Feedback on the Mainland

Well, I'd hoped to read this whole thread before responding, but only managed the first 20 pages...

Jack,

There are a lot of relatively small, discrete things I would like to see happen to improve Mainland, and I've been lucky enough not to be bothered by the adfarmers myself. However, it is more than clear that the problems adfarmers cause for other Mainlanders and the way they blight the Mainland's reputation as a whole far far outweigh any other change I'd like to see. And after watching Linden Labs for two years, I have no confidence or faith in the Lindens' commitment to actually do anything about the adfarms or other extortionist tactics.

I'm not going to list the other changes I'd like to see to Mainland, because I don't want you bothering with those at this point. I don't want you focusing on ANYTHING except getting rid of the extortionists. Stop talking about it, just do it. Stop trying to refine or explain policy and start enforcing it. The stories some have posted here and elsewhere about their ARs being ignored for months and the adfarmers' ARs being answered within hours is just unbelievable. The fact that Linden Labs' negligence has allowed some residents to even consider the idea that the Lindens are in collusion with the adfarmers is unbelievable. Until you've made real, lasting headway against the extortionists (including banning accounts who've engaged in it), nothing you say is going to have any credibility.

You can start with four things:

(1) Making it impossible to set noncontiguous parcels for sale (nonfraudulent sellers with a noncontiguous parcel can simply sell it as two separate parcels).

(2) Making it impossible to set parcels less than 256 sq m for sale to anyone (they can still be sold to a specific user).

(3) Implementing a parcel-based visual muting feature that allows me to mute a particular off-parcel object for anyone on my parcel.

(4) Pull the people making new Mainland off that task and set them to answering ARs from current Mainland landowners. The argument that "that's not their job, it's a different team" doesn't apply here. Customer service is not something requiring specialized skills beyond common sense, courtesy, and knowledge of current policies, and hopefully all your staff have those skills, regardless of which department they're in. Yeah, maybe answering ARs isn't what your engineers or whatever signed up for, but being harassed by extortionists isn't what your customers have paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for, either. Your staff can suck it up and deal, the way your customers have had to, until the problem is reduced to a level that the normal customer service staff can deal with on their own.

Any discussion of new Mainland should be irrelevant until you've dealt with the problems of existing Mainland. We don't need more land area -- there's plenty of existing land for new buyers, especially if you release the abandoned land that's been sitting unauctioned for years and the land that hasn't been officially abandoned but whose owners have been absent for years, not to mention all the Estate land whose owners are so quick to complain about how they're struggling for customers. Or the land that will be released after you seize it from the banned extortionists. Releasing new zoned Mainland does nothing but sweep the problem under the rug.

This is a comment in response to Smoothie Pearl and others who are worried about zoning.

I think Jack Linden stated that zoning wouldn't be imposed on existing mainland, so I don't think there's any need to worry about zoning fundamentally changing the nature of the mainland yet.

Will they transfer all the Picks, Landmarks, and other references to the parcel to the new parcel as well?

(that's a rhetorical question. )

and if the land is owned by a group how do you do it? when no group member is online? (ban lines being turned off automatically I am talking about, not obvious from the quote)

i have a small plot in mainland next to my plot is land owned by lindes but i see its sold to someone in sl . this land is where you tp into it looks a mess not even a level area all lumps and bumps , plus we have been plauged by add farms and ares that are fenced in so making it inpossible to explore the land there must be a better way to sort these problem out

Will they transfer all the Picks, Landmarks, and other references to the parcel to the new parcel as well?

(that's a rhetorical question. )
But they're not limiting access to their land. People can still browse around and see anything they want to on the land, including examining the contents of objects! They can even effectively move their avatar into the parcel, using animation offsets, and perform other tricks I won't go into here. Ban lines don't provide privacy, they don't provide protection, all they do is prevent transit through the parcel.

Given that you can't actually damage anything in SL, and you can keep people from leaving objects on your land without ban lines, the biggest effect that ban lines have is to "grief neighbors" whether the parcel owner intending to or not. Many people who have ban lines set up don't even know that they're causing a problem, they can't see the lines, they may have even forgotten that they're there, or even realize that they set them up. I've had a number of neighbors tell me that they had no idea that they were causing anyone a problem, because there's so little feedback from SL when you set the access controls.

