Event Calendar Changes - Discussion

>Yet another knee-jerk, poorly implemented change that goes far beyond solving the core problems it was meant to solve. The necessity of deeding my land to a group so that members can host events is just ridiculous. Why should I put my land holdings at risk just so that other folks can enjoy my land?<

Right on the button! In reviewing SL land policies I am just amazed at the lack of obvious needs that have not been addressed. One of the major lacks is a "Management" list which allows specific people to have full management parameters over the land (including Estate tools). Deeding land to group is the equivalent of slicing your own throat to avoid a traffic fine.

>And there you have the whole problem in a nutshell.
This new rule screws the 'little man' the one who does it all for fun,the one who does not have money to pour into Linden Labs game. Just the same way as withdrawing event support did. Anyone else catching on yet? Ever since the guy who owns E-Bay became involved in this place it's just gone from bad to worse - coincidence? Someone tell me that Second Life is not moving more and more towards taking your $<

I hate to admit it, but you make a very good point. I would like to think that LindenLabs is interested in customer needs and feedback. In fact, they addressed some major problems in the latest release-- things that have plagued users for ages. (of course, now we have new ones... sigh). But this event decision does seem to be a very "ignore customer needs and common sense" kinda decision, and their reasoning just doesn't hold water. And if Ebay does have a hand in SL... well, I know of no company more self-serving and almighty-dollar worshipping than Ebay (well, maybe Micro$oft...).

However, regarding this event situation-- Sometimes a change needs to be made and for some reason, people make the absolute worst decision possible.

In this case, first Lindens withdraw financial support of events. That was their right-- but we have seen the consequenses: "fun", non-commercial events are now few and far between. Gambling and porn events cover the board and businesses advertise the same event 5 times a day, day after day after day.

But now we have to OWN a piece of land to post an event there??? And the reason: "Because the Calendar is getting cluttered." You HAVE to be joking!!!

Anshe, kiss your merchant sponsoring of useful and fun events goodbye, because now I can't hold an event on your land! Hey groups that I belong to: kiss your events goodbye, because now I can't post your own group events because your homeland is owned by an individual rather than being set to group! Astrin, forget your concerts, because you can't play anywhere but on land that you own! Oh, and Poetry Guild... forget your events, because the hosts of your events don't own the land where you've been holding your events!

What a can of worms... with pincers!

We just opened up a private sim that is under the ownership of an individual. I am the FOUNDER of the group to which that sim is set. I am the FOUNDER of the group which inhabits that land and for which the entire sim is themed. Yet I CANNOT POST AN EVENT because only one person can be listed as sim "owner" and we decided to purchase the sim through my partner. I MANAGE THE LAND, BUT I CAN'T POST AN EVENT THERE???

This is supposed to be a good solution to a supposedly cluttered Calendar?

You know... the calendar is not nearly as cluttered as it was while Lindens were still sponsoring events. It's just that back then, there were so many good events we couldn't attend them all. Now I hardly even bother to look at it; I know it's going to be primarily porn parties and commercial scams.

We are told, "Oh, just deed the land to group". We don't WANT to deed the land to group. We don't dare put land parameters in the hands of 170 people. We don't want to have traffic profits go to every person who wants to join the group and never invest time in the group itself. We shouldn't HAVE to deed land to group to be able to grant MANAGER PERMISSIONS to specific people in this land and we shouldn't have to chop up our sim just to get events posted!

Really folks, was there no other solution?

I have a couple of constructive solutions:

You already have a filter for "mature" events. Add a filter for COMMERCIAL and GAMBLING events and then PATROL your event listings. Any commercial venture that posts an event without listing it as commercial, ban that person from posting another event for 30 days and if it happens again, remove event posting rights entirely. That will make them think twice about mis-representing events.

I agree with the users that say the solution to this problem is to add a filtering system. It sure seems a wiser choice than destroying people's ability to hold events. Second Life isn't nearly as fun as it used to be, and that's the bottom-line truth.

Not exactly the bottom line, the bottom line is that Linden Labs have had all the money out of me that they are going to get - THATS the bottom line.

