Bring dwell back for certain land types

bring back dwell for categories such as Educational, Hangout, Newcomer Friendly, Parks & Nature. Places that would typically not be generating revenue through sales or rentals of any type. A criteria could be created for each type limiting the type of activities and objects that can be placed there, like no slot machines allowed or retail vendor space.

Sort of like a non-profit org. I run a Newbie Network, and I personally pay for everything that goes on there. I think it's important that Linden Labs support the people that are helping newbies and providing education to new players.

So I'll call my store a Hangout and get dwell...

I have a better idea.

Re-enable dwell, but only collect it by having premium members on your land.

That won't encourage camping chairs, but it will encourage people to open their land up.

NO, you wouldn't call your store a Hangout, you did not fully read my post apparently. There would be stipulations to use those property categories.

With registration being open, AND the fact that new players get 0L$ to start with, it is very hard for new players these days, and I think it's unfair. The way it is now encourages camping chairs more than ever, because well the only options for employment that are readily available in SL seem to be escorts/dancers, hosts, in clubs. Or hosting Tringo or something of that nature. At least the measley $50L stipend was something.

And only collecting dwell when premium members are on your land is the STUPIDEST thing I've ever heard. Guess what? Of all those non-paid accounts I'll bet a good number of them will go premium, AND not only that, non-paid accounts are buying Lindens and shopping at your establishment, I'm sure. But guess what? After you've alienated all those non-paid accounts and they go premium, they will NOT be shopping in your establishment!

I started as a free account, and I did not go paid right away, so do you lump me in with all those people you want to keep out? Besides people should be judged by their actions, not pre judged by what their profile says about their payment method or lack thereof. Do you realize that what you purpose is complete discrimination against a very large group of people? It's as bad as racial profiling.

Parcels that help new players are a very important part of SL culture, even more so now because of open registration. Because let's face it, how many people spend as much time at Orientation Island as they really need to? No one! I skipped it entirely, because I just wanted to get into the game.

People that help new players provide a much needed service in SL, and it is worthy of compensation.

His point about calling his store a hangout to get dwell is just to point out the lfaw of doing it by category. It would be very difficult if not impossible for the Lindens to regulate the objects and activities places on every land to make sure something labelled 'nature & parks' really was that. Dwell has to be given for all land or no land, you can't reliably restrict by category. The point of dwell was that you got more based on how much traffic you saw not how little.

Camping chairs may be popular for the broke (and not just newbies) but without dwell they won't be as popular for land owners since with no dwell they have no incentive to have some AFK person in their land for hours on end generating dwell that no longer gets them anything back.

Newbies don't HAVE to start with 0$L, if they put in payment information on account creation they get 250%L to start with, and they could also use the Lindex to buy Lindens. I ran into someone who's been around a week and has probably bought and spent over 100,000 lindens!

What might be plausible is a registration system that you can apply for a 'nonprofit' status for a parcel with the Lindens and if approved you get some sort of subsidy (bonus lindens based on dwell which I think is still tracked even though it doesn't award lindens, reduced land use fee for that parcel like the bonus land you get for group owned land, or somehting else). This would allow for what you want without being the impoosible to manage system of just awarding it based on how they label their land in Find Places.

Also dwell bonuses only went to estate owners and land owners on the mainland. Anyone running a newbie helper or non-profit hangout in Anshe's lands or many of the other island sims never got dwell bonus for what they did. I know this because I help run a frat house in Provincetown that is half a park and pool, plus a few rooms that we rent out cheap. The rent we get off the rooms is only 1300 lindens a month, no where near enough to offset any costs for the land (think its about 9,000m). The alternative method I mentioned would allow us to potentially see the same sort of incentive to keep going that others on the mainland would have.

Well at least your post was intelligent and well thought out, unlike the other post that suggests we discriminate against people simply because they choose not to provide payment information for whatever reason. Or that we give dwell only if premium members visit our parcels...absurd at best!

I know I provide a valuable service for a small percentage of new players. I have received many positive comments about how nice and refreshing my place is compared to other newb places.

My suggestions was by no means perfect, and your idea is good too. I do realize it would probably be impossible to monitor and make sure that it was not abused, but something could be done. I would have to think that some sort of script could be written into that property category that would not allow certain scripts to be used there, such as gaming scripts, etc. Just guessing, I'm not a tech person. My purpose was to just get the idea out there, that if you are a parcel that does not sell things, have gaming, or rent property, but are still providing a worthy and needed service in SL then there should be something.

I did not know that if payment information was provided, but not used they still got $250 L to start with. My error there.

I think this payment method issue has overshadowed the fact that all people should be treated with respect regardless of their payment method, race, gender, affiliation, etc. and that in a world that wants to pigeon hole us at every turn, we should be equals in SL.

