ratings reform revisited

I said it before, I'll say it again:

Rate e-bay style. That's proven successful.

Drop the entire ratings system it is pointless and the main people that have profited from it are hoes, err escorts.

You're up early for a Saturday morning, babycakes... and thanks for the chuckle!

I didn't drink enough last night

Its quite simple, actually. Social players with no urge to build, sell or have a second job typically have no need for land. Having to pay $10 per month for a premium account for a bigger stipend helps keep the electricity on at Linden Lab.

The problem with the old rating system is that by rate-mining, people with $9.95 "one time fee" accounts could get the equivalent of a premium account stipend without paying. It sounds harsh, but I'm afraid this is a simple case of "you SHOULD get what you pay for." If everyone had done the $9.95 one time fee and rate mining, instead of paying the $10 per month for a premium account, Linden Lab would have been headed for financial ruin, and NONE of us would be having any fun!

People often tend to forget that LL is a business, and also tend to think they have an unlimited supply of RL money - this is not the case. They need to turn a profit. Without people paying for land and premium accounts, they will cease to exist. This isn't about taking away social player's fun, but a basic account is just that - for the casual user who only spends a few hours a week on Second Life. Services like GamingOpenMarket are there for these players who want more than the basic stipend. For ~US$2 per week paid to GamingOpenMarket, you can get L$500, or the equivalent of a L$500 stipend. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee!

Regards,

-Flip

They are notoriously tight lipped about discipline. As it stands now, and has been since the beginning, you are never even informed if the person you're reporting was disciplined or let off the hook. You get just those vague emails saying they are looking into it, and then that it has been resolved, the latter being curiously devoid of any real info. I would really like to see something public, like you see in local newspapers - "so and so was found guilty of <x>" - I think if people knew that their name and the offense they were found guilty of would be made public, most people, save for maybe the most hardcore griefers, would quit probing the edges of the ToS, but I am pretty sure they would never consider that either. It seems protecting the "bad guy" is paramount.

I can surmise from reading some posts in this threat that some would prefer to do away with the entire system of ratings. Isn’t a large part of our stippend based on ratings? So in affect your asking for ppl to do away with even more of their stipends. I do not believe that will receive any better of a reception than the last stippend decrease did.

These forums tend to lean to very economic/money side of SL with that in mind I cannot help but wonder if anyone has thought this threw?

How will this affect those that just play socially now. Wipe out part of their income, wipe out associated sales that are drawn from that income.

I do not see how such suggestions are aiding in moving SL in a positive direction for the greater good.

Cat

I'm all for removing negatives and bonuses, but then shouldn't a positive rating occur for free? With no financial impetus, it makes sense. For now, I'd just remove negatives and keep the cost of rating since its one of the few remaining L$ sinks.

What is Linden Lab gong to do to provide adequate sinks for L$ in the economy? Land is now being sold ONLY for US$. Ratings are barely used any more due to the cost. I'd wager to say that's the lion's share of the L$ sinks that have been removed with nothing to replace them. That's not good.

Where is the L$ coming out of the system? Classifieds? $30/week to list your place of business? We clearly need some viable L$ sinks in the near future, or the value of the L$ will plummet. Please share plans to avoid this happening!

Regards,

-Flip

Darn! I miss the last time we got wasted together:

If you eliminate the negative ratings given then you eliminate a way for us to tell who is a rating griefer and who isn't. I use negative ratings given as a guide for who not to buy from. I don't do business with griefers in any shape or form.

One of the things I don't like about the current rating system, is that there's no way to provide context for the rating given - making them somewhat arbitrary & meaningless.

Imagine if E-Bay only had Negative & Positive ratings, with no place to give a short "feedblack blurb". I don't think the ratings would mean as much. What's more, with ebay - its also nice that the person being rated has a short space to provide a rebuttal to the rating given.

I often scan ratings of a person I'm thinking of doing buisness with on ebay, just to get an overall feeling.

I think that's what is missing from our current ratings system. I'd very much like to know more about what you have planned for the replacement system, and if it includes something like this.

Having ratings are only weakly useful today, and if you designed it right, they have the potential to be really useful in the future.

Blinks

Ok, lets move everything back to the way it was. 1 buck per rating, and increase the bonus to 1500. Some of us are not creative enought to make items that sell. Many of us depended on the normal bonus. I see this proposed system as helping only a few people.

That is a formula for an entrenched FIC.

Better yet, just scrap the idea of a ratings or reputation system altogether. We don't need y'all wasting your time on such a feature. It'll never actually do anything useful for us.

Take ratings out of the system and have done.

I totally agree. Honestly I could care less what peoples ratings are and don't even look at them. I am surprised ratings have become such a big deal. There are more pressing issues that need to be taken care of...

I should qualify my statement by saying the stipends and bonuses should work like welfare to begin with. People who just want to shop and party can get the weekly stipend to spend. Those of us that choose to work, and earn some percentage more than the stipend, should be denied the benefit.

We need LL to supply our customers, especially newbies, with some money, but we're ending up with most it in the end anyway. I say some money, not a huge amount, we can always sell it back into the pool so that our customers pay us real money for the fake money that they turn around and give us for virtual products and services.

Oh and I don't see the loss of the rating sink as being very signifigant. Not enough ratings are assigned to makes much a difference in the money supply.

So, as a seller, if you feel there's inflation, raise your price a bit.

In other words, create inflation.