When do you cut loose from a losing game?

They have hidden my store, because it is on M land.

They have changed it from where you could uncheck mature to not see anything on mature land, to where you have to check it on TO see it.

They have made my store hidden by default.

If I had known they were going to do this, I would never have bought mature land.

They made a decision that takes .02 seconds to implement, and hid my business from anyone who doesn't realize they have to put a check into the mature box. Which includes new people looking for 512 houses, of which I sell quite a few.

I pay for my shop to appear in Classifieds, and I pay for it to appear in Find Places.

They take my money for that - AND THEN HIDE ME.

They never warned me they were going to do this. I spent over a year amassing my shop land in Rosieri, bit by bit, paying for it with my profits, bit by bit, and working my butt off and paying them tier for every last square meter of it all this time. AND paid for Classifieds and Find Places throughout.

Now they have made it so I'm hidden by default, through no fault of my own.

Presumably they expect me to now sell off all the land I've spent so long gathering, in a wonderful sim I love, and to do this under pressure, since I'm losing sales; then to find other land and pay to buy IT, and set up my whole store all over again, all because -

- they decided to take .02 seconds and purposely hide my shop.

As if all the other problems weren't enough.

So I ask you - when do you cut loose from a losing game?

Could it be when they deliberately change the rules on you and hide your shop, just so all the people and corporations now coming into SL won't QUITE so quickly see all the smut that's here?

coco

It is annoying seeing all the sex ads at the top each time you search, but it would help if they had a different classification, like when advertising that type of material you had to check a box, not that all business' in mature sims (which are the majority) fall under mature.

The checkbox for mature shouldn't affect your Classifieds, only your Places listing. If your Places listing is no longer drawing business, then you should probably concentrate on optimizing your Classified.

As for your complaints about the cost, the price to be listed in Places is less than 4 uploads.

I agree with you that issue perhaps an Adult Catergory for the XXX business here, in the Search Feature alongside the Mature and PG and those XXX businesses had to use that section when advertising in Places. Im sure its an easy thing to do but im sure LLs have more important things to worry about like the new Voice rollout with their new friends and partners, perhaps now its time to change the catchphrase to:

"Your World. Our imagination"

I think LLs are trying to distance themselves from the smut etc. now they got the corporate push underway i think we will see more of this sort of action throughout the coming months but thats just my opinion

If you do not forsee things getting better for you in the future, then the answer is: now.

Hang in there, Coco. It will take some time for people to adapt and figure out how to find you. Or maybe LL will revert to the way things were. And of course there's also the things you will do with your own efforts to get people to find you. It's just another bump in the road.

"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."
--Fellow Builder Donald Trump

I'm confused...

All this -- because some people decided to whine to LL about seeing porn ads? Is that the case here? If so, I have to say that "Mature is Mature"... It's pretty straight forward. If you can't handle any level of mature, then don't bothering visiting the area?...

I'm shocked to see LL take this quick and effortless approach at resolving the issue, by simply removing Mature listings from the Search filter.

Removing Mature from the listings isn't solving the problem, it's only hiding it.

"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."
--Fellow Builder Donald Trump

How long before that Pompous Ass sticks his bad hairdo in to SL?

"All this -- because some people decided to whine to LL about seeing porn ads? Is that the case here? If so, I have to say that "Mature is Mature"... It's pretty straight forward. If you can't handle any level of mature, then don't bothering visiting the area?..."

While I am not in agreement with these types of people, I think they will be the scapegoats on this. The Providers want the Corporate money, so this was a perfect opportunity to pay lip service to a group with a gripe, and do a whitewash for Disney's sake. I think if the Big Money wasn't knocking at the door, the complaints of this particular group would have been treated with the reaction of other complaints......

All I can suggest to the business owners, try to be creative when promoting your business, use all means you can think of. Everyone of you who closes up is a potential opening for a RL Company to fill the void. Personally, I don't want that. I'll try to avoid any area or business connected with a RL company until it becomes too difficult , and at that point I will probably just say B'bye SL and move on. I have to go now and help some of the small business owners stay in business........

He'll do it when it's a smart business move. So probably never.

Mature has NOT been removed from the listings. The default setting for the Mature checkbox was changed from checked to unchecked. This means that unless you deliberately check that box when conducting a search, the search results will only display PG listings.

When I first heard about this feature, I assumed that the exclusion was for classifieds that had Mature content checked on the ad form, but people on the forum are reporting that even PG businesses on Mature land are not appearing in the Places results.

The quick test I ran didn't show any change to my listing, even though I'm on Mature land. But I only had time for one search and then I got locked out of SL (sigh) and haven't had a chance to re-test my results.

As others have pointed out, however, this exclusion of businesses on Mature land is ONLY in the Places search results. As far as I know, a search for any other category will return PG businesses regardless of their land rating.

So although this is extremely annoying to some of us, I don't agree that it a catastrophic hit to sales. As if I had any sales, given all the OTHER problems this week.

More likely that they're (still) trying to set themselves up to be bought or get a nice round of financing.

I'm also wondering if having a non-mature listing to a parcel on a mature sim forces your listing to be mature. If so, that seems pretty harsh.

Coco,

I don't really have a solution - just wanted to give you an encouraging pat on the back and ask you to hang in there.

I am familiar with your charming products. Yours is one of the first places I suggest when someone is searching for a lovely home when space is an issue - and also because your prices are so reasonable.