What it needed IN THE FIRST PLACE was Linden Labs to hire someone to regulate posting and make SURE that their rules were being adhered to.

Event support was no more responsible for the crap state of the L$ than I was responsible for the American Revolution,the ratings system was.

We have two accounts,mine and my wifes,all our land is on her account which is the reason I'm writing this now - because if it was on my account I'd have sold it LONG ago and gone somewhere where I get value for my subscription fee.

You know what the worse part of all this is?BEFORE they made that first change and cancelled event support I never head ONE single player complain about the way things were - not ONE. I never heard one single player complain about who could and could not post events - now thats CRAP customer service - and you can wrap it up in as many fancy explanations as you like but thats the truth.

<<<You know... the calendar is not nearly as cluttered as it was while Lindens were still sponsoring events. It's just that back then, there were so many good events we couldn't attend them all>>

Amen to that!!

This isn't meant to be an inflammatory question, I'm honestly interested in opinions on this.

First, let me say that the calendar "fix" looks wrong to me. I think there were problems with the calendar, but I don't think the imposed "solution" fixes anything.

But the question of event support has come up again in this thread. That's what my question is about.

For many, the events are (or at least were) the most important part of SL. For many others, cool content has been the biggest draw. (These aren't the only two categories of interest, but I think they are sufficient for this comparison.) Content creators don't get Linden support for the content creation process. Or do they? Since objects can be copied with no further effort on the content creator's part, is that an implied subsidy? Event hosts can't "copy" their hosting and "reuse" it at another, later event, because the human element is what's important there.

Is that why event hosts should get subsidies when content creators don't? Content creators pay upload fees and spend a lot of time developing good content, whether it's clothes, vehicles, animations, games, etc. They pay for software like Photoshop or Poser to create some of the content. They either give that investment of time and money away or they charge for their goods, depending on their own preferences. If they expect to cover expenses or even make a little profit, they charge for their goods. I've heard people suggesting that event hosts impose a cover charge for their events, to provide support for the host, DJ services, prizes, etc., which would seem to be the equivalent. But it doesn't seem this is usually done. Why not? Why do you feel LL subsidy of events is more appropriate than a cover charge? People are willing to pay for good content. Are they completely unwilling to pay for good events? Are the tools to charge a cover for events not sufficient? Is there a philosophical difference between content creators and event hosts?

Again, I'm willing to accept an explanation of why these two situations are different -- I'm not an "event" person myself, so I honestly don't know why events and content need to be handled differently. But I am honestly interested in the considered opinions of people who live for events. And maybe it would help LL understand this as well, so they could make better decisions about event support in the future.

Thanks,

neko

Actually these are very good points Neko. In my expeience, yes, people ARE willing to pay for events (in some instances)... but even moreso they are willing to contribute to make an event work.

First to be pointed out is that content creators are paid for their work all the time. There are people who make their RL living selling things on SL; it's not easy, but if one is creative and skilled, it can be done. Merchanting is a major part of Second Life. I didn't like the economy-based system when I first came here because it does tend to stifle creativity and sharing building secrets with others, but nothing can really be done about it. It's a fact of life. So yes, while there are some such as the incredibly creative Jesrad who refuse to be paid for their work (and are instead paid in gratitude and friendship and appreciation of their amazing builds), and others of us who constantly offer freebies along with our regular merchanting-- content creators are usually paid for their work-- and far more than event holders.

When Lindens decided to stop funding most events, I was as upset as anyone. I emailed them and took part in forums and petitioned them to reconsider. There were about 5 things I immediately realized:

1) The Lindens were right; the economy was starting to inflate, prices were starting to inflate, something had to be done.
2) They had taken the wrong direction. If they wanted to uninflate the economy, they needed to take another step, such as wiping out the heavily abused and totally worthless rating system or the highly obscure "traffic" system. I would have much rather seen less important things cease to be funded. I'm not saying that event support had to remain; it just seemed a very unfriendly and customer-ire-provoking step to take.
3) When you remove support from good events, only stupid events promoted by money-hounds would remain. That is indeed largely what happened.
4) This would damage SL economy. (This indeed happened. Sales on SL have significantly dried up since this happened. I've had merchant friends who went out of business because people no longer had L$ to buy things. )
5) There were other ways to host events than Linden support.

