Feedback on the Mainland

Agreed. We have three parcels with an absentee owner and permanent banlines that have been sticking like a wedge into the side of our builds on Noonkkot for at least a year and a half. We periodically try and contact the owners, with no response, but so long as the owner's account is valid we're not going to call for their removal.

"Freedom" implies "responsibility" or, more specifically, "responsible exercise of said freedom". That goes especially for when other people are involved.

Arguably, you have much more freedom on a private estate as the owner than you do as the owner of a mainland parcel or sim, because you have *drum roll* neighbors.

Your freedoms end where mine begin. Usually at the parcel boundary, but sometimes beyond that.

As such, the mainland is less "free" than an estate can be, so arguing for mainland to remain "free" is really just a plea at the altar of anarchy. For me, that particular plea falls on deaf earfins.

Not unless in return people who own land on private sims get Linden-enforced equity in the sims. I've had one build vanish out from under me when the sim got sold out from under me, with no recourse, and a friend of mine "bought" land on a private sim and had the estate owner take it back with no recourse.

If you want the same rights as Governor Linden on the mainland, you need to give parcel owners the same rights as Governor Linden's tenants, with no way to weasel out.

My only gripe with LL is over the lack of enforcement of adfarms. I'm not against advertisement, or of owning one's own business, or how individuals choose to earn money in SL. What irks me is that there are residents whose profiles clearly state that their only reason for being involved in SL is for adfarm extortion, and they brag about their ability to cut land into micro plots and resell the property at hugely inflated prices. I have two adfarmers currently trying to sell 16m-32m plots for 999L to 4,600L next to my property and my neighbors' properties. No matter how much I AR the offense, nothing happens. In fact, more have popped up. And this is all next to a Linden road and Linden maintenance areas.

I like the Mainland. I don't want to be forced out, but everytime I land at my home, I feel a little angry that no one has done, nor do they seem to care, that the adfarm extortionists are taking over.

I know some estate owners who would like that as well... because they can't easily tell where some tenant has put up ban lines so they have to wait for someone to notify them to do anything about them.

There are no banlines to tell noobs why they cannot fly when they reach the edge of the world or an island, surely we are granting noobs with no respect if thats the only reason banlines show with the red lines, that are being used as harassment tools.
Darrens idea of a simple pop up notice would be so much less intrusive and could also be used for the green pay to enter lines which are just as intrusive btw

There is always going to be someone who complains lol....... I sat last night putting together a History in pictures of The Blue Note Retro Jazz Lounge ~ which was on mainland for a very long time and I fought long and hard to keep in ON MAINLAND... without buying the entire sim.... because honestly, I couldnt afford it. (you know, even cool clubs dont make loads of money on their own)

I remember when this started *grins* ... all too well .... back in early 2006... as the Telehubs had been removed and Prokafy shook his angry stick and said ...... *look at the reparations of this move..... pay attention to what will happen* .... *grins* I know so many folks hate him for being such a sign bearer and loudly at that.... but it WAS TRUE..... and what he said would happen ... did happen..... and so there I was arguing with some TrickeyGuy..... about courtesy .... and how could he move his DJ business behind my club ... which lagged us to a near halt on the sim???? It ended up with a war that I wasnt willing to fight....... because I knew what was happening ... and that Prok was right ..... this was a movement towards the future.... but it would have a devastating effect on all mainland ..... and as with all decisions about Second Life...... They have a purpose. Cleaning up Mainland and zoning it commercial vs. residential would be great .... Honestly, It wouldnt have helped me any because even as a club who only had one huge event a week..... we still would be thrown into the masses with laggy mall builds etc....... *but* ...... if there were sims that were zoned residential and I needed to downsize.... I would consider mainland pricing... when finding a spot to put a home up for myself....... This is what they are looking at... *Making Mainland Marketable again* ....

Think about this? .. Right now...... Mainland doesnt even look good to new folks. Who wants to buy a home of your own if there are crazy glowing orange spinning cubes next to you? This is a move that will ensure profitablity for Mainland and if we want to keep it in existance...... This needs to happen.... Slowly of course ..... because you cant just kick people out of their homes that they currently own ...... but you can .. with close inspection and as sims open up.... change them to commercial only or residential only.... and add the code into the software that doesnt allow for people to buy a 16m piece of land unless they already own at least 512m on the land.

Change is never simple folks.........but it happens and you have to learn to grow WITH your Second Life...... if you dont move and change with the changes... you are just trying to hold back progress. This is a very positive effort on behalf of Linden Labs and I for one send them all the Best Wishes On this Project!

