Dept. of Public Works: Full Speed Ahead

The blog is asking for more builders for the mis-guided public works plan
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/02/15/the-department-of-public-works-needs-you/#comment-585751


Full speed ahead. Ignore the unsupervised Infohub issue and build more unsupervised areas all across the mainland. Put no plan in place to deal with sim overcrowding, greifers taking over areas and massive loitering - all of which negatively impact the tier-paying residents in the mainland sims. Concierge told me that every time the InfoHub in my sim fills up and I cannot enter the sim - to abuse report it. Well Governor Linden does not come up as a resident that can be abuse reported.

We pay tier to access the resources of the sim - not to become victims to Linden Lab's attempt to put all of their free accounts somewhere.

Like the adfarmer issue it will take two years of greif before it reaches critical mass proportions for the Lindens to address the problem they created.

Jack Linden responds to resident's concerns about the builders working for free but still ignores the unsupervised parcel concerns.

I submitted my comments. They are ignoring that their customers want roads and are just creating more havens for griefers and abuse. I can't for the life of me figure this out whatsoever. It makes no sense at all. There is no logic to it unless they are going to do something about the problems they are currently having at the Infohubs.

I added it was nice to see that LL finally listened to it's customers by doing something about the Ad Farmers but sadly they seem to be going back to their former policy.

Whilst I can see the "unsupervised griefing parcels filling a sim" issue, I don't see the issue of payment as being important in the slightest.

People applying should be doing so because of what they can give back to the commuity, not what they can get out of it for doing it. If you're only doing it for the money - like most things in SL - then you're missing the point.

I agree. I don't understand why that's an issue at all. If LL says this is an unpaid position and people volunteer then it's no one else's business.

They seem to refuse to even admit there is a problem in the infoHubs. The Community Team does not want to tackle a problem they cannot solve. So they ignore it.

Blue Linden's logic is that more unsupervised Linden areas on the mainland will spread the problem out and not impact one sim too much(!).

I have written to Roben and Philip, I have spoken to concierge numerous times regarding this and I have also sent correspondence to LL's legal department (breach of contract being my reasoning - we pay to access the sim's resources. Linden Lab run parcels should not be the cause of non-access). Still they refuse to ackowledge a problem. And then compound it. I am amazed by all of this nonsense.

I don't know whether that should make me laugh or cry.

How do you get unsupervised infohubs issue related to rebuilding the roads etc, Do you want the volounteer builders to all babysit Bear infohub instead of fixing roads & rail network.

The issue, Tegg, is that LL says they will likely not be focusing on building roads, etc. They plan to build parks and community areas. If they can't maintain control of the current Infohubs which are major griefer zones then why bother build new griefer zones. That's the relation. If they aren't going to fix that problem then they'd be better off building roads, which it appears is what most people want anyway.

They won't be problems in other areas, the griefers hang at the infohubs to grief the newbies, if they hang out where experienced residents are they get their arses kicked verbally if not otherwise, because the 14yo minds can't handle a battle of wits with an adult.

I see in the blog that an adfarmer said she applied. She must need the extra income now that she can't extort people for land anymore.

I'm sure there is no one more skilled at making cubes. She's a perfect choice in that department.

But Blue Linden says that they will be sending newbies to these new Linden build areas staright from Help Island. These are just infoHubs without the name. So we are looking at a major increase in Linden Lan abuse reports, more greiefer havens and more newbs taken advantage of their first hour in the world. If the Lindens encourage people to gather in these areas we can also look forward to sim overcrowding and resource abuses.

Gathering for newbies is good in my opinion, because it would be bad logging in to find noone in all the sims around you. At least if there are other newbs you get to pass information and learn from each other.
Infofubs are working fine in my view doing this now, just need to get rid of the idiots somehow, or just learn to live with them.

Unsupervised gathering for new or experienced players is not good. The Shelter and other community-minded gathering places do it the right way.

You cannot tell new players that they can gather in one sim infohubs (which by the Linden definition is not their purpose. 4 Sim infohubs are for community gathering). Mainland sims only hold 40 avatars at one time and the resources nearly become unuseable at 32 avatars.

The 'idiots' (experienced players who just like to stand around in infohubs for no reason) use these infoHubs as gathering places (like the cool kid standing outside of the 7-11) recruiting new players into their greifer groups and disrupting the natural flow of the traffic THROUGH the InfoHub.

Absolutely. That's the problem though. Nothing has been done about them nor does it appear that anything will be done about them.



Easy for you and I to say. We've been around awhile. Not really the way we want noobs to be introduced to SL though is it? I go to Infohubs about once a week and what I see going on makes me sick to my stomach. LL could improve the retention rate dramatically by resolving that problem alone.

No, experienced players aren't idiots just because they stand around an infohub, many of them are helping newbies, and it's a community gathering place in your own words and newbies are community, and so are experienced players.
The idiots are the griefers who hang out there, visit Ahern or Watermouth sometime.
Labelling the Wallsitters of Periwinkle and other infohub groups as griefers is not right. If you run a business that requires 1/4 of the sims resources perhaps you should look at land elsewhere as it's not fair on the comunity to have resouces taken by your campbots.

Yes well if there was a decent Mentor/Welcome/Police group with chat access to any Lindens online as needed, then it would help, maybe pay these members "camping money" to stand around infohubs helping people with an anti-idle object. Could the community donate enough to support such a system perhaps if LL would give them access to a Lindens direct help group?

Believe me, they are not helping anyone. They are just standing around trying to look cool telling fart jokes.


The two types of infoHubs defined in Linden Lab's blog:
The smaller of these would function as an information center for centralized distribution of Linden Lab news and announcements as well as resident content. The larger type of space would be used as a public gathering space for meetings, events, or general socializing. This latter concept would more closely resemble a public commons' .

One sim infoHubs were never meant to be gathering places.

I run a small school in my sim that I have owned land in since it came online in 2005 - before there were infohubs. Making wild accusations about campbots is a little underhanded. When land owners in a mainland sim cannot enter the sim because the infohub is full of experienced players that are "wallsitting" and some greifers handing out guns to new players - Then there is a definite issue that is not being addressed by Linden Lab concerning these unsupervised infoHubs.

can we hang them?

The crazed homicidical lynch mob is a little busy with the adfarmers right now, but shortly they should be available to do some hangin', I reckon. It might be tough to get them to trade in their pitchforks for rope, though.

There are good and decent people who hang out at the Infohubs and try to assist the newbies, but they unfortunately get drowned out by all the chaos that is created by the griefers and just plain wackos that hang out there.

Paying camping money may be one way to get more helpers, but I think the real issue is to train them properly and to give them teeth. Oryx mentioned in another thread to give the mentors the ability to eject and ban. She and I both agreed we'd volunteer if that were the case. You may have some mentors that might get a little power hungry, but they'll have to be dealt with just like griefers would.

If I knew how to post pics here we could see the campers that I am making "wild accusations about". You can't complain that students can't into the sim to get to your class when you have 3 camppads with campers dancing away.
Having been to Bear a few times, I have to say the conversation there is no worse than any other infohub, many people there are just ordinary people hanging out to talk and not once have I ever had trouble teleporting into the sim.

Even the ability to eject and freeze (if freeze worked longer than 20 seconds, shamless plug for http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3914 )
And of course access to a group with Lindens in it they could call for help on as required for bigger issues. These people would alleviate a lot of Linden callouts that don't require godlike powers.