The Midge Project - Zoned Residential Program

Given present tools, land "owners" in Midge will neither be able to reshape the land nor plant particle trees and plants. That's a pretty serious limitation in a residential build. Cleaning up could also become an issue, though I suppose setting objects to the group might make that easier.

Land editing can be done. Not sure about particle tree thing or what kinda restrictions would exist.

Oh, lovely, Biff Pendragon is whining! Seems at least one griefer (alt?) is already very unhappy now that there is one sim he can not buy small piece of land to terrorize neighbours

Ha, I agree.

I think from a user perspective - it will be mostly new players going to Anshe's land. When people seriously want their own land, they'll buy it themselves... I think this could be an excellent "transition" ownership.

Speaking of which - Anshe - are "owners" able to resell their land at their own price?

I have happy tenants elsewhere on rented land since months. They are definitely not newbie now. The "transition" thing might apply to people who rent appartments or premade house. In fact I believe that Midge Project might appeal more to established residents who already made negative experience in non-zoned sims.



Yes, they are. But new owner must be informed and agree to the terms in the sim of course. If someone manage make money out of it I am even more happy

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I'm not sure if Jamie's and Schwan's tenants donate tier or not. I guess that would be the difference.

I like the idea alot. Maybe this will become standard practice for a alot of new sims. I just wouldn't want to be the one policing it and making sure everyone was happy. Groups are a superb idea, I wish I was more the group type.

edit to add: I know residential zoning isn't everyone's cup of tea and that's fine. I like to see chaos too. I just can't live in it all day. I think having the choice of which kind of area you'd like to live in is a good thing.

To my knowledge, neither Jamie's or Schwanson's tenants donate tier, and it's small wonder, because many people simply cannot crasp that donating tier is a wonderful thing to do for all concerned. I even had this woman harangue me the other day on behalf of her friend, thinking that if he paid tier only to have access to land of mine that he in fact turned around with my blessing and re-rented, that he was somehow getting screwed. If he is donating his paid tier, she thought, he should just get the land, and have his months of tier-donation somehow "count" toward his eventual purchase of that land. But that's ridiculous of course -- obviously my months of tier coverage to the Linden accounts doesn't entitle me to anything but just more and more of the same. If a person pays their tier bill only and has no upfront purchase costs and no re-sell and maintenance headaches, believe me, they got a deal and a half.

People just don't realize the headaches that Anshe does take on by this offer and I really do hope the hurdles will be cleared and more will sign up because working out programs like this on whole sims is really the way to go to turn the corner on this game and beat the maul-mall and the lag-club.

Once again, here are all the advantages:

1. No up front purchase cost, PayPay or GOM fees.
2. No re-sell headaches, where you might take a loss.
3. No wildcards of someone instantly devaluing your investment with a huge, ugly or laggy build.
4. Neighbours who are abiding by some decorum and rules that will help make the whole area pleasanter.
5. No forced release to public land if you get sick and leave the game -- at most you just lose a month's rent or you resell back to the manager of the whole sim who is more motivated to buy it from you than those on an open market.

If you don't get to landscape, frankly, that might be a good thing, because few people in SL landscape in any kind of way that is beneficial for the public at large.

The way I get around this hurdle is open up that land parcel to land edit and hover around it to deflect griefers while the tenant is doing their terraforming and land-scaping. Then I close the land back up.

You can still set to home in this arrangement and still get a separate URL music on a plot of land.

I also think Midge could appeal to older players, especially those with more capital who might make a rather fine residence up on that mountain, if the mist isn't too bad for their lungs LOL.

Now, what we need all the architects posting on this list to do is to get to work making the Midge line. These should be Eyries for Valkyries or something that fits on a mountain. I seriously do not want to have to take the cosy cabins that I can get from Barnes or Sophos and put them on this elegant mountain. I seriously want an architect out there to make something I can buy to put on my little plot on or near this mountain, and if you got your act together, a group of you could create a line of houses for this entire development that will considerably ease the headaches of both Anshe and its tenants regarding enforcement of style and building codes.

Psst...hey Anshe, I can't get in-world right now (@%^%$!-ing Windows) but this project has definately got my interest. Dunno if I can actualy afford to do anything but if you could drop an IM in world (goes to my e-mail), I've got some questions to ask.

Midge is up and running! You can go there directly and rent or contact me about buying or joining multiple parcels

For those nervous about buying, I suggest renting as Anshe will give you the option to purchase at a later date.

Not only does this mean you get risk free land by renting, the rent is cheaper than linden tier, and also you can potentially benefit if there is an upswing in land prices (but not suffer if there is a downswing).

