Infohubs, A definitive answer please.

For a long time The Bear Infohub has been my chosen spot to meet people chat and help the new people arriving. I have met many of my friends there and up until a short time ago all was well and life was good. The social aspect of this area was what made me like SL so much.

There is no denying that there has been a certain amount of griefing at Bear but this subsided when scripts and build were disabled some time ago.

Lately the good feeling of the Bear Infohub has been shattered by one of the landowners claiming that thepeople who use bear are ...... and I quote "loiterers, clowns, squaters, and have created a chat ghetto" She claims that the area is stopping her from entering "her sim" and that the users of this Infoub have "no right to be there" She is now suggesting that talks are underway to get the seating taken out of the hub and the patio to be removed being replaced with trees so that people find it hard to use it as a social meeting area. Every day this person comes to the infohub and causes a rift with the people using it which is now so bad that to many it is amounting to harassment. There are now large signs up on this persons "warehouse" scaremongering the other land owners right next to similar ads that she is complaining about! there is no need to stir up this amount of trouble in an otherwise very content area. This person has at times taken new people from the Infohub and introduced them to others making sure that they then mark this as their home. This she calls her "capture and release program! This is (IMHO) an inapropriate way for a mentor to behave and is hardly in the spirit of Second Life when her business is put before the welfare and enjoyment of those that are using a very nice infohub.

Reading through the forums in an attempt to get the good atmosphere back to The infohub I came accross the following statement from Jesse Linden........Originally Posted by Jesse Linden The new Infohubs are designed to be public spaces for use by the entire Second Life community. In the tradition of the town square or public commons, these local spaces will provide a central point of congregation and communication exchange between residents. We are committed to building traffic in these areas and giving the surrounding businesses and services the opportunity to benefit from their increasing use.

The above outline for Infohub use is EXACTLY TO THE LETTER what Bear Infohub has been used for by the community. It is loved and enjoyed by many until this campaign was started by this idividual.

My question to the lindens is (If you can be good enough to provide an answer) will our community be broken up (as this owner is suggesting) or is our community safe to enjoy as it was intended in the first place?

I would like to ask that this thread is moderated with a close eye as it is not my intetion to troll or flame.....My intention is to get this matter clarified so that we may once again enjoy the use of this hub without the constant harassment from this person. If she gets her way the other businesses in the sim will no longer enjoy the high traffic and very high land values that they currently enjoy because the Infohub is there. This would also set a precident for other business owners to dictate how sims are run.

Please don't hijack this thread and please keep it to the point and on topic. Many thanks.

My home position is currently Bear and I always see you there. You are absolutely correct on your view, but the other persons view is also not wrong either.

When you buy land you expect people to be able to get to it, but when one parcel on the sim is hogging all the resources and making it hard for other people including yourself to get to your land then something should be done.

In my opinion it is a very poor idea to have infohubs around private land for just this reason. Sure the business around could benefit from the traffic unless the traffic can't get to your business because of the high loads at the hub.

I think LL had very wishful thinking when they made that quote about the info hubs. Maybe their engineers brainwashed them into thinking large amounts of people in one area would not cause enough lag to make the rest of the sim unusable.

This is the very reason I sold off my last bit of land and gave up on my club and business. I setup with 1/4 of the sims land but the other 3/4 were so busy I could not do anything on my own land let alone try running a club or business.

Your complaint is very valid but so is the other landowner that cannot properly use hers. Although her point of view "loiterers, clowns, squatters, and have created a chat ghetto" is not at all correct as that is pretty much what SL is. I think she is just not happy she cannot use her land properly. I have been to places around Bear and can say it is very laggy. I know I wouldn't try to buy land there and would be pretty mad about one part of the sim hogging all the resources as I was on my last venture.

It would be an absolute shame to see Bear get less attractive to be social. Defeats the purpose of the infohub entirely. Also a shame other people in the area cannot use their land as not being able to use land defeats the purpose of buying land. Doubled Edged Sword that LL created.

*sigh*

JayDee is exactly right, this is an extremely unfortunate situation created by Bear's great success. It's so popular that little in the way of resources is left for local landowners. Neither party appears to have behaved completely charmingly.

How do I know this? I don't go to Bear, nor do I own land there. I know because of the ... what, 2? 3? ... threads that have preceeded this, on the same topic.

