Event Calendar Changes - Discussion

Cherry, thanks for your thoughtful response.

Event host funding may be simpler, but I think what you've outlined above has merit. Here's what I've gleaned from the whole thread so far:

1 - Fix lag problems so that events can be attended by more people at once (High Priority!)

2 - Raise standard "dwell" awards so people who make attractive locations and host engaging events are compensated more than currently (I would suggest only for primary accounts, not alts, but I'm not sure how to enforce that - discussion?)

3 - Provide event hosts with an automated cover charge mechanism, tied into the event posting system, probably with features to allow automatically splitting the proceeds between the land owner(s) and host(s)

4 - Support retraining the SL public that not all events are "free," i.e. LL needs to post about new cover charge tools in a positive way, explaining the value to the SL community

5 - Remove restrictions on how many events can be posted per lot/week (and who can post, or make this a delegatable function not based on group land ownership)

6 - Provide categories of events to help users find the kinds of events they are looking for, and to reduce calendar clutter, e.g. navigate types by tab, search/filter by type, etc.

How do you folks feel about having to pay to post an event, if these suggestions were all implemented? For example, to list a parcel in find is L$30/week, I think. Is a comparable charge to list an event in the calendar appropriate? Perhaps only if there will be a cover charge? I'm just trying to brainstorm a bit here.

I agree that better tools and systems are needed, and if we get a good proposal together, we can campaign for votes and try to make it happen. I honestly don't think the Lindens are intentionally trying to ruin events and hosting for everyone, but it would appear that they don't have clear ideas of what the community wants and needs to support a healthy events sector in the SL economy. (I don't either, as I'm no economist, but I'm trying to listen to what you are all saying and distill it down to something that can be pitched to the Lindens and the SL community as a whole.)

neko

I haven't actually used this function, so I don't know if it works, but to my knowledge there is already a tool in place to automatically charge people to attend events.

There is an option in (hmm... Estate or About Land.. I forget) which bars all entry to a parcel, but allows people to purchase a "ticket" for a fee. I think this was intended to be used as a cover charge for events. Getting people to pay it of course, is another matter. We have found a "prize donation" box and merchant support to be much more effective.

It's in About Land. I haven't used it either. I was assuming people had found it unworkable for some reason, e.g. you can sit past it or something.

I agree that the social problem of people being willing to pay for events or land is still there.

neko

Yes it was in About Land. However it was removed in 1.6 as it just did not work as expected.

I have ran into this once where people actually tried to charge to come onto the land, you get the red beams around the land line as if you were banned, but a pop up comes up asking if you want to pay to visit.

pfffft I was exploring and wasn't intrested, moved on.
Charging to come to an event would be rediculous in my opinion considering they are earning my dwells already.

I don't nesesesarly think limiting how many events 1 parcel can have in a day is a terrible idea but we should be allowed to assign who can post what. as Anshe said FILTER

also someone else mentioned this being like a beta.

Linden Lab has to realize that the more popular they become, the more a potential competitor will be snooping for the layout of the system.

for 3 1/2 - 4 years I was in another 3d community, building objects have more detail and options to it. it was a blaxxun interface site... well many other sites just like it started to pop into exsistance created by the current user of the origonal site. now this site has less and less activity, they are lucky they get 100 user at one time and most are afk. but the down fall of this other site is you couldnt use what you made like you can here.

it is just a matter of time before a new community opens up with the same concept, most likely made by a current user/company here in second life.

Linden lab needs to realize also that the memebers make the world go around. without memeber you just have an expensive server. if the top gathering places and land sellers start pulling out because it is becoming not fun anymore, they are going to be left with people that are on basic or won't put the RL cash out to purchase larger land.

I have only been here since june of 2004 and I see more and more restrictions.
This path is similar to the other 3D community I belonged to in a city chief position, and now they are lucky to get 100 users online at one time for longer than 30 mintues.
(3 1/2 years of watching it go downhill) I would hate for Second Life to fall down the same path.

KatanaBlade Anubis
Samurai Island

When a person attends an event, he or she gives only part of a linden dollar in dwell, usually only a small fraction (say twenty five cents). With ten of those, a person might get $2.50. Events used to be eligible for money for the hosts ($250/event) and money for prizes ($500) and the small dwell was a bonus for the team or owner who organized events. This system worked well.

