The Midge Project - Zoned Residential Program

Lack of zoning, problems with neighbours, ugly buildings, griefing, lag: All these are issues as old as Second Life. They have come up in discussions regularily. And while there have been admirable achievements in projects like Luskwood or Montmartre I believe it is time for one robust solution that is simple, accessible and scalable.

AREA
The area the project covers is the sim Midge. Terrain of that sim is one combination of mountain, green hillside and flat green area. The sim is mature and surrounded by other sims that are outside scope of the project. It is part of the mainland and easy to reach via the new telehub in Wixcom.

RENTING
Land in Midge will be available for rent for 200 L$ per week per 512 sqm. There won't be any upfront investment necessary nor will you have to pay land tier fees to Linden Lab. Minimum rental size is 1024 sqm.

BUYING
There will also be the concept of "owning" land. You pay normal market price, currently 2999 L$ per 512sqm, and you don't pay rent. This ownership is transferable if you decide to sell it to another SL resident. It is permanent as long as you don't violate the Midge Terms of Service (see below). But of course you have to pay tier fees.

There are some differences compared to normal land ownership that you should be aware of:

o As long as the Midge Project exists, your land will be held by me as your agent and not directly transfered to your avatar. This is the only way to enforce the Midge TOS, including things like the zoning rules.

o You pay your tier fees to me via PayPal, instead of paying Linden Lab. If you are a European Union resident you can also pay via EU-Payment. Rates are the same you would pay to Linden Lab. As added benefit you can have a custom tier tailored to the size of your land, e.g. 3000sqm, 5000sqm, 10000sqm or other "odd" sizes without having to pay tier for land that you don't use.

TRUST
True to the nature of this project you need to have some trust in my person. I do have a three year long record of town and community management in Shadowbane and I have been doing business in Second Life for almost one year. Still, if you have any doubts then it may be better to not burden yourself with worries and thus not apply for the Midge Project at this stage.

MIDGE TERMS OF SERVICE
The Midge TOS will be fully defined after further discussion with the first applicants to the project. The general idea can be summarized easily though: build nice and don't be an ass.

Building nice includes:
- No clubs
- No malls or rental of store space
- No casinos
- Max building height < distance of prim from parcel border
- Builds that are floating in the sky must be above cloud level
- You build some kinda house or tent. Crashed space ships don't qualify.
- Common sense when it comes to scripts and lag objects

Don't be an ass includes:
- No sexual harassment
- No stalking of neighbours
- Acting somewhat mature. Benchmark is my 4 year old daughter. I know this can be a challenge for some people

COMMUNITY
There will be an in world group to join for residents. Communication on that channel will be encouraged, similar to guild channels in other worlds. In addition I setup a discussion forum for the project. This is also where you can post your application post. If you already sent me e-mail or talked to me I still encourage you post there and hook up with other prospective residents

TERMINATION
In case of termination of the project a notice will be sent at least two weeks in advance. Bought properties will be transfered to the avatars of the owners and prepayments for rent or tier refunded.

Cool.

Congrats on the win, Anshe. I look forward to seeing Midge after a few months of your development efforts.

I also look forward to Prokofy's sour grapes.

I think your idea is great, Anshe. I know you will make SOME money, as well you should, but the terms you have laid out are very fair and a real benefit to many. I will be taking this to heart, and I may try to do a similar project in the near future myself. SL really needs some zoned land, and this is a way to achieve that. Hopefully, myself and some others will be able to join in setting up similar developments.

Thanks for being a leader willing to make the plunge.

Carl Altman

Nice one anshe. Good call on having a "buy" option. This invests your customers in the idea more, because they can even re-sell later if they like. The fact that they won't "own" the land outright will be the only thing lowering the potential marketability of the idea; Interestingly however, if the idea takes off then the idea of living in such a zoned sim may raise the land-values in Midge noticeably.

I think it is a GOOD thing that you are allowing your customers the potential to profit from taking a risk on such an idea. If someone buys in on Midge now, they might find that their land purchase doubles in value 3-6 months from now if the sim remains stable and cooperative. You risk nothing in this, because if a new buyer is an asshat, you can simply eject them from the group; the land after all will remain in group hands.

