Economy Announcement: Removal of Traffic Incentives

I just realized... I was on the run a while ago and typing fast... but I don't know as I've seen Vashuda's original statement. You don't happen to have a link or a quote, do you?

Yeah, agreed.




Well, that statement was meant to be humorous. But you have to admit, there are a lot of "adults" on these boards that obviously have never really matured. And when an adult acts like a child...

I wasn't making a direct slur; I was trying to use humor to make the point (ie, this really should be obvious). I'm so used to trolls spouting off in the boards, I couldn't tell whether the response to the original statement was serious or not... so I took an un-serious tone in response. Sorry if it came across offensively. No intention of such.



Yup, won't argue with you there. Even though I disagree with points you've made, it's been apparent was intelligent thought behind it. Misguided maybe, but intelligent. (sorry, just couldn't resist. It was just there... lol).



Have to agree there. I one time confronted [so and so] Linden (no need to get personal, lol) when I was taken down for "breaking" a supposed "TOS forum rule" that was never even hinted at in the TOS. There are many "rules" that are just a bit obscure, especially in the forums. I think you yourself pointed out, "What exactly does PG13 mean by LL standards"? And if it means people can still use sexual-reference obscene language, attack the motives of other users and take adversarial tones, then what is the use of a forum TOS at all (and... uh.. where exactly is the "forum TOS". LOL). Perhaps it's here somewhere, but when I asked where, I was referred to the SL general TOS.

I have visited a number of forums. Some of them were low-life, scum-of-the-earth flamer boards where everyone had a grand time just totally tearing each other apart. Aside from the fact that such forums keep such people out of other areas, they have no value imho. I've visited professionally run hobbyist forums (which is basically what this forum is supposed to be), which absolutely prohibited all forms of objectionable language, any personal attacks or dispersions of character and required people to respect other posters or lose access privileges-- and they were run with an iron hand. Know what? Those were really good, highly-intelligent forums that really accomplished a lot of good.

Sooo.. you can guess which type of environment I prefer. I've found from experience that the more people are left to their own whims as to forum conduct... usually the less useful the forums are-- and especially-- the more the really intelligent people avoid them. How many people have we heard say, "I stay out of the forums. Bunch of trolls and a total waste of time." I hear that comment all the time... and there's a reason for it. Every week I decide to stay away from SL forums for the same reason. LOL

Wayfinder, my comment about getting ppl on your land, hmm i guess i mean, not keeping them there for the full five minutes it takes to earn their dwell, and not trying to keep them there, and from going other places, youd have to split that persons dwell with.
In other words, make it so it doesnt matter how long they are there...

Ya see i think camping chairs are designed to keep ppl in one place for a lengthy amount of time, either not to have to split that dwell with another parcel owner, or in casino's cases, to keep ppls gambling for a higher payout on the chair. Either which way, dwell encourages stagnation of the avatar. We pay them in chairs, or 2 hour contests..whatever means we can to keep them in one spot. The basic account has more than encouraged this form of money for traffic mentality. Hence when the stipends do end, i forsee a vast unending universe of money chairs and dance pads. The casinos have never cared much for their dwell payments anyway, they rack in on the gambling.
I have never been one to see the whole idea of a boring nite or day in a camping chair, burning up electricity to keep my PC up all nite without me, because i always had stipend to spend on shoes as i pleased.

I think its sad day in SL'ville when we can't even count on anything they promise..its a business, i think they should be more accountable. Bad thing is, if you want to keep your land youve worked hard on, you have to keep that premium account..so the content land owners are truely the ones being screwed here. Others can flip back to basic, and plug in $10 cash a month for Lindens, and be on their merry way. So really i see it as land owners discrimination!!!!!!!! AND I THINK IT SUCKS !!!!!!!

