Do you have any suggestions for The Linden Department of Public Works

I wonder if the first team of ten will get an automatic FIC membership.

If so, then Welcome!

The clubhouse is on your left, the golf course out back, and the coatroom gal will know your names already - don't worry, no tipping required!

And uh, don't sit there, that's my favourite table...

I am no one special nor FIC nor a texturing pro but if I could do linden road this is one of my ideas that I created.

If I suggested to them what I really think they should do they wouldn't be around to work on sl so I can't do that then.

With this said, they should hire tech people who really know what the hell they're doing. It's obvious they need help in this dept as things continue to break down and when they're fixed-if they're fixed that is- they break down just as fast again. Second, stop trying to add all these bells and whistles and instead concentrate of fixing all these constant daily problems we're faced with each and every day. This is more important then adding new scenery as with Windlight.

Another part is to also revamp customer service which is lousy as it is. Stop trying to impress the rest of the gaming industry by showing off attendance numbers. We all know the numbers given don't tell the real truth as it's nothing near the numbers displayed. This isn't a priority, keeping sl in working order is.

Bottom line: Repair first, add new content afterwards.

The people that do this kind of work are not coders, so the stability features wouldn't get done any faster. This is not like asking coders to go inworld and start building. The repair first argument falls flat in this context. I'm not going to ask customer liaisons to get back there and start coding.

This new department is a great idea. I'd be interested in getting involved. Here are some ideas of what I'd like to see.

1) The road network completed.
2) Some of the most outstanding builders being invited to develop areas.
3) A scheme whereby builders of notable areas or even complete sims, if they want to sell, could instead have the option of donating the land to LL in return for a new equivalent area of empty land to sell. This would avoid the sad situation where remarkble builds are demolished by a new owner.

The problems the Lindens have with this is that most people have an idea what THEY would like and few actually propose ideas that would be for the greater good of all residents. However, I do realise a lot of suggestions in here would improve the experience for the greater good.

Ok about "I'm a builder, designer I can do this" posts, and I'll start by saying I am making assumptions here and it's an opinion that can be both right and wrong at the same time, the truthful answer in a lot of cases is no you can't, it doesn't work like that.

Linden Labs have to use builders, designers who can work to a brief, and saying they have ten builders referred is probably misleading, in all likelihood they are 'teams' of builders, or at least builders who know they can call on other experts to work on the project too, in a build you need many skills, build, texturing and scripting to name a few.

I see some posts on the blogs suggesting those with a lot of SIMs are probably best to do this, again no, if you have SIMs to look after, that's what you should be doing, you haven't the time to do both properly.

Also I personally know builders and designers in SL who are building new SIMs for clients on a daily basis, some have over 5 SIMs on the go at once, most of the time. If thats not you then in I'm afraid your not going to be one asked to help with this project.

I have been a graphic designer in RL since 1976, I have a lot of experience with meeting people who think they can design and have their friends telling them all the time "oh wow your a great designer" whereas in truth they don't have the basic understanding of what design involves in the first place. This is also true of a lot of builders in SL too and it doesn't matter if they have thousands of sales, because generally they're selling to other people who are clueless too.

That probably sounds elitist, but it's not, I doubt anyone on here would say they are a doctor because they have read a medical book, so why think you can call your self a designer/builder because you are reasonably talented at manipulating a few prims in SL?

So don't be disappointed if your not called up to do any work for the Lindens in this new project, because 99.99999% of you never will be.

They could be made into coders. LL should be training them up to be coders instead of having them pissing about with shiny.



Every little bit helps.

It's not their strength, why add more people to f things up? Let people play to their strengths. Coding isn't it.

Sorry. I was just being silly.

Edited after your silly comment. No need for my response.

oops.

I am not expecting anything either way personally... but I definitely have some ideas and talents, but I am first say I am no expert.
I would love to do something to make SL more beautiful though but I am not expecting anyone to acknowledge I can contribute to it any way.
Truthfully I am just unknown 2nd rate artist why would they pick me? I wouldn't even know who to ask.

Heck, the Lindens have a ton of self-important Volunteer Mentors about give them all picks and shovels and put them to work on the roads LOL

FD the same applies to myself, in RL I would spend at least 24 hours on the most simple of my design work, anything similar I do in SL I would spend 2.5 hours max, so anything I do for SL is only ten percent of the effort, so its never going to be amazingly good.

I just wanted to pipe up that what I love about Linden builds is the scale. Lindens can do something that pretty much no-one can. That is build something that is 100 sims long. Some of the walls and roads and rivers are breathtaking in their scale. It's not exciting to build a wall that looks exactly the same for 10,000meters and I'm guessing these artistic volunteers will probably not enjoy replicating sections of road over and over again but I say leave the small imaginative sim sized builds to the residents and concentrate on what Lindens do best.

edit: P.s. DO NOT think that adding more mainland will reduce lag or overcrowding (?!) and definitely do not remove all the roads.

Blue Linden mentioned this plan to me a few months ago. Back then it was just going to be more InfoHubs all over. But now they have a new fancy name for it. I said it was bad idea then - because the Lindens have abandoned the infoHubs to the SL Mobs - this will be the same fate of these new unsupervised 'public' areas.