What I have done at my events (and it has proven very successful) is place a "prize pot" donation box at the events. In my case, I allot all donations to the contestants, but there is nothing wrong with setting a rule that 1/3 to 1/2 of donations will go to funding the event (ie paying the host for his/her time and trouble and other expenses).

This method had worked EXTREMELY well for my events. Not only are people generous, our prizes have actually been larger than when Lindens were sponsoring events!!! It is not unusual for someone to donate 100, 200, 500 or even 1000 Lindens at an event, especially if it is a "special" event such as a contest of prior champions.

What's odd about this is that my events now work better than when I had Linden support. I no longer have to keep track of people attending. I no longer have to meet exacting event guidelines. I no longer have to report to Lindens or keep a note as to whether I have been paid for my event or not. The hassles vanished-- and the events became far more fun to conduct. Control of my events transferred from the Lindens hands to my hands-- and I was very pleased with that unexpected aspect of the decision.

Astrin, a live music performer, completely supports his performances by such donations... and from what I hear his listeners are most generous. He knew from the very start that Linden support of donations wasn't absolutely necessary. There are other ways.

One other way is to have a merchant sponsor the event. To a merchant, a L$500 donation is roughly two bucks. They can make that back in ONE SALE, with profit. All people have to do is ask... then generate enough interest in the event to make it worthwhile to the merchant.

Anshe Chung is famous for sponsoring events. She pays by the number of attendees and requests that the event be held at one of her merchant locations... and she has a variety to choose from. Other groups such as Awakening Avatars and my own Elf Clan have supported folks who hold significant events. They will give you prize money in exchange for posting a small sign and the event and mentioning their name in the event listing. So each event needs not only a host, but a promoter who can go out and arrange such things.

HOWEVER, this brings us to this recent Linden ruling. If one cannot POST an event unless that event is held on land owned by that person or land deeded to a group... GOODBYE SPONSORED EVENTS OF ANY KIND. This ruling makes it much more difficult for people to a) find a place to hold events in the first place b) keep the event within their control c) post the events at all.

This is a VERY BAD RULING, and one that I hope the Lindens will see fit to reverse soon. Because just as I knew from experience there were ways to get around the dropping of Linden event support, I also know something else: Obsessing over money is not productive and makes enemies. Put customer satisfaction first-- and the money will follow. Clients will throw money your way if they are happy with your service-- just as they freely donate at our events. The idea is to make the game fun, keep the customer happy, and don't constantly focus on your bottom line. The bottom line will take care of itself. But if you tick off customers, guaranteed your bottom line will grow narrower as time passes... or at the very least you'll lose friends, which is the worst thing of all.

Lots of good questions. I think event finances is a complex set of issues. There are events you could charge for - I think an entrance fee for tringo or other contests would likely work - but other events would die if you charged a fee to enter. Besides and entry fee there are a lot of ways to make an event work financially, however they all take work on the part of the event host to get them to happen.

My main question is: Why should I pay to entertain LL's customers for them? I used to have fun hosting a primtionary game for a while. LL gave me L$ to award as prizes and everyone was happy. I even got $250 to pocket as a thank you fee for my efforts. Now, there is no subsidy money, and it is very hard to find an advertiser who will fund an event that only lasts an hour for about a dozen people. Non-cash prizes don't work well for primtionary either. How many items do people need? So if I want to run primtionary I have to pay for the prizes out of my own pocket, I have to ask for donations from players, or people play for free. There used to be primtionary one or more times every day, but now you're lucky to find a game in a week.

Events are a big part of why users play SL. LL makes money because people want to play tringo or whatever. I enjoy hosting events and entertaining people, and while I can see myself doing it for fun with no host bonus compensation, asking me to pay my own money to be LL's entertainment so they can make money is unfair.

Hear hear!

SL used to offer L$250 to the host for putting on an event, and L$250 in prizes. I bet a lot of people would have been willing to meet them halfway and forego their host fees if SL would have continued to support prizes.

