Feedback on the Mainland

I have land at the north end of Nautilus. Nautilus was done with no water passages to the other water sims, unlike the earlier and later continents. Could you fill in some of the void areas so that we have a large area to sail and jetski in? A few additional water sims would allow sailing around the continent, and would also create some incentive for using the water sims.

Although it's somewhat off topic, I'm impressed by the volume of first time posters in this thread.

I own property on a sim that has water on 2 sides. The land is expensive (20 $L sm +). We have a diverse set of owners, mostly residential, a small shop with low to moderate traffic, and a sex and BDSM build that has the build at 600m. This has worked for over a year, but I have no idea how this could be zoned. We get the occasional lost user from the sex and BDSM build wandering on our property, but this is part of the entertainment from living on Mainland. We don't have build turned off, but we are on every day and police the property, beware of dropping a build on our land, we consider it entertainment to get rid of it.

That said, I hear the complaint about the ads and extortion. Make this a losing game, PLEASE! There are legitimate reasons for small parcels, for example listening to the stream from a musical instrument before buying. But some of the eyesores I have seen for the purpose of extorting money from the neighbors are a form of griefing.

I think the idea of zoning is good, but maybe take it a bit further and have limits on the maximum size a person or group can own in a sim.

I use to own about 4000m of land that I had 3.5 YEARS. (I've been on SL over 4.5 years now btw) The last year there was miserable for me, some twit came in and starting buying up all the land around me. and I ended up boxed in on 3 side (the other side was the sim edge) and he tried to get me to sell out to him, when I refused, he systemically banned me, and all my friends from his land effectively boxing us in, then build hideous structures facing my land. Finally I gave up and sold it (some land broker type bought it) and moved to a smaller lot to cut costs (RL work is not going well)

My point is, if parcels also had size maximums it could prevent people like me from being squeezed off their land. An perhaps have a more structured zone, with defined parcels and road to act as spacers between lots so people aren't on top of each other.

I own a lovely little piece of waterfront mainland, 1536 to be exact. And have done so for almost 3 years. It has a nice piece of Gov Linden land next to it on the sim border. I am one of the lucky ones, in that I have never had issues there.

I have some questions for you Jack.

If the Gov Linden land is beautified, or developed on, Can the resident that owns the land adjoining have input into how that land is developed?

Is there any plans to change the waterways at all?

Will there be changes in tier prices?

regards
Midnite

Dear Jack, you have seen a wonderful model of how things can be, you have watched it change, you have participated in its evolution, and now, you could admit the way the Island Estate are run is a far, far better way than the almost free-for-all on the Mainland. Please simply acknowledge we got it right and that our model is so much better than yours. Our Resident retention, income generation and stability of content is far in excess of many areas of mainland, and please acknowledge, the reason, ie, we are hands on enforcing rules (Covenant).

We eject, ban, remove inappropriate, offensive, abusive, simply annoying material, attitude, effects simply because, if we don’t, we lose our customers to someone who does. You do not police your mainland areas, you have a team that offer a watered down form of knee jerk reaction as and when you have staff availability and as and when it suits. Worse still, your policing team even have different ideas and concepts. One writer here said it was lucky dip as to who helped on ‘Live help’. On the Islands, you get, in most cases, the estate owners attention pretty darn quickly.


Now, if you copy our model, the chances are good that your estates will improve, is a fact. How about getting rid of auction for mainland, yes, sell them off at the same fixed price and give the buyer the same rights as the estate owners have, know something, you KNOW it will work.


Ah, but your reasons are different, yes, your loyalty is not to ‘the’ customer, but the customers ‘income supply’. It’s as though you don’t care who the dollar bill comes from, as long as it comes in. Why sell a mainland sim for a 1000USD when in auction it might provide two times that value. Why support a moaning and complaining customer, when if you ignore, they go away and are replaced by another and the new one pays just the same as the old one, so no loyalty there.


