camping, pathetic or productive?

*sighs* Read back to the post I quoted and what I actually said instead of forgetting everything that was said before.

Someone asserted that campers have a right to be on SL, my argument was that they don't, and if anyone *might* argue they have then it's paid - verified - accounts (don't know why you read premium, I never said that).

I never said paid accounts have a right to be on SL, I didn't even say "they might have a right", I said "they might argue that they do".

My example was pretty simple: you come in, don't order anything, sit down and everyone leaves you alone. At some point the deli fills up and someone taps you on the arm and asks you to make room for paying customers.

Now it seems like you're in favour of throwing a big tantrum and make a scene about that, while it would actually be a perfectly reasonable request.

This isn't about who gets entrance and who doesn't, it's about how people act and behave with that privilege.

That depends entirely on your perspective. From my point of view the community significantly degraded after open sign-ups and NPIs aren't students and teachers and respectable people (I'm sure they exist, they're just the exception, not the rule) but the griefers, harassers and trouble-makers who disrupt meetings for a chance to call Lindens child-porn loving freaks and who time and time again felt the need to insult and be abusive on LH.

Those qualities aren't unique to unverifieds, but they occur far more frequently in that group than the paying group.

Then both of you are wrong. Linden Labs has no policy on camping and has voiced no stance on camping.

Linden Labs doesn't let in campers, it lets in PEOPLE. They do have a policy on free and/or unverified accounts. That has nothing to do with "camping". Unverified accounts do not "equal" campers. Nor are all campers on unverified accounts.


Your example was TOO simple. Second Life is not some cafe there to sell club sandwiches. But, to follow the analogy again, only the deli owner -- Linden Labs -- can start deciding who to allow in, and who to throw out if they decide their cafe is "too full".

I give up since it seems you're determined to read things that just aren't there.

That quoted sentence has nothing to do with camping, it has to do about whether anyone can claim a *right* to be on SL, and no they can't, access to SL is a privilege, not a right.

Maybe im ignorant on what camping REALLY does.

But the only time it bothers me is when shop owners products apparently can not get people to the sim, so they use camping to boost their traffic count to try and get "ahead of the game." They will set up campers like 600M up in the air trying to hide them or something. Its irritating.

If people are using it at like clubs or malls it doesnt really bother me, I just won`t rent vendor space there usually.

I camped like once or twice when I was new, then I was like "F this *Buys lindens*"... Campers do help the economy I guess, they buy things with the money they earn. Ive had a few instances were people told me how long they had to camp to buy something from me. So I dont know, I guess I have mixed feelings on the idea of camping. I just dont like the idea of "zombies" boosting someones SIM traffic #s. But again like I said, perhaps im ignorant about what it really does.. EG the resources it takes up and whatnot.

If camping did not reflect on peoples traffic count im sure alot of it will stop. But the truth is, not EVERYONE is doing it to get a larger traffic count, some people do it as a way to get people shopping on their sim.

Correct.

And you are making the argument that that "privilege" is based on who brings the most money into the world -- or any money, at all.

Linden Labs apparently has a different philosophy about the world they are creating.

Most cities, most societies that have any form of "taxes" to pay for services, does so on an implied understanding that not everyone is going to be paying similar amounts. Again this would be akin to a city that only allowed landowners who pay property taxes, to enter the city limits. And again, people add value to a society beyond the "taxes" they might pay.

I'm still confused what this has to do with camping. I camped my first few weeks in Second Life (I include "money trees" in the concept of "camping", though I did both types), and used the funds to rent a studio apartment (whose landlord benefited) while I learned about Second Life and decided what sort of commitment to make to the world. Camping was a great orientation/introduction to the world, at least for me. It was a very positive experience for me.

I'm still on a "free" account, I no longer camp and instead buy Lindens -- but I don't buy very many. Probably $5 USD a month. But whether it was $0 or $20 or $1000 a month, only Linden Labs has a right to decide whether I belong here, or not. And whether I add anything to the world, or not. Currently, most of my time is spent attending free classes, learning to build and to script. I'd love to some day be able to run a business here, but I don't know yet whether that will eventually happen. I would like to teach classes some day. How much I'll eventually "give back to the community" is still an unknown factor.

You might decide I'm a "leech" -- but luckily for me, you are not in charge here.

Again, you're not reading what is actually there, but what you think I mean.

A privilege to me is something that's revocable at will, and a right is something that can be legally enforced. A premium account may or may not be able to sucessfully sue LL for damages if it were to unjustly deny access to SL since it's paying for the account.

Being logged on for hours and days on end (as in being AFK) is disproportionate use. It doesn't matter whether it's a premium, verified or unverified doing it. If everyone left their avie logged on all the time, SL would simply be unusable for everyone, it's inconsiderate behaviour. Unverifieds are by far the largest group to be guilty of that, and there's really no way to justify that.