Linden Labs would have to hire how many people to go around and verify that these restrictions were in place? They barely have the manpower to police the stuff they've already committed to policing as it is.
I think you're misunderstanding how dwell works, or what I'm proposing. It doesn't matter one iota to the player whether you collect dwell from him or not... it only matters to *you*. And you can't tell a Basic from a Premium as a landowner, so you can't keep them out even if you want to. All this does is take away *from the landowner* the incentive to give away a pittance on camping chairs to attract Basic users... but instead to create builds that are attractive to *everyone*.

i think peoples that doesn't give proofs of their commitment to sl shouldn't get anything at all in extra , they get fairly enough already

if dwell is put back, only premium member should generate any

*sigh*

Kyrah... the person who sheds dwell isn't the person who benefits from dwell, so you're not rewarding anyone by having them shed dwell... you're rewarding the people they visit.

Limiting it to premium accounts (and maybe some other 'paying' accounts, like officers in landowning groups who are commonly renting on islands, or people who buy significant amounts on LindeX) has two economic advantages:

1. It rewards the builders who are attracting paying customers to Second Life.

2. It emulates the 'franchise effect' that partly or completely subsidizes public spaces in real life.

It's neither "fair" nor "unfair" to the players themselves, because there's no way for a landowner to distinguish between premium and basic accounts. All a landowner can do is to try and build things that are broadly attractive... rather than simply paying a pseudo-stipend through camping chairs to attract free account holders.

This debate could go on forever, and I'm sorry I even made a post on these stupid forums, because it will not change anything, because in the end LL will do exactly what benefits them anyway. If this is not the case, then I want to see a Linden reply to this post!

You *CAN* distinguish who is paying or not by limiting the account types that have access to your land. And what difference does it make if an account is paid or not? You did not know the difference before, and did you discriminate? NO! There are jerks and griefers, moochers on paid accounts too, and a lot of very NICE people on free accounts. You are doing yourself a disservice by excluding an entire group of people, and counting them as insignificant. Where's equality and being judged based on your actions instead of being pre-judged based on your social class, because that's what it boils down to. What is happening now is just as bad as racial profiling. It's ugly.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you are saying, but I *THINK* you are saying people that are not paying are insignificant and places that cater to them are too, and have no purpose or redeeming value in SL? I'LL BET YOU DON'T MIND WHEN A NON-PAID MEMBER COMES AND SPENDS THEIR "CAMPING CHAIR" EARNED L$ IN YOUR ESTABLISHMENT!! Everyone is sooo against camping, but what people seem to have forgotten is those L$ are going to get spent somewhere. Just like drug money gets spent, and I have never seen any merchant refuse to take someone's cash because they were unsure of what it's source was.

If a free account is offered, and someone knows they do not want to own land, they are perfectly within their right to take advantage of that. Personally I encourage people to go premium. When newbs ask me the best way to make money, I always reply, become a paid account, you will get the stipend or learn building, scripting, or for goodness sakes, make men's clothing because it's sorely lacking in SL. But it's still their perogative to stay a free unpaid account. However, they should not be treated like 2nd class citizens because of that choice.

Second Life is about self expression, so if someone wants to come to SL and just hang out and never build a damn thing, learn scripting, or earn one single rl $ it's their perogative. It is, after all, still just for entertainment for some of us out here.

You seem to imply that helping new players is somehow not as important as what you do...Someone's gotta teach newbs how to walk and change clothes w/o getting naked, among other things. Ask the people I help if it's a valuable service. I can name several people that would not have stayed in SL after day one if it had not been for me and my service. Those people are now paid members, land owners and contributing members of SL community. I don't script, and can't seem to figure out photoshop, but what I CAN do is help, and that's what I contribute!

You are talking about "attractive builds", but there is a lot more to offer folks in SL than something cool to look at. I would be 10X more inclined to go back to a place that wasn't necessarily so attractive if I was treated nice by the people there. I mean the premise of SL is social, but you go to shops and rarely see the owners there, and there is no one to answer questions if you might have them. So impersonal, so cold and generic.

Opening registration w/o some sort of identification was stupid, taking dwell away was stupid, and taking stipend from non-paid accts was stupid-let's just encourage MORE camping, most people will take the path of least resistance. (wonder if taking stipend from paid accounts is next?)

I never got much from dwell anyway, and camping chairs still abound in SL so nothing was solved by what they did. There will always be people looking for a free ride no matter what you do.

I have a camp master at my place, but I got it AFTER dwell was taken away and free player stipend was abolished, AND my reason for having it is to HELP, nothing else. Everything I do is for newbs, I do not benefit AT ALL from what I do, other than the satisfaction of knowing I helped someone. If you don't believe my motives are true go to my place and ask anyone there.

If newbs want to waste their SL experience by being AFK to earn a few measley lindens who cares? As a newb, I tried camping chairs, but quite frankly I found them to be so boring, because when I'm logged in I'm LOGGED IN, I don't go afk. Why log in if you want to do that? Always has seemed silly to me.

