I don.t get it, and they certainly don't

You still don't get it.

You're confuosing negrating as a way of criticizing and motivating a player who has made a big bad ugly obstructive laggy build with negrating wildly just when you feel like it, on a whim, such as to lash out at newbies or creative people. Why do that? I'm not suggesting athat at all.

And I'm not imposing my taste or general sense of Western-world aesthetics on anyone. I'm talking about big bad ugly builds that many people suffer from and many people agree about it. I'm for casting around to see where that area of agreement lies.

We've already established that at least one lonely brave newbie was able to say out loud in this hostile smug and clubbish environment that yes, she isn't exactly happy to look out at a gorilla when she would rather see natural land.

Go and read the thread about the big building in Clunn to see what I mean by big bad ugly obstructive and I no doubt you'll agree with me -- anyone would.

Maxx Monde is among SL's best architects. I'm glad he ventured out into that thin ice of trying to indicate some standards -- based on RL aesthetics if nothing else -- for what constitutes "good". I'm not sure what he did, but I'm glad he tried. What I'm suggesting is actually different -- negrating in extreme circumstances of really bad builds. But I shouldn't have to keep characterizing it and qualifying it just to please you and all the other nervouse nellies. I'll just do it, and post it. And leave it at that.

He certainly wasn't "ridden out on a rail" by you witch-hunters, he's in the game and enjoying great respect for his builds by many, myself included.

Nobody would pressure a newbie or a creative person with a negrate.

Could you all get a life? At least a second life?

True enough. But I do think we can find a few examples of general consensus on what constitutes a big, bad, obstructive, laggy build. Why should they remain forever? In fact they often move when you point out that they are problematic, but few people bother -- they are so intimidated!


Just because most people don't care or it's the general norm doesn't mean you can't try. I do believe that reason is common to all men and women. And it is possible to appeal to people's innate sense of beauty, regardless of their cultures.



Apparently it became that in this game because of the mindset of the original players and what they established through practice. But why should I or others be stuck with that? A negrate is a good way to start a conversation that someone will take seriously when they've ignored everything else.



I actually think that most people even who enjoy King Kong don't want to look at him from their porch on their expensive home and land. Raise your hand everybody who plans to buy King Kong out of the bay and put him out on their front lawn.



Nothing. We're talking about the general issue of big bad ugly builds.




Raise your hand everybody who wants King Kong in their front yard 24/7 NOW and is going out to buy him.


...etc.



Well I care, and you are one of the best. Not everyone finds it to their taste. But liking your type of architecture or not is not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about taste, which is arbitrary and subjective. I'm talking about big bad ugly builds that obstruct that everyone can agree on.

Lordfly, when Blue Burke put a giant, glowing, yellow ugly square many feet high out in Allston, believe me, you didn't have to go to architecture school to get a real quick consensus from all the business and land owners for miles that this was FUCKING UGLY. It turned everything for many miles piss-yellow. Now come on, we can't call this an eyesore, contact the owner and say "Er...what are you doing with this? It's turning everything yellow. Could you at least turn it off? Better yet, remove it?"

It's this constant abstracting and diversion into the "one-man's-castle" rhetoric that prevents simple, swift, common-sense action on a thing like the big yellow box.

Turns out it was "just a test". Whatever.



Well I admire Maxx's work quite a bit. I know he doesn't deign to do builds for anyone for love nor money. He is cynical, but he has reason to be. And frankly, I find that a really chilling statement "as a community we broke him of any spirit". What a gory process! What kind of community does THAT, a community of cannibals? Why would you have to mob him because he showed some spirit and some judgement? I don't know the issues at stake or what he judged about, but I can guarantee you that what I'm talking about is actually far less grand. I'm generally talking about big bad ugly yellow or black boxes that hinder everyone else's land.



I know it's hard to read through all these long threads. So let me say it again. I don't advocate negrating parties for easily-wilted newbies. There'd be no sense. I'm talking about big ugly builds that obstruct, that block access, that devalue, that lag a sim. I think there's every reason to take action on such things. Negrate wouldn't be the first action, as I wrote earlier, but the last. But an effective one that we should be willing to use. It's not about "buildings I don't like".

I can see that I'm simply going to have to round up examples and then you'll see.



Well thanks for that comment, I will try to avoid "generalized attacks".

Lordfly, I was blasted with a completely unfair ad-hominent attack from the get-go about my motivations and intentions. It was absurd. So I push back. People really have had a free ride for a long time never getting push-backs when they act so arrogantly and so smugly. Frankly, there *is* a core of self-important assumed royalty, you can see it yourself. I don't fear "not helping my position" because it can stand or fall on its own without having to suck up to the right people. Really, it's a small-town atmosphere of status quo that will start to break up as any more people come in the game.