In real life certain groups can be a disproportionate recipient of resources (social healthcare, unemployment, etc) because there is a standard of living to consider and that everyone should have. There is no such standard in SL, no one *needs* L$ to survive, you don't *need* anything. If you don't want to buy L$, if you don't want to productively contribute in exchange for L$ that's all perfectly acceptable, but don't expect or feel entitled to anything in that case.

I already pointed out far back in this thread or another one that you're an exception, and not the rule.

The average camper is the person who throws a tantrum when they didn't get their L$6 and goes into an abusive fit and demands that they're compensated for suffering abuse.

This is somewhat true, although I don't know if unverifieds are the largest guilty group. In fact LL has overbooked the system. if everyone they claim as a user logged on at the same time it would be a disaster. I would like to see a break down of numbers of registered users.

Premium
Free PIOF
Free NPI

Obviously, many of the approx 8.5 million registered are no longer with us, and I wonder about the number of individual avis who account for the 1.7 million logged on in the last 60 days. Do they count each log in? I log in several times a day sometimes.

Who is defining that "average" camper, you? How accurate of a definition do you *really* think that is?

And I even might agree with you that "Being logged on for hours and days on end (as in being AFK) is disproportionate use." Or I might not, I dunno. It might actually turn out that the biggest resource user/abuser are users who use excesive scripts/flexi-prims/I-dunno-what. I don't know, what. But that might not have anything to do with the average "camper", or even with camping at all.

I think you are talking about "unattended camp-bots". Hey, I'll join in your argument if you redefine it to "unattended campbots", especially multiple ones run by a single individual who turns around and immediately withdraws the money out of SL entirely. Takes the money, and runs. But that has nothing to do with my own experiences with camping, and can be approached by a means that does not throw all "camping" out the door. I'd support some means that auto-logs out anyone for 30 minutes of unattended login, myself.

Of course there are others, who are not camping either, who will argue that unfairly penalizes them. Some of them also on paid premium accounts, I'd imagine.

I'm sorry if you think I am "arguing", I dislike arguments, normally. I just think there are some statements being made here that are inaccurate ... and also, unfair.

I also suspect people who are "griefers, harassers and trouble-makers who disrupt meetings for a chance to call Lindens child-porn loving freaks" are an entirely different class of users, than people who camp to get a few lindens. Getting rid of camping would not affect them, at all. I believe you are arguing that both types tend to use free accounts -- which may well be accurate -- and that if you get rid of free accounts, you get rid of them all -- as well of a LOT of other innocent parties who indulge in neither griefing nor camping, and who in fact may actually be contributing very positively to SL society. You are targeting a HUGE group of people, over the actions of an extreme MINORITY of people. It might be akin to saying if they got rid of all poor people, they'd drastically reduce the crime rate. That might actually be true, but certainly not one many people would support. A lot of famous contributors to society, started out as poor people ^_^

I think "camping" is being targeted here for some very real frustrations that have, in the end, nothing to do with camping at all.

You have that right. Past threads on this issue (AFK) have brought out some major fights led by premium account holders, especially sim owners and business persons.

Not an issue for me as I am rarely afk for longer than a few minutes at a time (nature calls, phone rings etc.. and logging out and in is a pain).

Here is sad story of truth of camping as it is.
I do spend money in SL.
I have spent hundreds of real cash within SL on property, textures, few interesting items here and there.
Yet I don't always have ablity to buy more lindens so I camp.
I found interesting place, it even had some unique outfits. I bought a jacket.
I camped for what should been the equivelent of around 100L, Yet when the night was out I was paid only 20l.
During that time I invited 3 friends to show them this place because it was interesting vampire theme. . One friend even bought another outfit. One camped maybe a hour and left. The other 2 hung out didn't camp and talked to me for at least hour.
At end of the night I got 20L inspite of the camping device saying I was owed 76
They got all the traffic they generated, over 50L from items I bought, friends bought.
While I was there I even helped people walking by with things. Talked to people,etc.
This is nature of what camping really is. They advertise to pay for you to hang out at there place to make it seem more interesting, more traffic, even buy there products but at end of the night if you're lucky you'll be getting anything.
Darn it you better appreciate them for providing the service or treated like you're the one with leoparsy in certain circles because you can't spend hundreds of dollars of REAL DOLLARS every month on land, and shopping. Person advertising for campers seems to be putting out lots of money but truthfully these days very few are really paying there campers. By the way I didn't complain about to the sim owners but I will tell my friends not to go back there.
By the way I am premium at one point my tier was 75 a month.

its relative to the person perching on the campchair isnt it? if they think its worth the time, why would you care?
you camped for a while and moved on. im sure many other campers move on too. so should everyone think less of you for it?

