The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday October 7, 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
- The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
- As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
- On the first Wednesday of the month at 14:00 SLT.
- In both Voice and text.
- At this location.
- Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
- Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Web Services Updates
- Juniper linden, the normal lead for the meeting was out of the office, so the meeting at lead be Eliza Linden, who is relatively new to LL.
- Not a lot by way of updates: the focus has been on bug fixing in various areas.
Future Marketplace Planning
The following were raised as ideas / thinking on what might be done in the future for the Marketplace, the idea being to obtain feedback and also input on other items that might be considered.
Marketplace Lists
- Allowing the Marketing Team and “in the future” creator-merchants to create curated lists on the Marketplace (e.g. lists of items (and links to them) a new user can use to pull together a complete look or a complete outfit for their avatar).
- This was seen as a good move for fashion bloggers – which would not be the intended initial aim. It also appeared to be based on the idea that bloggers could create their own lists – which again, was not specified by Eliza, nor would it be an adjunct to / replacement of things like wishlists or favourites.
- Overall, the feedback was, if it is something that will take time and resources to implement – then it shouldn’t be something that is prioritised.
New Resident First Time Discount
- A small (5%?) discount for new residents on “their first Marketplace purchase” – whether this meant overall (i.e. their very first purchase, or their first purchase from a specific store was not made clear), potentially with an upper limit (e.g. 5% discount on items up to L$XXXX).
- Either way, the consensus was that any discount of this nature should be covered by Linden Lab (e.g. by dropping any associated MP fee), rather than the creator.
- It was also noted that creators already run in-store discounts and special sales (like Fifty Linden Friday offers, etc.), which could render this idea moot.
- This conversation diverted into discussions on:
- Reinstating thing like PIOF sign-up perks (e.g. charging US $1.00 for registering a credit card on an account, then providing that dollar as L$ credited to the account) and L$ bonuses for remaining an active user with day log-ins over the course of the first month after sign-up, etc.
- Just how aware genuinely new residents really are about things like the Marketplace, in-world sales / discount events, etc., and how to help them become informed.
- The idea that many coming into SL are attracted to it via all the videos, etc., put out by users and creators, vloggers, etc., which impart levels of knowledge about the platform – commerce, avatar customisation, etc., – which actually both serve to encourage them to sign-up and be in a position to engage in the economy from the start.
- LL providing more and simple to follow videos on things like the mechanics of avatar looks – mixing heads and bodies, how to actually wear / add attachments, use BOM, etc., for those users who do come into SL with minimal foreknowledge.
- Coupled to the above – the need for LL to comb through their own web properties and update or remove clearly out-of-date information for new users which runs contrary to the way SL now works.
- Commentary on the so-called “lite” version of the viewer – the return to the idea that new users will be furnished with a “cut down” version of the viewer will a limited set of capabilities.
- This appears to be something of a re-hash of the “Basic Mode Viewer” introduced under Rod Humble’s tenure at LL as CEO (e.g. in 2001-12). While it initially worked well in helping users get started in SL and was subject to updates (such as the inclusion of Voice), ultimately it was cancelled due to problems in handling the transition from it to the “full” viewer.
Subscription Level “Best Perks”
- What do people consider to be the best benefits / perks at the different subscription levels?
- Premium Plus free uploads.
- Larger number of permitted Group memberships.
- Mainland free tier.
- This part of the meeting quickly segued into the more general discussion, noted below, starting with the conversation on communications.
General Discussion
Please also refer to the video for the following.
- General Marketplace requests made included:
- Having the page numbers for multi-page Search results to by at the top of each page as well as the bottom.
- For the upper section of MP pages – Search bar, list ordering, number of items per page – to remain static when scrolling, rather than moving off the screen when scrolling down a page (i.e. a dedicated scroll bar within Marketplace pages or having the upper section float when a page is scrolled).
- There have been numerous requests for users to be able to block Marketplace merchants they have no interest in purchasing from from their Search results (so as to reduce the number of “unwanted” results from their Searches).
- This is something the Marketplace team is still considering on how to best implement.
- Concern was raised over stores / search results being “blockaded” in terms of people “ganging up” on a merchant and blocking them, thus driving down their visibly in things like search stats, etc., and thus trend down in search results in general due to the internal algorithms viewing them as “less popular”.
- An extensive conversation on communications – from blogs through socials, etc., covering things like keeping people properly informed on initiatives and changes to initiatives use of e-mail to inform people, not updating old blog posts with updated information over making the new information the subject of a new blog posts, etc.
- My personal gripe here is more of the inconsistency of communications: sometimes an event or initiative is announced via a blog post; sometimes it is via a forum topic being opened; sometimes it s both; sometimes it gets a mention on the Lab’s socials, other times it doesn’t. At times people are encouraged to use the forums for feedback, other times it is via Discord. It is a scattergunning that lacks any form of internal structure or policy and thus makes it so much harder for users to stay abreast of things.
- A discussion on policy relating to Marketplace and third-party tools (a creator has made a CSV-based tool to ease the process of creating and editing MP listings and was seeking clarification on making it available to people). This was to be referred back to rest of the Web team for internal discussion.
- Two non-Web relevant topics were raised:
- The Bellisseria Ridgewood Enclave stores (advertising via Classifieds, availability, etc.) – which is more relevant to the Land User Group meeting.
- The need for better up-front identification of Scripted Agents (registered bots) via their profiles. This is actually more of a Governance / Trust and Safety issue.
- Details of both Land User Group and Trust and Safety User Group meetings are available via the official user groups page.
Next Meeting
- Wednesday, November 4, 2026.
