Second Hell Tourbus: worst places in SL

Ah, but now you tread the slippery slope of WHO gets to decide "within reason".

This is all irrelevant as the section "Second Hell Tourbus" is being removed because the resident in question whom was responsible for that section has long since left SL, as has been stated repeatedly.

Additionally for those whom enjoy just skimming and snipe posting, Infonet is a resident run service, that section 'Second Hell Tourbus' was merely hosted on Infonet by yet another resident, two separate entities.

(sigh)

That would still leave unaddressed the question of why LL endorsed Infonet while either a) knowing it contained the Hell Tourbus, or b) not having checked its other content.

If the government of your country decided to print a special message in one newspaper only, and that one newspaper was known to also give press to other authors with particular political biases, what does that action say about your government's opinion of those political biases?

the irony is that I would be thrilled to have myself on a list like this that can get peoples attention to perhaps want to check out. Negative publicity is not necessarily bad for a business *coug* Microsoft *cough* . In fact, I have heard that negative publicity can skyrocket business and individuals. I would be thrilled that A: Someone was willing to pay to have something bad said about me, it's your money after all. B: Someone actually knows who I am and what I do, dang I am getting popular. C: As a saying goes that I use in RL to my boss, "The proof is in the pudding". Badmouth my stuff, I don't care. Let those who actually take the tour decide on their own. Heck, if you are worried about noobs getting a bad experience, I think them seeing what can be done, good or bad may inspire them to try on their own. I can name perhaps a few times I have showed the basics to a noob on rezzing,basic texturing and basic linking and they were still impressed by my Red, Gree,Blue boxes that took me 30 seconds to do. On the same token I have been insulted on my builds by a resident who was not very new and after seeing her build I started to wonder if she was on crack, then I grabbed some wine and light up a cig and went on with my fun here.

I think the basic thing I dis-agree with the most here is that somone is making a big judgment on something that was built by someone else especially without consent from the one being judged. The way I see it, it took an individual to build it here, regardless of if it is a palace or a rusted out, mal-shaped car. If the build took effort (as in not just there for a gag or a joke of some type or there to provoke the community with bad taste or offensive material) then I think that those builders need to be recognized for the attempt at least, not badmouthed about it. I know, prepare for flames but we still need to consider that there is a person behind the mouse/keyboard and those people are all different and some may have difficulties in life that SL allows them to overcome and enjoy freedom. I would feel really crappy if I publicly badmouthed a build as one of the worst places if I later discovered that the builder has some sort of medical condition and SL is their only way to freedom from pain or misery, we have to much of that in RL.

yeah, Yeah, I am nutty like that.

1) LL isn't a goverment.

2) LL has stated via Pathfinder's posts that their intent is to have the infohub open to other SL resident run publications.

3) Still moot.

Replace "government" above with "private company providing an infrastructure service" (eg, telephone, TV, whatever), and what does it say about that company's view?



And they have yet to explain what happens if they get 50 different InfoNet-like terminals submitted. They must either refuse some (thus no longer open) or convert the InfoHub into a video wall that would be confusing to all users.

Pick the ones they think best serves their interests/business plan as is their right as a private company. They have no obligation to be completely open and accepting all publicans, again as their right.

Something I'm personally thankful for, I wouldn't enjoy walking into a infohub and finding a SL NAMBLA Quarterly notecard dispenser. ;p



My understanding (and this has been talked to _death_ in this and other threads) was that LL went with Infonet because this was a resident run application that had the functionality, and a months long history of proven success in operation that they wished to implement within their infohubs. Additionally they seem to prefer to, when feasible, give such projects to residents. That there was no other project in SL akin Infonet in terms of functionality at the time of the 1.8 rollout and they went with it, and hope to add more publications et al later.

But then you know that already, its been stated repeatedly. Feel free to continue to whip this particular dead horse.

I have asked for information in world going through the recommended action of filing a notecard in the questions bin, but didn't get a response, so I will ask here.

GNAT has been sending out cards asking for makers of shirts and tshirts to submit examples of their design which would be reviewed by a panel of "unbiast" judges. These judges would then call the work poor or quality according to some unexplained system of judgement (point formulation by several judges added and averaged? median scores? offhand remarks?). This same card was given to someone who had made for the first time ever, a shirt for males. The person in question contacted MK (who was representing GNAT, and in my understanding, GNAT is the organization responsible for InfoNet, no?)

