Petition to Boycot In-Game Classifieds

The best way to combat spam is to charge for its mechanism of delivery or otherwise introduce scarcity into the equation (and they have tried this already with the cap on the number of events you can hold within a given period). A nominal fee for event listings would go a ways to clear out the junk.

"I'd like to buy a vowel!"

Nuff said!

Brilliant idea! I plan to boycott the in-world classifieds until they return the forum classifieds.

Oh, cruel Linden oligarchy, won't our forum-based lobbying convince you to return our classifieds?

~Ulrika~

Hmmm, that would be much cheaper, and give me more exposure in Find to boot. Fiendishly brilliant!

Um, that's just not correct.

Find some land where people want to go and pop up a board that people can drop textures onto, and then others can page through them. Then, make it network with other boards so they share the textures and get folks to put them on their land.

Oh, but then people have to travel to the board, whereas the Lindens can have Find right in the toolbar? Well, the classifieds are going in 1.7, right? In 1.7, scripts can attach to UI. So make an attachment that someone wears that gives them a "free classifieds" button in UI, joins a network to get new ad textures, and pops them up as full-window UI attachments when the button's pressed. Then, hand the attachment out for free to anyone who wants one. Maybe even make it toss a Linden or two to anyone who gives one to someone who didn't have one before.

I'm sure that's not too difficult. I've only been learning for a couple of weeks and I could at least attempt it; I'm sure the wizards had the code in their heads by the end of the paragraph above.

Looks like the Lindens changed their mind! Read Here.


Quickest.

Boycott.

Ever.



- Newfie

Here's the problem.

Let's say a large amount of people boycott this new system designed to help you get more money. Let's say 25% of 60,000 accounts. That's 15,000 accounts boycotting this new service.

That's 25% today. A month from now, there will be 20,000 more accounts. That's going to shrink your diehard base. Two months from now? 30,000 more accounts. Then another 30,000.

And that's assuming a) a huge portion of SL boycotts this good idea, and b) sticks with it for six months.

So not only did you get "punched in the nose" by Linden Lab for closing Classifieds, but you willfully will punch yourself in the nose until it falls off for the next six months.

And by then, the vast majority of users won't care. Why? Because they're new, and haven't heard of your boycott. They simply use the systems for what they are. It's happened so many times.

Anyone remember the tax boycotts in 1.1? Few do, because there' probably 200 of us left in the game from that time period. Most users nowadays have never heard of it, and if they have, it's a quaint relic of the "growing metaverse" or something.

I never saw much return from posting in the classifieds. Getting more eyeballs to look at my products is a good thing.

I think all that says is that they'll keep the Products Wanted forum, and leave the Classifieds down on Nov 7 instead of Nov 1...

Well, now you can have it both ways, Lordfly! Or a choice of options! I'm thrilled!

coco

Boycotts are more symbolic than financial Lordfly. They are a lobbying tool that allow a small group to join together and send a cohesive message. Financial disruption is secondary.

~Ulrika~

HAH.

It'll never happen. In game spam will never occur. In game advertising will never be an issue. Users will be banned. OMG this is tragically funny.

EXACTLY as I predicted. Go ahead, say, "no it's not, yadayada this is different because Jupiter is over there instead of here".

I mean, the only skills you needed to see this coming was the far fetched and rare ability to look into the PRESENT, and demonstrate a mastery of the OBVIOUS.

SL = SpamLand. It's not far off. For lawd's sake open your eyes. Linden, save your gradually socially deteriorating world from being the digital equivalent of a 3d billboard with 70's style 42nd street attractions.

Then again, and I'll never forget this one, I had a Linden SHOUT AT ME THAT THERE WAS NO OTHER WAY BUT TAXES AND BECAUSE I SAID THEY WERE TERMINAL I OBVIOUSLY DIDN"T KNOW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT. No fooling. Right in the welcome area. And this Linden is a very well known one.

This is NOT a system "to help you get more money". That's ridiculous. It is a system to offer a way try to get more user interest to pursue the one in-game asset...money... in a world that has failed to implement meaningful ways to do so other than land flipping.

SL is not about earning money for god's sake. It never was. Look at what Land Baroning and Currency Exchange has done, and look where it's wound up. When will Linden look around and learn?

You want an example? Fine. Go check out Underlight. A game with designers that REALLY understand interesting social interactivity, society construction, and user roleplaying/interplay. If you could get the Underlight game designers working with the SL programmers, man, that'd be the next big thing.

