The MM - SL's biggest joke

I'm not trying to put the MM down, btw. I just think the survey is way fucked.

Why the need for nominations from the get go? An Other Specify option with a type-in would suffice.

why not just do a better sampling of designers...........

Some people did vote, actually i had at least 3 people telling me in world that they did in the last few days (wich is alot considering the scarce human contacts i have when i'm deeply submerged by work), so it was actually noticeable. The call for votes was in one of the latest issues.
Of course if one doesn't read a magazine (or is too lazy to send a mail with his votes), he can't really complain if his favourite designers/creators/professionals aren't featured in that magazine's survey.

...and I still wonder:


...and any that have meet the Morgan Tank.. in SL?.. or IRL?

But thats another thing...

/Tina

I cannot speak to the survey but as a sometimes contributing writer to the M2 I can say that some articles may be paid for by advertisers but the majority are not. Katt looks around SL for stuff that's going on and sends out a weekly IM to the writers on subjects they may want to write about. If they are interested, they pick up the story. She often has to beg. She is always looking for writers. No doubt there is a week or two with extra material but mostly there is not.

But hey -- lets not let anything like the truth get in the way of whatever picture Lewis is trying to paint today.

The OP's post was a bit rabid and I like Katt and so on, but if this is true it's pretty outrageous.

Having articles that are paid for by advertisers is a basic, fundamentally dishonest practice for any journalist or journalistic endeavor.

At the very least, Metaverse Messenger owes it to it's customers to re-brand itself as a magazine where that kind of thing is understood to occur on a regular basis, even though most of the serious magazines still kind of avoid it.

This is a violation of probably the number one rule of journalism (to operate without bias in a completely transparent manner) No ethically run newspaper can have articles paid for by advertisers, period. How could you ever trust any opinion piece, report, article or indeed "survey"????

Magazines don't do that either, Dianne.

Seems to me the problem here is the usual one in SL - getting the word out.

Even people who read the Metaverse Messenger don't necessarily read it every week, or thoroughly. Maybe next time a loud call for nominations could appear on the SL forums (such as this forum, should it still exist, hahahahaha, as if it will), and on every other SL forum out there.

coco

That should also worry you, it is clear that MM is not reaching the desired audience for doing nominations this way. Maybe nominations should be done by people who are knowledgable in a certain category.

To at, it would be nice to know why someone is nominated, how would i be able to vote on any of these people if the only thing i see is a name, without any description about who they are and what they did particuliarly in the last 12 months.

Lots of love and luck to KK, PP and MM.

Dont forgett MOM.. .

(sorry sorry couldent stop myslef)

/Tina

PS: The nomination time was in my opinion to short.. (5 days) - as working with marketing IRL I must recomend a larger size of it.. layout and more repetition of the message.. to get a wider audience.. SL are very hard to spread the word in., very very very hard.. and I try.. myself - often - and in M2 as well..

Lots of love and luck to Mom and Tina. <3

"Many categories received only a single nomination. Those do not even appear on the ballot, and will only appear in the final results next week.

If your favorite designer doesn't appear on the ballot, it's because no one didn't bother to nominate them. We didn't add anybody to the ballot based on friendship, or because they were an advertiser. As Sansarya mentioned, Ginny Talamasca and Katt are close friends. That's just one example of someone that we certainly would have included if we were going to manipulate the results. "

This is puzzling and typical..............But then again adverzing and Or PR is all inthe handles of the media outlets........There always should be a "FILL IN" A good poll makers ALWAYS has this option in most cases.
Friends or not its stil not a carefully design poll........alot of If whats and whos.........
And No its not because people did not vote. its the alts that voted for winners mostly.
What I don`t see in the designers inworld is how i base my judgement.........Hence I can`t see the sence of these winners. Oh they might be good content makers but in the business sencel I don`t see much of their content on avies.Not bashing just seeing it in the eye of a avie inworld most of the day.

Yeah, I posted in Second Citizen that I think there should be a do-over for nominations now that people know they are accepting nominations. I think I knew Phoenix was working on it, but I thought he was working on a form for people to make their nominations, not for the actual contest/survey.

I agree, Usagi, that there should be a write-in place for each category, but not sure it's possible with an internet form like the one they used.

From: Vivianne Draper

... as a sometimes contributing writer to the M2 I can say that some articles may be paid for by advertisers but the majority are not. ....

Just an FYI: we do not accept payment for articles. Our advertising is our only revenue.

P2

Lewis. I was a magazine editor and publisher for many years in RL. The old type on paper, the process for preparing for publication is the same however. You are way off base about the amount of work involved in publishing, even in the digital realm.

