When do you cut loose from a losing game?

Sheesh people, get a grip.

You knew this change was in the works before they implemented it. Why didn't you speak up then?

Yes, you take a short term hit, but people will learn to tick the box if they want mature things listed and it will even out. The sky is not falling.

Plus, part of your drops are likely because of the general server/viewer problems.

This change has already cost me over a hundred US dollars since Wednesday. I don't think performance issues have affected sales at all. I am still getting the same average number of TP's off of my classifieds but the overal number of visitors has more than halved, the only logical explanation is, I am no longer appearing within allot of people 'search places' results. You say the change was announced previously, when was this because I must have missed it?

I didnt' know about it and i read most stuff in fact i spend way to much time reading blogs and forums and I didnt see it so it was a well kept "well known" change to come down. It was a stealth alteration or yes I would have said something as would have many others. Also the fact that its TOTALLY ILLOGICAL that people are on mature sims not by choice but BY DEFAULT due to availability should prompt some people to stop and think. Usually a default option is in place because to save you keystrokes this one will not save keystrokes it ads them and is totally bass ackwards default usually leads to bring up the majority not the minority and in this case not due to any end users choices in most cases linden lab puts out far more mature sims then they do pg sims like about 2 sims in 10 auctions are pg rated on the auction block IF THAT at times they put out NO pg sims. What they have done is made it so that people will have to move. Also I have never seen such a sudden drop and there have been a lot of updates not to mention the concurrency right now is 35k users plus so they have for the most part adapted to the viewer

Cocoa? How much land would you need to relocate? I don't know but I THINK my land in Scandium is PG. Not sure though. I have 5 512 lots there. I like it and don't have any particular desire to move, but to help a nice person, I would consider it. I don't need to make money on the deal...just an even swap if your M land is comparable.

If interested contact me next week. I am generally online evenings from about 7:00 p.m. SL time to when ever.

I hope this may help.

hehe she owns half of a mainland sim

it would be a massive move for her and a massive undertaking

Don't suppose you have another spare 10000 sqm of PG up your sleeve that you would like to swap?

Then my idea wouldn't work. It was just an idea...just trying to help.

Sorry

No Porky, I have 2560 sm in Scandium, which I THINK is PG and 5192 in Chamcook, which I THINK is M. That's all.

Coco, you've been around long enough to know it's not going to get any better. You need to keep that in mind when you're deciding whether or not to cut your losses and stop throwing good money after bad.

Yep. Scandium is indeed PG and Chamcook is Mature.

I DID speak up then, but I had forgotten about it!

I wrote four Lindens tonight, and Blue Linden answered. He looked it up and came up with the blog post where they were talking about making it in the future so we would have MORE options to set our own lands, apparently, than to XXX/MUST HIDE and PG.

At the time, I CHEERED this! Somehow in the message it was lost on me that I would meanwhile be hidden!

I already KNOW what the other selling problems are - general server/viewer problems, etc. I already said that has nothing to do with this one miserable, easily-fixable thing!

There IS no justification for this. None, and zero.

To then hide everyone on mature land by default before ever having a solution for those of us in my position (and there are MANY), is absurd! It isn't worth it! It isn't worth the loss to our busineses, and consequently, to LL's bottom line, for whatever benefit that hiding us was supposed to confer!

I like Suezanne's little proposal there, by the way. It is the least they could do!

I urge anyone who is adversely affected by this to get in touch with any and every Linden you can, and tell them you want it changed.

coco

Thank you, Susanne, for the offer. That is very sweet of you! I have over half a sim right now, though.

As I mentioned earlier, it has taken me a year and a half to buy that much land, starting from First Land 512 and gradually buying up the pieces around it to have what I have now, which is very nice.

coco

Edit again: Yes, it was the same thing, that I had the total stupidity to cheer!

It was this:

Change to Default Search Settings in Next Viewer
Also, just a heads up that the next viewer release (tent. scheduled for next week) will include a change to the search default settings. The checkbox to include mature regions will be defaulted to off, currently it’s defaulted to on. This means in order to search both mature and PG regions you will need to click the checkbox the first time. We plan to add a more granular parcel-level mature identifier in the near future to further distinguish mature content from content merely residing in mature regions.

And here, the idiot Coco's idiot response:

"Hey, a great idea to distinguish between parcels that actually HAVE mature content, and those that are just on mature land! I think that’s wonderful!"