What I never did like was SL being so choosy as to what they'd pay prizes for. They'd sponsor a "best purple geek dance" contest.... but wouldn't support a poetry reading because it wasn't a "game" or "contest"???

Ah, the twists and turns are many and convoluted. Things cease to be fun when you cease to put the customer first. I often think LL doesn't INTEND or WANT to irritate the customers.... they just get out of touch with the game from a user standpoint and put corporate interests ahead of the client. Any time you focus on corporate first and client second, you're going to lose customer co-operation and loyalty. When was the last time you heard someone say, "Oh yeah man, Linden Labs is the best company on the planet". If they did things in the interest of the customer, you'd hear that every day and they'd have several thousand really avid supporters advertising their board like mad. But that's not the case. Instead you hear customers screaming in outrage at some new policy or a known bug that hasn't been fixed in years. Perhaps it's time to change corporate philosophy toward the direct good of the client and start viewing the game from the USER standpoint. They were forced to do just that when Ahern Welcome was bombed and they finally became aware of just how irritating a griefer can be. That same wakeup call needs to occur in many other aspects of everyday gaming life.

I myself at one time advertised Second Life on my website. That ceased to be the case when time after time I came across SL policies that were directly against the interests of the customer. I have recently noticed Linden Labs seem to be listening a little more. One of the Lindens once told me, "I think one of the problems is that we DO listen, but we don't tell people we're listening)." Many of the recent changes (although bug ridden) were in direct response to user requests-- and now I feel more open to making suggestions to LL as a result. But there are also policies in place that are just awful and one wonders what sleep-deprived brain that one came out of.

This recent "post events on your land only" ruling is one of them. Another one is that only ONE specific person can be recognized has "owning" land and having full land privileges such as Estate Tools (especially on private sims. Have they never heard of partners or land managers?). (And no, deeding land to group does not solve the problem-- and indeed is a very, very bad idea in many instances).

So what can ya say? When they make a bad decision, they just need to listen to the class-action scream and change it ASAP. LOL

I think this is a really good example (probably because even I can see the popularity of primtionary). Followup questions:

- Will people only play primtionary if there is a prize involved? (I probably would play for no prize, just for the fun of it....)

- Would a "donations collector" work at a primtionary event? (either for prizes or for the host)

- If you turn the question a different way, why shouldn't content developers be compensated by LL for providing content for the world? Content developers arguably pay even more directly than event hosts for their contributions to SL, because so much of content depends on uploads which must be paid for, whether or not anyone ever uses or sees the content. An event only needs to distribute a prize if someone actually shows up.

Of course, LL does partially compensate content creators -- at least if they own land. One of the places that sold me on SL was Mars Japanese Gardens. The creator not only paid tier for the garden, but also paid to upload textures for some custom builds, and yet I visited the garden for free, many times. The owner was paid a pittance for my dwell traffic. But that level of support is still available to event hosts, if they own land or have an arrangement with the owner.

I still accept in the abstract that there may be an essential difference between events and persistent content, which may justify different support for events than for content creation, but I think we haven't yet articulated that clearly enough to convince LL.

neko

[QUOTE Nekokami Dragonfly
- If you turn the question a different way, why shouldn't content developers be compensated by LL for providing content for the world? Content developers arguably pay even more directly than event hosts for their contributions to SL, because so much of content depends on uploads which must be paid for, whether or not anyone ever uses or sees the content.}]

I believe I can answer this with an illustration:

I pay to live in my home. I am paid to go to work.

We pay to build on our land because that's where we live and that is OURS. But hosting an event promotes SL. That is "going to work".

Now, I host events for the fun of it. I'm not really against SL dropping event support. But I do know it has really, really messed up the economy. Sales have dried up. In honesty though, the economy is far less important to me than the general overall playability of the game. Events have gone to the dogs because they're not being moderated and regulated properly.

If they want to stop supporting events financially, that's fine. Removing my ability to POST an event-- that's not. If you want to stop people from garbaging up the calendar, you don't do so by destroying legitimate event holders. You clobber the abusers. This has been a consistent viewpoint flaw of Linden Labs in my mind and one that needs to be washed out of the corporate mentality.

