“No Worky”
by prokofy on 03/05/07 at 5:09 pm
By Prokofy Neva, Community Affairs
Metaversal malcontents mashed-up in Maryport.
Cory Linden held a town hall today in response to Project Open Letter, an initiative by Cristiano Midnight that claims already 3,805 signatures to a protest about Second Life’s poor performance.
“No worky,” somebody commented on the Concierge Group at about 2 pm SLT. I had also come to the conclusion that the Lindens’ metaversal byproduct to their software development, known as “the virtual world,” was grinding to a halt. No teleports. No search. No map. No friends. No classifieds. Hard to know how to get any work done…
“Looks like it will be a sparsely attended Town Hall,” somebody acidly replied on the list. Yet by flying, walking, teleporting, using friendship cards, somehow the area was filled to capacity by 2:15 pm.
Like flies splatting up against the windshield, your faithful correspondent and other reporters like virtual media mogul Tao Takashi were barred from entering the too-full sim of Seascale, part of a 4-sim configuration where the Lindens hold their town halls. Seascale tapped out at only 33 avatars; the other 3 each had 40-42.
A motley crew of metaversal malcontents queued up in Maryport outside the Linux club on the ramp to the bridge to Seascale. A terse Jesse Linden told me there were no repeaters, and no streams, and that we would have to listen via the Linden Townhall Closed Caption group — whose group IM, of course, wasn’t working.
“You’ll have to use the Closed Captions for the Deaf,” I explained to everybody bunching up in Maryport. “Although they’re the ones who are deaf, of course,” I quipped, indicating the refusal of the Lindens to keep open the forums, provide repeaters or a stream for such an important town hall, or even to make sure that WordPress doesn’t cap at 100 replies to every blog.
Flies against the windshield of a full sim.
Tao Takashi SOL in Wetheral outside Seascale.
Trying to get the transcript of the meeting was near impossible, as the Group IMs are one of the things that are broken. As people found they had to type something in the group to get any chat at all from it visible, and as Jeska and Torley womanfully tried to keep pasting what Cory was shouting, all kinds of typical group busy-bodies kept shushing those saying “is this group working? I can’t see it”. Typical SL bedlam.
I was trying to load my Torley Linden Watermelon launcher to lob in a few to Seascale, while struggling in the lag to answer Reuben Millionaires, as unconnected as the rest of us outside in Maryport, that he would also have to tune into the Mass for Shut-ins the Linden Townhall Closed Caption Group, when Apotheus Silverman of slexchange.com arrived and offered helpfully to try to dispatch an unmanned autopiloted 747 into the townhall. Then all of us seemed to freeze or crash…
I did gather from the bits and bobs floating back from Pooley that there is one piece of very bad news, IMHO, though the usual vocal minorities will be gleefully gloating and vindictively telling their fellow residents to “adapt or leave if you don’t like it”.
In conjuction with the upgrade of the search function, says Cory, traffic metrics will be completely removed from Second Life land parcels.
Like the whack on casinos, this will have a huge impact on business — but not in the way that the gleeful gloaters imagine, and in ways where the damage will not be immediately felt, until everybody starts to realize, oops, there goes all those “positive Linden flow” businesses still numbering only a few hundred.
The gleeful gloaters would like to get rid of traffic because they feel it is “gamed” and the top 20 places use gimmicks like camp chairs to stay on the top of the traffic list. That’s supposed to fool vendors into renting the merchant space there in the belief they will get sales. This formula is used with very widely divergent degrees of success, but now it will be removed. Yes, we got all that, it’s gamed…by a tiny percent of the thousands of people who use traffic to manage land.
RL companies also have been deeply embarrassed to find their traffic is very low on their costly developed sims. I saw 177 on the Crayonista sim last night for example. They’d do anything to get rid of that tell-tale metric that reveals their actual lack of use even by themselves, let alone their lack of popularity in the world at large. Forseti Svarog of the Electric Sheep and others have been actively agitating to get rid of traffic, calling it “broken,” which is the tekkie term for “I don’t like the way it works, and it doesn’t serve my interest”. Yes, we got all that, the still 10-15 percent of island owners in Second Life who are RL businesses don’t find that this system that serves the other higher percentages of inworld businesses is advantageous for them.
Traffic for the rest of those in business not using chairs or serving RL interests in fact is a very valuable management device. It makes an otherwise-broken SEARCH PLACES function with some sense, by arranging any key word by ranking trafficked sites. It also helps manage and develop group land, as you can constantly get feedback about what parcels aren’t working and need to have content changed to increase traffic, which is merely another name for “feedback about how land is used by people” once you get away from the religious zealotry surrounding hatred of it for prudish reasons of hating camping, malls, and clubs, or ideological reasons for being an unsuccessful RL business in SL.
Whatever resident-based or corporate-sponsored traffic metrics now become available are likely to require expensive scripts, expensive tabulation, or expensive managers — one more big blow to the public world that was more accessible to all, with public utilities like traffic metrics. Unless someone can prove this is really the biggest draw on the Lindens’ database, more than “hide my status on line,” many will not see it as justified, and will see it as an unreasonable cave to various lobbying forces.
On other topics, Cory basically had to say that LL is hiring a lot more programmers, and is already throwing 69 percent of its devs at the problems. Meanwhile, we’ll be forced to conclude that the remaining 31 percent are busy making new laggy things that will themselves becomes broken soon and require more dev time.
“Charge!”
The bridge to the future Metaverse, where many of us will be left behind.
P.S. I wonder why Cory Linden advertises in the web page section of his avatar profile a service called Campire Now, a business chat group on the web. Must be due to the group chat in SL being no-worky…
UPDATE: And here’s the transcript of the Q&A’s for those lucky enough to get on the Blog with questions and get through the queue to Cory.
Hiro Pendragon
May 3rd, 2007
Was this in English?
Reality
May 3rd, 2007
Gee, looks like someone didn’t think that maybe – just maybe – the Lindens were going to axe traffic anyway and replace it with something else. I know! Let’s use a system where the returns are based on relevancy – just like each and every other search engine out there!
What a novel concept – the ability for everyone to have a fair (or at least reasonably fair) shot at having their store visited. High traffic does not equal quality or relevance.
SqueezeOne Pow
May 3rd, 2007
Too bad there is no substance or actual detail under the sarcasm dripping from this article.
Back to the forums for actual information I go!
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
What, Hiro, my article of the townhall?
Reality, you’re supposed to say, according to your usual script, “Oh, you’ll just have to adapt or leave,”. What happened, miss your cue?
