Censorship going a little TOO far?

What is needed is for new residents to immediately have easy access to all the information they need on any subject such as buying land. A more thorough FAQ accessible via the client would be cool.

sweet, Pen. I PMed a note to Jeska on this asking her to post a clarification somewhere, but the Hotline is a better idea. Given how so many businesses in SL are equivalent to sole proprietorship, I can see this issue being a little tricky.


To Lissy: very cool of you to offer classes

To Hiro: i agree. LL needs to make concise and coherant doc available through the client. I didn't discover the forums or the Wiki's for ages after I joined. I understand startup resource constraints, but boy do they make the learning curve steeper than it needs to be.

To Gabrielle: I just don't see these forums as analagous to the media. There are other forums, blogs, and SL newspapers where people can say what they want. I expect the press to be able to say things about Microsoft, but I don't expect microsoft to allow unfettered posting on their own servers. The funny thing here is that LL actually is much more tolerant of us getting nasty to them than getting nasty to each other.

Ahhh...

So NOW.... after we DO publically speak about it more
I see there is talk of forming a new class about land
for newbies. Benifit #1 !

I also better understand that it was mostly the lack of
knowledge from a new buyer that caused them to buy
land which they didn't fully investigate. Which makes
me feel better about .... uh... "this land dealer". Benifit #2 !
ANYONE who is trying to sell their house/land in first
life is going to do EXACTLY the same thing and try to
make it look as attractive as possible. NOTHING is
wrong with that!

Yet, I am still a little unclear on the lack of response
after the sale from this land holder which is a big issue,
and is an important factor when considering who to
do biz with. If any company is going to have poor
service after the sale, I'd like to know! This makes
for a more educated consumer who can steer their
business to the companies who ARE more helpful,
and perhaps if the ones who do not currently have
GREAT support start to lose more biz, then perhaps
they will put more effort in to customer support!
Benifit #3 !

Again, I FULLY support the naming of names !

Gabrielle

True, but I would have thought it would be a wise investment. I am sure that tho it would take resources to integrate a FAQ into the client, or at least a button that opens a browser to a more thorough web based FAQ, that it would lighten the load on livehelpers and liaisons (and forum mods ) suffeciently to warrant it.

The land was misrepresented.

Someone more knowledgeble might have caught on to this fact before buying it. Then again they might not have.

I would think AnsheChung.com bought this sim thinking they could themselves raise the land out of the water enough to create viable islands. The other island plots they created are in better shape than this one, but they all show some signs of reaching the terraform limit before fully breaking surface. I see some plots in the same sim that are all water and not for sale. My belief is they could not raise the land enough to make a valid island. My friend and I believe the 'island' she purchased should have fallen into that category as well. Isn't hindsight wonderful?

Yes, what we didn't know hurt us. I know after clearing it that the island being so overgrown prevented us seeing how little land there actually is.

Is the plot still of value? Of course! But my friend did not want a plot of this type. She wanted to buy land, not water, not water mixed with land (swamp). And the plot was represented as being an island.

Offline automated vendoring leads to mistakes like this. While I know it may not be feasible to have live agents availible all the time, or even at regular hours, their policy of ignoring all IMs from times they were offline makes it incredibly difficult to contact the principles of AnsheChung.Com. Not having a business e-mail clearly listed for such events, for what is clearly a very profitible enterpirse, or a phone number, or any re-course to contact individuals responsible makes for a very angry customer. Which leads us to the angry tone of my friend's post here.

The answer is probably obvious. What we would like to see happen is of course AnsheChung.com buys the land back, or possibly trade for a same-sized island or beachfront plot that does have good land. No loss to them over that. Gains would be two very happy people and whatever good-will we could spread. Suggestion I would make to the AnsheChung group would be to make it easier to open a dialog with the people in charge there. The ones that can make decisions in cases like this.

For myself I feel the forum is the last place for this sort of discussion. My friend felt she had exhausted all other options before coming here. As I said earlier I have been out of game for the last few days with computer problems and do not know if she had been contacted by them or not. I do know that when she posted earlier the issue had not been resolved and that several days had passed trying to contact them.

Land Ownership 101 is now scheduled for 5:00 pm tonight. I'm also running it on Thursdays and Saturdays while the demand is there.

I'll make sure as many Live Helpers, Mentors and Greeters as I can contact know about the class. Anyone on this thread is welcome to come along and audit it too!

