Feedback on the Mainland

Or someone builds a alpine chateau on a sandy beach, after they've flatten it, and then puts 50x50x1 megaprims screens up with snowy mountains on so they can't see the palm trees on all the florida-style parcels surrounding them. loool !!!

Or another parcel where they have built a Venice-like build on an ocean. Not bad until they put up a monster cityscape as a backdrop for their build. Great for them but pity the owners of the sandy beach parcels facing the back of it. They can't even give away their properties now. Arrrrggg !!!

And on another build, 50x50 megascreens again all-around. But at least they tried to consider their neigbours and made them transparent from the outside. Of course you can see all the others through the one closest to you. lol !!! And laaaagggggg !!! transparent megaprims are the worst of the worst after bling bunnies =) Oh! well.

Or .... or... or... lol !!! =)

Zoning of new mainland sims, kool =) Retrospective zoning of existing ones... hmm! probably not a good idea, given that people did buy the land on the basis of the existing covenant. But... ya! I wouldn't mind seeing screens banned in the new zones where monster advertising signs are also banned.

We should be working with the land when we build, not against it I think. So I'd like to see a lot less flattening allowed, specially on parcel edges. Talk about bulldoze the everglades and kill all the wildlife lol.

If people want a self-contained world in a box then stick it up at 3000m. Lots more privacy up there for starters. Which is what you wanted when you put up the screens anyways. And just smooth/roughen your land so it edges nicely with the neighbours and everyone is happy ya. You get to live in your boxed world and you help heal the land. Best of both ya.

I have changed the theme of my home several times in the past two years. Why should I have to sell my land and go searching for a new location every time I decide I want to rebuild my house in a different style? No, I'm sorry, but just NO. I can currently build whatever style home I want in the same spot I have right now and I will never agree to a themed location.

I bought non-themed, non-covenant land so I could have the freedom to build what I want, within the ToS and CS of course, whenever I want. I will NOT stand for having someone else dictating MY SL experience for me.

You might be surprised. I've seen groups I've been involved with screwed by most of the big estate owners one time or another. I've contributed a number of comments to this thread about my concerns with a more activist role by Governor Linden, and a lot of these are due to what I've seen happening on even "good landlords" estates.
Quite. The point is that 'in RL...' is a poor argument, because the whole point to SL is that it's not like RL in many ways. The 'in RL...' argument is one that's been used by spammers to justify their abuse for longer than SL or any 3d virtual world has existed. You can use 'in RL...' as a guide, but just because something works some way 'in RL' doesn't mean it's how it has to work 'in SL'.

Quite. The point is that 'in RL...' is a poor argument, because the whole point to SL is that it's not like RL in many ways. The 'in RL...' argument is one that's been used by spammers to justify their abuse for longer than SL or any 3d virtual world has existed. You can use 'in RL...' as a guide, but just because something works some way 'in RL' doesn't mean it's how it has to work 'in SL'.

As people have pointed out, there are legitimate uses for small parcels, such as setting media channels, and for editing parcel shapes. My approach therefore is to allow such
uses, but to set a minimum ownership per sim at something like 256m.

If you end up with less than 256m in a given sim, it will be auto-set for sale at the average of the first page of land sales (i.e. something like 4 L$/m currently) after one or two days, and if not sold in 7 days, then sold to Governor Linden at that price automatically.

The time delay allows people to make momentary transactions while rearranging land.

The point of this is to make uneconomic the practice of holding small parcels over many sims for the sole purpose of extorting from neighbors. A legitimate advertiser can *rent* use of some prims from a landowner.

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At the same time, I suggest implementing a ban on advertisements taller than the MINIMUM dimension of the lot. So a 16x16 lot cant have ads taller than 16m, and a 4x64 slice (also 256m total area) would be not more than 4m tall. This would be a height limit above local ground level, whether attached to the ground or floating.

The point of this is to restrict "annoyingly tall ads that block the view".

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At the same time, I suggest disabling general access bans on parcels under some size limit, such as 256m. Those parcels are too small to have much to keep out of anyway.