The Lindens will not be fixing SEARCH when the put in something that in fact doesn’t work the way it does now, having a Google-like search, with this amount of entries is only going to pull up a lot of strange junk the way it does now on the website. We can’t be sure that fixing it includes keeping the Boolean type of strings that have proximity, so that “Ravenglass Rentals” doesn’t turn up every single rentals lot or lot with ravens on it, but turns up all lots labelled “Ravenglass Rentals” first.
Everyone already does have a reasonably fair chance of having their store visited. Once you ignore “Popular Places,” and discount any key word search that turns up a top lot that has a figure like 20,000, obviously with campers, and look at the rest of the list, 5000 and below usually, you’ll see the organic traffic that is gained due to a store that is in fact popular because it has something people want, or they return for more due to the quality.
Your failure to grasp these nuances is something that is probably not fixable, for you or the others about to storm around in self-righteous wrath about camping. You’re not able to look behond the few spots at the top with campers to the 99 percent of other lots in the list.
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
>Too bad there is no substance or actual detail under the sarcasm dripping from this article.
Back to the forums for actual information I go!
Write when you get work!
Victoria Kemsley
May 3rd, 2007
Actualy if you want to decipher Prok’s true thoughts on this, go take a look here
http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=12138&page=3
I Think she could have condensed it however with this one sentance
[12:23] Prokofy Neva: but not when you actively hit at my livlihood
But the rest is quite enjoyable, shows Prok at her best
JayR Cela
May 3rd, 2007
hello
If anyone would like an Un-Edited ( by the Lindens ) version of the entire Town Hall Transcript IM me and I will be happy to send it to you
JayR Cela
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
Oh, I’m glad that interchange is published. It shows Lewis Nerd at his most smug and smarmy. That aspect of him is always terribly hard to endure, but I do endure it.
And yes, people who whack at other people’s livlihoods should get a big “fuck you” said right back to them. I find that kind of slash-and-burn politics absolutely reprehensible.
I don’t agree with camp chairs, and I don’t agree with removing them, but I don’t push and shove and say “My interests must TRUMP other people’s.” I merely defend my interests.
For others to actively, hatefully, gleefully, maliciously, gloatingly want to do harm and damage to others, as Lewis did with this remark about removing traffic, is central to what’s wrong with the world of Second Life.
No one ever understands the art of political compromise, or that there will always be conflicting interest groups, and that it isn’t about stamping out one interest group and annihilating it into the dust to make way for another, more presumably “evolved” or “adaptable” in this brutal social Darwinism that people like Lewis are actually espousing.
No, fuck that shit, and those saying those things are indeed terribly short-sighted. Anyone who thinks you secure your own interests by eliiminating other interest groups is simply dead wrong, and ultimately they destroy all of the society, and lose even their own interests.
And frankly, Lewis was simply too retarded in this town hall, and in the exchange with me, to grasp my point about the good uses of traffic, so zealous was he to blow hard about camping.
CarlCorey
May 3rd, 2007
Personally, I find it depressing that every update lately has resulted in them taking away functionality.
Victoria Kemsley
May 3rd, 2007
I’m glad your glad Prok, but you are really a foul mouthed (deleted).
I find that IM a textbook example of greifing by way of words. I have to look back and thank my parents for teaching me some basic commom courtisy, because it’s obvious you have none.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva
And frankly, Lewis was simply too retarded in this town hall and in the exchange with me, to grasp my point
I think anyone reading that exchange that is older than a 5yo would have no problem deceiding who the immature one is.
Gaius Goodliffe
May 3rd, 2007
“Your failure to grasp these nuances is something that is probably not fixable”
Oo oo! I can help! If you’ve read enough writing by Prok, you by now should recognize this one. It means, “your failure to agree with me.” It’s beyond Prok’s comprehension that anyone who understand him could nevertheless disagree with him. If you disagree, you must have missed something. Or, alternately, you understand but you’re part of the evil plot. It’s always one or the other. You’re either stupid or lying. Honest, intelligent people always agree with Prok 100%.
By the way, Prok, you’re making a specious argument here: “It also helps manage and develop group land, as you can constantly get feedback about what parcels aren’t working and need to have content changed to increase traffic.” The statement is true, but it doesn’t justify the point you’re attempting to make. It’s mind-bogglingly easy to track traffic in far more accurate ways than the Linden’s often-screwed up traffic numbers. Anyone who actually finds this kind of data valuable is doubtless already gathering it with their own scripts and databases. Unlike the Lindens, who can only give me some almost meaningless number, our scripts tell us who visited, when, for how long, possibly even where they went and what they bought while they were there, or what items they used, paused the longest to admire, etc. We don’t need the Lindens to do this for us. As incompetent as you insist they are, it boggles my mind why you always want them doing things for us that we can already do much better ourselves.
Oh yeah, you go on about how this will require expensive this or expensive that or whatever. Gimme a break. Better traffic stats than the Lindens give come free with some scripts in cheap prefabs.
Their implementation of traffic is not only bad for search, it ain’t even good for tracking traffic. It ain’t worth crap, so if it uses one iota of their server/network resources, it ought to be deep-sixed, the sooner the better.
And do you honestly think they’re hiding traffic number to not look bad to big companies? Don’t be naive. I have much more detailed traffic information that the Lindens can’t mess with, and I’m one little self-employed freelancer. You really think the big boys don’t already track traffic even more extensively than I do?
Your reasons for why you think they have other motives for deep-sixing traffic than those they stated are specious. Your arguments for keeping it are specious — there are better ways to accomplish the goals you mention. People don’t disagree with you because they don’t understand the nuances of the situation. They usually disagree with you because they understand them much better.
Actually, I don’t believe that’s true, though. When things are broken, you complain, but you also complain when they attempt to fix them. No matter what the Lindens do, you’re there screaming it’s the wrong thing. But if they do nothing, you also scream about their lack of action. And you always dredge up some half-baked justification for your arguments, as above. It’s not that you don’t understand. It’s quite simply that you’re a troll, and very good at what you do. Congrats.
Nacon
May 3rd, 2007
Such pity that Lindens had to listen more crap about what they were trying to work on anyway.
It’s the march of hating idiots all over.
Patient or get out.
There.com is still there.
Onder Skall
May 3rd, 2007
AH, their fix strategy revealed! They’ll just keep turning off features until SL works perfectly! GENIUS!
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
>Anyone who actually finds this kind of data valuable is doubtless already gathering it with their own scripts and databases. Unlike the Lindens, who can only give me some almost meaningless number, our scripts tell us who visited, when, for how long, possibly even where they went and what they bought while they were there, or what items they used, paused the longest to admire, etc. We don’t need the Lindens to do this for us. As incompetent as you insist they are, it boggles my mind why you always want them doing things for us that we can already do much better ourselves.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
There are not other ways for *me and others who are not scripters* to accomplish these goals quickly and cheaply.
If you are a scripter — sure, you can make customized scripts to accomplish these things.