Now the $2.50 (two dollars and fifty cents) are all the event makes and must be used to pay staff, owner, prizes, etc unless someone begs for money from attendees or sponsors. Sponsors, hit hard by people no longer shopping as much when they had less money to spend, are willing to give prizes but not money to pay event hosts, usually. The only way event hosts (the ones who actually do most of the work, aside from the publicity that now MUST be done by the landowner) can get paid for their efforts is if the landowner forks money out of pocket at a loss or people pay to attend the event.

I hope I have been effective at communicating how important it is for people to realize that dwell is miniscule and cannot subsidize the costs for paying for events. I work at a facility whose owner made it into the top 2% last month and the total costs for paying staff a very very modest wage (between $50 and $150 per hour, depending on activity) and teir (even with the bonus of free tier associated with the Vive La Evolution prize) STILL far exceeded the benefits of dwell and the dwelloper bonus. So, even with an advantage, this owner paid out of pocket to run the spa. What I hear again and again and again from venues owners is that they are paying out of pocket to entertain LLs customers and they are running out of resources to do this with.

Thank you for telling us about the experience of being asked to pay money and your response, as well as your feeling about paying to attend events. It is illustrative of what events hosts and venue owners are up against in terms of asking the public to pay for the entertainment opportunities they get at venues. ~ CT

This is a shame as the elbow room was one of the coolest venues in world

I agree it is a small fraction, but it is also the principle.

Holding an event for us is like inviting you to my house for a party with free party favors.
I would never charge a 10 dollar cover free to come to my house.

for clubs I can understand the cover more being that is the way it is in RL too.

but what about those who welcome the public for no charge, and try to hold on the very idea of keeping secondlife alive and fun. I'm not dividing my mall up just to charge.

take more and more abilites and supoort away from the paying members, eventually second life will be a boring place. How do you keep new members entertained to be here if they can't even find a good event to go to? not like many newbies come straight in to build.

When i was a newbie I was bored here, clubs and getting to know people at events was a way to feel welcomed and want to stay. you can only stand around the welcome area for so long before you get bored.

To be honest, I don't think events working or not working, can be held or not, are popular or not, really ever depended on Linden support.

I mean sure, when LL supported events, people would go to ANYTHING that offered an L$ prize.... but what good is that? How many events do I remember attending where people would drop off their av and then go watch TV, just so they could win L$? I remember actually having to boot "sleeping" avs off the land after the event was over.

First and foremost, people should attend events because the events are fun, or educational, or valuable in and of themselves, not so they can win L$. People don't have to have L$ to play this game. The first three weeks I was here I spent far less than my initial $250 newbie award, and I had a blast. People gave me free stuff. I talked with folks. I attended building events and dances and avatar contests and show and tell sessions and I didn't spend hardly a dime.

You don't have to own land to learn how to build and script. You don't have to buy expensive avatars and clothing to have a nice avatar and nice clothing. People gave me freebie cars and motorcycles and airplanes and guns and animations and dances... because they were friendly and wanted to, not because they wanted to make L$.

Spending L$ is for extras. And for extras, people can buy L$ on the open market. So when it comes to events, it's not the lack of L$ support that has killed events... it's the lack of moderation in event listings and the failure of people to get their mentality off of the "gimme gimme gimme" concept-- and just enjoy the game.

But that is durn hard to do when we lose our right to POST the event at all. It's one thing to lose L$ support of events... it's another thing entirely to be unable to hold events at all.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the reason Lindens want to post events only by landholders is to force people to purchase premium memberships and buy land and pay land tiers. That is the only logical reason I can imagine for this decision.

What's going to happen instead is that they're going to tick a lot of people off. People are going to leave the game. People are going to stop holding events, and newbies are going to start spreading the news about how lousy stinking stupid a game SL is because there's nothing to do.

There will be private parties rather than public ones. Or even worse (or better, depending on your viewpoint) the really, really smart ones out there are going to start thinking about ways to set up their OWN VR boards (which I'm sure is one of LL's greatest nightmares). Because Second Life doesn't have a stranglehold on the market like Micro$oft does... they're vulnerable to competition.

Myself, I figured out a way around this event posting ban nonsense. I'll be posting later how to do so.

In actuality, there were a lot of intentions in the new design (one of which was to raise the former 1/day rule to a higher number, currently 3), but allowing only premium members to post events was never part of the design.

Part of the design was to have a growing number of Linden-owned public venues available, and that has now been implemented, along with the re-introduction of private estate access lists allowing you to post events there.

