Feedback on the Mainland

After reading the thread thus far and seeing several replies from Jack this does sound very promising. My major concerns involving the mainland at present are the ad farms/extortionists and parcel encroachment (I don't personally have a problem with this at present but many residents do). The latter is apparently already being worked out for a future upgrade and it seems LL is becoming serious about figuring out a compromise for the former.

The only other issue is regarding the incomplete infrastructure which would be very nice to have finished eventually.

Out of this discussion I see frequent concerns about retroactively zoning the current mainland. This post from earlier seems to address the issue already:

*IF* retroactive zoning is made available to existing mainland, it will be opt-in and thus almost certainly require the consensus of all landowners in a region. It can't really be done any other way without causing more problems and strife than it fixes. If you do not wish to be zoned, simply say so and that would be that. There's still no guarantee they will ever do retroactive zoning, in which case the whole issue would be moot for current owners.

No matter whether a real or virtual city, top-down zoning restricts creativity. Although started with the best of intentions, zoning guidelines applied wholesale on a global scale often cannot anticipate unique and local conditions.

Especially when the criteria for establishing the guidelines in the first place is based solely on aesthetics.

How about instead of a top down enforcement of some arbitrary determination of what and/or how someone can build or advertise, you make these decision more localized. That is, create some voting mechanism that neighbors can use to vote up or down certain aspects of their neighbor's build.

If for example, a set of prims (used to display some advertisement for example) was voted down by enough of the neighbors in the area, those prims (advertisement) could no longer be displayed.

In this sense a neighbor's 'voting potency' would be inversely proportionate to how far they where away from the partial in question. That is, the further away a neighbor was from a particular parcel, the less their vote would count toward any type of issue on this property.

Putting the authority of establishing the local and flexible code in the hands of the immediate community will make it much more enforceable as well. Lindens will spend less time referring and enforcement of the code.

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On another totally different idea.

How about introducing shards?

That is, any one parcel could have many different iterations. The iteration of a parcel that is most popular with the local community is the default parcel seen by any avatar that is generically exploring Second Life... call it the top tier parcel

If, however, a particular land owner is hell bent on keeping their parcel as is, they have the option of inviting people into a less popular shard (tier) of the parcel. (which could be hosted on another server, capable of less concurrency)

If, however, the popularity of this less popular shard (tier) increases beyond a certain point, it could inturn become the top tier (default) parcel.

With shards, the community at large could determine what type of universe they would like to play in, but individuals or small groups could still render their own iteration of this universe and invite others to occupy or play their version of the game. I would imagine what you would start seeing is an emergent phenomenon where these small individual shards would grow in popularity to the point they would either merge with the overall community or branch off into another “game” in and of itself.

Perhaps, in tying in with the ideas outlined above, the owner's 'voting potency' is directly proportional to the popularity of their particular shard iteration.

Another approach to this idea, would be to allow individuals and groups to pick and compose those sets of partial shards they would like to see together.

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Just some ideas. Eitherway, top-down zoning will unavoidably restrict creativity because no matter how nuanced they are, wholesale zoning guidelines can never anticipate unique and local conditions. In this sense, a more bottom-up approach would be able to address the myriad of conditions more thoroughly ... especially when the criteria is solely based in aesthetics.

Being able to back up an entire plot, rather than an simulator, would be a huge help in this cleanup effort... so things can be restored if necessary. It'd also let us back up our precious work (and restore easily after prims decide to drift).

Talarus: thanks for the further clarification.

Regards,

-Flip

OK I see your point there, however, the zoning would be controlled by LL, not the estate managers, as is done in private sims, the owners decide the covenant, not the managers.

I like the idea of zoned communities, and unzoned areas. However, unzoned does not have to mean unfriendly, merely eclectic.

LL are themselves now talking about enforcing covenants, and I can only see this as a good thing, you choose to live in a place where the covenant suits the lifestyle you wish to lead.

If you want to live in a completely lawless area where ad farms are everywhere, i am sure LL will zone an area for that

Obviously there will be problems at the start where some people will maybe find themselves in an unwelcome zoned area, that is a problem that will take time to resolve.

You know... I love the diversity of the Mainland, too, and the ability to build something that may not fit into somebody else's genre. But honest to God, *something* has to be done or there's just gonna be nothing left of Sansara but Linden Village, Brown/Boardman/Bay City and 16sq.m. microparcels. And just shore-to-shore microparcels on the other continents.

And, really, if the covenants end up being too restrictive on the Mainland, go for it: sell out and buy on some free-for-all Estate somewhere. It's a free market. And most importantly, LL is free to make a profit on the Mainland as a business--it's not required to run it as a crypto-Anarchist dystopia of competitive ugliness.

