Net worth, Leaders Board, Dodo

an important issue that was raised in the WA, where philip was mobbed last night and attacked with a light sabre, was the disappearance of the net worth leaders board. while promoting SL as a place where people can make money, a place with a vibrant economy, etc, the only important metric in the leaders board is being removed.

the leaders board for net worth provides very important information to people who are playing or hoping to play the L$=USD game in any respect. it shows which major players are dumping L$ and which ones are amassing. it is important for people who are caught in these players wake to be able to see what they are doing. of course some major players would love to hide this info. some have been able to do so successfully exploiting the anonymity of GOM L$ trading, something the LL exchange could remedy. AS IF in real life i would ever be able to post an effectively anonymous trade for a security or currency! while LL is not protecting us from market manipulation, and arguably failing in stabilizing the value of the currency, it shouldn’t take away our few tools to understand what is happening.

in regards to weekly leaders, players who often show up in this list are revealed as potentially being involved in something lucrative. hiding this information now stifles competition to these players. The niche they have found is protected a little longer from upstarts. hiding the names of the top most successful players makes the market less competitive. nothing can be said for high end scripting services rendered in US dollars, but at least this part of the board offered some indication of the consumer economy in sl.

some would argue that this information is private. privateness is a socially defined boundary. participation in SL's economy != solitaire. it is a public participation in the community. therefore economic statistics are not inalienably private. The thresholds of privateness or publicness are socially determined, in this case LL also having a heavy hand in the decision. i believe those who are successful to the degree that they are market movers must forego their privacy in deference to fairness and accountability in a free market. creating a two way mirror that shields the L$ affluent engenders exploitation and unfair protection from competition for succesful players, and retards innovation.

the net worth leaders board is important to identify those who are heavily shorting or going long on the L$ so consumers and smaller investors alike can benefit from this knowledge. the leaders board is important to identify emerging “industries” or “markets” in SL.

this financial disclosure should extend to the new L$ currency exchange. large buy and sell orders should definitely be public knowledge (i would certainly like to know where alby or surina are shorting and where they are going long, very much like I can fly in world and see what market makers like anshe or hiro are setting for land prices). on that note, groups land holdings should also appear on the leaders board, particularly grid land. suddenly it will be apparent to all that owning 2 sims on the grid is nothing compared to land traders, and the land market will become more transparent.

the point of discussion should not be whether the market makers and movers should be disclosed, the question should be what % of the population should be considered! Top ten was great when the population was 2000 players. Perhaps it should now be scaled up to top 200? (top 0.5 %)

in real life we have a combination of policies and press protecting the common interest. for lack of these institutions in SL, we should not over look technology’s ability to provide those same services.

… information wants to be free?...

(late night post. i hope it makes sense. it looks like it's too long to be clear and concise. ulrika and oz might not read it )

My opinion is that its really no one elses business what anyone has in their account, top earners or not. I think the leaderboards should have been nerfed in 1.2 when the economy changed.

I agree. I just wish the IRS would agree... and the SEC... and the FBI...

Dear Government: Why won't you let me funnel the proceeds of my securities fraud to my swiss bank account via my reputable banker, Osama bin Laden? It's a private matter.

Very obtuse.

We were talking about in game leaderboards, not the fucking IRS (by the way, some of us arent Americans). As I said, it is not of anyone's concern what you have in your Linden Dollar account. The Linden Dollar has no value. It may well be of concern TO THE RELAVENT AUTHORITIES once you have chosen to change into USD. But it still isnt the business of any other resident to know what you have in your SECOND LIFE ACCOUNT.

Which is what I said in the first place. But I'll say again for your benefit. But then, since you're drawing parallels between game monopoly money and Al Quaeda, I fear no amount of talking to you will make a lot of difference.

That you are unable to comprehend the analogy between the SEC and SL concerns proves that I'm just wasting my breath here. That you are incapable of grasping the simple concept of market manipulation of the L$ proves that you don't understand.

