Events List: Leave it Alone! Yard Sales etc A-OK

Jesse Linden:

I am wondering what direction you are going with this stranglehold on the Events Listings.

We are all adults here, and you DO have categories set up for us to use, and I believe there was talk of a filtering system coming up soon.

So why all the babysitting?

I was also distressed to see you polling ONLY the people who post in the General area of the forums and then making decisions based on the majority of their sentiments.

What about the thousands of residents who do not read the forums, or who do not feel comfortable posting there?(myself included)

I think to create policy based on the opinions of such a tiny slice of the total resident numbers, (what is that over 10K now?) is unwieldy at best and at worst, doesn't give the rest of the crowd a chance to chime in.

The CEO of Linden Lab goes on interviews time and time again and touts Second Life as a means for people to make money. Yet time and time again the very tools that we can use to facilitate that keep getting taken away.

If I don't want to go to a yard sale, or a store opening or go see some land for sale then I just won't. I can use the dropdown menu to choose the types of events I want to see.

And when the filters are in place, I can set my parameters and my precious eyeballs need not be soiled by the sight of a harmless yard sale ever again.

Its our world, our imagination yes? If yard sales and commercial enterprises are not what LL had in mind for this world then fine. Philip needs to stop talking about that to the press.

In the meantime let us be free thinking adults and let us use the tools at hand to decide what we want to see/not to see. But I don't believe axing a certain type of event from the list due to handful of people's endorsement is the way to go.

Sure you want people to pay for classified advertizing and other things like that. And they will. But give the newer players a chance to reach the in game customers too - so they CAN make the money and then be able to upgrade to the other forms of advertizing.

You DO have COMMERCIAL as one of your choices for a listing category when you post an event. I'd love for the release of the strangle hold on that and just live and let live. To be perfectly honest, I don't appreciate you or the handful of General Forum denizens deciding for me what is concidered acceptibly commercial and what isn't.

I pay my money like everyone else and within the basic guidelines of TOS I should be able to post whatever I want in whatever category that meets my needs.

Perhaps its the semantics bothers people? The word "event".

Change the name to Activities or Happenings or whatever. Or have a separate list for commercial enterprises. But this clamping down on freedoms does not sit well with this Resident. What I consider to be an event another person might not. That word itself is pretty nebulous and open to interpretation - so let us interpret it!

I have been constantly puzzled since I joined almost two years ago, at the wierd duality vibe that is perpetuated in here.

All of the PR and media hype about SL almost ALWAYS mentions the money making aspect. Yet when you come in here, the climate is pretty much in opposition to anything commercial.

Why? Its pretty much considered a dirty word in here, and now I see it becoming policy. Why?

Free the Events List!
Let us decide what we want to see
Let us decide what we want to post
Give us the tools to filter out what we don't want to see/post

And let us be the paying adults that we are: we don't need to be babysat no matter what the majority of General Forum posters (less than 100 people at my last count) have to say about it.

Thanks for Listening.

Blah, bollocks!

The event listings is NOT classifieds. Classifieds is another tab.

People check the event listings for places they can go to an event and enjoy themselves. "Buy my newest product" is NOT an event.

You are an adult? If so, why is it so hard to understand the difference between classifieds and events listings? Events isn't a 'free classifieds', even if many ppl. want to make it that.

Want to advertise your product? Want to do some PR? Fine, there are a thousand ways! A thousand! They're not free, though. But if you sell your product for money, do you have to have advertisement free?

BTW: Do you also LOVE to receive spam in your email box? I hell don't. Just because it's possible to spam, and it's cheap to do so, and adults do it, I still consider that just clogging my email and making me find my normal emails harder.



Sounds similar griefers, they can say: I pay like everyone else, therefore I should be allowed to grief anyone (within the ToS).

Sometimes you need to do more than look at your own needs. There are other ppl in the game, too.

You always have really good points backing up your point of view and the ability to express them articulately

Personally, yes, it is the word "Events" that bothers me ... so your suggestion about changing the name is a good one.

Weren't you the one who whined long and hard until they crippled the classifieds forums for everyone? Why weren't we adult enough then to decide what we want to post and see posted?
Or did that not suit you personally?

I think maybe they're just following on as a natural and logical progression from the hand holding that's come about since your 'successful campaign' to fuck the products and services forums.

If people hadn't abused the events calendar, spamming it (which is in fact a CS violation) with multiple entries making it a 'perpetual' event, then nothing at all would have needed to be done.

