yard sales banned from the events calendar

My guess is no.... here's a sampling of the events calendar from the website

8:00PM YaRd SaLe All Weekend ***** name withheld
9:00PM ~*~ Yard Sale ~*~ PLUS Grand Opening 4th Store of 'This ~...name withheld
9:00PM ~*~YARD SALE~*~ name withheld
10:00PM YARD SALE - Stout name withheld
11:00PM YARD SALE, ALL DAY name withheld
11:00PM Big Yard sale! name withheld
11:00PM YaRd SaLe All Weekend ***** name withheld
11:00PM ~*~YARD SLAE~*~ name withheld

I get two pages of "events" just doing a search on "yard".

You know, I'd like to take the time to consider the actual crime these yard sale people are commiting.

You go there, they have goods out. Looks like a yard sale to me.

OK, well, maybe there should be a rule that a host should be present? (That's what I've always maintained.) Well, right now there isn't, so they aren't breaking any rules there.

Are they stealing money out of your SL pocket the minute you arrive with some sort of a hack? No . . . but if you know a little about how much things originally cost, you're better off. (The same could be said of rl yard sales.)

Are they working within the limits of events posting, vis a vis number of events posted per person? (Or alt?) Yes, but what some of them are doing is taking advantage of this set-up to post more than many think reasonable. (The same could be said of other people posting other events.)

What else . . . ok, they're getting dwell . . . and traffic! Well, we can figure at least dwell is doomed, so I wouldn't worry about that for very long. And as it is, people do not tend to spend lengthy periods of time at any one yard sale. People probably do what I do - make the rounds (just as in rl). Go from one to the next, checking out what's there. It really doesn't take long, and it doesn't give them all that much dwell. Though it's fun to meet people there, when there is a host, and chat for a bit.

So - where were we. Oh yeah, THOSE HORRIBLE PEOPLE POSTING YARD SALES!!!! Off with their heads! Make a new rule! Ban the people who don't follow it! Actually, no Linden has said anything about banning them, though at least one individual has called for it. But the Lindens have said they would be disciplined.

OK, cool. Make a rule so the yard sale people can't put their yard sales in events. And if they do, they will pay the price for it, by golly!

How about a rule about the IB guy, monopolizing the land sales? Seems to me if they could make up this rule about YARD SALES so dang fast, they coulda made one up about BUSH GUYS monopolizing LAND SALES with exhorbitantly priced teensy pieces of LAND he SAYS he has no intention of selling a LONG time ago.

But, I'm just thinking aloud here, and I'm going off on tangents. Back to the basics:

OK whoop-tee-do, we now banished those horrible yard sale people daring to hold yard sales from events! Geez, and they thought they were here to have fun in whatever reasonable way they wished.

So, lets move on. What's next. How about clubs! Clubs have a whole bunch of events, don't they? And lots of them are of the best t & a variety. And stuff like money balls, too! Hey, they are messing up my view on the events calendar, and I HATE those sex contest things! Let's get them next.

. . . . . . All I'm saying is it is ridiculous when calling a yard sale an event becomes a crime.

We already have categories in the events calendar. Seems to me it would have been reasonable to insist all yard sales be posted under "commercial." But nooooooooooooo - we don't LIKE that sort of silly thing, do we!

It's just ridiculous. What's next? As I've said before, pretty soon there will be no fun left. All the people trying to have fun will be turned into criminals.

coco

it's not that a crime is being commited (don't be so dramatic), but that it pollutes the listings with events that are not really events, which makes the listings that much less effective.

Well, I agree that the ones posted all the time and over and over aren't actual events. But I consider yard sales to be events. I go to them, and I want to find them. Shoot, I might even want to have one one day!

coco

Long ago I presented Linden Lab with what seemed to me a very viable solution to the "commercial event disguised as an event" problem: primary event categories.

There already are event categories if you're looking for a specific type of event. But this really doesn't serve to filter out those that a person may have no interest in at all. And it doesn't put an end to "garbage" events and bogus events.