(My hang-up is that covenants and zoning are neither necessary nor sufficient to deal with the main problem, which is the ad/extortion rings. And that problem is easily solvable; it only takes some gumption.)

A good point, however if the regions were controlled by estate owners/ managers, and the owner just left or could not pay, at present the sim is taken back and everyone is kicked out.
With the new rules working, the sim would then be offered to the other estate managers to purchase as a new sim, but with sitting tenants with rights.

Or even added to the mainland, with sitting tenants, LL would have the tier paid.

The amount of people with the resources to own a full sim is limited, despite the explosion in estate land. Most of the private islands are actual nonprofit organizations, and there are many estates with multiples of their own islands, especially with more useful openspaces. What if none of the other managers can afford it? What then? An ownership model that is completely dependent on individuals with varying levels of commitment/business sense/common sense is a dangerous thing.

My point exactly. Well stated. Thank you.

Believe me, estate owners would be waiting in line to take on a sim with sitting tenants
And the whole point of the arbitration is that there will be no bad landlords.
The only bad landlord is the one that lets people dump rubbish all over the sim, has people shouting all over the area, allows spinning sale signs, stupidly huge ugly buildings etc.
Does that remind you of anyone??

Heh, Cel Edman posted a great graphic on SLUniverse I thought I'd share:

http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Eelout/sldiv/eyesore_001.jpg

Enjoy.

Appologies Duke, I seem to have hijacked your ideas
But I am in full agreement with them, Private estate owners have the time and the experience to run things for the benefit of the customers, not just for the bottom line.

Just another idea to throw out there:

I would not be opposed to a single person per sim who had the power to report problems and abuses and their report would be given higher priority than a random person. They would not have the power to do anything more than report these problems and abuses to LL and, perhaps, try to contact the offending person before reporting them if they wanted to try and resolve it person to person first, although that would not be a requirement.

These primary contact people would be flagged in the reporting system or have a special tag or something that would trigger their report as a priority. If they are crazy nutbars who abuse this priority reporting privilege by reporting irrelevant things or with the intent to harass someone, it would quickly be noticed and they could then be removed.

This would not prevent everyone else from filing reports of their own but it might streamline the process a little for genuine complaints and problems including parcel encroachment, TOS violations, ad farms, visual spam, inappropriate content, etc.

As each person per sim was chosen, their name would be added by LL and go in the "covenant" portion for the sim so landholders would know who to contact to make the report.

How this person is chosen would be an issue but maybe something like it is first offered to the person who owned the most land in the sim or had been in SL longest. They can accept it or pass. Then the person who had the next largest amount of land or longest tenure and so on. Some people will simply have neither the time nor desire to be a primary contact person. But that is all they would be: a central contact person and someone whose reports to LL are given priority investigation. They would not be an estate manager. They would have power over their own land as usual, but nothing else.

At first it would be a big job as probably every landholder in every sim has a complaint about something. But as these issues were investigated and dealt with, that would ease over time.

Of course this would not work as well in sims where no one wanted to be the central contact or the land ownership turnover could be measured in weeks, if that long. But I think some of the longer term land owners, regardless of the size of their plots, would welcome having a central contact person who could streamline the reporting and, therefore, in theory, have their complaint dealt with sooner than having to gather all their friends to file dozens of AR's just to get noticed. And I think there are probably a lot of landowners who, for the sake of making the mainland a better place to live and work, would be willing to take on the job, at least for a short time.

LL might appreciate having a priority investigation list and a single contact person per sim also.

Shouting has occasional legit uses (mostly on a case by case basis) -- but by and large it's just bad scripting practice -- or a subtle form of harassment.

I already pointed out the problem with this. You responded by repeating, near as I can tell, the same message.

If I have 4096 meters on the mainland, so long as I pay tier on that, I keep my 4096 meters. Nothing less than the end of SL changes that.

If I have 4096 meters on an estate, I keep it at the whim of the estate manager. I've seen that whim abused too often. I've been lucky with my landlady, so far, and I would recommend Alliez Mysterio any day. But there's been plenty of screwed up estate managers... and I've seen plenty of people kicked out of land with no recourse because the estate was sold out from under them.

If you can't come up with a solution to that problem, don't expect anyone to rally to your banner.

First of all, what makes you think that I'm objecting to "removing the barrier between commercial and residential areas"?
That's why we created scripted high-speed taxis, the distant ancestors of our in-sim teleporters today.

You have never had to deal with a real "bad landlord" in SL, I see.

