1.13 - islands/estates can no longer be made invisible, is this true?

If this is the case, I'm not so sure if this is a good idea across the board...

Especially for folks who have 'workshop' areas to try to do development... not only do they become a search item, but they become a potential target, and a social liability...

Plus, I know that at least recently there were still ways to 'get around' island/estate access/bans.

I'm not sure -how- it was done, I just know that banning people on Taco had little to no effect on them showing up again.

I -can- see the positives in this: it could unify the world a bit more, at least in feeling. I understand that... Plus it'll show growth and magnitude...

But I guess in the long run: if a sim is not accessible, should everyone be able to see it?

Just looking for some discussion on this before Wednesday. It's not killer, but it's something to consider.

Correct BUT>>>>
If you have the island set so that no one can teleport from mainland then unless someone is on an allowed list, they can not teleport to the island from anywhere even if an estate manager sends a teleport invitation. The allowed list can have up to 300 entries. I will check later what the not allowed list behavior is.

Still not good.

In a situation where, say, something is used solely for development -- you want to do some work in quiet, even if you're set to "not show up online" -- if they know the name of your sim, all they have to do is look on the map and see if there are green dots there.

Then, they know you're online. And can commence with bothering you.

(as far as I can tell, setting yourself to show offline does not get rid of your green dot on the world map.)

The other possibility is - could maybe no-access sims not have their name shown? (in search or on the map?) That'd really help mitigate this some.

If it's just a block of land, that's one thing. But being able to search for (whatever Projects) or (whatever Development) - which costs US$100 to change as far as I know - could make this kinda sticky.

For times like that I just set myself Busy. People get a hopefully witty reply and I don't get bothered.

Still kind of defeats the purpose anyhow, and relies on people not acting like an ass.

it kinda takes estates/islands off the table for "get away from it all" workshops, and puts them all into the social space... unless you keep changing the name and location.

If you're paying that much money it should be up to you if people can see it or not.

Talking to LL, the reasoning behind this seems to be that it's an extra query and load on the DB server? (And this is the only reason?)

Seems like there would be a lot of ways to mitigate that. Updates every 15 minutes, or maybe you get to select visibility when you change your location/name of your sim...

There's gotta be a way to do this without it hammering the DB - estates dont "flip" from visible to invisible that often, don't see why they have to be queried every single time the map is viewed.

Either way, I don't think removing control is a good idea... People use estates for -lots- of different reasons, and the option to be non-visible to the rest of the world may very well be the draw that made a lot of folks get an estate in the first place.

Note i'm not talking about socially closed off communities: we already run a community area on the mainland, that will never be closed off. Specifically, sometimes islands are purchased to get a place to get work done without being bothered, or without making social waves.

This'll change the landscape a lot, and put every sim out there up for social scrutiny. I suppose I'm lucky that I'm only talking about a workshop, and not more, or "worse".

As it stands right now, working on projects in skyboxes is almost impossible - we get an audience and peanut gallery of 10-20. We figured perhaps an island would finally let us just get work done in peace - but now, unless we keep hiding the thing, I'm not sure how well that's going to work.

The overall point is that the estates are used for different things for different people -- they cost a lot, yes, and we're talking about removing control. And I think that if the reason for removal of control is just a technical issue, there are probably better and more technical solutions than just removing the ability.

I don't really understand. You do realise that the way the controls are setup now in beta that;


A: No one can teleport to your island even if YOU send them a teleport invitation if "Can not teleport from mainland" is checked. They have to be on the list.

B. If they can deduce you are online by seeing that there is a blip on the map then just select "Busy" mode.

The combination of those two ensure no visitors and no IMs.

Send a message to Milo and have him put your island online and come try out the new features.

Why would it incur a load of extra load? All it is is a column in the query, ie:

SELECT * FROM sims
WHERE sim_visible = 1
ORDER BY sim_x ASC, sim_y ASC

If it comes to it, take all invisible simulators and put them in a separate table, if you try to do something involving an invisible simulator, you check the visible list first, then the invisible one. Or make it so invisible simulators aren't searchable on the map unless you toggle an "Invisible" checkbox to search them (you wouldn't see inside, and they wouldn't appear on the map unless you entered a name that exists, at which point you can try to TP in).

They won't know you're there, they'll just know that someone in your circle of close friends is there.

I'm not sure why they made this change, I can't see a compelling reason for it.

I kind of like it in some ways... after Taco vanished and the Copybot storm happened, a lot of sims dropped off... most of them temporarily. It would have been nice to know that (for example) Tokachi City had just gone private rather than being closed down completely. But that's definitely not a good enough reason to make the change, and (again) I really can't think of one that is good enough. This sounds like a good question for Linden Answers.

OK there are problems with the private island estates and am bug reporting them.

EDIT. Sorry this was a lack of understanding on how estates work. Both islands were in the same estate. When the islands were split into two different estates then everything worked correctly.

Well, Jesse, is kinda the social kickback of "OMG you guys have an island, -and- you're hiding from me, -and- i'm not allowed to be there!"

