Unskilled jobs? Pay volunteers first.

Slacker!

The two-way value proposition is there:

1. LL: LL gives you a way to make money. In return, they get more retention of residents, more conversion of residents to premiums, and more subscribers overall.

2. Residents: The resident creates money chairs (or whatever), for people to make money. In return, the resident get greater dwell, and more visibility for their club, store, or other business.

That of course is aside from the issue of volunteers. With volunteers getting pay, you have the AOL problem.

But I don't think you can argue that these other jobs shouldn't be created because volunteers don't get paid. After all, the volunteers can do those other jobs, too, if they so desire (or at least it should work this way).

As for the problem of volunteers not getting any concrete reimbursement, I think they could come up with something, as I said before.

coco

RUR RUR RUR... that really does say it all. Thankya Leck!

Yes, but you assume people just want L$s. They don't, necessarily. The things you can spend L$s on aren't that big a deal unless you're enjoying SL for its own sake, too.

Imagine for a second that LL decided there was enough content on SL, and that they just needed to concentrate people on buying L$ and also reduce lag - so they shut down the editor. No more building, no more uploads, no more anything. You can still rez objects and move them around, but you can't link them together and can't rez prims. Any prim-equivalent objects that might have been made available so you could fake building are deleted from the database.

Would you continue playing SL in that world?

Because that is the world in which those people find themselves. They have the editor, but either can't (or think they can't) do anything with it, or think it's not worth doing anything with it because it would get ignored in favor of what already exists or what people with more experience are doing. As we've gone over several times, there's no point making anything if nobody else ever sees it; otherwise you might just as well close your eyes and imagine it.

Just buying L$ will not get them out of that. In fact, it can be seen as an admission of failure because if they could make stuff, and it didn't get ignored, then they could sell it for money and wouldn't need to buy L$. Now, that doesn't mean that they won't ever buy L$. They might well buy L$ for a starting stake in business, but only once they've got some idea that there's a niche for them. But they won't buy L$ just to go shopping, because they can't buy anything that'll get them out of that stuck situation.

Practice can give you basic skills, but it's hard to work out how to wiggle an advantage over others established in the world. And in many cases, just getting money won't automatically help that - unless you're going to pay people to attend and I now know what people think about that.

You keep saying that, Yumi, but saying something over and over again doesn't make it true.

Linden Lab gives you money -- they retain more customers who are dependent on being given money that, by merit of being given to customers to make them happy, and the growth of the customer base, makes the money worth less and less.

Residents get paid money to give people money which makes them more visible.

For making money.

You're confusing money and value.

Money is worthless without value backing it. By throwing money at people just so they stay here, the money isn't worth a thing. You haven't created anything except an unsustainable dependency.

The only way money has value is when something is created of value to back it.

So, converse to your apology for money chairing, teaching and mentoring creates a genuine value by creating useful and productive Second Life new residents who, by merit of their favorable introduction to this world, will one day become good citizens. Helping the platform by creating good, solid people who will enjoy themselves and make positive contributions is okay with me. Helping the platform by creating dependent people who will leave as soon as the free money goes away, as it will have to eventually, is not okay.

Your insistence at calling Second Life a game completely cripples your ability to make a compelling argument on anything related to economy.

But good luck with that.

Well, ok.

What is the main entertainment that SL - as it is at this moment right now - offers to somebody who has no interest in creating anything? How much do you think it is worth in US$?

Do stuff for people WITHOUT making money.

You don't have to make money to scratch the work ethic itch, otherwise NOBODY would be a volunteer ANYTHING. And a lot of them spend a lot of their own money on their volunteer work as well.

I spent a lot of time over the past few months writing and maintaining the code to glue a Wiki and a database and some other components together to create a website to bring victims of Katrina and Rita together with services, services with services, victims with families, and so on.

In SL I help people with scripting, write scripts, and give scripts away. Some of the people I've helped are now selling scripted stuff of their own. It's all productive work... to HAVE to get Lindens for it as well if you're going to feel productive seems foolish to me.