Presently I have coastal area with water access and built a business associated with it on mainland.. I was recently noticed the OPEN water ..protected land,was renamed and appeared to be now going to be set for sale. I contacted Linden support and was told...

Mystiphi_Giha: was corscia_reg
Mystiphi_Giha: that doesn't let me know if they intend on selling it tho
Mystiphi_Giha: well if it isnt now, i am thinkin in the near future it might, I have people that just paid rent for a few months
Rika: Just a moment please
Mystiphi_Giha: kk
Rika: I have received the official word that this land WILL at some point in time, when we don't know, be set to auction.

So those of us who built businesses associated ahead of time with coastal land unless we have one of these new convenents are gonna be out of luck ??? This land was purchased because it was coastal.

How about, just like real life, Linden Lab provide standardized advertising billboards along their roads and rent out this space.

There is nothing to say anywhere what is coastal today will be coastal tomorrow. As they expand continents they often do this.

The safest way I have found to almost be sure you get permanent coastal is to buy on a "finished" continent, or buy well out into the water as well.

Even these aren't safe though.

I would really like to Know what the legit purpose would be. enforce it and the ads would go away or become more costly.

Hosting various kinds of servers is one, eg OnRez, Slexchange, Hippovend. (put them in your main location? err of course, but how about a backup in a distant region or two for when yours is down)

Another is a TP point, although I use a 64sqm plot myself, for when I want to direct people to a particular point at my place besides the main landing zone when they arrive from out of the sim.

There are probably more, but these are the two I use small plots for.

Well for the last year or more its all been corisca_reg and was referred to Protected Land. and was open water.. Recently a good % has been named. As of this month I will have been there 1yr.

I am getting 2 different stories and really would like a LINDEN to let me know the situation. Otherwise I have to close my business, and return slip rental $.

The single biggest irritant and the thing that keeps me off the mainland is banlines. I hate running into those #@%$! things, but you can't really see them from a distance to avoid them. So you start out trying to explore a region, you end up bouncing off of the barely-visible red lines, and then you teleport to the welcoming bosom of your home on a private island vowing never to return to the accursed mainland.

I have in the past suggested a somewhat controversial feature in the SL client. If we have to have banlines, could we have the option to turn on "Highly Visible Banline Mode?" This would make banned parcels appear as giant opaque red cubes that can be seen from a distance and avoided. If I can't enter a parcel I don't care what's in it anyway. For me, this visual blight would be preferable to bouncing off banned parcels like a pinball.

The "corsica_reg*" regions were never going to stay "protected land". The whole continent of Corsica was originally just region after region named "corsica_reg*". As time went on, they've all been renamed to their final names and given their final roles.

And private estates won't give you any protection from this. Even well-managed ones. THe person who owned the sim to the south of my island land just moved out, and the whole sim was closed. Now it's being moved away, replacing the nice open well-sculpted sim with the void.

When we had group land on an island, during the period that we were renting there, we had a side parcel facing void.

Then the sim moved, and hooked up with another sim, and our side parcel became an inland parcel facing a huge ugly full-bright temple.

Then they gave us the opportunity to tear down our build and rebuild it in a corner, because they wanted to expand someone else's parcel. This was a "take it or leave" deal. We agreed that we would get similar terrain to work with, with both sand and green ground.

Then another renter complained that his beach had been turned into grass, so all our green was turned back to sand. He asked us why we'd moved onto the beach when we didn't want to be on the beach! He thought we'd deliberately moved...

We got the land types straightened out, and were rebuilding it when half the terraforming was redone to accommodate another renter. So we adapted to that.

Then the sim moved again, next to one of the busiest sims out there. We had to set up a wall of trees with one-way invisiprims hidden in them to keep our FPS dropping by a factor of four when we went on our previously lag-free land.

Then the sim got sold to someone else, and everyone had to move out. No recourse.

Thank your lucky stars you're on the mainland.

I have a 32sm plot with my home rental vendor on it. That small piece is listed in places search but the larger plot where my home is, is not.

I did have a 128 sm plot carved out that had a rather loud fountain and bench on it. I liked the look and enjoyed the sound when I went to sit there but the noise from the fountain was sometimes overwhelming since it could be heard pretty far away. I put it on its own little plot and restricted the sound to just that plot and that worked out well while it was there.

I have carved out many less than 512 plots for various purposes but mainly for issues of places listings, sound settings and the ability to have different media settings in my workshop (less than 512), my "crypt" (less than 512), an office (less than 512), etc.

Those are just some of the things I'VE used it for. I'm sure other people have other non-advertising uses as well.