Artificial Boy

((
I have temporarily disabled SLNameWatch or 3 days. A countdown timer on the home page indicates the latest point at which I will re-enable the site.

I have done this out of protest. The Linden Lab software responsible for tracking friend referrals stopped working one year ago, today. As far as I know, Linden Lab has not publicly addressed the issue.

About the only acknowledgement that there even is a problem is that WEB-841 was assigned to WorkingOnIt Linden about six months ago. There are no comments from Linden Lab representatives.

This site isn’t very expensive. It runs on a shared web host. The data collection bot continuously requires a small amount of processor and network resources on my home network, which I don’t mind lending. However, the Google Ads alone are not quite enough to cover the expenses. I’m slightly in the hole, here, going by cash alone. Before the refer-a-friend system stopped working a year ago, I received dozens of calling cards per week (You can see a blurred out picture of a volume of calling cards in my inventory, here) Occasionally, these accounts would upgrade to premium. The bonuses associated with the upgrade went a long way to offset costs and were a great motivation for me to invest more into the site.

Then, it stopped. LL launched a new registration portal, and my best guess is that the developers neglected to include the referal id handler. This affects referral urls, slurls with referral ids, and postcards.

I’m not asking for a freebie, here. I assume I am still driving a modest number of new registrations to Second Life. Without the stream of calling cards I have no way to know exactly how many. Over the last year my traffic has grown, so I feel it is safe to assume that traffic I driving to Second Life has stayed steady or grown. According to secondlife.com, Linden Lab offers L$2000 (about 7.50USD) for each new account that is upgraded to premium. Linden Lab is not making good on the offer, simple as that.
I have written a few words about this on the disabled website, and on SL’s pJIRA issue WEB-841, which I created over 9 months ago.

I understand, mistakes happen. New features introduce new bugs. Some business decisions that make good sense at one point in time outlive their usefulness. I get it. But, what is promised on the Second Life official web site for the last year does not match reality, to put it in the most generous terms possible. It is way past time to confront reality.

I will re-enable the site early if Linden Lab

• Acknowledges the problem, offers an explanation, and articulates a plan to repair it, which includes at least addressing the issue of the payment backlog, and/or
• Removes the false offer of 2000L from the official website, accompanied by a public announcement of the end of the program. Again, the announcement must at least address the issue of the payment backlog.

I don’t pretend that this will have a strong impact on Second Life’s thousands of new registrations per day, but maybe this will raise awareness of something that is clearly unfair.

See you in 2 days 8 hours, ….
-Big Adz ))