This is all works out for Anshe as well as she gets the difference between what you're paying and the volume discount she gets from Linden Labs.

I know this sounds corny, but it's true unless someone can explain otherwise:

It's win-win-win.

However, this is not a good deal for LindenLabs so the only question is how long LL will let Anshe do this or if they'll make this against TOS.

OK, I've set up my house on Midge.

I'm testing the system. We need more player-sponsored zoned communities. This isn't exactly the way I'd run it, but then I don't have the resources Anshe has.

I bought 2 1024s or 2048. She makes you buy a minimum of at least two 512s, each 512 is $2999. I paid $11,998 (yes, somehow $2 extra LOL it should have been $11,996 but I guess for Anshe, every little bit helps on that tough Euro/Dollar exchange).

Next -- and here's where it gets a little more cumbersome -- I had to pay her tier, instead of LL tier. The one benefit of her tier plan is that you are paying her separately, without calculating into your LL tier load, and she has increments up the scale that aren't as harsh step-ups as the LL step-ups. It's the same fee schedule, but with no big gaps. I paid $15 for my 2048. She instructed us to go to PayPal but not just click on PayPal, but to make sure that first money was deposited into our PayPal account, and then only sent to her afterwards. Problem is, that takes 3-4 business days. So you should click on 'send ecash to 40 countries today" when you get to that page about transfering funds into your account.

Yes, Anshe captures your personal information from your RL PayPal account and even comments on it. This is exactly why we use our ancient aunt's credit card for Internet purchases : ) Some people may not like having intel gathered like that. Apparently Anshe will have the possibility to let tenants and owners put in LL payments for their tier. Naturally, the prospect of tier payments in Linden in-world has some attractions.

You can rent, but I wanted to buy to test the system. The mountain is already taken by blaze Spinnaker. Woot! He is already doing a nice castle build. I took the foot of his mountain and put up Elle Pollack's glass house she made for Ravenglass. Yes, I intend to go on throwing stones : )

But not at Midge. Midge is looking very good. If you don't like the mist, use debug/render/clouds to get it sunny.

Now, about the commons: within 5 minutes of arrival, Anshe talked to me about the Good of the Community and how we could kick in 512 for free. Well...I'll give that a pass for now, having done other good deeds which I will write about in due course.

But all those who asked about commons, parklands, stages, gathering places etc. -- this is exactly the nut I had to crack on Ravenglass. I couldn't really get people to put in tier -- unassigned tier, especially new account premium tier, is the greatest under-utilized resource in our Linden Tier-anny, and yet people are very fearful of forking it over. They'd rather part with hundreds of Lindens at the casino or spend $4000 on a realistic skin than put in their assigned 512 to a group. Anyway...I got people to buy lots and promise to use them only for prims in exchange for allowing public access and some park-type builds like waterfalls or signs or trees. I got some others to rent lots and use the prims which in theory will help pay the tier on the commons. I tried different formulas, and it is hard. No one is motivated to pay anything extra in tier or money for land they can't control just to have it look "nice". Lordfly thinks we should go back to the Lindens and sell them this developer-assigned commons land, and make them buy it. I think we should leave the Tier-anny people out of it wherever possible, but think how to either rent or pool tier in some advantageous way. One way I tried was giving the dwell payouts for the entire rentals group for properties on all sims, but...it's never enough. Perhaps with enough campaigning and enough demonstrated public interest, tenants and owners could be induced to pay tier for commons.

Now, what is the downside of all this?

1) Kick-outs for "any reason or no reason" a la Lindens. Anshe's wrath can be swift and irreversible, for those who cross her, but she indicated there'd be a first-warning system.
2) You buy land but you don't really buy it because Anshe remains your "holding agent" -- but then, hey, we're already used to buying land and not *really* owning it in this game by having to pay tier on it!
3) You have to sell back to Anshe if you get out, and can't sell to outsiders, but she seems to be tolerant of sub-lets up to a point
4) The Lindens could decide they hate it when people try to beat their Tier-Anny -- but, let's all pull together on this, we have nothing to lose but our chains.

What is the upside?

