of statistical significance than it would for someone to sell only half of an average daily number below 30. That is: if you sell 9 items one day when you are averaging 20 over the previous month and someone else sells18 items on a day when they are averaging 40 over the previous month, their result is more than twice as suspicious as yours. In this sense, some of my past sales patterns have been what we might call "astronomically" suspicious, at least from a statistical standpoint. As I've said, I'm not seeing a drop in sales this time, but I have certainly seen it before as a pronounced phenomenon when inventory doesn't want to open or objects don't want to rez. I'm also not having either of those problems at the moment, either. What this all suggests to me is that the difficulties you're describing may be less specific to buyers' accounts than to merchant's accounts, further reinforcing my belief that the system simply does not treat merchants in an even-handed manner, even if why is somewhat less clear.

The fact that I'm seeing sales up quite a bit is pretty weird. It makes me think maybe someone it trying to buy off my discontent with less business interference. If so, nothing doing. Where the game is rigged, it's unfair to all players, including to those who win.

I realize that CTL is probably supposed to represent multiple Lindens. I also realize that CTL has effectively replaced one specific Linden in a number of ways, and that this began to happen after a specific incident which can be easily understood as making the change appear necessary. After the 13 September incident, that Linden has stopped coming to this forum, stopped being assigned JIRAs (although CTL has 20% of the open ones) and stopped bothering to pretend to answer for things like 14 February, the Mad Men promotion or for the impending box shutoff while DD still does not support breedables. She's hiding, and not hiding at all effectively. Anyone who bothers to look at the chronology should be able to see that CTL has become a personal accountability sink for one specific Linden.

Thanks for mentioning that, Marcus. I'm not seeing this part of the pattern this time myself, but on all earlier occasions when sales went into a slump, I have noticed either a problem getting things to rez or a problem with getting inventory to open. It's not difficult for me to imagine that fewer people will want to buy something if they can't open inventory or can't rez anything. And with the speed at which money moves in SL, even a fraction of people being so affected for some short period of time could produce a bottleneck that slows down the SL econonomy more generally.

If LL would just stop breaking things, there are a lot of places in the world where people actually could live on what they could be making in here after a few months, at least assuming they can access to the internet to begin with. So, it is potentially a viable workplace for more people than currently, if the service should ever become consistent and stable enough to support a more continuous stream of income. But that's just not where things are going unless someone begins to steer them in that direction with reasoned action instead of a bunch of fanciful talk. As things stand, I only see two likely outcomes to allowing things to take their current course: 1) CTL headed for a massive personal crisis before leaving LL 2) CTL headed for a massive personal crisis after leaving LL The second choice is the better one for everyone involved, including CTL, but that's just not how people respond in such situations while they continue to be blindly enabled by superiors. For her own sake, I hope someone will help her to find her way to the door before even more people become more involved in her problem.

Well now it's off this link... http://www.google.com.co/search?rlz=1C1SNNT_enCO408CO408&q=5424408+MadMen5&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=es&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=8iasT9uTCYKo8QTFwZ0a&biw=1366&bih=643&sei=9SasT_uvAcW9gAfgwOmEAw But not this one... http://www.google.com.co/search?rlz=1C1SNNT_enCO408CO408&q=5424408+MadMen5&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=es&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=8iasT9uTCYKo8QTFwZ0a&biw=1366&bih=643&sei=9SasT_uvAcW9gAfgwOmEAw#um=1&hl=es&rlz=1C1SNNT_enCO408CO408&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=WsSuT_aPL5HqgQfL8sS8CQ&ved=0CDsQBSgA&q=5424408+Mad+Men+5&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=68759288ae0053b1&biw=1366&bih=611 Which still leads here... http://www.google.com.co/imgres?q=5424408+Mad+Men+5&um=1&hl=es&sa=X&rlz=1C1SNNT_enCO408CO408&biw=1366&bih=611&tbm=isch&tbnid=m4Si2hiYCjUq8M:&imgrefurl=https://marketplace.secondlife.com/%3Flang%3Den&docid=SdHCPkvTPsn_9M&imgurl=https://d1ij7zv8zivhs3.cloudfront.net/assets/5424408/original/MadMen5.jpg%253F1334696563&w=700&h=275&ei=X8SuT6mQL8WMgwfx352nCQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=353&sig=115382914745254965143&page=1&tbnh=70&tbnw=177&start=0&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:66&tx=88&ty=37 So I guess it's going to be around for a while one way or another, eh. Maybe LL better just get used to the idea that anyone who wants to know from where they derived the concept for the Madstyle promotion will ultimately be able to find it if they are willing to dig a tiny bit. They've already clearly assigned some value to making other parts of this data trail disappear, so I can only assume there would have been some value in not having it exist in the first place. I wonder if they've considered the value of assuring that wheover produced the first piece of this data never gets the chance to produce something like that again.

