Stop the universal land-banning.

I believe putting a universal ban on your land has no purpose and harms one's neighbors for two definite reasons. A) Nobody likes living next to a locked parcel, so it reduces land value. B) Nobody likes getting bounced while they're trying to shop, so it reduces commercial value.

Right now I'm standing on the land of a friend of mine's in Kendall who has two adjacent neighbors with locked parcels. The red bars certainly ruin the view and decrease the freedom she can enjoy around and ON her land, and because she very much wants to trade away her land and live somewhere else, the fact that nobody wants to live or shop on a parcel surrounded by red bars restricts her freedom. They have infringed on her happiness and it is my feeling that any feature that allows you to infringe on another user's happiness is a feature being abused.

The reason I'm not putting this up in the vote system are threefold. A) It might've been suggested before but with 600 measures up there I don't wnat to spend hours searching to find if it has been or not. B) It doesn't matter. And C) It might not even be a good idea for the Lindens to do ANYTHING about this. Suresure it'd be nice if they did something about the obviously bugged parcels which crash or trap AVs...

However I think we're better off just acting as users to =encourage= this trend to stop. IM these people and honestly ask them why their land is set private all the time. I get craploads of spam each and every day so I can't see how they can be offended by polite inquiries. I'm not saying that people should target individuals, not at all, just when they encounter a troublesome locked parcel they should speak up about it. Everyone should be accountable for their actions, if someone is going to turn a simulator into a SLUM by making their land locked.. their attention should at least be brought to it.

Rise the shop on 10m pylons

Absolutely disagree. It seems to me that people feel they have some god given right to do what they like on and around what amounts to private property in SL.

At best, I think they should do something about the ugly red bars being a permanent feature. But NOT nerf the ability to keep people out.

How about when you see a set of red bars you have the ability to make them not appear in your display? Not ever again for the combination of you and that parcel.

I have had this problem before and been able to get the land owner to put me on their access list, this makes the red bars go away. Of course the land owner has to trust me not to mess with them, but that didn't seem to be a problem. That doesn't help the problem with reduced desirability for selling, of course.

I hate the red bars. Looks unfriendly. And/or makes the land seem like it's full of prisons.

coco

Yeah, red bars are really ugly, but people are entitled to do what they want on their land ...

I agree, I think there should be an option to turn 'em off (what an eyesore!). I probably don't want to go poking around in your house anyway.

AGREE!

AGREE!

...and who many of us has crashed when we fly - or TRY to fly over this kind of ”suddenly in front of us” red bars... to a store or friends place far away from a telehub???

I have banned a few unfriendly people that I dont feel secure with and I dont want on my land thats all.. .

People have a right to what illusion of privacy makes them happy. However, note that all such "privacy" is an illusion. You can play camera tricks to see into a banned property plot (and house) just fine.

The bigger issue here, however, is that many people seem to forget that SL is a *cooperative* environment. As a landowner, you are a member of a community, a neighborhood, whether you like it or not. As a community member, your actions affect your neighbors.

IMO, ban lines are ultimately very selfish and unneighborly. There are so many creative ways you can ensure your illusion of privacy without lowering property values and pissing off your neighbors and making the view ugly for your neighbors and visitors to the area. You don't live in a vacuum--there are other people in SL besides you. Your little plot of land is not an isolated kingdom.

For example, the plot of land that I share with my partner is designed such that the grounds below are attractive, fit in with the surrounding area, and inviting to view and explore. Our "private" area is hundreds of meters up above the ground, difficult to notice or access except by people we want there. Every need is satisfied. We get our private space, and our neighbors and visitors to the sim don't get an eyesore or a no-pass flytrap that knocks them out of aircraft.

If you have any shred of cooperative decency and compassion for others, you would plan your land to look attractive both to yourself *and* to your neighbors. You'd try your best to come up with a *compromise* design that does what you want but doesn't destroy the scenery for everyone else in the sim.

Unfortunately, too many people either don't realize they're part of a community, or they just don't care how selfish they're being.

I also hate the red lines, but they are no worse than a big ugly building built right on the property line, with parts overhanging the line.

In the immortal worlds of Woody Guthrie

Ok, so this is an old(ish) thread, but the red lines are still here!

Seems to me two different issues:

1. Whether ppl should have the right to decide who enters their land
AND
2. The ugly red bars which appear when they do.

I bought land specifically because I was sick and tried of random idiots wandering into my rented apartment and griefing me Also annoying to find pose balls being used while I was offline. So now my land only allows ppl who I want to enter.

But, I also hate the red lines and have set up a proposal to have them removed (see the Voting forum).

And remember that the ban only extends so far up (is it 15 metres or 10, can;t remember?) So as long as anyone passing flies above the limit, then they'll be ok.

This thread is 3 months old lol..

Yah, I think that's the real question... how to get people to think about what their builds look like to people around them.

I went out of my way to try and make my land a pleasant backdrop for my neighbors. I don't expect everyone to sink their whole land below sea level or put their house in a skybox, but at least landscape your land and minimize the BIG UGLY SQUARE TERRAFORMING...

