Is Dwell doomed?

So a thought just struck me.

A lot of the current forum drama llama issues -- p2p telehub income loss, popular places list being abused, the money chairs, and so forth -- all have a common root cause; that being the quest for ever-increasing dwell numbers.

It seems apparent that any attempt of quantifying anything in the world by the Lindens will simply result in massive gaming of the system, and thus making them entirely irrelevent for any sort of serious use.

Look at the ratings system; originally designed to award "positive" behavior and inhibit negative behavior, it instead became a money mine and a griefing tool, completely antithetical to the original concept. Positive ratings in the three categories had zero to do with the actual skills of the person, and the negative rates might as well have been doled out by a random number generator.

Now, look at dwell. Originally copied, I believe, from TSO's measurement of popular hangout spots, dwell has since been mutated into a horrible ratrace of "malls" that serve to trap people, money chairs that serve to make people entirely inert on a person's plot, and "events" that barely qualify as such by any conceivable definition of the word.

All of this, of course, is to generate enough dwell points in order to qualify for the DI, and thus, I imagine, to defray some of the insane costs these establishment owners are no doubt accruing.

It becomes a non-stop cycle; people want to make money, so they "follow the leader" and copy what everyone else is doing to make their dough. Every place ends up with the same Tringo/Slingo/Bingo/Yard Sale/Megamall Emporium/Hot Thong/Camping Chair areas, leaving very little for anything worthwhile. It just keeps going up and up and up...

This has perhaps reached its peak with IceDragon resorts; with tringo, slingo, and money chairs/dance pads going on 24/7, the sim is always packed. But there's really not much there. Content wise, it looks just like everything else in SL, except they're concentrated all in one area. There is nothing truly original about this place. I'm sure to many, it's a great hangout spot. But to me, and from a design perspective, it is absolutely mediocre. It is not what SL is all about. It may be SL's equivilent to the traditional MMORPG treadmill; unending, unvariable, always running.

Wasn't the Dev Incentive supposed to be rewarding innovative designs, rather than simply the most "popular"?

If Linden Lab stopped doling out DI, or even dwell payments as they stand today, would even half of these establishments survive, or bother to be run?

So I guess my main stab for this discussion (that will, of course, inevitably devolve into flame wars, name calling, and other forum standbys), is whether or not Dwell as a system is flawed, and should be done away with.

Does it spark creativity, or does it maintain the status quo?

DI is definately gamed. How to reform it is a complicated issue.

All popular resources (dwell included) will be gamed to one extent or another. Pick any one virtual world/game/etc that contains any type of resource like money, dwell, star crystals (and so on), and you'll find groups of people who will find a way to game the system in an attempt to get as much of it as possible with as little effort as possible.

It's unfortunate, but laziness is far too common a part of human nature.


Personally, I'm far too busy enjoying myself in SL to worry about those that are grinding away on their dwell-quests.


- Newfie

I'm not sure if dwell is doomed, but I think it's safe to say it's not working as it was intended (or maybe it is, but I don't think so). Honestly I'd hate to see these places go away since people obviously enjoy them and that's a good thing. I just wish there was some button to push to morph the culture into one where they felt able to be more creative instead of pressured to do whatever it takes to get the numbers. I don't think it's the DI itself that causes it, I think it's more the fact that these places are depending on the DI as their only means of recouping expenses. I think that if people don't start trying to find a way to make it without DI and be self sustaining then their long term survival is questionable. Then again, how long ago did money balls first show up? All this time later and they're still around just in another form. I don't really have anything against people who feel the need to use them to attract people. I'm just sad that they feel like they have to.

If they were to remove dwell all that means to me as a business owner is that I'll have to invest in some visitor counters to guage the amount of traffic my business recieves. I don't live off dwell at all, hell my SLingo and Blood 21 games serve mainly as a way to attract customers. With camping chairs rampid, my money ball barely gets any use outside of events as people don't wanna camp money balls any more. And since my Sim is really low lag I wish to keep it that way by not introducing camping chairs at my establishment.

Challenge here is to figure out how to measure creativity without resorting to a system that can be gamed. Unfortunately, the Lindens don't have time to fly the entire world all the time looking for unique and creative experiences.

Interesting points so far.

Perhaps a less transparent system is needed, in order to lessen the desire to "game the numbers", as it were?

Random idea in my head: A new system, used by residents, that is similar to Everything2.com's "Cool" system, or, more archaically, the old Votebox System. If you find a plot cool, for whatever reason, you simply click the button on the interface. You have infinite votes, but they may be "diluted" the more you vote. Maybe not, this is a stream of consciousness.

From there, the process is, for all intents, invisible. The system would collect these votes. The plot owner would not know how many people Cooled his spot, nor who pressed the Cool button.

At the end of the month, the system tallies via some archaic formula, and declares a list of winners that then receive the DI.

Advantages: Residents can spend more time flying around, exploring, and socializing, rather than sitting inert in one spot. Plot owners unable to "game" the system due to the vagaries of the process.

Disadvantages: People will still find a way to game the system. The forced opaqueness of the process would invariably lead many people to cry "foul", alleging corruption, favoritism, and the lovely FIC catcalling.

Something to ponder, anyways.

Given the recent "gaming" of dwell, I think dwell payments are doomed. The stats should stay however, because it displays the level of activity at the location.

Having said that, it would inject less "newly printed" money into the economy.

I don't know a single land owner who is dependant on that payment. I own 15 shops among other land and my total weekly dwell payment is less than my stipend.

Hmm... Or give everyone a random number of votes each month. No one would know if their vote even counted. Less incentive to game? Make each vote worth a random number of dwell points? Measure the time spent by an avatar moving around over a space greater than 5m while at the property? Another issue would be the additional processing overhead required to collect all the data.