The amount of mainland you have available is staggering compared with the amount of users, it is truly disproportionate, if you placed all the available and for sale land in to a single continent, it would be larger than the occupied continent. You have too much land. It’s a tool for generating income at auctions, nothing more and nothing less. Please, go ahead and admit it.


Let us remember, you have set tier for island owners at $295 a month, and the scrubby mainland at $195. People who tire of the mainland and want a decent existence find it in the islands. If you police your estate as we police ours, then residents will have no need to visit the islands. Good plan, that way, your island owners will sell less and less land to residents and you will get more and more of the pie slice. Your expectation is that wealthy customers will own an island without a need to sublet it to gather the needed Tier. Ok. So why not drop tier to $195 for island owners, ya know… level playing field, or should I say, as inarticulate as I am, ’a level PAYING field’?



River Ely.
http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/
Island Owner, Covenant Builder,
Keeper of residents having set expectation, and supported them.

Like before, Linden announces something that (could) affect the business of private Estates.
Of course again without saying anything about this new challenge Forced upon private Estates without consideration.
Private Estates have proven to be much better in creating an environment that offers what the residents want. Lots of residents choose to live on Private Estates even though it is more expensive. Private Estates are struggling to survive because the tier is 100 US$ more per sim, per month. Why do I someway get this feeling that Linden wants to kill the private estates and try to make their mainland work like private estates?

The good news is of course that it is simply impossible for Linden to manage their mainland like the estates are managed. If you put a covenant in place, it has to be policed in a very frim but gentle and polite way. This costs time as communicating with (violating) residents take time. I am not worried here If there is one thing that Linden proved over and over again, it is that communicating is not their strong point.

This is what will happen, to my opinion, to the mainland when covenant rules will come in:
Some landowners will seek the edges (or go a little over) the covenant rules.
Linden will be short and swift and will only act on complaints making the landowner very angry. Eventually the landowner will leave with a new grunch against Linden.
Why? Like I said, communicating (explaining) takes time. Time Linden cannot affort.
Private Estates, with proffesional custemor service, win from "Linden custemor service" very easy. The only problem is that the compettion-position is totally false. Private Estates have to charge more because of the huge difference in tier that Linden asks for Private Regions compared to Mainland regions.

Worce case scenario is that the Private Estates do not survive. This because, at first glance, mainland looks like offering the same. Private estates are already heavely suffering at the moment and only a few large ones are surviving barely.

If the privates estates give up, the residents are stuck with Linden service again. And I promise you (residents who lived at both types of land know this already) this will worsen the quality of living drastically. For the people out there who have no idea what I am talking about. Just go to by example to the beautifull castle Verloren in the sim Verloren. From there fly around and watch the land. This is all private owned residental land. No ads, no ugly builds and all very happy landowners. I really would hate it if the private estate where I live so very happy, would die because of the constant hammering Linden does. I trust they will survive because their added value is overwelming more then Mainland, but I am worried.

Yes, maybe... Vote for llParcelSay();

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlParcelSay

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1224

That could be a step in the right direction as for playing nice with the neighbors.

Make - Restrict Spatial Sounds to Parcel the default

Unfortunaetly there are more people abusing small plots them than not,
I think we need 16m plots still for chopping and moving land groups etc, so I think maybe they should apply a default that you can't sell any plot smaller than say 128m other than by a manual transfer process of some sort, maybe only to other land owners in the sim.
If you need a 16m to run a 3 prim backup server, whu not just put it on a friends land or rent the space from someone?
If advertisers had to pay residents to put advertising on their land, thenI'm sure they would only be putting them at locations giving payback. At the moment it is like spam advertising by email
Pretty much free to put as many ads out as you like and so if you have 0.1% sucess, you make money.

I would like to see terrain editing more accessible and more easy to control on the Mainland, as we are not given any good choices are we. Also some parts will definately not flatten they will stay "lumpy". we have about half to three quarters of a sim spread dover 3 sims, pay a lot in tiers and to be frankly dont seem to get as much support back .