Sorry to butt-in again, bumping this tread up from page 4. *o.o*Sorry Chris if I characterized too many of the SL forum members as anti-camping. It's just that I see so much anti-camper talk here. I'm not getting any of that in-world.I don't think I'm entitled to anything, once I can no longer play SL for free I'll move on. The only reason I signed up is because I could play SL for free, once I can no longer do that I'll go.All campers should hate the camp fleets, hogging all the camping spots for themselves, leaving everyone else out in the cold. I'm assuming the problem with campbots is that they getup and sit back down faster than any human camper can get in the spot, basically blocking out other campers from the spot.
By the way, I do AFK camp a lot. I'm not using any outside programs or scripts or bots. The only thing I did was disable the idle logout using the option in the debug menus. Otherwise it is just my lone avatar at the mercy of the camping spots idle-timer.If SL is a "social MMORPG" then I've actually lost. :/ Considering how shy I am. I'd never make it in SL based on my social skills. (Since I have none.)While it might be work of a sort, camping is nothing compared to the builders and scripters. The event hosts and sales associates are doing several times more work than I'm doing. I wouldn't call camping work, myself.This is why I always test out a new camping spot before camping for a long time. I'll cash out after one cycle to see if it will pay what is advertised. By the way ...if the place doesn't pay or doesn't pay what is advertised I just move on to somewhere else to camp, not go around stamping my feet a making a fuss. I guess I'm not the typical camper because I'm not going around whining about "not getting money owed to me". -_- I haven't notice any of that, are these tantrums happening a lot in the forums?

(Sorry for the long post.)

Actually yes, there are a lot of tantrums in the forums ( guilty), but not about not getting paid camping $ from my observations.

If it's not important enough to you for you buy the L$ you need (and what you make camping in a week you could probably buy for $5 US), then why be here at all? You spend a LOT of your time in-world just trying to make a few pennies' worth of L$ so you can do ... what?

I guess my question is, if you don't get enough out of "playing" SL to make it worth investing a few dollars into, then what makes it worth spending hours sitting on a camp pad?

He can sit wherever he wants. If it doesn't violate TOS what business is it of yours?

I didn't say he couldn't. In fact what I said had absolutely nothing to do with whether he can or can't, should or shouldn't.

I was (and am) asking *why* someone would prefer to do that. I am trying to understand the appeal.

When I started my Second Life, I was given L$250 just for signing up and another L$250 for providing payment information. I understand that is no longer the case, which has probably changed the dynamic for people who have signed up more recently.

Since I had L$500 to play with, I wasn't in a huge hurry to 'get a job', but still had enough in my pocket to try things out. I pretty much subsisted on freebies for a long time, until my friend gave me Lindens so I could buy some hair (since I was gripping tightly to what Lindens I had for upload fees for textures to make things with) and suddenly I was putting some spare cash from my PayPal account and once I had a computer I could use full-time, I bought a membership and now live nicely off of my stipend.

I've never actually camped for Lindens--the only time I ever used a camping chair, it was for some rather nice green eyes in exchange for sitting on my ass for twenty minutes. I parked my avie, took a shower in RL, came back and collected. The store had other chairs for other camping prizes, but the times were much longer and the prizes didn't appeal to me.

I see camping as the SL equivalent of a burger-flipping job. It's not enough money to live on, and you don't get much respect for it. But if you just want a little cash in the pocket and don't expect much, it should suit your needs just fine.

Sorry. I also don't understand the appeal. I investigated this a few weeks ago as an adventure. I went to Gold Rush and used a camper chair. Growing bored I played the attached slot and won L$3,000 . Cashed out, went home and haven't camped since. Also while there I won an additional L$ 100 in some sort of random draw.

I can see the attraction of camping in the now gone casinos if you have the chance to get really lucky like I did, but now that they are gone it's all nickel and dime stuff.

Yes.

I like turtles

The feeling that it's free I'd imagine. Like when I was in Vegas with the free beer, but I had to "Camp" at a gaming machine to get that free beer and heck we all know about gambling and odds and then there's the tip, so it's not really free beer, but psychologically it feels like it at the time.

Because leaving your computer on all night with your AV sat down seems to be "money for nothing".

Yes, I know it earns less than the electricity used, but that's less directly percievable - and anyway, it's possible that someone else is paying the electricity bill.

The "earns less than the electricity" argument is not always true. I would come out ahead on the cost of electricity vs. camping.

But you know, the cost I'm thinking of isn't even money. It's the time spent *not* doing any of the million creative, engaging and social things SL has to offer.

I kind of think it's a vicious cycle. You decide that SL isn't all that interesting, so you don't want to invest, so you camp for L$. But camping takes so much time to accumulate much money at all that you don't go out and explore the world, and therefore, you never find the things that would make SL interesting enough to put some money into so you can go do things rather than camp.

I have had friends who would use their camping time to sort inventory or catch up on the IMs they had been meaning to send out for ages. So time on the camp chair can be productive.