Feedback on the Mainland

Weedy, we are ALL stuck in the middle of this mess; we're all trying to work our way out of it. No one here is avoiding suffering at the hands of the parasites, and it is high time that suffering was reversed.

Please don't spam Jack..

I agree.

We get vertically blocked all the time. You'd be amazed how some people obsess over blocking an empty 16 plot. We never, ever report these violations unless they seriously overlap our land. The saddest part of all this being, its the neighbors themselves who have to live and look at the blockage.

Horizontal blockage and giant prims are a different story, most times an simple IM will get them removed.

We have also considered a comment by Talarus yesterday and have decided lift the freeze and re-open requests for land trades. IM me or Dave or drop us a notecard.

No, they are listening to far more than those posting here; they've been yelled at by many people who have never even been to the forums; I know, I have seen them at his Office Hours over the last 4 months.

It's also a "myth" about "the forum few" not being representative of the masses. In fact, you will find that the forums ARE a fairly accurate representation of the feelings and desires of the greater playerbase; that's been observed in other online communities as well. Statistical sampling of the forum userbase will not differ significantly via polling than from the greater in-world userbase.



A lot of us are representing the views of our friends and fellow residents who either do not have the time or the desire to muck around in the forums, but are still quite willing to express their views in aggregate. You will still find quite a wide array of views posted here in this thread, as well as many of the threads in Resident Answers and elsewhere, even including ones from the parasites themselves.

Also, as said earlier, this situation is nothing new, and this forum discussion is simply the thinnest dusting of snow on an Everest-sized effort over the last two years. In addition, the issue is far more complex than any simple login or forum poll can represent.

Even if he asked us to?

I must have missed that part - I did leave 5 minutes before his hour was up.

Large parts of the mainland are a city planner's worst nightmare, and are quite frankly a blot on the landscape. I think there should be similar controls on what and how people build on the mainland, that some residents impose on their sims through the land covenant. The mainland would also be a much better place if restrictions on how low sky boxes and other objects could be over land. These are the biggest eyesore on the mainland and if residents were compelled to place them high enough to be out of sight the view across the mainland would be hugely improved.

I also find those red barriers people put up on their land a serious hinderance to moving around and are very ugly, especially when residents could easily use a one prim device to eject people who are lingering about their land for more than say ten seconds.

These issues have driven me from the mainland so I now live on a privately owned island where I do not continually bump into red barriers or have a view blighted by some monstrosity floating in mid air (there is no reason why residents can't apply some aesthetic critique to their builds). It would be a relief to see Lindens beautifying some parts of the mainland through the proposed changes and hopefully reclaim it for all residents once more.

I agree that something should be done with the adcutters but I think that they should not restrict what people can build and do with their land. I keep hearing in some of these posts people who mostly want to tell their neighbors what they can build on their own land. As far as the land value, no one has a right to make a profit on speculating. Its always a risk. I just hope that Jack Linden will clarify that existing mainland will not be zoned retroactivly, just the new sims will be zoned ( I think thats what he meant in his origanl post). After all we bought land that had no covent.

My partner and I have each owned mainland since 2005, in several areas, and have used it for residential, commercial and gallery space. I realize we're in the minority, but neither of us has ever had many issues at all with neighboring plots. When there's an issue, we talk to the neighbors, or they talk to us, and we work it out, all civilized-like. Some of my best friends in SL have been my random neighbors. (I was just talking with friends the other night about how it was so much easier to meet people when there were first land plots, because you were tossed into a neighborhood and had to see interesting things while you got your feet wet. Shame that's gone now.)

Anyway, why not put it to a vote in each sim, weighted by how many square meters you own? Grandfather in the ones who disagree (ie, the minority) and when their land goes up for sale, it goes up with the new covenant in place. It'll take a while to weed it out that way, but it's hardly unfair and if people have been living with mainland blight for a while, a few more months won't hurt them.

But I agree with previous posters in that if you enact this rule for new mainland and don't do much to clean up the old stuff, you're going to create a lovely gap in the prices between the two. Hopefully you realize a lot of your mainlanders are old school residents and don't do that to them.

As far as ad farms, I think Ingrid Ingersoll had a fab suggestion with simply providing them with a frame and some rules that the ads must fit in the frame, no temp rezzer, etc. No beacons, no shouting, no smut in PG regions. Billboards. That seems easy enough.

I appreciate what you're trying to do for us. And thanks for letting us talk in the forums, so everyone has a chance to be heard.

I have to disagree with you here, your statement was "for ALL residents once more", what you think is pleasing to the eye may not be pleasing to me, and so on.

Are there ugly builds in my opinion, Yes, but that is the land owners right, you want to say what I can build and how then you had better buy my land and pay my tier.

ie, I bought on the mainland for freedom and I am not prepared to give that freedom up just because you don't like my build, or M. Linden doesn't.

