Lucy (Rodney Humble) is putting out the football (seeking advice on how to retain newbies) to Peanuts again (the peanut gallery at Sluniverse.com).
Although he's already conceived and prepared a new system without any input, seemingly (although there may have been secret confabs as he indicated that the next roundtables he had would be confidential), he is now at the last minute "seeking input" before he "pulls the trigger" from the FIC at Sluniverse.com
Sigh.
As it happens, I stumbled across one of my own outdated newbie helper notecards today that was on top of the stalls so I had missed it in updates, and it was funny to see how I advised people to get into the land business and sell their first land -- funny because now, there is no first land, and there's also no land economy anymore with Governor Linden dumping $1/meter abandoned land everywhere.
Would it make sense to bring back first land? Oh, sure. If the Lindens aren't willing to police the number of credit cards used with one IP address or the number of parcels taken with one credit card, they could just make the land autoreturn after 30 days. I think that's how Desmond did it. You set the land with an autoreturn of 42300 minutes for 30 days x 24 x 60 is and newbies get to experiment and sample and try and make new friends and not get stuck with land they can't sell next to neighbours they hate, as part of that experience will be learning how to move up to the next level of more permanent land. After 30 days, Governor Linden reclaims it and resets it. It doesn't even have to particularly worry if the same newbies come back and take it again. Who cares? There aren't that many of them.
But there's some more serious things that have always needed to be done but the Lindens just never will do them -- and are likely not to now, although I'll repeat them yet again:
O ALLOW ADVERTISING IN THE ORIENTATION AND INFOHUB AREAS WITH EITHER HIGHEST BIDDERS OR ROTATING EVERY WEEK SO THAT THOSE BUSINESSES WILLING TO TAKE AND ORIENT NEWBIES HAVE A WAY OF FINDING THEM
This has always been extremely hard for the commie Lindens to except -- they treat newbies like some newborn babes who can't be exposed to evil capitalism and keep them cocooned in the communist sandbox forcing them to learn how to build.
They should get out of the way and let the free market handle the newbie problem. And by that I don't mean just *their* free market in Linden Houses, but all our free markets in malls, clubs, rentals, venues, etc.
Clubs, rentals, educational areas, etc. etc. can all pay for ads to have newbies teleport into their laps, and then take care of them.
Newbies would get to PICK where they go instantly and not get dumped into an abusive infohub.
Currently the Lindens may offer better teleport options than into the hubs, but I don't think so as I still see them landing in bewilderment in the hub areas that I manage.
o MAKE DESTINATIONS MORE FAIR AND MAKE IT EASIER TO ENTER
Currently, there's too much of a backlog of requests to get into Destination, and the requirement to take a high-tech kick-ass photo is too steep a requirement. I can't take one with my lousy set-up with my um "dated consumer router" nor can others. It's what is holding me back from writing the Lindens -- that and not remembering where/how to write because the Lindens hide this somewhere on a wiki.
Right now, I see The Shelter on there twice under two different categories, and I see other destinations on twice under various categories. Stop that, Lindens. It's unfair. There are lots of venues that want in on this highly-visible board. Let them. Let them PAY in fact to be on Destinations! The Lindens used to have the Moth Temple listed as a "chat area" although mainly bots chat there. We put a lot of work into making that a regularly-updated and monitored orientation area. Now it fell out, for reasons unknown despite fairly good traffic. Shouldn't the Lindens put all the resident-built infohubs into Destination as a matter of course? They didn't. And getting them to do this is just too hard for me to justify all the time I'd need to spend. Just do it, Lindens!
o Destinations should be part Linden picks, and part FREE MARKET.
The other problem the Lindens have had with letting the market help newbies, in addition to their technocommunism, is their San Francisco cultural affectations.
They hate the idea of newbies, whom they all see as possible recruits to their open-source Burning Man cult, going off and shopping or buying sexy clothes and then making a suburban ranch home. This kitschy mass taste drives them batty and they can only ridicule it.
