Advertising in the Wiki

http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Dreamland+Land+FAQ


Can everyone advertise in the Wiki? Is this allowed? Can I post a FAQ about Hucci? Does this privilage only apply to land dealers? Can I place add something to the wiki about how to adjust my hoochie hair? What about how to sit on my furniture? Just curious.

Yes, a wiki's purpose is too facilitate groups of people sharing information with each other. If you believe it will enhance your business' reputation by posting a page of information in the wiki, go right ahead. Be sure to check it every day as anybody can edit it. In fact, you might want to check it several times a day.

Then again, you might quickly decide that it's too easily griefed. There are no rules against me editing your posted prices. It's a strictly public device after all.

LOL, I was gonna post a comment, and I accidentally erased the page.
Sorry Anshe, I know it seemed intentional, but wasn't. Hope you have the page saved. Truely sorry!!!

DNA

Wikis are designed to be reverted easily. You just have to click the revisions link and copy the content back.

Since tiki has been setup not to allow users to control the permissions on a page, really there is nothing stopping an edit war.

I don't see anything wrong with it as long as it is not being abused --

In other words, I don't think it should be used for "advertising", but maybe as a reference point.

We either need to allow advertising on it or not. There can't be an in between, otherwise it's discriminatory business practices and LL could be open to lawsuit.

I don't think advertising about specific commercial products, services, land deals, etc. is at all appropriate in the SL Support Wiki. Allow advertising in the SL Support Wiki and the support information will get lost in sea of ads, sort of like important email getting lost in spam.

The SL Support Wiki is not an "anything goes" area. There's all sorts of stuff that shouldn't go in the SL Support Wiki and which would be removed by the Linden staff and might result in penalties for those who posted. Support Wiki contents are subject to both the CS and TOS, for example.

Maybe Linden Lab might want to make a separate wiki specifically for use by businesses and other groups and individuals who want to advertise, present product support information, etc. This might be great for the businesses that use it but there are SL users with SL specific web sites that offer similar sorts of services and Linden Lab providing such a service might be undercutting those person's efforts. I'm thinking of Cristiano Midnight's excellent website, sluniverse.com, for an example.

Any group with a sufficient membership - 20 according to one statement and 15 according to another - can create a forum with moderation by the group that could be used for advertising products and supplying product support info. At least one business already does this.

As a practical matter, adding specific business and product info into the regular SL support wiki would make the text search function even less useful for finding SL Help info because of the additional hits that would occur not related to to the SL program interface and policies.

Wow, thank god that important Dreamland FAQ can be restored. I suppose that means it is open season on advertising in the Wiki then?

Ah yes ... that is what it's called, isn't it?

Never mind then. No advertising.

Sorry.. had to vote "Rat's Ass!".. best option I've ever been given in a forum..

Dreamland now comprise more than 5% of Second Life and is one integral part of the game. Providing information about it seemed more than appropriate. Since land ownership in those sims works differently than on the mainland it is helpful to provide one wiki entry to explain it.

After posting this wiki page two months ago I asked two Linden employee to be so kind and review it to make sure it meets standard of the wiki to provide useful and objective information to residents. They were both happy with how it has been posted.

But, well, feel free to try to, yet again, shoot something down that is useful for the community just because it comes from Anshe or can be labeled "commercial". You should make some phone calls to Linden Lab again and sound very "concerned" and "upset". I am sure you only need campaign loud enough and long enough to achieve desired result. You can then pat your shoulders and feel proud as "hero of political correctness" and "guardian of community".

Actually, for me uninformed people only means more money with less work. They will buy my land on mainland and keep moving from sim to sim every month until they find out zoned sims exist. Flipping land on mainland is still more money with less work than running nice sims on Dreamland

I think so to.

My opposition to advertising in the Support Wiki is not in the least directed at Anshe or based on an objection to business or profit making, and as for political correctness, well, I am a free market anarchist; there is no chance in the world that I will ever be considered politically correct save by an infinitesimal percentage of the population.

I suggested that the creation of a separate wiki devoted to resident's private matters of public interest might be appropriate.