1) If you rent first, your rent goes toward purchase -- and purchase is dirt-cheap at $2999 for a 512 in a prime area -- I bet that doesn't last
2) Control of builds, although within minutes of her community starting, people had to intervene to stop a griefer build on the next sim that was about to hold 40 people in Midge hostage to its ugliness until a sale took place -- watch for more of those!
3) More predictable neighbours, i.e. not clubs and malls

Please come and fill up Midge, people! If nothing else, you'll convince Anshe to get out of the laggy club and mall business!!!

what strikes me as odd about midge, ravenglass, and second life in general, is the notion that a landlord can rent land, under a set of predefined restrictions, to groups of complete strangers, and expect them all to cooperate and get along. it's extremely difficult to get people to buy into a large project or theme. it's almost impossible to keep them focused in an anonymous environment where they can do anything they like.

there are very very few mainland sims, not sold as entire sims, that have managed to pull together under a common goal. shining examples such as boardman, slate & taber still have uncooperative landholders, and even land owning griefers, that either have to be worked around or appeased. surviving whole sims such as indigo and seacliff, bought and managed by single groups from auction, are extremely rare.

what happened in ravenglass is amazing. i sincerely hope that it continues to develop peacefully according to plan (not THE plan shadow, their plan). if midge pans into something that follows anshe's charter and results in a sim full of happy residents, that'll be wonderful as well. i don't think ll will complain. i'm pretty sure they would rather people buy and subdivide whole sims. they're already backing away from subsim tier levels as fast as they can.

but there's still this underlying idea that renting, not selling, land with a set of rules and restrictions attached will force people to form a community and get along. that hasn't been the case at all throughout second life's history. it hasn't worked for ll and they have all the power. why do we think it will work successfully as a resident industry.

Mmmm, yes and no. If land market moves I will change land price, with ample warnings though. I will also have to adjust L$ rent fees if the L$ value drastically goes up or down. But that I am very very slow and careful with this, everybody knows who rented in July in Mahulu.



Mmmmm, no. I am convinced that this type of thing is EXACTLY what Philip want happen in long run Linden save much hazzle this way and maybe one day some residents companies take over most of micro management things and invididual billing while Linden can happily harvest on platform and big unit (whole sim) sales Or how you think Linden Lab could manage 1 million residents in 5 years?



*giggles* Yes, you are never save from my humor But I can absolutely guarantee you that any kind of real life information about you I keep 100% to myself.



Just one note: it is not about cross me personally. It is about keeping to rules and spirit of the sim and acting with common sense towards other residents. Nobody who e.g. flamed me on forums has ever been banned from my malls for this. When I provide service and administer one region I have some responsibility. Personal feeling belong elsewhere.



You can sell to outsiders. But they have to be informed about the rules and setup in the sim and agree to them. You can auction your land on EBay. But it is your responsility towards the buyer to make sure he/she knows what he/she is buying.



As mentioned above, I am certain the Lindens will love it. Some freelance "tyran" girls like me *giggles* should fit their plans very well

Well, we're safe from the downswing because we can just stop paying rent and you are left holding the bag - we are not.

We get to profit from the upswing, because we have the option to purchase. If the price is moving upwards, we can purchase from you and then sell out - showing a profit.

It's kind of like a warrant .. a type of borrowing equity that lets you get your money back but also lets you participate in the profit. Either way, it all looks good - unless you renege. I'm willing to bet you won't


As for what LL is doing, that's not so clear to me. I think the volume discount is there to encourage you to build a business of your own, not canibalize their sales. Also, if they really supported it, there would be a lot of useful functionality, like ejecting prims of late renters.

The billing issue isn't that complicated and doesn't need to be outsourced. As someone who does ecommerce on a 24/7 basis, I am well familar how trivial it is to charge a CC.

However, time will tell.

This seems like a very nice idea. Still Miss Chung? When improving something it is best to improve ones self. You speak of ugly buildings and zoning? Well you mar the side of the Lovely Volcano telehub and over hang our house with one of the most ill designed, UGLY telehub malls in existance within Sl.

Well, in Ravenglass, it's mainly sales on the open market. And it surprises even me, that griefers and barons didn't swoop down and eat it alive in the first days of the open market, but I paced the release of smaller plots on to the market and watched sales, I had top architects put houses on some of the lots to set the tone for "residence," and I put up notecard boxes explaining that it was a residential area. I continue to believe in the good of human nature, despite everything that SL gives me to the contrary. If you ask people nicely to keep a residential sim, they generally do it.

To be sure, they are complete strangers, with little in common and different lifestyles. But they are drawn together by a very simple common denominator: the desire to live in a mature residential sim free of clubs and malls. That's actually a very powerful glue in SL, just as in RL, the presence of a private security agency and a commons in New York can be a powerful glue to main a tenants' commitee out of completely diverse people.

