Jelly Doll, I do not think it is fair to say the ship has sailed when residents still clearly do care about public-interest spaces in Second Life.

Relay For Life of Second Life is the obvious example. People still build for it, attend it, donate to it, promote it, and treat it as part of the wider SL community. That is not a dead category. That is residents actively using Second Life for something beyond shopping, clubs, and rentals.

Virtual Ability is another example of a space with a genuine public-interest purpose. These kinds of places matter to people who need support, information, accessibility, community, or a safer way into SL.

I do agree that some old educational builds are stale. I am not arguing that abandoned 2006-era locations should be pushed at people just because they once had a college logo on them. If a place is inactive, badly maintained, or no longer useful, then it should not be treated as a strong result.

But that is exactly why better discovery matters. The point is not to reward dead builds. It is to make current, maintained, useful public-interest places easier to find, while making the stale ones easier to ignore.

Prokofy Neva I think this is close to the kind of practical version I would support.

A broader category such as Arts / Culture / Education / Non-Profit, or something similar, may work better than making “education” carry the whole idea on its own. A lot of the value here is not conventional classroom teaching. It is museums, archives, exhibitions, support spaces, accessibility projects, mentoring, charity work, historical builds, community learning, arts, and public-good activity.

I also agree that this probably has to be self-reported. If Linden Lab has to decide manually what counts, it will either become too narrow or it simply will not happen. Formal charity status should not be the only route in, because many useful Second Life projects are informal, community-led, and mission-based rather than legally registered non-profits.

That said, regions would also need to do their part. If they want to be found, they need clear descriptions, sensible keywords, active listings, proper event use where relevant, and landing points that make sense to visitors.

So for me the goal is still discoverability. Give residents a clearer way to find active public-good, cultural, educational, and community spaces, while also expecting those spaces to keep their own listings understandable and current.

Roxksie Logan Now that I have studied your comments on the forums and this proposal more, I actually see a fatal flaw in it that makes me now remove my vote.

It would be one thing if you wanted to add to the THEMATIC CATEGORIES ON THE ABOUT LAND MENU, which has such terms as "Art & Culture," "Nature," "Rentals," "Shopping" etc. That set of themes could definitely do with the addition of "Education/Non-profit" (and I would add, "Music" which shouldn't just be left to language in the crowded "Events" List). Yes, make more categories and police misuse of them. An adult shop selling furniture shouldn't put itself into "Rentals" or "Nature" just to get out of the crowded theme of "Shopping" and gain visibility.

But that's not what you're proposing. In fact, I suspect, like a l ot of people, you have never studied THE LAND MENU as distinct from the inworld browser search. Even if you don't own land, go on any land parcel and pull up "about land" and study the THEMES.

Instead of THEMES like "Art & Culture" or "Business" or "Rentals," it appears you want the inworld browser FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES like "People" or "Places" or "Groups" to have a THEMATIC theme all your own called "Nonprofit/Education" that . You want special pleading and privilege for do-gooding and get ahead of the crowd struggling with land labelling or keywording for "Art" or "Education" or "Music" the other way. That is wildly unfair. The Lindens ALREADY overpromote nonprofit/charitable activities in extraordinary ways with mindshare on the splash page, interviews, blogs, their own precious personal inworld participation in things like "Relay for Life". It simply isn't just to then give over to the scarce real estate of FUNCTIONAL categories a special pleading of EDUCATION. Themes should not be mixed in with functions. If you are going to do that, then the lobbyists for "Art" or "Shopping" will say "Why can't we be there, too?"

Currently, the THEMATIC search on the web based on self-reporting of THEMES like "Art & Culture" or "Shopping" works very badly for reasons I've repeatedly explained -- failure to clean up and update, failure to establish a culture of labelling in a setting where everybody ignores and tunes out labelling . The FUNCTIONAL search works a lot better -- it updates nearly in real time, with LEGACY search we now have a much better working discovery engine.

Prokofy Neva I think this is a useful distinction, but I want to be clear about my intent.

I am not asking for a thematic category to be inserted into functional search areas such as People, Places, Groups, or Events as a special category above everyone else. If that is how the proposal reads, then it needs clearer wording.

What I am asking for is better-themed discovery for public-interest spaces. If the correct implementation is through the About Land theme/category system, destination-style browsing, or another viewer-facing thematic discovery layer, then that is completely in line with what I mean.

I agree that themes and functions should not be carelessly mixed. A group should remain a group. An event should remain an event. A place should remain a place. The issue is that residents also need a better way to browse meaningful places when they do not already know the exact name to search for.