You seem to have garnered some sympathy here. What exactly do you do that makes you different from the run of the mill scum bag land cutters? Pardon my ignorance, but I don't keep up on the advertising biz in SL. It all seems a little silly to me anyway since I generally use SLEX or ONREZ, then look up the item inworld for a "real" look.

I really don't think that I have ever been moved to any action by an add inworld (except perhaps a land for sale sign once , It was tastefully executed).

As far as the replys to my ban line posts:

In an earlier post here I asked for the ability to turn seeing them on and off (Iam a sailor after all). But when you live next door to one of these asshats, you know it's there, and don't need to have it bleeding onto your parcel's alphas 24/7.

If they introduce new zoned, themed sims, those will have a lot higher value than the majority of existing Mainland sims, even if then do spruce up the existing ones. Just look at the prices they got at auction for Bay City.

We hold our operations cards very close to our chests, but suffice it to say we are interested in sim data. We don't sell data or collect anything with respect to avatars or their builds. We don't want to know what people do.

The main reason we don't disclose, is because we don't want to give our competitors any reason to cut our throats (any worse than we are experiencing as it is). Likewise, we don't want adcutters mimicking what we do to claim legitimacy. We have something unique and would like to continue to develop our network in innovative ways.

We are motivated to right by our neighbors, greatly. I cannot even begin to express how dismayed we are to stuck in the middle of all this mess and it's very distressing to slip through the cracks because of failed policies. Linden Lab knows precisely what we do, and never once have we been asked or told to change anything. We make every effort possible to minimize our impact and spend countless hours a week assisting our neighbors.

We are not perfect by any means and sometimes it shows either in posts or IMs, but we go far beyond what is required of us, because we care about others.

Well, give them 5 minutes before autoreturn in the event they are putting something up and need to reposition. There's no real control over how or where something rezzes when you drop it.

But yes - had that problem recently in fact. Up to the line and not over it. They seemed to feel my gate was the edge of my property and put their object over. It showed very obviously on the property but didn't register in my objects tab.

Also hiding banlines would be a great option for adjacent neighbors.

I hope LL takes a more HANDS-ON approach to greifing and other issues of harassment. it's starting to get sickening how long and how much people get away with.

You who are debating with one another, in this forum, must realize that LL is paying no attention to your fine points. I'm sure they have better things to read.

I hate ads in all forms and would like to see them all banned but I know this is unrealistic. A nice compromise would be to allow ads on the land where the store etc is located but nowhere else. I don't think many people see revolving particle spewing ads as eye pleasing especailly when they are stuck in a mostly residential sim.

As a large mainland only owner, I welcome the comments and the changes which will result. Linden needs mainland policy change, but also needs to follow through on its own development projects. Case in point, Bay City.

Auction prices for Bay City parcels were very high. I have no problem with the prices. Supply and Demand rules. The problem I have is in what was being supplied. There was a tacit understanding on the part of buyers that the public works areas of the development would become active so that traffic would be pulled into the area.

However, the theater, clubs, coffee shops, marina, etc. have remained dormant and Bay City is dead in terms of traffic. It can still be revived, but a coordinated rollout of the public works coinciding with the auction would have sparked a momentum for the area which will be hard to regain now. The restriction on subdividing in Bay City is desirable, but the public works remain an unfulfilled (though unspoken) promise. It would also be nice to be able to join parcels there. Simply do not allow subdivision below the initial parcel size.

Cleaning up the mainland in general will be painful for some, but not many will shed tears for the ad farmers. As long as the principles of "eminent domain" are exercised prudently with fair compensation for land to those who must relocate or alter their purpose, the changes will be welcomed by the VAST majority of SL users.

Thank you for listening.

This thread seems to be past the 'read everything' stage, but I thought I'd chime in my L$.02 anyway...

On Zoning...

I think Zoning is a fantastic idea for new mainland sims. For existing sims, its a hornet's nest, as you probably already realize. Unfortunately, the issues that need the most dire attention are contained within those very same existing sims.

While I wholeheartedly agree that the mainland is sorely overdue for additional attention by Linden Lab, realistically speaking, you're either going to need to enact draconian rules that will make many residents more upset, or implement technology that empowers residents to solve the problems themselves. Several Jira ideas have been mentioned in this thread - such as Object Mute, which could accomplish exactly that.

I hope you select technology/tools over draconian rules. Not only is it infinitely more scalable, any development investment required is sure to reap huge rewards with happier residents overall.

On Parcel Size Limits...

As was pointed out by Linden, this issue is probably mute anyway due to the sheer number of edge cases. But just to throw my position out there... there are indeed legitimate uses for 16m parcels. I use mine to run a few rather important scripts, and its the only parcel in that sim that I own.

On Mainland Maintenance...

As Weedy has pointed out in posts above, the reclamation of abandoned land is something better left to residents. Why? Residents are more scalable than Lindens, and they always will be. I'd think that realization would become clearer & clearer as mainland sims grow exponentially.

