Feedback on the Mainland

Agreed, that's certainly how it sounds.

I would be really curious to know the amount of the current mainland owned by Gov Linden that is either abandoned land or land taken from banned accounts, etc.

Who is responsible for making sure that land is properly setup to stop it from becoming a rez pile?

And yes Garth - it does sound expensive. I was wondering if shortly tier for mainland will rise to the level of private sims. I can not really imagine LL doing that. I enjoy owning mainland. I like people passing through, I enjoy being connected rather than isolated, and enjoy the $100 differenc in tier. Raising that would, IMHO, spell the death knell for mainland ownership.

DRD

Here here!

The Advertisers Guild is the problem; not part of the solution. If Jack Linden intends on implementing a solution that is patient and fair with your lot, it is doomed from the start.

Asked:

Serious Serapis
Registered User

Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 1

Shutting down the small estate owner
Well the Lindens are finally admitting they have MAJOR issues with their mainland and how they manage it.

Not only are they realizing that there is a simple lack of oversight (something they will never be able to properly do given the size and number of parcels they would need to oversee IMHO), but also growing cynicism and frustration on the behalf of mainland owners who buy their dream lot one day and the next day find their view is destroyed by an ad farm and their land is now worth nothing.

The answer is, and will always be, in more support for the private estates and the estate owners that work hard to ensure a consistent and fair experience for their land owners. Unfortunately the Lindens still haven’t grasped that fact and instead are working to create their own zoned and covenanted estates within the mainland. This is yet another swipe at the private estate owners that have supported SL though the payment of thousands of dollars in private island tiers each month.

The Lindens policies are clear. They wish to put all estate owners out of business by first destabilizing the land market by wildly adjusting sim costs, flooding the market with cheap mainland, sowing seeds of uncertainty regarding private island tier increases, turning deaf ears to reported problems, and now attempting to provide similar private estate experiences coupled with lower mainland tiers and purchase prices. Will they succeed? Time will tell.

Answered:
Gusher Castaignede
SL Builder

Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: USA
Posts: 238
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Awhile back I use to live on mainlands and did leave for the very main reason that it was just a mess out there. This announcement is very great and hope really that some good changes will happen. Perhaps I may go back and try it again.

One question I have, will the new mainland come in different terrain themes and/or will mainland sim owners have estate tool control?

Um? ... According to my calculations, we have paid, so far, in tier to Linden Lab, since 2003...

US$31,100.

Are you saying that our "mainland money" is somehow not as green as your "private island money" as far as support of SL goes?

I don't get it... You do know that, err ... land on the mainland isnt... *free*, right?

I mean... you've gotta be aware of that...

... right?

This is the kiss of death. Whether true or not, it presents the impression that the new policy is already known to TAG and has been developed in collusion with TAG to serve their purposes, totally at odds with the views of the majority of residents which are overwhelmingly evident in this thread. If this is true, it is scandalous, that a the interests of a tiny minority has been given sway over the great majority, most of whom put money into SL rather than sucking it out. Please tell us, Jack, that this is not true.

Or is LL, perhaps, looking far a cut of TAG's profits? In the end, it is not unreasonable to suppose that LL would wish to move to advertising as its primary income stream, as have most other successful vehicles of communication, internet or elsewhere. Was this the meaning not so subtly hidden in the pronouncements of M? If this is the beginning of that end, then we will surely see the end of the creative second life that we have known. I for one am not going to build to help earn money for TAG and their ilk. Neither, I venture, will many much more talented and productive than I. And if it succeeds, and the grid(s) become a significant platform for advertising, which will have to come from RL, do TAG really imagine they will survive? Well, perhaps they will get consultancies for a year or two.

But if it must be so, why does SL have to conform to the most hackneyed cliche's of the advertsisng world, as presented to us by TAG? Why not reach out to the creative capacity so abundant among your residents? Give them the opportunity to devise new forms of advertising that exploit the uniquenes of SL instead of destroying it. Present the advertising world with something really new.

