pay for event listings?

Personally, I feel that posting an 'Event' should be more expensive than posting a classified. Far too many people have abused the events list for things that *REALLY* belong in classifieds.

Of course, the problem could also be solved with a L$1000 *FINE* for inappropriately using the Events list to post something that belongs in Classifieds.

And if the player can't pay... suspend they buy some L$'s or earn enough via stipends to cover the fine.

--
Where's the "SecondLife Educational Classes" page of the Events list anyway?
Very tired of for-profit uneventful adverts.

Yeah, concentrate on the RL/SL part that I mentioned about the advertising reference and completely miss that the Lindens are about to go to a RL based economy based on everyone on SL needing jobs and paying to go everywhere.. The LINDENS are the ones applying RL to the game - if they go to the model where everyone needs jobs and pays to go to events, the advertising issue and "paying to post event notices" will be the least of the concerns..

Obviously I'm talking to someone who is too caught up on 1 issue to realize that SL is being MODELED ON RL all the way around :cleans off your eyes and rolls them back:

We already have paid listings in classifieds. There is no reason to make the events listings work the same way and be just as useless.

We need a separate event category for 24/7 "events" like ongoing games. It may be true that the host changes every hour, so these are "events," but they should be in a separate category. This way it would not be necessary to post them several times a day--a person looking for Tringo could just look at that calendar.

The events calendar needs a moderator. This problem is serious enough that it really degrades the experience in Second Life.

I'd make it $50 but same idea. However, I gotta say, I like Barbara's idea even better.

Seeing as how people want a way to communicate their commercial endeavours, how about make the commercial events a button that one has to opt into and lift the time limit on those? If someone posts a commercial event in the regular events section, bump 'em over, and if it is a non event at all being posted as a commercial event, maybe then redirect the person's posting to a $50 classified and charge appropriately. (Just like bumping a thread, kinda.)

I've noticed that people have started posting their regular events (dance parties that happen every week for example) in Special Attractions. Both Events and Special attractions forum should probably be monitored the way the rest of the forums are.


Question for ResMods: do you monitor the Events listings?

DO you think jesse linden monitors enough? Doubt it...........he is a good linden..But we need more serious monitoring then we been having say the past 5 weeks go so. Look at the events boards is a mess! AND i don`t even think anyone is minding then these days. I saw a island for sale on it. This proves nobody is watching hte event boards.

I own a club..my employees or hosts are never AFK or not doing the event posted..but because some other club screws up , we should pay for it? We aren't big time club..rather small actaully and the few who visit and get to see it usually like the fact that we are friendly and not AFK, etc. But this club drains the owner's resources everyday..matter of fact..dwell isn't even an issue with us because as a group owned land..30 of us get 8L a day! So I guess that 8L will certainly contribute to the event we could post monthly instead of daily!
As for yard sales..I think the amount of whiners/moaners/groaners about them are all on this board and the ones who like them aren't speaking up because those on the oust to oust them will tear them apart..I visit the boards so infrequently I'm quite willing to be shredded to pieces because I won't come back to read your rude responses..but a vast majority LIKES yard sales or me and several others wouldn't make money on them, and we would be forever resisnged to our overcrowded inventory or misguided purchases...and by misguided how often I spend 500L on an outfit, put it on and go what the heck this doesn't look a thing like the picture on the box!!!! So then I'm out the 500L Or I stick in a yard sale for 50-100 bucks..I'm not really MAKING money but I'm not out all mine and stuck with an ugly outfit to boot. I also enjoy visiting others yard sales ..have found several much needed items at a price I could afford! Having 5 private skyboxes in a club and trying to furnish with such items as sex gens..yard sales were a lifesaver!!!!
My opinion..LL has MUCH bigger issues to worry about than all this junk..fix our bad load times/rezz issues/inventory disappearaces/griefers and stop wasting valuable time trying to resolve an issue only a handful of people give a rat's about.

I'll jump back in to say:

1. Thank you LL for at least adding a "Live Music" category to the client in the latest rev, with the Live music scene exploding recently this will help immensely. It may not help the problem of spammy non-events, but it will cut down on double posting to the Arts/Culture and Nightlife areas, that was so tempting to do before since live music fits both.
2. So, it looks like Travis may be back to his original position (before this thread), and it looks like Carl, Moss (and I) agree with the position that the best solution to this is to add proper filter tools to the client that include exclusions, so if I don't want to see yardsales or *ingo I don't have to. The best arbiter of this stuff is the consumer, give us the tools to find what we do want and ignore what we don't. Having decent client side filters like this may even lessen the junk posting over time since lees people will actually see the spam, less will bite.
3. IRT moderation, how about simply adding a report abuse button to the listing display, and that can flag it for review. You could also use some threshold before actually having a LL staffer look at it, but if found by LL to have violated the rules, impose a stiff fine (as was suggested) this way the drudge work is done by the community, but if it's in violation, there are some teeth to it. I'd also be somewhere between the L$50 and L$1k camps, you want to make sure it's a deterrent not just a slap. Maybe with 1 warning/removal of the listing per month before fining to give people a chance to make an honest mistake w/o being fined. Could possibly escalate it to actual TOS violation action in extreme cases, as SPAM is a TOS violation.