Isn't it fun dismissing other people? Let's do some more of it. You start with the absolutely ridiculous proposition that a person's account balance should be completely private information. I cite real world examples where account balance and other financial details are most certainly not private. You then refute this by implying that I'm a fuckwit. Kudos to your excellent rhetorical skill, Kris.

Since the Lindens do not police the currency market, it is vital to have the leaderboard information available to ensure that the market is not being manipulated by a couple of malevolent, greedy, or otherwise harmful entities. Removing the leaderboard ensures that there will be no oversight and gives potentially harmful economic manipulators carte blanche to misbehave. Congratulations. You just skullfucked the L$.

You know, I feel I need to respond in more detail here. I'll borrow your delightfully hostile tone for this response too: what's your fucking problem? If you want SL to be nothing more than a glorified IM program for middle-aged women who can't fit in their party jeans, then by all means, let us kill the L$. However, a strong currency is necessary in order for SL to cease to be yet another retarded Sims clone. A strong currency is a requisite for the formation of a stable, self-perpetuating, collaborative community.

You already did that fine with your first post in response to mine.



Really? Show me where I said anything of the sort? And on the rhetorical skills... as I say... refer to your first response to my simple opinion. Pot. Kettle. Black.



Right. And that's your opinion. I stated mine very simply. If you hadn't decided to ridicule it in such an obtuse and sarcastic manner, you most certainly wouldnt have evoked the response you got. Funny how that works, huh?

Funny how it works, eh? I guess it's always justified hostility when you're the one being a jackass.

i appreciate that you have an opinion, kris. but can you support with an arguement for the sake of discussion here? i agreed with philip and others present this was something worth discussion. that's why it wasn't a poll

how about -
if it's not anyone's business - why isn't it anyone elses business? what is so invasive about knowing a player on the leader boards position on the linden $? does this "invasion of privacy" override the communities interest in this player's ability to manipulate the currency.

note, in terms of absolute net worth, it doesn't really figure for players who are making and cashing L$. they never accumulate. it's about players amassing L$ or players with strong positions dumping L$. in terms of weekly change, it figures for people with huge spikes and consequently it identifies movements in L$ towards a certain industry or someone trying to strengthen a L$ position. in the latters regard, i think negative leaders should also be listed.

Simply put, I don't see that you should have any more right to know my in game worth than you have to know whats in my personal bank account irl.

Yes, I read your counter arguments to that. I just don't agree, I'm afraid. I don't even agree with your "public participation in the community" bit - as far as I'm concerned my "participation in the community" is merely a necessary side effect of wanting to use the platform.

if your participation is merely a necessary side effect of wanting to use the platform, like last time i can recommend far superior software to accomplish what you need.

how SL differs from those other environments is it's sharedness, it's intersubjectivity. furthermore if you are participating in the L$ aspect of the game, whether for USD or not, you cannot do so without participating in the community. if you are simply using sl as a creative outlet, and even if you do choose to share your creativity with others, while you aren't participating in the L$ game, you could never possibly accumulate any significant amount of L$ to figure on the leaders board. your stipend just couldn't do it.

i'm sorry, but if you are going to disagree that participating in the economy is not a public act, you will have to go the extra mile and make an arguement of how that is the case. it seems to me commerce is entirely public, and that is why in rl it is regulated. perhaps this is "game" commerce with "game" money, but then it is also "game" publicness, and i want to know how do you argue yourself around "game" accountability to the "game" community.

Eeeeet iz zee dodo! Kill eeeeet!

What is it that I 'need', Jauani?




Not arguing with that!



A lot of the real life scenarios that are constantly presented around this argument fail to make the distinction between businesses and individuals. Yes, you can view my company accounts irl. But you can't view my personal bank account.