My main suggestion is to complete the roads.

Second is to get the Second Life Railway running again, and complete THOSE tracks. Every time I try to take a train, I stand around for half an hour waiting for a train, then give up.

Third would be either maintenance of Governor Linden land (PLEASE make them autoreturn, for crying out loud!) to either parks, forests, or just clean plots. They get so junked up with squatters, it's sad.

Fourth would be to get out a book on geology and design a continent that actually has cool geological features (canyons, high mountains, deserts, etc.) Southern California coastline is great, but GOD it's dull. Speaking of which...

Fifth would be to once and for all name the continents, especially that southeastern one of Ava's.

Sixth would be to create an Official SL Wiki that has nothing to do with scripting. The original SL History wiki was subsumed into some other lame "gaming" wiki and many of the pages and links were lost.

Seventh, and in my mind, the most important for user retention: Improve/enlarge/maintain the Infohubs. Work with people who've already made a great effort to welcome newbies (Carl, Travis, et al) to create Linden sanctioned gathering places that won't piss off neighbors. Remember the Bear infohub hullaballoo? STAFF THESE INFOHUBS/ INFOSIMS with volunteers or employees around the clock on scheduled shifts. Enable these employees/volunteers to ban/eject griefers during their shift. Hell, I'd do it for 2 or 3 hours a week if I knew that I wouldn't be fodder for griefers. Give every single newbie landmarks to these Infosims/Infohubs, advertise them in the MOTD upon login, etc.

Eighth, bring back the free 512 to premium members. Find a workaround to avoid land flippers. The free 512 of tier is too confusing for many people.

Just my two (well, okay, more like fifty) cents.

The Linden Protected Water sims are a very underutilised resource.

Many people might have no interest in boating of flying, or have been turned off by difficulties in controlling rudimentary freebie vehicles in laggy conditions.

The seabed is somewhere that could be attractive to all if it wasn't a boring empty expanse.

I'd like to find small builds scattered at random under the the Linden water sims.
Ruins or wrecks would be good.
Sculptures and other works of art, strange builds
Reefs or rock or coral
Fish
Terraforming

A lot of what would be good is available on the market for not a huge amount of RL money.
The makers might even donate copy-permed versions to a Linden-backed building group. It would be very inexpensive advertising.

We're not talking about massive complex builds here. We're not even talking big.
The coordination required would not be be particularly time-sucking.

Most of the planning would be in putting thought into avoiding a 'sameness' throughout the water sims. Every water sim should a have variety if only in combinations of selected item types should and contain some near-unique surprises. Perhaps SL artists would like to help with the unique bits.

Building on the great empty underwater plains would be a lot easier than on dry land. There would be no need to blend in with the surrounding builds, because there are none.

That’s a key point. Many of the existing Welcome Areas have been abandoned by regular CS abiding citizens and left to the griefers. To make things worse they now send newbie’s directly from the Orientation Islands to these areas.
LL has dramatically increased the number of SL Mentors but still only a few manage to make it to these areas. That needs to change. And so do people’s un-willingness to go and AR the a-holes that have infested these places.

In my time, First Land was L$512 for 512m.
Well it was if you were the first to get to a plot when LL released a bunch of First Land plots. The description I put on my First Land was "Land for the First Landed"

If the First Land could never have been sold for more than L$1 per metre, then it wouldn't have been flipped.


LL could very easily create a continent of First Land, purely as a start point/home for new Premium members.
It would not have to a dismal ghetto of densely-packed noob builds. Actual server space is cheap for them.
Have each 512 (or bigger?) plot surrounded by a border of Linden land.
Put in some Welcome/Educational builds in those sims.
Restrict those sims to Premiums. Prevent griefing by whack-a-mole alts.

Those sims would give a structure to new Premiums who wanted it.
Here's some land for you. There's some reference material. There's a line to some mentors. Move on out into the general land market when you're ready.

The plots would be free, and could never be sold.
They could be recycled back to Gov Linden and the Gov would pay a bounty of say, L$512
The bounty might discourage people from just abandoning a plot, leaving it unusable for new people.
LL could keep the number of sims at whatever was necessary to support the intake on Premiums.

I like this idea! Oh and duh, you're right, it wasn't actually "free." My bad.

Taking that to the extreme, I should be coding the current browser. My almost total lack of coding experience notwithstanding. A lot of the Linden staff is not comprised of code monkeys, because to run any business you really do need some level of other support staff with other talents.



You got it! Also, seeing the Great wall in Heterocera completed and maintained would be nice, too.



oh ya. I want the great SL barrier reef -- and protected waterways 'tween the continents with stuff like ANWR or the Mohrr crash site to explore.

Mari

Add real running linden water rivers and streams... I am tired of seeing "gullies" where a river or stream should be, but there is nothing there. And builders have to try and duplicate a waterway using prims, which doesn't look the same.

The second continent, Heterocera, has plants on the sea bed. also rivers and seas are ok to sail on with scripted objects. LL put some effortinto this continent.

All the newest mainland sims are boring grey granite.

don't see the point of making roads since they attract add-farms like flies to fly-papers... Unless LL makes a rule forbidding any add within 10 sims of any roads, then I could see hope for SL.