Feedback on the Mainland

The biggest single improvement would be the removal of generic ban lines (red tape)

Continue to allow banning of specific individuals sure... but to be able to fly around without getting caught in a spiders web would make all the difference.

JUST DO IT PLEASE!!!!

It's certainly possible to write policy with arbitrarily difficult-to-enforce guidelines. Or it can be simple and easy to enforce: No unlicensed advertising, no extortion plots. When they appear, G-Team confiscates them, no questions, no appeals, no wasted time.

It's not even remotely difficult. Even the most blighted sims could be cleaned up in an hour, with a God-mode "Confiscate" button. One can rest assured that every sim would clean itself 90% within a day, in advance of the Governor's clean-up team.

And if some borderline cases get caught-up in the sweep, well, too bad. Whatever they may be, they aren't responsible for improving the Mainland experience in such a valuable way that the world will suffer o'ermuch without them.

Hell, if all my landholdings get caught-up by accident, well, worse could happen: worse would be that the problem is not completely fixed for once and for all. Because then I'll just abandon the land anyway. If instead it gets accidentally confiscated, at least it would be for a good cause.

Now, if instead, another half-assed appeasement policy enables yet more variants of the same crap by the same clowns, G-Team will be wasting even more time enforcing another ineffective policy. I only hope LL will look out for its own interests and keep it simple and just ban the problem, not some contorted calculus of problem indicators.

I'm all for the zoning. I've been saying for a long time now that I wish we had commercial and residential zoning.

Its so frustrating, as a land owner, to spend time building a beautiful home, piece by piece...and to landscape with waterfalls, plants etc...making it a nice peaceful home away from home...and then show up one day with big ugly signs or a busy club right next door. Theres a place for clubs and businesses...but they need to be in separate areas from homes...just like RL.

Isabeau Conacher

This is a great idea.

If I can help in anyway just ask.

Thanks so much

Hedy Dewoitine

Ok maybe not Slums lol, but:

* What happens if my sim where I own land becomes zoned residential?
- Can I get equivalent space in a commercial sim of my choice?

* Can we have a resident nominated on a Sim (Me! Me!) to be able to clean up the appalling amounts of prim trash lying around from griefers and idiots?
- I have prim trash around me from nearly a year of tomfoolery. I'd love to kill it off.

5000 sims will need a monumental amount of planning to adjust the uses.

I would suggest that residents be involved closely with this, maybe with a group of residents (1 per sim) in clusters of 10 or so sims to get together and give their opinion on each of the sims as to whether they should be untouched, zoned as commercial, residental or mixed. I'd hate the Might Hand of Linden to walk in a dictate what is what out of ignorance. Its a lot of work. Residents must be involved.

Ban lines are a complete waste of time, they just cause a headache for anyone wishing to explore, they dont operate above 100m so are pointless for skyboxes.

I would say ban those silly scripted orbs as well, I have lost count of the times I have been teleported by my neighbours orb while building on my own land.

The banlines themselves would be a great start though as they are basically only any good as a harassment tool for the extortionists.

Then please give us tools so that we can be good neighbors and be able to find things such as bad scripts, too many scripts etc on our own land also.

A lot of the issues with zoning get simpler when you get rid of ad and extortion griefers, and then allow each land owner more ways to better police themselves.

This is long overdue. The mainland is a ghetto as far as i am concerned. With the exception of going occasionally to a couple of favorite stores whose sole location is on the mainland, I don't go there. If I am searching for a product or entertainment I automatically eliminate any that show up in search if I have to go to the mainland, and most people I know do too. I advise people who ask me not to buy land there as no matter how good it looks at first, it always turns ugly and laggy.

Its sad, because as you say I remember the early days when the mainland was a decent place. I lived there at one time.

There should be areas to accommodate all kinds of builds for all kinds of purposes, but I
never understood why there was no zoning. Proper zoning would increase property values and increase the aesthetics of SL. Zoning doesn't have to be overly restrictive to be effective. Simply designating areas as residential, commercial or industrial with clear definitions of what this means and the minimum necessary restrictions and enforcement would be effective without stifling creativity. You could even have 'free' zones with no restrictions inside the zone for anarchy minded folks. Land could be terraformed so that residential land is shielded from having to view the other zones.