~ Naynay

I think this is good news all around. I bought my first parcel in Snafu and have expanded over the last two years, and, I intend to keep the land I do have there. I would like to see a way for us (as land owners) to partition Governor Linden (or a Linden) to ask for some changes such as getting some open (protected) water at our end of the continent. As it stands now, we have no idea how to do that. It would also be great if all of us had 'on line' help and had access to in world Lindens for help. For the RL money that many of us are spending to be here, I think we are entitled to have in world help if needed. That was taken away some time ago and that was a mistake on the part of Linden Labs (my opinion). I don't think it is fair that one has to purchase an island or sim to get that kind of help, that should be available to everyone who owns land regardless of size.

In any event, it is good to hear that Linden labs will be taking an active role in the mainland, guess we will just have to wait and see what comes of it.

Have you ever tried placing a Linden tree near a wall? It's remarkably tricky, at least with default tree LOD settings: if you cam out far enough to see what you're doing, the damned tree will morph into it's far-far-away shape, which is always way smaller than the close-up shape. And then the slightest llWind() makes even a perfectly placed non-overlapping tree drift into any nearby prim. Point is: tree-planter may have no idea there could be a problem. Not that this actually helps in any useful way. Several possibilities here, but the most likely is that there's a height irregularity in the land at that stripe, and that the sun is lighting it differently some parts of the day cycle. With WindLight, those differences can be quite dramatic.

Sorry Tuvok, it will turn SL into Lord of the Flies. Hundreds of members left various VRML-based Blaxxun communities which had people in charge of hierarchies of areas. The same things happened to all of them, and in the end someone becomes the king of nothing while everybody moves on, usually to Second Life.



Well when I reported a lag issue - lag? we couldnt move at certain times of the day when I lived in Olexandrovich - all support could say was "there's no lag NOW" and there were no tools with which to check logs in a region at specified times to pinpoint the source of excessive scripts or resource hogging. I sure hope you mean to change that.

It'a about time LL stepped in and started to deal with the clutter. I for one will never own mainland seeing how there is so much clutter and crap everywhere. I hate it. If they regulated ad farms and regulated plot sizes maybe I'd be more apt to look at mainland. For now I'll pass. I find it laughable whne people like Austin Hallarad claim to work within the TOS yet are clearly extortionists. Those kind of foul miscreants need to be run off SL. Once they are, then I MIGHT consider owning mainland.

I'm glad to see LL address the problem issue of the Main Land, for too long it was been ignored and really needs to be tended to.

I think zoning is a great idea. Keep residential and commercial apart - to an extent. There's no harm having a "mixed bag" sim, just like you'd find in RL.

What would also be really nice to see is more "protected land" and "protected coastlines" along the mainland. Even "protected roads/rivers" would be nice. It would make navigating much easier and without having to encroach on other peoples land and getting booted off by a security system.

Back-to-back parcels mean there is no clear way to wander around. I know this would mean a cost in terms of "lost" land to roads/rivers, etc but I think this would far outweigh the clutter and junk we so often see around.

Give people a "template" to work to/from and let the rest come from there...

First of all... the problem is not "advertising". The problem is "spam". The million 16m square adfarm parcels that nobody actually looks at are not "advertising" any more than email spam that everyone filters out is "advertising". It's a con game with multiple victims. Ad farms are not "essential", they're a scam.Not through spam. The people who advertise through spammers, the ones who would otherwise be considered legitimate businesses, are just as much victims of the spammers. They spend money on advertising that produces few sales and much negative publicity, and in some cases find themselves the target of lawsuits.

So while I agree that banning *content* won't help, restrictions that reduce the tools that spammers and other scammers use to extract money from victims... like parcel-based muting, and restrictions on automated sale of small plots... very likely will.
There's only one big Linden event every few months. Advertisers would do better putting ad signs up in clubs where people actually hang out... and, hey, they do, and the money they spend helps subsidize the clubs! And they're not "Coke" or "Pepsi", they're small businesses selling stuff that people actually want to buy!

And a big **** you, mister spammer. We've had our land for two years, we own most of a sim now, which we have cleaned up parcel by parcel until there are no longer *any* adfarms in it. So what happens? More adfarms along the borders! Thank Linden for invisiprims, that's all I can say.

I agree with you that the restrictions need to be content-insensitive. But restrictions, alas, there need to be. May they have more sense and more success than the ones against email spam.

Um, no, pretty much everything Prokofy said would happen didn't happen.