Plan to plan to plan to - what good is that going to do us now? And WHY did they do this? That is the question.

Meanwhile, how many businesses will suffer, and perhaps go under? How can they think this is in any way, shape, or form a good thing?

They need to rethink this, and change it BACK, until they can do whatever this other thing is they have planned.

coco

Well

this afternoon I decided to protect myself against this situation,

I bought a 16M plot on PG land and added it to find listings. On the parcel I put a Notecard/LM giver for my real store.


In the couple hours since -
My sales litterally have leapt back up to a normal afternoons. Actually probably above normal(Im guessing becuase much of my competition has no PG visibility)

So Ive broken down and bought a PG parcel for a PG version of my store. Im gambling that Second Life becomes more disney, not less.

While it technically makes "sense" not to have Mature land on the Places listing when Mature is unchecked.

-Making radical changes to business as usual is really inconsiderate of business owners.

OK, maybe someone here can help me.

While Blue was looking up the blog entry, I was off in the bathroom, and when I came back, we both had had the same brilliant "workaround" idea, which is to go buy 16m in some PG land somewhere, and use it for Search, with a comment about where my shop REALLY is.

So I just went looking for that, and I could get that for $188, cheapest, plus going up, as you all know, WAY past that price, with also those 16m's going for sale for like 9k by those various people I don't need to name, you know, the ones hacking up the mainland and selling little pieces off at exortionist rates.

Anyway, even the low-priced, reasonable priced 16m's are totally garbage land, surrounded by garbage, and occupied by very very shady people, some of them (not the ones selling those pieces, but the ones setting up shop there).

Anyway, I don't WANT to be blackmailed by LL into supporting all that kind of thing, which is basically bad for all of us. I don't want to be sitting side by jowl even for a minute with SOME of the people who have these 16m's, and I don't want to encourage the nicer of those people who are selling off these 16m's to keep on doing that, know what I mean?

It's bad enough to be forced into this move by LL, but I really don't want to encourage these land hackers, or sit there in garbage next to signs belonging to the most notorious antisocial types in SL.

So - does anyone here have 16m in a PG land they can sell me, which I can use for the Search purposes, which I will sell back to them if and when this situation is ever resolved?

coco

PLUS it's costing me $30 more a week to do it this way, not to mention the cost of the land!!! They really should not punish people like me because of . . . well, whyever the heck they are doing this! Maybe they are the ones selling off those little 16m's, and want to move more of them.

yeah the one i bought was 1000 L =/

I bought a PG 512 also for 6500 =/

so definitely this was no fun

Coco, I already posted this sudden move 2 days ago, when nowone even knew this had happened. I too was hit hard by the Mature-thing and I really think this is the worst move ever from LL. It's hurting businesses all around Mainland now. People say it was in the blog. Well, I missed that, because so many entries are in the blog these days. And besides: you wouldn't think that a new rating/search setting would involve innocent shops on Mature land too.

So the main issue is:

How on earth can LL explain that normal shop owners with normal products on normal Mainland may be banned and disadvantaged this way, just because LL's own Mainland is rated Mature??? This really is an outrage!!!

I managed to do some damage control with Classifieds, but sales still are below average level. I'm really pissed off with this. It's a shame.

The "Include Mature" checkbox has been there at least for as long as I've been on SL. If you never stopped to think "hmm.. I wonder how people who don't have this turned on will find me", how is that LL's fault? People have always been able to turn "Include Mature" on and off, and you've never been visible to those who chose to turn it off.

There have been 50 times or more help requests over not being able to log in due to the inventory error than there have been people who suddenly couldn't find their favourite places anymore and concurrency has been a whole lot lower than it normally is. If there any lower sales, it's most likely due to that.

You're missing Coco's point though, and it's a very good one - that many people who don't sell Mature content nonetheless have their shops in Mature sims for other reasons (such as, they used their land for both a home and a shop, and wanted to be allowed to swear in their own house). The problem is the fact it goes by the sim, not by the parcel, as well as the well known "Mature vs XXX" objection.

That said, however, I'm sure that when I started back in September 2005, Mature was unchecked by default.. I remember having to check it and getting lots of new results when I did.

Cocoa, I have West Trade Imports land in Alice that is all PG.

If you need 16m of it, or even say a bit more to put a more explanatory sign up, I'll cut a bit out for you for free; it would be my honour to help.