New designer contacts MK to say there must be some mistake, this is my first shirt ever, so I think that I was sent this card by mistake, though i'm very flattered...yada yada yada. (The card seemed geared toward influential designers, people who had been around for awhile, or who were significant powers that be within SL fashion.) MK strongly (quite strongly) argued with the source who said in several different ways that s/he would be uncomfortable submitting his/her very first work to be judged alongside people who have been making these items for years or who did this professionally. MK tries two or three different tacts to get new designer to submit his/her first shirt ever for review. New designer asks more information, like who will be judging (someone from GNAT, new designer is told, not necessarily a panel at all, much less of unbaised judges as we will not ever know necessarily who is judging and what agendas said person has). New designer finally decides that this isn't such a good idea for him/her and MK at this point says that she will have to hide all her vendors because she expects to be hated. New Designer tries to reassure her that s/he doesn't think ill of MK, but merely that s/he wants to decline this time to submit. MK further says she plans to make (insert here the content that New Designer does in fact make money on) and to sell it so cheaply that she will surely be hated. (A threat for not submitting?)

Needless to say, something fishy is going on. Considering the Tourbus to Hell fiasco, none of us ever even getting to hear what "third party publisher" wrote that infamous libel, I was pretty cheesed that new designers would be being pressured to put their work up for consideration against SLs heavyweights. I was further troubled that this would be done by people unknown, criteria unknown. It seemed a way to play the favourites game on LL land and in front of the wide eyes of newbies at the Welcome Area. Am I wrong?

Please let me know what is going on with this? I'd love to hear the other side of this story, Venya. PS. can you just tell me this also? Was the "third party" publishing the Tourbus to Hell actually GNAT? It seems only fair that people know who it was who was bashing their places. I'd like to know and my place wasn't even bashed.

so does the tos dismis the right for 'free press' ??

this is a system not controlled by LL, and even the content is not controlled by infonet - it is from a free press peep- the same as sl gazette/ the sl times and other sl news peeps

so are all these 'newspapers' and blogs breaking tos? if they are then the tos is breakin us/uk and international law on the rights of freedom of speach

should LL edit these coments from the infohubs on their land? if so then when ever i place my infonet laptop down in a sandbox - does that mean they have the right to edit it?

also by having that laptop on my own land - am i breaking tos?

tos covers 'abuse' - not 'reporting' - why cant i warn people about a greifer/fake charity peep/bad product maker/bad land builder? if this happened in rl then all critics would be out of their jobs

god the people here cant make their minds up - complaining bout police state then complaining there not doing enough

probably complain about me using the word 'god' in the above sentance

Persephone Phoenix...

Thanks for that info. The reviews are not something in my FreePress department, but I promise to look into it and find out what's going on. I'll do my best to try and clear this up as rapidly as possible. If you wish, feel free to IM me, and we can discuss this matter further.

In the meantime... try this post Click here and see if it helps any.

However, they have actualy stated that they want to make InfoHubs open to submissions.



That's because, until they went with it, they barely told anyone they were interested in that kind of thing. InfoNet terminals didn't have that much coverage until that point. I know it's been claimed that they had postings in the WA and similar but a) those postings asked for "newspaper racks" - would you describe InfoNet as a "newspaper rack"? - and b) if they wanted everyone to know, why didn't they put it on the loading message?

Think of a running race. Everyone sets off, everyone runs, sooner or later there is someone at the front, there is maybe a bit of jockeying back and forth, and then somebody wins. That's a good competition, and when the leaders are jockeying back and forth, that encourages both of them to do the best they can.

But competition for this type of service in SL is different. All the runners are wearing rocket pants, and at some random point around the track, the race organisers suddenly turn on the rocket pants of whoever is in front at the time, which blast them up the track. No matter if they're being jockeyed or not, or no matter if all the other runners haven't even been told there's going to be a race yet. And when the others complain, they shrug and say "it doesn't matter because they were winning anyway."

