how to be an unprincipled wanker and pretend you have principles

United communities are overrated.

Go back and read Dianne Mechanique's post. Or did it get lost in all the "free speech" spam in this thread?

Apparently it did, so...

This is hardly some "small dispute" that puts "few" people's noses out of joint. I'm gonna guess that there a _lot_ of people who don't ever show up here who are good and pissed about this.

If LL is thinking that it's not "cost effective" to manage SL properly then in the long run people will simply leave and LL will be just another bankrupt company who had a "big idea".

You know I honestly see no point in making a political statement in a game. What real effect would it have to the people not in SL. A person can have freedom of speech ,but there is no real point to do so here.

Personally, I feel that the impeach bush guy is annoying. Yes he does have the right to have his signs on his land,but when the sign reachs over his land into others lands that is wrong. That I would consider harrassment to the fullest.


Now there is bigger issues with this



Yes and look what happend to neg ratings

Honestly , if this guy wants to waste RL currency on a virtual political statement that will have NO impact on current events happening outside SL then let him. His view on the current situations within and outside the USA are obviously not doing much considering Bush is still in power .

I guess he can't make his political statements in RL so he has to annoy people in a game.

I also doubt LL would actually police this bs because it might bring bad press to them. But afterall this is just a game and he is funding their "research".

Well, you could be right.

But I'm thinking that in the short run and the long run, all they are doing in cases like this is causing people to tier down or not tier up in the first place, and that is, as Cienna put it, shooting themselves in the foot.

coco

So who decides what is spam and what is advertising and what is free speech? It's his land. Who are you, or anyone, to tell him what to put on his land? What if I considered anything with words spam? What if store signs and ads are considered spam? What about trees that block views? Or walls? Or towers? What if you hate the texture your neighbor used on his house?

There's one important difference. Mr. Impeach Bush is clearly griefing people to get them to buy his overpriced land. There is too much anecdotal evidence to conclude otherwise.

As far as "who are we" is concerned. We're the customers, remember. LL loves pulling in the benjamins, but when it comes to dealing with any sort of disputes, they're ghosts.

Sidenote:

As I was exploring today, I saw a small sign planted in the ground that said "Impeach Philip Linden". Cracked me up.

If you owned the property in RL, would you not defend your right to put whatever signage on it that you wished?

Personally, I think almost every freaking ad I see IRL is bloody terrible, over-stimulating, fetishized, and garish -- but what the hell am I going to do?

Doesn't harm me though -- I choose to be in the environment I am in and so do you.

No one, not even LL, can garuantee that what you see in SL will be aesthetically pleasing to you or anyone. This world is built by us and I think it should stay that way. I certainly wouldn't want the "taste police" to tell me what to do.

IMHO the problem is not the political message. The problem is that the owner of the land set the land for sale at rip off price at same time as put on the banners. This is clearly land extorsion: grief people until they buy him out!

I believe his reasoning was to get a more prominate presence on the land sales page. If you look at that page there are plenty of plots set to rediculious prices set up to get a message accross.

Sounds like spam to me.

Actually, looking at it from a bus dev position, it is the height of ignorance and slip-shod management. You don't ignore the interests of your primary revenue stream if you intend to remain in business. To include missteps happening at the same time, you certainly don't alienate them by handing out something they paid through the nose for, are continuing to pay for, or are interested in paying for free to someone with less time and money invested in your product.

The only thing this instance demonstrates on its own is that LL is myopic to an extreme. Taken in context with other gaffes and the general scatterbrained nature that has been demonstrated consistently in the time I have been here (let alone historically), it indicates a severe disconnect or dissonance that is disturbing (at best).

There's no doubt in my mind everyone at LL means well, has the best possible intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions and no one understands how much potential revenue they have squandered by their inability to pony up to even a nominal standard of professionalism with regard to being responsible, authoritative, and accountible to their customers.

I'm just very thankful things happened as they have... else I'd be stuck with several sims and overhead. Count me as letting the tier pass on by...

*edited*
BTW, my lot is for sale at $L250,000 and is listed to be sold only to you. Come and buy me out...or if you can't afford it, come just the same and admire the build.

I agree. But he is not the worst land price spammer by far. Just look at the land for sale list. I was just saying his primary reason was not extortion. If it was he would place them for sale at values that can actually be afforded by normal people.

we need a wave finger smiley

Come on over to my place in Heaton. You can buy the 512m lot right next to a beautiful example of his work.

In my typically slow-witted way, I've been cogitating on all this. Wars and rumors of wars and all that. Impeach Bush! I'm having trouble turning my brain on at the moment (finals week this week), so I did a little research in lieu of doing any gray-matter effort on my own.

Seems like griefing is a kind of commons tragedy. Individuals tend to act in ways that maximize their benefits gained from use of the commons, since they generally do not appreciate the long-term ramifications of their actions (Edney and Harper, 197, thus pushgun, lag bomb, and impeach Bush griefers.

So how does one deal effectively with a griefer? The Stages of Moral Development theory (Kohlberg, 1976) may posit that any /effective/ communication (i.e., effectively telling them to go play hide and go f--k yourself) to another person must be couched in terms and delivered in a way appropriate to the development of that person. For example, as a person develops through progressive stages of moral maturity, he or she is able to grasp successively more abstract and universal moral pronouncements and judgments (Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer, 1983). So, to a small child, you might phrase things in terms of easily-grasped concepts: "if you don't take down these impeachment signs, then I will be forced to code a self-replicating scanner probe that orbits you on contact." One can see the simple cause and punishment effect nature of this kind of communication. If A then B. It is called preconventional development, common to young children.