Dwell was doomed by the time I got here and it really has just snowballed into this shite.

We all should know by now that being popular does not mean it is good, creative, or innovative. Look at films. The top movies are generally nothing unique. Same goes with music.

The dwell system changes and someone will figure out how to game it. Voting system? People will buy votes.

If they are to continue to have DI, they should pay people who only goes out looking for interesting things. People who want to go out and find interesting and new and creative things. People who are under a strict NDA. Like secret shoppers. If they refuse to do that, then take away the DI.

Bloody hell, I'd do it for free.

I continue to be amazed by that anyone is the slightest bit surprised that LL creates and encourages systems in SL which reward boring useless content and make interesting, creative content virtually impossible to maintain for those without infinite disposable income.

Because boring, useless content is good for business? I don't follow your logic.

Dwell is doomed.

Any automated system will be studied and gamed.

Any non-automated system will suffer from perception and favouritism issues.



As time goes on and any 'dwell mechanism' matures, those who wish merely to keep pace must by definition participate in the gaming of the system.

Otherwise they will lose out against those who do.

Which is justification enough to game the system, in the eyes of many.

I believe dwell to be doomed ... take it away, please.

Maybe as a replacement we need something like Nielsen families ... some randomly chosen sampling of the general population that keeps track of where they go and how they react to a place.

Don't we have a large enough population to be able to get statistically significant data from a truly random sample of the population?

Anybody have any idea about how big the sampe would need to be?

But ... but ... but .... wern't you one of the people who hated the voteboxes most?

Personally, I miss them. Sure, gaming was possible, but disadvanteges aside, they did inspire exploration and creativity in building. The whole point of building back in the day was to catch peoples attention as they flew past.

Oh I wish I had posted on my first AV so I could chuckle and tell you all "I told you so"

The Shelter is dependant on Developer Incentive to fund our tier costs. We're non-profit, and our goal is to give new residents that are receptive to it: a positive social experience in SL.

Donations from the community and sponsorships from content creators fund our events, which are mostly trivia-oriented.

We've never used camping chairs, and while we do have a money machine - its scripted to prefer new residents, and gives out a token amount - not enough to camp for, but enough to make a new resident say 'wow'.

If Developer incentive goes away, I suppose we'll reduce our operations, or push harder for donations from the community. Maybe a little of both.

I believe dwell is part of what allows Anshe to operate as a landlord. She wouldn't be doing it if she wasn't making a profit. Is that good or bad? I'd have a hard time saying. People seem to want the service she provides - themed, zoned sims. I personally would like to see the DI go to support innovative and entertaining builds... but who decides? My idea of a good time may be horrifying or boring to others.

Personally, I would welcome some structured fund-raising. I'd like to be able to donate money to a worthy cause, feel certain it was being used wisely (and from all of your posts I've read, I am confident you would do so), get something in return (like sponsorship -- mention my Market ).

I've donated to other causes in the past, but they never worked the donor's list ... so I eventually forget I was being supportive (short attention span).

From what I've read here, I suspect you have enough supporters that you might be able to replace the DI as a funding source. Some of those supporters might have pockets considerably deeper than mine (short attention span != deep pockets ).

Probably. And probably for the same reasons; they were easily gamed, and horribly inefficient to boot.

Putting that function directly as a button on the client isn't a bad idea, and allows for total anonyminity ,rather than the back-scratching reciprical voting that went on way back then.

/me bookmarks this tidbit of wisdom for future threads.

Will it work to have the system accumulate picks as votes every twelve hours and award the incentives that way?

My experience with funders / funding is that it didn't matter how many times I mentioned or rewarded a funder; they lost the 'attention span' anyway. For instance, I once received $1k in funding from a business representative who said he would be interested in establishing an ongoing relationship if things worked out. I put the ginormous, texture changing sign up and used the $1000L to partially fund 10 events that ran that week. The funder was mentioned in each and every event posting, and at each and every event. I also left the sign up 24/7 for the full week. At the end of the week, when I checked in with the funder (whom I had thanked profusely and multiply, and mentioned multiple times a day for the week) I was told that resources were scarce and the fellow would not be able to continue funding.

One of the reasons I wanted to be involved with the FFRC was to help people who make events. I also want to help people who sponsor events by getting them publicity on the scale that I had provided for that funder (who pulled funding nonetheless). I think that the FFRC (Foundation for Rich Content) has the opportunity to pool together Linden donations large and small in order to stabilize the rich content creator community. Funders will get mentioned in the not quite ginormous sign with changing textures available for their own logos to be displayed, as well as through publicity and follow-up posts of the FFRC-supported content. We'd like to see a gala too, I think, that awards creative content and also rich content funders. If funders and content providers work together toward a common vision, I think we can make a difference in this second life.

Mmmm, not really. Dwell is one factor for community sims that I sponsor, but my main business model is not at all based on it.

I think Lordfly raised some valid questions. Dwell is one great idea and very useful to SL, but I hope Linden Lab keep improve and innovate on it. Avatars quietly sitting/dancing in one place for hours should not really generate much dwell. Today I happened come across one of the top club islands. There was like 20 pads with avatars dancing on them. No chat, no audience, just avatar stuck there in endless dance loop. This was kinda surreal I must say

Well... it does display the level of zombie avvies at many places parked in money chairs at least. I do agree that it does work well as a tool for those who do not rely on camping chairs to increase dwell. I'd hate to see dwell payments go away for some people who actually deserve it. Bribing people to come to your land... well... I just don't think that should be rewarded.

And the only ones who are concerned with this issue are a Few Forum people.