It sounds reasonable, but what actually happens is that the race becomes a competition to always be at the front at right this moment, meaning you can't hold back your energy for a big burst - and since that's analogous to spending extra time working on things before starting to release and promote them, that has negative consequences. InfoNet is pretty good, but it's not as good as it could be, and now there will never be a networked information system developed that addresses its shortcomings, because InfoNet is already sitting pretty and has no need to change, and no-one else can compete with being the semi-official source of Linden news. Again, LL could have put their news pages on a central server which e-mails or RPCs them out and then released the protocol publically, so that they could all still have been on InfoNet but others could have displayed them as well (which was what I thought they wanted... maximum coverage), but no..

Yumi, why does it have to be a competition? Let's say LL sees a product made by a resident that they think would meet some need they have, maybe some type of furniture they think would look great somewhere on help island or the welcome area. Why can't they just decide at that moment "These are great. We'll take twenty."? Must they at that point announce publicly "Hey everyone, we're thinking of buying x product from y resident. Please submit competing products for the 'take opportunity away from resident y competition' and then we'll decide whether or not we still want to buy the product we liked so much in the first place that met our needs."? What a giant waste of time. The only thing that will accomplish is to ensure that they'll stop making use of resident products or services because it's too much of a pain in the ass.

Ah-HA! That was what was bugging me about this discussion! And I'm going to side with Chip on this one. Why SHOULD Lindens have to be fair about it? If they choose to subcontract the work, they have the right to choose whomever they want! I've got to say, if I was developing SL and was told I have to open every possible business transaction I did to make it 'fair', I'd laugh the entire time I was telling them to bugger off.

Fair does not exist. They hired the person (in metaphor) because they liked his work. An open call is just going to put other people's work up against the work THEY LIKED IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Who do you think is going to win?

Sometimes, fairness is just letting people do what needs to be done without PC screaming of 'but everyone should be equal!'

<sigh> I'm gonna pay for this opinion. I can feel it.

I guess another way to say it is :

There is a worldwide bidding contest going on - every single second of the day. By the Lindens - and by your fellow Avatars.

Things are always being looked it - evaluated - judged - and the best avatar will 'win'.

What you're putting out this very second could be exactly what is being looked for - so it better be good.

Thats what I suggest ya start doing... You think 'infonet' is gonna stay there in the face of some new totally kick ass system? Betcha it's not...


Siggy.

Sometimes 'overPC'ness' treads on 'best man for the job'

I agree.

Um, it is a competition. If LL are wandering around, giving extra money and coverage to some products but not others, then that's a competition - there's no way around that.

Competition has a good side and a bad side. The bad side is that somebody has to lose. The good side is that in the process of trying to win, people do good things that perhaps they otherwise wouldn't have done, and therefore hopefully everyone winds up benefitting.

The model of competition shown by InfoNet, and similar things, at the moment maximises the bad side and minimises the good side. People cannot do those good things if they're already declared a loser before they've had the chance to do them, and/or do them properly, and/or found out that those things are considered good. You might say "well, they can do them, they're free to do them anyway" but reality bears out the fact that products with no competition tend to be lower quality even though technically the manufacturers are free to make them as good as they want. It is not clear why InfoNet's pre-existance was so valuable; it isn't like there was a rush for InfoHubs.

The argument about "they're just inviting new people to compete with the product they liked anyway" is nonsense. Recently I decided to buy a graphics tablet for my whole learning-to-draw kick (thanks to Chip's reading list ) and at first liked the Graphire. But before buying it, I shopped around for various ones and wound up buying an Intuos instead. By your logic, I should have bought the Graphire because, since it was what I initially liked, nothing else would have been able to compete with it in my mind.

Likewise, when I bought my PC, I had the money budgeted for several months in advance - because I wanted to wait to see what new things were going to come out. I got a better PC for my money as a result. It is true, I didn't write to all the PC suppliers in the UK saying "hey, I want to buy a PC, build me one and I'll take bids" but that's because I know they're all building PCs anyway and I alone am not a significant customer. If I was a company buying 10000 PCs for a new office site then yes, I would have done that, because I'm a significant buyer. And LL are a pretty darn significant buyer for products in SL.