The work ethic is about working. The making money ethic is about making money. Both of these can work together really effectively in the same person, but they're not the same thing, and mixing them up will just leave you in an unhappy place.

Which is why I give my time to the game and buy the Lindens, because it IS a game, and buying the Lindens is more fun than the drudgery of running a business.

Because these things have nothing to do with the work ethic, or being productive. REAL productive jobs, like the ones I've suggested, will take care of the people who want to work and want to get "paid" for that work.

There's plenty of things that people CAN do to create jobs, even without Linden help, if that's what they want to do. I've suggested some of those too. Nobody wants to do it, they just want to use the newbies as a resource, fuel to burn in their dwell ghettoes. And THAT is why they get trounced. this isn't upward mobility, it's a sweatshop mentality.

No, it's not. Anyone can rez up a cube, drag it into a slab, and drop a snapshot on it. Now you've hung a picture. You've made something. Start with that and move on. That's about the simplest thing you can do with the editor and it's already useful.

If someone doesn't use the editor at all and for some bizzarre reason they think they should be able to... but aren't willing to try, then at the most they have CHOSEN to put themselves into that world. But that's THEIR problem. If they really want to make stuff, they can make stuff. I know some people who've made really dumb stuff, stuff I wouldn't have thought would sell... like a tortured prim linked to a slab and labelled as a sculpture, put it up in a free store for a nominal price, and people bought some.

If you can do that and make sales, then there's NOBODY who is so incompetant they can't start. Unless they CHOOSE not to.

Well I think this is all a bit of a stretch.

The "work ethic" generally implies that people are willing to work hard, and regularly, to get ahead in life. It doesn't generally apply to altruistic activities.

There is one area in which it would very much apply to altruistic activities, and that would be in the royal family of England, who are involved in virtually nothing but volunteer and charity work. Princess Diana "worked" hard at her job, and enjoyed it very much, too (which is why she did enjoy it). But they didn't call themselves "The Firm" for nothing.

It has been suggested numerous times that when people want a way to make money they actually are asking for handouts. I'm saying that's not true. If you want to call the "work ethic" a "making money" ethic instead, fine.

In any case, when I flew around to money trees, and when I pulled the lever at free slots, I was working, in my work ethic, for me, and for me alone. Just as in real life, when I work, or my husband goes to work, we are working to make money for our family alone. That doesn't say we don't do the type of work we do for altruistic reasons also. (As in Diana's case, loving what you do, and helping people with it, does make you good at it.) But the concept of altruism doesn't trump the need to put bread on the table.

coco

I'll tell you what I do in SL when I'm not creating. Hang out. Turn into a giant robot. AND TALK. LIKE. THIS TO. SMALL PEOPLE. Fly a "flying saucer" around the map, landing near people, and speak broken English mixed with science fiction gobbledegook until they give me direct me to their leader. Or their ladder. Doens't matter. Dance. Chat. Turn into a police dog and call people "Citizen" and "Sir" or "Maam". Explore. this past week I've found a half kilometer tall screw you can drop balls down that's probably been there for months before I came up with the same idea. Check out the weird avs people come up with, like a tiny giant mecha only 2' tall. Find out where to buy one. Come back. have a slow motion tiny giant mecha fight with karate animations and bad fake japanese. Turn into a giant robot again. DID I STEP. ON YOU. SORRY.

A few days ago I TPed to the northernmost hub I could find, rezzed up a plane, and started south flying nap-of-the-land up over the mountains, then set my plane in a wacky vertical spin while taking snapshot after snapshot of the smoke trails until I finally hit 4096 meters and my plane derezzed. Then I IMed someone on the ground while I was falling, talking about the horrible accident, my plane blew up in midair, I was going to hit the ground like a bomb... and then set off a particle bomb from Yadnis when I hit... and took more snaps.

Oh, and a made a snow-otter on my land, not for sale or anything and that's hardly creating anything, certainly not the "building stuff for Lindens"... it's just a handful of snowballs and a retextured copy of my otter avater's head. But my land's tropical so I built a giant ice-cube around it to keep it cool.

