Economy Announcement: Removal of Traffic Incentives

On the other hand, mature people in most cultures realize it is improper to inflict their personal cultural mores on other civilizations. Or have you not heard the phrase, "When in Rome do as the Romans do."

No matter what your personal cultural heritage, this forum has rules and those rules are clearly stated. No, I'm not a moderator. I'm a user and as such I do have certain user rights... such as not having to put up with such drivel. So moderators have been notified as you requested. I don't care what your culture is, SL is a primarily American board with a primarily American user base... and that should be respected by you regardless of your personal culture.

Here, here! *claps*

"ENTITLEMENTS: fancy name for something Liden promised me when i signed up for a premium account and started buying this spendy land and making spendy land payments (tier). Give me one good reason i should keep all this land, provide entertainment for all these "free" accounts, and keep em coming on in to pad YOUR pocket, not mine. "

This is exactly right. Why will people have parks, dances, or classes open to the public for free without these incentives? It's strange how we're counting on the altruism of people to keep good content around, while making this whole move towards eliminating dwell because some people are concerned that they're not pulling enough US dollars out of the economy. Why do the altruistic people who are already operating at a loss have to operate at even MORE of a loss for ingame capitalists to make more money?

"I don't know who's idea this was to take out all incentives..but i feel like you falsely got me in the enterprise area of SL, land owning and tier paying. I just bet your not going to lower tier, in any way shape or form are you ?? Its just bad business to treat your best customers this way...wishing you the best Phill, but in my lifetime I've seen greed take down more successful businesses than anything else."

Again, I agree. I moved up to a higher tier to get land, build a community to help my group get off to a good start until it gets more members. Now I feel like a sucker because I'll never see that money back like I thought I would by investing in land for the long haul. Guess I should start playing the immediate speculation game, like so many others.
In less than a month, our group has paid for 3 memberships (at a minimum of $6/month = $1 plus a $25 land tier fee, totaling minimum of $43 into the pockets of Linden Labs. And we've received about L$700 in traffic, or less than $3. Hard to believe WE'RE the ones bankrupting the system. We have a museum, classes, a conversation cafe...why offer these for free any longer? What will basic membership players have to do when everything is pay-for-play? And how much more per month will paying members have to shell out just to be able to enjoy their Second Life experience?
It just doesn't seem fair.

Siggy ended his original post in question -

"Over here it's considered rude so I refrain."

He used colourful language to illustrate a point - I think he was almost making the same point...

Egads, are you saying you hosted events that you ded NOT want to? That's madness!


I think the heat of anger is making you a bit irrational and extremely negative. I respect that you're upset by this change... but I think your predictions, if even remotely accurate, will have a very narrow scope of manifestation.

Simply put, Dwell is an incentive that backfired.

Instead of promoting quality it promoted raw human sewage. (I was going to say crap but then I read your following posts)

Do you have a non-exploitable alternative to dwell?

Does anyone?

Should Linden Labs continue helping people that are crassly exploiting the system make money until some alternative can be found? How long should they wait?

Yes, there will be people who are on the verge of burnout that use this as "The straw that broke the camel's back", they'll storm off in a mighty righteous huff over it, and things will move on.

Yes, the unfortunate folks 'hanging by a thread' to make tier may fail without this 'incentive subsidy' from Linden Labs. If what they provide isn't valueable enough for them to survive finding alternate ways to make ends meet, then WE should shoulder that burden... why are we counting on Linden Labs to do it for us? They are not the boss of us. SecondLife is ours, we pay Linden Labs to keep it running. If something has value... it's because it matters TO US and either we save those things... or they fail.

Besides...

Pride, ego, a sense of accomplishment, recognition, validation, ownership, popularity... these are much stronger motivators than dwell income. And if they aren't... perhaps someone's values are a little messed up.

--
I'm not exactly sure why your response got me so keyed up... sorry, if I over-reacted.

Sadly Siggy, it has, but only recently. There's been a whole wave of new IR 'reforms' in the last year or so, and we now have these lovely things called 'enterprise agreements'. It often amounts to if you want to keep this job, sign here to give up your benefits and your award wage. The new round of 'reforms' have seen corporations able to fire people at will, so they can offer them back the same job for a whole lot less money.

Tipping has increased a bit, maybe partially as a result, but it's still largely confined to bar persons, waiters and cab drivers. More wide-spread tipping is still not in our psyche however, at least yet. I think in most professions if someone stuck out that hand with a tip you'd still brush it off with a "don't worry about it mate".