Because of all the search problems now, I give folks an LM and of course I have one to Coco's *smile*

Hang in girl, SL needs all the quality creator/merchants they can get.

Is a lot of people that sell lots of Non XXX content on Mature land - becuase Mature land is better. PG land is totally unflexible, one nipple and your in violation.

I sell shapes on Mature land. The pictures of the models are nude. This is intentional, a nude body gives you the best veiw of the Avartar figure, with a minimum of interferance.

If im forced to move to PG ill have to reshoot all my ads in some non descript skimpy swimsuits or something. (carefully so I dont show anything non PG how much cheek is M and how much PG?)

Avatar nudity , or RL Nudity isnt XXX - its not obcene-Its not ugly- But no, its not PG.

It's actually hit us pretty hard.

... when I become fairly confident that the remaining things to accomplish or discover require more patience, effort and frustration then I'm willing to invest.

"Games" shouldn't be easy, they should be challenging... or there's no satisfaction in accomplishment. How frustrating should a game be? As much as it can be without chasing off players!

Frustrations however, are usually anticipated or expected, not sudden unannounced changes to the rules. Whether or not this counts as 'unfair' not in the business sense but in the game sense is something we each have to decide for ourselves.

LL's track record has certainly made us expect the unexpected.

Our accomplishments and discoveries are up to us. SecondLife may try our patience, make us work harder and frustrate us... but when it comes down to brass tacks... leaving or staying really depends on this:

Do the possibilities we create for ourselves in secondlife have a chance to engage, entertain and reward us enough to put up with the effort frustration and patience that attaining them requires?

--
Nothing lasts forever.

In all honesty Coco, given the fact that your land and the Stratics HQ take up around 40,000 sq m of Rosieri, there is a load of Linden road, a house and a football museum (neither of which are M content), we should be able to use our power of majority ownership to get Linden Lab to change the whole region from M to PG anyway. It would be far easier for the one or two small landowners, who I have never seen there anyway, to move (if their content is not PG rated) than two large and well established properties.

I'd "ask a Linden" how to get this done... if any of them were still here.

Broccoli

I've been hit hard, too, but I'm not convinced it's the mature search issue that has undermined my business. There has been so much going wrong with SL over the last week that I'm not even sure it's possible for us to find a single culprit for plummeting sales.

The search default issue is an easy lightning rod for anger, but if it's not the root cause then it simply deflects us from focusing on other issues that inflict equal or greater damage on sales.

My scepticism is born of too much sociology in grad school. Correlation is not proof of causation, but it's a very human impulse to think it is.

Thank you for your kind thoughts, Solange!

I have to point out, this doesn't have anything to do with any OTHER reasons for people losing sales. I'm looking at a specific , new, and totally UNNECESSARY reason for losing them. They have all of a sudden decided to hide by default anyone who is on mature land!

Just because other things happen - grid problems, etc. - is no reason to let an easily fixed thing like this continue on!

I hope others here are right about the classifieds, and I will go in tonight and check that again. I have business that comes from both classifieds and search, and I don't need to all of a sudden be punished in either both OR one of those, even though I pay the same amount as other people!

You should not pay the same as other people, and then get turned off by default!

If I sold sex toys, then the individuals looking for them would ASK someone why they can't find any sex toys, and the person would say, well you have to click it on to turn on mature.

But I don't sell sex toys and there is no reason a person would know they have to click on mature (once they even realize they need to, especially not a new person, and how many of us who know about these check boxes have accidentally had them off even before they turned this around, I know I have! And not known why I wasn't finding myself!). Nobody is going to say, "Oh, well, I'm looking for cottages, oh yeah, I'd better check ON mature, just in case there are some I've missed."

If I had known this was going to be a consequence of having a shop in mature I never would have bought land there in the first place, and never would have paid LL tier for it! Much less spent a year and a half buying it and building up a shop!

I don't even HAVE any mature content. LL didn't warn me that I'd better not get on mature land unless I wanted to be hidden, even though I pay the same amount!!!! I only got on it in the first place so some of my friends could say the f word and I wouldn't have to worry about them getting in trouble, and stuff like that!

I want this CHANGED BACK.

There are more shops than just me, there are BUNCHES of people on mature land who are not involved in anything that a 10-year-old couldn't look at! That LL decides to suddenly hide us all is ridiculous! Nobody ever warned us that there would be this penalty for having mature land. Nobody ever said, well, yeah, you can have your shop there, but one day we are going to hide you, so think again!

But here's the thing - when LL cuts into my business, they cut into their own. So I think they should change it back.

coco

Actually MOST people sell off of mature land there are like NO PG rated private sims I can think of and pg rated mainland sims are in a ver large minority. There decision makes no sense I'm on mature land beacuse that is all that estate owners sell when I was on the mainland I was on PG land if and when I could get it but since 75% of sims are mature this is not easy to do so basically people I'm hoping will notice that the places listings are shorter then usual. New people however wont notice anything and might possibly wonder where everything is I'm not sure. Basically they are allowing people select from a minority by default and this makes no sense.

I mean who would think to check in the mature slot because they want to buy a new sweater or a dog? lol

yes I would say a drop to 100 visitors and 0 sales is pretty hard from 1.5k visitors and several K per day in sales to be pretty hard hehe

If LL thinks it must not show the Mature search results by default, then perhaps it should add a warning that comes up when you do your first search, much as does for rezzing a box and many other actions the first time you do them on a fresh intallation of SL.

The warning message could read something like: