Consumer Reports/Merchant Ratings.

Sorry for the forum spam, I just wanted to let eveyone know about a new site that Koukla Twilight and I have created to help take a possitive step into the future. Please visit www.secondlifenow.com. You can give a product review to products you have purchased. If your a merchant, prove how confident you are in your products or services and let your customers rate your business.

Sick of interviews with the rich and successful? Each week we will also interview a citizen of SecondLifes middle class. Our first Spotlight is on Slim Edelbrock.

SecondLifeNow

Looks interesting!

Beau have you considered talking with the RATE folks?


I am wondering about you being a merchant and your site being viewed as subtly advertising your products.





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Merwin, please read further, anyone who puts themselves up to be rated will get a banner ad on our website for free. I by no means plan on having any connection between this site and Mr. P's

Cool.

Beau, my name is Merwan.

LOL, coming from the person who has only once ever managed to spell my name correctly that's pretty rich Merwin

Moopf - I apologize for misspelling you name. It won't happen again.

Beau, this sounds like a great idea. If I was actively selling in SL I'd put myself up for rating. I hope lots of people take you up on this and use the site.

oops and all this time I thought you were the wizard



Thank you Moopf, there will be many more useful consumer/merchant features coming soon also. Call this the beta site, I just want to see the response it gets before dedicating major resources to it.

THANK YOU to our first Spotlight Citizen, Slim Edelbrock, for his time during the interview process. Our goal with the Spotlight Citizen is to give the limelight to those everyday citizens that are creating a wonderful secondlife for themselves and others around them. There's plenty of you out there and I just may be knocking at your door next.

I like this idea. Many times I have bought items inworld that were nothing like the picture (since many pics are photoshoped to look much better than the actual itemreally is), were not as useful as were described to be or it was just plain false advertisements.

A long time ago there was the SL Consumer Reports magazine that was edited by a friend of mine who I haven't seen in a long time. I'm glad to know that someone has decided to give product testing a try. Just make sure that competitors of certain products don't start giving out negative reviews in order to persuade customers into choosing their products.

Submitted my shop. Great idea!

I have one concern after looking over the site... perhaps I missed something. SLExchange (pretty sure it was them) had an anonymous rating system that they had to change because people were gaming the ratings. I don't recall if they did away with it, or attached names to the ratings.

I would be concerned with this becoming another way of griefing. Or, of gaming the system for positives. What would keep this from happening?

Are you rating the person behind the thing, or the shop and its service in general?

Some services are provided by groups instead of a single person - means that the same group can have varied service quality results. How do the site handle these kind of cases?

I have to apologize to anyone who submitted to be rated. I had an error with the for and got most of it encrypted. I think I emailed every one, but if you did not get this email and you did submit your business to be rated please email me at [email]beau@secondlifenow.com[/email] with your business name and description, may as well attach a banner to the email also.

I am fixing the form and the new polls will be added this evening. Thank you all for the possitive response.

Clarification - SLExchange does not have a product rating system.

We did change the calculation of TODAY's POPULAR ITEMS to prevent someone from buying lots and lots of an item so it would not make it on the list.

Hehe.. so it wasn't SLex... perhaps secondserver.. anyway.. my point remains...

What safeguards are there to prevent positive or negative gaming of the system? What keeps it from being a popularity tool, griefing tool instead of the service it is intended to be?

I think the idea is great andmuch needed... but you see my concerns.

We have a new interview up on secondlifenow. THANK YOU to Sabrina Fredericks for her time, she is our second Spotlight Citizen. This world is filled with so many people with such great ideas; I really am looking forward to finding them and bringing their story to you. Until the next time...

Yeah, that's what we did. We made it so any ratings you make can no longer be anonymous, which stopped it in it's tracks (after spending 2-3 hours cleaning up this persons mess)

-Adam