Ad farmers yea we do the same hide them they are an eyesore, and its these stupid little 16m squares for sale that do the harm, Linden come on take them back and offer them at a cheap rate to the adjoining owners, or even better give it to them, they have to suffer them.

And as most sims on the Mainland are multi parcelled owned how about giving us more prims, 117 for a 512plot is not a lot is it.

What function does water have? Because if there were no roads that's where the adfarming would be, on all our beaches. I anything we need more roads, adfarmers won't be able to keep up lining every road in SL if there are so many, because roadside is so rare, it is more valuable, hence beter to exploit.

Roads give property front and back, and provide a way to visit the neighbour without having to fly through 3 other yards. Visit some mainland in roadless sims and tell us looking at the front of your neighbours castle entering the side of your house looks good?

Without roads , we might as well live in windowless cubes as the chaos will continue, looking out at every new neighbour and wondering which way he will face his house.

People use roads to walk on and now cars seem to be more popular with Havok4, I'm getting probably 4 cars a day pass and people are paying me $5L to rez vehicles on roadside rezzing platforms I provide.
Overall, Jack's post sounds purposful but no real action so far, a descision and action nees to happen.

I just dumped 1400m in Andraca at bot price because the sim has been guttedin a few months by landcutting adfarmers, itwas nice & adfree with 4 neighbours, one sold out now I have 20 neighbours most of them neon rotating signs, so I'm no longer interested in business or residing there. I'm going to do the opposite, rather than buy them out, I'm just dumping my land instead, let them fill the sim with fake advertising for all I care.

Some retro zoning would be good, seeing there's so much yellow land about now is the time to do it.
Maybe a restiction on people selling parcels smaller then 128m would be good, if people need 3 prims in oher sims fro legitimate reasons let then put them on a friends land or rent them from a sim resident. This postage stamp owning a 16m in every sim for spybots, spambots, campbots and landbots is just crap.

And how about linking the continents by water and making sure they can all be circum navigated, use some of your older servers as openspace sims perhaps to do it.

People: LL does not want to upset Estate owners. Estate owners provide the majority of the income for the company. Also they can't afford to piss off the current tier-paying resident since new residents who will pay high tier are a rare breed. They are trying to please everyone and maximize profits. That is why I make the following predictions:

-Any changes they make to the Mainland will be minor and gradual. Like adding 20 or so new zoned sims with some sort of attractive theme (Steampunk would be a bit too transparent that they have watched Desmond's success and are trying to emulate his model, but something along those lines). If these sims prove to be popular and fetch amounts like Bay City, they will add more.

-As for existing Mainland, there will be some action taken to remove some of the more blatant ad farm offenders, but most of the blight will remain.

-They will do some improving of existing Mainland (adding protected water, picking up trash, fixing the trains) and will promote this heavily on the blog.

-They will not raise tier on the Mainland. And at some point, they might even lower the upfront cost of Islands again.

One thing I ask all land owners to remember: You have to love this hobby and enjoy your time inworld. Because most of your income goes to pay your monthly tier.

We are like the humans in the Matrix. We think we have free will, but really we're just feeding the beast.

re: small private estates.

The key to survival in this business, now or in the future, is to add value. If all you do is shell out land with limited benefits (no theme, no terraforming, no security, etc.) then you are in trouble. But if you provide swift customer service (and you should - do you really think LL will respond to ARs as quickly as an estate owner, or will teach people about parcel management?) and maybe a beautiful themed property, there is a niche for you and you should survive.

The market is vast and consists of more than just people looking for the cheapest option. Of course, there are plenty of those, but as a small private estate owner or mainland landlord, you have got to add value in order to compete with the mainland ownership model. This isn't new. You should not rely on the fact that most mainland has looked like crap until now. That's just low hanging fruit and is a poor excuse.

People choose to rent for a reason - it is convenient, and they often can get more out of it than if they owned themselves, and typically have no commitment beyond a week or two of (usually cheaper than LL rate) tier. Renting is always a viable option.