QUESTION: If a customer "buys" land in Midge from you, will they have the option of paying tier directly to you OR donating their tier to the group and therefore paying to Linden Labs? Either way, the land will remain under your jurisdiction as I imagine you (or a trusted AnsheChungCorp employee) will be the only officer(s) in the group; even if the purchaser is paying tier to Linden Labs, they won't be able to wrest control of the land away from the group. If they do NOT have this option; if they may only pay tier directly to you, will you pass along any kind of a tier discount, seeing as how you are not paying full tier yourself? Will there be discounts for larger purchases? I ask this, because although you have shown yourself (in my opinion) to be pretty straightforward and trustworthy towards your customers, it *is* a bit of a gamble to "buy" land in a sim where you do not in fact "own" the land; and from another individual who might decide to leave SL at any time.

I do give you alot of credit for seeking out new business niches and doing more with the land-game than simply "buy low - sell high". Good luck to Midge and its future residents, no matter what happens.

I think what Anshe is doing is great and while if you buy the land you may not own it outright, if you only buy 512 or 1024 or even a bit more... you are not really risking a lot of money at Anshe very friendly prices.

this is a wonderful proposal. it mimics the boardman & brown zoning with the exceptions that there is no selling restriction (including no ugly free market), and no air building restriction above the cloud layer. i understand that you won't be accepting allocations to the group because that won't really give you a tier break until at least half a sim's worth in contributed by others.

the most impotant difference though is that you, or an agent WILL be enforcing the guildlines.

i wish you the best of luck with this endeavour.

Quoting in part, below:



Just my two cents: I don't think Anshe or anyone else undertaking such a project should do "tier discounts". The extra work involved in managing such a project more than justifies the profit from the fee differential. Dealing with 30 small owners is a lot harder than dealing with 4 big owners, and the tier scale gives some small compensation for the extra work.

Basically I am offering one "ownership" deal that is not so different from what Linden Lab do. Linden Lab does not hand you over server, you have to trust them they deliver on promise. And in this case you have to accept ANSHECHUNG.COM as one trustworthy business, not as random anonymous resident. Like Linden Lab. Like GOM. Like IGE.

Brava!

This is great. I am so glad you got this going. I hope it works. I will see if I can get some tiny parcel in it.

Let the record show that I thought up the original kernel of this idea -- go see the thread "Midge: Opportunity for Projects" some days ago.

I pushed and shoved everyone to refine the idea, to stop all their usual feted inner crap, and suffered all the slings and arrows upon my persona. Everyone was like, "No, I'd never do a project with YOU you're TERRIBLE" or "I'd never do a project unless it was Bedazzle, wake me when it's over" or "Anshe is a terrible land baron not again" but I pushed and pushed and PUSHED to keep this discussion live because I was confident that someone would take me up on the concept instead of going the usual way with the usual maul mall and lag-club bilge.

See what it takes? And indeed it DOES take that amount of pushback with this incredibly smug, insular, and resistant inner feted crowd in SL, and it DOES take that amount of hutzpah to go up against land barons like Anshe and challenge them to do more than the usual silly crap at the telehubs, chopping up land.

Sometimes the role of dissident is a good thing for a world because it enables those with more mundane but calmer temperaments to follow up after the road is paved by someone who is loathed and despised and never credited but this is my motto: there is no good deed you cannot accomplish if you are willing not to take the credit. In fact, 9 out of 10 readers are snorting now about Prokofy, thinking in their usual inner, feted smug manner that a) he didn't think up the idea and b) he is some loon trying to take credit for it -- but scholars of worlds and forums will see the track record clearly and understand it with the kind of perspective that only they can bring to a frenzied realm like SL.

It's all good, because the result is that Anshe is now doing a great thing. Anshe will never likely acknowledge that I got this started and pushed and pulled through all the oldbie and newbie resistance to keep people on focus, she will never give me a tip other than "get outta this game" lol, but it's just fine, because the record shows who thought up the idea "let's do something with Midge or some other sim to have the bottom line of no malls and no laggy clubs" and it took an honourable business person with plenty of resources, knowledge and experience of the intricacies of the game, and trust in the community to get it done. Bravo!

Now...go on to the next square, and do that with Cub!

I am very interested in this prospect - I will be contacting Anshe tonight in world to set up my own little plot in this new zoned sim.

I think this is a great idea and having someone like Anshe (who I completely trust) as the owner/government of this sim gives me a lot of confidence in the project.

