If you were Philip

LOL, that's another thing I would change!

Welcome Area will be filled with greeters, paid in L$, to welcome the new and give guidance on SL. Except for the greeters, any accounts over 14 days old will not be able to enter the Welcome Area.

I would buy a light sabre, go to Star Wars conventions and have lots of sex with sweaty people in Chewbacca costumes.

I'd also ban Starax Statosky for being annoying and then call Ingrid whats her name.

I am Philip (that is my RL name.) but soon to be Andy. My Petition for Change of RL Name is in the works.

But if I was The Philip I keep it the way he is doing it now. After all he is the CEO so he knows best..

If I was Philip, I would have an application made so I could be a god like in Black and White. Then I would travel the grid, dispensing terror and kindness in random amounts.

I would end all forms of the free market and let communism and socialism rule.

I would also outlaw the wearing of black clothing.

So, another vote for leaving things the way they are then?

You mean he can do that alread.. whoa whats that? *crunch*

Sell yes, while it's still possible to recoup the millions I'd poured into the project. But to move on to the next innovation after a short vacation. Philip has great ideas and a penchant for grouping people to implement them. What needs some work is the wisdom to pass the project on to someone with long term management abilities.

If I was Philip I would dance with Aimee again. And maybe something else

We are dancing dangerously close to the endgame question.





When Philip finally faces the possibility that we all really *are* him...

...the metaverse will come to an end, and the doctors may ease off on his meds a little.

Other voices, do we have a consensus on this? It MUST NOT HAPPEN!

I would touch mys.....errr....

Dear Aimee, please see my responses in green:



I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not in charge.

If I were Philip, I'd be upset about not being Newfie.

Seriously. That's asking a question that has no answer and no useful purpose.

How about instead asking 'what can we do to improve life in SL, regardless of Philip or anyone else's role?'

- Newfie

I'd start off banning all the freebie reselling sharks, then I'd turn my eyes to fixed adn rigged contests/games in SL. I'd fix a rate of exchange for L's on the website itself adn I would put a stop to all thirds party cvurrency trading.

I would stalk the world as a god, complete with a 50' tall god-like avatar, and smite the unworthy. I would set up my own temple and demand worship and sacrifices, with attending temple virgins of course. My priesthood would flourish and preach my gospel in every sim, and eventually my cult would reach into the RL, replacing Christianity and becoming the first virtual/real world crossover religion.

In the future, I would rule the virtual realms as well as the physical world, turning the earth into a paradise of my choosing. My faithful followers would strive to combine technology with nature, and in our off-hours, we would run and dance naked, in the woodlands...

Umm..what was the question again?

Stipends? -- Paid by the lapdance
Censorship/decency/pornography? - -- none/none/mandatory
Griefing/discipline? -- punishable by spanking
Dwell? -- paid by amount of time spent in norti anims
Selling Freebies? -- Put in stocks and pelted with physical fruit
Currency/exchanges? -- See stipends
Favoritism? (remember YOU are Philip) -- Mandatory
Harassment? -- punishable by spanking and no desert
RL Corporations/Events entering your grid? -- Only companies started by Ron Jeremy, Larry Flint, or Hef allowed.

Maximum prim/texture limitations? (for lag control) - No clothes, that should help
Object privileges? -- Free bits.

Extra Credit: What would you call your grid?[/QUOTE]

Thrusto-Porno-Land

The happiest place on earth

Win.

You'll all know where to find me. <3

Things i would do if i was phillip...
* Perminently Remove a known land baron (not naming names) from SL and shove a big ol... [CENSORED]
* I would bring privacy and grief protection into SL
(even Horizons has better privacy, And it's just a hackem slashem game)
* I would Lower the cost of a new sim so people with lower incomes may afford to have one.
(Either that or hold contests to give away a free one every now and then)
* I would hang out in the welcome area and sing songs and roast marshmellows with everyone.
* I Would put the linux client in a higher priority.
(I'm tired of all the mud slinging with Windows and Mac)

First things first ;0 I would give myself a bonus for all my hard work... Probably a Ferrari 430.... and then I would make my investors cry by open sourcing the client and server ;0 While this would cause a huge outcry from investors, the OSS community would embrace me and over time with faithful attention to the codebase we would have what is lovingly refered to as the metaverse ;0 Yadda yadda... Baddabing.. World peace under my skilled leadership.


Oh yeah... LL makes a quadrillion dollars on other services related to all the new tech and the investors are happy. ;0

Well, my grid, The Wormhole would run something like this:

Stipends: Paying users would get stipends based on how much land they pay for (not actually own) - kind of a reverse property tax. I think the current L$500 a week is a good starting point, scaled up to a few thousand a week for the 64k tiers.

Censorship? Certainly not in The Wormhole. However, certain content would be prohibited in public areas. Only property designated as "mature" or islands would be allowed to have nudity or graphic content. In the mainland, all graphic content should be indoors. On an island, it should be allowable anywhere, as long as the TP entry point is separated so that people won't be surprised by something they're not expecting.

However, ZONING would be enforced. Zoning would be decided per-sim by the majority of the residents of the sim, voted democratically per resident. Yes, a 512m resident would have as much say as a 64k user.

Greifing? I would have tools in place that would prevent much of the common griefing methods. However, for inter-personal conflicts (he called me names, waah!), I be relatively hands-off. I would, perhaps, step in in the event of libel. Perhaps I could institute a virtual court and legal system. All avatars used by one user would be tied together (one account, multiple avs, rather than the current system of one account/one av) and the actions of one avatar would affect the account as a whole.

