New GMC service: Rental/Housing Listings

Another new service the GMC is offering the Gorean community is to have their rental plots/housing listed on the blog and have a single notice posting allotment per week to advertise what they have available. There is a very specific set of criteria for this service, which is outlined on the Rental Enrollment Form.

The Enrollment Rules are posted on the form so you can easily find them and reference them before filling out and submitting the form. Once the form has been submitted it will be understood you have read and understood the rules provided.

If you have any questions, please contact Dartavia. We are currently seeking a person to be the focal contact for the Rental Roster. If you would like to take on this task, please fill out the Staff application form

Fraud in Marketplaces

There are many forms of fraud which you can experience in a market place. Never under-estimate the fraud artist who will stoop to any level in the attempt to make the biggest buck the quickest way with little to no effort.

This post will be an on-going edit of the many tactics used in the Gorean Markets to fraudulently gain funds from people in Second Life.

It is in your best interests at your store, or your market place, to post signs significant enough which will be noticed easily outlining the names of representatives, or if there are none, and what steps should be taken if someone fraudulently represents themselves as an official staff member.

If you become aware of someone who is pulling these scams, submit an Abuse Report and advise anyone who was ‘taken’ by the scam to do the same. Simply banning the person from your store/market won’t stop him or her from doing it elsewhere. Preventing this person from doing it again through the abuse reporting system will give Linden Labs all the information they need to investigate and take the furthest action possible they deem is necessary to stop this person from doing it again – such as banning the IP of the individual so they aren’t able to create alts and start their scheming process over again.

If you are aware of any other valid fraudulent tactics, please email them to Dartavia so they can be added to this list.

Technical Assistance
There is a known case of someone posing as a person offering technical assistance (in some form or another) to merchants advising them that a vendor is not working and to pay them directly for the product with the promise of it being sent to them.

Important Change in Process

Because there seems to be a large change-over of market managers which leads to a lot of sign switching and confusion, there is going to be an enforcement of a processing proceedure for the forms.

1) Only the market/sim owner can submit forms. They will also be the only one getting the signs. This will cut down on the amount of managerial sign swaps that’s needed.

2) Sign renewals will be sent to the sim/market owner listed on the blog page. Ensure your blog page is accurate by checking it.

As per this post, there will be a removal of market managers from the hippogroup unless they are also the administrator for the sim. This is to ensure that only authorized people will be given signs through the market manager update group if there is need for an update to be sent out.

A bit more of an explanation (taken from the GMC In-world chat)

As we all know markets can go through a lot of changes in market managers. When managers change, so does signs. Some times old signs are left out and new ones aren’t put out there is the confusion when the old sign deletes itself and the new manager/market owner thinks they were removed from the GMC. Which can lead for days of explanations from Cela and I.

So, to avoid that confusion signs are now only going to the sim/village administrators and they will put them out and that will also save those same people having to renew numerous times and straighten out sign issues when the market manager has moved on (for whatever reason) and the market is left without signs.

This DOES NOT impact the inworld group – all MM’s keep their notice postings. This is just for the HippoGROUP, which isn’t used much as all can attest to, but if there is a major update to signs it will be done there so i don’t have to drag signs to 100 profiles which takes hours

Merchant Gathering

We will not be having a merchant gathering this week. RL intrudes once again but stay tuned, next week we are back!

GMC Merchant Gathering 08

Group Announcement | Agenda | Transcript 11am | Transcript 5pm

http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Central%20Fire/114/203/23

Join us this Saturday Sept 5th 11am-1pm and 5pm-6:30pm at the Central Fire Market for this weeks Merchant Gathering.

Topics will include:

a- Adult Verification / Search Revisited

Well, now that adult verification and search is in full swing let’s revisit this, share our stories, learn the latest and see what’s been happening on the adult front. Also, some confusion over Adult and “age verified only” on some sims, so let’s sort that out!

b- The adult / bot nazis

Seems that recently some have taken it upon themselves to seek out those they feel are violating the adult or bot policies. How do we deal with these accusations?

C- Open discussion for anything that’s on your mind!

Join us!! http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Central%20Fire/114/203/23

GMC Gathering 07

What ways are working well to promote markets and merchants?

MM boards and treasure hunts are all the rage, but do they really produce traffic and sales?
Are classifieds really worth their price these days?
Is XStreetSL and it’s new face lift and integration with secondlife.com and SL inworld a good place to market?
Are groups even worth bothering with?

Come and join us for a round table discussion on what is working and what isn’t these days.

Saturday August 29th, BlackWraith Market

Group Announcement | Agenda | Transcript 11am | Transcript 5pm

Merchant Gathering Market of Laura Aug 8th 2009

The next Merchant Gathering is this Saturday at the Market of Laura.

Topic: Linden Labs Content Management Roadmap https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/08/04/our-content-management-roadmap

**Please review the blog post PRIOR to the meeting!!

During the discussion we shall review these new upcoming LL policy changes and tools and develop some coordinated feedback we can send back to the Lindens.

Agenda | Transcript 11am | Transcript 5pm

Protecting Your Content

After a very informative chat channel discussion in the GMC today, Anthan and I were talking and thought it would be a great feature of the blog to have a page where we can collect various tips to help content creators protect their work.  If you have any tips you would like to share, please post them here.  There will be a compliation of all tips to form a page which will be easily linked at the top.

Remember, this is for help only and not a ‘do it like this’ cemented guide.  All the tips provided are freely offered by many people to help you help yourself.

Merchant Gathering @ Market of Fina

This Saturday Aug 1st we will be having our next Merchant Gathering @ Fina!! 11am-1pm and again 5pm-7pm.

Topic: What role should the Markets and Merchants of Gor play in preventing / punishing content theft?

Are we prepared to hold kangaroo courts and should the GMC or other groups even be involved in such things?? What legal ramifications are involved? Are there ways to insure it’s fair and objective and doesn’t turn into a witch hunt?

See the agenda and LM to the meeting!!

| Agenda | Transcript 11am | Transcript 5pm

Merchant Gathering 04 @ GPSU

This weeks Merchant Gathering will be held on Saturday July 25th from 11am-1pm and again at 5pm-7pm at the Gorean Pleasure Silk University Market.

This weeks topic: Standards

Should certain things like attachment points, stall sizes, prim counts and the definitions of “low lag” and “high traiffic” be somewhat standardized?

Come and share your thoughts and enjoy some great discussion!

Hope to see you there. See the Merchant Gathering Page for all the details or click here for the Agenda.