Hahahaha. See what I mean? Go back and read the first, original post titled "Midge: Opportunity for Projects" and see that my main purpose was to start a discussion, overcome the smug insular resistance all the forum harpies bring to these new ideas, and hope that someone with savvy and resources like Anshe, or a group of players working with someone like Anshe, would get this done. I never claimed it as my own project, never said I would manage it, but only said I'd kick in a little tier and brainstorm on it -- the record shows that for sure.

I said in my original post that I did not have the resources to take it on, and only volunteered to go int with like 40 other people if someone else could exercise the leadership and the participation. So read it and weep, Enabran, and see that there aren't such things as "sour grapes" in a new world like this, except the spiteful kicks that someone like you administers when they believe someone is "down," forgetting that in a world where you fly, no one can ever do that to you like they do in RL : )

My point was to play the role of dissident and do some kicking and screaming to make this possible. Anshe has been in this game for what, a year? Two years? She didn't think up this idea of enforcing her zoning and cooperating with players like this a year or two years ago. She thought it up AFTER I began pushing the discussion, and you all know full well I am the one that helped her to think it through. She knows that, and she'd be the first to admit it, unlike all the smug types in the peanut gallery now who never attempt projects or attempt to work with land and people, as Anshe has done on a huge scale, and as I have done on a tiny scale by comparison.

I couldn't possibly have sour grapes about this game finally turning the corner, and moving away from the zillions of meters of lag-club and maul-mall into something halfway resembling a world where a million people might like to live in. Free at last, free at last, thank God almightly, free at last...

Meanwhile, I've done my little bit for simkind this week, helping to ensure that two extortionist idiotic eyesore laggy griefer clubs on Furness got bought out, and helping to start a small, modest beachside rental community, a dinky little project compared to Midge, but I take on what I can manage, as I have RL jobs and can't make this game my job : )

Hmm. good price. Can I get a small spot of residential?

Amazing!

Anshe, are you thinking about master-planning any community commons areas?

Or maybe a thin layer of "wildland" around the edge of the sim?

I know I'm cheering from the cheap seats, when I'm not the one who'd have to figure out how to redistribute the cost of unassignable zones within the sim. But I'm fascinated by what you're undertaking, and depending on what your first residents and you hash out at your kickoff discussion, I'm curious if they'd consider ponying up a small neighborhood association fee to let you recoup your opportunity costs on green areas.

Oh, and: WTG!

-- danny d.

There would have to be a clear code of conduct. Especially regarding laggy scripts.

Please, everybody who want join come to forum I setup at ANSHECHUNG.COM Part of this is the neighbours get to know each other a little and it would help me organize things if everybody start post there what he/she wants to buy/rent etc, ask me question and so on. Better than 10 people IM me separately and ask same thing all over

I also create group in world now.

Prokofy helped speed this up, as I was not confident there would be enough demand for this kinda service. I was more or less waiting for Linden Lab provide us better tools. Now we will see how it works out

WTG Prok! DLTBGYD

http://www.anshechung.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24#24

Check out the group here:

http://www.anshechung.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14

Schwanson and Jamie Otis have been doing this for months in Abacus and now Aasim, unless I'm mistaken.

Let me tell you the difference, Ingrid. It's not like I'm unaware of what Jamie and Schwanson are doing, because I studied their lots quite a bit before I did mine and I talked to Jamie.

Jamie just took on the whole tier himself, and gradually rented out his whole sim, and made a planned residential sim. The tenants pay rent, but they don't donate tier (unless I'm mistaken). He has rules, a plan, building code, etc. But he didn't put out a call to the community to come and get a group together to pool tier and share the purchase of a sim together and the planning. He just did this on his own, or maybe with one other friend or something (like Slate and Bob Bunderfeld) but he didn't form a group that functioned *as a group*.

Again, unless I'm mistaken, he and others with "planned communities" are really single planners, who then get others to rent from them, or even give or sell land to others as friends at very low prices -- they are not cooperative purchasers, planners, tier-sharers all on an equal footing. That isn't to knock them. What they do is tremendous and they probably lose on it or only break even. But it isn't a total solution, nor a scaleable solution to break this game free from the idiocy of tiny minds who hold everyone hostage with their ugly builds and griefing.