I went through the calendar one day. Out of 200+ events, there were only like 30 actual places represented (the rest were all duplicates), and out of all those going on at the time, only 2 actually had a host in attendance.

Those who have forced this action are to blame, not Jeska, or those of us who would actually like to use the events calendar for specific activities but find that we are lost in the sea of detris that is the calendar at present.

Yard sales and suchlike belong 100% in Classified - as do new product releases. That is, after all, what the category exists for.

The guidelines are clear to read when you hit the "Accept" button when posting an event - if you don't agree, don't post, and don't whine when your 'non event' gets removed from the calendar.

Lewis

"Yard sales" was last month's whinge. Keep up.

f you are not adult enough to follow the rules then you will have to be babysat. How many times do they need to state the rules before you follow them?



Yard sales that are posted all day long do not fall into this catagory. You game the system long enough and they will stop it.

Personally I think they need to do more about the events listings. The "events" that turn out to not be the "event" that it was stated as. The "events" that have no host. There are enough volunteers that would be willing to help out finding out bad events. Whereas "hosts" and parcels are banned for FIVE days from posting another event. That'll teach them.

You didn't seem too uncomfortable posting this

The forums are free, and all you need to do is have a working game account to sign in and read - or post if you choose to. If people choose not to follow the forums - where official announcements are made - that is their fault, not LL's.




But they have every chance to - and if they don't, then LL can only do something based on the feedback they do have. The actual final policy change is the final decision of whatever Linden is dealing with it - so whether 1 or 1,000 residents had an input is irrelevant.



Within the parameters that LL set out for us to work within, with the tools provided.




.... and those guidelines include "no yard sales or perpetual events". Keep within those guidelines, there are no issues. Quite simple really.




Evidently those of us who can't follow a few basic guidelines - which you click to accept before you get to post an event - do need babysitting. And those who can't follow mean that the rest of us have to suffer.

Lewis

Well being one of the those that recieved a warning ( i am still wonderful why in the hell i got one ) I always post with in the rules........ I never got a clear answer..........but what else is new from LLAbs at times.

Ack. Don't listen to this guy. Please clean up the event list. Please make people posting "non-events" pay to post in the classifieds. Thank you have a nice day

Try again but with a without a fake smile
Some people still live in the stone age.
have a wonderday

Yes. Please clean up event listings. Either craigslist style moderation, or resident event mods.
Either would be a welcome change.
And people posting commercial events in Misc. all the time is just one example of why babysitting is necessary.

This thread seems to start "hey I don't mind this why are you changing it".

Many of us do mind and have asked repeatedly for this and are glad to have it.

pardon?

Yes posting commercial is a problem......and if you look you stil see yard sales in the event listing as well. As always max you have a point

I'd love love LOVE to see the events listing cleaned up. I do not personally think that I have gone against the postin, heck I don't even remember having a all day yard sale personally and postin it. I've quit lookin at events. All you ever see is yard sales ALL the way down. It makes me sick when I think back in 04 when I joined there were more REAL events. I post events for my island, and every event is 1-2 hours long, with a HOST, talkin the ENTIRE time, and keepin the EVENT organized. An event requires a few aspects that a YARD SALE is lackin.

Didn't they used to also say you couldn't post the same event on the same land more than once a day? I maybe mistaken but I remember somethin to that effect I do believe....

~starting edit~ Oh ya and I forgot you DON"T seem all that upset and uncomfortable making this post or any of your other 100's of posts, not to mention you don't look too new from what I saw soooooo I don't really see how your excuses for posting yard sales could add up, atleast not in your specific case.~end edit~

Have a wonderfullllllllll day

Here are my 2 cents on the subject:

From a long-term perspective, I agree with Brace. I think the ideal event calendar should have as few restrictions as possible in regards to what you can/cant post. I'd like to see us get to a point where the only restrictions on posting to the calendar were that a host must be present, and it must be a group activity. That's it.

However, a lack of restrictions makes the Event Calendar utterly useless without filters and robust search capabilities. While we do have Categories today, and it is possible to do an inclusive search - those tools are only barely useful, if at all. For example, it is not possible today to filter out all search results containing the wordmatch -INGO.

Ideally, we should be able to compose a search filter that suits each of us as individuals, and use that same search filter all the time when looking for events - creating a customized "View" that shows only what we each want to see.

In the absense of that, I believe we need tight restrictions, such as 'No Yard Sales' as a temporary measure until robust filter tools can be worked out.

To have neither restrictions nor tools results in an event calendar that is such information overload that its rendered useless for many. This is the state of affairs we seem to have at present.