If you have investment cash — sure, you can hire scripters to accomplish these things.
If you even just have only $5000 or $20,0000 to spend, you can find various systems like the notorious Andy Enfield’s who stole my key words for his own business — to gather information.
But then…they have access to your proprietary information and have a hold over you, and they can fix or not fix their script depending on a whim when it breaks with each Linden patch.
What the Lindens did, in spite of themselves, was make a world with tools that were simple enough for even the non-technical to use for business. This was their revolution, and their miracle. They are now busy running from it as fast as they can, breaking it, and stepping on it to make something else they like better.
What they are doing now is breaking the world for amateurs, in order to remold it for a tiny percentage of elitist, fuck-you, arrogant tekkies.
That’s wrong, and I’m going to be screaming bloody murder about this, regularly and often.
There aren’t things that “we can do better than the Lindens” if we are *not coders*.
You can sneer and snark and gloat over this all you like as one of these fucked-up elitist coders or payers of coders, but eventually, you’ll have to concede: you can’t make a world of only coders. it will always be a tiny world. There has to be a RANGE and a very broad range of entry levels for all kinds of people.
We’ll be forced to wait until one of the scripters either open-sources traffic/land management scripts, or some of the more decent scripters who understand what is involved in running commercial businesses, as distinct from open-source fanboyz’ clubs for the losers to feel like they are initiated, will come forward and make a user-friendly management script that also doesn’t steal all the proprietary data.
The world used to be paralyzed, horridly dependent on Moonshine Herbst and Hank Ramos for the only two rental scripts in SL. They had to pay fantastic usurial sums to these individuals who wouldn’t sell the scripts for cheap. (The only reason Hank gave his away finally to open source was because I commissioned a third person to script a box for me and broke their monopoly).
Today, who can remember that year in Second Life of the usury of Moonshine Herbst and Hank Ramos? Nobody, as they now have dozens of rental scripts of a huge variety and effectiveness, many low cost, to pick from for their business.
We’re still a long way away from that for land management scripts.
This is really actually a profound problem for SL, if people would but grasp it.
It’s not “trolling” to make penetrating and persistent criticism of something this important.
I believe they are removing traffic, because like all arrogant tekkies, they hate the idea of a world in which there are amateurs doing things ranging from camp chairs to running land businesses merely using it for management — and not privy to the special cast of coders.
They hate it with a passion.
They loathe it.
And that’s why they incite equal and opposite loathing from me.
They sneer at people who do anything *with* the world they are making, they merely want to make it and collect the cash and the glory. It’s fucked.
They are removing it because they don’t like the popular places, they are all sex joints, and most Lindens personally do not get their sex inworld in a virtual way, but get it the ordinary way, so they can only have pity or contempt for those who use those sex palaces.
They are removing it because they are all highly-paid coders who don’t need campchairs because they aren’t soccer moms working at Wal-mart and camping for gas money or play money in SL.
They are removing it because they feel bad for corporations from RL that can’t get traffic because they really want them to succeed, buy more islands, and displace these embarassing soccer moms from Wal-mart making gas money that they only have contempt for, culturally.
Trust me, they get loathing from me, because they loathed people like me first.
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
>And do you honestly think they’re hiding traffic number to not look bad to big companies? Don’t be naive. I have much more detailed traffic information that the Lindens can’t mess with, and I’m one little self-employed freelancer. You really think the big boys don’t already track traffic even more extensively than I do?
This is so naive and stupid, particulary because it’s the usual witless and nasty arrogant repartee.
What you’re failing to grasp is that traffic that we have now is a PUBLIC METRIC. ANYONE can see it. It is a terribly important part of the transparency of the world.
Sure, some RL corporation can count their traffic with their script, and show who interacts, chats, touches boxes, etc. So? WE can’t see that and make a PUBLIC judgement about how they are doing.
It’s so typical of all these gurus who claim they are for open-source, open this, “information wants to be free” and all that other bullshit, that when it comes to REALLY making the society open and free, they don’t, and wish to close it down, to have power over other people.
Anonymous
May 3rd, 2007
Prokofy, you seriously need to stop insulting and degrading everyone who doesn’t see things your way. You are NOT a journalist.
How many different views that people have are what make things work for if everyone thought the same the world would be a dull and seriously boring place.
I believe you purposely try to start shitstorms more times than not.
Let’s see how you completely try to turn my comments into some sort of conspiracy because we all know the world is against you Prok.
burning the wrong person
May 3rd, 2007
Forgot my name. Oh no, that must be part of the conspiracy too! *gasp*
Prokofy Neva
May 3rd, 2007
>Prokofy, you seriously need to stop insulting and degrading everyone who doesn’t see things your way. You are NOT a journalist.
I am a journalist. And I insult people who insult me, I give it right back to them. If you have something that works better for you, use it. I don’t insult them because they have a different opinion, or because I don’t believe anybody should have any other opinion but mine — that’s truly retarded BTW — but because I wish to argue my own opinion forcefully.
You kids are so unuse to controversy. I guess it’s because your parents never tell you “no” and you can’t imagine a world where somebody says “no”.
>How many different views that people have are what make things work for if everyone thought the same the world would be a dull and seriously boring place.
If you feel this way, then reroute your complaint right back to Mr. Nerd, and tell him that far from having “common sense” as he claims, he has merely “an opinion” and “a wrong one” from the perspective of others. You need the lecture on diversity, not me, as the overwhelming majority of posters here come from the same tiny, conformist, clannish collection of tekkies who have only one perspective, and one they think is “right”.
I provide the diversity around here.
>I believe you purposely try to start shitstorms more times than not.
I respond to people who give me shit, in kind.
>Let’s see how you completely try to turn my comments into some sort of conspiracy because we all know the world is against you Prok
Not the world, the sect that is in SL that replies to comments.
Victoria Kemsley
May 3rd, 2007
Posted by: Prokofy Neva
I am a journalist.
Ohh and I’m only a crazy cat lady with a tin foil hat that see’s NKVD and Smersh agents under my bed…..wait, I also must be a journalist!!
lololo
Reality
May 4th, 2007
No Prokofy, I said “Gee, looks like someone didn’t think that maybe – just maybe – the Lindens were going to axe traffic anyway and replace it with something else. I know! Let’s use a system where the returns are based on relevancy – just like each and every other search engine out there!
What a novel concept – the ability for everyone to have a fair (or at least reasonably fair) shot at having their store visited. High traffic does not equal quality or relevance.”
Your failure to grasp even the simple concept of getting search results by relevance and not by some bullshit number which is best compared to a “Top 100″ voting site …. Hmm, using Ravenglass Rentals as an example again? Here’s a hint for you dear: The only time a normal search engine looks for the exact item being search for, is when you tell it to. someone wants to find Ravenglass Rentals? How hard is it to type “Ravenglass Rentals” (with quotes mind you)?
