Universal Sign for 'FREEBIE'...???

Is there such a thing? A gesture or....anything?

I was working on a stairway from the floating dock I'd already furnished with a sailboat and two Jetskis, up to the cliff where I'd put a house. From the corner of my eye I saw movement--an avatar had landed on one of the Jetskis.

The message 'you must wait for Ponsonby Low to sit first' (or words to that effect) were generated by the Jetski.

In not-native-speaker English, the person asked if he could ride. I immediately set the Jetski for sale at L$0, and typed that he could just click on the Jetski and buy it for L$0, it was a freebie. (I had gotten it in a freebie box of vehicles, at Yadni's, I think, months ago.)

But I couldn't make him understand. The typed words 'freebie' and 'click on it' just weren't getting across.

(Yes....I have considered the possibility that this was a griefer who was only pretending to misunderstand. But that river DOES look like fun to Jetski in, and it leads to a dozen or more ocean sims, so....even a griefer would probably grab the freebie, wouldn't he?)

I thought of minimizing SL and opening Paint and making a sign "Freebie, just click on it to buy for L$0", with a big arrow---then paying $10 to download it and put it on a sign and put the sign over the Jetski.

But...I had more work to do on the stairs and decided not to.


It's not like this is bothering me, exactly. But I was just wondering...was there some simpler way of getting the message across that I'm simply not seeing?

I haven't met anyone, no matter what their native language. that didn't understand the word "free"

You could have given him one by dragging it onto him from your inventory.

Not a very interesting answer, sorry. But possibly a solution that went whooshing past you in the heat of trying to do something with that darned jet ski that was already sitting there. Happens to me all the time.

$L 0!!

The word "FREE" is very well known in many cultures. Even if it's not their language, people "catch on" to what "FREE" means.

0L$ works too.. but I find that if a vendor says the word "FREE", people will click the hell out of it, without stopping to see if the item is copyable or not.

Among the most useful things you can make for your shop, are the following signs.

NEW!
FREE!
COMING SOON!

The following "icons" seem to communicate best in store signage.

"a wrapped present" = "buy as gift"
"A red pushpin" = "a landmark"

Less common, but just as communicative, are the following.

"A green checkmark" means "yes"
"A red X" means "no"

(useful when disclosing permissions)

"a plywood cube" = prims
http://tinyurl.com/d3betx

On the subject of "standards" in SL, the following are my observations of some of the standard ways that many content creators communicate things.


a small green circle on the bottom of a rectangular framed object, indicates "this item is actively scripted, and online" (subscribe-o-matic signs and apez vendors both use this). Adding the "green dot" to things appears to increase people's comfort when clicking.

Clickable items should, generally speaking, make a noise to confirm the click. It connects the act of clicking, to the result. Ironically a landmark or notecard giver that makes a small sound when you click it, seems to be less likely to be muted, than one that doesn't. There are a couple of "standard SL sounds" which you can dig out of some of the older library items.. that the Lindens used to accompany inventory giving.

Stone pillars with floating icons are accepted almost subconsciously by most users as "information points", and seem to be considered "safe to click". For an example of the stone pillars that Linden Lab uses, check out the infohub in Plum.

Vendor arrows (animation demos, slideshows, etc) should point left and right, not up and down.

true.i don't think there could be a better symbol for the word free than the shape those four letter make..
it may even be more popular that they symbol SEX

Put the words "Free" and "Sex" and "if you right click/buy" and they'll figure it out, I guarantee it


Almost sounds like you got some of the old Hidden Lakes region land, I lived out there and loved that they had about 30 sims worth of connected waterways and connected roads. Its south of Help Island, gorgeous place but yes, you do get the wandering newbies, which is cute.

what winter said, in addition

vendors with arrows should include numbering of their pages, this lets your customer know how many items are there, when they can stop, and free it up faster from window shoppers vs interested buyers in high volume locations. try not to overload these, customers get bored going through huge lists of unrelated items, but even focused items like animations can be monotonous to browse in long lists, break them up, or categorize them.