And to all you ad farmers and advertisers out there that use them: I purposely do not patronize any business that uses an ad farm to advertise if I am aware they are doing so. Ad farms are offensive and only make the ad farmers money. I have never found them to be effective advertising. They devalue land around them, and make SL ugly. At the very least they should be restricted to commercial and industrial areas.

SVC-835 asks for part of this...

Vote here: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-835

My biggest concern with Zoning is that if it is retroactivly applied to existing businesses it will force a lot of small ventures to go under. I youre foced to relocate and bear the cost of such a relocation you may wall find that its just not worth bothering anymore.

For example. If the sim my business is located on was zoned residential, I would have to buy new land, double my tier in the process and then wait for my old land to sell so I could tier back down. And you can bet that land values for residential and commercial wont be compariable, so I have to take another hit on the land value. (not that my investment hasnt been devastated by the crashing land value anyway).

I cant imagine I wont be the only retailer in SL that will be faced with this situation.

I bought my land knowing I could could do what the hell I liked on it. That is the beauty and the curse of the mainland. The offset is private islands.

A little chaos is good for secondlife's soul.

This is a repeat of a post made on an earlier forum, but since you ask.
I honestly think there is a great potential for sims that are sized more like
city blocks than large estates. If I wanted to build a skyscraper with many
floors and activities, I would not want it marooned in the middle of a big
area of land. I would rather have the neighbors right next door.
Surely this would be easy to implement. Just make some areas, where the sims
are city-block sized, right next to each other, but with full sim functionality.
Make a city zone.
SL city1. It even sounds cool.

I am adamantly opposed to arbitrary returning of builds of those who do not login for extended periods.

There are alot of junk heaps and prim litter on many, so on a case to case basis, it's not unreasonable for autroreturn to be enabled.

I owned land in the same region where I got my "Land for the Landless". My next door neighbor has two remarkably lovely builds in Tenjin, very fitting and appropriate for the surroundings. I am online alot and never once in four years did I encounter him. It would be shameful for LL to remove these builds. It's quite obvious, he pays his tier promptly or is a beta charter member.

LL needs to tread lightly despite the volume of public outcry. The problems raised by ad farmers although reprehensible, should not have any bearing on what absentees do. Too many people slip through the cracks of LL's poor policy making as it is, let's not victimize others. It serves no purpose, to bite off your nose to spite your face.

One person's junk is another person's treasure. SL is about living dreams and roleplay.

I hear plenty of talk about "beautification" which always seems to mean planting trees or placing park benches. This is flawed thinking.

For example... In my RL, I live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I am surrounded by snowcapped peaks, oceans, rivers, lakes, farms and forest land. That said (odd as it may seem) I also see beauty in factories, abandoned buildings, old locomotives or machinery and/or other normally inoccuous locations. Perhaps "industrial" should be included in any zoning plans. Ask any steampunk at Caledon, I'm sure they'll agree.

Nuking these types of builds by paying residents is not acceptable. Litter by deleted accounts, griefers and accounts unrelated to the land owner should be returned. Perhaps auto return could be set to 30 mins by default, as opposed to 0. If a land owner doesn't want autoreturn, they can always toggle it off.

I bought my land on mainland specifically to avoid having to conform to some "theme" and so that I could build whatever I want on my own land.

If I ever decide I want to open a little shop next to my house, I don't want anyone telling me I can't.

If I want to have my home in the sky with a park on the ground, I don't want anyone telling me I can't.

That said, I do try to talk to my neighbors and see if I can build something that won't cause them grief. A lot can be done to avoid a lot of the problems if people would just talk to each other. Look around before you buy and see if what you want to do will obviously conflict with what is already there.

I do agree that the ad blight needs to be addressed somehow.

Also, the practice of splitting lots into 16m2 squares, setting some for sale for market value, others for sale for extortion and a few scattered lots not for sale at all (making it impossible to even make a usable lot out of the mess), has to stop. This practice has but one goal... extortion. Those who do this need to be tossed out of SL and their assets confiscated and never allowed back in again.