As an alternative, make the height limit on ban lines proportional to the lot dimension, for example 2x the minimum lot dimension, up to whatever current limit exists (if its currently 150m high, then lots larger than 75x75 would cap at 150m)

My opinion for "Specific Themed Sims"?
Aren't having to do ANYTHING with Linden Labs and Mainland tho.

I TOTALY AGREE WITH KATHY! THIS WORLD IT'S FREE FOR BUILD ANYTHING & ANYTIME WE WAN'T!!!!
THATS WHY WE CHOOSE TO LIVE IT THIS.

there are approx 5000 regions, if you want unzoned, then buy in an unzoned area,
The majority will, I believe, like a stable zoned theme, and will buy in these areas, there is plenty of space for both.

Please don't "change" landscape of older SIMS - I bought long ago in Mimas and Chaska regions and want them to remain the same. Be careful of over-policing. I act responsibly in my P.G. and Mature lands. I don't draw attention to myself or to my partner. I am suspicious of zoning - suggest you tread carefully there. Also in censorship of such things as genuine artworks and even housing. Remember this is NOT suburbia even though many people would like it to be so. I don't live in suburbs in real. I don't want to live in suburbs here. Thanking you in advance for keeping Mainland and older sims as we bought them.

I don't trust LL to enforce covenants. I would rather see enforcement of ownership rights on "private" sims.

My suggestion is to let the current landowners petition to change from "no zoning" to one of a set of zoned categories (residential, commercial, etc.). If a majority (or 2/3, or 75%) of the land area in the sim chooses to rezone, then it is implemented with a 30 day time delay for enforcement. That allows people who don't like the new zoning time to move.

Linden Labs would also offer to swap any owners who don't want to convert to the new zoning to a parcel of equal size someplace else. Governor Linden surely holds enough land to make that possible.

Linden Labs can also choose to keep a certain percentage of map regions "permanently unzoned free-for-all land", for those people who like total haphazard freedom.

This plan allows *residents* and *the market* to decide what sort of zoning will exist.

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Technical implementation could be done like this:

Set up a zoning web page. Allow any resident on a parcel to initiate a "zoning petition" with a serial number. Allow other residents of the sim to "add their vote" with their land area. When the votes total the required threshhold, it gets forwarded as an action or ticket to the Linden staff to implement.

Have some standard covenants such as "residential only", "shopping only", "club use", "mixed use commercial", plus a "special use" category where the residents can write their own covenant.

I am not an advertiser, I have no home or business on the Mainland, it is simply full of places to visit or explore as far as I am concerned. I have no "vested interests".

But everything I have read of what Jack said, makes me feel excited : if the Mainland experience improves for all residents it could make me want to actually buy land there or run a business. Obviously the precise nature of the changes are important too, but so far I feel good about it.

The Zoning idea sounds particularly interesting ....

Totally agreed. I think there are *few* who would disagree that the 16m plots that contain often spinny, sometimes beaconed, even occasionally ban-lined ad plots, like the ones shown at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Qie_Niangao

I agree with may others who say that these are not ads in the common sense. These are blight. They do not encourage people to patronize the advertisers. They are commonly used to extort money out of other landholders or otherwise disrupt the world as a whole. *These* are probably the #1 issue on the Second Life mainland, and not dealing with that problem forcefully and promptly will keep the mainland down.

Should there be a place for advertising? Sure. I use the Resident Advertisement kiosks at some of the old info hubs. I have a classified ad. My stores have signs. Sometimes I even get the opportunity to provide landmark givers at events, in designated areas. A bit of my RL background -- both in design and writing -- involves advertising.

I've travelled many, if not most of the SL roads, and I've seen some roadside stores that have done a good job of promoting their locations with advertising. These are not an issue. Ad farms are not legitimate advertising, any more than junk faxes or solicitation text messages are.

Those who promote them are trying to appear legitimate, even going to Linden Office Hours to claim that it is only a small number of "griefers" who are trying to keep them down. This is the same thing any "spam king" will tell you, too. Like has already been said one on this thread, they are the problem, and as long as ad farms like what you see in that web link above remain, then there is no solution.

