Popular Places tab goes, but the Places tab remains

Get rid of popular place oui I agree. But NOT get rid of Places. Many , many people use places not all tab for faster access to exactly what they are looking for.

My vote is to rank by parcel acquisition date.

Phil, I would not mind getting rid of places completely,

LL the business has an interest in newbie retention, so giving resident-recommended favorites is one way to help. If newbie retention leads to more landowning residents, that's good for the business. So long as it's not a FIC thing, and really reflects the kind of places that residents frequent, then fine. But if it becomes paid, that would be problematic.

A long time ago they actually had a tab in the search that was Linden Picks. And most of the paces in it were pretty good. Classics like the Ivory Tower of Primatives. The down side was it never changed (or rarely). Same 20 or so places permanently there. Just wasnt very useful and I think the excuse given when they did away with it was something to the effect it wasnt time efficient for a Linden to do anymore.

I see little difference between it and this new system other than people can buy thier way onto the new one.

Nope thi sis another bad idea in a long sad history of bad ideas.

I thought of the newbie-retention angle. That in no way even begins to excuse funneling the customers into the hands of a chosen few.

It makes a mockery of classifieds, as well.

coco

People need to get it through their heads that the showcase isn't for us. It's for new users, and as someone already pointed out, it's probably intended to help with keeping new users interested enough to stick around. In that regard it makes perfect sense for LL to pick whatever places they think will interest new users and will aid that purpose. It doesn't have to be fair. It only has to be effective.

It isn't a replacement for traffic, but it's probably fair to say that it's a direct response by LL to having the purpose they wanted traffic to serve destroyed by unscrupulous cheats. If you don't like it you might want to place the blame where it belongs. They gave us an objective metric and people like you ruined it for everyone else.

Whatever LL comes up with to replace traffic will have to be impossible to game. If it isn't then people will just subvert it and game it into uselessness, just like everything else they've tried. Should it surprise anyone that they want a way to promote some popular places that residents can't destroy? Given the history of voting and traffic I don't blame them for taking matters into their own hands.

Not being for us is one thing. Being flat-out working against us is another.

LL shouldn't be funneling customers to select resident businesses, period.

We pay SL so they can take our money and use part of it on significant manhours picking and hyping their own choices? To the detriment of those not chosen?

That is just so wrong on so many levels.

Phil, I would not mind getting rid of places completely, but we have had repeated complaints of people's parcels not showing up in the all search. Until that is reliable, I would not get rid of places.

I cannot think of an *objective* criteria that makes sense to use as a ranking factor other than age, because older places probably should be rewarded for sticking around so long. So many places are fleeting, come and go. Why NOT age?

Parcel size? Why should big lots get an advantage?

Number of objects for sale? Easily gamed.

What objective factor would you use?

Not being for us is one thing. Being flat-out working against us is another.

LL shouldn't be funneling customers to select resident businesses, period.

We pay SL so they can take our money and use part of it on significant manhours picking and hyping their own choices? To the detriment of those not chosen?

That is just so wrong on so many levels.

I'm under the impression that the Showcase will feature interesting places like Apollo, Greenies, SL Botanical Gardens, that Mars sim, the evil carnival rides place, etc, along with educational places like NCI, Ivory Tower, Shelter, etc. I'd be totally fine with that.

I disagree, Coco. High retention rates benefit everyone. The more users SL has, the more potential customers every one of us has.

Plus businesses, like clothes and furniture stores. They are already there.

Ah, gotcha (not inworld at the moment.) Well in that case, I would absolutely take out the clothes and furniture businesses (and I'm sure skins, hair, etc etc as well.) I'd make it a stipulation that the Showcase be composed of basically "non-profit" parcels. I mean, Apollo has a few things for sale down in their little shop, but basically the entire sim is devoted to being a cool place.

Darkeness and Cristalle:
But there is already a replacement for the Places tab. The All search with Places selected returns only places, and with a good ranking system. It works well.

Cristalle:
Bearing in mind that a search system (not a directory system) has to rank things according some criteria that can be changeable over time, as places change in various ways. Parcel acquisition dates can't be used for that, or the oldest parcels will always be at the top and get the most business, which would be very unfair - as unfair as alphabetical listings.

It isn't a replacement for traffic, but it's probably fair to say that it's a direct response by LL to having the purpose they wanted traffic to serve destroyed by unscrupulous cheats. If you don't like it you might want to place the blame where it belongs. They gave us an objective metric and people like you ruined it for everyone else.

QFGC

that's a new one on me.

I have a problem with the Fashion recommendations. But the "hot spots" - no.