Thanks for opening this topic and good luck. Hope you can find a solution to this complex problem.

I'm embarrassed to admit that when someone recently bought the entire sim surrounding one of my mainland parcels, and "cleaned" it up, that the whole area sort of lost it's wild west appeal to me.

I do like controlled environments as a safe haven, and i do think it might be a good thing, this new mainland initiative. I say *might* because I do believe Estate Owners do a pretty good job of this already.. So i'm not fully convinced that this is needed, and it may actually even be hurtful to estate owners (but not that you care about them).

But anyway, I DO think existing mainland should remain unregulated. Keep the regulated stuff on the new sims. We knowingly bought unregulated land, and it should remain that way.

Strongly agreed. It doesn't affect me at all of course, I've logged in for hours every day for years but I don't see how anyone can justify deleting prims or reclaiming land that someone else is happily paying for assuming they don't violate some other general rule or guideline. Of course I agree that banned or accounts that are behind on payments should have their land stripped and prims returned.

I would like to see:
No plots smaller than 512 sq m allowed (to prevent add farms)
NO ban lines allowed at all (why have mainland and keep people from traveling over it? Especially water areas!)
A limit on how large signs can be!
A ten second warning on all security orbs before orbiting someone off a plot.

I agree that if a current mainland sim's landowners can all agree on a single zoning designation, they should be able to submit a request to LL to have that zoning made official for their sim. There are certainly a number of mainland sims that have only 1-6 landowners insim.

Landowners, consult with your neighbors.

Ban lines are a scourge as bad or worse in many ways as the ad parcels. Both are highly detrimental to the mainland areas as a whole.

The following pertain to MainLand parcels only:

Controlling who can rez objects on my parcel is important, but controlling who can come onto it, other than being able to prohibit specific people who have caused me problems of some kind, simply makes no sense. What is being protected by only allowing a certain group access? I can camera into any area I want, even across sims, so you are not gaining privacy. Kind of like locking doors. I can camera into a house and sit on a chair and poof, door bypassed. People can not steal things, so agian, what purpose does limiting parcel access on a large scale serve. It does however mess up views with the lines, it serves as a great extortion tool, and it prevents the passage of residents across the mainland, one of the things I thought mainland was all about. If we have to have that ability, change it so that there are no lines, but a 10 second warning window pops up on the avatars screen as the orbs use. And regulate the use of orbs a little better. Make a 10 second delay the minimum, and seriously consider AR's on orbs that extend their reach outside their parcel.

I do realize that controlling access to a parcel for a specific event may be important to limit personal griefing, but evict and ban can be used for that. If it is a paid event then I can see where controlling access would be needed. The 10 second delay above should be sufficient means, but if immediate no access was needed, maybe something could be done to have it expire in say, 4 hours. That way people could control access for special purposes, but for the majority of the time, access would be open.

Stopping objects from passing across a parcel may be a slight aid in stopping object griefing, but to be honest, I have not seen a real attack of that kind in months, and so what if my parcel is immune, during an attack of that kind, the sim is unusable due to the lag they cause. Until the objects are removed, there is no point in being on my parcel. So - remove the ability to prevent the passage of objects across a parcel.

DRD

The primary reason I live on the mainland is because I don't want anyone telling me what I can and can't build or the possibility that the sim owner can randomly kick me out, lose interest in SL and abandon their land, etc.

On the other hand, I also don't build things with the sole intention of annoying my neighbors and am a reasonable person willing to listen and make an accommodation if possible since my taste is not everyone else's taste. If someone nearby has something I don't want to see, I will try to discuss it first (however, that has not worked for me one single time) so I either cover it up with a textured on one side wall or reduce my draw distance. Those two things have taken care of a few minor problems but won't solve all of them (like the ad farms and low hanging skyboxes and sky trash).

SOME zoning is not a terrible idea but I just don't see how it would be feasible. Perhaps a small amount of newly created sims, far in the future, that are zoned purely residential or purely commercial with the majority not zoned at all might work. However, the great thing about mainland is mixed zones. You just have to be lucky enough to have good neighbors and patience. Which can happen, just not most the time.

