No payment info or money trees

It appears I am in some what of a dilemma. I have 2 money trees at the Promenade mall in Clarksburg both of witch either i or my alt Aimee put 1000L$ a week in each tree. i have had them at the mall for about a month now and recently I noticed many one day old residents stripping the trees. since I find it hard to believe so many one day old residents can know of money trees I can only think that there are people scamming the money trees with alts.
so I turned on the ban for "no payment info on file " and that cause me to get many IM's most of them very nice and polite but some not so nice i must say.

so I am in a delima here i want to be able to provide the money trees for new residents but i can not have my money trees scammed by alts. I have to make a decision. get rid of the money trees and hurt legitimate new residents or keep the ban on "no payment info on file" and hurt legitimate residents that don't have or want to provide a CC.

suggestions comments?

sincerely
Crucial Armitage

Well, just let me say first that I think there's a differene betwen "not helping" and "hurting". So, I don't think you're "hurting" new players by not offering them some charity by way of money trees. I do understand what you mean, though, and I'm not trying to be critical, just wanted to make my thoughts on that clear. I think it's great to be charitable if you can.

That said, I can understand your dilemna of not wanting to throw away your money vs. wanting to help newer players.

If you strongly suspect the people stripping your trees are scammers/abusers using alts, you're probably right to some degree. And if that's the case, then the trees are probably not helping the new residents all that much, anyway.

If you want to help new residents, and are also worried about having your generosity abused, you might want to think about losing the money trees and offering very low cost, good quality, clothing/jewelry or whatever, with a scripted vendor that will only allow newer residents to buy. You could sell off older product that way at very low cost, while keeping your newer products at a regular cost. Most of the older players who want to make alts to scam any "newbie" help may very well already have your older products, and if they don't, and make purchases, you still get some money out of it anyway, especially since the alts were not going to be buying anything from you anyway.

At the same time, new residents gain access to higher quality clothing, shoes, etc. at very low costs. So instead of giving newer residents money to help them buy standard priced goods, you offer them no money, but significanty reduce the costs of some things to them. This is a win-win, as far as I can see it. You don't give away anything, continue to earn revenue, while helping new residents get access to decent things at prices they can handle.

Ok, I know my suggestion can still be abused, but I think the abuse is not a loss to you, and the type of abuse of this sort of charity will no affect your helping newer residents.

I hope this helped a bit . Good luck no matter what you decide, and I'd like to commend you trying to be charitable with your SL "wealth".

I'll reply quickly, because I am tired.

Yes, I think you are right to exclude those with no payment info on file.
The reason is simple : unless you ban people with no payment info on file, a stream of alts is probably going to strip your trees dry before genuine newbies get much L$ out of them. Once the scam catches on, that is. One person with a bunch of alts can drain a tree pretty fast.

Without blocking those with no pay info on file from the money trees, there is really no way to put a stop to this scam. So, out of 3 obvious options listed so far :
* allow money trees for everyone
* allow money trees for those with pay info on file
* don't use money trees
#1 is ruled out due to scamming, and #3 is ruled out by your desire to be charitable. That leaves #2.

This is a quick response, and it's not thought out as well as my other posts, but my gut feeling is that it is better to have a smaller number of genuine newbies get the L$, then it is to have the vast majority of the L$ go to scammers.

Laff if you want, but we use money chairs, i know, i know, but in a way they kinda stay in the perimeters of the game, your traffic for our $L, everyone needs to learn, you earn in the game, money does not grow on trees..sorry for the pun. Ours are set pretty low, but newbies can earn about $25 in a night..not too bad for just sitting around. We do note that they tend to shop around our place too, which is another advantage, they been lookin around while sitting, seeing things they want. We also provide scads of freebies, so its kind of a draw. I dont think this detracts from their experience either, as most go on "away" statis after about 10 min..so its really their down time anyhow. As the sun sets on SL every nite, one by one our chairs fill..i kinda tuck em all in...lol

Money trees to me have always been a ridiculous invention, they get stripped in seconds..and like you say with all the alts..there is no further use for them.

Oh, yeah I also wanted to say, not all alts are "no payment info on file". This problem has been around since before LL got rid of the age verification thing and the whole "no payment info" deal started up. I know someone ingame who had this same issue with her money tree.

