Petition To Linden Lab on Change.Org About Cashout Fee Hikes

On Wednesday May 29, Linden Lab would announce significant hikes to both the price of Premium accounts and the cashout fees for Linden dollars. The move has triggered quite a bit of discussion among the residents. While some are reacting by canceling Premium accounts, one person calling himself or herself "Second Life Residents" started a petition on change.org, "An Open Letter to Linden Lab."

While the person thanked Linden Lab for retracting their decision to cut back basic account group limits, "We are, however, disheartened by the other changes that you have announced that are scheduled to be implemented this month, specifically the doubling of the processing fee from 2.5% to 5%. While we understand that Linden Lab is a business that needs to profit in order to thrive, we feel it is necessary to remind you that we are running businesses, too. As you know, many of us are more than just hobbyists, we rely on the money we earn in Second Life to pay our bills, feed our children, and survive. Rather than simply protest the changes you have made, we come to you hoping for an open dialogue to both understand your needs to implement such a drastic and high percentage and possibly come up with alternative solutions for Linden Lab to generate profits without punishing those you depend on the most to keep Second Life going."

"if your creators and other earners in Second Life are not kept happy and confident in your decisions, you risk a great loss that would eventually render Second Life obsolete. We believe that the decisions you make should not be done in a vacuum. The voices of residents have given you guidance in some of the best choices you've made in the last several years. Bento, Linden Homes, new default avatars, animesh... all of this was achieved with input from resident creators. We feel there is a place for resident consultations beyond content creation. Second Life residents understand this platform on a level that Linden Lab employees cannot achieve without becoming immersive residents who shop, live, and love. We are the ones immersed. We are the community. We are the culture. We have a keen insight into our own needs and many of us are competent, intelligent, and capable enough to advocate skillfully on behalf of the residents."

The writer would go on to suggest Linden Lab hire consultants, "residents who can demonstrate competence and expertise in various Second Life areas ... and real life practical areas ..." and "discuss the possibility of negotiating the 5% processing fee. We understand that Linden Lab does have a final say, but we have a long list of innovative and insightful ideas of how Linden Lab might increase profits without relying on land and without creators having to bear such a severe financial burden."

The petition had already reached over 1600 signatures as of the writing of this article.

To read the petition in full, Click Here.

Addition, as of 2PM SL time, the petition had reached 1900 signatures.

Hat tip: Lia, Braelove

Bixyl Shuftan

A Cry For Help From Venezuela

A year ago, the Newser interviewed Alejandra Jumanya, also known inworld as Miss W. A skilled content creator with a line of women's fashion, she had also attracted attention as her Second Life income had increasingly been making a difference in her real life as in her home country of Venezuela the economy was deteriorating. A couple nights ago, we once again spoke with her. The situation of her and her daughter had gone from bad to worse and was in need of help.

Read more in People.

Team Firestorm Says " 'Restore to Last Position Needs You' "

Presumably if Team Firestorm and Linden Lab have a disagreement about how things on the viewer should appear, it gets quietly resolved. This time they called out to their fans about a certain feature that the Lab is planning to do away with: "Restore to last position."

In a recent meeting, LL mentioned that they are considering blocking the  “Restore to Last Position” functionality at the server level. This is because it results in permanent content loss if it fails when using it on no copy items. Since version 4.6.7 Firestorm prevents the feature from being used on no copy items as a simple measure to prevent loss, but the underlying issue here is that LL doesn’t understand the feature’s value to residents who use or rely on it.

Kicking, screaming and calling foul will not save this feature, nor will criticizing LL or anyone else for not understanding the feature. In fact actions like that will speed up its demise. What WILL save it however is a well structured set of use cases that demonstrate clearly and concisely how useful and valuable this feature is to you.

If you use this feature and would like to see it stick around please leave a comment on this post detailing how you use it and why it is valuable to you. In a week’s time we will extract the best use cases and formulate an email to LL that will demonstrate both the feature’s value and its usefulness.

One can view the comments here: http://www.firestormviewer.org/restore-to-last-position-needs-you/#comments. As of the posting of this article, there are over 350 of them.