How Many Islands have gone so far?

Another thread was closed with no reason given.

Dear X Linden,
if you have a problem with the numbers published here, due to the footnote* you provide on the statistics page

(*: Please be aware that the Islands Added figures are not currently an accurate reflection of short term change and are therefore misleading. This is because of the way in which they are calculated and will tend to cause the figures to look significantly worse than they actually are (either by overcounting in some cases or under counting in others). In addition, the many Openspace conversions will significantly drop the total island count exaggerating the change in numbers. We are looking at changing this page to provide more accurate data soon.)

then it is up to you to fix your statistic page. This thread is supposed to make YOUR official data available in the forum, in compiled form, to make it easier for the forum users to keep track of and discuss the development.

This post is in the correct forum and is related to the topic .
---------------------------------------------------------------

The number of islands peaked on Oct. the 28th: 26665.
Island growth in the days 29th-31st Oct: -126.
Island growth in November: -1977. - I.e. an average of 66 islands removed per day.

Island growth so far in December, as of December 1st: -64.
Island growth so far in December, as of December 2nd: -120.
Island growth so far in December, as of December 4th: -190.

Please keep in mind, that the number is the total growth of islands (growth = added - removed).

Er.. That's kinda EXACLTY the point of these threads.

Please don't change the way this is reported.

When is a statistic not a statistic? When it doesn't suit your purpose.

They were happy with this formula for years. They may be right that the calculation isn't accurate but it's pure spin one way or the other, the figures when it was all growth were using the formula that they are now discrediting.

/me scribbles 'years' over the word 'months'.

They could make it more accurate by giving both the "growth" figure - i.e. the number of new islands - and the "loss" figure - i.e. the number of islands (presumably mostly OSs at the moment) abandoned, rather than just giving a net figure. For real accuracy of course they'd also have to give the figures for OSs converted to full sims.

I wouldn't have thought it would be very hard for LL to provide these figures, but I can't see them doing it, because it's pretty clear the figures wouldn't look any better for them than the current ones, and the vague explanation of why the current figures are misleading is probably less damaging than letting people see exactly how many OSs have been handed back.

Probably six numbers would suffice:

new full sims added
existing full sims abandoned
new homesteads added
existing homesteads abandoned
new openspaces added
existng openspaces abandoned

Matthew

"…This is because of the way in which they are calculated and will tend to cause the figures to look significantly worse than they actually are…"

actually because of the way they are calculated, aren't LL also saying that 'has the figures are currently calculated the island loss could be even worse than shown'?

I think the error, from some comments attributed to Jack, is that when converting four openspaces to a full sim, the loss of four openspaces is recorded in the stats before the additional full sim is recorded.

e.g. let's assume a very quiet week when only one set of openspaces is traded in at the begining of the month.

At the beginning of the week, increase in sims is 0
On monday the four openspaces are traded in, and the new fullsim created. Only the reduction in openspaces is recorded so the increase in sims is -4
On tuesday, the new fullsim is recorded so the increase in sims is now -3.

Overtime this all corrects itself, and this inaccuracy doesn't really change the overall trends in the statistics.

We are looking at a loss of around 64 sims per day at the moment. Let us be generous to LL, and assume all 64 are openspaces being converted to full sims. In which case the conversion and loss of those 64 sims results in the unrecorded creation of 8 new sims - i.e. the daily figures may be out by about 8 sims.

So the true figure for 4 December may be closer to -180 rather than -190, which still doesn't look very good for LL.

In practice some of the lost sims will be both openspaces and full sims being abandoned rather than converted so the inaccuracy may not be that large.

Matthew

I think transfers are causing a problem too, but as Matthew said, these stats will at some point sort themselves out.

If they are conversions then there is no real change to LL. 4 OS is $300 tier, 1 full sim is $295. I expect they have planned for some exodus over the price increase anyway, and based on the price increase they can have 67% abandoned OS before there's financial impact. At the moment there's a 10% reduction in the number of islands, not even close to 67%, and even further from 67% when some of them at least will be conversions.

I made calculation for November with the data they reported assuming about 600 new sims where added in that month.

Also Jack mentioned in a meeting that the convertion ratio to abandon is about 2.5:1

With that published data of -1977 sims lost in November you can assume that 3.150 OS disappeared in November, from which approx. 2.250 where converted to approx 560 new full sims and approx 900 OS where abandoned.

Funny thing is, when I confronted Jack with the numbers at the meeting he said the published data on their website is wrong, there are much less OS gone....funny isnt it

But should the data be correct and December will be the same which I assume, as most people wait till the price increase, to convert or abandon, LL will loose approy 6000 OS by the end of the year, which is approx 50% of all OS on the grid....

So by mid next year most OS will be gone, facing the second increase which most people just are not willing to pay anymore.

LL calculation of getting more money from OS will just poof....as they will get more than 67% OS back. Guess they will look to get more money from another product....wonder where

Island growth so far in December, as of December 6th: -328.

Where did you find that?

However this is narrow thinking. The people being displaced are people who spend money inworld. There's a knock on effect if they leave the world completely. This causes problems in areas where people who don't give a flying fig about openspaces get hit.

So yes, initially conversions may seem to make no difference to LL's bottom line, but a 10% drop in paying customers, rather than those who sign up on freebies and spend a few hours here before getting bored, could well have more serious implications.

Oh.. Has it been matching what's on LL's Economic Stats page? That's still back on December 4th..

The statistics page http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php seems to be behind. Normaly the newest data is on the raw data page http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-data.php (that's where Ciaran Laval's link is from).

Island growth so far in December, as of December 7th: -382.

Looks like all they can handle is approximately 60 per day.

Island growth so far in December, as of December 8th: -501.

Fixed that for you

I sincerely hope that's the case.

Island growth so far in December, as of December 9th: -549.

Is this right? Since the OS announcement, the sim additions is running in the negative hundreds? Wow!

Yep.. On track to have had the grid land mass shrink by about 10% since the openspace announcement by mid next week or so.