Let's Talk Zindra 1 - Developing the Zindra Sim. Read the first post before voting

Thanks to the curse of timezones, there's no decent method where we can get together to discuss anything that crops up at that Monday meeting. Soo I'm going to give this a try.

I'm fully prepared for it to be hijacked by the trollish element but perhaps we can actually come to some kind of agreement/understanding so that we can get this can actually happen without too much angst and drama.

There are a few elements of this that need to be ironed out.

1. the placement.
Blondin raised the possibility of moving it down South. I don't care where it is as whatever traffic it generates probably comes nowhere near me. Some of you might though.

My preference is to leave it there and put a bridge over the river to the other bit. It might actually make the area a bit of a tourist attraction.

2. The build.
We have a choice between something already constructed or waiting months for the moles to build something new. The chances of it being constructed let alone being anything remotely tasteful, nice or even what we asked for is pretty small.

My preference is for it to mirror what's over the river. It might be ugly but at least it will keep the theme going.

3. The shop lottery.
Blondin mentioned they'd put in shops and have a lottery. If I understood him correctly it will be an adult version of this: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/10/13/lottery-time-luna-oaks-galleria-busy-ben-s-vehicle-lot-or-new-port-yacht-sales-spots-available

I can't think of any negatives to this but the question may arise about restricting it to zindra shops only.

I'm happy to have it open to all adult content sellers but what's the opinion?

In theory he's going to get back to us on monday with an update, so it would be good if we had some kind of position. That way there's nothing to get in the way of them actually doing it.

So give me opinions or alternatives.

I've set up a poll (or at least I hope I have) so we can get some idea of the general feeling.

I have no idea what you are talking about. The placement of what? And what Zindra sim, there are a lot more than 1 sim.

If you look at the map you'll see there is a zindra sim. We're the only continent that actually has a sim with the same name so if you go looking for us on the map you actually will find us.

It was stuck out in the middle of the ocean and LL moved it onto the mainland. Which was a good thing as people were tping in and drowning Unfortunately LL have done nothing with it since - it's just a patch of unprepossessing wasteland.

The discussion is here: http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Zindra_Alliance_-_Blondin_Linden_Meeting_Transcript:_19-10-2009


btw.
I had forgotten about Innula's suggestion of a community build. The logistics of organising it would be *ahem* challenging but do people have the time or interesting in going down this route.

My concern is that something needs to be done sharpish as it's so uninspiring it's laughable atm - but with a long term view in mind it would look more attractive if we did it ourselves (and will be done quicker and be a better quality) but again it comes back to being able to organise everyone to do it and follow some kind of theme.

The best thing to do is to either delete or rename it. At a minimum, it's obviously confusing to have a sim with the same name as this particular continent. By naming the sim this way, it's unique and distinctive, which prompts the question raised in this thread. But since it was established without any plan for exploiting that uniqueness, it was a mistake to have set it up in the first place.

Initially Zindra was synonymous with adult content and there was no way for anyone to find us via a map search to come check the continent out. There are a fair few people who search via the map btw. Unfortunately the map doesn't identify the continents, so when people talk about Nautilus or Corsica or any of the others unless you have one of Carl Metropolitan's excellent maps you will have no idea where people are talking about.

Having a Zindra sim gave us visibility at a time we had none. It reduced confusion rather than increasing it. Even now I believe that to be the case.

Initially the problem was the sim was out in the middle of the ocean so even if someone tp'd there they'd never find us. Now the problem is they land on the continent but rather than whatever they imagine a raunchy adult continent should look like they'll be completely disappointed to land in a field with tumbleweeds blowing past. So the sooner it's fixed the better.

There is the added confusion the continent used to be called Ursula and there is an Ursula sim on the Zindra continent. New sims come on-line with "Ursula-274" and the like, Ursula plus number, but there is also a sim somewhere on the continent named Ursula.

when i went looking for zindra on my own i used the world map and typed in zindra..i was like whao!! it worked lol

if you zoom out the only way you can see it is from the event stars..otherwise i wouldn't have found it ..it's a dot compared to the other mainlands..i'd keep it bare or put something like that circle on help island where people are born just to keep the rezz down..then roads or bridges leading off north south east and west.

that's just my opinon..not even sure what it looks like now..i just remember only seeing water there last time hehehe

A map search on "Nautilus" will put you in the vicinity of the themed part of Nautilus (not the main Nautilus continent).

What happens when you put "Bay City" in a map search? What about the names of the other continents?

Putting the name of major estates in the map search will generally put you over the right archipelago, because the estate owners are smart in the way they name their regions.

Here's yet another area where LL has an opportunity to improve service...and, no doubt, won't take it.

Each continent should have a region with that continent's name. It should be a Linden owned region, and it should act as an information center for that continent.

There are many "Bay City" sims. I mean if you put "Bay City" into map search, you get a bunch of options for sims within the Bay City set of sims. I do not recall of the top of my head if all are that way, but a bunch of them are. Something like "Bay City - Docklands" (though I don't think Docklands has Bay City before it).

Perhaps they will finally take MY suggestion and call it Pornsylvania, or Pornodelphia.