Since SL makes no such distinction either - then I simply don't feel it is right to publish that info. Taking the usual example (sorry Aimee!), While Preen may indeed be Aimee Weber, not everything that Aimee Weber has or does is Preen. If SL allowed/forced Preen to be an actual corporation somehow, then yes, by all means publish 'corporate' finances. But why should she disclose all her personal dealings for the scrutiny of others because somewhere in there all her business finances are lumped in?

As you quite rightly surmise, the leaderboards in their current format don't and won't affect me. But that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion on them, even if it differs from yours or everyone elses

here's a a paste of a portion of a reply i gave to you many moons ago:
you mentioned you had tried some of those. but you didn't mention which. if you haven't already, virtools is probably what you are looking for.



i wasn't really after an opinon. everyone has tons of those. i wanted an arguement. and you make a good one in this post. (perhaps someone with more knowledge of income tax in the various countries can help out. i'm under the impression anyone can request certain kinds of income tax information under the right to information)

the leaders board, if aimee were to ever appear on it, wouldn't include information such as who was giving her money or where she was spending her money. it would strictly indicate that she had taken a very strong poisiton on the L$ either over a long term on the over all board, or a short term position on the weekly board.

taking a position of 3 million L$ is not a private "um let's go buy some bling" kind of account balance. it is a business balance. nobody has use for 10 000 USD in sl for leisure purposes. a positive or negative weekly change of 200 000 L$ is not "+3: rating you are cute". it's a business position indicating a long or short position, or an indication of a good week of sales.

your idea of seperating business and pleasure accounts is something really rick suggested last night as well. it's an interesting but complicated idea, as in rl.

But does it really mean anything at all? What does that actually tell you? I'm really no economist, so I genuinely don't know. I just don't see as you can actually get anything useful from the leaderboard at all.

I've held and passed L$ for friends so they don't appear on the leaderboards! People have alts and friends holding and juggling small amounts of money to stay off the radar. It's not really an indicator of anything other than 'money changed hands'. It doesn't indicate a business dealing and it doesn't indicate a personal expense. The mere existence of the leaderboards and the speculation that constantly surrounds them actually encourages people to resort to means to stay off them. That can't be good for your economic transparency or help you make any sense of what it tells you?



As I said, I don't think it indicates anything other than 'money changed hands'. I've held over a million Lindens before. Wuzn't all mine, wuzn't all from the same sources, wuzn't all from business dealings of any kind. (Wuz because my subliminal forum icon works, ya know). What would my suddenly having it and appearing on the boards actually tell you? You don't know where it's come from, why I have it or where it's going next. How can you predict anything or act on that?

What would Aimee appearing there tell you? Did Preen have a bumper week? Did Aimee collect for charity? Did Philip pay her a hefty bribe to keep quiet? Did she feel like appearing on the leaderboard for a week to get people talking?



Was this on the forums? Would be interested to read it. As I said, I wouldn't be against transparency for commerce if it really were possible to make that distinction.

But can and will something like that be implemented? Is it in the interests of SL? Or its residents?

For example,

if you want to sell copies (just trying to make the distinction between a 'production line' and a one off sale) of a product,

or you want to set more than one plot of land for sale in more than one sim (again trying to make the distinction between a casual resident sale and a land trader),

then you must form a 'holding company' to do it, which would be like a group, except that it wouldn't have restrictions on number of members and stuff, and it would have an account of its own.

You would inject your personal finances into your holding company, and from there, each and every transaction in and out could be publically available. Which would be fascinating for those who are interested in the commercial side of SL (imagine, being able to see comparative sales trends on an hour by hour basis between all SL businesses?!)

I'm sure this is full of glaring holes. Its completely off the top of my head. I'm sure it would be technically complicated to implement, too, as you say. But it's the sort of solution I'd require to convince me that economic transparency was viable while respecting personal privacy.

Jauani, you're making me spend entirely too much effort and brain power on this. I wish I hadn't posted at all now

The Net Worth leader board is pretty useless as it is pretty much filled with the alts of the money changers. It is kinda nice to know where you stand monitarily (woot, panic dumping has moved me from 87 to 76 overnight) but I can live without it.

