How to tell your neighbors?

This is a serious question. How do you politely tell your neighbors that their gigantic towers with rotating flashing signs are an eyesore without starting some kind of war?

As Sponge Bob would say, "Good luck with that".

Yikes... one approach would be to move to another sim without ever talking to them, and assuming they'll know why after the fact. That's not a very useful approach, but it does keep the conflict to a minimum.

Hi Susie you have me on ignore so you can't hear this great piece of advice:

Negrate them!

Negrating is a GREAT way to start a conversation!

Do you just want to tell them, or do you have a goal. such as to get them to make changes?

Do you think something you could say would get them to make changes? Probably not huh?

Considering you either can't or don't want to move away....
Is it possible to shield your view, such as a huge backdrop between them and you, with pretty scenery texture on your side, and something else on their side?

This will happen no matter where you go. I've moved 5 times over the past year, and my experience has been that things keep changing constantly and they'll either be gone someday or get better at building.

There is no good way to tell them. If they're buttholes it'll just start a fight. If it's actually a good person who is just challenged at building, it'll hurt their feelings.

Thank you kindly for the responses I have received, even from Prok whom I have muted, but I am getting a little tired of facing this problem no matter where I go. I wish it was as easy as moving but I seem to be buying new places all the time in the hope that it will get better but it never does.

I know that people see good builds and beauty in different ways but are rotating sky cubes really beautiful to anyone but the builder? Do barren tracts of ice with a house plopped down in the middle look great to the owner? Somehow I sort of doubt it.

With the help of some kind neighbors we have established a 16,000 square meter area in the middle of Sand with mostly trees and other kinds of natural landscape. We aren't about to leave so I am just looking for some nice ways to help some neighbors here, and in a few other places too, understand that building obvious eyesores is not real cool.

And yes I have planted the biggest trees in SL to screen the view and they work if I keep my eyes to the ground.

you can make one way walls.
phantom, opaque on your side, and transparent on theirs.

in the end my solution was to move to a private sim.

If this is important to you, move into a zoning area.

It will be like a whole new SL for you.

Could start a thread about it... wait...

Personaly I'd just say "Hey, thats kinda annoying, whats your idea behind it?" or some such.

Blaze's suggestion is good, zoned neighbourhoods are good.

Whoa... you know what, I was just flying by that area earlier tonight! Your forest preserve looks nice. I'm actually considering buying land in the next sim over (the No sim, I think), so I can have a smooth squarish area that will be mostly wooded as well... also to find a good place to plant my humongous tree (currently more than 50m tall). I didn't notice a really obnoxious build when I was there... but maybe I didn't get around all the sides of your preserve.

I do... I see the beauty in rotating cubes and barren tracts with a build on it...


Whether it's just plywood boxes stacked or a rotating sign, it's all cool. This is SL, it can be WHATEVER we want it to be. We have the ability to create our own little worlds, yet here we have people, instead of working on their own dreams, whining that their neighbor's dream looks ugly.

It's an imaginary world.... Linden labs could have used some sort of alien landscape, not included 'trees' as a basic building block, but they didn't... so build whatever you want!

Geez, if I'm on ignore, how can you know what I said??? Geez, do you people *peek*??? You're not very good at organizing a medieval shunning!



You know something? I bet if they had to *pay* for the use of rotation scripts over a certain number...drawing on a certain number of CPU/time/whatever units....we might see less of this.

In fact, come to think of it, the single most effective way of getting rid of all this dreck is to take the rotation script *out of the library*. Yeah, I think that might do the trick. Then work on making it expensive, say, $1500.

*sigh* Why do I keep clicking "view post"?

Anyhow, problem: llTargetOmega is one line. Sent once. It uses such an infintesimal amount of both bandwidth and CPU power server-side that you couldn't assign a whole value to it.

Thank you for giving me a name for my campaign to get scripterati and Linden Labs to think more about what scripts do to reduce the quality of life in SL and drive investors away.

I think I'll call it "Target Omega".

hi. this is what i do, and i have had people bitch about it. but i want my place to look nice, its important to me. my land spans the waterfront of aqua, blue and grey. along the grey area there are 4 spinning signs high in the air. i made mountains all along my blue and grey to block the signs and some building that i found unattractive. (sorry!) i planted trees and bushes all along the edges and randy made a beautiful waterfall. now the whole area looks like a mountain valley.

the aqua area is all beautiful, since chip turned the whole of aqua into a shopping village. i didnt have to do anything, so i just made a pretty little park along the walkways he put down. there is also a sitting area by my office, and we brought in a slexchange terminal.aqua is turning out to be a well thought out little shopping community, not a mish mash mess.