Just scroll through this thread and look at all the hectoring, lecturing, know-it-all posts from people telling me "look out for your own good". And look at your very phraseology about running Maxx out on a rail.

I advocate a much milder thing -- talking publicly about big bad ugly builds, and negrating the builder if he doesn't respond. Whereas you're talking about running people out on rails, ostracizing them for the duration. Why? Everybody here is lecturing me about "tolerance".

Waiting folks out has proven VERY effective for me where I currently reside.

If you feel you simply cannot abide the tastes of your neighbors, and feel that you must speak to them about it, try to be civil, or it will usually end up like this situation has.

Weedy told me to press "release" or "delete" and the community would be grateful. I think that's the attitude that new players have to struggle against. I think it's helpful to characterize what they do accurately. The "suicide" is of course of the pixelated variety.

]

You've summed up very eloquently here what I was trying to say a few posts back. Implicit in your statement is a condemnation of those who are so low-brow or middle-brow or middle-class or bourgeois enough to want that carbon copy. Yet...why do you think you've noticed this trend? Because new people are coming into the game -- from TSO, UO, RL, whatever. *And this is what they want.* Some land barons and some group project leaders give them what they want, and this has the old technocratic and creative intelligentsia elite with their knickers in a twist. In fact, there's a mixture of old-guard beta-test-love-fest tekkies/designers and brand-new "carpon copy real-lifers" who want that "naturalistic" device. Of course as Juro has pointed out, um, what's exactly natural about Eric Linden's interpretation of northwestern American rocky waterfront?

I personally have preferred the more whimsical exotic landscapes where all kinds of big trees and odd creatures appear for roaming around in. Yes, that might sound like a contradiction to what I've posted about King Kong, but that's because subtlety can often be lost here. It's merely when I *assumed the role of developer* -- yes, it's only a role, in a game -- that I began to see through the eyes of those "cc real-lifers" and understand that they valued a King-Kong-free landscape -- as one brave one indicated -- and that a good business would try to give it to them.

If Philip Linden wants a million people to come through the doors, surely he didn't mean them all to be the technocrats nursed in the arms of King Kong. When you have a million people, you have Wal-Mart shoppers and people who take the RV to Yellowstone. Hey, in fact we already have that in SL! These people are paying customers and can't be castigated for their "rejectionist" attitude. It will be their game, too. Everybody is happy to loudly proclaim the freedom of builds on one's land -- except when it's real-life carbon-copies? These are conflicts that must be managed, not wished away.



Yes, it was delightful to be able not to think of valuable waterfront property, just swimming and flying around through the landscape whatever it turned up, turning away from the stupid and ugly, flying toward the beautiful. But I personally paled on that after a lot of slow-rezzing laggy malls and boxy clubs and began to wonder if something else was possible, at least for residence, so I tried these experiments.



I personally have absolutely no illusions about this. I don't think you *can* make money in virtual estate (it's not real) because the risks and losses are just too great. There's no way to calculate things like the teleporter to your sim being broken for 3 days or the entire game being down just when ppl were getting ready to buy a house. Those few who have made some money on it have done it through mass of land, volume of sales, and high turnover. It's precisely because of the inability to protect view investments, the tier structure, and the risks in the game mechanics, that land barons are driven to mass produce, with predictable effects.



Well, this is why many new and old Americans fled your repressive shores of Europe or Asia : ) People do fight to protect their views in America. I can think of the ferocious lawsuits over the Trump Tower in New York City. Projects become politics and legislators get involved in approving or disapproving. Consumers boycott slumlords and other types of builders they loathe. Neighbourhood groups fight back. There is a robust civil society that fights for that view and often gets it. There's an awful lot you can do about a tower going up putting your view into shadows -- from letter-writing to demonstrations to city council intervention. It's precisely that kind of fighting spirit that is missing from SL, where many people roll over and take the ugly pancaking of a beautiful island lying down.



Yes, sadly, this is the engine of the game -- and the Lindens are able to justify their rolling out of new sims constantly precisely because of the need for so many people to move away from ugly builds.



It's truer than you know : (

Yesterday I felt like retiring from the forums, and even pressing "release" on my land.

I am sorry that Pahoa has had to experience any kind of grief, given the vicissitudes of moving from Lusk and having to set up shop in a new place.

You people have been at this far, far too long with no push-back.

Why don't YOU try a little respect and stop lording it over the place?

Well, this is why many new and old Americans fled your repressive shores of Europe or Asia : ) People do fight to protect their views in America. I can think of the ferocious lawsuits over the Trump Tower in New York City. Projects become politics and legislators get involved in approving or disapproving. Consumers boycott slumlords and other types of builders they loathe. Neighbourhood groups fight back. There is a robust civil society that fights for that view and often gets it.