It's like the words of Justice Potter Stewart, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

I think the SL community -- residents and Lindens alike -- can clearly point to what an ad farm is. We know it when we see it. We look at the piccies in that weblink above, and know that['s an ad farm, in the same way we look at a feline and know it's a cat. I think you'll find few who will agree that they need to remain, only those who will argue over what legitimate uses there are for 16m parcels, or that any rules on ad farms need to not overextend into blocking truly legitimate works

Mari
(Who's wordy today)

Land Ad's there is no need on the world of SL to have ads placed on small plots of land.

That is what the search function is for PEOPLE!

And still not in agreement with what some are saying here there is NO NEED for a plot smaller then 512sqm

/me stretches, yawns, blinks a few times, shakes off the sleepy nod that attempting to read this thread induced.


SSDD folks. Nothing will change to actually help the existing Mainland. Probably, really, at this point, nothing can. No big deal really, it's what we've bought into since the beginning. Love it or leave it, as the patriots like to say. I left it for a while and snuck off to a private estate, but I finally moved back last year, because quirky is still one of my favorite things.

Zoning for new Mainland sim? Damn fine idea! Shoulda considered it in 2003, huh? O well, hindsight being 20/20 and all that. Still, it'll definitely be good for business, which is all that counts anyway, huh? Little piece of advice tho, since you didn't seem to consider it the first time... Try not to put commercial sims smack up on residential sims the way you have mature and pg sims stupidly... I mean inadvisedly, so close to each other as to make the benefits of such zoning mute. Perhaps separating them with Linden sims might be a good idea? Just a thought as to how you can increase the overall monetary gain from this move, guys, since ultimately that seems to be your primary goal.

My inner public servant keeps wanting to volunteer for that mole program you got going, since I'd love to help beautify the Mainland, especially the old Mainland that I love like my homeland, but you guys at Linden Lab make it soooooo hard to want to help you when I've watched you dick over so many of the people who have helped you over the years.

But really, best of luck.

I've read almost every post in this thread. There are a lot of good ideas, and a few that concern me. For the first three months of my secondlife, I was a dedicated mainlander. From Dec/06 till March/07, I was committed to the mainland in a big way. I quickly put together a large property in the middle of a sim on the Southern Continent, over 9000m at one point. I opened a shop, and it was good. What drove me out wasn't adfarms or the general mainland chaos, it was performance. Seemingly overnight that one sim's performance tanked. I searched it end to end, top to bottom, but there were no laggy clubs, casinos, or anything else. I was paying almost $100/month in tier and account fees, but couldn't even walk across my living room. People could TP to my store but couldn't browse around. Twice I contacted Live Help (back in those heady days) and twice they rebooted the sim, but it always ground to a halt within hours. That's what drove me to the islands, where I have been happy ever since.

So, on the one hand, what happens on the mainland "doesn't" really concern me -- although I am saddened that the sim where I first landed and started building has devolved so greatly, but other than that...my islands generally run well, look great, and are populated by some of the best people I've met. On the other hand though... doubt and uncertainty lead to fear leads to instability, leads to economic hardships for all of us.

Cleaning up the mainland, adding zoned or even covented sims, giving owners of whole-mainland-sims estate controls... these may all help mainland. I'm afraid that they will hurt private estates. I used to understand why the private island fees were higher than mainland fees, but I don't now. Estate owners have more powers, sure. But they also take some, or a lot, of the support burden off of LL's hands. If LL does introduce zoned mainland, or extends some estate-level controls to mainland landlords, it does feel to me like that is moving into more-direct competition with the private estates. I'm not saying competition is a bad thing, but that without the playing field level, it will be difficult, or nigh-impossible. With all the current pros and cons, and with the current discussion of changes to the way things work, I would like to see the island fees reduced to match the mainland tier. Yes, I admit I have a vested interest.

I've been in business situations before where the 'manfacturer' enlists a bunch of distributors or VARs, takes in lots of money for licensing etc, then decides there's more money to be made by dealing direct, so they undercut their distributor base. It usually ends up hurting everyone - the distributors / VARs get burned, the company loses its most-outspoken supporters and eventually goes bankrupt or gets bought-out.