(To clarify - I do not beleive, no do I intend to suggest, that TAG is involved in harrassment or extortion that has been mentioned in other posts. As far as I know their approach to their business is honest and sincere.)

Greetings Jack. Am very glad to hear LL is doing something about the Mainland. For quite some time now I have intentionally avoided the Mainland because the majority of it (forgive please) is like one huge garbage dump, unstructured design, and constant slamming into private security zones. Considering how much more user-friendly private sims are, I've avoided Mainland entirely, as have many others.

I believe the concepts of zoning and advertising limitations that you mentioned are a good way to start. This may require people moving large structures to a new home, but it must be done if Mainland is to ever have any semblance of unity.

One thing that has often been suggested in the past is that for someone to advertise anything on a plot of land, that plot must be at least 512m in size. Another option is to simply make it a TOS offense to have some kinds of advertising; what comes to mind are vertical, spinning signs. It might be easiest to simply state, "No builds strictly for the sake of advertising. It's ok to have reasonable advertising for an accompanying shop, but no shop present, no advertising.

In addition, with LL's intention to take greater hand in these matters, it might be proper to simply allow people to abuse report advertising or building that they find offensive... because it's hard to make a ruling for everyone. When some guy creates a huge, pink blob in the middle of an otherwise pristene neighborhood... it could be argued that he should have known better from the outset, even if he is the land owner.

There are many people who build on SL with no consideration for neighborhood or neighbor, and many more who build specifically to tick off their neighbors, deriving some kind of twisted pleasure in doing so. I don't imagine that's the kind of customer LL had in mind when creating SL. So I wouldn't be hesitant to start regulating people whose sole purpose on this system is to harass their neighbors. The guy who buys the 16m plots and erects huge political signs, the guy who puts huge gaudy-texture billboards next to someone in order to extort them into buying his land for ungody prices... I think most residents would have no problem with LL stepping in and saying, "This is no longer going to be allowed."

But in addition to zoning and moderating harassment-builds, another thing that could be done is simply to put a cap on how much land may be sold for. That would put an end to someone purchasing a 16m plot for 5L a meter and trying to sell it for 3,500L... and an end to that particular extortion racket. (That is, if such hasn't already been done. Surely needs to be done). Just put a cap on land prices... enough to allow a savvy land investor to make a buck, but to pull the rug out from under extortionist-advertisers.

It's fine to be concerned about new Mainland, and Zoning will be an appealing option for some of that. But LL's revenue model is mostly tier, not new sales.

And they're not minting new residents like they used to: concurrency is in a 5-month long plateau. Sure, existing landowners have bought more, and some residents have become new landowners, but until the underlying market expands, there's a hard ceiling ahead for Mainland (and Estate) growth. This means existing Mainland is relatively more important than it would be if a high rate of growth could be sustained.

And the acreage owned by Governor but without Auction ID assigned appears to be growing again: the existing Mainland revenue stream is faltering as abandoned land drops from paying tier.

So it's not just that all LL's current Mainland customers will be dissatisfied if existing Mainland is allowed to rot. It is that LL's bottom line will bleed.

Jack: Thank you for starting this thread for feedback, and for your attention to Mainland problems. As you've heard many times, many of us feel that the ad blight and extortion scams are by far the most damaging plagues of the Mainland, and that they've only gotten worse since the last attempt at controlling them. So, for us, seeing these disappear completely from existing Mainland is the--*the*--criterion by which your future actions will be judged.

Please understand that partial measures will not suffice, and some collateral damage will be more acceptable than for any remnant of the problems to remain.

I am hoping that temporary rezzing of objects be allowed on more of Gov. Linden's parcels, and that more be designated as usable wildlife areas, parks, forest, lakes, rivers and ocean. If this land could be used to rez boats, planes, hang gliders, snowmobiles, skis, vehicles etc, it would be SO appreciated! It seems such a waste to not be able to use these vast tracks of land for recreation.

will fix most ills on mainland once ALL advertisement signage is banned except within 4 walls that surround it (roof or not). That is no advertising would be visible from any point at parcel edge. I don't think a definition of advertising is required. It should be obvious even if its written on an orca.