I've seen Linden Labs suspend people for defending themselves against griefers. I've seen them chide people for defending themselves against liars and flamer attacks on the forums. This is not right. You solve problems by taking care of the problem-causers, not by damaging the rights of legitimate users.

Wow, I posted 3 messages here today? oops. I need lunch.

They've apparently never heard of collaborative development, i.e. objects constructed from components created by more than one user, either. When you rate the creator you only rate the person who put together the final configuration you're looking at, not the scripts or textures that may be what makes it unique. You don't even know who that is unless you dig around in the object's content.

I actually think the Lindens do listen, and do care. However, they are neither omniscient or omnipotent, no matter how many folks like to joke about them being deities. They make bad decisions sometimes, and they have limited resources which can limit the options they have in decision making.

I think we can help by providing more information, articulated clearly, about what we perceive as good and bad, and what we think the consequences of various proposed "solutions" are. In fact, my main frustration with the feature voting system is that it does not require links to prior discussions, so people are often voting on very simplistically worded proposals and the Lindens may or may not be aware of the often extensive discussion and debate around the same ideas.

I wish we could also help in more direct ways, e.g. by helping to extend the system, but that would probably take opening up the client through user-definable interfaces, or open-source development, or both. (Though making their bug list public and allowing us to add definition, severity, frequency, reproducible cases, etc. to bugs would really help.)

neko

Just my own two cents here on Event support - I realize I probably differ with the event-holding majority on this one...

Event support was nice, but really... I've learned to live without it. Bringing that back is not a life-or-death issue to me like making event posting fair, and fixing the calendar is.

There are plenty of other ways to subsidize events. To name a few:

-Donations (There are some very generous folks out there)
-Sponsorships (I do that for Payment Podium)
-Metaadverse Publishing


Event support did make it easier for me to motivate hosts to hold events - and did seem to bring out more contests. But I don't believe its something we can't survive without.

Travis

I really don't think it's this cut and dried. The garden example I gave was not a home. It was built on the model of a public park (complete with faux snack food vending machines.) It was content created to be shared with others. Should it have been sponsored by LL, on the same grounds that event hosting should be sponsored, i.e. it provides benefit to the community? If not, what is the distinction?

I agree 100% on the messed up Linden policy regarding griefers vs. regular netizens, however. And, as I've said above, I don't think the posting restrictions have fixed anything.

neko

Yeah, I think a few of us agree on that. The big question here is: how do we encourage hosting of good events and eliminate trash events? Several things seem apparent:

1) Preventing people from posting events is not the solution
2) There are way too many garbage events being posted now.
3) People are really, really ticked at the current decisions.

So my solution is this: have the events sortable by categories, and CLUBS or CASINOS or MARKETING ploys should be required to classify themselves as such. In that way, people can search those specific areas if that is what they desire, or leave them out totally in normal searches, just like they do with so-called "mature" events. To me, it would be very simple to simply have a list of check boxes of which ONE is normally clicked (general public events) and the MATURE / CASINO / CLUB / MARKETING buttons optional.

And if someone intentionally mis-classifies his/her event, there should be penalties.

The claim is that the calendar is cluttered. It's not nearly as "cluttered" as it was 6 months ago, so I have to wonder what the REAL reason is and why someone seems to think we is all tewtally stoopid.

OK, I just found out about this. Last week my officer was allowed to post to events.
(Not sifting through all the post just giving my opinion)

This is a problem for me, to only have the land owner or group owned land officers post an event to the Sim.

1. We don't want to make this group owned land, the allowed list on the estates tools worked for me fine. My partners are fine with working around not being group owned since our group is Large. We use the daily traffic bonuses for our events and paying staff since there is NO more linden support on events that are non educational. Hence group owned land traffic gets split 90 ways if 90 is in your group.

2. If I can not be there and we have a weekly event that needs to happen...

So when it boils down to it, it has cost us $995 to buy a sim, $195 a month to keep the sim,
(That's $3,335 the first year and $2,340 every year after) $0 funding for events, Major cut world wide on Bonus for ratings (effecting our sales as merchants), and NOW Limiting on how events can be posted that helps our traffic.