We'll often have 30 or so 'modifications' en queue to get done: which involves a whole lot of people asking, "are we there yet? are we there yet?" all day long. Working on them as alts isn't quite the right solution either as then the creator tag becomes an issue and the alts get found out, and get put into the page battery.

Busy, from what I've seen, is iffy, and restricts more than I'd like: but the issue is with our group, there's only 4 of us, and everyone knows that.

It's kinda like: "Any of the four of them offline? yes? Check the dots on the island and see if they're hiding from you - step 2, raise a fuss."

The solution to really be able to work in peace without dramatics was - at least until this week - 'fork over for an island'.

We could obscure the name, sure, but if *anyone* should know that 'obfuscation doesn't work long term', you should know that, Jesse.

I know we're not the only ones who are looking at the use of an island strictly as a workshop. (Actually as far as I know, we're pretty late to the party in considering that.)

But as I said, different uses for different people -- I'm sure other folks (like Angel Fluffy mentioned in the blog) have *other* reasons for wanting to maintain this feature...

I can't see any real compelling reasons to remove it unless it's a social commentary - the queries can certainly be optimized or slowed down instead of eliminated alltogether; even if the estates' status was only updated once a day. (From what I was told, the big drain was the fact that it had to be 'updated every time the map was viewed?)

There are ways to cache or proxy that.

If they're trying to, one, -unify the world- or two, show how large SL is to potential investors or clients, then that's another story completely and would actually give more creedence to the decision.

But, when it does come down to it: I'm pretty sure - and correct me if i'm wrong - that there are still ways to show up on any island you want, even if you're banned or not on the access list.

I know it happened repeatedly in Taco. Estate bans seemed to have less effect than mainland parcel bans, to those who knew what they were doing.

hmmmmm Not sure what you were saying here. One way that it could be read is that I personally am the social kickback that is jealous you have an island. I sincerely hope you do not mean that Michi. I won/t even begin to go with the comments that would come out of me if you do. So for now will ignore that. Hope I read this wrong.



I tried for 3 hours to gain access with different settings in the island, from different locations and could not gain entry. BUT the islands were not physically connected to each other and there was linden, no cross water in between. So don't know if it was an island chain someone could use a sitting on box trick etc.

I have seen one MAJOR problem that needs to be rectified. If a person is offline and you send an IM, you recieve the message that the person is offline and the message will be stored. If you IM a person that shows in your freinds list as offline and they are really online then...... Before you even start typing you recieve a message taht they are offline & as soon as you send the message, there is no message saying they are offline and the message is being stored. Soooooooooooo, you know that they are really online. The only resolution for that I can think of is that you can send the IM BUT will recieve a fake message stating that they are offline and the message will be stored. Can not think of a way for the IM not to be actually sent though, they can not just sit in limbo somewhere because you are really just invisible.

Final note; instead of anyone (no person singled out) pointing out the problems stated in the beta forum. Please come to beta and see the problems for yourselves, bug report the problems, let's get the problems fixed before release.

No. Not you. People we deal with every day. People who will essentially go nuts because they arent quote unquote "invited into the private club" (whereas, really, it's not a club at all. just a place to get work done without an audience.) Posting signs of, "We're busy here, please don't gather to socialize" while we're building hasn't been enough. We're looking at an island because we want to reduce dramatics,and get more done; not increase them and get less done.




I don't know how it works. All I know is that ban and access lists had little no effect on keeping determined problem children out of Taco. Probably would have to ask Broken and Zirnitra more on the details, but I know it was a big problem, very very recently. If the issue is still there, it could be pretty bad, especially since new "target" sims are going to show up very soon.




With this, I'll concur: There's STILL an issue on sim border crossings where avatar attachments will all move to the pelvis attach point. This is a problem. We've reported it, and I'm hoping it gets taken care of by Wednesday.

O god. Thank you for responding Michi. I was worried there for a moment. Thought you had had a REALLY bad day.

Yes I have also reported the one on the attachments. Have had it happen after teleporting and after flying. It is a bad problem and is client side only. I looked fine to Milo but was able to give him a photo of me standing beside him and my hair was on my butt!!! Think it has something to do with the Rendering changes. Never noticed it till after that. Hopefully another update Monday night or Tuesday morning correcting these problems and see what is left.
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Morning all,

I'm curious regarding the banning/access issue. In Taco, was the Estate-level ban used, the parcel-level one, or both?

From my understanding of both sets of tools, if you have someone in the Estate-level ban the island(s) aren't even supposed to show on the map (and as an aside, this may be the item LL is trying to fix by having all islands viewable - since this is dynamic). The same goes to estate-level group-only/av-only lists IIRC.

I've only used Estate ban once, but back then I never bothered to bring up the alt I use for permissions testing and check what happens (kicking myself for that now, as I no longer have the island). Anyway, setting no-fly & no-build is enough of a deterrent for people to only visit if they're intending to do something related to the island now.

--Alan

This was an estate ban, not a parcel ban, correct.