So I honestly believe that most people would have no idea that their "access only to this group" lines only had an effect when there were group members in the parcel. Nor would they care. Perhaps adding an option to enable permanent ban lines... with real visual feedback when you do it, could be allowed for the few exceptional cases where it matters whether the lines are up or not. But the current default behavior merely creates a situation where people are greifing each other and creating bad blood needlessly.

I just pick up on the "only one subdivide per 512m" I understand that you're addressing the micro-farming problem but that would also be the death shroud for the 80-100 people who come to my tiny 512m parcel everyday.

If I could only have one micro-plot on my 512m parcel then thats a lot of newcomers condemned once more to trying on their newly-acquired outfits in public sandboxes and oceans with all of the hassles and embarassment that can and does cause them.

I suppose I could just buy more land, like about 3072m but then I'd have a problem paying the tier for what is now a free service provided as a public good. At the moment the 512m tier I am able to gift because it is gifted to me as part of my prem membership.

I need to be able to provide both script-enabled/no-build areas to test scripted attachments and build/no-script to rezz boxes. And to allow both, without the people being shot and/or caged by the greify types that do plague public places at times. I can do all these three things at the moment with the current parcel capabilities.

But if I cant then I cant I suppose and these mostly newcomers will have to find someone else with the capacity to do so. Someone who feels that helping people out while thy're finding their feet in SL is a good idea.

Umm! 80-100 people each day is not alot, compared to the thousands online at anytime, but they are trying on stuff they did get from somewhere else. And while some of this will be freebie, some of it isn't. They're somebodies customers. Hair, skins, clothes, shoes and stuff like that. And they're not all the same people each day. So, while I have no idea who actually does come here, because I dont track or record anyone's personal details, I do know that in the last 10 weeks or so the number of unique visitors is well into the thousands.

And in a rush to fix one problem for the landed, I wouldn't like to see another one created for people new to SL who at this time are landless and mostly friendless. People who when given space, can and do stay, and go on to become landed themselves and make lots of new friends =)

ps. About the State of Mainland

I'm also landed and I learned something yesterday from a guy I met inworld who wrote in this thread earlier. I offered to buy a parcel off him. He turned me down. He asked why I wanted it. I told him that I wanted to make it into smaller parcels for new people. He said thats a bad idea. So I listened. And then I went away and joined up some smaller parcels I had into one big parcel. And it sold straight away for more that what I would have got anyways. kool =) So I bought another parcel next to another one I owned and joined that, and I bought 2 more parcels in another sim and joined them too. kool =) I got 3 really nice large parcels now. One on a road, one on a beach and the other on a mountain overlooking the ocean. kooler =)

This announcement has stopped the market slide on the mainland cold. There is still alot of churn but its mostly uninspiring land, flat and boring, that always churns anyways. The serious real estate dealers who have been quietly buying up choice parcels for rock-bottom prices over the last few weeks are now showing their hand. It was a real-estate dealer who bought my joined-up parcel off me, at a price I wouldn't have got anywhere near last week. And I bought it off a bot that didnt know enough about the sim when it churned it to me at what was a ridiculous price really. Some of these land-churning bot programs don't seem to work very well. I mean they make money I suppose working on tiny margins but gee !!! (which is the only reason I starting buying land just so I could figure out what you could do them, thinking as a human being and not as a bot =))

pps. On another note, and nothing to do with the above. I just like to acknowledge the Spicy Chicks people who gave me back my land when I messed up the sell thingy today. I know you not supposed to name people but umm! thanks anyways =) Not everyone in the SL land business is a crook. Specially not the 3 different human real-estate dealers I have met and dealt with in the last 2 days anyways =)

So, if you made it this far then I just like to say things are looking up, and if you do have a nice parcel on the mainland then I'd suggest that you hang onto it for a bit.

This announcement will be followed up and actioned. M Linden is the boss now. Not P Linden, as great as he is =) Customers is M's core business skill. Users is Ps. They not the same thing. Customers is what M was brought in to grow. And he's doing it. And poor J Linden has to make this happen. Because if he doesn't then M will probably give him the sack =)

I saw Jack's statement and agree with him that zoning the existing mainland would be an exercise in futility at this stage.

My comments since then have been directed at those who insist the wholesale zoning of the existing mainland would be a good thing.

@Argent Stonecutter

everything between ' and ' where quotes from other posts and everything below those lines where my answers.



would this happen in RL?
no it wouldn't, so total bullshit.
u can't tell residens from outside Amsterdam, that residents from amsterdam have more rights than you do.



bots can detect ban lines, but can also buy land from a distance of 250 meters, because they can't see.
bots are program without a grafical interface.



no, sh*t, if u need to be on a other sim far away, u would be walking for hours.