I get tips at work, but it's more along the lines of "your music's f@#ked, play something better"

Wayfinder I don't think it's so much a case of using it to "make" the point. It just comes out of our mouths along the way. We really do have different ideas of language appropriateness down here. We just ran an international ad to promote tourism here with the slogan "Where the bloody hell are ya?". . I'm often unaware that I'm cursing when I'm cursing, because they are almost non-words. As for it reflecting on the person's intelligence, down here some of our greatest intellects/writers etc speak this way as much as the 'common' person. It's a larrikan streak which I find one of the most endearing traits in Australians.

I actually do try and temper this in an international environment, and because of the PG thing, because I'm aware people would percieve it differently. It is however, basically against my nature to do so.

I agree. That's why I took one look at entertainment here a year ago and decided to make physical content instead. And it's worse now.

It boggles my mind, too, why content creators want more competition instead of more places for people to show off the things for sale.

content creator coco

I see what you're saying now thanks for the clarification Jopsy
Maybe sleep helped a bit too.

Tell me about it. Yeah, actually, I've hosted numerous events I didn't particularly want to host. Such is the responsibility that comes with founding a group that's exploded to almost 600 members. LOL



Actually, no, not angry at all. I manage Elf Clan, Forcythia manages the sims. So this doesn't yet directly impact me. I was just commenting on predictable outcomes of this situation, based on historical precedent. When LL removed financial support of events, events mostly went down the tubes, just as many of us had forewarned. No different here. LL has once again, rather than dividing economic responsibility among all users equally, struck at those who are primarily to be credited for providing content and activities. I'm simply extrapolating on what is likely to happen as a result of that decision.


I almost hate to put it this way, because it sounds snide, but I don't know any other way to make the point adequately-- I think it backfired because like so many other LL policies we've seen... it was ill-concieved, ill-planned, badly implemented and didn't address what was really needed in the first place. (Sorry, not meaning to sound anti-LL because I am surely not so. Just calling 'em as I see 'em). Sometimes it seems that LL makes decisions without looking down the line and considering the possible eventual outcomes. That often happens when people are worked to a constant frazzle.

There are so many of these decisions that are constantly made by LL that in the past... many people have wondered whether LL is comprised of a group of genius programmers who lack basic business management abilities. To be honest (and perhaps a bit blunt), I cannot understand a company with a system such as this which, after all these years, has never considered it important to provide group officers with a method of communicating with group members-- or sending out a group newsletter. Communications is the heart of any enterprise and the lack of such tells me that at least in some ways-- LL seems rather tunnel-visioned and surprisingly ignorant of basic customer needs.

Second Life is amazing. In some ways LL is amazing. But they're like the idiot-savant... incredibly gifted in certain areas and severely lacking in others.



(LOL. Actually, I'm not a prude. I've given a thing or two the "crap" label (which is surely well within PG-13 guidelines). I just think there are certain levels of decency that Siggy has ignored for too long. He spouts whatever he wants to spout, often just for the shock value. He's been told this by more than one user, in more than one thread and when he copped an attitude this time, I just finally to stop being so tolerant.)

Back to the point, yes, I agree, the system did promote extensive abuse. Which is why I'm not against removing it per se... I'm against removing it without providing a reasonable alternative, as Linden Lab had promised to do (another broken promise?).



Yup, sure do. Of course, they might take a little effort and a judgement call or two and someone with guts enough to implement them.

One alternative: stop basing financial incentives on an automatically-generated "traffic" figure (which is thus open to manipulation) and provide set-value incentives to those who are KNOWN to provide system content on a regular basis. It's pretty well known who is providing content and who isn't. Linden Lab is surely aware of such. Sure, it might take someone at LL visiting sims every so often... but it's surely a lot more viable than the current method, and totally resistant to manipulation.

There are other methods as well. They could ask for resident volunteers to go around and evaluate sims and groups and base a fixed incentive payment on the results. They could set out vote boxes and have groups/visitors to sims vote as to whether this sim is deserving of incentive compensation... and Linden Lab can consider the individual merits of vote results to see if someone is trying to fix the vote. (If Elf Clan or Dreams gets a lot of votes, that's expected considering all that goes on in those areas. If Joe's Nudie Dance Hole does... that might be a little suspect).

So there are three viable alternatives without even putting much thought to it. Keep it simple. Help people know what to expect. Give them a reason to keep their group active and happy. It's basically a management concept thing. There are good management systems... and bad ones.



Until they come up with a viable alternative. Surely they have enough creative people down there to come up with some reasonable concepts to try. If not, they can ask the users for suggestions. To shut off the gas before the electricity is installed is not usually the best decision.