The number of people visiting a shop does not reflect the quality of what is being sold. If people have to choose between two similar items sold, one at a shop that gets thousands of people daily (cost: 1000L) and the other at a shop that is lucky to see a hundred people come through in a month (cost: 200L) …. They are going to look at quality Vs. the price – not how many other people bought from the shop.
Oh yes, so you know? I don’t have an issue with camping my dear – I’ve stated it before: I have an issue with people like you who are so out of touch with reality that they believe with all their being that they live within a stream of electrons forming computer data.
As a final note Prokofy: You are not a Journalist – you lack integrity.
Phantom
May 4th, 2007
yea writing for a online news “paper” doesn’t make you a Journalist. if you wrote for a real company, sure maybe, but all you really do is rant over things over and over again, until people start to ignore you because it’s not use arguing over your opinions when your dead set your always right.
given evidence, or giving a well explained theory does much better then ranting, name calling, mud slinging, and trying to force your opinion on the unwilling.
Not Prok
May 4th, 2007
I actually like the Herald’s relentlessly-negative take on news, even to the extent that they whine about both sides of an issue at the same time. So I like this writeup of the town hall.
Still, I’d like to point out an obvious reason for removing traffic numbers. Traffic numbers add to database load not just directly, but also due to extra logins for AFK people on camp chairs.
I believe LL is preparing to carry out their threat to limit concurrent logins. Someday soon you could go to log in and get a message “SL is full. No more than 50,000 may connect at once.” How would you feel if 5,000 of those 50,000 were bots and people on camp chairs? You know very well you’d go straight for the nearest forum or blog and scream bloody murder. So… the time has come, those camp chairs simply have to go away.
I actually don’t care much about the direct impact on casinos and malls and corporate islands, I’m more interested in the socioeconomic consequences of removing camp chairs throughout all of SL. What will we tell newbies about making money, for instance? It should be… interesting, in the sense of living in interesting times. Also, what will happen to the ‘popular places’ list? If it doesn’t go away, the camp chairs will continue, even if the actual numbers aren’t public. So I imagine it’ll have to disappear too.
Bryn Voight
May 4th, 2007
While Mr. Neva obviously has an axe to grind with regards the technical classes in Second Life, in this regard, it doesn’t make him wrong. Traffic may not be of much utility to select groups, but the principal users of Search aren’t interested in the technical realities of the search function; They want to know where to Buy Shoes, or where it’s popular to have BDSM Sex, or whatever.
Newbies, fresh off the Island, as I was not too long ago, must rely on search to find… well anything! All the social spots I found that led to me actually ‘learning’ stuff about SL were discovered through the search and traffic functions. It takes but a few tries to realize that the high level traffic places you tend to avoid. It also gives me incentive to check out those places with really low traffic, get out the ‘little guy’ as it were. Now of course as I’ve learned SL I have adopted other means of gathering information(mostly from other people, and in the case of locations Slikr), but Search, and the traffic Info that is attached to it, remains an important method of not just discovering places, but determining which of them I want to go to.
In this regard Prokofy Neva is absolutely correct, why is functionality being removed from SL? Why is a tool of public information being withdrawn that the vast majority of users will have no way of replicating? A Broader question of what will happen to the economy of SL if the mechanism where by much of the ‘entry levels’ of that economy are taken away. What will happen when the campers are ‘gone’?
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
>Now of course as I’ve learned SL I have adopted other means of gathering information(mostly from other people, and in the case of locations Slikr), but Search, and the traffic Info that is attached to it, remains an important method of not just discovering places, but determining which of them I want to go to.
>In this regard Prokofy Neva is absolutely correct, why is functionality being removed from SL? Why is a tool of public information being withdrawn that the vast majority of users will have no way of replicating? A Broader question of what will happen to the economy of SL if the mechanism where by much of the ‘entry levels’ of that economy are taken away. What will happen when the campers are ‘gone’?
Thank you thank you thank you. Couldn’t have said it better. Now can it be emblazoned on a blimp and flown over Linden Lab, and also over the land of people like Suzie Boffin and Lewis Nerd who are irratinally screaming about traffic? By “traffic” they mean they hate people who sit AFK and earn money and lag sims. I doubt that either Suzie or Lewis actually have campers near them lagging their sims. Both are too savvy to live with a sim with that problem for long, they’d sell or move. I unfortunately *do* have a sim like that with an ass who has 6 campers at least constantly, filling up the available avatar slots on that sim. It’s a nightmare when people want to simply go home to their house, they can’t get on the sim.
But even with that glaring problem, I don’t say “let’s remove a public utility with information that is useful to order search findings”. That’s not only throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it’s throwing out the bathtub as well. It’s just plain short-sighted and stupid.
The Lindens just don’t want to LISTEN about how the world is USED and LIVED IN.
I hate when the Lindens do things for ideological reasons, not real authentic technical reasons, and do it while cheered on from various cliques and factions also ideologically-driven.
Taking out search is just that sort of time, that’s why I really go ballistic about it.
It’s not just “what will happen when the campers are gone” — although it’s a great question to ask. The deeper question is: what will happen to all new entries to the economy? I know from my tenants that new people entry, especially foreigners sometimes with limited English, and SEARCH is vital to them. That’s why I offer it as part of the rent, not as an extra. A person who is skilled at making something can’t get noticed without search. They just have to get in search and hope that the key words they can think up will turn up somewhere even in a list of 100.
They work hard at changing their stores, their wares, their offers, their prices, their events, etc. and gradually their sales and traffic pick up. These are not people with fake 12,000 traffic on stores that have campers bunched on one quadrant and nobody even looking at the merchants’ wares in the vendors there paying $3 a prim. These are people with 200-2000 traffic but every visit is leading to a sale, or at least a long browse that leads to a sale later.
The more I think about it, search plus traffic is really the lifeblood of the economy for ordinary people, newbies, foreigners — anybody who isn’t Cristiano Midnight and the FIC. It’s vital for *other people besides the Lindens, the Lindesidents and their friends* to be in the economy.
It’s how the world is kept free.
Once it’s gone, there will be a devastating effect that the Lindens won’t acknowledge and people like Cristiano and the rest will try to spin even if they secretly notice it affecting them.
Only the very rich and powerful, and those connected in RL to RL companies, will be able to get on the list. We will see even more hysterical sign griefing and extortion as a result — that ugly blight is directly related to the lack of real opportunity for advertising normal in a non-blighty regulated way. (I noticed the telehub ads are still broken in Waterhead, that may be a feature, not a bug.)
God damn. I really despair for SL sometimes. The wanton boys, always pulling the wings off the flies.
