Bring Back Top Picks?

I would like to get together with other players who would be interested in creating some kind of player-sponsored "Top Picks". It would be for free and non-profit.

As you know, the old Linden-sponsored "Top Picks" has been removed and is now changed to a "Sponsored Links" that you can get by bidding on ebay. Whatever the pluses or minuses of this new system, it means that certain landmarks of SL are no longer visible in the "find" list. And it's still the case that new builds don't have a way of getting visitors and recognition.

I am interested in sponsoring a "top picks" type of quest each week. We could start with the old "Top Picks" just for orientation. Then each week, we could feature some selected sites in SL showing interesting builds, great new shops, best clubs, etc. Dwell/Traffic wouldn't necessarily have to be a factor. We could have a weekly event to advertise the latest picks and have the landmark dispensors ready.

Of course, if you make a list like this it opens up the question -- but how did you pick? What is your criteria? And are you just picking to your own taste or are you just picking your friends? Well, by rotating the picks each week, eventually you will find picks everyone likes -- there's always the next week to get your build featured. And if a group of people all pools their picks each week, say, for 10 slots, then it won't be just one person's taste, everybody can contribute different selections.

I'm thinking of having a booth or exhibit where you could have screenshots of the builds or sites and landmarks to those sites and maybe a notecard directory of past picks. Anyone who had the space might copy the set of materials and place them.

It would be good to have a different categories i.e. fashion, clubs, stores, residences, etc.
Anybody doing a new project will know they have this place to advertise it too.

So if anyone has suggestions along these lines please post here or write me an IM and also if you remember what the original "Top Picks" were please post their name, sim name, and coordinates so we could reconstruct them.

We should have a resident decided list. Since we all have a picks section in our profiles and are allowed to add 10 sites there, it would be easy for LL to grab the top 10 or 20 most picked places each night/week.

That way folks wouldn't have to go out of their way, they just add a pick and go on with their day.

Personally, I have found some really interesting places when looking at others picks.

Meridian, my understanding is that much like other aspects of Second Life, the current Sponsored Links is an experiment. It won't necessarily be here forever, but the system is being tested out to see how things go in actual practice, as opposed to theory -- otherwise, how can Linden Lab and the Resident community know what it'll be like?

I encourage additional means of promoting cool places you like to be and cool things you like to see. I highlight stuff that drives me crazy (in a good way) on my blog, and if you've got praise for creativity in SL, by all means start a thread about it.

Come here and join the UNION of secondlife members. Here we can lobby the Lindens for change in issues that are important to the majority.

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Stand with us or stand alone.

Alan, I like that idea of putting the "picks" on that "picks" place on the profile. Well, maybe that's one more thing I could do and change them each week. I don't know what would be involved in getting the Lindens to pull out the data from all those picks on the player profiles -- is that technically possible? The info is probably somewhere.

Yes, that's true, I often can't find somebody's store or build in "Find" usually search words I dream up, but when I look on their profile's "picks" I often can locate their store or place.

That's interesting the "sponsored links" idea is an experiment and they're willing to take feedback on it.

Torley, I will look at your blog to get some ideas.

Jsecure, I wasn't really intending to protest that they bring back the picks as they were, or wanting demand anything in particular, just wanted to start a player-sponsored picks, I just think it would be a nice addition. Anybody with suggestions post or give me an IM.

Let em make money off thier damn game, the players are.

Stop already. I'm borderline hating you now.

Making it be the 'top picked' would just encourage link farming, as it were. "I'll pay you L$100 to make my property a pick." One thing I would suggest, as someone who thinks that sponsored links are a bit silly (thus the GIANT CUBE) is to pick at random a resident or more per week and showcase their picks.

What about a collaborative Wiki devoted to user picks, or better still a tag based system like flickr or del.icio.us that residents can self maintain?

There is always going to be gaming of the system, regardless of the system. I was just looking for a middle ground between Lindens picking their friends and people buying their way in.

I do commend you for what you did. It is brilliant.

I will study this but I was thinking it would be good to have something in-game, visible through "FINDS" and through a weekly event.

I think going into it you would say that it isn't a links farm and doesn't accept money for picks. That would be a bribe.

Essentially it *would* be picking random, after the first week or two perhaps, because really, there is SO much in SL that it just is hard to keep track of. But the idea is just to try to provide some venue for recognition.

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Location tags would rock! It would probably be a nightmare to keep up to date though.



Having it be just a raw "top picked" is blatantly and easily gameable. Having a selection of users each week is a little tougher to game as easy, you can get people to pick your spot, but that doesn't guarantee that they will get picked to have their picks shown. (pick your brain on that one)

And thanks, however a lot of credit goes to Belaya Statosky for inspiring it. I just was fool enough to pay money for it.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because
they are easy, but because they are hard."

You're probably right tho'

OK after taking a look at this I think it's useful if the people who you pick have websites, so let's say you made a free blog site with the top picks, you could add in their links like this.

But how would that connect to the game? As far as I understand, you can't put something in the world that you click on and it takes you to a website...or am I not up to speed on this?

has anybody looked at the auctioned ads yet? i haven't thought to.

i say just do away with the whole kit and kaboodle. the lindens have enough to worry about without it.

Eeee! Fool with money! <3 <3 <3 <3

Now that rating isn't ridiculously cheap and game-able, perhaps a list, by land plot, of the plots that received the most positive build rates over the past week? Granted, rates are given to the builder, but it should be too hard to add a query when a build is rated and keep a tally for the land plot.

-Flip

ha ha ha flipper said "query" ha ha ha

what query did you have in mind?

Hmm... I got an idea while reading this. How about a reversal of the old voting poles (for those that remember them) that people used to plant on their land in liu of dwell/traffic tracking. People would click the polls to place a vote for that location. The system could be gamed, however, since everyone could vote as many times as they wished.

How about turning that system over and make it an attachment. A command spoken by the wearer will record their current location as their vote for top pick of the week. This way it's just one per person. You could change your mind and vote any time during the week if you found someplace neater.

A server could record these votes and make a tally. Then the top pick(s) can be beamed back to the attachments where it can be viewes and visited.

I think I'll start coding this today.

This sounds really cool Tiger. I found another thread here about making a kind of blog on the world map.

I guess I just want to get started flying and picking now LOL. So come and discuss all ideas for Top Picks tonight at 6 p.m., see events schedule.