And removing the telehubs didn't make adfarms happen. Adfarms are the result of the Bush Sign Guy getting away with it. They'd have happened anyway.

And bad as ad farms are, would you really go back to teleporting somewhere and waiting fifteen minutes for the 100 meter high maze of malls around the telehub to rez before you could see a way out?

"Hands off Strategy Fails" - Who's fault is this?

On the mainland there are no covenants a failed Hands off Lindens Policy!
On private sims if there is an issue between land owners and estate owners "A Estate manager can do whatever they want we don't get involved in that" - A failed hands off Linden Policy!

Every Society needs Rules and Regulations and some system to enforce them.

A five point plan that would take days to implement and show immediate results

1. Level the prices take a profit but make it reasonable
2. Put mainland Sims in the hands of private estate owners
3. Concierge team/Governor Linden act as Overseers and Dispute Arbitrators.
4. Give all Estate owners the tools they need (Same tools Linden support has)
5. Let the law of Supply and Demand work without interferance

Duke

Do that and I would dump my land and exit SL faster than you could say the word EXIT.

Thanks but NO THANKS!

Number 2 sounds like the end of mainland. If it's under control of private estate owners, it's really not mainland any more.

Mainland is, by definition, not a private estate.

Yeah hence my post back on page 10, if every time you owned land in a sim, it charged you a minimum 512sqm tier, those 'spam' advertisements/extprtion scams, would suddenly be unprofitable, without drastically affecting legit sim land owners (i.e. no matter how little land you own in a sim, the smallest your 'tier' could get would be 512sqm for that sim)

because it is spam, and the only way to deal with spam is to make it cost more than it profits, then it goes away

So why would you leave if landlords were given a set of rules wherby they could not take peoples money and then kick them out, if the congierge team had a right of arbitration.

I am an estate owner, and I would welcome that. my tenants stay because I do not overcharge, and I am willing to help.
I am very confused as to why you dont like the idea?

Nooooo.... I wasnt talking about adfarms at all.....

When the telehubs were removed..... folks no longer attempted to keep all the commercial places close to them....... that is what I was saying...... and that was what removed the barrier between commercial areas and residential at the time. No one expected to do a good level of business if you had to fly 800m to get to it.

It'd better to deal with LL and its processes directly on a zoning dispute than some landlord who can kick you off and ban/mute you for an alleged breach of the covenant.

There is no arbitration for the situation where you stop paying for the sim and/or disappear.

LL is not going to get into the habit of adopting orphaned regions.

That is the whole point of the arbitration, so i am still confused, the complaint was that estate owners can take your money and run, with LL arbitration that is no longer possible.

How long does it take now to get a direct answer from LL about anything,
How long does it take to get a direct answer from an estate manager.

the results would be more security for anyone renting ANY land, and the same amount of time for arbitration, BUT an instant answer from the estate manager.

Believe me, estate owners are here to make a profit, they will not do that by losing customers. LL do not have the time or the resourses to help individuals, estate owners/managers HAVE to MAKE time.

I think the post was related more to enforced covenants than property risks. I read it as such, at least.

The only real purpose I can see to putting private estate owners in control of mainland is to create covenants and planned communities. Doing so, however, would defeat the entire purpose for many residents. Being forced to comply to some covenant or community planning (of which I probably would have little say in) by whoever happens to be given authority over the particular sims would ruin it for me. I bought land and build to be creative (within TOS guidelines of course). If I'm not allowed to do so, then I may as well sell it all and use the money for something else.

Jack,

I'm really happy to see now LL is seriously considering implementing zoning beyond the "mature vs. pg" parcel and sim ratings. For a year now, I have suggested zoning various times at office hours and other venues for community feedback (such as the blog) and my suggestions were always simply ignored.

The problem with the mainland is lack of effective zoning and infrastructure. Sims are divided up into plots with little or no rights of ways and so you end up with a bunch of lots all crowded together and the place looks like a kindergarten sandbox from a third world country. That destroys value! Bay City is a good example of a change from that pattern but it is too FLAT! Have Philip drive around and look at whats been done to RL Oahu vs. Maui. Check out Haiku and up country Makawao and Haleakala. Look at Kula. The best places are not flat This is Second Life, not RL, theres no need to simulate the same economic problems in RL and pack residents like sardines into places that look like Beretania Street.

I think generally the zoning should not be too restrictive (community building guidelines) but it would be nice to have some places where property line setbacks are enforced and even some mixed agricultural/residential zones which help maintain forest/jungle feeling of a place.