Something needs to give somewhere instead of taking constantly from members that pay for premium membership, buy land, and referring new members....

Call me crazy but there is alot of money comming out of our pockets. More money that comes out of the pockets, less this games becomes fun.

KatanaBlade Anubis
(Samurai Island)

I am the officer of Samurai Island that tried to post but could not tonight. It's not like we post events all day long everyday of the week. I run one event a week for Samurai and now because of these changes I can no longer do this even though I am an officer and on the land as being able to post in the estate tools. While I understand some of the reasons for doing this it has caused a very bad side effect for those of us that do not post often. We aren't the ones that caused them to make these changes yet it hurts us too. Something needs to be done to recognize this and open it back up for us to post.

Because of the calendar changes I am now loosing about 100k L$ per week. My hosts are now hosting in desert instead of my malls or clubs. I will do this for short while, but not for long. Then it means: no more jobs, no more Tringo pots, no more building projects on mainland. This comes after week long dwell wipes and after excluding useful and economically beneficial events like real estate tours or product sales.

It is absolutely beyond me why Linden Lab starts exclude people from posting events or does any restrictions on events at all. Mmmm, yes. Whoever is in charge for this need learn one English word: filter

This is the reason that Elite Island no longer exists

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I have felt for a long time that a lot of the decisions LindenLabs make are because they have no real competition at this time. This is an ENTERTAINMENT based industry. What happens when a year from now someone else comes in with a virtual world that offers four times the land area for half the money, is attuned to user needs and feedback, and bends over backwards to please their clients? Will Second Life be able to continue operating under the current mode? These decisions that are so obviously contrary to user needs make no sense from a business competitive standpoint. The smart concept is this: satisfy your current customers so competition doesn't have a chance to get in a foothold.

There are many aspects of Second Life I truly enjoy. I like the ease of use, the wide diversity of builds, the character interaction, the creativity, the easily-ineractive building system. I hate the lax security and tolerance of griefers, the totally inadequate security and land management features, the forced telehubs that are sims away from the desired destination point, the seeming anti-event mentality, the ludicrously high prices, the lag-infested coding, the predominance of porn-infested activities (which really does detract from normal game play-- really, people, consign such to a "red light district" and get it away from general traffic areas), very bad land permission setups, the lack of responsiveness to user needs and the unfriendly "corporate" attitude, just to name a few things.

It's the Micro$oft syndrome: people use it because it's the only store on the block. But what happens when a new store moves in next week? Second Life has the potential of being the hottest system on the market, but I have to admit it seems that Linden Labs is just setting itself up for competition cleaning their clock. They ought to hire us as business consultants, Anshe. LOL. We'd have the place cleaned up in a month.

I think of Second Life as a game in beta. Policy changes happen way too often and nothing can be counted on to stay the same. I will no longer pay 200 - 400 a month to beta test Lindens social experiments.

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Excellent!

It's beyond more and more of us Anshe.

I'm slowing getting to the place where I wouldn't be surprised if LL sells SL overnight and tomorrow morning we discover it's no longer SL but some newly named world run be a new company.

I posted an event on land I own and the drop down box has the name of the land correct, but the coordinates are set to 0,0. I had to put the correct coordinates in the event description.

There are a few things that make the situations different, Nekokami. You pointed out one and that is the opportunity for materials content creators (and I argue that events are content, but a different type only) get not only the benefit of free manufacturing after the original is made (a benefit not found in rl) but also get the benefit of volume. You see, a content creator can, with an hour of work (or less with practice) make a chair that gets sold again and again with endless volume.

Events Hosts cannot recoup with volume as only so many avatars can fit on a sim before the sim completely lags. If i have an event, heaven help me if anyone else in the sim is doing the same at the same time! If I have an event and try to have it in a beautiful locale that has been built up in any way, (waterfalls, dance floors, etc) then I experience Lag even sooner. Lag is detrimental and makes people leave sometimes before they have even stayed 5 minutes, so they do not count as traffic for the venue.