Yes they will. But the question is... when will it actually BE the last straw? And what kind of quality will remain on SL when that happens? It has already been noted by many people that event quality seriously suffered when LL suddenly decided to withdraw event support. It suffered again when they cut ratings bonuses (although that certainly needed to bite the dust), because people no longer had those funds available to conduct events. So now, they're taking away support of user-created content. They're basically telling us, "We want you to help us attract customers, but we don't want to compensate you for all your effort". There just might be a lot of people who simply are not going to do that.



I agree that it should primarily fall to users to support their desired groups. And they do. But... people are assisting Linden Lab to earn millions of dollars. They are helping to advertise SL, to bring new people to SL, to make SL more than just one continuous nightclub/mall after another. And that deserves some consideration. Because these people are going to close down if that consideration isn't forthcoming. Then SL just might turn into one continuous nightclub/mall after another.

Am I exagerrating here? Not to blow our own horn, but Elf Can just won 3 major awards for our content (accompanied by several other content-rich, active organizations). Do you know what is the most often-repeated comment we hear at ElvenGlen? "I come here to get away from the nightclub environment, to get away from the rest of Second Life." One user said, "Elf Clan is Third Life". Apparently what we do is not all that common on Second Life. There are over 1000 sims on this system. How many of those actually have publicly-available rich content that is not mall/ clutter/ nightclub/ sex club oriented? Based on oft-repated comments, one of the major perceptions of Second Life is that it's a "pimp board" that primarily caters to cyber-sex activity. From what I've seen, that seems in general to be a pretty accurate description-- and is growing more accurate all the time.

Now, remove those that still are offering unique, valuable, interesting content, and what do you have? Ah, that's the question at issue.




Yup, and it seems the majority of "us" seem to think that strip malls and nightclubs are the center of the universe. If that's what SL wants to become... so be it.



I fully, 100% agree. That is a valid point. If anything saves SL, these things will be it. But then, LL has set up an economy-based system that puts base sexuality and the L$ to the fore and puts such things as listed above to the rear. LL has just removed one of the primary ways they support rich content. So... there may not be a whole lot of the above to count on.



Not at all. Sensibly stated opinions, presenting valid points. That's all I saw in your post.

Yup, I can understand that. And I have a great deal of respect for those who intentionally curb their natural impulses out of consideration for others, such as you have demonstrated above. We have a word for such attitude: civilized.

Actually, according to Andrew Linden that's pretty close. They have a Big List Of Things To Do (BLOTTD) that anybody in the company apparently can add requests to, and programmers basically just pick whatever they feel like doing off the list at the moment and the upper management is potentially never involved. Or even aware, it seems.

So - you can either address the point I made - or you can address the way I did it..

I see you chose the latter, which is much more telling of your own methods than it is of the language I chose to use - we'll take that as a 'I can't contest it'

Not only that but reinforce the point I made with the initial post anyways.. Thanks for playing.

As for what not wanting to read 'drivel' well old mucko you can feel free to use the ignore list thats provided with the forum software - or of course skip over my posts, after all noone is forcing you to read them.

The exact point actually - rather funny really, a literal 'preaching to the choir' (and this case I DO mean preaching.

If I were a pissant pedant like a lot forumites are I'd say the retort was a 'style over substance' fallacy.. but that whole 'OMGZORZ AD HOM!' isn't my style - I say what I say and if folks 'get it' they 'get it' if not - they can skip over if they choose to

I won't argue that it's unexploitable, because I can almost hear the ringing of OMG FIC as I type this, but I was thinking a similar thing. I was thinking incentives aren't actually a bad thing, and they could do a lot of good, but the incentives that have been removed were both problematic and not necessarily the most efficient ones. Targeted incentives, like a grant or similar, would be a good idea in my book, but it would involve judgement calls not automation.

I know they like to have a largely hands off approach, and that's good, but I would consider it perfectly acceptable for LL to make judgements about what they feel is adding to the culture of SL or is of benefit to many. They would be able to bring enough of a 'big picture' perspective to make a reasonable assessment, and they could also garner feedback from residents. That could be as simple as starting a thread and asking what people think, but they'd also need to find a way to reach people inworld as well, to get a full appreciation of what the residents see worth in, not everyone reads the forums. It wouldn't be perfect, but it might be better than what we had.

There just has to be a way that content providers here can get some recognition and reward, without cuasing so much mayhem...maybe we can throw out some ideas for them here...

Mine is simple, each time someone sets foot on your pacel, you get a point, it matters not how long they stay, or where else they go, that parcel owner gets that point. If its malls and sex the masses wants, it will show..if its entertainment that they want, that will show also.
But and this is a big but!!! A meeting was called with Jeska Linden, a few weeks back, she stated bluntly then and there, that LL would NOT budge on this, all entitlements were being phased out. She made no offers of any replacements, only grants and some educational funding..thats all she could offer.