While banning the "no payment info" people will probably stop most scammers, it won't stop all....

Well, really, money trees are easily exploitable, so...no matter what, it's gonna happen, unfortunately.

I have a feeling that with the influx of alt accounts, the money tree will eventually become a distant memory. That is unfortunate but at the same time completely understandable. We all want to help genuine new residents but none of us wants to feel like we are wasting our time and resources either.

Money trees (as far as I understand) always had a limit of allowing only avatars less than 30 days old to pick from them. Why 30 days, why not 3 days? Because we all know that very few new people even learn about things like that in the first few days, getting to know SL takes time. With so many money trees being stripped bare so quickly, it's obvious that the gift of the trees is no longer getting to the real newbies. So with that method we're no longer helping anyone but the greedy little pilferers.

I think the best method of helping new people is as one poster said, to offer them things at a much lower price and also to offer freebies of reasonable quality. We can also help by being willing to talk to new people we meet, show them things, teach them how to do for themselves. Meet a newbie who loves a shirt she found in the freebies and has an artistic talent, teach her how to use paintshop or gimp. Meet someone who loves the house he's watching you build and says he'd like to do one too someday...show him how to make a few prims and play with them. This is something we can do for them that is more effective I think than simply giving them cash.

The money trees are a noble thing, a generous gift, but they are unfortunately no longer being used in the way that was intended.

Personaly, I would do this.
I would remove the money tree. If you want a great way to help new players use the prims you save (since the trees at maturity take quite a bit) and offer totally free boxes of good freebies. You could even theme the boxes.
Really that helps more then a few L's here and there to the real new player. They get a good start on clothes, vehicles, whatever.
This could go a long way to helping them. If you still want to donate a little to the cause you could always consider tossing a little at one of the groups that help newbies. Then you are helping even more then now.
I hope that helps.

I'd keep the "no payment info on file" ban active. I would also assume that the nasty messages that you're getting are from the people who were using alts to strip the trees.

It's unfortunate that people are gaming the system like this, but that tends to be human nature. There are always a few bad people out there who will take advantage.

I'd also like to take the opertunity to point out that if it weren't for the forums, I probably never would have heard about this new trend, and either would a lot of other people. A simple, centeral, non-blog method of communication is usefull, and indeed irreplacable.

Now that the code to have a script recognize payment info of an agent has been added it would be kind of easy to add an optional (so that the one that want everyone to use the tree can allow that) check to the bill pick up script.
If the agent has payment info on file or used (depending on setting) -> allow pick up
If the agent has no payment info on file -> "Sorry, but only registered residents can access this money tree"
If such a feature was added to the money tree code i would put it up again immediately.

I'm curious, why isn't there a "Do not accept IM if sender has no payment info on file" option?

If the new residents started out at NCI, then they might have picked up a copy of our list of money trees (updated every few months). That has LMs to all active money trees that we could find at the last update. So it is possible that they were genuine new residents.

Just a comment, when I was new, I lived in a state of almost constant shock, box on head the money trees were a umm...a cheat or something, in my mind, that would make it too easy or maybe it was pride not sure...but I stayed away from them and lurked and explored and read the forums, I'd say 30 days had passed before I even understood that this was altruistic behaviour on the part of the citizens of SL. Thats not to say that an alert new resident didnt read a well positioned notecard..but i dont think I understood a word for 2 weeks at least. As to "no payment info on file"....well arent they the ones that need the most help having very little resources at hand...I realize these statements are contradictory in terms of your problem..... how about if you are older than two weeks and less than 4 weeks probably impossible but if its smash and grab alts it might frustrate them. I dont think I even camped until I needed an extra 7L for a new bathing suit one weekend and that was 2 weeks ago. camping doesnt really work well without an anti afk does it?, except at places like the matrix? I do appreciate the generosity of older residents,the big break though for me personaly in terms of self confidence/style/self image was the clothing "raffle" at June Dion's Bare Rose and some of her low low priced items! (plus a few other well hidden gems found through endless exploring), as to encouraging me to shop there after I was on my feet so to speak....I now have over seventy folders of Junes stuff and I want, no....I need more!!!!