They don't have to focus on a single thing except their common denominator to live free of lag. That's the beauty part. The open market can provide incentive if it goes to this type of common denominator. You don't have to have a social democracy toy or a Nazi building commission to do this. Of course, you're welcome to say "I told you so" with the next large griefer build saga.



Yes, and the wildcard really is the power of the griefer build to paralyze people on 3-4 sims with their obnoxious build or laggy club. So Sl needs to develop tools that share the cost of such "free expression" by making such customers pay for their draw on the server resources of FPS and agents, in addition to their existing system of merely paying for literal server pixel space.



People in Ravenglass or any other community we are developing on the open market will now have to form their own owners' associations, if they like, and decide whether they should do things like pool a commons, buy up neighboring sims to keep their views, divvy up prims among themselves, handle sales if people sell out of the community, etc. I can't remain to hold their hands for them through this, as that would require me holding the tier on it, too, and it's not my purpose. So I can only point out opportunities and encourage them.




We can only try it. I think it's worth trying. It's a gamble. But I find that people are hungry for it. I do think we need to get some basic ingredients from the Lindens as to improvement in group object permissions, and group land arrangements to encourage group planning, rather than to punish it. These would include creating a "Landholder Officer" status for the group founder so that his land can't be sold out from under him by other officers or members, and "Officer" status that has tree-planting, land-editing, group building, etc. privileges for those who help develop or become owners eventually. The despotic democratic idea that 2/3 of the members of a group (tenants) could vote out of the group the officer (the person who paid for the up-front purchase cost and paid the tier) is insane, and this needs to be restructed. Land-hold groups need to work differently than just the usual theme or club group.

Mahulu is one of the most beautiful telehub sims in Second Life, at least as far as my land in that sim is concerned and what I built there. It is your personal problem that you bought your land next to one telehub sim.

By focussing busines and shops around the telehubs there are less commercial buildings left in residential zones. This is one nice example of zoning that worked very well

One of the most beautiful sims with one of the ugliest malls in sl, yours.
Oh and I live in the sim next to it, unfortuanely your mall goes right to the
sims border. Our land was purchased before that land you own became
available. Now I love to shop and I love malls its just an ugly build for
a very beautiful place.

hey anshe keep up the good work! what you plan in midge sounds pretty cool and your asian style mall in mahulu is a pleasure. this guy obviously built his home below a highway and now complains about the cars. ignore him.

Thanks, Guni

As for Midge: It is already rent out more than 25% after first day This is very exciting! I really look forward to see nice community in this sim demonstrate what can be done

Syanin and I purchased our land in Apukohai long before the Mahulu land where Anshe's mall is is now located was sold off by LL. As I have stated before, people have a right to build whatever they want on their land given the lack of zoning inherent in Second Life, so I cannot fault her for her build. However, given the existing open, residential feel of Apukoahi at that time, her build was very unsympathetic to any aesthetic or even neighborly ideals. To Anshe's credit, she did listen to our concerns after the fact and made some minor texture adjustments through the original builder to make it somewhat more palatable.

I would also like to add that prior to its auction by LL, the Mahulu sim was set UNSAFE except for the area immediately around the telehub, so in my noobiness I assumed the area at the base of the volcano would be protected land. Foolish me.

Anyway, back to the mall, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I will let you all judge for yourselves:

We all need to stop complaining about builds and start lobbying for more zoning functionality.

Actually, it's not the whining that bugs me. I like to whine too. What bugs me is when people (like me) say we need more zoning and zoning related functionality, my fellow whiners keep their mouths shut and don't support my position.

Next time, unless people are posting support alongside someone who is lobbying for zoning, I can only say they are getting what their apathy deserves.

On that note, why aren't people buying into Brown? Linden policed area so you don't have to be the bad guy when innapropriate builds go up next to you.

Again, i'm not saying its for everyone, but if you want to live in a zoned sim, it's right there!

For me, a couple of reasons.

One - I like the risk free rent with the option to purchase of Midge. If the zoning experiment works out, I will lock in and purchase.

If not, I wil bail

Two - lindens are not as responsive as I'd like. The mall in the middle of Boardman really irks me considering the fantastic effort that has already been made there and the subsequent investment made by max monde.

Yeah, the renting part is a plus for sure.

But I just wanted to add that Jack Linden is the guy in charge of monitoring in the residential sims (Brown, Boardman, Green, Deharo) and from what I've seen he's been very vigillant. Which is nice.

Midge is coming along very nicely: The sim is filled to more than 50% within less than one week

About half the occupied area has been sold and about half has been rented. I invite everybody to come and visit the sim. It is very peaceful and residential

Fly to Midge!