NO, the goal in the RL world is the have no borders at all and a 'GLOBAL HIGHWAY' is being planned.
we need to look @ the future and learn from the past, the world is property of every soul on earth.
no discrimination again, ever.


Advertisers Guildline, YES.
a LL figure 'type of marshal' to evalute a landprices if people report a 16sqm (for example) for price abuse, 9,999L$ for 16sqm.
that LL marshal should remove the 'land for sale' flag and set it back to land 'not for sale'.
over and over if nessary, till the owner of that 16sqm gets discouraged about setting it back for sale all the time at a **** high price.

i think there hould also be a minimumsize of 512 since the beginning, than noone would need 16sqm plot for to reach the max tier fee.
(because land fee start @ 512, not at 16sqm or make a new tier system and pay for every SQM owner by someone).

i have 2 plots on mainland the they both are surrounded by add farms, directly next to my plots.

i think many of your opinions are way to orthodox and selfish.
please be more liberal and understanding.
thank u.

I think I'm pretty qualified to speak on this one -- there've been a few parcels like that in my sim that bug me, but I'm also the sort of person who has an unfortunate tendency to drop off the face of the world for weeks or months, apparently abandoning my current hobby to go obsess on something else for a while. That doesn't mean I'm actually abandoning it -- I may be spending quite a lot of time thinking about and planning things for it without actually logging in -- but from the perspective of bystanders, it will look like I've abandoned it. So I think I can safely speak for the small minority of absentee landowners who actually do give a crap what happens to their land.

If the Lindens tried to reclaim land I had paid for, simply because I hadn't logged in recently, I would be furious. But I also wouldn't mind in the least if they came in and turned autoreturn on or changed any other settings (like ban lines or spatialized sound) that didn't interfere with my previous work and that I could easily reverse when I logged in again. And simply doing those things would take care of a huge swath of the absentee landowner problems. In fact, it would help the absentee landowners, since when they do return (if they do), they won't have to face a huge swell of ill will from their neighbors.

Problematic builds is a bigger problem requiring more careful handling, but remember that the Lindens _are_ the estate owner here and have estate owner rights, if they choose to use them. You can easily argue that they're morally obligated to use them to protect their other customers. If we can drop megaprim screens on our land to block unsightly builds, then the Lindens should be able to do the same on semi-abandoned land. If the owner doesn't like it, well, they can log in and get rid of it. And from the technical end, parcel-based visual muting would also solve this problem.

Say you have a decent-sized mainland parcel that you've spent a lot of time on. It looks really nice, it's got a cool lounge, dance area and maybe some naughty poseballs off in the corners. Say you've also got a group that anybody can join but it costs L$500. Maybe you've got a bot that punts people from the group after they've been in the group for a month or two. You set this land to be access-only and only allow group members in.

What you're suggesting will destroy any business that does this sort of thing.

LL is never going to do this. It's too much work, given that they have to special case every legit reasons for having ban lines, for too little return.

I object if i would like to have convenant i would rent land reason why i have land on mainland is my freedom to choose if i have home or store.This is my choice and taking this choice from me is same as taking my right to have freedom!!!!

If this happens i will end playing this game!!

Leave my land alone!!!

Geneve: go to the SL support portal and enter a ticket asking LL to clean up the parcels that appear to have purely junk prims. They may not do anything... but they might: I've had them clean up trashed out parcels before... and it can't hurt to ask.

Not really related to mainland but I'm curious what your (edit: short-, mid- and longer-term) plans are for this forum, Jack...

The tip jars are still there and they still say "Please support the American Indian Movement", though now they link to the real AIM fundraiser page. At least the one in my home sim does.

--------names removed by Katt Linden -----------

Dont you think its better to remove them signs inworld ?

Setting aside the question of whether any such business would actually work... with the behavior I'm suggesting, there's no problem:

1. If there's *any* club members on the parcel, the ban lines will go up. Club members will never even *see* any squatters, they'll be kicked out as soon as the members teleport in.
2. I'm not suggesting that specifically banned people should get in, I'm only talking about the common "only club members" access. So you can always have a security script that adds squatters to the ban list.
3. If that's not good enough, you can leave that bot you're using to punt users in the club, 24x7, and have it act as a "host". Kill two birds with one stone.

This doesn't require LL to create any specific exemptions. SL has plenty of tools to keep your private club private. All this would do is change the default.