I ran these regularly until about February 2005, and used to get 4-10 people per class which was encouraging. When I ran it again 2 weeks ago, I only got 3 people and two of those were just interested in becoming land traders themselves. I was a little discouraged, but this thread has raised my motivation level again.

The point still remains, though - there is no single point of reference for new players to get the education they need when they enter the game. "The Wiki! Awakening Avatar notecards! Mentors! Greeters! Live Help! Events/Education!" A new player just wants to get out there and play, as has been mentioned already.

The problem is, of course, that the avenues available are all resident-supplied and thus there is no way of regulating the information given to the new person as they go through orientation. It's still a "contest" as to which resident-written set of information they stumble across first.

Let's just all hope and pray they don't find the forums first!

Right when I logged into Second Life just now I got an IM from one of the owners of AnsheChung.com. He mentioned that someone had pointed him to this very thread and he wanted to know what was going on and how to reach my friend. She wasn't on but we had a nice chat and when she does login this evening, she can trade for whatever comparable land she would like that they have up for sale. (This being one of the options she wanted.) And of course she can talk to them and work something else out if needed.

He explained about why there were no e-mail links (and that shocked me, I had no idea people could be that mean, and what could they gain from that sort of thing?!) and why it had taken so long to get in touch with them.

Regardless of how you view online business's of this sort, they do exist and that is not going to change. I am very happy with their offer as I am sure Hope will be too when she next logs in.

While maybe not the best thing in the world, it seems in some weird roundabout way, her forum post, this forum and you caring people did help her and me too. I feel much better.

Thank you!

Based on your statement here, I'm now *very* curious what the explanation was? I've never had issues getting IMs in my email. So if there is some *danger*, I would love to know!

Hi Pendari, everyone... me again

They were getting a lot of spam attacks, mean e-mails and such. To the extent they couldn't keep up with deleting them from what he was saying. They had to abandon those e-mail accounts.

Those sorts of attacks are not going to change things in any meaningful way. I really do not understand why anyone would resort to those tactics anyway. It only leads to hurt feelings, frustration, and even the attacker really gets no satisfaction other than that of a vandal? I can't imagine...

Nothing really hidden, I personally just didn't even want to think about it, made me sad when he told me. But there you are.

Hi Candy,

I can undeerstand being upset by this situation, but if your friend still loves the feel of the area where her land is, there are some very interesting ways to build on a water lot.

I suggest you and your friend explore the Atoll builds that are on stilts in the new continent area at the north part of the SL map. The stilt architectural style is found on the US east coast beach areas and, for me, has a nice vacation feel to it. If your friend wants to stay there and make her land work, I would be happy to help show you both what can be done to make a water lot very special.

Wow... a great and happy ending.

Again, if we just had the first half of the story
how many people would have come away from
that thinking "that certain land owner" was some
vicious monster?

It's good things were talked about, and now this
resolution continues to show me that the land
owner in question is often getting picked on more
than their fair share.

I happily give praise to the land owner by name,
but it seems our dictatorship does not allow
naming names in the forums.

Gabrielle

Your friend may find that she can not find a peice of land that is an island as you seem to desire for the price she paid for her "swamp land" from anyone. It is hard to say that you really paid a high price just from the information that a new user thought they were paying a high price for high quality land. It is possible that the price you paid is the price that most of the competition is selling "swamp land" for. If your friend keeps the land she has I also suggest that you could possibly build a prim island.

Aside from this particular issue, always remember that Linden Labs provides a Land Sales option if you push the Find button. It is not the best at sorting land out, but it is there for you to use if you truly want to seek out your type of land for the best price.

I'm sorry, I know I was defending "the seller" earlier as I felt the attack unwarrantedly aggressive and (particularly in its title) a deliberate provocation to get attention.

But, you know, this "spam" story doesn't quite wash.

I routinely get at least five times more spam than genuine email. My spam filter routes most of it into quarantine, where I occasionally scan through at leisure to check for the odd chunk of gold.

I get more than 50 spam mails a day, but it doesn't phase me - I don't lose stuff.

So how is a big SL organisation like AC worse off ? Well, if you have a large number of genuine communications to handle, you must ramp up the staff to the point where they can handle them. Unless the spam/genuine ratio has worsened, each team member shoudn't face a worse task than I do, and spam-handling, despite the volume is only about a 20% increase of my email reading/writing time.

Moreover, every email from an SL IM has unique words in it, so that your mail reader can very easily route it into a "from SL folder", safely segregated from practically all spam.