I am all for paid Event listings. I'd be very happy with $100L per event.

Asking the question "I don't mess up the events listing, why should I be penalised?" is like saying "I've never been in an accident, why should I have to obey the speed limit?"

Its a mass sytem. It has to work against the lowest common denominator.

If all event listings are paid then all product postings, land sales postings, all postings should be paid as well.

The events producers in SL have taken enormous hits. This might well be a death knoll for producers of high quality interactive events.

IF there is going to be a cost for posting, then there should be a reinstatement of events funding. To do one without the other is dealing a fatal blow to those folks who create community events.

Does anyone who is in favour of this ACTUALLY HOST EVENTS?

The primary problem with the Events Work Group (miserable failure that it was) was that there were about 100 people involved who had political philosophies about how things should be all free market, etc. Those folks, or 80% I would say, did not run events. Those folks did not host events or event venues. They just wanted to enforce their socio-political philosophies.

People with no clear stake in the issue commenting would be like me saying to members of parliament in England that I was all for increased taxes there (even though I live in Canada and clearly would not be affected).

Based on this, perhaps, Jesse, you should be consulting with the community that would be impacted by this and not just anyone and everyone in the forums (most of whom do not produce events and will not be directly affected so are happy to say hang em hang em high!)

IF there are paid events postings, people will move their events postings to special attractions (many already are, which isn't right or fair, but they aren't being bumped or penalized either). ALL that would be left in events postings, then, would be those events that could recoup costs. Therefore that means that we might as well take out all the categories but commercial.

Would you be all for a paid posting for land sales, property sales and rental, new products and special attractions also? Do you actually run or post any events? $100L is more than the traffic that most events get. People are already paying out of pocket if they are running events. This means they would have to pay still more.

Let me be perfectly clear. NOONE makes money on events other than a handfull of entertainers who make pocket change while the property owners who pay for those entertainers to perform are currently getting worse than the short end of the stick.

I anticipate that we will see the events listings go from bad to worse if there are paid listings. It leads one to wonder, why people so despise event venues and event makers, to be so adamantly for bankrupting them.

I wonder why it is that we have res mods jumping on everything BUT the events postings??? In the last few months before Clinton took office, when Emelda Radice was head of the National Endowment of the Arts (a Bush Sr appointee) she spent the travel budget for the full following year as a way to further cripple the place she was posted to. Prior to that she had repeatedly thwarted funding to artists who had been peer approved through multiphase processes, being the only administrator to ever deny funding at a top level. One way to dismantle a program is to cripple it over time.

Perhaps the lack of interference with the events schedule is a way to so cripple it that we all agree that it is broken and people should be charged Linden to use it.

I am, as you can tell, absolutely against this and would like to hear someone who is for it tell me why, in logical terms, this is a good thing for the events community of SL. HOW will this benefit makers of genuine events and the events-going community? People who make genuine events will not post in the thing if it costs them out of pocket (in addition to teir with no DI relief, and in addition to smaller traffic when all dwell is diminished to nothing). If pay posts come into being, the events schedule will become nothing but garage sales and infomercials within a fortnight.

Sure.



I do. I make money.



Two words: ticketed events.



You know what would really be useful? If every business in SL could have their own Events Calendar. This would probably require a business profile or something, but whatever. Then event businesses could run Classifieds like evey other SL business and we could all look at their events.

Some events can make money with tickets. Let's say a concert is held at a venue. People might be willing to pay $200L to get in to a concert for a truly loved performer. They had better, anyway, because the talent is going to cost the event venue $4500 per hour depending on the performer. That's right, $9,000 for an evening. The event venue holder will need to get 45 avatars through the door paying $200 each just to pay for the performer's fee and break even on that score. To host such an event and be able to accommodate 45 avatars, the venue owner would need to have an island or multiple sim properties. This means that he or she would need to be paying bare minimum the $195 teir rate if not more for multiple mainland sims (such as Clover has). Assuming that the owner was doing this every night of the week (a best case scenario) this means that he or she would need to raise an additional $1,500L that night toward teir to cover those costs as well. This means the venue owner would need 53 ticket holders paying $200 each to attend the concert just to break even (assuming no advertising expense beyond the $100 events placement fee you suggest he or she should have to pay. To make money, he or she would need to get more ticket holders in or charge more. It is difficult, but doable, and only people willing to invest money (a significant amount of it in USD) will be able to go this route.

