Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Boo's Bits vs Linden Lab Marketplace - Part 2

Since the last posting, I have had discussions with Linden Lab on the flagging, and got some vindication when a linden agreed on some of the flagged items shouldn't have been flagged.

That said, I am still dealing with a great deal of flagging from my items, specifically my lapdance chairs. These are my best selling products and I can't afford to not have them listed on the marketplace, so they are now listed under adult.

I don't agree that they should be under adult. I strongly believe they are a moderate item. Lapdance does not automatically mean sex, in fact i sell several chairs that don't even have a sex menu (any of my "basic" lapdance products only have the dance menus). They really are no different than any other piece of furniture that has a sex menu in them, except they have dances.

LL also told me that if i see items like my own that were flagged under general or moderate search I should flag them. I have been doing that, yet none of the items I flagged have been moved out of general or moderate. In fact, if you search Lapdance without being logged in (which defaults to general search only) you will still find 14 pages of products listed (I will admit that many of them are henmations dances, but there are still a number of stripper/sexual items in there)

So I am going to have to admit that the marketplace does not offer a fair slate for merchants, and do the best with it I can. When a item of mine gets flagged, I will most likely just put it under adult so that it can still be listed, and hope that consumers are checking off those options to see adult items.

Over the next month you will also see me release versions of my products without the sex menu, to be listed under general on the marketplace, with the specific note in the description: Adult versions of this product are available. please check off the "view moderate/adult items" checkbox to see them.

I also can't help but think that people don't know that if they are age verified the marketplace default search will be moderate if they are logged in. People could be flagging things thinking they should not be in general...when they already arn't. But what can you do about that? Not much...the information is out there, but not everyone is going to read it.

That's all I am going to say on this for now. Thanks to everyone to IM'd me with questions and words of support over this. Specifically to my fellow merchants who have been going through the same thing. The downside to doing business in SL, is that it is Linden Lab's world, and they get to interpret the rules they make however they like. Even when their own rules contradict their actions.

Nynaboo

xx

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