What I recommended was removing the current category system (which really has very little value) and replacing it with something like the following:

* Main Events (standard, real-value events)
* Commercial Events (yard sales, merchanting concerns, grand openings, etc)
* Club events (stick your nakee tringo stuff here)
* Misc (just to catch everything else.

Along with these listings would come the rule-of-thumb: wrongly post your event, and lose event posting privileges ranging from 3 days to permaban.

Of course, if sub-categories were desired within the above that would be fine. But it would be nice to be able to look up an event listing specific to the type of event you're looking for. Also, someone could always choose ALL to see everything that is going on at one time.

I never even look at events anymore because of all the garbage I have to wade through (I've heard numerous people say the same thing). Clubs don't interest me. I already have enough inventory items and nakee avatar events are just plain silly. Would be nice to be able to hit the Main Events button and see an event listing with all the stuff people aren't interested in filtered out.

If someone wants to shop, or primarily enjoys clubs, then they'd have their own category they could check. The above concept would be fair to merchants, club owners and main event holders alike.

Maybe they will listen eventually, Wayfinder! It's a search engine, done all the time LL. It's doable!

I'm only seeing a handful at the moment.

-- ddg

Looks like it hasn't been implemented yet.

If someone has a home that they sell full perms, all someone has to do is have a "yard sale" and sell that same home for whatever price they have it set at, and then the creator gets no money whatsoever.

It's why my prefab homes come full copy/mod, but no transfer. So far, I've never seen my homes resold. Custom homes come with full perms, but seeing as they're normally built to suit the land, they're not very portable.

LF

Thumbs up, to the 'yard sale' restriction on events.

But...

with one caveat:

If one was to turn off 'Mature' events, once yard sale events are gone...

The event window may usually be EMPTY....

<grins>

I am curious as to why yardsales have been singled out for this ban. Why not the Bingo, Slingo, Tringo events. Or even the so called club events which are usually no more than "escort" agencies offering the services of their ladies.

I held my one and only yard sale after being asked by three friends who had accumulated a lot of clothing at great expense and had no further wish to keep a large percentage of it. We held a timed, supervised event for two hours which was well attended due to the posting. But the plus part we thought is that it gave a lot of new people a chance to buy good clothes which they would normally be out of their budget.

Ok so the alternative is the Classified section of FIND. What a pile of rubbish that is. There is no order to it other than the person who pays the most for the advert gets highest up the list. Personally I think the solution has already been mentioned. Break the events calander in to a number of sections. Main, club, commercial and misc. Surely it cant be that difficult to do.

There is only one **ingo place that abuses the events calendars and it should be stopped. I wish I knew why they get to keep abusing the calendar in such a way. Same with the sex clubs..

Most of the "yard sales" are really just second-hand stores trying to circumvent paying for a "places" listing. I know there have been authentic yard sales. Most yard sales in RL do advertise in the classifieds sections of the newspaper. I wish there was a better way for LL to handle these things, but if you consider the size of their staff, the size of the grid, how many abuse reports they get in the course of a day, how many "fires" they have to put out in the course of a day, etc., right now there simply isn't a better way.

I find it amusing. That we ban yard sales for those of us that want to downsize our closets. Yet lately you look at most of the events and see that it is truly selling sex in SL. I find it amazing MOST of the events now are sex oriented. When I first joined it wasn't this way. YET this isn't banned. Is this not somewhat ironic?

I agree. When I first came here, LL supported events with small L$ payments to hosts-- but did not support club and sex events. As a result, all kinds of interesting events abounded. But when that support stopped, suddenly the good events started vanishing and the club/sex/tringo/commercial "events" shot up like a rocket.

A year ago, checking out events was the first thing someone did when coming online. Now most of the folks I speak to about event listings rarely even look at events any more. Even if someone wants to post an event, they tend to get "lost" among all the other listing and as a result, what good events there are often don't have enough attendance to make them worthwhile.