That said, perhaps one day when there is a proper system of contract verification, people could sell land with restrictive covenants. In that case, it's a different story.

and one of the fundamental principles of our planning laws is that you do not have a right to a view.

Prokofy, have you considered buying a private island sim? Yes, it's expensive, but in the long run, it might save you a lot of anxiety that you seem to be having about your neighbours.

In your last two posts you never talked about the elephant in the living room: King Kong. He's big, he's kitsch, and well....he's BIG. Could we hear some comments from others in the area about their feelings about King Kong?

All landowners have that right, and a landowner who is commissioning buildings or selling land has the right to ask on behalf of his customers what to expect nearby -- merely what to expect! -- so that buyers can plan accordingly. It shouldn't have to cramp your style to answer "yes, there's a big building planned" or "we don't know but it's likely just these animals."

And while you may believe you have absolute freedom in this game when you buy land, the person next to you who bought land thinks they have freedom, too, and their freedom is encroached by your unbelievable resistance to merely talking over your plans so that others may adjust accordingly. Let me point out again -- that was ALL that was asked of you! No one asked you to remove anything -- they merely asked to be INFORMED so they could MOVE.

Actually, SL's old player base reminds me quite a bit of a commune -- subsidized, self-referential and hostile to newcomers.

Of course not. You have to start somewhere. I view myself as a pioneer trying to push against the tide of helplessness and anger I see in this game over the utter inability to do anything about the ugly build next door. The Lindens aren't going to zone. And players can't really enforce zoning without constant disputes and Linden intervention. So I think there have to be ways of developing alternatives. One of them is to buy a sim -- and even the views on to the next sims -- and ask people to respect the idea of "residential".

strong viewpoints.... the language of the opressed... speaking about an existing world order and a kind of oldbie clique......... SL has less of that kind of thing than any other MMO in existence. ...the community is so non-judgemental, welcoming, and friendly. ...yet if you had your way, other people would be under the thumb of yours. What makes SL great is creative freedom and a community that mostly cheers on the creative endeavors of others instead of seeking to tear them down. ....You've chosen to have an adversarial relationship with the community at large. .... it's far more important to me to be a good neighbor by accepting people's right to do as they please with their land. I'd rather have a good personal relationship with my neighbors than have adversarial relationships. ...Who cares? I loved it.

I quote the above solely as a means of illustrating the following point ---- not as a means of denigrating or taking on Chip or anyone else.

I agree with Prokofy that there is an established, fairly cliquish, and observably insular "oldbie network" with a measurable bias toward traditonal liberal thought/philosophies. The above quote provides quite a bit of evidence of the lack of self-awareness or blindered view that that group exercises.

Having a few alts here, you probably have no clue that I have been on the fringes of a few of the sub-groups that most consider "oldbies". So, it's interesting to see the self-righteous defense of that larger group as a whole... It's astounding the level of the lack of self-awareness evident by some within that community.

Whoa now you say.... Korg is just sounding off, you say. Of course he would say that... He's an @#$@#$. Well, Believe it or not... at least one of my alts could be beside you right now and you wouldn't have a clue. (Remote control access to/of another computer is a wonderful thing if you know how to use it properly.) But that's beside the point.

Now, not everyone in the "oldbie" group is friends or thinks alike - no one would expect that to be so. Even close friends have their differences of opinions on issues and third parties. But the fact that certain in-groups routinely jump in to close ranks around one another against even a sniff of a perceived threat/insult against one of their own is not only noticeable to those outside the group, it IS something that does concern most of SL. Oldbie status is not something I personally revere and rarely acknowledge - whether here or elsewhere. It only means one registrered somewhere before someone else. Being an oldbie entitle no one to anything - not respect, not special treatment, and certainly not blind adherence to a particular point of view held (even loosely) in common within the group.

So you are saying that people that have been here a long time, and have gotten to know each other..umm..know each other? Gee..you da Sherlock! Have you also noticed that a few old timers dispise each other??

As for closing ranks, the exact same thing can be said for groups of newer SL firends, or anyone loyal or of the same opinion. If there were others like you Korg (please..no..), and they were friends of yours, and you shared alot of common views, would you stay out of any threads where one was defending him/herself? Or offering an opinion? I very much doubt it. So yes, groups of friends are..well..friends. People that share values and ideals are..umm..in agreement often. And folks that have been around each other longer, tend to know each other better. Not all that hard to figure out eh?

But nice try on the sowing seeds of suspicion thing. The "I have alts sneaking around" part was particularly good. Do you work for the CIA too?