The announcement is here:
/3/05/42647/1.html#post462190

Again, I offer my apologies for the delay in introducing these. The good news is, we are certainly still open to suggestions and changes, so keep up the communication with us!

Thanks,

Jeff

Jeff - how does this help non-estate landowners?

I think more where Wayfinder was going with this is - the new policies have made it a *huge* advantage for events posting if you own large amounts of land, and if you own a smaller amount, say 4000m - it is much more difficult.

-Estate tools do nothing for me. I am on a mainland parcel, and its not deeded to group.

-Large landowners can divy up as many 512m parcels as they like, plop a teleporter on there - and post events completely unrestricted. A smaller landowner cannot do that - at least without serious reprocussions.


More places for folks without land to post events? That *is* an awesome thing. But your post implies that this is a big fix that should sate everyone for a little while. Furthest from reality, if that's what you meant.

I've been complaining about the flaws with the new events system from the day it was implemented. We're now a week and a half later - and the only tangable fix to these issues we've seen is more places for non-landowners to post events.

Just want to clarify as an Estate owner you can not just plop a teleporter on each 512 divided up lol and there is still restrictions, at least if you want to keep a sucessful business by making sure once your HUB is set down when you first open up it and leave it there, for us as a Mall we would have very MAD merchants if we keep moving the HUB. and as for small teleporters half dont even see them.

Estates tools apparently don't do anything for us either as far as who can post etc lol (my assigned people used to be able to post events at the most).
the only thing the estates tools really does is let you change the textures of your land, make you visible or invisible to people, control the sun, and the banning tools is they dont see you on the map. but there is flaws and less options when you have 2 island together.
most all your setting must be the same, even your bann list or someone can walk over from the other islands HUB and interupt the events. so really for me the estates tools is to make the place look pretty.

Travis I do agree with you though that smaller land owner are more restricted, we were smaller and on the mainland too before so I feel you!

We had to be group owned to do anything together as a group but our traffic bonuses were split with so many memebers, and on the mainland you always risk being group owned getting a untrustworthy officer taking the land for their own. Seen it done.

I truely hope that Linden lab works on all of our tools, the ability to assign people with land tools without having to make it group land was and still is my biggest wish.

this would help us in many ways and also it would allow only assigned people to help post and host events, kick and bann, change the radio with out script, etc....

but in a nut shell there is not much more options as an estates owner vs parcel owner.

*crosses fingers*

Katana Blade
Samurai Island

Hi Jeff. I absolutely never meant to accuse... was nothing more than reflecting comments I've heard from others as folks wonder why this measure was implemented when it appears to be so counter-productive to the good of the users. I'm pleased to hear that limiting event posting only to premium users was never the intent of Linden Labs and personally never thought it was. However, that is the result-- and that's naturally what comes to people's minds.

What users want is simple: the ability to hold their event at any time, any place they wish. There is always a chance griefers could try to hold unauthorized events just to cause landowners problems... but they can also be booted for doing so, so that's not really a big issue... especially if a landowner were to be automatically notified if an event is scheduled for his land parcel so he can cancel an unathorizied event posting.

It just makes no sense to restrict events in any manner. The 3 day event restriction is not good... because sometimes events are planned on a "last minute" basis. I've seen very successful events posted 1 hour before the event itself. So while I can understand a 1-day advance notice, a 3-day I think is excessive.

The basic idea is to make it as easy as possible for folks to post events. Events is what makes Second Life work.

We also don't want to have to look through tons of garbage events to find the events we want-- we don't want to have to wade through the poker, the tringo, the "best non-existant bikini" contests... so requiring events be posted in appropriate catagores (with filtered searches) and accepting complaints from folks if they are incorrectly posted-- would easily solve that problem... without negative customer feedback and ill-will.

Jeff Linden: >Part of the design was to have a growing number of Linden-owned public venues available, and that has now been implemented, along with the re-introduction of private estate access lists<

Forgot to address this earlier...
Two things here:

It's GREAT to have more Linden-owned venues available for the landless and groupless who want to hold events. I applaud that. However, using these as the focus of event posting for landless draws the traffic away from landowners who might otherwise be very happy to host these events.

Regarding "private estate access lists"... most events want EVERYONE to come... so would use of an access list solve this problem or exacerbate it? Again, the idea isn't to limit events... but rather to simplify the calendar. I mean, the calendar is a database... it's not unhappy. The ones who are unhappy are the users who have to wade through the garbage to get to the gems. So filter the garbage, relegate it to its own area, and make "general interest" events easier to get to. And make the users happy by reversing the "event posting" limitations and go back to where you were before.