You do not see many companies that consider the standard procurement process to be a "waste of time", or stop buying things because it's too much bother. And that's when they have to send letters and mails out to the companies manually instead of just sticking a message on a MOTD.

When LL buys or uses a product or service, they're doing it to meet their needs, not yours. The world doesn't revolve around each of us every moment of the day. This isn't a contest. It's a marketplace. In the case of InfoNet, they looked around, saw something they liked, and made their decision. The end. They're a shopper like anyone else. When you're at the mall about to make a purchase do you call every other store in the mall and give them a chance to change your mind? Do the other stores give you a hard time about your decision and call you unfair? If you want your creations considered, create them, get them out there so they're visible. Maybe you'll get chosen for something. This isn't a county fair and LL isn't handing out ribbons.

Yes! I don't call them, but I look in them. Do I try to get informed about the product in the first place (if appropriate), walk around the other stores in the mall to see if they have the same thing, quickly check online suppliers on my mobile if I know any of them off-hand? Yes. And as a result, I get better products, pay less money, and feel I'm being a responsible consumer.

If I was a corporate procurement officer - which basically the people buying for LL are - would I expect to keep my job if I bought a product just because it was the first one I happened to stumble across?



Um, yes. Spoken to any small business managers lately? They don't do it publically, but they do it.



Which is impossible, since I don't know what the next thing they're going to choose is going to be, and by the time I do know it'll be too late. And as for "making them visible" - to LL? The folks who can just do SELECT * FROM SL_ASSETS WHERE AS_NAME LIKE "*INFO* AND AS_SCRIPTED = 1?

Of course, the other truth of the matter is that I know that, now I've posted these very complaints, I'd probably never be considered anyway, so there's little point. Stopping complaining wouldn't change it as it's probably too late.

Obviously the Lindens had no idea what they wanted, and they didn't consider any other options. We'd know it if they had, because it'd be in the Message of the Day, just like the announcement about what Brent had for lunch.

They have no clue as to what products and services are available on the site they built and operate. They're too stupid to shop around, and too lazy to do it unless forced into action by a bunch of condescending complaints posted on a message board. They'd impulse-buy the moon if we didn't post here demanding that they have open auditions so you could show them Uranus. It's a wonder the Lindens remember to breathe without dual threads in the Hotline titled "INHALE!" and "EXHALE!"

You're entirely missing the point. You look around those other stores at your perrogative, not because you are obligated to the rest of the stores in the mall.



Which gives you an exactly equal footing with everyone else! InfoNet was not informed that LL might need their product before they developed it. It was luck of the draw.



No, you posting your opinions will have nothing to do with it, your defeatist attitude will.

Kim, it's incredibly cruel of you to make someone with bronchitis laugh this hard

That's true. No-one is "obligated" to be a good consumer, but that doesn't mean that folks can't complain if people aren't. And, if I was buying on behalf of a company, I would be obligated to my employer to secure the best possible deal. If LL had made a truly open call there's at least a reasonable chance someone would have offered to do this for free - there's plenty of sophisticated free scripts out there after all - thus saving LL's money and/or requiring them to print less L$. (Remember that when LL buy stuff for L$, they're spending your money by affecting the exchange rate.) If they were allowed to sell advertising as well, as InfoNet apparantly are, they might not charge LL anything, while InfoNet apparantly did.



So what is the motivation for me to try and do anything well if I know it's going to depend on luck in the end? I've seen other cases where inferior products were chosen by luck, and it's not necessarily to do with placement either.

I'm not saying that this is what they did - I'm saying that this is what folks here seem to be defending their right to do.

And as for the implication it's not important enough - no-one's stopping them improving the MOTD. They could have a tabbed information browser there if they wanted. Ooo, wouldn't that be an effective way of communicating with every resident!

That's true. LL isn't a government. It is much more than that.

It is THE government.

That is why it must act in a fair manner, regardless of how much time is "wasted" doing so.

It must act in a fair manner toward its paying residents. All residents pay LL the same amount of money, and all should receive the same service.

Some should not receive special treatment or unfair advantage.

coco

It does, and you do receive exactly the same service, according to the terms of service you agreed to, as everyone else. Anything else not covered by the TOS was never promised to you, nor in any way implied. You're getting exactly what you pay for.