>every single thread being taken over by his pointless points. If you actually count the affected threads, you'll find that that's appreciably exaggerated, although I appreciate what you're saying. I think the trend you describe is unlikely to have to continue, as threads created specifically for such purpose are no longer being summarily deleted, and so it appears less necessary to post commentary on other threads. Not being provided the basis to understand differently what has been happening, I have to assume that while moderation requests have come from actual merchants such as yourself, the thread deletion requests have come from Lindens or their alts. Probably, it's just one more example of something The Malefactor does that encourages a divisive outlook between us on this forum, futilely slowing down the inevitable consensus that, by now, you must see inevitably forms between us; a consensus that forms in spite of any incidental conflict between a personality like yours and a personality like mine. I bug you and you don't like me. I get it. That's unfortunate. But it doesn't lessen my ethical obligation to you as a fellow merchant to try to get LL to address the root problem underlying practically everything that has gone wrong for merchants in recent months. If you disagree with my methods, OK. I don't think I necessarily always agree with yours, either. Hopefully at some point we'll no longer have reason to continue doing certain things that we have been doing and you'll realize that the things I do which you don't like come from a very sincere place; that, really, I'm just trying to make it easier for you to focus on making money and stop having to focus on everything LL is doing to keep you from making money. As long as we keep arguing about the irritating behavior of other merchants, we're wasting the opportunity to more quickly come up with a clear and concerted message for LL. Somebody (probably CTL) has to go and you all know it. If you want me to ST#U for a while, OK... just help me to get LL to remove the person who has to go, and you'll see less of me around here for a long time. A LOT less. For a LONG time.

Pretty close here, too. I should add that humans are not herd animals, but pack animals. If everything finally goes right (from my perspective), this is a distinction that will be made compellingly evident to Mr. Rosedale very soon.

If I'm somehow wrong about who to remove, then I'll certainly understand that they might remove a different person. But, so far, all the signs that point to anyone in particular have all pointed to the same person. As for hating said person, I think that's inaccurate. I'm done hoping that that person will grow whatever she needs in order to stop ruining things on her current job, but I still hold out hope that there's a job that's a better fit for her somewhere, and that she'll be less tempted to sacrifice integrity in order to maintain that next job. In fact, I'm sort of hoping that there is some medical facet to her behavior for which intervention and/or treatment currently exists, and that (one finally relieved of the pointless pressure of keeping the current position) she'll be able to derive maximum benefit from said intervention and/or treatment while growing into the next job. I can't claim to really know what's going on in regard to that, but there does seem to be a bit of a hint in this message. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Marketing-Opportunity/td-p/1484001 Can you spot the hint?

I think the tightening IP laws go too far in terms of telling people they don't own what enters their own eyes and ears when they're forced to see and hear it in public space. But in terms of existing laws and loopholes, if LL at least wants to seem to be discouraging people from inviting take-down notices, they shouldn't be inviting them, either, by their own actions. Following an existing law only as strictly as it is written may or may not be irresponsible. But not bothering to follow it at all, and being seen not to follow it, is certainly irresponsible.

>I removed all the "madstyle" keywords from my listings after the rainbow items were flagged and the ones that were changed by me still show in the madstyle promo. I also noted that earlier. It seems to be a way to allow items listed as madstyle to be flagged a second time for keyword spam on the basis of their inclusion to the promotion, even if they explicitly have no keywords, and regardless of whether they fit the madstyle description provided by CTL. The result in at least some cases is that the item will be permanently removed from the Marketplace, and any attempt to relist it may be met with punitive action. Yes. This IS really happening. Before you ask why it would be "allowed" to happen, I must first urge you to consider whether allowing it to happen would actually pose some kind of benefit to someone,

It is normal and I support it.

