Economy Announcement: Removal of Traffic Incentives

Hmmm. I'm thinking here.

I'm thinking that the camping chairs are a definite bad thing - in that they encouraged zombies unless they were used in conjunction with something else, like playing Blood 21.

But aside from that - where the heck IS all this so-called gaming of the dwell system?

I mean, think about it. Dwell = people staying on your land.

That means - people WANT to be at those places that have high dwell.

So - isn't that the point?

Or is there some sort of sub-clause of the agreement that says, "Dwell is only for amusement parks, gorgeous builds like Backstage, Linden-promoted events and classes, discussions and high-brow activities, etc."?

Cause if it IS supposed to be for that, then why didn't they just say, "Nobody with a club or a casino can get dwell."

I don't think it's "gaming" the system (aside from camping chairs, which would have died on their own or transformed into something more interesting if left alone) that is the problem.

Because the system simply reflected where people want to be. Which is what it was supposed to do.

coco

P.S. I think Argent's idea of counting only premiums in dwell is simple and brilliant. Unless somebody can tell me what is wrong with that solution.

Grants?

I can tell you what they are thinking. They are planning to give support to only those people and plans they consider worthy, that's what they are thinking.

Everybody else can go jump.

Which is, by the way, what I predicted.

coco

Actually... they are removing the payment bonuses for dwell... not the traffic system alltogether. Places that have high traffic will still show up higher in the Find feature. They just won't be paid for it, thus reducing the amount of new L$ printed into the economy and devaluatung the L$.

I know that, Burnham.

coco

Add a wishing well type tipjar. I have a small park with one, and earn more from the tip jar than I ever would with dwell for the traffic it gets.

Burn-ham?? LMAO

That's a new one

Haha - sorry about that - I had a professor named Burnham.

coco

First of all, taking the condescending "explaining it to the kiddies" tone with me is a good way to lose teeth.

We're not talking about things like child pornography, so shove that red herring back where it came from. The TOS does not provide a list (or even a good definition) of what constitutes unacceptable language. So far, no Linden has done so either. Until they do, what constitutes acceptable language is still up to personal interpretation.

Example... Some people have complained about fuck and cunt. I have yet to see anyone complain about bugger, quim, and wanker. Pants is probably too obscure.

This is an international forum, not your living room, not your backyard, not your home town. SL is not exclusive American-Midwest cultural domain.

If it bothers you so much, why don't you go lobby the Linden's to get the rules changed/clarified whatever instead of trying to be a nanny here.

Currently there is no such thing as "generally accepted graces" in an international space - public or forum. There is the tolerance that intelligent, well-educated people extend to recognized examples of cultural-based mores when in mixed space.

I don't know if you are an American, but you sound like one. If this was an American forum, you'd have an argument.

That may be an option, should I need such a thing, but (a) the guy with the nice build who isn't really interested in going out of his way to be social isn't necessarily going to do that, and (b) that doesn't answer my question. You keep saying that traffic will continue to be monitored, and I'm asking why that matters. I repeat, "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?" Not "what else can I do to get money" but "why should I care if traffic is being monitored?"

Back to the topic. We've heard all the opinions on if removing traffic payments is a good thing or a bad thing. It's a done thing. The Linden's aren't going to change their minds on this one.

Maybe it's time to stop chewing over the dead horse and do more dialog on adapting to the new environment. It wouldn't hurt to keep stipends ending in mind either, because I think the writing is on the wall for those too. Basic going away first, and eventually premium being restructured.

hehehe Quite alright

If you don't care about the payout from dwell... why do you care about this at all?

If you want to have a popular place, you'll care. If you don't care if your place is popular or not... why are you posting here?

There is most definitely a benefit to having more people come to your land if you are offering goods or services. You'll earn more. If you are simply providing a nice place to visit, and you don't care about earnings, then I am trying to grasp the relevance of this thread to you. I truly do not mean to offend... just seeking an understanding.

Define restructured... the way the L$500/week is advertised when you create an account, it is part of the purchase price of $9.95/mo.

Of the solutions I've dreamt up or heard this certainly has my preference...

But any clever person can still cash out... they get compensated for their tier doing one thing, then use part of their tier to rent out to basic accounts and cash out the rent money they get for their cheaper/free tier land.

The system that I think I would prefer the most would be something like the rating system, but instead of accumulating popularity points you can have real us$ transfered/debited from your account to the account of the person you're rating. Something like:

Oo, this build/land/sim is really cool!
rightclick->rate land owner
Contribute us$[ 1.00 ] to this owner's tier fees.
Comment: [ Great job! I love hanging out here! ]

Preferably, make it so that it's in a pool that can't be cashed out by the land owner.

One of the nice bits about this is that popular non-profit areas are far more likely to get sponsorship that obviously commercial once. Quality builders would be more inclined to tier up or at least not tier down to save money if the people that appreciate their work are making it cheaper for them to keep it all online.

(and, to consolidate a bit, the inane events "red herring" I was referring to were more the "I want dwell... hmm. I'll propose a meeting to talk about (some incendiary topic that I know nothing about)." No agenda, no points, no insightful opinions just a bunch of people showing up and then quibbling about how to go about having a meeting because no more thought was put into it than that, and however many minutes later a bunch of people moving on grumbling about that being a colossal waste of time. But I have to agree the percentage of those is probably marginal compared to the like meetings that sucker people over for just as contrived and pointless tip-jar funded events.)