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
What a novel concept – the ability for everyone to have a fair (or at least reasonably fair) shot at having their store visited. High traffic does not equal quality or relevance.”
Yes, that’s what we have NOW with SEARCH PLACES.
DUH.
It’s not what we will have with classifieds only.
Search Places using key words will turn up parcels…how? why? with what order? Googlian gamed-up clicks? Those things already clicked on therefore at the top? Or…just a jumble, which is how the LL-made web page works now that nobody ever uses as a result.
>Your failure to grasp even the simple concept of getting search results by relevance and not by some bullshit number which is best compared to a “Top 100″ voting site …. Hmm, using Ravenglass Rentals as an example again? Here’s a hint for you dear: The only time a normal search engine looks for the exact item being search for, is when you tell it to. someone wants to find Ravenglass Rentals? How hard is it to type “Ravenglass Rentals” (with quotes mind you)?
Um, here’s a hint for YOU hon, putting “Ravenglass Rentals” in quotes will do sweet-dick-all for you on the Linden-made web search on http://www.secondlife.com Because it’s not set up to work like Google. It will do sweet-dick-all for you in the search now, as it can’t recognize it. It will do sweet-dick-all anywhere it isn’t institutionalized.
Sure, if the Lindens make a system work like that, possibly it might work better…but we don’t know they will make closed quotes function to keep terms together (as if anybody who uses the Internet for their job wouldn’t understand about these quotation marks, my God, what stunning retardation, to assume somebody else is stupid like that — really remarkably fucked).
Putting something in closed quotes is no guarantee that lots of other stuff won’t come up, as we have seen when the search was broken, then fixed to work without Boolean thingies, and then finally fixed back.
Everything depends on how the Lindens will sort it, and knowing them, I have absolutely no trust that it will work better. None.
>The number of people visiting a shop does not reflect the quality of what is being sold. If people have to choose between two similar items sold, one at a shop that gets thousands of people daily (cost: 1000L) and the other at a shop that is lucky to see a hundred people come through in a month (cost: 200L) …. They are going to look at quality Vs. the price – not how many other people bought from the shop.
Gosh, now is that a brain wave of what???!!!!! Duh! That’s exactly why we need SEARCH PLACES to stay exactly as it is. Because it helps all those people NOT in the Popular Places. People have different ways of reading returns.
As we can see, some deliberately go to the little guy or the low-trafficked lot just to get away from lag. Others head for the high-numbers. Still others pick a number like 2000 which they know from experience is the figure somebody who has real sales and not fake traffic will have (like Barnesworth’s Tableau island). Everybody has their techniques and needs….and now the system is free to accommodate all those kinds of searching styles.
Not so when it is removed, and we are stuck with paid-for classifieds sorting by price only.
Or by search that can sort only by alphabetical order or the kasha that search has been on the website. Go and see how it works please, so you get what it’s store for you.
>Oh yes, so you know? I don’t have an issue with camping my dear – I’ve stated it before: I have an issue with people like you who are so out of touch with reality that they believe with all their being that they live within a stream of electrons forming computer data.
Yes, we live here. And more people will be living here. And you’re the one out of touch with reality if you can’t grasp that this is the future, and the future we have a chance to make better or worse now, not later.
>As a final note Prokofy: You are not a Journalist – you lack integrity.
I have more integrity in my little finger than most people posting on these forums, and I know it, and they know it.
Reality
May 4th, 2007
I am going to chose to ignore everything you have posted above relating to search Prokofy as you have no clue what you are talking about.
I will however respond to this little gem here: “Yes, we live here. And more people will be living here. And you’re the one out of touch with reality if you can’t grasp that this is the future, and the future we have a chance to make better or worse now, not later.”
No – you do not live in Second Life Prokofy, you make a living using Second Life. There is a rather large difference and you seem quite incapable of grasping that, in order to live in Second Life – why the very essence of your being, all those nice little electrical impulses that drive you must be able to be placed within the Internet and in particular, your avatar.
There is no objective, scientific evidence you can present to make the above otherwise at this time Prokofy. You truly are out of touch with reality and truly do need help.
“I have more integrity in my little finger than most people posting on these forums, and I know it, and they know it.”
Nope – your ‘integrity’ amounts to ‘I am always right and no one else matters but me! I know all and am all! How DARE you disagree with me?!’
Thank you for playing “How attached to reality are you?” Your current score is currently so low it can only be represented by a negative infinity loop.
Brent Recreant
May 4th, 2007
Sorry Prof, I’m not going to resort to acting like a Child to out-wit you, even though thats easy, since you seem to loose your temper fast.
See, there you go!
Isadora Jervil
May 4th, 2007
well – search is a great function – and I learned early on to use that very handy little scroll wheel on my mouse to start at the bottom of the resultant list of businesses, sex joints and casinos….. What the joyous traffick results tell you is that the sim will be busy and you will not be able to tp there…. so avoid it. If the Lindens actually get the tp process sorted out around the on the 10 minutes to the hour til 5 minutes past rush – as everyone goes to music, learning or indeed town halls – we will all be better off.
BTW – I also then to use the scroll wheel to deal with Prok’s little rants – no this is not journalism – its comment; read the editorial if you like, but avoid the mud slinging that follows.
Obscure Doodad
May 4th, 2007
A few comments.
No journalist would be assigned to a story about some issue directly affecting a business they personally owned. They would mention it to an editor and someone else would be assigned. Probably hard to do with shoestring operations, but in a world where journalism is accused of either liberal or conservative bias, such an obvious manifestation of impartiality should have been easy to avoid. Of course, maybe all of the staff of SLHerald have in world businesses and axes to grind on this story.
Regardless, a great deal more overt impartiality is called for in an article — as opposed to an editorial.
Perhaps more to the point . . .does anyone know what the new search ordering algorithm is to be? If not traffic, what? Relevance? That would just spawn an avalanche of keywords, accurate or not.
Obscure Doodad
May 4th, 2007
Correction . . . manifestation of partiality, not impartiality.
Buretin Peart
May 4th, 2007
Prok- You may be a journalist, however all the articles I’ve seen you write for the Herald are all heavy op-ed pieces which really lack objectivity. Instead of asking “Here are the facts, what conclusion can I draw from them?”, you ask “Here is my conclusion, what facts can I cherry-pick to support it?”
Artemis Fate
May 4th, 2007
I like that Prokofy tried to marginalize the removal of traffic numbers not to the people screaming about camping chairs destroying their sims and giving businesses unfair advantages, but that somehow the corporate giants who haven’t even cared enough to show face in SL to see their sims, now apparently are greatly embarrassed by their traffic numbers enough to put pressure on Linden Labs to change it.