Please: if you're only going to call CommerceTeam Linden by that name, I think it's only fair that you refrain from expressing your latent favoritism by calling me things other than Kampu Oyen. > I tend to think it's less "twisted nefarious plot" and more "someone has their head up their ... ". I'm pretty sure that it's both. Especially after how clumsily the cover-up of the Mad Men promotion has gone. WHY is surely less important than WHAT, though. We all should be able to agree by now that someone at LL needs to be permanently removed from her position. Debating what motivates her is splitting hairs anymore, because we all know what the bottom line is anyway. That is: even if every single thing that has happened so far has at least started with some kind of very honest mistake, that wouldn't be anything like an adequate defense either of her job performance or of how she has followed through on the problems her presence has allowed to precipitate. All the theory of intentional service downgrades does is to make her behavior slightly more predictable than a theory of mere incompetence. Take, for example, the impending shut-off of box use to the Marketplace while DD continues not to support breedables and items of similar permissions issues. Being that the consequences of this up-coming incident have been known for well over a month, and being that all that need be done to prevent such a thing is to allow the boxes to keep functioning until DD can support breedables, which theory better explains why this service downgrade is going to happen?... A) CTL somehow still has missed the point that shutting off boxes on 1 June without fixing permissions support for DD will force a large number of merchants to either stop selling their items or to sell them in-world (as a higher land use cost). B) CTL is aware that shutting off boxes on 1 June without fixing permissions support for DD will force a large number of merchants to either stop selling their items or to sell them in-world (as a higher land use cost)... and wants this to happen. That CTL is sufficiently oblivious to the content of this forum for A to be true is completely inconsistent with the recent process in which the link for MadMen5 was changed to a link for Madstyle5 when the link was pointed out on this forum; in which the image in the MadMen5 link was removed after it was pointed out on this forum that the link still showed the image; in which someone began to flood forum moderators with requests specifically pertaining to the Mad Men discussion after it was pointed out on this forum that Google still had the image indexed in a way that demonstrated it as incriminating. Incompetence would better explain some of what has happened, sure. And malice or devious desperation would better explain some of it. But how much of what is to be explained by which has become a mostly very unnecessary point of contention between myself and the other people on this forum who, at least now, finally, seem to agree that there is a persistent and pervasive core problem with the way CTL's domain of control is being administered, and with how it has been administered for many months. If it will help produce any kind of solidarity here in terms of demanding decisive action from LL in regards to the removal of this destructive person, I will be happy to offer better support for a theory of mere incompetence as a valid competing theory after the 1 June incident does not occur as predicted. In the meantime, I can't in good conscience fail to again emphasize that the incomplete roadmap provided by CTL at this point consists almost entirely of the 1 June signpost; a signpost that points less to mere incompetence than to a continuing pattern of intentional service downgrades.

>What ideas might you have? I have one. An inventory folder inside which a Magic Box will behave as if it is rezzed on Linden land. Too obvious?

The moderation messages are all related specifically to my discussion of the Madstyle promotion. (edit) Sorry... I meant the Mad Men promotion.

> there are no merchant LL cheerleaders left Don't speak too soon. Now that their alts aren't tied up preparing a deploy, you can expect them to flood in any time now, as they have in the past.

... aaand now that the deploy is out of the way, here come a whole bunch of moderation messages directed to me. Interesting coincidence.

>Why does LL continue to make missteps even in the face of overwhelming strident advice to beware the pothole? Why do they seem to launch off on efforts and ventures that not only have no obvious impetus, but seem almost to be engineered to cause damage to the paying customer? I think I've already explained why every bit as compellingly as has LL so far (which is not hard, since they haven't explained it at all). The probable reason "why" appears to me to be that someone inside LL believes that it is necessary to push commerce from the Marketplace to in-world venues in order to improve land revenues. It sounds a little wacky, sure. But a lot of stuff that started being predicted on this forum in August 2011 was at least equally wacky, and yet it has happened. Am I wrong?

Update: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Google-still-has-indexed-MadMen5-image-on-thumbnail/td-p/1528625

Well, I understand that they comply quickly with take-down notices, so they're not completely irresponsible. I suppse if they don't ever get one about Hulk or Mad Men, then, in a sense, there's "no problem", even if what thet do with Hulk etc encourages users to try to get away with such things as well. Not to condone the use of Mad Men by LL from an IP standpoint, but the reason I've made a stink about it has more to do with the way merchants have been treated over the last few months than about some kind of morbidly positive sentiment someone like me might have for Lion's Gate Entertainment. If nothing else had gone wrong so far, I'd have probably just sent messages to LL pointing out the legal exposure and hoping they'll fix it and move on. But the promotion was administered in a way that it either provided an unstated competitive advantage to a select group of merchants, or at least would have if so many merchants hadn't decided to game the promotion (as I encouraged them to do). And this promotion is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what has not neither been done correctly over the last year, nor been properly remedied. A proper remedy to the total pattern of events would have included to fire someone a long time ago. Better late than never, though, I suppose. I understand that firing the person who chose the 13 September and 14 February deploy dates, instead, just for the Mad Men promotion ("if it should happen to be the same person") might be a bit like prosecuting Al Capone for not paying his taxes. Whatever. There's just no sweeping this thing under the rug, so something's got to give, I should think. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Google-still-has-indexed-MadMen5-image-on-thumbnail/td-p/1528625