I've been a happy resident now since 2006 and spent only short time living on my first plot of 512 sqm. The surroundings were different each day, as were the neighbours. Suddenly I could find myself surrounded by banlines too and so I sold and went to buy an island on the private sims.

Cause: Who wants those horrible ad-signs hanging over a 100m high, rotating horrors and those ugly low-prim buildings?

LL, take an example of those ever-expanding private sims that have clear covenants and see that rules are inforced. See to it too, that abuse reports are dealt with in the first place and within a reasonable timeframe. Ban the abusers and strip them from their money, so next time they do behave. Sad but true: We need LL-police to see to it that mainland will be a beautiful place too, and not the horrid site they are now.

Good luck and I really hope and expect that you'll do something this time.

I'm sure these changes would be welcome - what you're suggesting seems to be that LL should become a planning authority, as you say much in the way local authorites work in rl (in the UK at least, and in some US states). This could work, or it could become heavily beauracratic .. as it has become in the UK! There is also the risk LL will become a benevolent dictator, with no community representation in what kinds of covenants and planning prevail in different regions. Some kind of democratic representation from mainland occupants on these 'planning authorities' would also be welcome.

You talk about ad farms, which do need to be controlled and regulated. But you don't mention sex clubs .. the bane of mainland sl, and the real reason that is preventing anyone seriously interested in developing sl as a business or creative environment from getting involved. I would suggest that, again just as in rl, activities like this should be controlled by covenants and 'planning regulations' too, or maybe set up some other 'sleaze grid' where those who enjoy this peculiarly detached activity can watch their avatars grind away to their heart's content. Then perhaps we can see sl be taken more seriously, and begin to realise its potential ...

And yes, universal ban lines, forgot to mention those. Ban ban lines .. at least while residents are not at home. What are you all afraid of? No-one can actually steal anything ...

Welcome to all the new posters.

Be sure to check out the Resident Answers forum for more lively conversations.

An off-topic tip: If you want to receive private messages on this forum, you have to turn that ability on in your User CP. It's turned off by default.

User CP>Edit Options>check Enable Private Messaging.

I'm all for gutting the ad blights but worry that retroactively zoning parts of the mainland will make some existing parcels 'unacceptable'. I like the anarchic nature of the place but there again i tend to build little gardens. But I love the way you can build whatever you like and yes I have had neighbour problems. By all means have a stricter covenent structure for new mainland sims - but leave existing ones alone please? Our world after all. Leave the existing mainland more or less alone - if people need more strict control they can move. In fact make that an option - if people want to move but cannot afford to go through the sell/buy process let them exchange parcels - for a fee of course. Its nice to see the Lab actually paying attention I must admit but keep in mind some of us like it the way it is. And yes I have a vested interest - I am a minor land trader.

/me applauds and wishes he had more reason to do business with Sarah. If the governor position was elected I know who'd have my vote.

Having been in SL for over 18 months now creating a non - business area just for the enjoyment of other residents, I feel that there should be a reduced tier rate for those like myself. I have no wish to make money in SL and just want to provide free ineteresting places for others to explore. There are many in SL like myself who sometimes find the costs prohibitive and so we are restricted in not being able to hold enough land to do this. I know Linden Labs do make reduction for non-profit and educational groups from RL and offer a substantial reduction in tier. Surely there could be a comparative arrangement for residents who are providing non-business and non-money-making ventures which are, in effect, almost the same as these groups who get a reduction.

While you are re-thinking many aspects of mainland etc...please consider this. I think that such a scheme would make SL even richer in variety and experience for creative others who may not be affluent enough to afford high tier fees. The benefit would be to all SL residents with more venues and richer content. Maybe offer a LINDEN LABS CHARITABLE STATUS for which residents would have to apply, explaining what they intended to provide etc.

I love SL and this is just my personal view. May not be achievable in Linden Labs terms but I would like to think you would think about this.