But obviously I haven't a clue about SL culture, politics or anything else in SL, so I'll just shut up and keep helping newbs regardless of what LL or anyone else in SL does. Oh and just so you know, I have TWO paid accounts and am contributing a lot to the SL economy, most of it goes to help new players find their way, so they to can become productive members of SL.

when i joined sl there wasn't unverified accounts, and it was that way for more than 2 years

That doesn't distinguish between Basic and Premium, which is the distinction that matters to Linden Labs, and the one that I'm proposing here. The fact that there is no way to know whether someone has a Basic or a Premium account is an absolutely critical requirement for a "Premium Only" dwell to work without creating a caste society.

Here's the point: Premium accounts are ongoing paying customers, dropping money into LL's pocket on a regular basis, and it's that money that Linden Labs is virtually sharing when they pay dwell. By rewarding people who attract premium accounts, they would be making dwell into a tool that would make SL more attractive to the people who are spending the money that makes SL possible... without penalising Basic account holders in any way.
You are, rather severely.
Quite the contrary. It was six months before I upgraded from Basic to Premium myself, and I've largely given up my mainland holdings since and I'm only keeping my tier and premium status because I'm the main tier-holder for a group build. It's only since dwell was killed that I've even set up a store where some of those "camping dollars" might potentially be spent, so I've never benefitted from the redistribution of dwell through camping.

Most of the work I've done in SL I've given away, and all but one of my scripts are open source... and that one's only closed because I haven't had a chance to "polish" it up.

I've also argued vehemently against any attempt to set up a "caste society" in SL, even when the camping chair paranoia was at its peak.

AND I've argued against killing the basic stipend, and pointed out how it benefits the economy.

AND I pointed out how killing the reputation bonus and cutting the basic stipend led to the creation of camping chairs in the first place, and I've argued for bringing back the reputation bonus in a suitably "non-gamable" form.

So please try reading what I've written without filtering it through the assumption that I'm some kind of capitalist asshat trying to keep the "Basics" down.
Absolutely.
That's what I find myself doing, most of the time, in SL, when I'm not building stuff that I don't charge money for (or didn't until I quit getting dwell).
And I mean that literally. Builds that attract people who are actively spending time there, socialising, whatever. I agree that shops don't need dwell, that it's other kinds of places that benefit more, but there's no practical way for LL to implement a "no shops" dwell.
I do. Newbies who are sitting on camping chairs aren't socialising with the rest of us. I want them out doing stuff, I want them getting reputation bonuses from the people they hang out with just because they're cool even if they ARE newbies. Heck, I think that they should get a share in the dwell if they're in the parcel when the dwell is accumulated. That is, Basic account holders would get money just by hanging out with Premium members... though they should be taking the same chances that the folks they're hanging out with are Premium that the landholders are.

It seems we are on the same page after all, I now clearly understand what you were trying to say.

Bottom line is it's a mess that the residents of SL didn't create. So now what do we do to make it work?

I would love it if you would visit my Newbie Network. I don't script (I would love to learn) I build a little, and understand the basic principles of building. I always encourage newbies to visit the Ivory Tower, and even take them there myself often times.

The whole reason I founded my Newbie Network, was because I didn't just want to be guys cyber fantasy to put it nicely, and I wanted to do something that mattered that utilized my skills, which is helping people AND I wanted it to be a place where people shared what they learn with others, a sort of pay it forward concept.

My vision was to have guest speakers talk about building or other topics, but I have never been able to get it off the ground. Would you be willing to "teach a man to fish"?

I would love to schedule an event and have you as the guest speaker to talk about your building and/or scripting expertise.

Sometimes you have to get passionate to get your point across and I am very passionate.

Again, thank you for the clarification.

I do it all the time, but I do it as part of socialising... "hanging out"... because it's fun to do that stuff one on one. I don't care to run an "event", in fact I really don't "get" the whole "event" thing much... I play the game when I have free time, I don't organise my free time around the game.

Well I do a lot of one on one helping as well, but it would also be nice to speak to a group of new players too. That is the point of Events. I do Trivia on my land every Thursday, it is my way of socializing and giving people some monetary gain. Sometimes you have to schedule things that are important to get people together.

You seem to be very rigid in your views and unwilling to see things from another point of view. I have read all of your postings and come to see your point of view, but you seem unwilling to meet anyone half way.

Too bad, but if that is your attitude, I will look elsewhere for someone to give a talk about their expertise.

Good Day.

Erm. I've largely been agreeing with you, except to defend myself from some unfortunate misunderstandings. I'm not sure what exactly it is that you're upset about.