Zoning, just on newly created sims, would require a huge amount of manhours to monitor and enforce the covenant. On existing mainland? I can't even begin to imagine how that would work.

Something more helpful is to move mature and pg sims onto different continents. I've never understood why there are pg sims to start with since we are all adults. However, I understand some people would like to live without a sex club next door. So, having pg and mature sims side by side completely defeats the purpose of pg sims if all they have to do is look out their window to the next sim.

On existing mainland, a slow changeover to basic zoning as sims become empty(ish) might work but I think that would take years because suddenly changing the rules on existing landowners is not acceptable. However, making extortion and visual spam illegal, and then actually enforcing it, will go a long way toward making the existing mainland a much more resident friendly place and maybe even encourage people to buy land or buy more land.

But, in my opinion, the first step should be to clean up the existing mainland before any more thought is given to new sims, zoning, themed sims or anything else. And certainly do not flood the market with these "new" sims until most of the existing mainland is sold.

So, first find some way to get rid of those obnoxious, useless signs that serve no purpose but to annoy, regardless of the size of the plot they are on. Advertising is not a bad thing but those signs are not advertising, they are simply a nuisance. Legitimate businesses that advertise have to know by now that no one looks at those things and are harming them more than helping. I don't know the solution to this problem although there have been many good suggestions that, combined with other suggestions, can probably take care of the problem. Of course people that simply want to extort and annoy will find other ways to do so but that is a later problem that will have to be solved when it comes up, take care of this one for now.

I have been waiting almost three months for a parcel in one of my sims to come up for auction. I think that land had been abandoned for probably a year before I submitted a ticket and offered to buy it but was told it was over 512 so it had to be at auction and it would appear "in a few weeks". :till waiting waiting waiting:: I can't believe that the land that ends up at auction can't be recycled faster and/or offered to other landowners in the same sim FIRST and all without anyone having to file a support ticket. I don't know a way that can be automated but I'm sure the people that could create something as complex as SL could figure it out.

Go through landowning accounts and contact anyone who has not logged in for the past six months. They've probably forgotten SL exists and never look at their credit card bill. Then quickly recycle the land of people who do actually want to cancel their accounts by offering it first to other landowners in the sim before putting up for general auction.

Require that sky builds must be above a certain height.

There is nothing you can do about active landowners who choose not to clean their land/sky of other people's discarded junk. However, Gov. Linden owned land should have 5 or 10 min auto return on by default. Land that has very inactive owners can be cleaned of non-landowner owned junk on a case by case basis upon request.

Etc. Etc. Etc. In other words, clean up and fix what you have already before moving on to new things. Be as precise as possible in the rules and enforce them evenly and quickly, improve abuse reporting communications, make a commitment to put your existing customers first and your constant search for new customers second and, if necessary, set up some voting system (announced here, on the blog and in-world) for changes and see how interested your current customers are in those changes before implementing them.

Posting here in the forum was a good start and I think you're probably seeing things you did not expect. Good luck!

let me preface this with i am *not* directly advocating this... certainly not without a real discussion on whom would all be significantly impacted....

But ok... the problem with 16sqm advetrising/extortion is the same as with spam email.. the 'cost' of doing it is so tiny that even meager response/successful extortion more than financially 'justifies' the practice...

so the technical solution has to be to make it more expensive to do than you are likely to make by doing the practice... while hopefully minimally (if at all) impacting tjose *not* doing it...

clearly raiaing tier in general will *not* succeed as it willkimpact legitimate users more than adverscammers. also minimum *plot* size changes as have been mentioned earlier, will impact too many legit uses like reshaping plots etc...

so a new idea... minimum *sim* tier... i.e. instead of making the minimum tier by account be 512, which could be split across 32 sims, make that minimum apply per *sim*. i.e. if you own land in sim x, sim x charges a minimum of 512 sqm to your accounts tier. if you own 16sqm in 32 sims and use their resources your cost would be thirty two times higher than someone who owns one 512sqm 'newbie' plot and is using the resources of just one sim.

clearly many people will feel 'some' impact, maybe a few exra sqm tier if they are legit... but it would likely be a small cost to them, compared to a *huge* cost to scammertizers... perhaps so huge that they will not be able to extort enough money to continue to play 'flip this parcel' with legit users hard earned cash.

again i am not socially advocating this be *the* solution, but i do think technically this is *a* solution, and one that would be fairly likely to work.

basically assume everyone owning *some* land in a sim is using a certain minimum of its resources, irrespective of parcel size, and charge them accordingly.