I find a red 'no' symbol (circle with slash through it) works better than other methods for denoting permissions along with the green check

manila price tags seem to be universally accepted for showing price (and are great if you want an antique shop atmosphere.)

starburst labels with bright colors (usually red or yellow) are great for drawing attention to things like 'new', 'sale', and 'free'. yes it's cliche, but it's universal.

*facepalms*

Yes, of course. As you kindly suggested, I was all afluster in the confusion of the moment. And later I was just...dumb, I guess. (But next time, I'll remember!)

I swear to goodness, I typed that at least three or four times in the course of the conversation.

(But if the person didn't read English and was relying on a translator, who knows if it made it through...)

Everyone who replied, these are all really good suggestions (and in fact I saved the posts into Word). Harmony--this might not be Hidden Lakes since it's on the Atoll continent, but then I'm no expert at SL geography.

Anyway, thanks, all.

Not a bad idea for someone to create a logo for 'freebie' actually.

How about a big green 0 with a dollar sign inside it?

ETA: Come to think of it, maybe add a (red?) slash through it as someone else suggested.

Otherwise, some newbies fixated on "how do I get lindens in here" might focus on the $ sign to the exclusion of all else...

The logo ideas (both the Yes, Freebies and No, No Freebies) are excellent.

I mean, you can't blame new people from wanting freebies (and indeed the prospect of Tons of Free Stuff probably brings more people to SL than we know). But at the same time, it's reasonable for shopkeepers to want to have more time to concentrate on their business without having to redirect freebie-hunters all the time....

PL that is a great thought - shopowners without any freebies could put that logo in their search engine graphic, and on a sign in front of their store if they wanted to. I hadn't thought about it as a way of quickly saying "nope no freebies here, move on."

/me thinks of hobo pictograms carved into fence posts and wonders if SL newbies will adopt their own logos to paint a path to freebies too. hehe

Ah ok, I'll have to take a looksie on the map

Universal sign for a freebie?

Ruth Avatar in a red plaid schoolgirl outfit

i love trying to convey info with a simple icon:

Nina, that's genius: a clear 'no poseballs on this furniture' that must save you from a lot of 'do these come with poseballs?' IMs.

(Or actually this may show my ignorance of poseballs---maybe it's only 'no sex poseballs'. But whichever it is, it does convey the information very succinctly to those who buy such furniture frequently.)

Harmony: I guess I can say: it's Sawdel.

I like the 'menued' icon... that's nice.

I also saw a fun trick that Xcite uses, touch the vendor picture and it flips to an extend text info texture.

now if only I could find a simplified way to iconize multilingual menus (I built a great drop in system, so people could have menus in their own language, and had some friends do translations for a few)

thanks
the icon is indeed intended to indicate that there are no poseballs of any kind. at one time the lack of poseballs confused many people, fortunately not so true anymore.

localised menus! that sounds sexy as hell. if i had a feature like that i think i would overlay a different flag on the corner in each menu in the icon.

Use national flags?

hah you're both geniuses (why didn't I consider that, you see it all over the web!)

I musta been too close to the problem...

ETA:
@Nina:
it does require a different method of building menu's. one that never references the actual text of a button, but rather it's index, and compares for actions from there. all read from notecard.

if I ever get around to posting the code I'll try to remember to drop you a copy, currently it need lots of cleanup, but the final should run as it's own link_messaged script, and be easy to integrate.

Mu first reaction to the No Poseballs icon was that it menat No *Couples* Poseballs/animations - because of the Pink and Blue in the icon.

That was my second thought.

But to prevent any confusion, maybe the icon should have different colors than blue and pink for 'no poseballs at all' and keep the pink and blue for 'no couples poseballs'.

In any case, I think Nina had a brilliant idea, well-executed. I'd think that all furniture makers would be interested in this (and to toss a few L$s her way would be gracious!)