You can't DO this stuff in Everquest or... well... anything.

How much? Well, the avs and plane together cost maybe L$5000, so that's about US$20. Oh, and I gave a friend a few hundred Lindens to buy a house with, and helped 'em customizing it by using Photoshop to remove the Alpha from a messed up texture.

US$20 a month. No problem. There's a bunch of scripting and stuff, but some evenings I just can't get into the scripting, so I bounce around doing toony stuff instead.

TAKE ME. TO. YOUR LEIDER.

I can call it okra, and it won't change the facts.

Fact One: If the Lindens are thinking about instituting some sort of jobs, they aren't doing it for the good of their souls. They are doing it to get more members, and more premium members. That is the value of doing that. If that were seen to be of no value, then they wouldn't do it.

If the Lindens decide to try this to get more members, and hopefully more premium members, then they will be able to see if it works. If it does, the Lindens can be said to have obtained value. That value can be expressed in terms of money in Linden coffers.

Both the Lindens and residents can get value from this, since more money in Linden coffers means we will all be able to enjoy a bigger and better SL in the future.

The residents gain value, too. They gain a way to be productive, stay busy, make money, and enjoy SL.

Fact Two: If there weren't value (in several dimensions, including ones I've mentioned already) for the residents who offer money balls, etc., they would doubtless stop doing it.

The residents who use them gain value, too. They gain a way to be productive, stay busy, make money, socialize, and enjoy SL.

Both the businesses who do this and their customers enjoy these symbiotic relationship.

I don't think you are saying that these facts aren't true.

But I think you are looking at "value" entirely in terms of: How much is a Linden worth on the market in dollars today? In other words, is my thousand Lindens worth $4.00, or 3.50, or what?

That kind of thinking doesn't allow room, though, for the kind of thinking that makes for the most happy players and the most residents (and premium) residents possible. While, of course, upsetting the economic apple cart, and players like you, the least.

Because above and beyond the U.S. dollar value of the Linden is the question of maintaining a privately owned game in a profitable way, and growing it for even more profit. Otherwise it won't matter what the Linden is worth.

Teaching and mentoring are not more valuable activities than socializing, slot-machining, or any other activity residents enjoy. Having activities residents enjoy is of value, and in fact is essential. Not all residents enjoy being taught or mentored, or, for that matter, learning arcane skills. One's idea of what constitutes a "good, solid citizen" is a matter of opinion as well.

"People who will leave as soon as the free money goes away - as it will have to eventually" - is not necessarily a true statement.

First, there is no need for the money to go away at all. As long as players are willing to have money chairs or money balls in their establishment, they can. You won't have anything to do with that. As long as the Lindens continue to give all players stipends, they can.

And if the Lindens decide to do some sort of job plan - which we really have no idea they are going to, by the way, it was just something a Linden said they were tossing around - then that, too, isn't something which will have to go away eventually.

Which is okay, because even more important than the meager amounts of Lindens earned through such things as money chairs, or Linden jobs, is the feeling that you can do something about your situation - you are not helpless. That you can better yourself, even without the Holy Trinity of Professions (or resorting to the World's Oldest). It is FUN to do what you can to make money and build yourself up slowly.

Second, the idea that there are these vast quantities of people who will hang around SL only as long as they can get a few extra bucks working at a Linden job or playing free slots, etc., is faulty, too. As I said earlier, these sorts of things enable a person to get a start, to figure out what they want to do, to socialize, to buy a few items, make friends who will give them a reason to come back, and to begin to learn skills if they choose to learn them.

I still like to do Free Slots now and then, for the socializing and for the bucks.

coco

If I was paid for volenteering, I think I'd count it as event support and start holding more show and tells and such..

It absolutely does apply to altruistic activities, and to leisure activities, and to hobbies. But if you've got a hangup about the term, then read this as saying that you can scratch the same itch in the game that you can in RL without actually making the pittance in Lindens that you are going to make from even the best-paid entry-level job.