I don't get enough time inworld, and certainly not reliably enough, to get involved in events... even if they were something I wanted to do. I'm sorry about that, but even if I enjoyed standing up and giving lectures I'd have to decline. If I were to say "yes" I'd simply be setting you up for disappointment if (as is likely) I wasn't able to actually make it.

In thinking about this current conversation. I have seen the so called status classes in game and I have played hard as a mall co-owner. I have a few points to make in hopes to encourage more thoughts to be added.
Here are some basics.
1. There are monetary classes to start out, everyone starts out by feeding or not feeding their accounts money (this is good for the lindens). How much we feed into the game is based on how much we can afford in our real life budgets, or choose to afford. There really is no way for the Lindens to make things even from there on.

2. Making money in game is much like making money in the real world you either have talent and backers, or money to support what you like to do best and do it regardless.

3. The money we put into our “hobby, educational tool, or advertisement” may never be recuperated. It is after all a hobby, a educational tool, and a ad. Those using it for educational purposes have backing or can write it off as an expense, those using it as a business add have much the same advantage. Those using it as a hobby, have to find a way to balance what they can afford.. and what they can make in game.

4. People with a talent for getting around the system and finding a way to make money, do. People with a talent and a new approach will find a way to make money. (That doesn’t mean they will maintain that ability during their entire SL game playing time. I have seen people make money .. Then lose it as new technology comes into the game. Or by sitting back far to long, and not producing more things to keep people buying.) Partnerships going bad are another way profitable game business go under.

5. Time is a major factor in who will make money, and who wont. You can be the most creative person in the game and not put the time into it because other real life things are more important to you. You could have the education material in front of you, and not be there to teach. Time is important, finding a balance is not easy.

6. There are different modes of play, time, and money put into the game by each individual. There is no way the lindens can regulate that without a few getting around the system.

These are my basic thoughts, from here you can find reasons to change the game to make things better for the community as a whole.

1. It isn’t easy to buy land, its to expensive for hobbyist, educators and advertisers. Education and Businesses get breaks, their land cost less. Yet its still so expensive, they have to weigh their options to buy land or not. The monthly fees are pushing the point of being to high for most to play, add land fees and you have a monthly bill that can reach your limit each month. Land fees are way to high, we already are charged for monthly game play to purchase land, then are double changed to own it .. Makes no sense.

A. Why not make a flat rate to play the game, this way. Everyone pays the same fees,. Lindens I do believe your approach to getting more to play is good. But getting more to play that pay is another story. The boost to the economy, is in paying customers. One 512 should be given to all, that pay to play …after all one plot of land is never enough.

B. I do believe a Free Trial period is in order for new players. That the newbie island should be set up as a residence and basic education center, so they can run around not get taken by others in the game, they can still explore all the diff places and possibilities SL holds. Learning a few skills at the newbie area can earn them donated cash to try the games, gambling, even buying an appearance. I have helped many in this game with $L and advice. You never know who your helping in the process. Could be someone you will end up cherishing for a long time. Furthermore, those that help should be made a Title and their names or business names in the newbie area. Great way to promote a business, or just a piece of SL heaven. There are enough hours in a month for all of us to help someone. Also, a growing concern of kids playing in game. This would eliminate more kids playing on the adult side. They would in effect be stopped at the gate.

2. To buy land, tier is needed. I totally agree with this. It takes the lindens time, employees, servers, electricity, artists, managers, tech support, to run this game. This is their livelihood. Tier at this time is costly, but I am more willing to pay in tier for my land monthly. I understand the cost as it is now. If you want more, you pay more. Simple, however as it was suggested in a previous post.
A. Earning bonus land by , earning land by recommended places to visit by high point count in positive rating of avatars (everyone being a paid account now that’s possible ), by the amount of land you own, most money spent in sl for the month or even community good deeds. Longest time in game, you all get the point. One time incentives to stay and play .. To peruse that dream and make it a community. (we have these in real life, why not in game) And to those who are still playing and their Avatars reach the age of 65 Retirement!! LOL ok,ok, so that was a bit far fetched. *got a bit excited* ~

B. Clear categories for bonus land earning. Basically a Spotlight on promising business or avies.

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Setting The Record Straight. I have read previous posts, were claims of certain lots making more money then others. Example given: games and stores make money, where services do not. *clears throat* Having run a big mall and been co-owner of one, I can tell you they don’t all make money… the longer your in a mall the more chance you have at profit, but it can take years. Games, do not always make money .. Sometimes your paying out .. Sometimes you make a lil ( and I do mean a lil). The amount of time it takes and cash up front for a big operation, the longer it takes to see a profit. Just because a lot of money changes hands .. doesn’t mean they are making money at the end of the day. To penalize all in a category, would see a reduction in malls and gamming. I think bonuses for “Categories” alone, may not be the best idea. Service lots have abilities to charge and accept tips.

This has been my 2 cents take it or leave it… but I do feel better for sharing.