This is not a request for special privilege for my own group, nor is it a request that Linden Lab promote one cause over others. It is about making an existing kind of Second Life activity easier to discover through clearer labelling and better viewer tools.

So yes, if the practical route is to improve or expand the thematic land/category system rather than add anything to functional search categories, I would support that. The goal is clearer discovery, not special placement.

Prokofy Neva I do not think this should be framed as forcing new residents through worthy or mechanical content. That is not what I am asking for.

I have been in Second Life for around 20 years, so I am well aware that onboarding, search, welcome areas, events, groups, destinations, land settings, and resident behaviour are complicated. I am not approaching this as someone who thinks one category or one viewer change magically fixes discovery.

I agree that people often want something immediate, social, fun, or entertaining when they first arrive. They may want music, clubs, shopping, games, building, art, quiet exploration, or just somewhere with actual people. That is normal. I am not proposing that the viewer should march anyone through public-interest spaces as if that is the "correct" way to experience Second Life.

I also agree that human hosting, events, advertising, portals, signs, groups, and direct outreach matter. Discovery tools do not replace that work.

My point is narrower than that: when residents are already looking for meaningful places, the official tools should make those places easier to find. That does not mean special placement. It does not mean forced onboarding. It does not mean Linden Lab is choosing moral winners. It means clearer themed discovery and better labelling so residents are not dependent on exact keywords, old knowledge, external lists, or luck.

I fully accept that public-interest spaces still need to do their own work: events, promotion, networking, search listings, and staff presence. But better viewer discovery would support that work rather than replace it.

So I do not see this as either/or. Human outreach matters. Advertising matters. Events matter. But clearer themed discovery inside the viewer still matters too.

AlettaMondragon Resident It's entirely incorrect to say "Legacy Search" in the inworld browser is "completely dysfunctional" for discovering "nonprofit" when you can type that key word into "search/places" and get "Nonprofit Commons" and many other actual nonprofits with the word in their name OR in their description. That's because those groups bother to pay 30L a week to put themselves in search/places, and that's what you are required to do if you want to be discovered. Everybody can afford the equivalent of US 10 cents a week for this. There is a confusion in this discussion between the thematic land menu categories which are fairly useless, along with web search, which is very flawed for reasons I've stated, and inworld browser search categories that should not have special pleading for this or that theme. If you invade functionality like "People" and "Places" with "Education" then...why not have "Music"? Or "Religions"? Why leave these "things to do" categories in the mire of "Events" or the slow loading of big "Destinations" pages?

As I've noted, "Nonprofit/Education" gets all kinds of other sometimes intangible and inaccessible boostings into the mindshare through blogs, interviews, Linden involvement, etc. etc. I have been in the nonprofit sector in RL for 50 years. I advocate for justice and fairness everywhere, including on this issue. Invading a theme into a function is special pleading and also unnecessary.

Prokofy Neva It's not only completely useless for finding educational or non-profit entries but for everything else, too.

My comment here suggests a complete overhaul of Search features and to combine them into one robust, reliable feature. I will explain that better both here and in the forum topic later.

My point is, the way I would redesign this, there wouldn't need to be a standalone top category for education in search. Rather the existing Educational category in Places that you can choose for your parcel. And the ability to choose such categories for groups as well.

Once categories exist in Places, Groups and Events alike, in a new search engine combining Websearch and Legacy Search you could just select as many of the top categories (such as Places and Events) as you wanted, and then on a filter field on the side you select the Education tag, and boom, you get everything!

The full Destination Guide would be integrated in this as well. More on that idea later.

This can be done with roleplaying, commercial, art, etcetc as well. I think it would be quite close to what already exists, but it would be more extensive and rational than the current features.

AlettaMondragon Resident So Aletta, you need to specify the factual experience inworld in what specific activity that led to this claim which I can only declare as false, as big a critic as I am of Search over the years.

o I make lists of country/language sims; charming cafes; sacred sites; rentals; nature preserves; etc. etc. These have hundreds of entries on each card maintained on a server and clients inworld. I look up these sites constantly, daily, hourly and update these listings accordingly.

o I run a business that directly depends on people using search/places and other search functions to find my offerings and I poll them publicly and individually on their experiences

o I use only the SL Viewer for lots of reasons but I respect that Firestorm saved the SL economy (although they would never put it that way) by maintaining what amounts to Legacy Search for over 15 years

o So daily, hourly, I use search and fix things related to search and I know the key-word "Nonprofit" or "Art" or "Charity" you all are so concerned with does come up; is surfaced; is plenty accessible; does not need any special visibility invading functional categories instead of thematic categories.