I don't see how money trees can be scammed. It would just take to much work and picking all night just to get a few hundred Lindens. I might be wrong though, but from what I remember it took several hours when I started out to get that much. It could be possible that a lot of new users signed up for SL lately?? I love my tree and helping out new people and it will be staying. It's fun to see how the new people are doing and sometimes I chat with them trying to get them in the right direction.

I ran a couple money trees at the Respite for a few months.

I'm afraid to say they were being scammed quite actively.

Its one thing to say, mathematically, that money trees cannot be scammed because of the limited amount of money one avatar can take in a certain time period.

But when someone running 5 avatars is hitting 50+ money trees in rapid succession, they can make quite a bit.

Simple facts are, after confronting and having a long drawn out conversation with one of the most obvious ones...he said, quite simply "Yes, I'm scamming free money in Second Life...its what I do, its my job because I can't do anything else here. Don't blame me for taking advantage of what you've made availible."

I also had one girl, who was very polite and nice, admit to me that yes, she was a chinese farmer and worked at a place that did this kind of thing in many games and turned the money into real money. I felt sorry for her, she said she didn't make very much doing it, but it was to help her family.

Simple facts are, the math...if the trees are properly utilized, or if no one puts any donations in them...is correct...and the trees can't be scammed.

But if you run an active parcel/store, and people donate to your tree regularly, it does open up the tree to people that are rolling money on trees, going from place to place in rapid succession to the tune of 5000L+ a day. And whats worse, alot of the active scammers that were hitting my tree were quite obviously NEVER buying anything anywhere, most of them had base newbie stuff, self created clothes from the Linden standard meshes, base hair, no detail skins....not even a pair of shoes...now I might expect to see this for a day or two from the same person, but for a month? No....quite obviously the money they were getting for free was going somewhere else...where was it going? I think it was going to the Lindex...and to be honest, that money was for the economy...if it was going to go to the Lindex, I'd have put it there myself.

And thats why I chose to discontinue my tree. I felt the intended benefit of it, which was economic stimulus and assistance to new players was perverted and misused by people that were given more or less the ability to continue this sort of business indefinitely by LL's no verification policy.

I liked the idea of the tree, I liked it far more than dance pads and camping chairs, but unfortunatly it just seemed to me that the tree was being farmed alot more than it was being properly used.

Well I just would feel so bad taking mine down. After reading that, I might consider. I wish there was a better way. Maybe I'll run give out vouchers to newbies that prove themselves as actual newbies, rathe than run a money tree.

Even if someone told me they did this I wouldn't believe them! It's almost an impossible task!

Even if they got a full 25L$ from every tree they visited, which they wouldn't, it would take around 6 to 7 hours to pick that much money! That's assuming 200 trees, 2 minutes per tree and all the TPs work quickly and properly. Even my tree which is constantly loaded with 10000L$ almost never has a full 25L$ in it. It's rarely got more than 10 !

Frankly, anyone prepared to work 7 hours a day for a mere $15 is welcome to try. I get more than enough thanks from newbies who appreciate the trees to know full well it's a worth while venture.

I get many visitors who ask how they can donate to the island, I normally ask them to donate to the tree instead.

Put simply, money trees are not worth the effort to farm there are far faster and more lucrative ways to make money in SL !

I do agree however, that opening up SL to totally free unverified accounts was a really bad move, but even so I wouldn't ban them just because they're free. In RL of course, that would be tantamount to unjustifiable discrimination!

I like the idea of a money tree and had one; however, I don't like how much it pays out and afew other features. So, I created my own solution.

I wanted something that pays token amounts - 1 or 2 Linden$ instead of 25 or more. Free money should, in my opinion, give someone access to the L$1 freebies and provide access to just enough content to get started.

My solution pays out L$1 or L$2, is donation driven and also remembers people that have come by. I added the memory feature and keep the payout low to make farming a lot less attractive yet still offer a bit of free money. I also did not like the idea of a 'tree', so my solution has users walking around finding the money instead. This encourages exploration of the area and makes it more difficult to just walk up and start farming.

Even though help island and the welcome areas offer so much, I still enounter a lot of new people that have no clue about what to do or how to do the most basic things. So, I do agree though that handing out freebies and information about getting started in SL offers new citizens a lot more value than any money tree/free money solution offers.

-2fast