Please contact me in-world.

Warm Regards,

Des

I was thinking about that and I'm half sure it wasn't the default when I signed up either.

Strife has a whole bunch of old viewers, maybe we can bug him to install/uninstall all of them (and delete the settings since those remain even after an uninstall) and check the defaults across time .

I don't really want to pay for a premium account so I can own 512 of land that will not receive the volume of traffic that 8k of land does in order to be able to be visible. I also dont think that people should be trying to find "a work around" for this problem by delving into their pockets and raising tier. I'm about to dump my premium account because all my holdings are on estate land. I consolidated stuff so I could avoid being spread all over the place and not really getting traffic and sales properly as a result of it. Now people are saying buy 16 sq meters pay tier for it just to put a landmark on it in order to make sales. I think its a bit unfair of anyone to be expected to do this. I also can't really afford it at this point and have yet to figure out how to give a small parcel of land enough traffic to make it rise in the traffic listings in order to make the keywords I enter actually findable in the first 10 pages.

I dont think buying 16 sq meters will do a lot in the long run if everyone does it the traffic competition will bottom out the listing. I also dont think we should all be expected to pick up and move because of this thing. I also resent having this problem being layed on my plate to solve as a "work around". I think the solution is to remove the problem and do the entire programming so i can earmark my pg content on a mature sim as PG so i can use my parcel they way its supposed to be used instead of buying MORE land in another area to try to siphone 2K or 1k of visitors on it SOMEHOW in a day.

Anyone jumping and buying 16 meter cuts from the landscape is gonna find themselves in a boat of possibly raising tier and in a traffic race to try to get the rankings they have on their normal parcel of land.

I hate to say it but this is going above and beyond the call of duty here and I dont think people should be leaping up to try to solve the problem this way. not to mention the veritable nightmare that will occur if this keeps up for a month and we all buy little 16 meter sq chunks of land and then another 16 meter sq somewhere else etc etc to put up our little landmark givers.. gah

given the choice I would just close up the entire thing and move on I only just got moving and am not prepared to pump money I dont have into a scheme to siphon traffic in what is basically a very bizarre workaround for a problem that is not our fault

Update:

I went and bought a 16m of hell on a completely vertical snow-covered mountain. Couldn't even figure out if prims I put there would be automatically deleted for taking up the air space of the space below mine!

Then Desmond found me in game and set me up with a nice, tasteful spot of his own. For that, I'm very grateful!

What I really really hate most about this is the Lindens driving us all to now buy a bunch of 16m's. This not only costs us twice as much, plus the cost of the land (and causes some confusion and inconvenience to the customer), but it also encourages the buying of all those horrible 16m pieces of land around!

And if you don't think they are horrible, I suggest you do a little trip around them like I did tonight!

And WHY? I still want to know why? This is not good for SL in so many ways. I hadn't even THOUGHT of the bunches more of little stupid plots that will clog up search just so people can find our REAL ads.

All so that the mature can be defaulted OFF, instead of defaulted ON. Like defaulting them on is gonna kill anybody. Do they think that new players and corporations are actually going to be run off if they see a bunch of porn easily, as opposed to taking some time to figure out to turn it on?

I hate the MOST about this the land carvers going to town with it. While I was at the horrible 16m, this guy came along and very earnestly tried to tell me why it was bad to buy those advertising plots! I had quite the conversation with him, explaining how very much I AGREED with him, but LL was forcing us to do it!

AND - charging us the same as charging those on PG lands. It is such pure discrimination I can't believe that it is happening! Why don't they just hit up my account for more money, while they're at it?

I tell ya,when Coco's Cottages - practically a synonym for wholesomeness! - gets driven underground, something is very wrong around this place, and that's for sure!

coco

Ummmm.....

Why not just UNcheck the Mature box in your land options for Media? Then your land shows up in search without people checking Mature.

I suppose truely mature places "should" keep theirs check, but since all of the Mian Grid is over 18 due to LL's constant vigulance *cough*, there's no real need to hide that inworld. I'd say to keep working and pics "PG", but advertising for a "Sex Club" per se, isn't out of the PG range (billboards everywhere irl). Only nude pics, or foul language is.

*shrugs* Just some thoughts.

Good luck Coco. Always liked your builds ^.^

~Jessy

Can't DO that for Search, Jessica. Because my shop is on Mature land, it is automatically hidden FOR me.

coco