(added in after-edit)

Hrm.... but that then puts casinos at the head of the reward queue, as players pay, get money back, pay, get money back... are you going to track the net profit of the parcel? Now your're rewarding the players that would benefit the least from dwell and ignoring those quality not-necessarily-for-profit builds like parks and event locations.

If I can venture a guess...

To help people see more sane and logical sides of an inflamatory issue.

All the better to have an objective viewpoint from someone not so entangled with the issue as to have an agenda or bias. =)

Understood Jon, but in this instance I wasn't thinking about it having to scale to the whole of SL. I agree generally incentives would be customer-driven/provided as you put it... I had in mind something that targeted a small number of truly unique, widely beneficial cases... like the Shelter, or the Open Air Art Gallery, where artists can show there work for free for example. That's why I used the word targeted...

edit/afterthought: Also, grants aren't typically just handed out, you usually have to apply for them. LL could simply say, "we have this much money allocated, hit us with something good". You want it, then you have to put some effort in, put together a proposal, explain why your project is worthy. A few posters have wondered about the good things that may slip through the cracks... this could help address that concern.

I don't like it as much as Premium-only dwell, but whatever...
Yeh, but they can't cash out just by paying for dwell. They have to do something productive as well.

Even the concept of what is PG is culturally elastic. What's considered PG here probably wouldn't fly in the US... and have you seen what some Scandanavian countries find acceptable in free-to-air television advertising? It does need defining, if we're supposed to live by it, because I think we have different understandings about what that is.

Ok... now you can go back to talking about dwell.

You mean... talking to the folks I know at Google about the possibility of them buying Second Life and applying their actual market knowhow to the problem? Or starting up a competitor?
And then, after all the money's been transferred to an ever-shrinking pool of meaningless Linden Millionaires, you'll see some real collapse in the LindeX.

I didn't say I didn't care about it, I said I didn't need it. I care about the people who do need it... either to make tier or just to provide an incentive to keep their land open.
I don't need to look at the stats to know if my place is popular, I can look at my place. "Oh, look, there's people on it, and nobody else in the sim. Cool."
Yeh, but I still don't need Linden's popularity stats to tell if I'm earning more.

You're missing the point: if there's no real benefit from being high on the popularity stats, why should I care if those stats are being maintained or not? Not "why should I care if I've got visitors", but "why should I care if I've got more or fewer visitors than some plot halfway across the world"?

Why am I posting to the thread, if I don't care about popularity stats? Because the thread is about "traffic incentives", not about "popularity stats".

Makes sense...

Personally, I have never received dwell payments... nor have I ever expected to. I mean... if you open the "popular places" sort, most of them are camping havens... so I rarely ever look at it. Why would I expect to see my location there with the top gabillion most popular places using camping chairs and casino machines to be popular?

I think that removing the dwell payout to increase the value of the L$ is personally a good idea, though I can see how some of the population who offer non-profit/profit-would-be-nice-but-not-the-point locations would be effected negatively because now their locations cost more to operate without much... if any... return.

Personally... I would much rather see voting stations be the primary source of popularity, not the number of people a parcel has over the course a period of time. There are some locations that only have 2 events per week, but those events are amazing. With the dwell/traffic system... those locations are hurt because they don't have daily events running long enough to compete with camping farms.

Traffic should be a good way to measure how effective you are at getting people to your location. Popularity should be a measure of how much those people like your location once they have arrived. The "find" feature should be based on popularity... *not* traffic. I have been to some of the "popular" places... and immediately left due to the overwhelming lack of quality content. This is not all of them, mind you... but there are definitely some locations that are consistantly on the "popular places" list which I can't believe would be popular without the zombies earning L$3/15min to be afk.

You know... it occurs to me that a ratio between traffic and voting would be the best way to measure popularity... think of this...

If a location has 10 people visit it in a week, but 9 of the 10 people voted in favor of the location... that location is pretty popular compared to a place where 100 people visited in a week and only 10 people voted in favor of it.

9/10 people in favor certainly beats 1/10.

The lower trafficed areas would receive more traffic... and as more traffic comes in, the location gets a mroe and more accurate portrayal of its popularity. New locations would have the chance at traffic, while existing locations must keep their content fresh and interesting.

Seems to be a decent idea that would benefit the community at large... what do you think?

So what? The most amazing "event" I ever saw in SL was a completely spontaneous flash crowd in a sandbox because someone had come up with a neat new gadget. No matter HOW you structure Linden-managed payments it wouldn't matter to this event, because the landowner and the person running the event have nothing to do with each other. Events have their own mechanisms for payment... you have a bunch of people in one place and you can use peer pressure to solicit donations, which people do, and do it effectively. They have nothing to do with traffic incentives and should be left out of this discussion.

by "paying customers" I mean "customers who spend real money that keeps Linden Labs operating", not "people who spend Lindens in-world". Premium accounts are the most obvious "paying customers", but people who spend a substantial amount on Lindex or who are renting on islands (and thus are officers in landholding groups) might also count.

that is, if you're not a "paying customer" by these measures, you don't shed "dwell". Only Premium accounts and other people who are feeding money to Linden Labs get counted.