In the Sept. 5 issue of the Metaverse Messenger, there were several mentions of the Best of poll. Once as an FYI at the top of page one, then an article on page 19. That article laid out the schedule for the reader's poll as follows:

M2 readers will have the opportunity to submit the categories
they would like to see in this week’s poll by e-mailing their suggestions to [email]katt.kongo@gmail.com[/email]. The deadline for submissions is 5pm SLT on Sept. 10.
Starting Sept. 12, the M2 will start taking nominations in all
categories. The nomination process will end Sept. 17, and
voting will begin on Sept. 19. Voting will close on Sept. 26.

Then in the Sept. 12 issue of the Metaverse Messenger, there was another FYI notification about the poll, with a full ad on page 23, telling residents that everyone was welcome to send in nominations.

I did everything I could to truly make this a poll from the readers. I have given residents ample opportunities to submit their favorites. None of you who have chosen to insult me and my partner here bothered to take the time to send in your nominations, but now you will insist that it's a case of favortism. I'm very offended.

As usual, a few will spoil it for others as the Best of SL is now cancelled. I will run ads in the M2 letting people know why the poll was cancelled with a link here.

Katt,

The week of the 12th was one of the most chaotic in SL's history - the forums were closed on Monday the 11th, which was also the day people were trying to call LL to get their accounts back. Wedneday the 13th's update was a disaster and there have been multiple grid outages. Perhaps you should consider extending the deadline and redo the survey - a week is a short enough time frame, let alone a week when people were far more focused on just getting their accounts back and being able to get online. That is potentially why the turnout was so low.

I was trying to avoid reading this thread, but after I posted, I saw a few comments on the same page. The M2 never accepts payment for any article. I dig for story ideas, and people come to me with story ideas. Everyone who has a story idea is welcome to pitch it to me.

I wish we had a better way of hearing about these things in world. I think this just proves that we do need some sort of cummunication system in world. This isn't Katt's problem, it's LL's.

Dazzle won best flexi stuffs thingys (and deservedly so!)

I didn't read the issue that had the nomination details in, so bleh... I am a BAD READER!

I agree it's a really ODD survey, I don't see a bunch of people up there that I think should be up there... but hey, if the votes didn't go in...

>aybe not cancel it Katt? Maybe now that people are more aware, just do it in another fortnight or something?

A whole hell of a lot, considering it's done every week.



Why would you assume that? Do you mean that stories get done because an advertiser pays for them? Or just that advertising covers the cost of publication?



Not in and of itself, but it is complicated to do it well. Have you tried to put together a 24-page publication? And do it every week? And make it all come out so it fits?



Yes, if they're lucky



Plus the wages paid to people who do the writing, the ad sales, and whatever else needs to be done.



Your point being? I'm working at a daily paper right now. We have a staff of 400 just to be able to make a daily product. MM doesn't have that kind of available work pool.



Ok, so?




Really? Because I am impressed. And I say that both as someone who works at a real-life newspaper and as someone who started an in-world magazine in 1994. We came out monthly, and just doing that was a herculean effort. Like herding cats, really. I'm in awe of what MM does, and what it continues to do each week. I've often wondered why KK and PS haven't gone on a shooting spree from the stress of it.

No, because no matter what I do or how hard I work to make this inclusive, those who don't get nominated will be cruel and insulting.

It's just not worth it. I rather spend my time on more productive matters.

They do, however, accept bribes in booze and cigars.

KIDDING!

KK, PP, and MM have never been anything but completely professional. Lewis's commentary aside, they did not pay SLCC any funds to have the real-life version of the paper printed (although they covered all printing costs). I was approached about the idea, thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever heard, and as a planning team, we agreed it would be fantastic. As for my previous dealings with them, as an advertiser when I owned SLBoutique, they were extremely receptive, friendly and easy to deal with. Incinuating that me comments are positive due to some kind of payment arrangement is silly; my comments are positive due to my past experience with the MM team.

The amount of time and effort they put into this EVERY WEEK is astounding. Lewis' comments fail to recognize that for many of us, time is much more valuable than a cost like bandwidth. If putting out a virtual newspaper were as easy as Lewis claims, everyone would be doing it. It's clearly NOT easy, or there'd be a competitor out there (which also rings true for Linden Lab).

I agree with Cristiano: the past few weeks have been quite hectic. If KK and PP and Norinn and the gang at MM are up for it, let's try a do-over for nominations when things aren't quite as hectic. I read the MM every week and didn't submit, just because I've been swamped, but can think of quite a few things I've seen in the past year that blow my socks off (the translation HUD, Svarga, Siggy's Waterworks are just a few that come to mind).

Why not also have nominations for some more categories that might get overlooked?

How about a category for Best LL Innovation? Flexi-Prims, llHTTPRequest, etc...
How about a category for Best Resident Blog (General)?
Best Resident Blog (Fashion)?
Best Newbie Hangout?
...etc...

Regards,

-Flip

Yep, from experience, weekly is a punishing schedule.