That 30m limit would straight-line-grade from parcel edge at zero meters and at 45 degrees. So to build to 30m you need to be 30m from parcel edge. To build to 10m you'd need to be 10m from parcel edge.

Flashing, glowing and outright gawdy builds should be permitted to be obscured by neighbors via one-way transparent and phantom mega-prims built on neighbor's parcel edge at appropriate height. These background type mega prims should be made available by LL to all residennts where the alpha atop the texture of mountains, ocean or forests etc.. makes them look like real terrain background. (No sky in texture). I have examples.

That way the offender sees none of the mega-prim from his parcel and can walk thru it.

Interesting thought but maybe thats not the case. Sounds like Linden is learning from us private Estate owners. However, I don't think the purpose is to rid of private estates. The new changes might have little or no affect on Private Estates. People will still buy Private Estates unless Linden allows full estate management to Mainland SIM owners and/or allows themed mainland SIMs not to be connected to other mainland SIMs...

Roads provide the same function your furniture provides or the plate of fruits you keep on a table in your home where you 'think' you live. If you need them, you do need roads and trees too. Roads are a must to give the blank space a face and character of a world.

And, by the way, they also provide a safe passage between the possible ban-lines if someone feels like flying through exploring the world. We might not drive on them, but we do use them for the similar purpose I guess. I fly my hot air balloon through them

You don't have to agree, though.

Interesting hour spent reading this lot. Ad farms good riddance asap.I would also like to see the large red For sale signs banned en mass,no need for spinning eyesores.A small sign is all thats needed as land for sale is on the map and in search.The rest is overkill and bloody unsightly.

I just don't get it. The majority of ad farms advertise, guess what, the ad farm. Some are so outdated as to be laughable. Only recently did Gov Linden finally take down, after repeated requests and AR's, a set of cube signs near one of my parcels, for a casino.

The only reason they even exists is that they really don't have to rent many to cover the tier it costs to be an ad farmer. Lets see, $9.95 usd for a premium membership which includes tier on 512m2. Toss in an additional 1024m2 and add the $8 usd for that, and I now have 1536m2 or 96 ad parcels. 96 ad parcels....

96 ad parcels for less than $20 usd.

96 ad parcels with 3 prim each, for a total 288 ad cubes - for approx $L5200 a month.

So, I only need to rent 52 of the signs at $L100 a month to break even or less than half of them at $L50 a month.

Thats not what I don't get. What I don't get is why anyone would rent one, considering the negative impact they have, and way most residents feel about them. I guess its sort of like spam. Who cares what people think, as long as some of them are dumb enough to read the message.

DRD

One of the main contributing factors to problems with advertising is that there simply isn't a reliable alternative to advertising services in SL.

The classifieds system has its problems (some are known technical issues, others a simple matter of some just outspending others). The secondlife grid and showcase are not at all usable by smaller businesses and many people in SL don't even know of the existence of these resources.

Advertising spaces, networks, and the infamous 16m plots are a means to get a message infront of a relatively large number of people, often in a targeted way and at competitive prices.

If, for example, someone makes prefabs, searching for prefabs means that a new resident needs to know the word "prefab" and then needs to wade through hundreds of irrelevant search results just to get to browse a few places. SL is a social place and to put it plainly, word of mouth and advertising spaces are a great means of attracting visitors. Much more reliable than the integrated search.

Many businesses found themselves loosing business when search was not functioning well, and when there were problems with classifieds. LL essentially boosted the value of ad spaces with these problems.

Getting rid of small parcels of land is the easy way out. Creating a reliable, fair, usable marketplace is harder yet helps everyone.

-2fast

Ok, it's taken me 5 hours, with TV breaks to read all these posts. Yes, I have read them all. It's great that despite the cynicism, there haven't been the usual howls of outrage at LL for making any sort of change.

Well done, LL. Some loose rules for zoning would be good. I for one like to live 'over the store' though so mixed-use has to be in there somewhere. I also happen to think some signs/adverts can make a place more interesting. The biggest no-no would be to enforce too-strict rules though and make SL resemble some virtual-USA.