Schwanson also is renting out islands or parts of islands, you pay him instead of the Lindens. But he absorbs the whole Linden tier bill himself, he doesn't pool everybody in a group as equal partners all owning land or pooling tier. Maybe they set objects to group or something, but the point is, they don't kick in tier.

What I was attempting to get people to realize -- and you, too, with Boardman at one point -- was that people can form land groups, cooperate, pool their tier, and gain the advantages of group land. They can leverage their tier power. They can cooperate. It's not a question of one person with a lot of resources assuming the whole burden of tier and administration, with all the others hanging off them. People can break free of the chains of Linden tier bills if they would only cooperate with each other and pool tier and make collective, participatory decisions about land purchases and living.

If 40 people pay $25 each in tier, if they can organize a fairly simply collective or serial transaction on PayPal, they can have a sim -- if they would but stop sniping, griping, kvetching, and kvelling, and just get off the dime and get a sim *together* and *as a group*.

What Anshe is now proposing is essentially not that different than Jamie or Schwanson, and while it picks up on my proposal to try to save a sim from club-lag and mall-maul, it still revolves around this concept of one person holds the tier, pays the tier, and administers with their rules, absorbing all kinds of headaches on route, mainly having to do with making a creative filter for people to pay tier, but not really pay tier to the Lindens. It's a good way to break free of the chain of the Linden tier, but it isn't the freedom I propose with has the multiplying factor of a group. It's ok, it's better than a silly chaotic sim with crap, but...it's not what I'm talking about.

What I've been able to do with Pharos Rentals and Ravenglass Rentals is have people donate their 512 in tier which is free on their premium account, or donate 512 they have because they are in between tier levels as older players. And that way they get land, but they don't pay the up-front purchase price of land, and they don't pay a tier bill. And I don't pay tier bills higher than I have to, because we've spread it out in our group. I think this is a great solution. It's fool-proof, because no one can rip you off -- your tier stays with you, and you pull it out or put it in at will. If you don't follow the simple rules, the officer of the group will be compelled to eject you from the group. It's not a perfect tool for reasons I could explain but it solves some problems.

Once again, could I explain, that what I'm trying to do is think outside the box, push the limits of the game, and try to really do things in the virtual world instead of just yammering about them on forums, and then report on experience and test it relentlessly. It isn't that I haven't genuflected 10,000 times to older players who did all these marvelous things or newer players who did all these marvelous things but you can't just spend your life genuflecting, Ingrid. You have to get tier paid, and you have to find a way for all of us to free ourselves from the Linden-induced hell of lag and mall.

It's just not a solution to have one strong-willed and resourced person take over a sim, pay the purchase price, pay the tier in perpetuity, and have 30 others dependent on them for an arrangement that relieves them of tier. *We must cooperate to break the chains of Linden tier.*

What do those letters mean, blaze?

Anshe,

I like how you've flushed out this idea, excepting the following two points.

The max building height rule failed miserably in Boardman... I would seriously reconsider this rule. I might suggest, instead, some sort of "no greatly obstructing your neighbor's view" rule.

You could also terraform things on more of a hill / slope so height matters less.

As for your second rule... i think this is outright stifling of innovation. Again, I point to boardman as a failed attempt at this. Bottom line, houses can look crappy, and space ships can look awesome - it's not the type of build that makes it look bad, it's the implementation.

As an alternative, I might suggest that ugly builds could be put up to a vote of all residents in the sim as to if it needs editing, and giving a few days to have it changed.

zoning offers more choices to residents. more choices are useful.

but I question the Midge effort.

you have to trust someone who's demonstrated a bad temper toward perceived and imagined slights. she behaved like a thug when she didn't like my build. is this the person you want to trust your land investment to?

you lose your privacy since you pay Anshe not LL. do you want to share your private information with Anshe?

if in Anshe's opinion you violate her TOS, do you lose your whole investment? what if she or your neighbors simply don't like you?

if you're thinking of living in Midge, know what risks you're taking.

Absolutely.. I think she's the perfect person to trust in everyway as she has everything to gain from behaving decently and she has a proven track record of doing so.

She has 100s, if not 1000s of satisfied customers. She's referred tonnes of users to SecondLife.

The only people I have seen nay-say her are people who clearly have a very weak grasp of the economics of SL.

Though, I do agree, owning might not be the best approach. Renting however, has lots of advantages.

a) cheaper tier
b) no upfront cost to having land
c) no ongoing risk