So yes, that means if you let the market respond, there will be lots of disco, sex, free Linden kind of places, the genuinely popular places. So what? Let them pay ads, let that be a source of revenue for Linden, let newbies CHOOSE.
There can always be the intellectual places, too.
For example, the Rekviem Cafe on my sim which is the only parcel in the entire search/places list of Second Life that has the word "intellectual" in it. I'm not kidding.
OK, then.
o Don't waste time and staff you don't have policing welcome areas -- let the free market help get newbies out of them instead.
The welcome areas are cesspools of idiocy, but the Lindens should just leave those nice builds up on the 4096 plots and let the idiots coagulate there, but meanwhile, enable newbies to teleport right from the web, or right from their first orientation landing, or even right from those cesspool welcome areas, into something they chose, and which is BETTER.
They can do that WHEN THERE ARE ADS WITH TELEPORTS FOR SALE
O RESTORE THE POLICE BLOTTER, FIX GROUP EXPLOITS, AND DEAL WITH GRIEFING MORE EFFECTIVELY, I.E. WITH ABILITY TO KEEP OPEN GROUPS BUT BAN GRIEFERS
Finally, there's griefing. That has got to be dealt with far, far better as my ample reporting here indicates. One or two people or a tiny group of morons and sickos shouldn't be able to ruin the Second Lives of hundreds of people like this.
That means:
o fixing the group land exploits. Why is this happening? I'm told it is a "leak of Linden god mode". Well, change your god mode then? I mean seriously, when the basic rules of the world which are like "gravity" are so easily broken, the world isn't sustainable. Fix it. Make it a priority.
o real, honest-to-goodness hash bans, and blacklisting of obvious griefer content throughout accounts, so it can't be copybotted and passed around; tracking of alts to their main nests and groups better and eliminating them (and that means yes, getting rid of the latest incarnation of the Woodbury/Nicholas Mafia island rental that has a name like Red Square Redux). Yes, block the proxy they use for a time. Try that! That will make the other script kiddies who use it put pressure on them to stop. No, there aren't any Iranian dissidents using SL, so stop speculating with that edge-case.
o Allow Concierge customers to file abuse tickets!!!!
ALLOW CONCIERGE CUSTOMERS TO FILE ABUSE TICKETS!!!!
This simple combination of Concierge and Governance is one that the Lindens hate with a passion. I don't know why. What's the big fucking deal? If somebody who pays you thousands of real dollars a month has a serial griefer, why can't Concierge deal with it at the top region/sim level and be quicker to organize bans and removals of grief objects and tracking of culprits? Why is this so GODDAMN hard to do?
The reason the morons so easily make new accounts over and over again is that they can last on them for 3 or 7 or 10 days at a time. When they can last 10 minutes after an abuse report via Concierge, and that can be done 50 times a day until they get tired, we will see an end to this nonsense. Truly.
The people that have spent oodles of time and money in there have left. Veni vidi vici.
The new kids coming in that are tolerant of the poor performance issues of SL... are so young they don't have money. And if they do... they sure as hell aren't going to spend it on the gaming experience that is SL. There's Xbox...
I see asking for advice as a way of stirring up the former bourgeoisie. I say former because their fan base is pretty much gone now too... and well, everyone blogs now so it hardly makes anyone special... even if they insist that they are. :)
Trying to wring a few more drops of debate, trolling, bickering, self-important pixel posturing in the hopes that it stirs up interest in the cash cows that remain.
But even those cows aren't spending anymore.
It's interesting to watch. :)
I am sorry you are getting bothered again by griefers. Personally I've always been tempted to machinima them and send the video to their place of business.
Real world should know what kind of nut jobs they have employed. Virtual worlds are a dumping ground for neurotic vents and surreal silliness that makes me shake my head and wonder why I spent thousands in there in the first place.
Lori / Skylar
Posted by: skylarsmythe | August 06, 2012 at 07:43 PM