Events working absolutely does depend on Linden support if one believes that events hosts should be paid for their effort. If we believe that events hosting should not be a valid job in SL or a valid way to work for compensation, fine. I believe these folks work hard to make sl more fun and deserve compensation. I pay a staff of 16 and the money has to come from somewhere. Right now it means every penny of profit our venue makes from traffic, or my own earnings go to running the SPA and paying staff. I do not get to keep my earnings because paying staff and venue costs takes all of the Lindens right out of my pocket.

These constraints resulting from support withdrawal are difficult for midsized clubs. Actually, I don't much give a toss about the restriction of 3 events postings per person, though I WOULD like to set the actual landmark of the Actual place the event will be. This ma be why only large-sized clubs are worried about event numbers restrictions (none of us in the mid-range can manage more than 3 events per day, usually, anyway, so that aspect will effect maybe a dozen venues?). My only issue is and has ever been support for events hosts. If the Lindens could reinstate money for events hosting, it makes events hosts able to create events in a way that the hosts are compensated for their efforts.

Events hosts and venues managers create content in SL. Like their peers who create material content, they deserve to be paid for their contribution to the world on at least a modest level. $250 per event isn't a large sum, particularly as most of our events run at least 1.5 hours (with two recent Truth or Dare games lasting for 3.5 and even 4 hours!). Many clubs indicate that their hosts do this job for free, which is okay if one is only taking votes on a contest. Our hosts, however, organize non-gambling games, run adult storytelling events, sceners events and the like. This takes tremendous effort (particularly the latter events). It seems fair that these folks who contribute to SL should be able to recoup some $L for making content people consume. As it stands, we cannot recoup this from volume and modest door charges (hard to enforce and not enough $L to pay for host fees). We must have events host funding subsidies to make it a workable model.

OK, at the risk of going off subject (since the subject is WHY THIS RECENT EVENT RULING?)...

We have the question: Do hosts deserve to be paid for events?
Answer: If a host puts on a good event that draws people to Second Life, perhaps.

Nuther question: Is paying hosts essential to the running of events?
Answer: Nope. I run events all the time for which I'm not paid. Friends of mine run events all the time for which they're not paid. Why do we do this? Because of a strange and seldom-spoken of concept on Second Life: for the fun of it.

So let me throw out if I might, a totally radical idea:

What if tomorrow, everyone on Second Life suddenly stopped worrying about L$?
What if Land Owners stopped worrying about Traffic and just paid their land fees because they like having land and building on it?

What if event attendees stopped focusing on trying to win L$ and instead focused on just enjoying the event / game / contest? What if instead of winning L$ because of having a nice avatar... they won a special award or trophy instead?

What if event holders stopped worrying about bringing in L$ and instead focused on making the event FUN?

What if Linden Labs no longer had to shell out L$ for traffic, L$ for ratings, L$ for popularity, L$ for events, for this, L$ for that... would they then be able to lower their prices so that land and other services are more affordable?

I mean, as far as I was able to discern, at one time a significant percentage of profits was going back into Second Life itself to keep people in L$. Now that just seems kind of a silly concept to me... we pay Linden Labs to play the game, then expect them to pay us back for playing that game?

What if all that just stoppped-- and LL was to hand that back to us in lower prices instead? What if instead of getting paid for traffic, for ratings, for events and all that other stuff, land and membership prices were to drop 10%...15%... 20% or possibly more... would anyone out there complain about that?

I mean, winning an L$ prize for "best avatar" is nice.. but there's no proof of anything after that. A trophy sitting on your shelf is permanent testament to the accomplishment.

Linden Labs is a business. They have to turn a profit. Them paying us for playing their game is somewhat counterproductive to that goal. And it's like real life businesses. You know, the corporations don't pay income tax... WE do. Because every time the government raises taxes... businesses just have to raise their prices to meet them.

So when LL hands out L$ in ratings, in event sponsorship, in Traffic bonuses, etc etc... it's not Linden Labs that's paying for it... it's YOU.

So what if everyone suddenly woke up tomorrow and realised that this is an online "game" that we pay to play, and just leave it at that? Are people going to stop building nice builds all of a sudden because they no longer get traffic? Are they going to stop hosting events just because they're not "paid" to do so? Are people going to stop playing games because they don't win L$ to play them?