Susie,

First off, I'd say to open a conversation with them by finding one single thing that you can say you like about their build. Let them know what some of your plans are and the direction you are going in. Since you like gardens, maybe you can pursuade them to add one? Give them a housewarming gift along the lines of a style you like. Maybe some textures or a plant.

As Stoneself said, you can build a wall that is phantom and transparent on their side but has a beautiful scene of your choosing on your side. In addition, you could use your land area as a garden, but build your house on a platform that is a few meters above the highest point of their build. If part of your land is water, consider building under water, I have seen some really cool builds under water.

It's just been my personal experience that when I show people that I'm willing to bend a little for them they tend to be willing to bend a little for me. I've lived on four different SIMs now with all kinds of builds and the only real issue I've ever had was with one person who wanted to extort the neighbors into buying the land they had. We all put up phantom, transparent walls and basically ignored them until they took down all the pictures of nude women etc. that they thought would incite us to the point that we bought them out. In fact, when they put in a "junk yard", with a lot of rusted out stuff, I actually thought it was a cool build and told them so.

Sort of took the wind out of that sail.

Just some ideas, I hope you are able to work it out.

Rose

I don't know your build, Susie, but just yesterday next to a friend's land sprang up the prototypical "purple cube of death" hovering in the air. I helped her out in making a screen of trees (eucalyptus and fir). So far it's been quite effective -- but we just enjoy the property at ground-level and it's fairly flat, not hilly. YMMV.

As for talking to the neighbors, if you feel you must, the suggestion of starting positive is good. But there's no way to avoid the risk that if you offend your neighbors things will simply get ugly in more ways than one. And of course posting a direct question about your land specifically is a good way to get into hot water, if the other person reads the forums at all.

And hey, if push comes to shove, the idea of one-way walls seems plausible. And if shove comes to smackdown, I'd just put a nice, big, yellow smiley face on the other side of that wall. "HAVE A NICE BUILD"

Susie,
I live on the edge of Sand. I think I know the property you're talking about, it is a bit annoying...

Kat

(and no, I'm pretty sure, as we have no rotating cubes that it isn't mine )

This is what I did, after having to move 3 times due to ugly rotating signs or big huge mall move-ins... not slaming those guys as they have just as much right to build as I do. In the mainlands there are no zones... so it is a risk you take.

I've started placing some billboards in Second Life. I've tried to keep them to the sides of roads, and not have them tacky... IE, a nice, professionally done graphic design, they don't shout, they don't spew particles, they don't sense nearly avatars or force feed them a URL or notecard.

Most people have been quite receptive. A few folks, however, have politely IM'd me and asked me if I could move it somehow, its distorting their view, etc. I've tried to be as nice as possible in these cases. Not everyone wants a war - many of us just want to exist in peace, whether we're promoting something or not!

After one discussion, where we came to a mutually agreeable solution, the two people who asked me have actually gone on to join up with SLBoutique (which was being advertised) and offerred some great suggestions! So my advice to people whether you're asking or being asked - work with your fellow citizens. Karma does pay!

-Flip

Here Here!

What I want to know is how do you nicely tell someone that their forum avatar is freaking you out?

I can tell you what not to do:

1. Don't be passive aggressive.
2. Don't be passive aggressive.
3. Don't be passive aggressive.
4. Don't ask a person to remove their 60 story asphalt smokestack by using the royal "We."
5. Don't be fucking passive aggressive!
6. Don't suggest that the other person will be sorry or use any other thinly veiled threats and then deny you are making threats.
7. Don't be condescending.
8. Don't be passive aggressive. (sigh)
9. Don't leave virtual poo all over their property.
10.Don't make passes at their RL girlfriend who happens to also play SL (unless you want to be laughed at)-- especially pathetic, poorly spelled ones, Mike.

I think I've gotten lucky in always having had very respectful and friendly neighbors in SL. I have moved a few times due to lag, but never due to an eyesore.

The one time I did have a problem with a neighbor's build, I asked her to come over and look at my view. Seeing the blank/untextured back of her gigantic sign, her response was, "Oh god, that's ugly.. I had no idea." She changed the sign, checked it again from my parcel, and everything was fine. I in turn moved some of my trees that kept getting in her way when she alt-zoomed. (And I ended up with a new neighbor to chat with while we were both at 'home' building.)

Hopefully, if you politely point out the problem to your neighbor, they'll be agreeable to a compromise. I find that approaching things with an open attitude goes a lot farther than making demands or criticizing.