Land Zoning

This has probably been covered before but I get so annoyed at buying a nice piece of land to put up a house when along comes a dirty great mall or club next to it. The effect is that at times it gets too laggy to stay at home

It would be great if mature land had zoning for residential and commercial purposes.
It just ruins the game to see big ugly clubs with 40 peeps sucking all the Sim resources up.

Dont get me wrong, I do enjoy clubbing and shopping Just not in my backyard. I have moved several times now to get away from clubs and malls and each time I get caught. Yes, I could go to PG land but enjoy the pleasures that come with mature land

As I have been posting lately all over the forums, I am also getting tired of all the lag caused by varying things in a sim. I am definitely in favor for zoning of some sims. Seems like they started this once, as I have come across sims that seemed to have some zoning restritcions. I have started selling off some of my land in mature areas in the thought that I may move to PG rated land for the sole fact that clubs and malls do not seem as prevalent there. Nobody should be forced to do this however. There should be the choice to have a "home" in a mauture sim and not suffer the lag we have been having lately.

On a completely different topic, what the heck does PG mean in the game anyway. I always thought PG stood for Parental Guidance ... well ... aren't we all adults playing anyway? I'm not sure what this rating even means in an adult only game. I'm not saying there should not be some restrictions, but maybe they need to be reworded and explained more clearly.

Well ... that's it for tonight ... maybe ... lol

Dain

I think that land zoning is the complete antithesis of everything that Second Life is about, and I vehemently oppose any attempt to impose land regulation on a large scale. However, one or two sims are not a big deal. Look at Boardman. It's a completely boring little place... the land zoning worked perfectly!

If you can't tolerate the idea of actually interacting with your neighbors in a civilized manner and absolutely love the idea of conformity, then I suggest you either keep petitioning the Lindens to set aside some zoned land, or do something about it yourself. Since there seem to be quite a few individuals like you who love imposing arbitrary laws on other people, ya'll should get together in a group and purchase yourselves a happy little suburban sim. It'd solve all of our problems: you get your white picket fences and rose bushes, and the rest of us get the creative chaos we so crave.

In general, I'm not in favor of zoning, however the best idea towards this topic IMHO was in this thread.... /13/1a/22883/1.html I got really excited cus I thought that's what the lindens were setting up with that little outjut of new sims on the east side but now I see there is a telehub in Isabel.. Oh well.

-Meiyo

This is a particularly rude answer. The issue stated is not addressing a personal feeling towards malls and clubs, it's talking about a technical issue we all know about: LAG. So I believe if we are going to pick and inslult eachother for what they say, at least take the idea correctly.

No, the idea was specifically land zoning. Though combating lag is one good argument for land zoning, it is not the only valid argument, nor even the only one presented by the original poster. If you intend to correct people, Marker, please be sure that you are actually in the right.

As for my hostility: I become angry whenever someone tells me what I can or cannot do with my own land. I am normally very even tempered, but I grow tired of people constantly clamoring for extensive land use regulation. Though some guidelines are necessary, I absolutely resent the suggestion that you should have any control over what I choose to do with my land. When does it end? One of my neighbors produces some amazing particle effects, which can sometimes decrease the performance on my client. Should her creations be banned? Should her expressive freedom be infringed? Another of my neighbors hosts horseraces on a very regular basis, and the massive influx of visitors can sometimes make the sim much slower than it normally is. Should we deny him the right to host these events, which are evidentally fun enough to draw frequent crowds? The answer to these questions is an emphatic NO! Unless someone is intentionally and maliciously impinging upon other people's rights to exist in this world, their freedeoms to build, create, and live should NOT be restricted based solely on such a superficial basis.

Petitioning for the addition of zoned land is a fine gesture, which I wholeheartedly support. Creating a community-standards group and purchasing land is a proposition which I also agree with. Implementing land zoning carte blanche in mature sims, as the original poster suggested, is a horrible infringement of my rights as a land owner.

ROFL.

Ardith, why don't you stop beating around the bush and simple state clearly "I don't give a damn how you feel because I want it like this so shove off." Wouldn't that be more honest?

The proposers weren't trying to get YOUR land zoned, they merely wanted the choice for themselves and for like-minded people, so they weren't intruding on your freedom. In contrast, you say that you don't want there to be any zoning anywhere, so you are trying to impose your way of life on them. So who's the bad boy?

Freedom is about having choice. SL is about freedom to choose your own life, but not freedom to ruin the lives of others -- it even says that in the Community Standards. So, pure and simply, your stance on this is completely out of order. Your freedom is not absolute. It's limited by the equal and opposite freedom of others.

Uhhh... aren't "Themed sims" zoned? We have themed sims, don't we?

We have very very few.
Most sims with any segment of theme are private.
---
The obvious, huge reason why land zoning is a good idea - private sims by and large look awesome, and most non-private sims are sprawl. The reason is because private sims are themed.