Alternately, people with more moral development often respond more effectively to messages that are phrased as ethical appeals (ibid.), e.g. "won't you join the thousands of SL users in keeping the Grid lagless and beautiful!" People who communicate on this level tend to be older, and invested in aesthetics over agenda. Folks who work for the common good.

Of course, many gradations exist between these extremes. Later preconventional people tend to see relationships and communication in terms of direct and personal benefit ("Kohlberg's stages of moral development," 2005). "How can I use these 16m parcels to my maximum benefit?" "What can you do for me now?"
This stage of development is common to preadolescents.

Next up the ladder are the folks who conform and communicate based on their need for personal acceptance in widening circles, and later understanding of the importance of the rules and greater society in general.

Thus, if you want to meaningfully express to this land griefer, know your enemy ("The Art of War" and come to understand his/her stage of moral development. Then communicate with him/her with a message that speaks to the developmental level of this person. Doing otherwise can be frustrating for both sides and unproductive.

Of course, the vehicle of the message is at least as important as the message itself. The exact same text coming from a Linden Liaison or coming from you will have a very different effect based on the speaker and other elements of context . Natch, nobody follows the speed limit... until you see the cop gunning for speeders. This so-called Peripheral Route to Persuasion (Manning, 2003) is incredibly important and comes up over and over in the literature.

Indeed, Linden Lab may need to step in on this and related issues, if for no other reason than their bottom line. Expectancy theory holds that the measure of satisfaction derived from a recreationist's experience is based largely on how the recreation environment is able to match the desires of the recreationist (Stewart and Carpenter, 1989). Who on Earth joins SL hoping/expecting to see stuff like these signs cluttering the viewscape? I'd bet my land that a lot more people are pissed off at these signs than there are people whose SLives are enhanced by them. An unhappy populace, I posit, is less inclined to buy up land and fill Linden coffers. Full Linden coffers are to all our advantage.

Perhaps the concept of the viewshed easement, a recent comer to the practice of RL landscape conservation, may have value in this situation. I'm afraid that all the research in the world (and certainly more than I was able to turn up here) can't give LL a silver bullet to keeping its residents happy. Still, doing nothing leaves all of us wide open to burdening inconsideration of the community aesthetic.


Works Cited
Edney, J. J., and Harper, C. The Commons Dilemma: A Review of Contributions From
Psychology. Environmental Management, 2, 491-507.

Kohlberg, L. (1976). Moral Stages and Moral Development. Moral Development and
Behavior: Theory, Research and Social Issues. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston.

Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., and Hewer, A. (1983). Moral Stages: A Current Formulation
and Response to Critics. In J. A. Meacham (Ed.), Contributions To Human Development (vol. 10), New York: Karger.

Manning, R. E. (2003). Emerging Principles for Using Information/Education in
Wilderness Management. Reconstructing Conservation: Finding Common Ground. Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 335-349.

Stewart, W. P. and Carpenter, E. H. (1989). Solitude at Grand Canyon: An Expectancy
Theory. Journal of Leisure Research. 21(1), 4-17.

"The Art of War" Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War Wikimedia. Accessed Dec 9th, 2005.

Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development Wikimedia. Accessed Dec 9th, 2005.

As far as I can tell, it was an informed decision and one I'm glad they made.

They stick by their TOS rather than get involved in subjective arbitration.

If ya don't like the damn signs, move. He pays, he plays.

Think about free speech for a minute instead of yourselves.

Jews are a race. Bush is an individual. Bush is the president. "Impeach Bush" is a political statement about the policies of a certain politician. "Impeach the Jews" is gibberish. It might even be racist gibberish. LL forbids racist and pornographic speech. No one in this thread has offered a simple rule that could be used to stop the land spam. A simple, easily applied, fair rule is all you need to propose. All I've read so far is, "We don't like it so it shouldn't be allowed." So give us a fair, simple rule that could be easily applied that would stop this sort of thing. I don't think there is one, and therefore, your right to do what the heck you want with your land, no matter what the neighbors think, takes precedence. Sorry.

Quite true. I think you've phrased what I've been fumbling for.

I've removed the inflammatory personal attacks from this thread - please do not attack those you do not agree with in the Forums.

Let's just forget all this discussing and impeach President Bush.

There ya go, problem solved. Or, should I say, mission accomplished.

Glad to see something being done. Although I think the signage was the actual problem.

Ever hear the one about <generic computer company technician> stuck on the highway with an overheated engine? He changed all the tires and the car still wouldn't work.

Your short-sightedness isn't my problem. It isn't about his signs or what they say. Pity you and so many others can't look beyond that and get over your fascination with assuming the intention, interest, and motivation of others.

I haven't seen anyone else make this point, so I'll bring it up. In the interview he claims that he sells the land so it will show up in the "for sale" search, further spreading his message. When I use the search utility to look for land, I'm not looking for the most expensive parcels I can find. I'm looking for the cheapest land of a certain size and so his land is never going to show up. By pricing land really high, it guarantees that most people won't come across it in the search engine.

Also, I think it speaks volumes that he is selling parcels at very high prices, but not at prices that are beyond the means of many SL landowners. He could price his land at $999999999 and guarantee that it ends up at the top of certain kinds of searches, but for 16 sqm plots, the vast majority of his plots range between $5000 and $20,000 linden. An insane price obviously, but low enough that I'm sure that he sells a few here and there.

If he wanted people to come across his message more often, he would price it much more reasonably or much more insanely. The fact that he doesn't means he is either stupid or lieing. I think he's lieing.