Yes. As long as we can. *thinks of people's shops recently being censored and asked to remove images.* *thinks of the griefer dropping bugs on her property with impunity* *thinks of the missing 45 dollars then the missing 16 dollars that used to help with her teir, now gone* *thinks of the people desperate to sell land, and being unable to sell or rent hers*

You've hit it right on the head, Site.

Wayfinder, that's coz they send their ALTS to clubs! Sheesh! I guess I gotta get you a manual. *winks*

I meant L$500, too!

Wayfinder, people can create rich content but not BE rich. Especially individuals, as opposed to groups.

If you put up something like this, only those with the money to spare would apply, which would off the bat knock out a lot of content and possibly a lot of nifty ideas.

coco

Sorry, I missed the humorous part. If no offense meant, then none taken.

In some ways I just want the Lindens to make a clear rule and enforce it consistantly and even handedly.

Oh! Well, in that case I'd have to point out what someone else already mentioned: L500 is worth about $1.50 to $1.75 these days. Almost ANY individual or group can come up with L500 in some way or another. A very small price to pay for an application fee that can gain a US$50 a month "noteable content" tier reduction award. If an individual can't handle it, there's almost always a friend that would be willing to donate to such a thing.

Let me know if you start a vote on the matter. I'll give you all ten of mine. Not that I have a lot of faith in that vote system, but hey, a good cause is a good cause.

But yeah... seems that in this type of environment, clear-cut rules (although the chaotics may object to such) would be of benefit overall. Protects those who appreciate such and draws the line for those who don't know where to draw it themselves. Everyone wins and LL stops taking it on the nose in the "wishy washy" awards.

Worst thing about forums and emails.. can't see the glint in the other person's eye or hear the voice inflections. Of course, we can socialize without having to shave... so there are pros and cons.

Okay, I am going to tangent off a few points here, I read through random 15 pages and didn't see much of this mentioned and I am going to *try* to produce a reliable math problem to illustrate.

First, camping chairs WILL NOT GO AWAY. Why? I'll tell you. Once dwell goes bye bye, there is ZERO income outside of taking someone else's money. What this does, is make MORE people want to place classifieds OR need more people to come to thier land to raise their traffic markers. Here is my lil math problem.

If you are willing to pay 9000L (average to put you on the top front page of classifieds) a week, this works out to (9000/7) 1285L per day. Which equals 53L per hour. At this rate you could have several (about 4) 3/10 chairs going all week. Increasing traffic, bumping up your spot in the rankings AND getting people in who might randomly shop, or play games.

(A second example just to show it off.)

If you are willing to pay 20000L for an ad out for one week, it works out to 2857 PER DAY, which is 119L per hour. That would pay roughly 7 camping chairs.

It doesn't seem like a whole lot, but that's assuming there is no other income. If you make 4x more by increasing your traffic spot on the find list, then obviously, you can afford more to shell out, because your profits will be larger.



Second point. This will stabilze - eventually, but how far will it go before it does. I have a job (actually 2) AND I own a mall. Yes, I have camping chairs, but no, the dwell does nothing. I do it for traffic and to get people into my mall to buy from my vendors, so they are happy and feel like thier rent is worth it. I sell L close to time for my tier is due, and I still don't come up with the whole tier usage. I do it because I like it. But I am also only losing out of pocket about $40USD a month. (That's including the L I make from my jobs.) What happens when people start losing $205USD a month, because, no one will want to pay cover charges - slots and such will go up everywhere in hopes someone will play them to help income.

I work by tips and pay, and lemme tell you. Tips aren't really squat.

Let's assume a new player comes in and wants to have one whole outfit and body ready to go. (From female side since that's what I am.)

Skin = Decent ones average $1000 or so.
Hair = 300
Shoes = 200
One whole outfit packaged = 300L

That's already 1800L (Or roughly 6USD currently.) Just to get started. Not including accessories. And once all the money incentives are gone, these items will increase to help cover upload fees, land tiers, etc.