Best rate I've seen at a dwell ghetto was L$50 for dancing for 1HR. That's... 20 cents in real money. For an hour. And any non-inflationary McJob is going to make the same kind of money.

I think we should have some real low-paying jobs like that, but ones (like meaningful reputatation "tips" for being interesting to people who have money) that actually make SL work better. Not because I want to help the people who can't figure out that "getting ahead in life" isn't going to happen at 20c an hour, but because it'll help the economic simulation keep from going non-linear, and because I'll have more fun if more people are around so I CAN. AMUSE MYSELF. BY BEING. CAREFUL. NOT TO. STEP ON THEM. BY ACCIDENT.

I'm glad playing that game made you happy, but it was a game. It wasn't putting bread on the table.

I'm looking at value in terms of "how much fun is it to be on SL today". And people camping money trees aren't doing anything to make SL more fun for people who are paying for SL, so what they're doing has no value and paying for it is a handout.

This doesn't mean that people shouldn't do things that aren't valuable. It just means that you can't justify paying for it by calling it a job.

The presence of the activity may have value. But DOING the activity doesn't create value unless it has at least the potential of making SL more interesting for someone not involved in the transaction, who may be a paying customer. Rewarding people for doing something that has no value doesn't make money for LL.

So. camping on a money tree creates no value. Chatting with people creates value. You can do both at the same time, but the activity you're being paid for, that's being reinforced, isn't the valuable one.

But if the balls quit encouraging people to interact with the paying customers, or otherwise benefit the paying customers, and they cost LL money in dwell not spent on thing sthat create value or developer bonuses that are real ready money... LL *will* change the rules to make them less attracttive to run, and they *will* go away.

Can you still torture prims? I thought all the settings were correctly listed for each type now, or are there any that aren't?



But you've also said that, if you want to compete with those already establihsed, you have to come up with something new. And you've also said on the other thread that it's possible that you can turn out to be "just not cut out to be.." something that you wanted to be. (On the other thread the example was a "club owner" but presumably it can occur for other things as well.) So, it's not too surprising that people are going to want to hold off spending their US$ until they can establish if they are "cut out to" achieve what they wanted in SL or not. After all if they are not there's not much point spending money chasing it.

You can still torture prims. I imagine there would be huge outcry if the ability was removed.

That's a bold assumption. For all you know, they're off building cool things when they're not in the chairs, and when their av is in the chair they're at their RL job and otherwise wouldn't be connected to SL at all. No matter how much money they'd make selling things, they can do that and camp too.

When I was only just starting, somebody started shouting around on one of the newbie channels that they were halfway through building something and had to take a break to go pluck money trees to get money for texture uploads. Camping chairs could provide the same.



It does have value. Once the campers have the money, they go and spend it. That means there's more money sloshing around the economy and actually being spent on toys, av customisations, sculptures, gadgets, etc. and things that people make. That then makes the market for content and similar things bigger, more lucrative, and easier to get into. If the campers didn't have the money, it would still be with the site owner who probably already has all they need and would just have cashed it out.

I thought that "prim torture" involved altering a setting on a prim, then changing its type to one which didn't normally support that setting (eg, setting Advanced Cut on a cube) but which still had an effect. But according to the wiki, there are no settings that have any effect and that aren't normally supported now, so there'd be no cause to do it. Or are there? And if so can you let me know what they are please?

You're right about what it is. I don't think I can list all the different combinations that work off the top of my head, but I think most if not all do something. Go try for yourself!

If you start out making things (clothes, skins, buildings, whatever) specifically for the purpose of making money to cover your tier, you're doing it for all the wrong reasons. People make things because it's enjoyable to do. If after enjoying yourself making things it turns out that you can also pay for your SL with them, so much the better! But seriously, you have to do stuff for the enjoyment factor or don't bother. If you're having fun it won't matter if it takes a year or more (as it does for most people) to become established and start profiting from your creativity.

Creativity is fun. Learning how to do things is fun. Everything else is gravy.

