SLExchange Joint Statement - APO & MER

Seriously, you want to lead.. then lead by example. You want to preach good manners and restraint. Then demonstrate them. People may still not agree with you, but they will certainly respect you more.

http://www.slboutique.com

"SLboutique is entirely programmed and maintained by FlipperPA Peregrine and Jennyfur Peregrine."

I think a lot of people have tried to do this. Merwan, Torely, the lindens .. a few others who pop up now and then. I tried for awhile, but either I'm not very good at it, or I'm just like all the rest and have zero impact.

The truth is that lots of individuals here who have the patience and certainly practice a very good attitude toward one another have tried to set an example .. all to no avail.

People like Lance, Zuzi and what not pop up with .. I don't know what it is .. jealousy? envy? anger? self-hatred? Anyways, they can not do anything except snipe at people for posting serious questions or ideas about SL.

All they do is raise the water level of anger in these forums and drown out new players and new ideas.

And the Linden's don't do anything about these people. Certainly setting an example has zero effect on these community destroyers.

Fortunately, the General forum has been pushed down out of site. That was a first step. But now all these forum villians have done is moved it into other forums.

I don't mean to be a forum cop. Truly, I don't. SecondLife is simply the only 'game' in town and I hate to see it all covered in shit like this.

No thanks! I'll stick with SLExchange.

Make it 5% and I'll move over to SLBoutique

SLboutique isn't officially "open" yet, but the cat is kind of out of the bag. The reason we are requesting RL information is simply to avoid anyone trying to scam our buyers. That is also why we require an email address. Anyone caught scamming will be reported to Linden Lab.

We are talking to Linden Lab about perhaps requiring less information since that information is already on file with Linden Lab.

Please see our help section for more details:

http://www.slboutique.com/index.php?p=help

Regards,

-FlipperPA

To comment on percentage taken:

(1) Nothing is yet set in stone on percentage taken. As of now, it is 10%, but this is configurable easily on a site-wide basis.
(2) We also have a cap on the percentage; no more than L$50 per sale will taken per sale, as it is currently configured, including land sales.

Regards,

-FlipperPA

I just registered with completely false information (other than the email, which is a gmail address)

How are you going to keep other people from doing so? The only way really is to take a credit card # (but even that can be worked around).

Just a suggestion, but you might want to relax this requirement.

I don't mind giving my Email address but it wants your RL name and address which since I am only spending Lindens at the site seems a bit of too much information.

Its a tough call. I'll definitely take it under advisement. Perhaps only taking the information from people wishing to sell on the site is the route to go. I'll think on this one and report back when we "officially" open.

Regards,

-FlipperPA

Blaze,

I will try and answer you seriously. You are describing reacting instead of acting. A moderate, well manner person acts that way regardless of how people act around them. They may sometimes lose their temper, but they apologize and return to their good natured selves. They walk away when necessary.

Community is made up of everyone in a group or it is just a club. Either a community has room for everyone's opinions and input... regardless of whether you like them or not... or it's just an excuse for the loudest person to railroad everyone else. The forums represent around 20% of the population in SL, but it is an argumentative and motavated 20%. Yelling is part of a healthy community. Even name calling and stupidity is. You wouldn't be happy in a fascist community unless you were in charge, and that's not going to happen. You want the Lindens to squelch people. What if the person they want to squelch is you?

The bottom line is that each individual is responsible for what impacts them. IMO the forums could do with a little less championing of other people's causes - real or imagined and a little more personal responsiblity.

I will use the SLExchange debacle as an example (since we are in that thread). IMO this was a business problem primarily between Apotheus and Merwen. We still do not know what actually happened there. We have heard a lot of heresay. But as far as first-hand accounts, we don't really know. The secondary people involved were the merchants who list with SLExchange. We certainly had a vested interest in knowing what was going on. As far as I know, no customer complaints were generated during this mess. No one lost money or inventory. IMO Apoth and Merwen should have been left alone to work out their issues in privacy.. with updates to the merchants, their clients. Instead we had everyone and their dog... well meaning or not stick their oar in. Demanding fix it NOW!! Bottom line. A lot of ill will was stirred up. Reputations were damaged by gossip. We still know nothing except that many merchant's sales were hurt. etc.

You can't do anything about what other people do except refuse to associate with them. You might as well accept that and move on or you will just go crazy here. You may think an idea is great, has merit, but other people may think it's stupid. You can post your point of view. They post theirs. Democracy in action. Yay!!

Excellent post, Surreal.

It's not democracy in action. For one, you can have ALTs.

There's a reason slashdot moved to a scoring system for posts.

Anyways, the point was that there are a bunch of jerks in these forums that treat others like garbage simply because they don't have the same viewpoint.

We all know who they are, and some of us even join in on the taunting.

It's childish and disgusting and gives us all bad name. If you don't see this, then I suggest you read through the forums a few times and you'll start to get an idea of what's going on.

I don't agree. Only you can give yourself a bad name... or a good name.

I can have alts in RL politics... they are called lobbying groups. Yay!! Actually I find the politics here sort of refreshing because although it can range from annoying to hillarious, they never affect my survival. What Gov. Smooze or Pres. Sleeze do on the other hand DO.

While that's a great idea in theory, in practice communities and organisations build reputations for being a certain way, even if there are individuals who buck the stereotype.

But we are more a collection of communities. Just like in RL. A garden salad rather than a melting pot. I would personally like to kick the collective asses of a couple of the communities here... but until someone puts me in charge....

blaze, you're missing the point here. It's Catherine. She's been the official forum punching bag since beta. It doesn't matter what she says (it's usually either "i'm leaving" or "money sucks". We don't even read her posts, we just jump at her throat. It's a pavlovian response

Well make me the forum punching bag. Leave everyone else alone.

** rings bell **

Get her Eggy!



I'm curious if you would drool right before the attack?

*drools and insults catherine*

blazey and cathy, sitting in a tree...

(prods a 3 inch flappy square of horse flesh hanging from a nearby bush)

...It's dead Jim...

Good news FlipperPA!

I would like to see the percentage be significantly less than 10%. I'm comfortable with GOM-level taxation on the order of 3% myself. If you position yourself aggressively in the beginning it will allow you to attract many new artisans.

Also, I would rethink the second point. It creates a regressive tax punishing smaller items under $500 in price, which will actually be the bulk of your sales. Instead, I'd remove the upper cap and instead create a lower cap. Note that there will already exist a cap which is a function of your taxation rate. For instance, if you go with a 3% service tax, all purchases under L$33 will have no tax (assuming you round up to the nearest L$1). I'd take that a step further. I would eliminate all taxation on items under L$50 as a rule to promote a affordable prices.

If you really wanted to be progressive, you could tax all sales equally but have a minimum number that must be sold before you begin taxing as an incentive to create new wares and reward small artisans.

Finally, I highly recommend the ability to split sales revenue to multiple artisans automatically. That's the only thing keeping our group from using an online middleman right now.

Just some thoughts.

~Ulrika~

Lynch mob, huh?

I say we string him up.