A Zoning and Player Government Experiment

eeeexactly! and not only one is the only one "right" for all people.

i don't think it would be a good idea, to "summarly give a sim or group of sims to a governmental group as an experiment". and i don't believe this will happen. why should the lindens do this?

but you and anshe are right in that the biggest problem for any form of government by players is continuity and motivation of all those participating. if it's just a hobby for some, that "some" might loose interest and endanger the project. there are different solutions for this problems in RL too. the ones which maybe fit best with the freewheeling capitalistic structure of SL is anshe's model and another would be a kind of shareholder model. there are gated communities in the US and in some other countries that work that way. everyone in such a community would have to buy the land for example. maybe you even would pay a premium for some shared community services... every shareholder would have a vote for some kinds of decisions. others would be delegated to an executive council. still other rules would "fixed".

no, that is not a concept. but it is an idea. no reason not to discuss it.

and get well soon, Shadow!

Why did Philip Rosedale embark on a quest to make Second Life when a million other projects could of made him more money and do so faster?

So why not? I'll be honest, if I had to bet on whither or not this project will be accepted I'd say no. Infact I'd say betting "yes" would be a fools bet. But I figure "Hey, why not. Lets give it a try" and decided to bring it to the forums.

Another thing to note is that there would be no leader. Just a council who's only job isn't modify and change zoning laws and review builds. It's not an exciting job, no and it has few perks... But people forum a neighborhood watch, don't they? I know wouldn't just petter out and stop paying attention to such a project, especially since I don't see it has being too time consuming. This isn't a full scale political government. This is more like a bunch of people looking out for their community. Thats gain enough for some people.

I think some people are reading too far into this.

Pah-leeese, please don't repeat the g-word, Kayin. It was my fault, that I used it. It is not appropriate. So let's not establish it.
Good metaphor. Those towns actually existed in RL once. Medieval towns were a complex network with some form of self-government in different groups (usually not one group for the whole town), some 'rules from above' and lots of relationships which were more or less regulated by individual contracts between persons and families.

And there were VERY different kinds of people living together in those towns. Yes 'mad scientist' and 'samurais' too. There was no way to enforce 'one lifestyle for all'; and no reason to do it.

If you want to have six or so sims that people may elect to enter as hamsters in this experiement then by all means, have at it. Beyond that there is no need for representative government in this world as live in a dictatorship. OK, you could say, monarchy as well. The point being that we are at the whim of LL as to what their mood is on a particular day. There is no due process.

Mind you, I'm cool with this but I can see how others are not. I loathe the idea of zoning and some sort of House of Representatives/Parliment type of arrangement. But, I'm all for it if it is limited to certain sims.

Kayin, I'm not a communist, rather I am a Social Democrat, which is why I created the Social Democratic Faction (SDF), SL's first official political organization. Further, I don't feel that the word "communist" (or "capitalist" should be used pejoratively as it sells short the benefits of communism (and capitalism) without deep analysis. Further, reducing political labels to insults ("liberal", "commie", "right-winger" is a form of ethnocentrism and should be avoided.

As for the Neualtenburg Projekt it is doing as well as ever, to my great joy. Just about every principal members (myself, Kendra, Pendari) have all essentially left SL, due to RL commitments (I'm pregnant) and I love watching the project from afar. The system has persisted and new members have filled vacant positions either by election or selection. In other words it is functioning, to my glee, exactly as intended, allowing people to flow in and out of the project, while the system remains in place. As with any collaborative project, it is always in need of more members (send Gwyneth Llewelyn or Sudane Erato an IM or post in our forum to join).

As an episodic piece, watching the city evolve is more fun than a television series. I'm always looking with great anticipation to see what new bill, proposal, or topic will come up in the Neualtenburg forum (still the largest and most active group forum in SL). I'm also tickled how often it comes up in the General forum as well.

Anyways, I think your ideas are splendid. If you would like to seek collaboration with the project, I'm sure we could work something out to jump start your ideas. Perhaps we could all create a cluster of user-owned adjacent sims that are all government ruled? You could even try to hold together your own group and we could all meet in the middle. However, before you succeed you'll have to move from talking about it in the forums to actually getting things done on the grid. I assure you the latter is infinitely harder.

~Ulrika~

By Social Democrat you mean a Communist...right?

Anyways, glad to see things are picking up again. N'Burg has a fantastic build, but it was awfully lonesome there.

No, I mean Social Democrat. There are more social democracies operating on the planet at this moment than any other governmental system. Social democratic parties are among the largest parties in most countries in Europe, as well as in the majority of European-influenced parts of the world. Instead of replying to this, why don't you educate yourself instead?

It's not picking up. It's exactly the same struggle to create order out of chaos that it has always been. If you require evidence of activity, I again invite you to visit and participate in our group forum, which is hands down the largest and most active group forum in SL, which is not surprising given that the project was conceived by a group of forum junkies such as myself.


As a personal criticism, I suggest that many of your posts are just flat-out ignorant. Whether it's regarding group projects (Neualtenburg or Anshe's sims) or the general understanding of politics, you display not just a lack of understanding but a reluctance to acknowledge your errors when corrected. Who's going to follow a person like that into an experimental themed governmental project? I demand you change your last name.

~Ulrika~

Actually I was kidding about the Social Democrat thing, I thought it was obvious. Kinda like when I said Anshe knew she was a tyrant.

As for my supposed lack of political understanding I don't get where you'd infer that considering actual politics hasn't really came up yet. Perhaps it's simply because I called social democrats communists.

For the record I consider this more of a zoning project then a government project. The less "politics" the better. Also would be nice to get back on topic.

I like Anche's ideas for the sims. I think it's great there will be some central authority over land, but that other than that it's up to the land owners to sort themselves out.

Not meant as a criticism, as I would love to see more of these experiments going on in SL, but a lot of this stuff sounds more like "condominium" to me than "government."

Not that "condominium" won't evoke just as much flameage as "government," especially among SL's New Yorkers.

Nor is this meant to be flip. It's a parallel to consider. Condo boards rotate their presidency, they are true democracies (not representative) they maintain building guidelines (and vote on exceptions to them), they decide who can and can't buy or rent in the property, and they are made up of people who have a vested interest in keeping the property in good shape. Substitute "sim" for "property" in the preceding sentence and you have more or less what's being described here, and perhaps a good RL model to work from. Any one sim is rarely going to have more residents than a mid-sized NY condo. And if you get it going with six sims, well maybe then you start thinking about electing representatives and how inter-sim zoning and things like that would work. But I'd be really interested to see someone start a 1-sim condo-type operation and see how that goes.