I suggest that instead of both sides endlessly staking out their positions, you undertake positive action toward a resolution. The two parties -- landowners and Bear aficionadoes -- need to not share a sim. Ask Strife if s/he would consider forwarding a petition to Linden Review. Topic: Please move Bear to an emptier Sim. Bear, I believe, already has a Group for it ... moving it should not be majorly disruptive to the regulars. If Strife agrees, craft the petition carefully and post it in a SINGLE thread for people to amend or sign. I imagine the local landowners would be more than happy to sign You might also consider presenting your petition to a single relevant Linden at their office hours. But don't bug them to death - they really don't want to get involved in disputes between residents.

And, incidently, Lindens only rarely read the forums.

Good luck.

Some very good points JayDee......As you stated you always see me there and this brings me to my point ..... In all the time I have frequented Bear I have never ever had a problem getting into bear! Further to this we have extended to her the option to send an im to one of us in which case many of the people there are happy to vacate the area so that the land owner can get to her place. This however has not been accepted and the answer was "no why should I have to ask for access my sim" She has called the act of socialising at the infohub "demeaning squating" and has described the people there as "thuglike"
The landowner in question in fact owns just one sixteenth of this sim but has expressed a will to be able to bring in up to twenty people at a time to hold "business meetings" and has also expressed a will to greatly expand the numbers of people on her parcel. This is in a sim that has a busy infohub. I might also point out that all the landowners were asked if they wanted the Infohub there in the first place!!!!

It's also worth mentioning that i dont see anywhere near the maximum number of people at bear most times although there are obviously peaks and troughs but as I already said in all the time ive been there I have never had trouble getting into it anyway?

Nika's right, Cam. Asking about it here might get you some sympathy but we can't help you solve your problem. You need to deal with the landowner on your own, or via a moderator of some disinterested 3rd party. Unless you can somehow contact the Lindens themselves and ask them to move the Infohub, you're going to have to work together to solve it.

Maybe rather than everyone logging into Bear and then spending hours there, you could all use it as a quickie gathering point and then move off somewhere else. Perhaps that's what its original intent/purpose was. I don't know, never been there. What I do know is that any large group of people needs to be mindful of its impact on the sim and for you all to just assume that you have a right to all that sim's resources when there are people who have paid for them isn't fair on your part, just as her abuse isn't fair on her part.

Honestly, why don't you all sit down and talk like decent people without name calling or insults and try to work out a plan?

And BTW, expecting HER to have to contact YOU when you need to thin out your gang is completely unreasonable. Just one girl's opinion.

I used to own land in Skegemog, just up a Linden road from Bear.
I've been to Bear a number of times while exploring (flying or driving).
Bear was generally 'well populated' and noticeably more laggy that the immediately surrounding sims.

"Close to a Linden Infohub" used to be a selling point in land descriptions I noticed that in sims around Bear.

The lag/access effect of a popular Infohub on other landowners in a sim is no different to that of a casino or club.
I think LL should dedicate entire sims to LL use.

Although I think this particular landowner could be more diplomatic (to put it mildly), I do sympathise with her plight. She pays LL real USDs every month for her land, and - having visited Bear myself - it seems likely that if not prevented from entering the sim altogether, she'll still suffer from terrible lag as a result of the continual 24/7 traffic.

Her so-called capture and release program sounds like an abuse of the mentor system and I suggest you write to Blue Linden (blue@lindenlab.com) about that. He's in charge of hiring and training mentors these days, and I doubt he'd take kindly to somebody abusing their position to resolve personal issues.

The ironic thing about this situation is that land close to infohubs tends to be worth more than land elsewhere because the high traffic generated is beneficial to business. Said landowner could probably sell-up for a profit (assuming she didn't pay over the odds in the first place) and buy some place quieter with thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of $Ls in change.

Sure it would appease this particular landowner if the infohub was moved to another sim, but she'd likely be replaced by ten times more furious landowners in that sim due to the traffic drop and consequential land devaluation.

Basically, the Lindens are bu**ered if they do, and bu**ered if they don't.