Well if they give it up, what enterprising new resident will order a region named "Zindra" for themselves?

New resident: "Hai, is this Zindra? Looks kinda small..."

Crafty Opportunist: "YES, this absolutely IS ZINDRA. Read the region name for yourself. It's the one and only!"

New Resident: "Ah, okay... I just thought it would be a bit more... I don't know, official or something..."

Crafty Opportunist: "Oh, there are other areas masquerading as the real thing, but... as you can see from the naming for yourself, this is it! Accept no cheesy imitations!"

LOL...and I can see that happening. Anyone seen the Ginko guy lately?

When I started thinking about the sim and zindra in general I realised that there's not actually a bridge crossing anywhere. I think you might be able to walk across the dam, but it's not the same as being able to tootle around the roads and drive over the river to check out the other bits. Although I haven't been down south to check it out yet but I assume the river down there is the same.

It's such a shame they didn't think about these things when they planned the continent.

or Kinkyville.. I vote for Kinkyville

AdulterNation.

As I mumbled several times at Blondin's meeting, my main concern is that there be some marked, direct link between Zindra sim and the infohub directly to the East. Folks landing at that infohub should see some inviting way to get to Mosh and Kama City (or whatever the heck it's called--the urban area around Mosh), and going through Zindra sim and across a footbridge to Mosh seems an appealing route. (There actually are a pair of *road* bridges across that river on the east and west edges of the Mosh and Zindra sims; I haven't checked primcount to see if that could be a problem with adding a footbridge or anything.) People landing at the Zindra sim should also see how to get to that infohub.

Using it for lottery-awarded shop space seems fine to me (it's what should have been done with the Mosh transit station from the start). It might help draw some more traffic onto the continent. Personally, I wouldn't even restrict it to adult content sellers--they'll likely self-select anyway, given the verified-only access and search restrictions, and I see no need to limit it to existing Zindra-continent businesses at all. (Not that Zindra-continent businesses don't deserve a break: they definitely do. But I think getting other businesses--yes, even competitors--onto the continent is a win for *all* businesses on the continent, not just the ones lucky with a lottery.)

I agree that ideally, it would be cooler if the build were done by the Zindra community, but I have no idea how that could be coordinated. A mirror of Mosh seems fine; it is one of the least messed-up of the LDPW builds on the continent, IMHO. We could even call it a temporary installation, in case somebody has an epiphany about how to organize a community build in time for the next time the lease lottery comes due.

I'm not a big supporter of making it a dedicated event venue. If necessary, even as a commercial build it could hold special performances and maybe fireworks on the river, so folks could attend on both sides (using both sims' forty avatar limits). It just seems that there are plenty of candidate venues already (even Cafe M is empty most of the time); perhaps we could work some kind of "partnership" through Blondin that gets the event organizers temporary control of the audio stream at any of those public venues.

One of the main reasons I floated the idea of a community build was that people kept on saying, when the Zindra sim was first renamed, "let's have a community build" and I was anxious to say, in case anyone was going to suggest it, "for God's sake no one suggest a Town Hall," which I seem to remember lots of people wanted last time.

I dunno. I'm torn between an auction, in which case I think it should be open to anyone, for pretty much the same reasons as Qie, or a mirror of Mosh. I'd be a bit less unhappy with the latter if I didn't hate Mosh so much -- maybe a mirror of Mosh if we're allowed in to grunge it up a bit, within reason....

No strong feelings, really. In an ideal world I'd like to see something built by talented and imaginative residents, rather than more SL municipal architecture; there's enough dull public architecture in RL, for heaven's sake. But I can see that getting that organised would be impossible, so I'm happy with either a mirror of Mosh or an auction, inclining slightly towards the latter.

I had forgotten about those bridges. I remember seeing them when I was first scouting for land. They're only in the city centre though. There's none once you start going further afield

I notice that people have been voting to both restrict the lottery to zindra shops and to move it down south yet no one has actually posted any reasons or arguments for this.

It would be good if you could as then we can see what benefits we might have missed. As nothing is set in stone yet we might as thrash out all the options.

My vote is "none of the above: Rename the Zindra sim."

why?

I'm not a Zindra resident, but I would think the lottery should be open to everyone. Or even restrict it to non-Zindra residents. Winners would have a chance to see what life and business in Zindra was like, first-hand. As a result (if business is good, of course), at the end of the free period, Zindra might obtain some new residents.

Congress

You're a much better person than I am. Despite your impeccable logic and common sense here I'd just like to see it restricted to adult content sellers but that's because I'm still in foot stamping mode over the adult content sellers being excluded from the other raffles.

Let's see what others say. The crafty person in me thinks it's a good way to demonstrate to LL that they've isolated us pretty completely in search as anyone who has a stall there can't advertise it in anything but adult search.

I had a thought about the sim once it's built. Is it worth seeing if we can get blondin to give us a mole for a few hours prior to each holiday so we can dress it up accordingly? Since most of us make stuff that is decorative as well as smutty we could drop items over to the mole and get them to put up pumpkins and things for halloween. Which is probably a nice community builder as well as being relatively easy to manage.

what say you?