I had a point when I started this post, but I'm not really sure where I'm going with it... I hear of some estates doing well, and I hear a lot of estates just hanging on, and I hear of some estates closing up or cutting back. Things have been very difficult since the changes around March/April this year - lots of mainland added, island purchase fees cut, and technical instabilities (transactions down, TPs down, etc).

I guess what I'm getting at boils down to this. Generic platitudes and vague comments about committments will only add to the doubts and uncertainties. Something specific - in details and deadlines - would go a long way to helping people both understand that you are sincere, and plan their own strategies to deal with the changes, whatever they may be.

We've been told that soon the thread will be closed and the responses will be considered. How about something firm? When the thread is closed, how about a firm date as to when we can expect to hear what the decisions will be? Then when that date comes, give us all the details, and the implementation dates? Not 'soon' or 'within the next 3 months'... Real businesses and real business people do not plan that way. It's "Here is the first step in our strategy and this will be completed on September 30th. Here is the second step in our strategy and it will be completed for Dec 31st." That is the kind of direct, specific information I'm talking about. If you can't provide a deadline date for a given issue, then give us a deadline date for when you will have one. "We can't set a date now for when this issue will be resolved because of X, Y, and Z, but I will have that information by xxxx and will post the deadline at that time."

LL, if you need any help, Char might still have my resume on file.

-Atashi

yes, but with all due respect, you can solve problems on mainland alone, we cannot. (I am referring to greifers and encroachment and things of that nature)

Atashi, I think that there are too many inexperienced and/or unprofessional estates to begin with, and a push back with mainland should weed those out. e.g., the estate owner under discussion in RA who is afraid to upload a .raw file for her tenant who purchased a full island. I am confident that quality estates that really add value will always survive because even a clean mainland has limitations that are easily exceeded by competent, committed, motivated private ownership.

Terraforming rights, organized community activities and services, and speedy customer service are things that mainland can only have to a certain degree. Both clean mainland and private estates can coexist peacefully, and not at each other's expense, in my opinion. There will be a shakeout of the market, but some consolidation into more competent hands is a good thing.

Old south mainland at that time was almost all on class 4 servers and they did indeed have lots of performance problems. I remember well my home, also in that area, being _horrible_ at the end of 2006 and for most of 2007. That and it crashed pretty frequently.

Havok4 helped a lot. They've also fixed a number of memory leaks in the sim code, though I suspect there are more still lurking in there. With a class 4 server having 1/2 the memory as a class 5, things like memory leaks and high script loads impact them a lot more. (is this true, Jack? It sounds like it should be but I don't _know_ that it is.)

If you haven't been there in a while, you might want to revisit your old mainland home and take a look around. It may be performing a lot happier than you remember.

Its abundantly clear that most of us love the existing mainland and want to see it restored. Thank you Jack for opening this forum and allowing so many of us to express this opinion. The problems on the mainland, as so many have already said, boil down to visual spam from ad towers, use of such towers for extortion, the rampant cutting of land into 16m to 64 m parcels, and price extortion on these cut parcels. Even the few advertisers that have posted here support the elimination of small plot extortion. I may have missed it, but the deafening silence from the handful of small plot extortion dealers just proves they know exactly what they are doing and are too smart to try and justify their crimes. In regards to what has been written here over and over, it is also clear that big box ad towers have to go. There are many other viable means to advertise, including low visual impact outdoor advertising, that remove any justification for these god awful towers in our faces 24/7. Please Jack, I know you know this is true, keep up the great work you have done so far and really take a stand for the mainland by eliminating the cutting, the extortion and the big ad towers.

Some people noted the American Indian Movement signs on BTEGlobal's signs. Please note AIM did not know their ads were on Cytherea's signs. When told they went ballistic and the next day they were gone. Cytherea had them for what?, ego, validation of her company, or to lead to you to the tip jars labeled AIM at the bottom of the signs.

The use of a trademark without permission is fraud, the collection of funds for an organization that doesn't know you are doing it is fraud, and the funds collected are where?