FILTERS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION. Why? Because they reset while you are trying to add to your search. THAT is the biggest hobble in the system now and why most people don't use "Land Rentals" or even "Land Sales" unless they are obsessive land barons. It's too clunky; it doesn't keep your search in place as even the Marketplace does. It dumps and makes you start over like "Favourites" does on the Marketplace which is also wildly infuriating. The user interface in this regards cripples the products. So no, filters can't be the solution until they stop the automatic dumps and resets.

We also have to be clear about what you mean by "just adding Charity or Nonprofit": to the About Land menu, where indeed it belongs, so that it becomes a factor searches of various kinds, or as some special category elevated to the status of People, Places, Groups. As I keep trying explain, there is a big difference.

Why does Charities get special pride of place, alone among categories, and not Music then? Why not Art? Why not Shopping?

You don't add those thematics on the search interface; you add them on the "About Land" categories and of course in your key words.

If your point is that you don't think it's fair that LAND TO RENT OR BUY and CLASSIFIEDS get to be a functional category along with PEOPLE, PLACES, GROUPs, then say so. if you feel this commercial sector is overbalanced contrasted to Nonprofits, then say so. Don't cloak that demand with universal pieties about how search needs to be overhauled.

I do not think NONPROFIT should go under LAND TO RENT OR BUY as it is a theme whereas LAND is a function. If you put NONPROFIT on that visually prominent piece of browser "real estate" then the question is begged why not Music? Art? Business? Shopping? https://gyazo.com/b4d41c40ea7431f5a462178a97e58fe9

Prokofy Neva As you noted as well, Legacy Search is better than Websearch, gives clearer results, etc. Except, there are a lot of ghost results that come up, places that don't even exist for example, or not where the search result shows. And you can't combine categories in Legacy Search. So I would fix the search database issue and then combine the Legacy Search engine with the Websearch UI.

Filters not persisting is just another thing that makes a function useless. So if you search for certain things often, the filters you used last should persist so you can run the same search the next time.

In my version there wouldn't be any special treatment for any category, everything would have its own filter that users could select or unselect as they wish at any time when searching, and multiple categories could be selected for your parcel as well. So if you do "Arts and Recreation" and "Education" at the same place, you could choose both, and if someone runs a search for all "Arts and Recreation" places, it would be there. If someone searched for Roleplay, your place with "Arts and Recreation" and "Education" tags wouldn't show there.

I think it would make it fairly easy to set up places (and also groups and events) to show in search like this. This could be still misused or abused. I don't think it would be viable to monitor this actively and fix misplaced search tags, but it would be nice for sure. However the Destination Guide should be monitored actively and closely and LL and the owners of places featured on the guide should be in contact regularly to make sure it is up to date.

Then places in the Destination Guide could get a nice purple badge or something (whatever color you like) that would show next to the name of those places in the search results. That would act like a "verified" status in this case, so if you see a result with the Destinations badge it should mean it's definitely not a random, outdated result.

It is important to keep in mind that I'm talking about a complete overhaul here, not patching a few two-decade old bugs and inconsistencies. I would rebuild the whole thing from scratch.

Marly Milena

Rewording this because I was too harsh:

I think it would have been better to say something more factual, since your idea can come across more like an advertisement than a factual statement. To me it wouldn't be a problem, but trolls and naysayers started using this comment on the forums to misinterpret this feature request:

I saw your explanation in that topic so I changed my comment here, sorry about the harsh tone earlier. I do think however that the "educational paradise" advertisement would do more harm than good, seeing that forum topic.

AlettaMondragon Resident I understand the concern about the phrase “educational paradise” being easy to misread or exaggerate, and I agree that the request is strongest when it stays focused on practical discoverability rather than promotional wording.

That said, I do not think Marly made a mess. She was supporting the proposal in good faith and trying to suggest language that would make the value of education and lifelong learning in Second Life more visible to new users.

I appreciate the support for improving Search, but I would rather keep the focus on the proposal itself rather than place too much weight on one comment.

SL Feedback Implemented HOW? As a thematic category on the "About Land" page with its themes like "Art" or "Nature"? Or a functional category like "People" and "Groups," awarding its thematic status special prominence alone among themes? Which is it? Be specific and do think about the consequences here.

xDancingStarx Resident, I understand what you are saying, but I think this frames the issue too narrowly.