Dwell? I'd absolutely have dwell. However, the dwell would be calc'd like this:
H=Your total hours logged in per month.
T=Time spent on one lot
M=Money you're paying to use SL
D=Dwell you generate for the property owner

D=T/H*M

However, I would probably institute a policy similar to the one that other on-line worlds use: no unattended avatars. I can think of a few ways to police this.

So if a user is logged in one hour a day and spends that hour in one lot, and that user pays $10 a month, that user would generate 10 dwell points. A user who pays $20 a month and spends half their time one one lot and 10% of the remaing time on 5 separate lots would generate 10 dwell points for the one lot and 1 point for each of the other lots. One point does NOT equal L$1. Dwell would be paid out based on total paying members for the month, and free users would not award any dwell.

Selling freebies? Difficult to enforce. Sometimes freebies are sold as part of "value added" packs, and the value is in the object the freebie is included in (such as a dance ball). Is the user buying the dance ball or the dances? Perhaps all items need to have a non-modifiable tag embedded in them that lists the original content creator's intentions. Any item that was intended to remain free will have "FREE)" as part of the mod/copy/transfer flags, and it will be clearly visible in the listing of contents when you buy something. This way, people can choose whether the "value added" items are worth the purchase price.

Currency and exchanges? Certainly! However, I would host my own low or mininal cost exchange system. I would not charge to sell or buy currency, although I would charge a 3% fee to "load" real money in to the exchange, to cover credit card fees. The market itself would have some regulation built-in to prevent manipulation: for example, you could not post buy or sell orders that are excessively higher than the current market high or low.

Favortism? That's easy. I treat people based on their actions. If people prove that they are honest individuals, I may give their opinion more weight. If people are greedy, selfish, rude, or demanding, they probably won't get as much say. However, I will *not* give special advantages to someone based on how much they spend.

RL Corporations? Great! However, they should pay RL wages for custom content.

I also believe on content ownership. Your content should be protected as if it were your own. If you ever did something bad enough to be kicked out of SL, I'd give you the option to sell your account. Your no-transfer items would get a special pass and be moved to the buyer's inventory.

You would OWN land. Literally. I'd have it work the same way as a mobile home park or a condo complex: you own the land but still pay association fees (tier). Don't pay tier, and the land gets a lein on it, just like in RL.

I think that putting more control and ownership in the hands of the users would induce creativity, and I think that continuing dwell would give creators a reason to keep creating. Personally, I hate the fact that dwell is going away, and I've had to scrap some pretty grandiose plans because of that fact.

Damn right!



If I were Philip I'd look at myself in the mirror aaaallll daayyyy and say "Damn I'm pretty.", then I'd sleep with Aimee and my wife (whoever she is she has to be hot). Then I'd give out free premium accounts with lots of land for sex from all the hot womenz. Then I'd challenge Superman to a race around the world, and when he didn't show up I'd call him a coward and claim my place as worlds greatest superhero!

And if I wasn't in prison or commited by then, I'd travel around the world and meet famous people and talk to them about crazy stuff. And then I'd sleep with Uma Therman, because that seems like a very Philip thing to do (and my wife wouldn't care, because hell I'm Philip Linden!). Then I'd buy all the hair gel in the world, so no one else can make their hair look like mine.

And then we'd all boogy the night away as I hang my pants from a chandelier and spin it around!

And then...

I'm glad you are not Philip. He would never do this.

Although he's not quite as free-market Capitalistic as ideal, he would never turn Communist.

So basically, you'd go Communist.

Much of what I would picture as the ideal virtual world is very similar to SuezanneC's. In other words, it wouldn't be a Euclidean "grid" at all. I think many of the current economic issues are pretty minor in the scheme of things.



I wouldn't change these much at all from the way they are now. *Perhaps stipend amounts would fluctuate with the growth in the overall economy.*



I would likely change this so the Lindenbuck is tied directly to the dollar, as is done in many small countries.

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PUBLIC/PRIVATE

What I would change is to make a clear distinction between public and private spaces. Linden Lab would focus on creating the Street, rather than the whole world. Individual landowners whether large or small would be able to have their own private spaces to live and build in, with portals tying them into the Street, or into other privately developed hub spaces. These landowners would buy the spaces directly from the hosting company, or host themselves.

Linden Lab would sell server space for private volumes, and hand over all internal environmental and policing controls. They would sell private, contiguous spaces both in huge multi-server configurations as well as fractions of a server priced within reach of the average user.

Then it would rent out storefronts for portals onto the main Street. Probably it would hire third parties to develop attractive hub regions and give a cut of the storefront rental fees.

ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE?

Next I would focus on creating a modular platform design that could be adapted to optimize different spaces for different types of uses. You could choose preset server parameters for High Quality Rendering, or for High Quality Physics/Script Function, or for High Avatar Count. You could also make tradeoffs for high volume of space/low prim count, or vice versa. One person may wish to live in an apartment crammed with people and all manner of furniture and decoration. Another may prefer to have nothing but a few deck chairs in a square mile of windswept fields.

MOST IMPORTANT

The economy would still be capitalist, but since the incentives for land and exchange market profiteering would be vastly reduced, they would no longer seem like THE GAME.