What this will do is hide the actions of the moneychangers from public view, most importantly LL money changer. Perfect way to conduct business out of the light of day.

I'm glad to see the leaderboards go. These are all individuals, not companies. Sure some are businesses, but there is a huge difference between a business and a company. A company is a business, but a business is not always a company. I pay my taxes as a sole trader in the UK, that means that no one but the taxman and myself are able to look at my finances. Why should it be public info here? I have always found it kinda crazy that you cannot paste conversations here from in world, yet your finances are on a public board!

I say, ditch the whole Leader Board. Name a good use it still has? Because I can't think of any. I used to care where my standing was when the world was smaller, but now days, eh, it doesn't matter. And I really don't care about what other people are doing or where they are.

Does it encourage people to do anything? Do you sign more people up to get on the leader board, or for the money?

It seems like each thing on the leader board, has either been dropped with no benefits (i.e. ratings) or has been provided for with other ratings to help get people to do it (i.e. referrals).

So... what's the point of still having a Leader Board?

I suspect if businesses in SL want to compete for rankings, it can be done with an uberGroups system of the future and a Resident-run board. Then, company names can be entered instead of individual avatars.

This is a good idea... like a stock market kinda dealy. There are better ways of displaying that kinda information than the 3 year old Leader Board.

The leader board is one joke. It can be gamed anyway.

What I would like to see is some useful general statistics:

How many L$ are in circulation?

How many L$ are on top 1% accounts?

How many L$ sit on top 10% accounts?

How many L$ are for sale?

What is the L$ total on accounts of currency sellers and banks? This could be listed as aggregate (GOM + Ginko + IGE + SLEx + SLB + ANSHECHUNG.COM + ?).?

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and more of the same...still laughing at this .thanks for a great laugh

Does anyone know the current net worth of Linden Lab/Linden Research? I did some googling, but I found nothing. This could be due to the fact that Linden Lab is a private company - or as Philip put it last October, "By pre-public, I mean that Linden Lab is not a public company..."

Publicly traded companies are required to disclose financial info, private companies are not (unless an IPO is in the works). Even though Linden Lab participates in the public community, as far as I can tell, they aren't required to disclose their net worth to the public.

Individuals who run businesses on SL are also private, except for one company which has begun to trade publicly. The private individuals should not be required to disclose their net worth on a leaderboard.

because the SL economy is played in L$, and not USD, participants in the L$=USD are involved in currency trading. the nature of the economy forces players to make decisions on holding short or long positions on the L$. currency exchanges and stock exchanges are very public.

in fact, this is where gom can transform itself. it can act as a broker for people and act on the market on their behalf, very much like my trades on the RL market are all listed under my broker.

i am very aware that people game the leaders board, as anshe, kris and others point out. people game all kinds of things for personal benefit. people game alt accounts. should we block all alts? should we block basic accounts for good measure? people game the open endedness of LSL. should we get rid of that? no! against the arguement of "pointlessness because it's gamed," i say improve it so it can't be gamed.

the benefit of a true capitalist society can only be realized when capital flows. the problem with capitalism in RL and in SL is those with priviliged positions are able to further benefit from their privilege by accumalating capital and becoming able to leverage even more from the social network. hence the adage "it takes money to make money."

those who are constantly cashing in L$ are letting the capital move. those who amass L$ for a future time are affectively manipulating the supply demand curve. while i wouldn't want to see that choice restricted, i don't understand why the common player should not be able to protect themselves and their meager L$=USD decisions with some handy information about top end L$ movement.

kathmandu, half of the top 10 are indeed money changers accounts. this is why i also propose the question that perhaps now that the player base is around 40 times the size it was when the leaders board was still somewhat relevant, perhaps its format should change. maybe it should be top 100? or top .5%? or some other figure. that would definitely help prevent gaming.