I agree that not every new resident joins Second Life specifically to visit museums, and I agree that "Non-Profit" or "Charity" may not be the strongest user-facing wording. However, I do not agree that this means users would not be interested in what those spaces actually offer.

A user may not click something labelled “charity,” but they might absolutely click “learn to build,” “scripting class,” “art exhibition,” “community support,” “accessibility help,” “health discussion,” “live talk,” “museum tour,” or “creative workshop.” The issue is not whether public-good spaces have value to users. The issue is that the current in-viewer Search does not present them in a clear, modern, activity-led way.

I also think it is risky to assume that because one group of users would not personally seek those things out, new users broadly would not care either. Second Life attracts different kinds of people. Some come for shopping, clubs, roleplay, or adult spaces. Others come for creativity, learning, building, arts, education, community, identity, support, and experimentation. A good discovery system should make more than one pathway visible.

If new residents are not queuing up for museums, classes, cultural spaces, or public-good regions, that does not automatically prove they are not interested. It may simply mean they do not know those places exist. You cannot measure demand for something that users are not being shown.

The Destination Guide is excellent, and I am not criticising it. But the in-viewer Search is still one of the most obvious tools residents use in Second Life, and right now it is poorly configured for discovering non-commercial public-good activity unless someone already knows what to search for.

So my point is not "promote museums because creators worked hard." My point is that Second Life should make its non-commercial, educational, cultural, accessibility, and community-support activities easier to discover from the user’s point of view. That means better categories, better event visibility, clearer browsing, and less dependence on old keyword search.

xDancingStarx Resident There are times when indeed newbies do queue up at museums. Times such as Black History Month in February or Black Lives Matters special events or the Holocaust Museum events when meet and greet, or provide at least very sensible and comprehensible asynchronous introductions and guidance for the content. I have seen this work in many other themes and settings but it takes work, it takes advertising, and a Destinations page of Search category can't cure this; it is no different than RL. Newbies get ENORMOUS exposure to "scripting class that starts in an hour" at Oxford and Builders' Brewery ALREADY. There is already too much of this mechanical approach to RL that new people, even technically oriented, just skip over. No one should be forced to stagger over the obstacle course of steerage to "script, build, drive" when what they want to do is "dress up" and "go to a club". Let them.

Roxksie Logan The Lindens who have struggled with newbie onboarding for 23 years, and oldbies like myself who have struggled with onboarding in various ways for nearly as long can tell you that that approach of pushing the mechanics of SL and the Better Worlding philosophy at ostensibly helpless new people does not work. When you land at Grand Central Station in New York City, perhaps you ought to go dutifully to a safety class or a subway map-reading class or Metropoliant Art Museum but instead, you go eat icecream and go to a Broadway show. It happens. This is human nature. Virtuality does not change it. You get people to the art gallery by billboard advertising, by staff handing out flyers. This is why I want teleport portals or billboards to convey newbies to destinations where there are live people prepared to meet their needs on their demand, by their preferences, and not march them through do-gooding, prescriptive, mechanical activity they reject.

A simple lesson in "Search" will surface, say "Black Lives Matter" or "Nonprofit Commons" or "Builders' Brewery". about land* description will help this a bit; but again, creating some special opportunity only for the 3rd sector of society in the functionality of the "phone book" outside the white and yellow pages is unfair and only will draw enormous strife and further special pleading from other sectors.

If you believe so much in the in-viewer search and think Destinations gaining the mindshare right at the very top of the screen with staff-curated destinations inclucing educational/charity....then you will perhaps concede that this surfaceability, which costs to create, needs to be offset with 30L, key word editing, and advertising work by nonprofit staff. As in RL. We couldn't sit at the Human Rights Watch office in the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue and wait for tourists to notice us and our issues when they land at Penn Station a few blocks away on 7th Avenue. 100 other things must be done with events, press, advocacy, etc. etc. in SL as in RL.

AndyLoki ResidentI think that's laudable and others should follow your example which is a social imperative but voluntary. It's not about making clubs or music or shopping getting in line to get attention behind charities in "search" by giving them their very own functional category (instead of thematic category on "about land"). It's about all of us doing our part to bring eyeballs to the horrors of our age. I raise money for Gaza in a mosque sustained at a resident-run infohub near my rentals. Etc. There are 100 things like this we can all do. But it has to be voluntary. It can't be coerced. It can't be mandatory that newbies be dragged across "beneficial" content ahead of "other" content. They have to be able to choose. A simple search lesson WILL surface these nonprofit opportunities. That's why I urge the OP to revise her proposal to ask the Lindens to add to "about land" categories and not functional search categories on the inworld browser.