There is NO reason why we can't come up with some light zoning regulations that would keep SL navigable. As SL gets bigger this will become extremely important.

You're completely incorrect about your characterization of my post, Morgaine, and about your erroneous attempt to poke a whole in my logic. A careful rereading of my post will show that everything is internally consistent, and that some of your allegations are completely without merit.

In particular, refer to the section where I refer to the freedom to build, so long as your intentions are not malicious. If you build a wall surrounding your neighbor, you eliminate their freedom without any actual benefit to your self. It is not a harm which is inflicted unintentionally, such as increased lag resulting from malls and clubs, but an intentional act of malice which is inflicted on someone. If your intentions are not sinister, then I see absolutely no reason why your desire to be free from lag should automatically trump someone else's desire to run their club or host a mall.

Also, read the part where I explicitly state that I agree with the concept of zoning, but that I disagree with a "carte blanche" zoning method of all mature land. Which is what the original poster, intentionally or uninentionally, stated. If he had meant that only newly released mature land should be zoned, then he should have stated as much in his post.

If the latter is what you meant, then your original quote was definitely misspoken.

As for the Boardman example, I could point to dozens of other sims where themes have made things look great, and dozens of other sims that are ugly and laggy as sin by being unzoned. No, Boardman is boring for other reasons:
1. It's set up to look like a contemporary suburban neighborhood. There's no flexibility for creative stuff. (Medieval, futuristic, etc) There's no reason it couldn't have been made residential without the ruling that it has to be suburban.
2. The whole sim is FLAT. Flat sims are BORING.
3. The plots are small and by-and-large made by newer players. More advanced builders demand larger plots both for prims and because they love building. There's no privacy, and there's no room to get creative with the land.
4. The height limit creates a stagnant look.

Meanwhile, you only have to look at private sims like Galleria to see that zoning is a very very good idea that we should work with to implement in a user-rights-friendly way.

Those two quotes do appear to be contradictory at first glance, and I apologize for the imprecise language and getting carried away. The point I have been trying to make when referring to large scale or carte blanche land zoning is that I don't think pre-existing land should be zoned. If the Lindens opted to zone all new land, no problem. If the Lindens decided to set aside some more specially zoned sims, no problem. But zoning land that is already in use would be a horrible move.

Then again, I've always thought that the landowners of a sim should have more say in the way that sim is run. There should be a way, in every sim, to make proposals and allow landowners to vote on the issues. Perhaps give landowners a number of votes porportional to the amount of land they own in that sim. In the end, this would be an effective way of allowing for a fair way of determining whether a sim should suddenly become zoned.

The reason land zoning exists in the real world is so that land owners who live near eachother can get along without pissing eachother off.

Of course, many people want it their way or the highway and aren't intrested in getting along (thank you anonymity ).

Landzoning is a MUST. But more than that, it is inevitable. So enjoy the current state of affairs, cuz it can't last forever. There are larger forces in play than our individual desires.

Zoning would be cool if only applied to new sims and the PG/M had nothing to do with it. It annoying that builds near a telehub are so tall. I basically TP, then fly up for 10 secs, then start moving.

Don't mess with PG and M ratings.

That's fair enough, Ardith, and I agree with you too. I implicitly assumed that the proposal referred to new land only, since applying it to old land would be quite impossible short of forcing a mass displacement, and I didn't think for an instant that Chase was asking for that. I still don't. I guess you assumed the opposite, so we just made diifferent interpretations.

I'm not really sure why anyone's talking about Mature land in this context though. The issue of Mature or PG is entirely orthogonal to the matter of zoning, and you can certainly have secluded non-commercialized Mature zones for uninhibited adults (naturist zones full of beach sports are an obvious example) just as much as secluded non-commercialized PG zones for families who choose to limit their behaviour.

The extent of brash clubbing and shopping in a zone really has nothing to do with M vs PG. It's more about the relaxation and simplicity of countryside or suburbia versus the deafening bussle of the big city. People do need a choice, and calling them or their preferred lifestyles names just because their choices are not the same as yours doesn't help.

Interesting discussion.
Out of interest I have noted one newish Sim to the north that now has two competing clubs on it and it is not uncommon to see over 50 avatars on this Sim. As you can imagine it is unbelievably laggy. How would you feel if you purchased land there for a pad and saw two new clubs spring up around you? Also what happens is once a club is built close to a housing area the land prices plummet as noone wants to buy next to a club.

So as far as our individual rights go, by not having some sort of "light" zoning a lot of players are being seriously diasadvantaged as far as lag and the land value is concerned. Maybe this is a way for the land barons to get more land at a reduced price??? I have not the answers...just the questions lol

This zoning thread shouldn't really be about lag, but about choice of lifestyle and environment.

Lag is just an engineering problem. The most important thing you must do about lag is to complain about it --- avoiding it actually prevents the problem from being addressed and corrected.