This could also carry over to the local maintenance of things like Infohubs, and the return of non-Linden objects from Governor owned land. Why not allow the local landowners to take care of that for you, for free?

On the Linden Estate (aka Mainland)

While treating the mainland as an estate like any other, which requires regular attention & maintenance is long overdue, don't forget that many of us chose to purchase mainland property because we 'Own' it (even if the reality is that we really don't own it at all )

I'd advise that you be sensitive to that character of the mainland which makes it... mainland. If you begin insinuating that we're simply renting tenants, respect that it may change how residents view the property that they've 'owned'... for some in the negative.

Sure that someone must have mentioned this before page 35 but it is VERY unhandy to have someone's giant tree from next door infringing on your property. The smaller the lot the worse the problem. I only have one 512 mainland lot now but have had more in the past. The same problem occurs on estate land of course. Some sort of "you can't place the item unless it is TOTALLY in your land "would be very welcome.

And it sounds like most everyone is in favor or less signage and rotating banners all over. Also blinking particle lights that go into other's property, rainstorms etc are not on my list of favorites. I have over half a sim now on estate land so I have fewer neighbors to deal with and they are all very reasonable. I am very happy about that but can see that thing have only gotten more complex over the last couple of years. Thanks for working on it.

Also in favor of invisible or on - off ban lines. They infringe mightily into the next parcel - even if only visually.

I won't cut your quote. Thank you for responding. I guess you may be the model for why someone would need tiny parcels spread over the whole mainland.

Of course you must realize that many residents, having been screwed by the extortionostas, would be leary of your operations.

If it don't show, and don't massive lag me , I would give you a 16 for whatever it is you do (at a fair market value of course )

As a 'short timer' in Second Life, less than a year, I don't recall the 'good old days' but wonder if I'm in the 'bad new days' now. Actually, I tend to worry about what these changes will bring in Mainland sims. Admittedly, there aren't too many 'ad farms' near me, my neighbor has advertisement up for his business, but we were able to work out something where I didn't have to view it from my windows, unless I really looked. What I'm more concerned about are the griefers, which I know LL can't really control.

I own about 1/8 of Falcaria, and my biggest issue is sim lag. That is the one thing that I would really like to see taken care of, better hardware, better response to sim slowdowns. I saw Script Perfs go as high as 40K ips today, I'm told thats over twice what a 'average' sim should be. I realize that upgrading the hardware for the Mainland would be a monumental task, and a costly one at that. I still think, given the amount of Mainland area, that it should be a high priority for the Lindens and LL as a whole, especially if they want to keep residents here. I've often, and moreso recently, considered selling off my property, even at a loss, and just moving on. I can't afford the tier on a full sim, even a Mainland full sim, let alone a private sim.

If we're going to do zoning, and covenants, beyond residential and commercial, we should also look at sexual and non-sexual. While I am in a Mature sim, I consider my land to be 'Child Safe' and my land is a place where Child Avatars, as well as Furs and Babyfurs can come, and be safe, and enjoy that aspect of Second Life. I absolutely forbid any sexual activity on any of my land, and the people who come here are not interested in that anyway. Yet, right next to me, I have a plot of land, while nothing on the surface, above the ground there is a club dedicated to sexual pleasures. Okay, I'm an adult, I don't get freaked out over sexual stuff, virtual or not. But, I don't like having it right next to me and around the 'children' that come here. What I would like to see is a 'zoning' rule on that. Hey, make a new level of sims, PG, Mature, Sexual, and age verify the Sexual one.

I don't know how this is going to shake out, I don't know what's going to happen. I hope that Linden Labs approaches this in a thoughtful manner, I hope that my experience in SL is enhanced by this change, and not degraded. Maybe LL will be willing to relocate people as part of this, open up new sims and offer current landowners the opportunity to move their holdings to a new area in exchange for their old areas, which can be 'renovated', i.e., wiped clean and start over. I hope I don't regret this.

Gennifer

I do appreciate the finer points being debated, and I'm reading it all.

This is not the only feedback we're seeking about land, for those of you who wondered, it's a chance to have this discussion all together, in a place where we can all read and participate. It's different from office hours, for instance, because we don't all have to be here at the same time. You don't need me to tell you all that, of course, or that we won't always be able to make every change requested -- but we're paying attention.

As you know, we are experimenting with a variety of ways to communicate better with you, and this is one. I personally appreciate the chance to have a conversation with you.

Thanks for being here for this discussion. Even if we're not responding at the time you're posting, we are reading every post, and what you have to say is being taken seriously.

Thank you!
-- Katt Linden

By the way, my own personal land is on the mainland -- I've had it long enough that the first bit of it it was my "First Land" -- so I know what it can be like, both the great and the annoying elements of dwelling on the Mainland.

-- Katt Linden

By the way, my own personal land is on the mainland -- I've had it long enough that the first bit of it it was my "First Land" -- so I know what it can be like, both the great and the annoying elements of dwelling on the Mainland.

-- Katt Linden