I agree with Brace here. I don't think the recent "Events" posting policy change was needed. Furthermore (as I said in the initial thread on this in "General", responses of people in the forums are not representative of the average SL resident.

I'm a frequent yard sale shopper--it is one of my favorite things in SL (I know, I'm weird; not news to me). I also scout out good deals for a friend who owns a resale shop. So I'm very familar with the yard sale "scene" here. And I've noticed an unintended consequence since the yard sale ban has gone into effect.

Most people with legitimate yard sales have honored the restrictions--and just not held them--the sales that remain contain a much higher percentage of freebie resalers than before. I think the posting ban has had the effect of cutting down on non-business "real" yard sales, while making the freebie sellers sales much more visible to residents.

I think the answer to this is less restricive posting rules and better filters. The current filters work poorly, if at all. I am aware that better filters require programming time from LL--a resource that is in short supply. I'd like to suggest that we just live a with a bit more bloated "Events" listing for a while longer until LL can add such functionality.

I agree with Travis' post above...I'll see about getting better search filters implemented but its unlikely to appear in the near term if at all. The reason being the development time is better spent on a new events system entirely rather than plugging leaks on a sinking ship. The goal is definitlely to allow any and all events listings (we don't, generally, approve or disapprove content) and create proper filtering and search tools. But as Travis pointed out, given the current situation, it is necessary to 'loosely' moderate the calendar.

There is simply NO NEED to post your event 5 - 8 times a day using alts etc. Just use common courtesy and respect the system. If you post one 'Grand Opening Sale' I'll probably leave it alone...if you fill the calendar with junk, expect the listings to be deleted.

Such a simple concept to understand...... yet seemingly beyond the grasp of many.

Lewis

Ok I have one for you.........Now I am running a club that deals with NO vendors Not Many Event running(if any)......But we provide a place to have our members and other to hang out and enjoy with poses and other goodies. We are a non money making club. We enjoy it running the club and have a place to people to realx without the hassle of money balls money chairs etc........ I believe any NEW addition to the monitoring of the events listing should let clubs like ours that DON`T have vendors and such be free to post without having to be warned that we are breaking event rules.

Let me ask jesse if i may........is there a way to prevent ALts from posting like this.. I recall a club that posted every one hour for 24hours? And they stil had their events standing even thou I was warned about mine! While my event were taken down theirs stood...........Now jesse please tell me in the future actions like this will not happen again during due to the fact of not fully monitoring the event listing. Because it does seem that there are hole in the montoring system.

Another thing. what about club running alts on their property just to increase the daily dwelling totals? there are a few large clubs on sl doing this a abusing not only the event listing but that of the dwelling rules as well. When i mean alts not just "1" but "5" to "10" or more at a time. Is this fair to the smaller clubs? Or does LLabs have a policy allowing larger owner to do this?


Before doing any warning or banning of event Posters......... I think there should be a clear cut outline and not a fuzzy one as it stands now. I repect LLabs for their actions and i anways do my best to follow rules. But seeing some of the current abuses (being on the end of this problem at one point). A little more commucation is needed. You want a "FAIR" event listing No? Then look at the larger clubs and what abuses they are doing before you look at the smaller clubs and trying to break us.

Thank you for your time and patients for your reading of this.......
Usagi

While I support your non profit motives, I just don't understand this Usagi.
You are NOT HOLDING AN EVENT ! why on earth should you be listed in the events ? Using appropriate keywords it should be easy enough to locate you by finding "places".

Why is it so difficult for people to comprehend that having specific and appropriate places to promote and search for things makes life easier for us all to find what we want in the end. Blurring the boundries so everything is listed everywhere renders any notion of organisation meaningless.

I do appreciate the need for better search tools but bear in mind this is counter to the nature of "browsing" - sometimes I'd like to peruse a list not knowing quite what I want without having to filter out or in results I may not even know exist, all be it without having to fish through a sea of things that are clearly not events (not having a go at you per se Usagi, i do want a FAIR events list with the same rules applied to everyone).

At this stage of development of both SL and the human species, given the profound philosophical implications of a "searchable life" with no structure or organisational heirarchy, lets see some common sense and properly applied rules to the use of features such as the events listing.

And, once again, we need a special section on the events calendar for ongoing, 24/7 events, such as treasure hunts, week-long building contests, tringo games that never shut down, clubs with constant hosting, etc. Some of these events are things that people would like to know are ongoing, but you have to find the event listed in some two-hour slot when it really lasts two weeks or something.