I think we have a "slippery slope" problem here, especially with the idea that "free speech" means making other people, such as Linden Lab, provide the means for distributing speech being so common, and the idea that a wiki being publicly editable means that the people paying for it have no say in its contents.

I have just now finished reading the Dreamland entry, my opinion is unchanged; this is not something that should be in the Support Wiki.

I have started a thread in the feature suggestions forum on the creation of a new wiki called Residents' Information Wiki

It is definitely the slippery slope argument on where you draw the line? It has nothing to do with Anshe, other than as an example of it. Should I be able to put a Snapzilla FAQ since it is used by so many people? Should their be an FAQ for the new ROAM device, or those ubiquitous Chimera things? Anshe owns most of the malls in SL - should their be rental FAQs posted in the Wiki about using SL? What is the line?

That's an affirmative.

It makes sense for the wiki to have an explanation of how that kind of land rental works. In fact, it needs a page on land in general: ownership, rental, mainland rental and ownership, private sim rental and ownership, etc.

There is no need to mention a particular business. In fact, doing so invites other businesses to get themselves mentioned as well, it being only fair that if one business is mentioned in the documentation, others should be. Eventually any useful information a new resident might have extracted from the wiki is drown out.

If a business wishes to use a Linen Lab provided venue for advertising, they can purchase a classified advertisment. If they want a free ad, they can use the telehub kiosks.

I don't think a FAQ specifically for a business like this has a place in the official SL Support Wiki. I like SuezanneC's idea of having an additional Wiki for this sort of business-related information. I'm certainly not against entrepreneurs, as I run my own business in SL too, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. There's no denying the Dreamland FAQ might be useful to some, but if we let one business do it we have to let all of them. I imagine the Wiki would get pretty cluttered with thinly veiled advertising in that case.

This, I think, is the appropriate litmus test.

To cite another example, I created a page of "free resources" on the wiki some time ago. This was not motivated by advertising, even though I have some of my stuff on there.

Anyway, the bottom line is if it meets Linden approval, it's probably fine. After all, it's their wiki!

Same with the LSL wiki... almost. There things should be both up to Linden standards and to the local standards. Suffice it to say, I get yelled at a lot there.

Yes, I would consider Snapzilla FAQ one useful addition to the Wiki.

I think it all comes down to appropriate organization within the Wiki tree to properly accomodate such information. Criteria should not be if something is commercial or not, but if it affects many people (= important) and if it is presented in one objective way, as opposed to soap commercials style.

there is no need for new wikis, as you can always add a page to the existing one. I don't think the front page should look like a bunch of advertisements, in fact last time I was there I noticed there seemed to be a lack of info there. However having FAQs that have an example business seems fine to me.. and if competitors want inclusion they can add them selves. If I go and find the list eats up more than the FAQ page I might decide to put the list on another page, that is linked from the FAQ.

As for the edit wars... yes its possible.. but I find wiki's stay more static then static pages in practice...

As for the Anshe's pages they seemed worth inclusion, as would a snapzilla page.

I would see it as ok to have a pages comparing the different services of a type, in a spreadsheat fassion.

As long a the page isn't biased towords any one service in a non factual way, and the data be accurate, I see no problems.

The details that wouldn't fit the spreadsheet format would have to be hosted by the individuals providing the services (not on the wiki).

There are certainly some areas of Second Life that can use more documentation. I think it's wise to provide a place for documentation and FAQs for resident projects; if newcomers are confused and frustrated with something inworld, they're usually confused and frustrated with Second Life.

That said, it's best to help clarify that these creations are not Linden-owned, created, or sponsored. Seeding documentation for resident creations amongst the Linden documentation would probably confuse things; a resident trying to understand how land works probably doesn't need to be solicited with every resident-owned alternative land resource before obtaining the answer they wanted.

So, we made a decision based on three goals:
1) Guides for complicated things in Second Life (even resident creations) is a Good Thing.
2) Mixing Linden documentation and resident documentation is a Bad Thing.
3) Any solution we provide should be available to all.

We've created a "Resident Resources" section of the Wiki, where residents can post FAQs for resident creations, games, businesses, and services. Existing FAQs for resident projects have been moved there.

Hope this helps!