Article: SL Content Creator Locked out of LCO *

You think there is nothing wrong with those comments as the owner of a grid?

Whatever. I did not jump to anything, i posted a message and commented in it. The only person jumping is you.

LOL.

This sounds like you were rezzed yesterday.

Linden CEO/Presidents do not go to 3rd party blogs making comments like that and posting their chat logs. Thinking such a thing is well....stupid.

Stirring up more drama is not jumping? Bored this Sunday afternoon?

I posted a message - it was not 'stirring drama'. Your defense of the issue leading to our exchange here is the only drama happening.

Yea but in SL we generally refer to people by their SL avatar sex, not their RL sex.

I originally rezzed my first avatar the 1st o October, 2005. I know a little about SL, LL and this forum. I know who the posters are that post BS just to keep it all stirred up.

What is stupid is to post something you are completely uneducated about and make resounding comments about it.

Yes, I jumped.......but not on non facts. I jumped on people posting BS as facts..happens here all the time and there is a predictable few who all chim in with equal BS.

BTW, if you want to know about LCO then go there yourself......and for more than a few minutes. If you had left SL when you joined for the same reasons you claim you would not join LCO then you would be non existant. SL was terrible back then.

Indeed however we could have a whole conversation about what gender pronoun to use for the large percentage of people who have genderless avatars and of course the probably larger percentage of people who have many avatars of multiple genders and are using a posting medium that does not identify the persona that they are posting under.

If you acquire the sculpt map, couldn't you generate the model from that?

2003 is a far cry from 2005. SL's stability in 2003 was far beyond what these other grids have going in their ALPHA stage.

Or we could just use the right pronoun.

Don't dismiss it just because it's Prok. Whatever the truth, this has produced a healthy debate regarding alternate grids, content theft, TOS and how to handle your customers, oh and how not to respond on a public blog.

Here is a better discussion regarding the issue here: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/22740-prok-lco-opensim-grid-allegedly.html

Exactly.

I was afk a while pondering this, then realized I wasn't sure this was true. I know that premium members avatars are suspended and removed from the grid for nonpayment, risking loss of their inventory if there's some horrible billing problem -- I've voted for the JIRA on the subject (http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1961). However, I don't know whether the same is true for island owners. Is it? Anyone know? Seems to be another issue to be linked to that JIRA if so.

(Yes, this is a sidebar to the thread. Just something that occurred to me and I wanted to have clarified while it was top of mind.)

But.. but.. but then there'd be less things to argue about!!

LaLa speaks to the matter at hand: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/531823-post99.html

Well 2 weeks ago I bought a couple sims and moved into LCO.

After a week of crashes, builds going poof, no search, group land powers don’t work, etc. I knew I had made a mistake. I wrote to LCO support to cancel my big sim, I was gonna go ahead and keep the $25 a month one just to show some support for them, I told them why I was downsizing and I got a 20 minute chewing out e-mail from the owner for not realizing how hard they worked or how far they had come.

Ummm didn’t they just buy an already existing grid that runs on open source software? Lots of work there. Oh they turned on the money option, no that was on already, OH! they inserted new avatars. There you go. anyway,

I found the e-mail very abusive and rude, in fact I thought I was reading a teenagers forum roast post instead of a business reply from the owner of a company. I replied saying as much and explaining that I was just trying to help by telling them what a new customer was leaving for and what to fix to keep customers.

I got an even longer abuse-O-gram from the owner.
My account was then locked out/ deleted and I was told to wank off.

So because I told LCO support about the things I would like to see fixed my account was deleted and I was banned.

I will say they did give me a full refund of the money my main avatar spent, without my asking! That was a surprisingly classy move. The $25 each my 2 alts spent for game dollars is a small price to pay for the valuable lesson. Never contact LCO support! lol

With all it’s faults LL is still the safest bet for a 3D world if your a content provider.

ROFL

Wow I'm glad I read this thread. Amused the hell out of me (yeah go for it Briana, you big drama lover).

Call me a troll while you're at it!

/me wanders off amused to create my content, slamming the thread shut behind me

I don't know the truth of the situation, and I doubt anyone else does outside of the people directly involved. This is even despite the presentation of the content creator's side by Prokofy, and the presentation of LCO's side by LaLa herself. It's a well-established fact that there are at least 3 sides to every story; one side, the other side, and the truth. That's what courts and the judicial system were designed to wrestle with.

Regardless of the truth of the matter (which sounds to me like VERY poor and VERY amateur business dealings), there are a few things happening that cast a very dark pall on the LCO service. One of them is the OWNER of said service publicly attacking a customer (despite said customer's status -- it is irrelevant), and airing the company's specific dealings with said customer in the public on 3rd-party sites, including posting of private chat logs. That's just so wrong on so many levels, I can't even begin to fathom them. It smacks of amateurism and lack of professionalism to the core.

Despite LL's follies with their customer service policies, the ONE thing they do right is not air a customer's dirty laundry in public, even to defend themselves. It shows a level of respect and restraint that is admirable and refreshing.

We can rant and rave about how much we've been jerked around by LL, but they aren't going to breach our confidentiality with anyone. Some people would think they are entitled to present their case, but many times, the damage it can do to customer goodwill is far greater than any face-saving will allow.