This is the crux of the ad farm issue, people with less than demonstrated morals scamming us, the johns, for the micro dollars they can get. They only care about those dollars, not the immersive experience, or the inches of ad space on your pc screen not the sky in SL with the same popups for AdultFriendFinder malware sites We block in RL. And the Lindens seem to value these people as commerce. Nuts!
I didn't know that the Linden teams were removing peoples screens for these misarable signs. For shame, people do not have a right to project their porn and spam across your space, any screen you put up is your build and they had better keep their mitts off. This is not the promise that lured me here.
In RL I'm 56 and well past having trash thrown in my face. Please remove Earth Spam and ad farms from my experience. I am that new age of pragmatists and the Lindens are not delivering the service they are selling when we can be spammed without the option of turning them off, blocking them or orbiting them.
The true American Indian Community like Red Rock should be after Miss Eagle for trashing AIM's good name.

On the issue of extortion, in Gergonne at the base of BTEGlobal's particle cannon near 128,128 one 16sqm is $L25000 roadside. Why? It looks like because it blocks a new build from road access. That is a creep selling it.

This is a perfect solution. If this is technically possible, that is. Same for being able to visually mute prims like ad blocks or ugly builds. If we could do this, we could keep our views and the ad farmers and texturely challenged could keep their eyesores.

LMAO Wow wish I had thought of this myself earlier then perhaps wouldn't have been harassed by the extortionists for having a plot next to theirs!

On a serious note though I am concerned that the term adfarming doesn't cover the whole problem as it implies adverts are used, many 16sqm plot extortionists don't use adverts anymore since LL changed the rules back in march, they put the adverts out only as a last resort to apply extra pressure when people refuse to be robbed.

My harassment came from--------names removed by Katt Linden -----------when I offered Austin a sensible price for a 32sqm plot he had up for 9995l.
He immediately took the plot off sale and had a huge tower posted on it in the middle of my land, but he is not an extortionist low life he is an honest businessman, luckily --------names removed by Katt Linden ----------- has crawled away under a rock now, so the plot is back up for sale again at a stupid price.

(btw Primlands is just one of a long list of vermin, its just it is the one I have experienced)

I would like to know what Linden Labs is going to do about this despicable behavior, personally I am not against advertising, I am against using underhand ways to force large sums of RL money from the users of Second Life.

Banlines and advertising blocks on the 16sqm plots that wreck so many of the sims are just the tools of the trade, the route cause of the fragmentation is the dishonest scheming villains cutting up and laughing all the way to the bank.

Jack your initial statements started out strongly and gave me great hope of real change, Currently the level of fragmentation is unacceptable, we intend to introduce zoning to new sims, there will not be a New/Old divide we will invest time in the existing mainland.

Then we could return abandoned prim litter from unused parcels after a long space of time maybe even put up some trees, give us your feed back, which many did.

Now I hear only in the worst cases of fragmentation if no other alternative is available will extortionist plots be confiscated compulsory purchased etc.

So if you are not going to make these few bad pennies abandon the immoral business scheme of 16sqm plot extortion,what are you going to do about it, to clean up the mainland, absolutely nothing?

/me disagrees!!

If somebody wants to limit access to their land, and they're not doing it for the purpose of griefing neighbors, they should be allowed to do it.

If it's too expensive to make it happen when the owner is online, how about limiting it to when allowed agents are on the parcel? In fact that would be better, because otherwise the spammer could just leave a bot logged in to keep his extortion lines up. The bottom line should be that there's no point in putting ban lines around empty parcels.

My solution for the ad farmers on my site was to buy up all the land around them and construct my site to completely obscure them. Most of the ad farmers I surround have given up and have accepted my more than fair offer (10L per Meter) for their land. The few that remain are negligible.

The idea of Zoning bothers me simply because I own half the sim and my site is huge. Re-creating it in another site because of zoning would almost be an SL killer for me. As it is, I built my site 600m high so that none of my neighbors have to look at it. The few buildings I have on the ground (surrounding the ad farms) are pleasant to look at. In fact, I have no need for the buildings on the ground. I constructed them as a favor to my neighbors so that they did not have to look at a huge ad farm.

Perhaps Zoning could be enforced on the ground level, leaving sky builds free, as they do not affect the view of people living on the ground.

Just my opinion