I don’t think the problem is with people who use access lists, as a land owner I do want that option. Perhaps what should be done is to remove the bars or have a option to hide them so we don’t have to see them. If you try to enter a protected piece of land you would get a message that you don’t have access to the land such as what you see now and do away with the bars. Perhaps they can make an option sort of like the show property line choice we have under view and add a show access controlled option so we can turn the bars off and on as we please.

My thoughts exactly - remove the red bars, but keep the land access options - or at least give us an option to not view the land access bars!

As it happens, there's a proposal on this very issue:

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=799

I have a suggestion which would allow something more intuitive than simple boundary lines. Basically the suggestion is for boundary 'boxes' which a player can place themselves to keep people out of a specific area, so they could place one that encompasses their home, but still allows people to walk up and knock on their door.

It also incorporates some other features which I think would be awesome, namely chat filters and camera blocking to keep your activities and conversations in your home a secret

Boundary Boxes Suggestion

Geez!

If I wanted my property to be private, I'd simply lock the door on my house.

Given that the interface provides a mere checkbox that tells you nothing of the effect that your choice has on other people, added to the non-obviousness that others cannot mess with your stuff, combined with an RL expectation that that which isn't locked may be taken, I think that a large proportion of land-banners have no idea of the negative impact of that little checkbox.

As others have noted, given the 40m height of the ban and the myriad ways in which it keeps no one "out", I consider this a mis-feature that has balkanized SL for no useful purpose at all.

Which, contrary to popular misconception, would have almost no effect at all.

I went back and took two of my votes back from other issues so I could vote for this, I think it's the best idea I've heard, next to expanded multimedia support and keeping the edit controls centered in camera view when you zoom in on something.

Hmm, while I like the idea, I feel the generally lethargy of a virtual world won't work for it. I doubt many people would buy a product, go off and use it and then return to rate it or its owner.
Most ratings would be creators saying "Hey, rate me and I'm rate you back!", meaning that if people actually paid any attention to the ratings (which is unlikely I'm afraid ) then shops which don't do this, or shop-keepers with awesome stuff and no friends would suffer.

There's a much better solution.

Play Sims 2 offline.

Honestly people.... what is the big deal about 'privacy'? It's an online game, which by logging in to means you are going to be confronted with OTHER PEOPLE!

If you're doing 'stuff' that you don't want others to see.... perhaps doing it online is not for you.

You want privacy? Make a frickin skybox out of the way, so those of us who like to explore and play the game the way it was designed to be, flying round from property to property to see and enjoy other people's creations, without being bounced around hitting barriers - or even worse, teleport home scripts that give no warning (which get an AR every time I hit one).

Lewis

I think it is a very bad idea to have locked areas. It basically is a representation of a flaw in the SL system. What we really need are houses and doors and walls that really are able to be private, with no clipping.. when someone goes into a hosue or car, the computer shoudl realize they are in "inside house mode" or "inside car mode", and there should be some types of optimization and specialization for it.

SL may be inside a computer, but we should not have to be reminded of that all the time when we're there. They should make every effort to make it a functioning self-contained world, without invisible bariers bumping us in the face unless there is at least some kind of explanation (wwwwwssheeew, magic spell! bzaaap, energy field!) .. also, while i do think it's good to respect people's choice to "get away" from everyone and go inside a private area, the grid blocks need to have some kind of right-of-way in them for us to travel through. I think that it would be a good idea to say that while people can have locked buildings and such, there should always be a road going through, or a way over (a bridge), or underground (in a tunnel) to pass through a quad without just bumping into a barrier and clumsily having to go around it. It cheapens the Second Life experiance.

I totally agree with Berios. A very good point!
Lewis, it's not so much privacy in the rl sense, more to have some level of control over who TP's right next to you, comes into your space and gives you grief. How would you like it if some idiot followed you around and kept bumping your avi, setting off particles and stupid sound effects and spamming your chat with inane drivel? - It makes doing anything (building, scripting) in SL almost impossible without either going somewhere else (why should I, it's my apartment?) or switching off particles and/or sound (again, why should I limit MY SL experience?) I had all this happen to me when I had a rented apartment. I tried security devices and they were too clunky (an all around globe of protection tends to hit your neighbours when you're in a multi-storey apartment block!).
I agree about no warning Home Teleporters, but since when was SL designed only so that people could fly around and look at other people's creations? Surely SL is about doing whatever we want (within the TOS), and one of the privileges of PAYING for land use is that we can decide who and when we allow onto our property. Island sim owners do this, why shouldn't us lowly parcel owners be able to too?
If you fly above a certain height then any exclusion zones don't apply, and surely a skybox is worse, since you're more likely to bump into them when flying fast before they've rezzed? Furthermore, a skybox offers no protection due to the access height limit - a neighbour of mine has his land Group only access, but nothing on the ground, it's all in a skybox, which means anyone can land in his house in the sky, but not on the empty field below. The worst of both worlds in my book.
Sure, SL is a "public space" but like any public space in rl, unfortunately, some ppl take that to mean that they can jump right in your face and give you grief. If ppl behaved properly, then the Access controls wouldn't be needed. I think Eric and Berios's suggestions would be better than the current arrangement, but until/unless they're implemented at least Access options are less of a problem than security devices tend to be!