So im just not sure what they are thinking, i dont really believe its to fix the economy as much as it is to fix the LL bottom line..perhaps profits were not where they expected at the end of the year. Who knows...

But i think they really need to rethink this whole thing, i surely do see bad reprocussions from this...

The problem is, LL is trying to scale all of their internal systems and policies to handle 1,000,000 residents. Stuff like this doesn't scale. Incentives have to be either completely automated (which means they will get gamed), or customer-driven/provided.

- Jon

If the incentives are designed properly, it doesn't matter that they get "gamed". Economics is the study of how people "game incentives", and incentives that are "customer driven" are "gamed" as well. Picking the right price to sell the most of a product for the biggest profit is "gaming incentives". Bargaining is "gaming incentives". Shopping for the best deal is "gaming incentives". ALL incentives are automated incentives, from the point of view of Linden Labs.

The problem with dwell isn't that it was gamed, it's that it wasn't based on customer behaviour. Instead of paying people based on the number of paying customers they attracted to Second Life, they paid people based on the number of visitors regardless of whether they were paying customers or not... so it's no surprise that it encouraged activities that attracted free accounts: there's more of them and they're easier to attract.

The only way to design incentives that work, is to assume they're going to be "gamed" and include the gaming as part of the system. The best way to do that is to look at how the real world does it. Model dwell on the money people spend buying necessities (since there are no necessities in SL, you might as well bake that into the economic model) and you'll get a better economic simulation and you'll get a system that reacts reasonably when it's gamed.

Dwell isn't an "entitlement", it's not a "handout", it's an essential part of a good economic model... if it's got a good economic basis.

I don't think that "events" need to even be considered in this discussion. People can charge for events, even by just leaving out a tip jar and depending on peer pressure to fill it. Events are a big red herring in this whole discussion.

It's not the events that are really going to have to cut back, it's the "this is a really great place just to be in" places that are what I'm worried about.

Nicely put.

How about... instead of paying L$ in dwell payments, cut tier payments for the people who would have been getting dwell? That won't bankrupt the economy because it's not putting more L$ in, and since you can't cut tier below zero people won't be able to "buy" dwell and cash out.

Traffic is still being monitored... you're just not going to get paid for it. That's what I took from all of this.

Basically...

You actually have to have a cool place now, not simply fill it with L$5/10min camping chairs. You actually have to offer decent content, quality events, to get traffic. And... once you get the traffic to your location... you actually have to have something someone would want to spend money on.

If you can provide a decent location, and you have something worth paying for, you will still be able to earn a little something.

Dwell is an incentive that was never thought out.
You bet. I've posted half a dozen solutions.
No, they should immediately change the basis of dwell to "paying customers"... not "warm behinds", but keep it there and see what the effect is. Like real companies that make a profit on the Internet do.
Because it's Linden Labs for whom "what these people provide" is valuable. Secondlife belongs to Linden Labs, and it's just plain stupid of them to fly it blind the way they're doing.

If I'm not paid for J. Random Resident visiting my land, no matter how cool it is, why should I let J Random Resident visit? If there's no benefit to being 403 from the top of the list instead of 868, why should I care if traffic is being monitored?

Look, I build places people like to see. People visit them. People in the forums who've visited them will tell you the same. And I don't personally need the dwell, but at the same time I don't need random particle emitters, poofers, and other trash visitors leave on my land, and so long as the people I know personally enjoy visiting my land I'm kind of at a loss as to why I should be expected to care if other people do. But somehow the people who are anti-dwell seem to think that I should.

Now... personally... I do care. And the loss of dwell isn't going to make cleaning up after the occasional litterbug make me close access. But I'm a pretty open and easy-going kind of person. I've spent months working on my flight script and I open-sourced it because I like to give.

But a lot of people who are less accepting of the occasional minor inconvenience aren't going to be getting that 5 or 10 or 50 Lindens a day payment for the hassles of running a public area on SL. So why should they keep it public?

That's what I'm concerned about.
Blow camping chairs. The problem of dwell encouraging camping chairs (if it does) is an EASILY solvable one if LL actually wanted to solve it. Just quit paying dwell for Basic visitors, and the visitors that camping chairs bring you quit bringing profits. End of problem... of people keep making camping chairs after that then dwell isn't the reason for them.

It's going to be a while before that changes: after over 25 years in the US I still have that impulse. I sometimes almost wish that SL had a "So-and-so just offered you L$20 (Accept) (Return)" dialog.