I completely agree with this. And, for an example of just such a junk heap that needs auto return turned on, have a look here...

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Glenboon/151/16/45

As a long time mainland owner and content creator I would like to know if there is a possibility that I am going to be forced to build a residential premises against my wishes should the area be declared as residential.

If this is the case do I get the option to sell my land at a good price as opposed to being forced to accept deflated prices due to forced sales.

I bought land on the mainland specifically because there was NO COVENANT and I was free to build what I wished on the land.

THIS IS A FANTASY LIFE AND SHOULD HAVE MORE FREEDOM NOT MORE RULES
real life has far too many rules already so why make our leisure time the same.

You may as well build endless rows of tower blocks so lots of people can live on top of each other and all have the same bland styling. that way nobody can complain

As many have said LL don't help when required are we now going to see uniformed LINDENS patrolling telling us we have a light showing at night or that we must observe the curfew.

You would be far better employed making useful changes to the inventory window so we don't keep dropping items into the wrong folder when they open unexpectedly or making it so we can change permissions on a group of items instead of the tiresome single item method we are currently saddled with. Oh sorry cant do that as you have to change something else on the UI that nobody wants.

Except that you are misrepresenting what I am saying in your rebuttal. If something is "inside" or aimed towards the residents/visitors of a particular venue, parcel, location, then I am perfectly fine with it. Vendors, for sale boxes (even small ones put outside in a "yard sale" fashion), billboards INSIDE venues, all those forms of "advertising" I am good with. What I am NOT good with is advertising which is placed with the intention that *I* or my customers MUST see it. IE, it is specifically aimed to "reach" me on my plot, and our my neighbors on their plots. If someone sticks your "ad game" on an externally-viewable billboard which is blatantly intended to include me on my land in its view reach, then it is just as bad as any of the other adfarm billboards out there and should be ganked along with them. There are exceptions; I never said there weren't, and any "absolutionist" take on what I am saying is purely your own fabrication. If you want to know the exact nature of the stance I support, read it here: http://etakeh-oh.net/adless/?page_id=5 Go to the last proposal on that page.

The point is, if it is advertising, and it is intended to "reach" me on MY land because of its placement/size/orientation/whatever, I consider it harassment, and want it gone. Period. End of story. Unsolicited commercial advertising is the very definition of spam. If I am in my home or even my place of business, and I have advertising spam foisted upon me, it is harassment, pure and simple.



A "fair" advertising framework is one where residents OPT-IN to seeing advertisement. I am all for advertising which respects the rights of all residents to not have to see it if they don't want to see it, and to choose when to see it, most especially when they are on their own land.

Is there no policy to let landowners know when reclaimed land adjacent to them is to be auctioned? We waited for adjacent reclaimed land to be auctioned, but land grabbers beat us to it, even though we scanned the listings looking for the for the auction date and it never showed. Could there possibly be an auction black market in these small plots that have been reclaimed by Linden ?
We had to pay through the nose to buy it from the land baron, who no doubt got it for a rock bottom price, and made a very quick profit on it.

Also, could there be some rule to limit the height of walls and screens built on land borders A 100 metre high screen was built right on the border of our garden and we could do nothing about it. Griefing reports we filed were ignored by Linden.

And can I add my request to all the rest of the pleas, and say.....please please get rid of the advertisers and their ugly pornographic or flashing signs. They make living on the mainland Hell for all of us.

Get rid of them. If someone wants their land private let them spend 100 L's and buy a security orb. I do ban people who put up ban lines around their land. The funny thing is they IM me wanting to know why I added them to my ban list.
Ad farms don't bother me, I just don't buy land around them, If one sits up around me I just block them with trees!
Zoning should be on new sims.
My main gripe is the low price of mainland. Drop tier, get more paying accounts, more land would be sold and price go up some.