I do chortle at ye.

what

Is this in some way motivated by the desire to have people inworld shopping who when they see something they want use the inworld money purchasing method to buy some money then go inworld to the selling location to buy the item?

An attempt to focus attention inworld, to increase immersion, and to take advantage of "impulse buying" through the simple inworld money buying system?

Well, for one thing, the technology is circa 1998, so it's not terribly groundbreaking.

Secondly, it seems to rely almost entirely on player interaction/reaction to get anything done. IE it's only as interesting as the people inhabiting it.

thirdly, it's a game. The lindens seem to be fairly adament (right or wrong) that our little bundle of joy isn't a game. Maybe it's a platform. Maybe it's a simulation. Maybe it's a zombie. It's a thingie to me.

Yea, no doubt we'll see spam, even the insidious RL variety. But we also see tubgirl pushscript security guns, should we not be allowing LSL either?

LF

My prediction is the message that would be sent would be "less than 20 people disapprove of this action enough to boycott it for an indeterminate amount of time".

Sorry, but them's the ropes.

LF

"Well, for one thing, the technology is circa 1998, so it's not terribly groundbreaking."

As I said, get the SL developers together with the Underlight game designers (which is not the same thing as a technologist) and there ya go. My point, and you know it, was that the built in motivations to become part of, and participate in, the society, is unique, and so far beyond anything LL has implemented that...well, they should get a few accounts. FYI, it's more like circa 1988.

Many Underlight dwellers argue that Underlight is not really a game. Maybe you should actually play it oh...for a year or two. You'll see.

"Secondly, it seems to rely almost entirely on player interaction/reaction to get anything done. IE it's only as interesting as the people inhabiting it."

And SL doesn't? And/or Isn't. Read the town halls, the visions for SL. C'mon. You're ignoring years of SL history ("the world is what the residents make of it....", "we need to rely more on the talent of our residents...)...please. SL is ABOUT the residents. They make it, give it the reason, such as it is, to exist. Take out the residents, and resident interaction...no SL. You should edit your post immediately.

"thirdly, it's a game. The lindens seem to be fairly adament (right or wrong) that our little bundle of joy isn't a game. Maybe it's a platform. Maybe it's a simulation. Maybe it's a zombie. It's a thingie to me."

SL IS A GAME. It IS. If you don't play "the game", you will never be more than a landless scrub, an occupant of the lower social rankings (those numbers, and status/titles thereof, very much qualifying as a "game". Even in EQ, there are "fringe" players, that don't really "play" the game...but they are generally of no account. Face it. It may not be a "game" by the straightforward def, and it certainly (probably is more) applicable as a platform for specific projects (like entirely dedicated online universities), but in the end, the way SL is set up, it IS a game. And there are winners. People like Angst Chung (or whatever) and Big John Jade. And the sad thing is, since a few of these have dominated, there is no room for anybody else to win. Go ahead disagree. But these people have essentially beat SL. How much room is there for more like-Chungs? Answer...none. Because there aren't enough people sticking around and taking SL seriously to make it happen. Why...cuz there's NOTHING TO DO if you're not a programmer, builder, or baron (and even scripters and builders are marginalized). It's the same old story, same as early beta, that LL just can't figure out. Again, look to Underlight. I myself have more money than I'll ever spend. Because I flipped some land. Pfft. I piss away money at clubs $500 L at a time just because you stood near me longer than somebody else. Meaningless as gold in Ultima Online. Flip your first land parcel, and that's that.

I had a long conversation with Robin a year or so ago. I told her that without basic and long term goals of some kind, SL would continue to struggle, and money would continue to be the only driving force...and I told her that was broken. In the end I'm convinced I will be proven right. I got interviewed by some Linden I forget his name, regarding games dev in SL, he asked me the same question about money. I told him I didn't like it, and thought it would kill SL if it became the driving force. And I gave reasons. Well...here we are. Welcome to SL = SpamLand.

"Yea, no doubt we'll see spam, even the insidious RL variety. But we also see tubgirl pushscript security guns, should we not be allowing LSL either?"

I was told this would NEVER happen. NEVER. I have quotes from Linden saying so. Endless quotes from residents about my paranoia, mental derangement, and so on. And here it is, and people are either silent, or saying, "Oh yeah but..."