I’m impressed Prokofy, that takes a great amount of dedication to conspiracy and hatred to say something that is so blatantly untrue, that even the newbies are going “uh…what?”
Also, Prokofy, journalism requires atleast the illusion of non-partiality, something you fail at so miserably, you couldn’t be called anything less than either a.) an editorialist or b.) soap-box ranting psycho, you’re certainly not a journalist, because you’re completely incapable of reporting anything CLOSE to “just the facts”, you HAVE to drip your opinion, world view, and hatred over EVERYTHING you say, which inherently makes you NOT a journalist.
Brent Recreant
May 4th, 2007
I choose B. Amirite?
Firsttimelistener Longtimecaller
May 4th, 2007
Ah, oh, oooh yeah. That feels good. My little Pazoozah is back. ooooh yeaaaah…
And casting speculations on Linden lovemaking no less. Ooooh, paaaah-zooo-zaaaah…
/i tink my peepee just frew up in my pants a little bit
Rusties Dagger
May 4th, 2007
I couldn’t get in, I wanted to yiff Cory Linden. ;_;
Rusties Dagger
May 4th, 2007
Also, I was there way before Prok, still couldn’t get in.
NigrasOnMyLawn
May 4th, 2007
someone call the waaaaahhhbulance
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
Artemis Fate is a creepy stalker
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
I like that Prokofy tried to marginalize the removal of traffic numbers not to the people screaming about camping chairs destroying their sims and giving businesses unfair advantages, but that somehow the corporate giants who haven’t even cared enough to show face in SL to see their sims, now apparently are greatly embarrassed by their traffic numbers enough to put pressure on Linden Labs to change it.
That’s pretty stupid. I mentioned both constituencies as problems, but I explain the facts about them without ideology and zealotry like yourself. There just aren’t that many camping establishments. People like you who are fastidious about business, advocating socialism or state control or no-business-but-my-business hate camp chairs and their establishments because they represent freedom you can’t control. It’s not my idea of a good business, and I do not permit camp chairs on my property or use any of those gimmicks, but I can understand that it is the symptom of a deeper problem: lack of advertising capacity inworld, due to a pig-headed sign-boarding policy, and lack of entry-level jobs for newbies. In a free situation, those two factors of control of the economy by both Linden Lab and the oldbies mean that campchairs become a kind of economic resistance.
They didn’t go away even when dwell and dwellopers’ awards were removed, which the Lindens were surprised at.
>I’m impressed Prokofy, that takes a great amount of dedication to conspiracy and hatred to say something that is so blatantly untrue, that even the newbies are going “uh…what?”
I have no idea what you’re smoking there, gal. I have sims with camp chairs as I’ve said, oh, about a dozen times now. I fight them like dogs. But is that a reason to remove traffic? No. It’s a reason for the Lindens to enforce their TOS on ‘disturbance of the peace’. Any sim that has campchairs is disturbing the peace and taking up all the FPS of that sim and all its avatar slots.
If the Lindens would a) get over their desire to idelogically control and edit the world and b) enforce the simple rule of law they do have then c) they could invoke “disturbance of the peace” against camp chairs, make a few arrests, make a somber warning on the blog, and that would be the end of it. But they never enforce law by written law or rule of law, they only enforce it by code-as-law. And that’s what is deeply wrong with them, and the tekkie-wikinistas who support them.
>Also, Prokofy, journalism requires atleast the illusion of non-partiality, something you fail at so miserably, you couldn’t be called anything less than either a.) an editorialist or b.) soap-box ranting psycho, you’re certainly not a journalist, because you’re completely incapable of reporting anything CLOSE to “just the facts”, you HAVE to drip your opinion, world view, and hatred over EVERYTHING you say, which inherently makes you NOT a journalist
Oh, I’m happy to drip my world view into every story, and that is just as much journalism as anything else. It would be terribly boring to merely read some wire service report saying “Town Hall sims full, everybody locked out, groups don’t work, next”. We know all that. What’s important about the Herald is that we always present everything fairly unbalanced. I love being a fairly unbalanced journalist and I do it deliberately, it’s the only way to cover a profoundly unfree world that punishes the free media.
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
that last line about Artemis being a stalker was not posted by me btw.
Rusties Dagger
May 4th, 2007
What’s this I have in this .txt file? Is it Prokofy Neva’s full name, phone number, and address? Oh, I just can’t tell. Might be a recipe for fried chicken.
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
I conclude that Artemis Fate is a creepy stalker AND an impersonator. I consider him stealing my identity rape and assault. That last line about that last line not posted by me was not posted by me btw.
NobodyImportant
May 4th, 2007
>>What’s this I have in this .txt file? Is it Prokofy Neva’s full >>name, phone number, and address? Oh, I just can’t tell. Might >>be a recipe for fried chicken.
>>Posted by: Rusties Dagger | May 04, 2007 at 09:18 PM
Did… did you say…
ch-ch-ch…chicken?
Artemis Fate
May 4th, 2007
“but I explain the facts about them without ideology and zealotry like yourself.”
You do explain things without ideology and zealotry, i’ll agree there, because you believe your ideology and zealotry to be fact, not opinion. Take for example this quote:
“RL companies also have been deeply embarrassed to find their traffic is very low on their costly developed sims.”
Now any real reporter editorializing on what might have happened would have used terms like “perhaps” or “I think”, but you, you didn’t have any part of that. You said “have been” perpetrating this line as perfect fact. So where’s your source on that? Where’s the inside person or report collaborating this bit of so-called “fact” (maybe you’ll use Random Unsung?). You’re the worst kind of zealot, because you don’t even distinguish belief and fact anymore, whatever you believe in your mind is true.
“There just aren’t that many camping establishments.”
Oh sorry, I guess there’s the problem of our disagreements, we’re on two different grids! Clearly, you saying there aren’t many camping chairs out there proves you’re on a different grid (perhaps, with your attitude the teen grid?) because on the main grid, putting camping in search alone gets you 1000+ results (which I might add is 500 more than putting in “club”, though 500 less than putting in “sex”, for example of scale), and that walking along the main grid to any spot with any proportion of dots will almost certainly yield you a camping spot.
“People like you who are fastidious about business, advocating socialism or state control or no-business-but-my-business hate camp chairs and their establishments because they represent freedom you can’t control.”
Wow. Your mouth must smell terrible all the time with all the bullshit you spew out of it.
“I have no idea what you’re smoking there, gal. I have sims with camp chairs as I’ve said, oh, about a dozen times now. I fight them like dogs. But is that a reason to remove traffic? No. It’s a reason for the Lindens to enforce their TOS on ‘disturbance of the peace’.”