I appreciate that Cam is trying to seek a solution - even though he went for the sensationalism a bit there.
I am said landowner in Bear Sim. I bought a sizeable plot in Bear the day after it came online in 2005 and purchased most of the sim by early 2006. July 2006 I got my own island and sold most of my Bear holdings to responsible business people and kept 4000 M for myself. I recently started a school that had no place on my island - So I began using my Bear parcel to hold classes.
Since I cannot be in two places at once - i was also holding some island staff meetings on the Bear parcel. This has increasingly become impossible because of the thirty plus people that use Bear InfoHUb as a chat spot. Just today the sim filled up (41 Avatars). I had 5 people at my parcel and the rest were in the hub or on the pathway of the hub (http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e298/bladyblue/BEAR/41insimposter.jpg). I was forced to cancel a meeting I was going to bring into Bear and keep only essential people in the sim so my students could enter and get what they paid for.

I just do not agree that after paying tier for a space for nearly 3 years that I must now ask people may I enter my parcel. Also, the people that see my advertising cannot enter the sim at times and some will never even contact me about it.

I have the exact post that Cam paraphrased. He left off some information:

"These spaces, called Infohubs in Second Life, are distributed throughout the mainland grid. Because these spaces vary in size from very small plots of land to larger ones, we are considering two types of builds. 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."

Bear sim only holds 41 people on a good day - this is a very small hub that has been used for new players to rez, get acclamated and begin their Second Life. The Bear Landowners Association has started a open enrollment group for the new players that rez at Bear. We give a freebie a day to the group and answer any questions posed. We welcome the new players to Bear but we do not promote sitting hours on end in the InfoHub.

Cam started this 'Bear Buddies' group with a few people and now its grown quite large - and it is effectively making it quite difficult for me to use my parcel.

The one store directly across from the InfoHub has not seen any increased sales since the Bear Buddies started using the Hub to chat for hours.These organized chatters influence others to stop and chat - thus creating a glut in the hub. When the Bear Buddies are nto present trafic flows normally and we still have a average of 200 visitors a day.

I won't pick apart Cam's post. It is not necessary. The green dots tell the tale. For the more curous http://virtuallandownerrights.blogspot.com/.

Thanks for that bladyblue. Never met you in world but I've always found you to be nothing but reasonable on this forum.

I'm filing a note with myself to at least wait for the other side of the story before remarking on it in future. A lesson I should've learned a long time ago.

I hope a solution is forthcoming for you both, but as you are paying for the privelidge of using the Bear simulator, it goes without saying that your own issues should carry more weight.

Good luck!

bladyblue, I do appreciate your position. I've only been to Bear once, so my comments aren't intended to be a comment about Infohubs specifically, but about the "fair" use of resources on any parcel.

With all due respect, your 4000M parcel is 1/16 of the total sim, and you say the sim is full with 41 avatars. Therefore is it reasonable to expect to have more than 5 people on your parcel for any length of time, whereever it happened to be?

If for example you were surrounded by heavily-trafficked stores, would you ask them to slow down their businesses and use less than their fair share of sim resources so you could use more of them?

I go to a lot of classes myself, and I would think it's pretty difficult to run classes effectively on any busy sim. As you have your own island, would it not make a lot more sense (and be a better experience for your students) to have your school there?

I know all of the land owners in Bear. All are reatilers with a steady flow of traffic. I can see no reason that a store would have a glut of people in it for any length of time unless they had camping going on - and none do in Bear sim. My fellow bear Land owners are the only people that I would see any need to negotiate with about traffic flow. These are people with a vested interest in this sim. They understand that my business is different from theirs and accept that I need to have my students and staff enter the parcel often. For their cooperation the Bear Land owners get free full page ads in my SL magazines and teleporters to their stores in my Bear Facility. The T-Shirt shop closest to the InfoHub has been distributing my magazine for nearly a year at no charge to me. The people invested in Bear get along quite nicely. We have gone to great lenghts to preserve this sim. My island is fully developed with two clubs on it. I choose to use my mainland resources to house my new venture. And I have every right to do so.

personally, if the traffic was not to my advantage id sell and move my 4000 to a dead sim.

I do not feel that a near 3 year investment and a established address should be thrown away to accommodate a glut of chatters. Bear alsways had a Telehub then InfoHub. We never had this chat group issue before. This is just a mis-use of resources and can be resolved eventually.