I am glad to hear your going to do something about the advert spots all over SL. I can tell you that I have ran a business in SL for the last 2 years, and have never had to sink that low to get traffic to my places.

That said, take a look at the URL listed below, its a live up to date map of second life with parcel lines. You can clearly see how huge the problem is. And they still try to extort money from people, do a search in the land search for 16 meter size spots, and order by price desc... there are currently 14390 16 meter parcels selling for more than 20 linden per SQL meter.

Here is the URL:
http://gvurl.com/secondlife/Durdane/238/214/25/?title=16%20Meter%20Spot%20Everywhere&msg=Look%20along%20the%20road

I have no problem with mixed use land but I think we have to address build density

rather than worry if a build is commercial or entertainment or a sex club or residential worry about if the door opens into its neighbours foyer.
create green belt sims where only a third or two thirds of a parel can have a low level build on it. ie a build under 200m should have a footprint decidedly smaller than the land its on. This will prevent 16m ad parcels in these green belt sims. and allow a landscape to emerge from the jumble.

consider banning the use of glow on any object larger than .5m along a side.

automate the settling of auto return and the removal of ban lines on abandoned land.

implement a recovery scheme for land whose owner has not logged in for a year.

make regulation clear and easily found and understood. with a transparent and public appeals system.

Justice must be seen to be done.

My advice to my residential renters (they all have their own wee parcel as part of a greater complex - not in a Waco kinda way complex) is that I don't like universal banlines but if they want to ban individual avatars that is fine.

I prefer that sort of system because no one is trying to spy on you or can steal your stuff but yeah you might want certain people not on your parcel and that is fine.

Another point about banning avatars is that if an avatar is banned they can still purchase your land for sale by standing to the side. I would like it implemented that you cant buy land you are banned from. I really should jira that I suppose and stop whinging on a forum.

Also while we're on feature requests could grace peroid avatar ejectors not be coded into the server, auto return of avatars sort of thing. That would be nicer than universal banlines.

re: rezzing on roads.

I would like that premium members can rez on roads and that all roads have the correct auto return turned on. This would encourage people to become premium members surely, $10 a month or whatever for the ability to go take a car out and explore sl. Gives us more value for money and with the correct auto-return switched on wont be a problem of littering mainland.

I love mainland. I love the roads and the waterways and the sense of geography you get there, which is missing from islands separated by void. For the most part, I also love the jumbled mess of it - I love coming across the unexpected.

Zoning ... I can see that some zoning might be a good idea, in some places, but it would be good to keep a proportion of land unzoned in terms of residential / commercial. I like mixed neighbourhoods and would not like to live on a housing estate. I also wonder how it would work in practice ... say I have a little plot in a residential sim with my home on it. If I put one or two boxes for sale on my porch, am I then classed as commercial? If this is enforced very strictly I can see the value of this land falling sharply as anyone just starting out in business would need to rent space or get additional land in a commercial sim just to put down their very first "for sale" prim.

I would not like to see too many covenants based on style of builds - many of us like being on mainland because we can experiment with our builds without worrying about somebody else's sense of taste.

The type of zoning I would most like to see would be simply to group mature sims separately from PG sims.

Adfarms ... I am really pleased that solutions are being sought for this problem. Any solution will, I think, require human intervention as certain people will always find a workaround for any automated system.

Other stuff ...

banlines ... I hate these, they are ugly and wreck vehicles. There are places where they extend into roadways. I can't see that they are even useful as anybody can cam past them. I am not sure what the answer is for those who are paranoid about people seeing their prims, but well-configured security orbs seem to cause fewer problems.

default land permissions ... a lot of mainland junk could be eliminated if abandoned land automatically reverted to no build or 5 minutes autoreturn. This would also protect vehicle rezzing areas from running out of prims because somebody has stuck 4000 spinning cubes on a 16m abandoned parcel.

Another thing that has just occurred to me but is probably a pipe dream ... what about a sort of "keyworker" system, with a named Linden who looks after each mainland sim or group of sims?