Only the ones who are willing to shell out a bunch of money now, for returns later (when malls start dropping like flies and only the biggest are remaining) and can charge more for vendor spaces, because there will be no alternatives.



What I want to know, is since we know how much *new* money was created - how much was paid in tiers and memership usage? I mean 4+mil is roughly $13333 USD. Which is only 66 sims. Assuming all those islands are owned by 1 person, with no membership fees. Obviously though, we all own lil bits here and there. If you went by land tier alone and everyone owned 1/4 of a sim, that's only 177 OWNERS, and only 44 sims.



Here are some ideas for money sinks on top of the others:
1) Since there is a cap on how much you can BUY, make a cap on how much you can sell at one time. Let's say 10,000L per day and cap at 100,000L per month. That would solve some of the large amount gouging. Someone personally told me, they sell 1,000,000L per month. That's just crazy, I know they ain't making that much, just to "sell" to get money.

2) Increase sales "tax" of L to 5%. (I haven't seen anyone mentioned that the 3% is a sink too.) (This way, those who actually buy it are getting more for their money and selling it wouldn't be as much of income, and would weed out some people who are selling 100L at each dollar increment, hoping to bring the economy of L up, so they can buy massively, especially right now, if they are expecting the value of the L to go back down.)

3) Longetivity rewards as opposed to dwell. Let's say a new club pops up. For 2 months, they cannot recieve anything. For each increment of 3 months after, increase thier hand in the pot by 1%. (This would also help prevent some of the places that have been around a long time from folding, or charging so much.)

4) Stipulate that a percentage of your land tier must be paid in Lindens. This way, you are personally grabbing some money out of the economy, from money that would be coming to you anyways, but it would be draining some. Let's say I have to buy 40,000L to pay my tier, it's bought from other users, yet, when you charge it to me, you are draining out bit by bit. (This also works in hand with #1, because if you make more than that, some of your money will go to your tier, and add an option to bill L alone.)


Wow, that went on longer than I thought. But anyways, you get the ideas.

It is my understanding that there is no limit to purchasing L$ after 3 months.

"""Main Grid Residents whose accounts are 45 days old or older will be restricted to:

purchasing no more than US$2000 worth of L$ per rolling 30 days
selling/posting no more than US$2000 worth of L$ per rolling 30 days """


I assumed that since there is no other mention of it on the page, that the cap stays throughout, unless you apply for other tiers. And you must be in business or a currency trader to get those, I believe. I think one problem is that L has a "cap" per se on "Currency Traders" but it's hardly a drop in the bucket.

(Overview paste)

""""Business Owner Tier 4:

purchasing no more than US$5,000 worth of L$ per rolling 30 days, and no more than US$2,000 worth of L$ per day
selling/posting no more than US$80,000 worth of L$ per rolling 30 days, and no more than US$5,000 worth of L$ per day """""

If someone outside of Real Estate (maybe) is selling $24,000,000L per month, I would think that's a bigger problem than a measley $14 million being paid to hundreds off people.

"""""Currency Trader Tier 4:

purchasing no more than US$20,000 worth of L$ per rolling 30 days, and no more than US$2,000 worth of L$ per day
selling/posting no more than US$20,000 worth of L$ per rolling 30 days, and no more than US$5,000 worth of L$ per day """""

Wouldn't a smart idea be to get rid of Currency traders altogether instead of hurting the little people? I mean, they would rather keep people who play the market in business than the small shop and club owners?

How?

Commentary:

Well, then I would have to point out that there is a concrete wall people run into, at different points for different people.

That would be my concrete wall: Paying any amount of money ($1.50 or whatever) for the right to submit my content that I'd already worked hard for in oder to possibly, maybe, get that tier reduction.

It would be the psychological effect of the thing. And the very same reason I didn't stay in "There." I didn't want to pay them every time I made something. Just where my own personal wall is. Doesn't have to make sense, really; after all, we pay LL for the privilege of making content already. It's a psychological thing.