No, sorry, LaLa, you're ultimately responsible for the public face of your business and your dealings with your customers. If they turn sour, you've no one else to blame but yourself. The customer may not always be right, but you aren't winning any points rubbing their faces in it.

How did Prok even know about this unless someone spoke to her? Seems if you want to maintain your privacy on a personal issue like delingent on a bill you would not go public with a known rumor monger who has a blog site. I suspect Simone Stern (her LCO name......I don't know her SL name) is the one likely to "leak" that news flash.

LaLa Legend was publically slandered. She has a right to put her side out. No, it's probably not the best way to accomplish that but aside from some sort of legal action to get the other side of the issue out I can't see another way. She could have kept her mouth (or fingers) silent and let the likes of some of the posters here and other forums rip LCO apart. Most, if not all, of you don't even know what you are talking about. You know as much as I do on the subject.........which is just what has been posted on the internet. And, we all know everything posted on the internet is absolute fact.

Well, if customers want to air their own dirty laundry in public, that's their prerogative. However, there's no call to go out of your way, as a business owner, to throw more gas onto the fire. Personally, I don't care much about a single customer's issues with a company; more often than not, such instances are clearly originated by the customer and they have no one else to blame but themselves. Even still, that's no reason to trash them any further.



I'm not arguing that she does or doesn't have the right. What I am saying is that exercising that right often does more damage than good versus just staying silent on the matter. Besides, when you address someone specifically, you lend credence to their argument, and begin the process of polarizing the public. All it does is fan the flames.

The only two people who need to be discussing this issue are Simone and LaLa. If they can't resolve their issues amicably, then they need to end the business relationship and go their separate ways. At most, LaLa only needs to point to her posted business policies and say "them's the rules". If Simone is going to claim that she had another arrangement with LCO and LaLa, then all LaLa has to say is "produce it, and we'll be glad to honor anything we've legitimately bound ourselves contractually to do". That's it. Don't need to post chatlogs; don't need to post disparaging remarks about a(n ex-) customer. Smile politely, and wish them well on their way, making sure that it is clear that the door is still open for resolution, if it is desired (don't know in this case; maybe it isn't).

Anyway, I am not taking sides in the dispute, just on the unprofessional conduct of the owner of LCO related to it. It's just not the way to run your company.

/me doesn't know the answer to any of those questions.. I assume most of the new 'grids' (which includes a bunch more that will pop up before long) don't have that stuff and some small number do. I'd also add things 'real business plan' and 'experience' to your list. Sure, it's possible that some uberkid in his parents basement can fire up a grid and grow it to be serious competition to SL but I'm not going to bet a whole lot of my RL$ on that just yet, I think.. (That said, I continue to be unhappy about the LL's openspace deal and confused about how it was handled.)

I usually think Talarus is a bit of a nag ( ) but I agree with most of what he's said above.

I've read this thread, and the blog and comments, and I found it difficult to know what actually happened, but this quoted post sort of crystalises it for me. I still don't know what actually happened but the tale in the quoted post means that I don't need to know.

Anyone can set up a grid and charge for sims. It's very easy to do because the software is free to anyone. And that's what is happening. People are seeing that there may be some money to be made and they are setting up grids and charging people for sims. They change a number to offer a lot more prims per sim than SL does, but if many sims are sold, the extra prims will cause real problems - they hope it won't cause problems but they don't know and they are just crossing their fingers. They sell a lot cheaper than SL does to attract the naive and try to make a few bucks before people realise that the grid will never be much good. To attract customers, everything about them is much better (e.g. a lot more prims) and much cheaper but, if they have any sort of success, those things can't be sustained.

Apart from that, I don't believe they have the wherewithall to succeed. I honestly don't think that LL has it either (yet), but LL has a hell of a lot more than the tiny grids have. The wherewithall that I'm thinking of is programming skill. Because of all the continual little problems with SL, I've come to the conclusion that they just don't have good enough programmers. Companies like Google and Microsoft attract the best people, and not companies like LL. But LL is a multi-million dollar company and can attract good quality programmers, though not the best, whereas the little grids have nobody but themselves - using other people's programming - the free software that anyone can use to set up an equally good little grid, and charge people for sims.

In short, they've seen the free software and are trying to take advantage of it (and people) while the going is good, but they are unable to do anything much themselves, and the quoted post even shows how lacking they are in business abilities.

It's possible that one or two may emerge over time and do well, but I doubt it. Imo, they are just opportunists who don't have the abilities to do well. They will make a little bit of money, at other people's expense, before closing down, but that's as far as it will go, imo.

[added]
Back when bulletin boards were the thing, I helped a person to set one up and I asked him why he wanted to set one up. His reply was "for the power". That's another big reason why these little grids emerge - some people just want to be in charge of one - the main man/woman. It was ok with bulletin boards because users weren't paying, but people who set up little grids want to charge people for land, because LL does. They really don't have a chance of success, but they'll get some money from a few people - unfortunately.

For the same reason that when people misused OS's by using them for the top 2 things that the list said not to use them for,and being reminded multiple time that was not there intended use.It was still all LLs fault when LL said our servers can't handle it so we have to change something because people generally can't police themselves.

You are mistaken about the OpenSpaces, but that's another story.