It's not much value. It's so little that it immediately evaporates as soon as Linden Lab stops handing out the money. Conversely, training people to use Second Life and make the most of it is a real value that does not diminish. I'm supporting a plan to enable new residents to meet their potential. You're supporting a nebulous ideal wherein we give people money without really caring how much value they're actually getting out of SL.

Paying people to help others to become better at using the SL tools is infinitely more valuable than paying people to polish a turd or sit in a chair. Given the choice between a glut of people who do nothing but jump through hoops for pennies and people who actively develop Second Life for personal or profitable reasons, the obvious value falls on the latter.



That's not even remotely how I define value. I define value as something worth having. Knowledge is something worth having. Content is something worth having. Service is something worth having.

If hyperinflation (thanks to stupid policy) makes the L$ valueless, well, there's not much I am able to do to fix that. My business will change to use another medium of value exchange, and whoever makes a PayPal wallet system with in-world hooks will end up very wealthy very quickly.



I'm saying your facts aren't useful. If Linden Lab compromises their economy to make lazy people happy, sure, there's a brief period of fun for everyone. But then Linden Lab has to deal with a useless economy and content creators who abandon ship on the L$, opening a host of new challenges for Linden Lab as they deal with an economy that is based on a real world currency. That's not going to be fun for them. Nor will it be fun for all those nice, L$-dependent folks who now have plenty of money but nowhere to spend it. And, guess what? We shed a whole bunch of subscribers because instead of giving them tools to succeed, we paid them to hang around. Oops!



Oh, that's great news. I'm glad we don't have to have these discussions anymore. If that's true, we can continue with the very reasonable assumption that everyone pays their own way.

Glad we could agree!

Linden Lab need NOT stop handing out the money, should they start putting out any this way, any more than they need to stop handing out stipends.

Now, getting paid to learn the tools, hey, I think that's a great idea! There was one place that did this, a little, maybe they still do.

"You're supporting a nebulous ideal wherein we give people money without really caring how much value they're actually getting out of SL."

People can get plenty of value out of SL without learning any tools or doing anything you might consider of value. And do. There are just oodles of people who don't care to make a thing. They just wanna have fun (and buy our things to do it!).

Your idea of "people's potential" and my idea of their potential don't mesh. Only a few of us want to develop our potential to build things, for instance. That doesn't mean everyone else is "wasting their potential" or anything like that.

Some people enjoy "jumping through hoops" to make their money. I still like making preserves in TSO, believe it or not. I like embroidery irl, too. Neither activity takes just a whole lot of mental energy.

If you define value as something worth having, and I define value as something worth having, we have no conflict there.

The thing is, I define these "jumping through hoops" type things as something worth having, and even something fun. And something worth having from the Linden point of view, if it increases subscriptions.

And I don't think people willing to fly around to money trees, pull free slots levers, or hang around money balls are lazy. If you'd ever made a living that way, you'd know that!

And guess what - if some content creators jump ship because their Lindens aren't worth so many U.S. dollars any more, well, there are plenty more content creators where those content creators came from. There will never be a dearth of content creators.

coco

Well, neat, but that's not what I said. I said if anyone at all is to be paid, they should be paid to teach -- not to be taught.

You want people to feel productive. Fine, they can be productive as they learn tools from someone who is teaching them.

But the thing is, you don't actually want these people to be productive. You want to make them feel that way. The actual act of production is one you've yet to describe in any sense.



I'm pretty convinced after the SLBoutique Events List thread that you don't actually read any of the stuff you respond to. You continue to confirm that suspicion.

I didn't say content creators are going to bail on Second Life. I said they're going to bail on the L$ and accept only US$ as their medium of exchange if the L$ becomes worthless. (This is already possible, but the market hasn't made it popular or necessary).


In any case, thanks for confirming my suspicions about you time and again, Cocoanut. Not only do you not read, you think it's better to pay people for sitting in money chairs than to pay them for teaching. Good to know.

Forgive me for an expectation of effort that exceeds what a trained chimpanzee is capable of providing.