That's what I was thinking, too: Maybe somebody with a different kind of business could get some benefit from that traffic--enough to possibly warrant a premium price. Or maybe the info-hub regulars want land for a clubhouse.

Most of all, I think any "definitive answer" to this as some sort of legal dispute is sure to make all parties miserable for a long time.

Some interesting replies .... Many thanks.

It 's worth noting that Lias (also known as Bladyblue Bommerang) sold most of this land and the bear info hub grew to become a great community. Lias has now stated that she plans on expanding her business at Bear! This would effectively bulldoze the community for the sake of big business, hardly the ethos of Second Life.

As the bear buddies is a point of contention to Lias (why i have no idea as it was set up as a means of chatting whilst we are in other parts of the world and as a general "friends" group that can keep in touch) It has been decided to disband it. The regular people at bear have tried long and hard to comprimise and reason with Lias but the simple answer returned is "why should i negotiate with loiterers when I own land here" It seems like a poor decision to plan on expansion in a sim with an Infohub when the land she already has could be sold at a high premium to enable expansion in a better area.

The green dots unfortunately do not tell the tale.........these are screenies taken over a very long period and do not reflect the true traffic figures at the infohub. I left my info bar running yesterday and the hub seems to average less than 18 with peaks and troughs during the day. It's also worth mentioning that if the sim was always full as Bladyblue suggests then it would also be impossible for the infohub users to get into it! I gotta say that in all the time i have used it I have never had trouble getting into the sim. The question to ask is.......Would we even use it if we could never get into it?

There has been no attempt on Bladyblue's behalf to work with the community so that we can live together in harmony, instead she has chosen to agitate the community by comming to the hub where she tells the residents that thay have no business there. Her continual insults and outbursts now ammount to harassment in a poor atempt at driving the people away. The "teleporters" she talks about have only been installed today in an attempt to get the other landowners "on side" so they support her campaign. Once again I would state that to lose an Infohub would be detrimental to all of the businesses except Bladyblues and would greatly devalue the land.

In short ....... The Infohub has grown into a warm and friendly community where newbies come and find a nice start to their Second Life. Bladyblue has stated that she has only just started to use her rather small parcel and now plans on a big expansion which would far outstrip her percentage of users. wouldnt it have been better to take advantage of the high land price to sell up and move to a more suitable area? The arguement that she has a three year established user base at Bear does not stand because (by her own admission) and I quote.... "I recently started a school that had no place on my island - So I began using my Bear parcel to hold classes" Please note the word "recently" here. The question here is.......Why on earth open a business that requires lots of people to attend at given times on land where an Infohub sits?

there's a very old SL saying "If you want the view, buy it" I understand not having the option to buy the particular land in question. I also can see LL's view of giving an advantage to a few people due to paying tier. I dont look for ant changes, its gonna be, if you want a low traffic sim buy it.

I don't want to be the taken as a jerk here, but the cold fact remains that anyone who buys land in a Infohub (Telehub) sim has always done so to take advantage of the flow of avatars in and out of the sim. To complain that the sim is full of people (which was why you bought there in the first place) is to be complaining that the sim is full of people but none of them are shopping in your store or visiting your parcel.

That being said, it is also unfair to fill up an Infohub sim for a social activity (and/or classes) - but unfair to the other people who are homed to that Infohub, not the business owners who are looking to capitalize on the traffic. There are plenty of places around SL that would love to have groups of avatars just hanging around socializing.

Which brings me to my final point - that god forbid any of the Bear business owners be creative enough or progressive enough to create a "hang out" directly adjacent to the Infohub for the socializing that goes on there and incorporate their store onto a 2nd story over the hang out area. Most business owners pray for that kind of attention and traffic. Sheesh. When life hands you lemons, make kick ass lemonade!

TBH, as a point of definition, I do not consider people sitting and chatting as traffic. To me traffic is the action or intention of moving from one place to another, and thus arriving at a destination means one is no longer part of traffic.

So the Maximum traffic of a sim by that definition would be a constant flow of its maximum load of people over the time frame it takes to teleport. Realistically though that does nothing for socializing and business, both wanting people to linger and look at what they are selling, or chat. Now given that Bear in question can only handle 40 or so Avs at any one time, and the size of the Sim itself, it is really unfair to say that just because one person owns a certain size piece of land they are only entitled to a small portion of such a small number of spaces. I would say Bear is best used for high traffic and low linger activities.