The fact that you fight camping chairs (when it suits you anyways, yet you assault other people who hate camping chairs for being fascist-pig dogs limiting freedom, but it’s totally okay for you to do it) isn’t necessarily relevant to the initial point that you attempted to marginalize the removal of a useless traffic system being gamed by camping chairs to corporate executives inexplicably embarrassed by a place they don’t seem to care that much about besides having a “billboard” constructed.
Traffic is a useless system, now maybe i’m wrong, you own much more sims than I, maybe it’s somehow been useful in your business (though I can’t possibly imagine how) but all I see is people gaming it to get undeserved traffic to draw newbies who don’t realize that traffic is meaningless. Traffic is just like ratings, an outdated concept that has grown increasingly meaningless overtime left over from when LL was still treating SL partially like a game where one person could be the best (best appearance rating, best building rating in the long deceased leaderboard), and is only hampering or not helping anyone except those who wish to game. Yes the incentives were supposed to cut down on camping, and they probably did (I didn’t bother to record the difference in camping spots before and after), but the removal of DI still left traffic which could make a great advertising agent. Now, do I think that removing traffic will be the end all of camping chairs? No, i’ll be interested to see how many people still keep it up for the green dots on the map advertising (I can’t imagine not that many), and how many of the camping chair owners honestly believe they’re helping newbies with them. But yes, I do think that this will be the death of most camping chair places, and will be the countdown for the rest to slowly follow.
“Oh, I’m happy to drip my world view into every story, and that is just as much journalism as anything else. It would be terribly boring to merely read some wire service report saying “Town Hall sims full, everybody locked out, groups don’t work, next”. We know all that. What’s important about the Herald is that we always present everything fairly unbalanced. I love being a fairly unbalanced journalist and I do it deliberately, it’s the only way to cover a profoundly unfree world that punishes the free media.”
Hate to break it to you, but to be a journalist you have to be non-partial. That “town hall sims full, everybody locked out, groups don’t work, next” as you put it, IS the concept of journalism. You report the facts, and you try to be as non-partial as possible. Read a newspaper sometime, there’s subtle tippings in choice of interviews and placements of words to push for one side or another, but as long as the focus is on “Just the facts” it can be considered journalism, whereas you write with the focus of “just my opinion” which is called editorializing. Which means, you are not a journalist, and this is not a newspaper. You’re just a person with an opinion, and this is a blog.
Look “journalism” up in a dictionary, trust me, there’s not a picture of you by it.
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
rape its aaaaaalllwight
Jessica Holyoke
May 4th, 2007
First, like it or not, Prokofy is an important draw to this website. He may have a self-interest, but at least he has something to say and his self-interest is disclosed. (And before you start flaming, match the pronoun to the presentation. I’ve worked with transgendered people and avatars and the proper etiquette is to go with the presented gender.)
Second, revenues are great and all, and private visitor numbers are also great, but that doesn’t give a good idea of how your business is doing compared to other businesses. When I used to manage the PinkPussy Cat club (still an investor, see I can declare my self-interest), I would use traffic as a means to compare my club’s performance with the performance of other clubs and look at ways to compensate and improve. Private, unpublished numbers doesn’t help with comparative strategies.
Third, camping is a great start to a newbie’s Second Life. What else is there? Money trees are mostly gone. Hippie pay has the potential to generate spam in your e-mail. Eliminating camping eliminates a beginning income stream. At the same time, the Lindens, running the Lindex, would be interested in discontinuing camping so that their interests are met. If two out of the three main early income generators are gone, then people will more likely have verified accounts and use the Lindex to start their Second Life.
This leads me to There. There is not a good alternative to Second Life. Beyond the lack of content creation, There does not have the same newbie friendly options SL has. There is more about purchasing Therebucks to take part in the experience. Linden labs may want a mandatory exchange in order to have a more steady income stream, through currency exchange. With my experiences with the Lindex, I take more money out, than I ever put in, mostly because I want to limit how much money I spend on a virtual experience. Residents may not want to put money into the game until they know they enjoy the game, or until they are addicted to the experience.
Experience leads to the last point. Second Life can be a wholly encompassing experience. And the terms “magic circle” apply wholly to people like Prokofy and others who see an existence through Second Life. We have homes, jobs, friends, and sometimes families. We are vested in our Second Life. Others see Second Life as a tool or another form of webpage. Both views are valid. It is vastly more important to realize these differences and what different people want out of Second Life and move on, in order to create a better virtual community together.
Jessica Holyoke
May 4th, 2007
One more thing about camping. By getting a person into your club and having them present, just for a while, you’re exposing them to your product. Even if they go away from keyboard, they still have to come in and look around. It may be expensive advertising, but it is a way to try and build brand loyalty.
Newbie starts in SL and needs lindens. He camps at the PinkPussy Cat(see above disclosure on self-interest). He likes the dancers and the music. He goes out and decides to start his own business, and make other friends. Where might he take them back to? The PinkPussy Cat, thereby increasing word of mouth advertising.
Now this is all theoretical. After all, with the new architecture, who knows what will happen. Maybe we can all hear each other’s voices shout “darn lag” and “nooooo” as we all crash for the fifth time in twenty minutes.
Prokofy Neva
May 4th, 2007
Artemis, we already long since got your point: as an IRC channeller, tekki, builder for the Sheep, blah blah blah, you have a different set of views than me. But you’re not “right” any more than you believe me not to be “right”. Get over yourself.
>You do explain things without ideology and zealotry, i’ll agree there, because you believe your ideology and zealotry to be fact, not opinion. Take for example this quote:
“RL companies also have been deeply embarrassed to find their traffic is very low on their costly developed sims.”
Now any real reporter editorializing on what might have happened would have used terms like “perhaps” or “I think”, but you, you didn’t have any part of that. You said “have been” perpetrating this line as perfect fact. So where’s your source on that? Where’s the inside person or report collaborating this bit of so-called “fact” (maybe you’ll use Random Unsung?).
This is a fact. They are embarrassed. It’s been discussed all over the Internet. If you missed it, well, you’re oblivious, and now that you work for one of these metaversal agencies, suspect in your claims.
>You’re the worst kind of zealot, because you don’t even distinguish belief and fact anymore, whatever you believe in your mind is true.
I promote my viewpoint, yes, I can be reliably depended upon to do that : )
>”There just aren’t that many camping establishments.”
Oh sorry, I guess there’s the problem of our disagreements, we’re on two different grids! Clearly, you saying there aren’t many camping chairs out there proves you’re on a different grid (perhaps, with your attitude the teen grid?) because on the main grid, putting camping in search alone gets you 1000+ results
No, 828. I counted them. Out of 7800 sims. And tens of thousands of stores and malls.
>(which I might add is 500 more than putting in “club”, though 500 less than putting in “sex”, for example of scale), and that walking along the main grid to any spot with any proportion of dots will almost certainly yield you a camping spot.