Even further. The attentions of spam-merchants build up over time. If you could swap to a new email address every week, you could leave them behind.

But with your own domain (which AC has) - you have exactly that capability.
The domain allows you to create a new email address whenever you want. SL will instantly reroute your offline IM's to any email address you choose. Put these together and you can leave the spammers behind whenever you like.

So with the capability for easily separating any SL originated email from internet spam, and even to lose the spammers behind whenever you want by an easy "address-switch" I just can't see this defence as holding together.

UNLESS the spam is coming from IM's inside SL - a totally different matter. And one which is easily reported to, and trackable by, the Lindens who would doubtless take remedial action.

All in all, I'm not convinced.
Offline IM's should always get through the filters, separated from spam

This sounds to me like using technical mumbo-jumbo as an excuse to blind the kiddies.
Seems to have worked.

I'm perfectly willing to have it explained otherwise, but right now I can't see it.

I still find the insistent use of the term "swamp" loaded with inappropriate value judgements, associated with instability, sinking and undesirability. Not sure what to suggest, though. So I suppose I'd better shut up. We need a new word for water/land interpenetration with complete stability.

The thread in question was deleted because it was a negative personal attack aimed at a particular SL Resident, per our forum guidelines:

This guideline is the same whether an individual owns an in-world business or not. Normally, we remove or edit out offensive material from threads which otherwise have interesting discussion in them, but the thread in question had spiraled into a series of personal attacks against a particular Resident and could not be edited without removing almost every post and as such was deleted.

Thank god you didn't remove this.. Glad to see LL has their priorities straight!

This is a dodge, and I'm disappointed.

The issue isn't that Anshe Chung owns a business. The issue is that Anshe Chung IS a business and your execution of policy leaves those aggrieved by said business wholly unable to communicate their problems. I don't see a point to discussion forums if the only safe topics are Ice Cream, Lollipops and Puppydogs. Because no oversight is provided by Linden Lab into the business dealings of its residents, our only safety mechanism is communication. If we can't say "Anshe Chung/IGE/GOM/Whoever" gave us the shaft, why bother talking?

I have to totally agree.


Unless we are reading what Jeska posted incorrectly, she has stated that we can never vocally complain about SL businesses in forums. If there is a business in SL defrauding customers, how will this information be communicated to the user base in an effort to protect other customers?


I hope Jeska is still reading this thread and replies.

I am sure it is protected under the all important parody laws...

Those who rage against the Banshee will get funked. Just allow her to take your money.

My read is not quite that disheartening, but much more irritating. From what Jeska wrote, it sounds to me like we are free to talk disparagingly of:

PREEN
Templar Botworks
Hucci
Anomations
ARMORD

But we are not allowed to speak at all disparagingly about:

Aimee Weber
Enabran Templar
Eboni Khan
Cristiano Midnight
Marcos Fonzarelli

or...

Anshe Chung.

But, you see, Anshe has no brand that isn't Anshe. So that leaves her very nicely protected. Which is absolutely unacceptable. I, too, hope Jeska is still reading, and offers something a little less scripted. This is a real problem that has no explicit rule already on the books. It's time for leadership and judgment calls, and from the looks of it, Anshe is going to get to keep a very nice umbrella.

Lucky her.

Don't buy animations from PREEN! They were motion captured using small children and puppies in a sweatshop in Cambodia.

No, I think you are confusing PREEN with AnsheCorp which does the same thing and is also operated by Satan with their proceeds (which I have meticulously calulated to be US$8m/day based on information obtained from a box of breakfast cereal) used to fund the export of cocaine from South America for distribution into our nation's elementary schools.

Nothing against your post Elllie, but this is the topic I want to address. I saw the plot, it has a lot of water holes. Does one sink, no, but it obviously did not meet the expectations of the buyer and therefore was negatively valed for this buyer. If it was like all the other plots for sale in the area it was so covered with trees that one could not possibly get an idea of the terrain before purchasing. Would AnsheChung.com remove the trees before sale so that one could check out the teraform limits and actual terrain??? Don't know....I suppose it's worth investigating though.

As for removal of the thread??? I agree with those saying that that Avie's name is actually the business name...but to be safe, let's just always tell people to add the .com

teach them how to turn vegetation off.

i saw how anshe is selling land in the marshy area. i must say it's a cheap trick. she's fillin them with ferns to hide the puddles. there is no excuse for this kind of marketing. very low.

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