A second thing to ponder is the fact that we have trained, over many many months, not only consumers but hosts in a way that counteracts charging admissions. Because consumers used to not only get events hosting for free, but actually were paid to go to events, consumers are reticent to let go of that model. This impacts venues as our goal is to provide consumers with the content they want. Therefore, hosts have come to expect that their hard work should be given out for free in order to make the consumer happy. Club owners pay tier at a higher rate than shops (events venues generally need more land to support appropriate environs for different types of events on the same land) if not host salaries also; currently most hosts work only for tips (and with a few exceptions at my venue these have proved to be meagre).

What needs to happen is a model that benefits the people doing the work. We cannot expect that consumers will change deeply engrained behaviour overnight. We also cannot expect that it is ok for mall owners to make money, but accept as a virtual society a condition that club owners and events hosts should lose money.

It is true that material content makers invest money in tools if they choose to, but one can make materials without buying these additional tools, so the expenses they incur are a direct result of some people being willing to go that extra ways and treat it as a business. These folks who pay for photoshop, scanners, and poser generally are making their money back on that investment and breaking even at least. Some turn a considerable profit (enough to quit their jobs in 1st life). I do not begrudge them this. All I ask is that Club Owners be given a fair opportunity to break even by either increasing the amount that is earned by dwell or by giving them the opportunity to pay their hosts through funding support. Or, if an event listed as costing a cover could automatically debit and credit the attendees account in such a way as to do that so that events hosts don't have to beg folks to hand over their money, that would be good also.

Material content creators do not have to give objects to folks and then beg each and every person who buys from them to compensate them for their time and effort. Events hosts now have more work than ever because they have to not only run the event, but then they have to charge for tickets. You ever try running an event and running box office for each and every person who comes in late during the event? It is impossible without two people. Additionally, the events host can no longer do all of his or her own publicity as the owner now has to do that. This has turned the honourable job of events hosting into a job that requires a team of three people to do the job if one charges at the door.

So the short answer, Nekokami, is that in order to make event hosting work on the same model as materials content creation, one would have to have access to unlimited volume the way content creators do, one would have to more significantly reward venues for dwell so that one doesn't only recoup (partial) costs if one is in the top 2% of traffic, one would have to retrain the public to expect to pay rather than be paid (a tough sell after rating stipends were cut), and finally one would have to provide events hosts with charging and publicity mechanisms that work rather than hinder them. Then we can play by the same rules. It is a much simpler fix to reinstate events host funding.

Prizes I can make or beg for (that involves begging only one person rather than begging all event attendees for cash). Also, sponsors are much more likely to donate objects that can be given as prizes than to give Lindens to pay hosts. Prize money can stay gone as far as I am concerned: let club owners hassle with that after they have more dwell and don't have to do all the publicity for their orgs. I know this is a long answer, but your questions were thoughtful and deserved the best I could come up with.

Thanks for your thoughtful contribution to the discussion, Nekokami. ~ CT

You can fix that by going to the parcel and settingthe landing point

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The new event posting rules ruined the theme of my bar, the Elbow Room, which was a 29-prim bar on a 128sq.m parcel. Though I've since "up-parceled" to a 512sq.m lot the restrictions mean that I had to cut one event (Word Hunt) and my other three events are most likely non-event events: Happy Hour: sitting around drinking and talking after work; MST3K: The Home Game: watching "TV" together; Last Call: people sitting around drinking and talking after an evening of clubbing or pub-crawling.

I opened my bar on January 20th, it's now April 20th, and somewhere in between the Linden staff has managed to completely kill my interest in maintaining a Gathering Place. Multiple Dwell payment/scoring probs, combined with last month's botched Developers Bonus List calculation, and then the super special bonus of event posting restrictions. After approximately 90-days of building up a clientele and a schedule around them it's very nice, and highly effecient, that it only took the Lindens about three-weeks to ruin my motivation. Stepping back at looking at this as a customer service issue (c'mon, never-ending Dwell problems?) it's exceeded my threshold as a customer.

I no longer care how this issue turns out. No matter which direction this issue is resolved I'm certain the Lindens will replace it with something that will continue to inferfere with and degrade my in-world game experience.

Thanks Patrick. I will do that when I get home