Fashion Consolidated

Hi petals,

Didn’t we look bad one month after our SL birth? If you’re an avid archivist like me (aka “hoarder” aka “procrastinator”), your house will be full of boxes of birthday cards from people whose names you can’t remember, and your inventories or hard drives full of photos of yourself from 2006 (or 2002, if you’re quicker at picking up on a good thing than me). And those photos probably make you laugh (if you’re good-natured), wail (if you tend to be self-critical) or shed a little tear if you’re sentimental – I tend to do all three at once, which can cause unexpected tea spillage.

So I’ve been simultaneously giggling, hair-pulling and blubbing everytime I see my plasticky looking face on FashCon kiosks all over SL since 2006. In those days, knocking up a quick poster from two prims made into a sign (“hey I can build!”), and forgetting to remove (one of?) my neko ears didn’t seem like a big deal for my soon-to-be-announced little idea of FashCon, which I didn’t think would make much of a splash. Quite why I’m standing in a red lace slip and leather jacket, I can’t remember. Thus was born the FashCon “poster”, which now shamefully still graces a few thousand kiosks all over SL to this day.

Of course, now SL is much more sophisticated, we understand about skins and don’t drop ears without noticing, and so it’s time to update that poster… in my time-honoured fashion of knocking up another one without significant photoshop skills that I will also live to regret. Luckily the masterful system under which the FashCon kiosks run (courtesy of script goddess Sasun Steinbeck) allows me to change and cycle the textures that are pushed out to all kiosks centrally. So this is to say to all designers that the texture on you kiosk will change sometime soon to the new pictures in this post (click to see). This affects people with posters most – the texture covers the entire surface; on stalls and boxes, it’s the small texture on the “phone directory”. In due course it’ll probably change again when I cringe at this one too, or may even revert. In general, be prepared for those textures to change off and on sometimes.

Maybe sometime in 2036 the old poster will be claimed a classic of kitsch and sold on the martian equivalent of Ebay for 25,000 interplanetary credits, but I feel that unlikely. If you suspect I’m wrong, feel free to snatch a copy now.

Much love and embarrassment!
Honey

P.S. I added another pic!

Fashion Consolidated has now been in existence for over two years, and from inception its aim has been to bring news and views of new releases of fashion and av-related creations to the attention of the in-world public – in-world.  As it has grown from a handful to over 2000 designers and to 11,000 members to date, this has of course caused problems of scale, many of which I’ve managed with designer kiosks and the like, but one of which has required continuous large-scale effort: moderation of content that designers post to the group.  FashCon’s original ethos hasn’t changed one bit, and the rules about what may be posted have never been modified in any significant way since January 2007. These rules were devised after consultation about what people wanted in a group like this.  What’s proved difficult is ensuring these rules are followed, and members very often express unhappiness to me that content posted doesn’t follow policy, and that group notices become increasingly hard to read, as the off-topic or incidental notices cloud out the real gold – illustrated new release notices.

The purpose of this post is to indicate that FashCon policy will now be enforced in a clearly defined manner, and designers need to be made very aware of these changes, as failure to follow policy will result in suspension followed by removal from the group if not followed.

FashCon’s posting rules (which haven’t changed) are described in the FAQ and summarised in various languages here.  More detail explanation of each rule, why and how can be found on the new rules page. The rules are:

Rule No.1: no more than 1 notice/week
Rule No 2: only new releases
Rule No.3: only fashion and av-related items
Rule No.4: always send pictures

Under the new policy which has come into effect today, any post that a designer sends that does not follow these rules will result in one cautionary notecard, explaining this policy again, and explaining why the warning has been sent.  A second offence will result in suspension for 2 weeks – and the designer concerned should contact Ivy Norsk, the FashCon content moderator, to indicate that they acknowledge this, so that staff know that they have taken notice.  These rare suspensions should be taken as an extreme warning, as a third offence will result in removal from the group.  Refunds for kiosks purchased will not be made, as this would encourage people to spam without cost (repeatedly with alts), which would hurt the group.  Application of these three stages are at the discretion of Honey Fairweather as owner of the group.  Declined notecards will not be resent.

To summarise:
Rule break 1: warning and explanatory notecard to designer
Rule break 2: two week suspension
Rule break 3: removal of the designer from the group

See below the cut for whys and hows.

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My staff and I have had lots of notecards from designers in the last 10 days about why they can’t send notices and yet they see others coming through. This concerns me, and appears to be a general problem on SL that large volume groups are sometimes seeing – a new problem and particularly bad at weekends of heavy usage.

So clearly SL has had some serious problems with groups for more than a week, and it’s unclear why some designers can’t send to FashCon.  If you are a designer and your notices fail to send, please don’t keep resending, wait a day and try again.  My totally random hunch based on years of fighting group problems on JIRA is that you might want to try teleporting to a quiet region or mainland (I used to try the region “Io”) before sending, but there’s no reason whatsoever to believe me. Just the ill-educated ideas that float through Honey’s head and she likes to mistake for intuition.

Sorry I can’t do anymore right now, but it’s a general SL problem and I have no control over the whims and fancies of the Lindens!

P.S. Oh but you can help. A reminder that my 2-year-old (yes) JIRA is still alive and I think still the fourth most “popular” bug on SL. It used to be the second – and although LL have still to something substantial to really address notice issues, it’s very important that this JIRA is kept current so they can’t ignore. If you care about this please log into JIRA (top-right of page) with your SL username and password and vote for it (left column) and even more importantly comment if you have personal problems with posting notices, and any feedback you can give them.  Thanks!

Honey