Same thing with the removal of traffic incentives. A certain number of people are going to arrive at their own personal wall, no matter how trifling the amount of money lost seems.

Keep removing one thing after another, and eventually everyone will arrive at their own personal wall, and it won't matter if they've lost only $1.50 to that particular, latest change.

coco

Lemme clarify - Don't reward them, or allow them a special cap so they can play the Linden market. That way, only people in business are actually able to buy and sell beyond the cap the rest of us have. Take out the tier specials for all currency traders so that no one has the power to just buy and sell $2o,oooUSD ($6,000,000L). That cap, for one person alone, is about 40% of the dwell they are giving out.

The 'popularity' rating on the find list should just get replaced with some arbitrary number that degrades to zero... but can be bought with L$'s.

You want your listing at the top? Put L$10k lindens into it each week.

That'd make a nice and effective money sink.

I'm confused, what rewards, what special caps?

The sell/buy caps for new accounts are there because of past fraud. The volume cap can be raised by anyone who can demonstrate need and track record.

How do you identify a currency trader? Also, not all trading is done on the Lindex, so how do you get IGE, Anshe, etc. to share records?

What if they don't own land? Land ownership has nothing to do with currency trading, unless you specifying that only Land brokers be targeted. Land brokers provide a service that people appear to want, why would you want to cripple their business and distress their customers? Most land brokers deal with private islands anyway, which don't get a tier discount since they are a flat fee per month.

I'm not sure how any of this relates to dwell, but since it's going away the point seems moot.

Almost anyone can afford a lottery ticket too. That doesn't mean it's a sensible investment.

This idea just takes one of the problems of dwell and DI... that they're regressively scaled to reward the top recipients more than their fair share of the bonus... and makes it worse.

Or you mean classifieds?

Okay, I will simplify. The average free account after 45 days gets a cap on how much they can buy or sell once they are no longer new. I have a cap of 2000$USD per month for the rest of my Linden life, unless I use alts, or choose to apply for a new membership tier. The people who apply for currency trader tier, can do more than the average person in terms of buying AND selling. By ALOT. Remove the currency trading tier and options so that only business owners are able to do that, since they have legitimate business. I don't identify one. LINDEN LABS THEMSELVES allow people to apply, to be able to skirt those caps.

For others that have private Linden sales and buying up others, it's not exactly worth a whole lot of money, they charge a higher fee to do it, and I know, I checked it out. You give less Lindens to the dollar than through Lindex. So if people wanna sink their money to outside sources, that is up to them. However, if we took out currency traders, majority of these would go dry, further increasing the sink and helping the economy. The others would be capped. Anshe has a business and therefore, be in the business tier, which I said nothing about removing, but possibly lowering it.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OWNING LAND. Land tier and membership tier are totally different animals. So your last paragraph is null and doesn't need to be debated. If you want, I will provide you with the link so you can check it out, I merely quoted the highest membership tiers. 4 of each, with different limits. I never said a word about land at all.

ETA: bracket

I've never hear Lindex trading limits referred to as tier, so you can understand why I assume land.

People will just use alts if you do that.

I do actually mean the places finder... not classifieds. Let people buy their popularity directly and waste L$'s on it that way to keep the currency surplus more under control.

Yes and no, firstly, the highest tier right now allowed for one is worth making 8 alts. Most people on average won't be able to create that many alts, for obvious reasons. I mean, if I used every single method available to me right now, I would only have 5. So it could at LEAST help. But also, it will become such a hassle overall to manage all those alts. Sure, some will stick it out, but it will also phase out some, along with the outside traders as well, so LL has a better idea of money.

I said tiers because that's what LL refers to it as, but I can understand the confusion. Until I started thinking about all these ways to help the value of L, I didn't realize they were so much.

I wouldn't mind seeing numbers on how many of each tier on business and traders. I mean, how many business avs actually do THAT much in money? If they are allowing 100 people, but only 10 people need it.... you get the picture.