To this end I do feel that using the Info Hub there as a social gathering area is inappropriate, it is a small Info Hub in a very restricted sim, and to that end I do not believe it was ever intended to be used in the manner it is. I am certain is was intended to only have a small number of mentors linger, give new residents the kick start they need in SL and then send them on their way. If friendships were to form they can gather in other areas. There are much larger Info Hubs either in their own sims or in sims with much more resources that are more appropriate for social gathering spots.

Blady's enterprise in Bear may not be the most appropriate either as the sim in question seems better suited to high, low linger activities such as retail, as the typical linger for her endevers are 1 to 2 hours as apposed to a few minutes of more in a retail shop. But like a retail shop it is based around people coming to her land doing whatever business they are their for and leaving.

In the end, and I am sorry to both parties, neither seems to be using the sim entirely appropriately to the resources the sim is offering.

I'd say if you have a problem with the way the infohub is run you should take it up with the owner.

how do you talk to the gov'ner?

Just like campers, people sitting and chatting for hours on end is not traffic. I bought my land in Bear before there were even roads or Telehubs in the sim. Linden Lab told residents to go to infoHubs and try out the new voice client. Some saw that as a invitation to stay and use the resources for free forever. The Bear traffic has been just fine for business for nearly 3 years. It is this new breed of SLer that feels that they become a Server's 'community' because they decide to sit on it. This is just not the case. Now that Cam has your attention he will grandstand a bit, bask in the attention and continue to post 'juicy' comments to demonize the landowner lady. That's just his way. I like Cam and we actual get along when he does not have a audience.

But the fact remains I have no problem with my neighbors, the new players rezzing in Bear InfoHub or anyone in a surrounding sim. The problem occurs when Bear Buddies take over the Hub for several hours a day and use it as a chat zone.

Linden Lab ASKED the Bear residents did they want a InfoHub in place of the deleted TeleHub. We agreed. And since 2006 it has been used as it should. These new mis-uses are a new twist on things that have to be addrressed. This is not a popularity contest - it is not about business before 'commuity' - it is about people knowingly over using resources and effectively damaging a tier paying player on the sim they pay tier on. Cam owns a sim. He talked about placing a public gathering area for his friend's group there. He spoke about disbanding the group so that this will not continue to happen (instead of adding new members daily). I have a vested interest in Bear sim. Cam is just having a bit of fun.

If I has purchased land in the same sim The Elbow Room or the Blarney Stone was in then I would expect a large group of chatters to over power the sim's resources daily. This is not the case. I must have been working on my island when small public infoHubs became the center of a sim and were considered more important than the landowners in the sim. So this new course of 'government' means that I can sit in any Linden Owned area for a length of time and gather enough people in my 'community' group to start making daily demands on the land and the landowners. This is a very dangerous course of action - one I do not believe LL thought out very clearly. And I challenge it.

Turning this land back into a InfoHUB for INFORMATION dessimination and not long term camping is not the end of the world. Cam has a venue on his island - Many of his members have land and meeting places they own. I have my parcel in Bear that I intend to use as I always have without asking permission.

Well.

This is all rather interesting.

I've got a bit of an offbeat solution, perhaps... as a group, the Bears don't really need prims per se, right?

I've got quite a number of high powered, double-primmed class 5 sims that are literally over 50% wildland - and Caledon LOVES community. This isn't old mainland - 20 avatars isn't going to even scratch us.

If you are just looking for a place to hang out and set a home point, with perhaps some benches and no permanent prims but say, 1 hour autoreturn, I've got that in spades.

In fact, some of the Caledon landowners who hold maybe 30,000 to 60,000 square meters may just simply *invite* you - I'd have to talk with them.

Let me know, if interested.

QFT This is EXACTLY how I feel.

I also agree with Mortus' post. I think Des's offer is interesting, if the Bear folks can bear to be away from where newbies arrive fresh from the womb. Perhaps a really obvious TP to Des's area could be arranged?

The only alternative I see, as mentioned before, is to move the Infohub to an emptier mainland sim.

Either way, if blady's classes really do have 20 people coming to them, then that too will have to be worked out with the remaining residents ... hopefully not in the forums ...