I think people would take part in competitions just for the thrill of it and the honor of winning. I have a sneaky feeling people would still play primtionary because it's fun. If L$ wins at events were to suddenly completely disappear tomorrow, if no one was allowed to give out L$ prizes at events, know what would happen?

The FUN events would continue to be supported, and the garbage events that people put on just to rake in the cash would disappear. People would start doing like Jesrad Seraph and start building and giving away things for the fame and honor rather than the profit. People would start sharing building secrets and if someone liked that neat special effect... they'd be happy to tell how it's done.

And although I may be sticking my neck out here... I think Second Life would become a more fun place to live. So no, I don't agree that L$ are essential to holding events.

I do however, believe that being able to POST an event is somewhat essential. Silly me.

However.. now that I did stick my neck out and gave my personal opinion on an idealistic utopian concept...

Reality check: SL is currently an economy-based board. There are people here who make their livings off of SL. Part of the fun of SL is making things to sell and buying things. And while it would be just as much fun to make FREE things and pick up things for FREE... I think that's a little unrealistic. It's just not going to happen without some major, major board changes.

As much as I complain about problems in Second Life and the "corporate mentality" that too often rears its head, face it, Second Life is one of the most fascinating things on the net. It is truly unique; there is nothing else quite like it. The majority of us who play here would STILL continue to play if L$ completely vanished tommorrow... but that's just not gonna happen is it?

So in the meantime, event holders need to find other ways to finance events... because SL doesn't seem inclined to begin funding them again. And when a decision such as the "only landowners may post events" come through... we need to scream bloody murder so that someone DOES change such things.

After all, the Lindens aren't totally unresponsive. They're just over-worked and are trying to please several thousand people at once. So when they make a mistake (which IS going to happen time to time) we are duty-bound to make them very durn well aware of it thank you, so that they can correct it and we can all be friends again.

I am really glad you revisited the previous post, Wayfinder. It would be great if we did and made and gave things all for the good-will it generated, but most people operate under business models in SL. Events venues are told simultaneously that they need to be more businesslike and that will solve their problems, or that they need to be less greedy and do stuff for free and that will solve their problems. The truth is that neither of those will work for a variety of reasons that I have discussed in many related posts. But what interests me is the idea that the Lindens aren't inclined to reinstate events funding. If they aren't so inclined, that might indicate a problem with Linden responsivity.

I have not seen that elsewhere, so it seems likely that the Lindens will respond to the current vote to reinstate events funding. so far it has over 600 votes. They accepted a proposal that had only 350, so if people keep speaking out on the issue, perhaps they will listen some day and reinstate events funding. Even if it was only host payments, that would be great. People already get something out of events: attendees get entertained. Events hosts should get compensated in some way or they will only host events when they feel like it, now and then, and then get sick of it and stop. Volunteer positions just don't hold the same level of accountability for the worker that paid positions do. If someone asks me to volunteer, I may or may not do it. I will follow through on what I have committed to, but likely won't volunteer again if it wasn't 100% fun for me at all times. If I am paid, I am willing to accept 50% fun.

Another indicator of Linden responsiveness is the fact that Robin, in answer to a Hotline to Linden question asking if events funding cuts would ever be reconsidered, indicated that they would do so after analyzing the actual impact the cut has had on events. Perhaps they wanted to get the system in place first so as to make the obvious less obvious: that cutting event host funding dramatically favoured the top venues over smaller venues (because the top venues actually make enough on dwell and dwellnor awards to pay for staff or almost anyway). This latest move might have been a way to balance that shift before they conducted analysis of the funding cut impact. My sense is that funding cut for events (which would have had negligible impact on the strength of the Linden) was more about less administrative work for the company than about preserving the SL economy. I propose that they decrease this work significantly by reinstating only funding for hosts and not prize monies. It will be less *detective* work for them and save significant time compared to the prior system when they needed to check the event against the posting and additionally check prize winnings against the prizewinners' accounts.

If we ask event hosts to give their content to game for free, then it makes sense that everyone making content should be asked to do the same. Some people bring RL skills to the game though, and it is a sign of respect of this skill level that we compensate those individuals for their time. It is not only material content makers who do this, however. Some people bring RL hosting skills (or specific arts and culture skills) to the game and those should be compensated the way that other RL skills are compensated.