I've worked (freelance) for clients equivalent to Linden Labs running online services, all the way from much smaller to 100 times larger, and there's one thing that seems pretty universal: the priorities are set up to 50% by the chief architect/visionary (depending on his democratic-demagogic mindset), 50% by inertia, 150% by complaints, and 0-5% by feature requests. Yes, I know that it doesn't add up to 100% --- the decision making process never does. It's up to engineers to make the numbers add up.

The 150% by-complaints effect though is not surprising, because it focuses the minds of everyone in the company, each for different reasons: the CEO worries about futures, the dev team doesn't want to look silly, QA wants to show that it knows what it stands for, marketting want to be able to claim "We are leading the field" without their faces glowing red, and Customer Services wants to find a reason to not cut its wrists. Without complaints, they all just potter along from day to day and nothing forces the pace.

Believe me, open-minded and visionary management actually welcomes everyone firefighting major service-impacting faults because that cuts through company inertia and team red tape, which is always a problem (mainly in older outfits though). If there is a major design flaw in the system which impacts on performance, the best opportunity to smash the old design with a sledgehammer and put in something more creative is when the old system is in flames anyway.

Complain.

Morgaine,
though we've disagreed in the past, I agree very much with your analysis of management, and I would assert that LL is on top of their game in this respect.

Ardith,
okay, you make more sense now. I agree, retroactively zoning is a bad idea... though perhaps zoning could take effect next time land is sold, even if it is an older sim.

As for the issue with players getting more power for regulating their own areas, I think this will become increasingly important. I believe we're going to see a lot more private sims (and the growth of the number of them is explosive alreaedy) and we're going to see more and more clusters of communities.

When you look at the long term of SL as it becomes the Metaverse, you are going to see communities getting larger and larger. Malls will span sims and stores will be more elaborate and take up more space. Universities will build sites and band together in academic areas. Government services will reserve tracks of land and build informational areas where people can learn about gov't, find contact info, contact representatives, etc. Huge subworlds of medieval / fantasy themes, city themes, casino themes... all will naturally gravitate together.

We need to empower communities to lead themselves and provide local standards for their areas.

This is why we have telehubs and sim ratings.
If you want to be left alone, buy a PG plot as far away from a hub as possible, at the edge of the world even. The snow sims are particularly hubless, and land there is very cheap now. This was what I did, and it works nicely. I can hang out with my friends without having random noobs pop up to shoot pushguns at me

Eggy, were you paying attention? This goes way beyond simple privacy and rating. This is about style, content, and community. These are dimensions of which the rating and distance to the telehub are completely insufficient to nurture.

The proof is the fact that there IS NO non-private or non-Linden sims with overall style.
there IS NONE with similar overall content.
there is NONE with a sense of real community.

Sims specifically made to have these do, and look awesome.

I agree with many of you we need standardized zoning rules and ways to set them up (and enforce them). I would love to see more themed sims (not sure if that will ever happen). I've found that many groups self destruct after a period of time. A themed project is very hard to do, you need a group of peope willing to work on a project not for a few weeks but for many many months on end (and in the case of SL, really years). In this modern age where ADD is just a couping strategy for the information deluge called tv & internet it's amazing the groups last as long as they do.

Zoning good, Lag bad
More zoned sims == contained lag == more happy customers

yeah it's putting a bandaid on puncture wound but we have been hearing about havok 2 for months now. You think they will have lag addressed in SL 2?

We already have zoning. Get a group of like minded players. Agree on a theme. Buy a sim. Congratulations. You now live in a zoned community. This is the ONLY way zoning should ever be created. Let's stop trying to legislate taste. Get what you want by exercising your freedom of choice, not taking someone else's away.

I agree, that's currently a good way.

BUT, we're not talking about legislating "taste". Things we can zone:
- Purpose: commercial, residential, mixed, red-light, learning, youngster, sports, etc.
- Style: Medieval, modern, renaissance, oriental, space, cyberpunk, etc. (and we do these to an extend with the different trees / land textures, as well as Linden sponsored sims like Dore, Darkwood, and Gibson)
- Empowerment: Add voting features inherent to the sims, standard road textures, etc, optional rules that landowners in a sim could choose.

It's about giving players the choice, not about making the choice for them.

If it's a choice between different narrow definitions of what's allowed then it's not really a choice is it? People shouldn't have to move if they decide they're bored with their house and want to build a store. They shouldn't be forced to have a tudor ranch when one day they get the urge to build a mayan temple. If someone has a residential home but has a ton of friends that visit often, at what point do you start considering their home a club? How many people can someone allow to sell items on their land before it's no longer a store but a mall? Zoning robs people of the ability to change their minds and to be spontaneous. It limits creative expression. People's creativity needs to be driven by their own imaginations and creative whims, not the subjective bias of their neighbors.

Who would enforce it?
The lindens arent here to be your nannies.
If you want to live in a better neighborhood, buy enough land around you that any ugly build will be too far away to be seen. Build your own neighborhood. Taber did it and they dont own the whole sim. Mocha is working out nicely, so is chartreuse...