A request to GOM

First of all, thanks Ricky and Zeppi for operating GOM for almost two years. It has been great service and I am sure everybody here really appreciates this.

However, giving the community 4 days notice before shutting down this service that many have become dependent on so much is little bit short. Especially since State of Play and SLCC will take place next week. This makes it very very hard to adjust.

Therefore I would like to ask you to keep GOM operational until after the Second Life Community Convention. I believe the community and your customers deserve at least 2 weeks prior warning before you close trading.

Everybody else who support this request please be so kind and post on this thread.

This will make it a central issue at the convention discussions, I'm sure. Ultimately, only Jamie and company can decide to keep running or not, which as you indicated, is the problem.

The timing is particularly bad in regard to the SLCC, for sure - I agree with that.

I think at this point, there is no turning back. Why would they risk more when everyone knows they are closing? I wished they had stuck it out, I bet they would have been surprised at how many people stayed with them and just avoided LL all together. The time has come, and going back will just be worse for everyone. At least this way it is all final.

I am sure it will still be discussion topic, even if the closure is scheduled for after the convention.

Don't think theres any turning back unfortuantely. The market on GOM is already dying a death. So you will probably have to rely on IGE or even your own services Anshe. You should be getting quite a bit of business in the future

I strongly agree with what Anshe has said -- 4 days notice is not a respectable amount of warning. Ideally the community should have been given 30 days (although two weeks is fine), so we can close up, find competitors, rather than be left in the dark, with a good deal of reevaluation to do.

That being said -- GOM has provided a fantastic service, and much needed competition for the last two years, and deserves to be congradulated for their upstanding reputation.

-Adam

I agree that there is no turning back. However 4 days notice is too short, especially with key staff from other businesses like ANSHECHUNG.COM and SLB busy at SoP and SDCC.

I don't think it would help. The L$ would show a steady decline, if not an outright crash, within that two week period. Better off putting a halt to the market until a system can be put in place with atleast a semblance for the potential of a more stable currency exchange.

I agree that 4 days is a bit too short of notice.

I know of one instance for sure where a well-known developer is out of the country through this weekend.

If it were me coming back to find that my favorite exchange company closed the doors before I was able to get my $L out of the system, I'd be furious.

The transition should be more orderly, especially considering your participation in SLCC and the distance you must travel, at the very least.

Adam is correct, 30 days preferrable, 2 weeks at the very least.

We just bought L$ and removed about 16 mio L$ from GOM. I think this should be enough to prevent anything like crash. It is just that it would have been great if we would have had chance to prepare for one flood of people who will certainly come and buy/sell L$ on ANSHECHUNG.COM. This hits us at about the worst time possible and it will be real challenge to provide good service to people next week.

I understand Anshe but do you for a second believe it was unintentional. I think it obvious that it was effected in this manner, by design, to have maximum impact.

There's been plenty of notice. We were all notified when Philip announced his plans to usurp GOM's designs and create their own. From that point forward it was only a matter of time. And that's not to mention the other disastrous warning signs like half of GOM's ownership pulling out, and the near-straight-line plummet of the L$ value.

If the patient's head is cut off, there's not much point in trying to take a pulse before declaring them dead. Nor does one need to have a degree in medicine to know that the wound is fatal.


- Newfie

(PS: I pulled my money out well over a month ago, and am sitting on it. I'm also crossing my fingers in hopes that despite LL's actions, it might actually bounce back in value eventually).

GOM is closing.

The only problem I can see is that it might not leave enough time to do some market manipulation and really take advantage of a panic.

Four days is plenty of time to clean out accounts, but not enough time to really make mischief and turn a quick profit on it.

Not enough time to do much when you are preparing to travel a few thousand miles to a Secondlife Convention, either.

Not that we can collectively wish it back, but it has to be said. A bit too short, and the timing is...how can I put this - maximum impact at the worst time.

You mention "maximum impact". To be frank, the only impact I would see if GOM really closes in such short-notice "maximum impact" manner would be that they proove Philip's point. If anything comes from this, then that everybody at State of Play will see that, after all, resident businesses are still just very, lets say, "personal affairs".

I haven't seen it spelled out in the context of this closing, but I'm sure they will still refund people's money even after they close. Tom and Jamie have earned everyone's trust because they have consistently shown that the are worthy of that trust. They still have all of the information on file in case there are stragglers who were away at the time of the announcement. I'm sure it would be far easier for everyone to close accounts prior to the web site closing rather than after, but I'm really pretty sure the aren't planning on just running away with any leftovers after the four days are up.

There may end up being a little bit of a windfall from accounts which were actually abandoned, but anyone with significant investment in GOM isn't going to abandon it.

Exactly!

Unfortunalely, it appears that the need to strike back, clouded all reasonable thinking, and took precedent above all else. Hence our current state of affairs.

According to Tom at GOM. The exchange will be shut down on the 2nd. But the site will stay open long enough for people to withdraw their L$ or US$.

I didn't consider this - you're right. It creates the perception of investment/business in SL as being high-risk, at best. Its a shame, because GOM did have a good track record on reacting to fraud, etc..

If the LL system for buy/sell L$ comes online soon, was the plug-in nature of the API available as well? I missed the primary post around this point.

I think this was the orginal sticking point between GOM and LL. I think it all boiled down to implementation, LL wanted to do it one way and GOM wanted a different system. Depending on who you believe I suspect the first version of the LL exchange will probably be quite simple without a API as such and I think to get the exchange out of the door its going to be very cut down.

Between yesterday and today we are already seeing the king of gaming of the system that prolonging a shutdown of the type of service offered by GOM spawns. GOM is not a furniture store that announces they are going out of business and then holds a going out of business sale for the next year. GOM is more like the kind of business where you show up one morning to find that the doors are locked and there is a notice on the door announcing the bad news. And that is what GOM probably should have done, especially in light of yesterdays childishness.

This wasn't precipitated by GOM. This was precipitated by Philip and LL. The timing could have been anytime. Now you have four days to really game the system, so go make the best of it, as it appears some of you are really eager to do.

You already got Telehubs at the expense of better game play for everyone.

Now you've got four days to create a mess in the market and show you are the greediest. Go for it.

Completely agree.

I think they mentioned here or on the gom forums they were loosing 100,000L$ due to the flakey nature of xmlrpc of late, and had to buy this much back to bring the account back into balance and had started to manually check all atm orders, so them operating at a loss the extra work and soon to be taken over by sl's system, i cant really blame them for wanting to move onto other projects. Who'd waste money on a dead horse?

Your desire for a service does not impose an obligation for someone to provide such to their own detriment.

As Jamie noted, for the last month he has been having to hand audit every single transaction because XMLRPC has been failing sporadically and Linden Lab has been of no help. So Jamie is being incredibly generous in processing the myriad transactions at time cost and real money cost to himself because of the L$100k he has had to purchase to cover transaction errors because SL has broken something.

Had GOM not said that they would remain open (but not exchanging) for a period after the end of trading so that all depositors could retrive their deposits, you might have a legitimate bitch.

Why don't you also request that Jamie come to your home to give you a hot stone massage? It's only fair!