The other point that seems consistent in these posts is that LL have to frame the rules to target harrassment and then DO something about the people causing the problems. It shouldn't be a difficult task for one person to police 100 sims in this respect: RESPOND to the ARs against nuisance objects. Yes, I understand you need the framework of rules in which to act but surely even the existing TOS definition of harrasment covers ad-farms?

Maybe you don't see too many cars in SL because there are not enough good roads,yet!!!

I ditto this.

coco

I do agree that a lot of places have been overfloaded with a lot of advertisement but in my case. I have been at my Region for a year now and has been so happy there that despite at the beginning, tought I would be there for a while only, I stayed and would like to continue there. I have my mainstore and my home close by it. i was one of the first residents of the region. My neighbors and I have a very good relationship and some of them have or had a store as well. The area in my opinion looks very nice and from some parcels behind me to the front everything is fine. My concern is now with this thing to place regios by zone what will happen with me, my store and my house. I finally got a parecel ocean front for my house right in front almost of my main store and I dont want to lose that. I have been paying my tier and would not be nice to all of a sudden having to move or I don't know. Nevertheless, the region i was before this one was really so crowded and overloaded with advertisement everywhere and a lot of stuff hanging there in the air that i decided to move.

Thank god I found this other region and just love it. So I dont know how this sounds but maybe what can be done is selecting the areas with the worst situation and work with those and new regions be called New Mainland with the new covenants so ppl will decide if remain on the old Main land or going into the new one. Not sure if this can be possible or how to do it but it was just an idea that came to me thinking about a lot of designers that have stores already on mainland and also their houses either nearby or besides their stores. I really don't know how this will affect us so basically that is my biggest concern.

I'm probably gonna regret saying this but, in some ways.. yeah.

How much do you think somebody policing the mainland should be paid? One person certainly can't take care of the whole mainland so multiply the salary by the number of people you think should be added to keep us happy.

These changes, if LL does what most mainland dwellers want, is probably going to cost LL over US$250k a year and I'd be surprised if it wasn't closer to US$750k, though I really have no idea what LL pays concierge-type people or how many of them it'll take.

Compare whatever numbers you think are resonable to do what you'd like on the mainland - the whole mainland - with what they need to spend on private islands. Of course there are things like the better tier return they get from mainland and premium but, again, in some ways, private island money is greener. At least at the start of this effort, this is going to cost LL a few big bags of cash.

edit: and, if I haven't said it before in this thread, Jack: TY, TY, TY!!

I think all the SL volunteers are already in line for that job.

Also, I'm not nearly as patient as Jack and haven't read this whole thread, any plans to restrict megaprims on the mainland?

That.. doesn't make sense? So you're saying we somehow -cost private island owners money- by paying tier on the mainland?

Our area really doesn't need a lot of policework from Linden Lab as far as what we do. Griefers, yeah, but they're gobal and that's why I'm saying there should be better controls.

But not from us. We actually already have a zoned section that we take care of. And by zoned I do mean Linden zoned, that -we- maintain. (Lusk Estates. We're talking pre-beta zoning here, that yes, in fact, is still in effect and was renewed via a joint effort in 2005).

For us to "move" to private estates it'd cost us US$4800 to have equivalency. Keep in mind this is money we've already paid, as the original mainland plots over the years were not given to us. (We paid US$1000 for one 8192m2 at one point.).

I just think there's a lot more to this than you may realize. Again, it's not like we "chose" the "lower tier" of the mainland. And it's not like the land was free. And it's not like mainland tier was always lower than estate tier.

And about that time - (and it was a long time) when mainland and island tier was *the same*: we had a wonderfully effective ban height of 30m. I liked to call it a 'symbolic ban height'. It was pretty much a placebo.

Do my hours of putting in work "at parity price" during that era count for anything in the balance of fairness?

That's interesting..

So, if I volunteer and am accepted as a volunteer, what powers will I have over other premium residents?