Good Grief

Why do noobs buy land next to yours, immediately put ban lines up then start building plywood monstrosoties at 300m where the ban lines don't reach?

Answers on a postcard please.....

Same reason dogs lick their balls?

Pep (Because they can)

/me stomps her feet in the brattiest fashion possible. "Because it's MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!" (>_<

Heh... Well... The alternative isn't much better. (=_=)y

Or even worse, put the plywood monstrosity about 5 metres above the ground, rez a few random freebies on the ground and then leave SL for good, forgetting they'd taken out a year's subscription which will probably renew automatically the following year.

Because they are new and still figuring things out and attempting to learn.

Cuz they don't know any better

KINDLY educate them....then they'll know.

Noobs doing that, I could understand - SL does have a steep learning curve. But, it's the accounts that are 1 or 2 years old, who still do it, that scare me.

They just can't help it.

Is that why they do that? So.......... if you could, would........

nvm - I don't really want to know.

Apparently, 87% of male 18 year olds spend more than 100 minutes per year attempting to do just that.

Pep (Only 1 in 23,000 males can actually do it)

I feel I must speak in defense of my fellow canines.

If your standard greeting for your species involved putting your nose to another's crotch for a good sniff, wouldn't you want to make the best impression you could by cleaning 'down there' frequently? People wash their hands - dog lick their nether regions.

However, this does not explain why noobs like to immediately put up ban lines and build monstrosities. That does not make a good first impression.

Wow, the things I learn via the interwebz.

I have ranted needlessly in the past about the issue of ban lines and I have matured to realize the virtual world is for everyone. Other residents are not there to please me. I am attempting to rise above voicing opinions about people who think they are so interesting everyone must be spying on them and wants to intrude on them, and they must put up ban lines to protect their staggeringly interesting selves.

So I won't say those kinds of things.

Who doesn't enjoy scaring people now and then?

It's not only noobs who do this. I don't think it's very fair to blame everything bad that pops up inworld SL on noobs. I appreciate all the people who gave me a hand and were helpful and nice my first few days and weeks I was new.

You know... I look at that picture... and for all our snarky oldbie commentary I see an area where a lot of people are having a lot of fun.

Small plots and big dreams and commerce and meeting new people.

Miss those days, in a way.

Wow, thanks for pointing out the positives in that pic. I do wish my neighboring mainland shopkeepers and experimenters were around more like the good old days (well, relative to my decided lack of oldbieness - a year or two ago).

I do have an abandoned series of plywood platforms and stairs next door I could do without though.

I genuinely think the attitude you express here is commendable.

But I also genuinely think that a HUGE proportion of ban lines exist because those who've put them up can't see them, and don't know they're there.

It's way too easy to check that one little box on the About Land window that Restricts Access (and Restricting Access sounds perfectly reasonable---'hey, I don't want Just Anybody coming in here!', a lot of new land-owners probably think, without realizing that they're creating Ban Lines.)

Absolutely. It took me several weeks to get in contact with all the people who had set up ban lines around my First Land, way back when, and only one of them actually knew what they were doing with the ban lines.

He didn't want to take them down and keep them down, but was happy to trade his 512 for a 560 I bought for him on the other side of the sim after I explained how he could use the group bonus to avoid paying extra tier for the extra 48 square meters.

I'm sure that no more than 10% of the people who set up ban lines on small plots know what they're doing.

This is why you would not want to buy property.

Well, there are some indications that the Lindens are considering doing something about ban lines.

I think the current idea is to do something only about those ban lines used to extort someone to buy a neighboring plot.

But I think Argent's estimate of 10% is probably pretty accurate. And maybe the Lindens would consider making the check-off box on the About Land window more informative--"this will put bright red lines, like a cage, around your property".

Maybe they'd consider making them 'opt-in on a regular basis----so that a person couldn't put them up and just go away and leave them for months. The person would have to re-check some box every month (or whatever).

The Lindens HAVE said that they want to make Mainland more attractive, so very possibly they're looking at various ideas relating to ban lines.....

I thought dogs lick their balls to take away the taste of the food.

Hmm. Maybe they could get rid of the ban lines entirely and use a different visual cue. For example, fading a message in and out whenever your av tries to cross through a restricted border. With a little graphic creativity, it could be a comic explosion bubble, or some other animation. It's even possible to add a unique sound effect.

It could even be user-selectable, and create a brand new market (just like typing animations).

With regard to the title, this doesn't really sound like griefing at all.

For that matter, isn't Good Grief an oxymoron?

Those sound like excellent suggestions that could really enhance the SL experience (which is presumably what LL wants to do). I love the explosion bubble idea.

In the meantime, as a quick fix: why don't they just make ban lines visible to the person who puts them up (as well as to everyone else)?

Bet a lot of them would come down in a hurry.