Face it. It all happened, and is happening, exactly as I said it would. It is SO funny that now people are saying, "yeah sure there will be spam....". Go ahead search for my posts, you'll see. Don't post 'em out of context...I'll rip ya apart.

Oh my GOD this is great. After all the insults, all the nay saying, all the "you are insane LL will never let it happen". Ursula, thou art harbinger of the end of SL.

Lordfly, you've been around. But that last post...I question if you understand the original, core vision of SL. Well, then again, it's been diluted to pap now, so perhaps it is excusable. You are, after all, relatively new to SL.

I can not BELIEVE how right I was about this. All you people, your insults, your insinuations...well, eat 'em, with those crow feathers, and no salt...dry as can be. Very few people have seen more SL, or thought more about SL, than me, and that includes many LL employees. I know wtf I'm talking about, and this isn't the first time I've been validated.

What's that? No other way than taxes? Land ownership-based prim allocation won't work? Letting instructors teach at locations of choice isn't tenable? Shall I go on....? Nah. I mean...well, ya know.

/smackthedonkey.

The threat of a boycott works quite effectively. Black people threatened to boycott Toyota after all those racist ads they ran, and now Toyota pays millions to Rainbow Push to avoid the boycotts. Pepsi was also threatened with boycotts for dropping Ludacris on the grounds of morality while promoting the morally bankrupt Osbournes and Brittney Spears. They paid 4 million to avoid a boycott.


So boycotting/blackmail works well if you know how to flex the power.

It also helps if Bill O'Reilly is doing the flexing, as in the Pepsi case.

"Second Life is not a game. It is a platform that is used to create content, socialize and network and allow residents to monetize their efforts by selling their content and/or services."

So it's about money. And getting it. Or meaningless blab a la T-Mobile. Get more.

Sorry. This just ain't what it will be about. It's not about money. Or selling the rights to make L$...well, for money. One account, or sim, or island, at varying levels, at a time.

This is not Maud Dib. Sand will cover SL. Sand will cover...you.

Like i always said i liked the forum classified section cuz if im in an older computer outside of my home i can access the internet but not sl... so i can show ppl creations of friends and such things. If its in-world only, i could not/ or install it in someone else's computer to just see creations made by second life residents.

If Linden Lab is not doing this to get $250 per ad, im sure ppl will put in both places, in world and in the forums, gives more advertising opportunities to the designer.

I guess we will just have to wait and see


:: as if LL listens to what we need ::

An extremely cynical person might ask "will there be a game economy worth adding a sink to in the proposed timeframe?", but I wouldn't. This same hypothetical poster might also ask "why don't they just remove stipends to more effectively control the money supply?".

I'm glad I'm not the hypothetical poster as there isn't enough tar nor feathers in all vBulletin if I were.

The caution against partitioning a parcel has been the effect of doing so on your dwell payment. As a retailer, it would make far more sense to focus on advertising your product than on dwell. How many spots in Find can you get for $100 per week compared to the $200 per 2 weeks the inworld classifieds will be charging?

If I were in the land management business, I would make commercial centers (malls) that were partitioned into 512 sm shops. For $10 per month ($6 if paid annually) a person could own their own shop and control their listing in Find. They could divide their shop into, oh let's say four departments, with four separate categories to be listed. Or if they can get by with less floor space (25 prims instead of 100 saving the remaining 17 prims for the shop and mall common ways), they could band together with 3 other fledgling commercial entities and trade spots in three other locations. End up with a lot more potential in owning a 512 level membership than trying to put a furnished house on one.

I'm not in business so this idea could be totally useless. It seems a better plan than posting in a forum and watching your thread sink, imo. Just thinking.

I never pay any attention to my dwell anyway, since it doesn't seem to make much difference in Find. My land is group owned, so our payments are split. I don't hold events on my land to earn dwell, so splitting it wouldn't make much of a difference in a practical sense. Only some numbers would change.

I could split off 4 512 portions and list them all in Find for 2 weeks for $10 cheaper than I could list 1 ad in the Classifieds for 2 weeks. This would increase my chances of a plot ever coming up on the first few pages since they select a random 100. Just like the classifieds I could change the coordinating photo and description whenever I wanted.

I won't do it because I'm lazy and I don't want to parcel up my land, but it makes more sense than paying 250 per 2 weeks to advertise in the Classifieds.