I do believe the solution I presented above would bring at least some life back to events again and encourage "real event" holders to start hosting again, knowing they won't get lost amongst the garbage. Unfortunately (and not to be negative), Linden Lab is so inundated with things that need to be updated, getting them to recognize the priority of such a thing is nearly impossible.

If there are two things that need seriously fixed right now on SL-- it's group management tools and events listings. Those are really the core of SL activity, aren't they?

The banning of Yard Sales from events will not slow my shopping

I am not against Yard Sales, real Yard Sales that is, just don't think they qualify as Events.

To me this is the first step to getting back a nice Events system... me hopes.

Hi Faminu! Yeah, agreed 100%. When Yard Sales first started showing up, they were kind of fun. Who doesn't like to go to a RL yard sale? But then the bogus ones started showing up... to the point that now the listing "Yard Sale" seems to be synonymous with "another marketing rip-off". So the few real yard sales out there are lost in the shuffle.

Not to mention... how many yard sales have I attended where someone was selling a freebie item for L$25, L50, L75... which is against TOS. Such blatant taking advantage of newbies is without honor.

Now some have mentioned that this is OK because "that item belongs to the user and they can do whatever they want with it" and "hey, I'm doing a service to newbies by going to the trouble of finding this stuff. I sell it to them for my time."

Which of course, is blatant rationalization. The item does not belong to the user; it belongs to the creator, who intends it to be distributed freely. To get legal: selling a copyrighted item (which builds are) for a profit against the intent of the original designer is against United States Copyright Law. So one rationalization shot down.

As for the second: if the seller was doing a "service" to newbies... he'd give the item to them as originally intended.

All of this has gone to giving Yard Sales a bad name. It's a shame, because I've attended some that were fun. But like you said... an "Event"?

That's why a separate category for "Commercial Events" ventures would be good. It would still let them post their events (in their own area) without conflicting regular events in the process. (It won't stop bogus yard sales of course... but at least everyone won't have to wade through them when we're looking for something to do). And those that like such things can go right to that category and have a blast.

Looked today and there are still thirty four yard sale style events (Give or take a few). A lot are still directly called "Yard sales".

Is the party still going?

Thumbs up. Get the yard sales and commercials out of Events.

Big Two thumbs up from me

I'm in favor of it.

Wow you Lindens have done a great job of cleaning up the nightmare called the Events Listings as judged by the Police Blotter. Keep it up please and give hard time to repeat offenders!

I had some yard sales in the past. After all these months in SL I had a lot of stuff in my inventory that was perfectly nice but I'd gotten bored with it and never touched it. I had six boxes in my inventory alone marked "clothing storage".
Now I made it an event. I was there the whole time, my friends would come by and put their things out too and some would hang out and some wouldn't But I was always there. I would hide items that I would normally charge for in among the rest and mark them at 0L$. I would post the event (and yes I considered it an event.... during the weeks I was doing this I traded cards with several people and had fun).

Now why did I stop? Because the last three weeks in a row that I tried (I always did my yard sale for three hours on Saturday morning, an easy time for me) it would be deleted within minutes of my posting.. every time. I understood why it was deleted, I hated it, but I understood. So many other people were breaking the rules that it was just too hard to distinguish the real yard sales from the fakes so the hammer came down on all of them. The only way the Lindens could have known for sure would be to physically visit every yardsale themselves and they have other things to focus on. So, I stopped doing the yard sales and just gave away the stuff I dont wear or use anymore that I had left. (Though its been awhile and the inventory is piling up again)

When I read this thread initially I just sighed "oh more yard sale fighting".... but thinking about it now, I think maybe this move is a good thing. With them being strictly in the classifieds it will be more expensive to use the old repeat posting over and over for 24 hours straight trick and people will become accustomed to looking in the classifieds for their yard sales quickly enough. People adjust.

Opinion:

Exactly the comment I just made in another thread about this.

One correction, however: Yard sales are not banned.

They simply have to have a beginning and end time, and a host has to be present.

coco