HOWEVER some events cannot make money. The nature of them precludes it (for example the depression support group or various arts and culture events that get a good draw for what they are, but will likely not have more than 12 people there). For such events, dwell will likely not even be enough to pay the event posting you propose, let alone the venue owner's teir. These are non-profit, non-commercial events. Since they are not supported with any kind of event funding, they have no way to pay for the posting aside from out of pocket.

There should be a place for community events that are non-commercial to be posted. Not everything in world has to be a business.

If it costs $100L to post an event listing, and ten people turn up, then we don't need to be talking about $200 a ticket. Each person who attends chips in $10. This is simple math. And its what, like 30 cents?

I am uninterested in hearing anyone whine that they can't afford a 30 CENT event. Really, I'm all for not-for-profit, but not-for-profit isn't the same of "entitled to no overheads." The community needs to be willing to support these events - if they're worth an hour of your time, they're worth $10 in the donation jar.

I agree that the community must be willing to support events that it desires. I do not agree that a $100 event posting fee will be good for SL. You're saying that $100 is easily recoverable, and I agree. However, $100 isn't the only cost and adding $100 on top of a jillion other costs that, under the current system, are difficult to recover is rather ludicrous. It precludes the notion that traffic generated from an event should be going to support the host of the event who indirectly supports LL with Teir. Basically it is agreeing that LL should make money at both ends without any opportunity for free community listings for events of types other than yours, Sabrina.

In ANY other community, there is a chance to post worthwhile events for free on bulletin boards, in public service announcements on the radio, on television, in the community listings section of the newspaper. Give me a reason, just one, why this would be a good idea. So far, all I hear is that it wouldn't hurt that much. Well, from one particular perspective it probably wouldn't. What would a fee accomplish?

A fee would accomplish making non-profit events much less visible while commercial event notices proliferate. What good would it do? I see no good whatsoever other than another income stream for LL on the backs of a group that has already done it's share for the monitization effort, tyvm.

What if it was just 10L or 20L per listing? I think it would definitely be beneficial to have even a nominal cost for event listings. If someone wants to clutter up the events listings with 5 events a day, they should have to pay something for it. It's really surprising to me that this has gotten such a negative response.

Also, if you don't think we need more money sinks should take a look at the Lindex.

why not just do what they do for the sellers ads. the the amount you pay is the location you located at.

New Citizens Incorporated currently offers 16 hours of events targeted at new players each week. (That number will probably rise to 18 in a week or two.) That's 1600L$ per week under your proposed system. Can I count on you for a weekly pledge if this ill-conceived idea goes through? Remember--we are a non-profit, all-volunteer group.



No--it is like saying "I didn't break the speed limit; why should I get a ticket for speeding?"

Your "nominal costs" are simply going to drive more of the non-profit events off the Events list. People running events that make money for their posters, such as yard sales, club contests, *-ingo games, etc. will have no trouble paying for those events. The end result will be even more "clutter" on the Events list.

I would like to see no charge for posting legitmate events but, a penalty for posting non-legitimate ones..... wouldnt even need to be in L$ it could be assessed as a 3-7-14 day ban from posting again.

What kind of events do you make money running? How do you make your money off the events? I'm assuming you make well over 100L$ per event, since you thought that 100L$ would be no big deal as a posting fee? Where you hold these events?



You have a way of making ticketed events work? You should have entered the Foundation for Rich Content's Box Office competition. There was an 80,000L$ prize.



Not all SL events are run by businesses. Really.

Big diff from Newbie style clubs and Muture club events...... Sorry but the clients are diff and the reason why they show up is diff........ OPPS is my grammar ok or do you want to bash it again!

$0.03 is going to drive non-profit events off the Events list? Charging for event listings will create more clutter? I'm sorry, I just don't see the logic there.

see no reason to do this its just an economic excuse to adjust the volume of L. Adjusting the volume is by no means a permanent fix or solution to anything and charging L for events will just lead to problems for clubs especially if it gets expensive and those that hold several events daily. Clubs usually payout to the public and lose enough money so as it is!!!!

Another problem arises from this idea. The fact most Hosts arnt going to pay out of pocket. they already pay the general public and especially Clubs Like the one i co own which is not for profit we pump anything we make back out to the public. We dont really want to be paying a fee just so someone can decrease L volume to raise L value by like 5 point for a breif period of time!

Again its all a economical Ploy. To pay 100L per event listing would drain clubs or stores or anyone that runs events at an even higher rate then it does. Paying for event listing would only cause more and more problems among the communities and isnt fair to places with employee's or that run paying events as they are giving away money quite often. People arnt necessarily messing up event listing you can search them but they do end up posting quite often for a day or so ahead sometimes quite mroe then that. But thats a fact of a matter of actually looking. The event board is easy for me to understand very very easy. People that complain just seem to lazy to read!