They all overlap, so that doesn’t count. “camping” for 828 sounds about right.
How many of those are on their own sim so that it doesn’t matter? Lots. And…let’s say about 400 remain that are problems? Sure, 400 too many. But not the horror everyone imagines.
>”People like you who are fastidious about business, advocating socialism or state control or no-business-but-my-business hate camp chairs and their establishments because they represent freedom you can’t control.”
Wow. Your mouth must smell terrible all the time with all the bullshit you spew out of it.
Truth hurts, Artemis.
>”I have no idea what you’re smoking there, gal. I have sims with camp chairs as I’ve said, oh, about a dozen times now. I fight them like dogs. But is that a reason to remove traffic? No. It’s a reason for the Lindens to enforce their TOS on ‘disturbance of the peace’.”
The fact that you fight camping chairs (when it suits you anyways, yet you assault other people who hate camping chairs for being fascist-pig dogs limiting freedom, but it’s totally okay for you to do it)
Um, no, I assault them for trying to get rid of a public metric that helps the world just to kill the messenger of the news that yeah, newbies need jobs and want in on the economy, and that yeah, somebody other than Adam Zaius wants to be at the top of the classifieds list? hello? hell, yeah.
>isn’t necessarily relevant to the initial point that you attempted to marginalize the removal of a useless traffic system being gamed by camping chairs to corporate executives inexplicably embarrassed by a place they don’t seem to care that much about besides having a “billboard” constructed.
You aren’t making sense.
>Traffic is a useless system, now maybe i’m wrong, you own much more sims than I, maybe it’s somehow been useful in your business (though I can’t possibly imagine how)
I’ve explained a million times, but I won’t be repeating it.
>but all I see is people gaming it to get undeserved traffic to draw newbies who don’t realize that traffic is meaningless.
you’re just the usual person on their usual little sim, get over it. The world is bigger than you.
>Traffic is just like ratings, an outdated concept that has grown increasingly meaningless overtime left over from when LL was still treating SL partially like a game where one person could be the best (best appearance rating, best building rating in the long deceased leaderboard), and is only hampering or not helping anyone except those who wish to game.
No, traffic, when it isn’t gamed, which is 90 percent of the time on 90 percent of the lots, is fine as a metric, a good public measure of merit and and accountability. Hardly a game, that.
>Yes the incentives were supposed to cut down on camping, and they probably did (I didn’t bother to record the difference in camping spots before and after), but the removal of DI still left traffic which could make a great advertising agent. Now, do I think that removing traffic will be the end all of camping chairs? No, i’ll be interested to see how many people still keep it up for the green dots on the map advertising (I can’t imagine not that many),
BOY are you in for a surprise!
>and how many of the camping chair owners honestly believe they’re helping newbies with them. But yes, I do think that this will be the death of most camping chair places, and will be the countdown for the rest to slowly follow.
Who says anything about helping newbies? They objectively help newbies by paying them. But they help themselves by having those same payouts come right back in the form of casino takings or in vendor sales. But it’s all consenting adults, eh?
So, away with your net-nannying please.
>Hate to break it to you, but to be a journalist you have to be non-partial. That “town hall sims full, everybody locked out, groups don’t work, next” as you put it, IS the concept of journalism. You report the facts, and you try to be as non-partial as possible.
I’m chuckling to myself, since I know a great deal more about this than you do now, or forever, but it’s not important, you only look stupid making comments like that.
You seem to fail to grasp the point: journalism *of this sort* is just the ticket for a closed, controlled, synthetic world. Just the ticket.
You need your own blog.
>Read a newspaper sometime, there’s subtle tippings in choice of interviews and placements of words to push for one side or another, but as long as the focus is on “Just the facts” it can be considered journalism, whereas you write with the focus of “just my opinion” which is called editorializing. Which means, you are not a journalist, and this is not a newspaper. You’re just a person with an opinion, and this is a blog.
Sounds like you have a great concept for a paper, go make one!
>Look “journalism” up in a dictionary, trust me, there’s not a picture of you by it.
I’m a virtual journalist for a virtual world : )
Bryn Voight
May 5th, 2007
Artemis, you are wrong, Traffic is not a ‘useless system’, not to me, not to most of the people I hang out with in SL, and not to the host of people checking SL out or who actually decide to stick around. In fact Search and Traffic are some of the Best tools for doing the essential ‘work’ of your early Second Life, namely meeting people who can tell you what the Hell your doing, since Newbie Support in SL is lacklustre at best.
Once removed, how will one judge the list of websites that will suddenly srpawl across my screne? How will I know “Ooh, almost assuredly camping Chairs or Gambling or Whatever there, I’ll go over here” or “Oh, this store looks neat, and has very lower traffic so is probably new”. These are choices and decisions actual people are making using the system as it exist. Remove it and you remove a source of information that the people utilizing SL for the actual ‘stuff’ of SL, the Cyber-Sex, the Yiffing, the Horseback Riding, Blowing Things Up, Chatting, Dancing, the Gorean RP, the crafting of Giant Robots that Look cool for the Sake of Lookign Cool and so forth, are using. Could a better system be implemented? Sure. Come take away Traffic when you have that system ready to be implemented. When you can go ‘We are not removing functionality, just changing it’. You may never use traffic, adn thus it may be useless to you, but it’s very useful to me, to a host of other people, to Newbie of all stripes.
Lastly, as some-one who hangs out on the mainland, I see camping chairs periodically, and sometimes find a Sim with maybee a half-dozen; Malls are common for this. But over-all, they are not nearly as common as you would think. Try finding an empty one when your a newbie and want to get cash to afford some of those 1$ freebies or maybee, just maybee.. get some Prim Hair and you’ll see what I mean. People will always ‘Game’ the system, especially when cash is involved, it’s the drive to earn after-all, Lindens let you do ‘stuff’ in-world, people want to do stuff in world, people thus want lindens and will figure out easy ways of getting them.
Phantom
May 5th, 2007
I can only speak for my self, I hate the Search systems as it is now, I always had issues finding items I wanted to buy, because of the people using search word spamming, I don’t really look to much at the traffic my self, maybe I’d have an easier time finding what I really wanted and not have to look through a list of shops with a search word in the description, I my self do not buy from shops I know use spam search words.
my real questions is how is this “new” search system going to act on? because if it isn’t going to be much different then the key words search they have now, it would be pointless use the search use the search any more, I would not want to sit looking through a hundred entries and only find a hand full of shops that do sell they kind of items I’m looking for.
at least Web searches the content your most likely looking for is normally on the first page or two if your really going to find anything.
so I my self would much more enjoy a search system that will give you a better idea on what your looking for and not just some person spamming the description with search words.
but maybe it’s just hard to find cyber punk items, that are of any good quality anyways.