I would like to thank you profusely for opening up this discussion forum on this topic. (And for actually reading it all!)

To weigh in on the topic itself, I hate ad towers on 16m plots.

One type of zoning that could be done on the mainland that would hurt very few people would be to zone ad towers on 16m parcels OUT. Period.

Barring that, it would help to restrict their looks, like their height, for instance. And maybe to prevent them in future, do something to prevent people hacking up the land for these 16m ad/extortion plots and selling them.

I think there should be more ways to legitimately advertise, but I have no ideas on how that should be done. I do know that the way it is done now is awful, and the people doing it are awful.

Please don't get in bed with those people.

coco

I think there needs to be some balance of unzoned mainland in new offerings, but it should probably have a buffer of Linden owned protected green space around it, at least 64m of green space.

Me too.

We've been to office hours for months now, being told "sorry nothing new to report, but we're talking about it!". Then a month and a half ago now, "we have a new policy we are finalizing, and it will be released Real Soon Now (tm)". That's been repeated since, with the goalposts being pushed out. Now, I can understand pushing it out once or twice, but repeatedly pushing it out every time it comes "around that time", for the same amount of time, is troubling. Then there is this new forum regarding the subject. Granted, it is nice to open up a new line of communication for posterity, but the purpose of THIS thread escapes me. One would ALMOST think that this is something that should have been done many months ago, at the "we're thinking about it" stage, if input to the process was desired. However, we're on the eve of implementation (or so we would think, from the words used). What's the point? To gauge the last-minute "water temperature" before rolling it out? To warn people that it is coming and give them a touchy-feely place to vent/applaud beforehand? If the policy is already done, and we're just ramping up for the implementation phase, then it can't have been for policy input.

So what WAS the point?

Jack, I have read through every post in this thread and there are some great ideas here. I don't know how much LL really intends to do, but hopefully there can be some true changes to bring SL Mainland back to the fun, crazy, often beautiful place it was to go and explore when I came in. Ad Farms and just plain inconsiderate people have changed that greatly for the worse as it stands now. I still own only mainland though, and still think that is the place to be. It has been expensive though to maintain views etc because of the extortionists and their apparent backup by LL employees. I have often wondered how many of the people I have been hassled by over the years are LL employee alts. Some seem to get much better responce than residents, even concierge level ones.

You have opened a major can of worms here though, because now, if LL does not act on these issues, or acts in a way that is either wimpy or goes against the majority opinions expressed here, what little credibility LL has on matters such as these, will be gone completely, and the I am afraid the monetary cost to LL when many leave will be enough to be noticed.

I see 3 big issues here over and over in the threads, and a pretty even responce on your zoning ideas.

Ad Farms - Fragmented parcels
They have to go! There is simply no other answer that is going to resolve this. Anything less will as bad or worse than no action at all. The answer is simple, and you have the data. Examine the use of lands by any resident that owns more than small number of 16m plots. If there are ads on them, confiscate them. Offer the owner a fair compensation for them, either contiguous land in a new region, or lindens. If they are being used for data relay or other such legitimate purpose, move them to a protected land border, such as a road, and out of the middle of parcel groups. Offer the land confiscated to the owners of land on the parcel boundries. Remove the ability to mark for sale, any parcel under 128m2. Allow transfer only to LL. LL can then offer the parcels to bordering parcel owners.

Walls - View Blocking - Sky Boxes
In Erie, we have a land owner who has put up really ugly 50m high walls on three sides of their property, visible from both sides. This person has been totally unresponsive to resident requests and AR's etc have had no effect. They made sure their view of this really pretty area was unobstructed, but blocked the view, or ruined it, for all those around them. This type of abuse also has to stop. A legitimate build, such as a building, between me and what ever view I might have is one thing, but walls like this have to go as well. Case by case is probably the only means to work this one out.

Sky boxes should be restricted to 250m or above the cloud line, which ever is higher. There is no real need to have one lower. The whole point of a skybox is privacy for most, or freedom to build a controlled view, so the atlitude would have no effect. (I think if mainland was cleaned up, the number of skyboxes would decline as well.)

Banlines
They need to go as well. The ability to block a parcel to all other residents or objects for extended periods of time simply has no purpose. It goes against the whole idea of what mainland should be. The ability to block access to specific residents is important. I would like to suggest that the ability to block the movement of objects across a parcel be eliminated completely. The ability to block all residents, or those not in a specific group, be changed so that it can only be set for a limited time, say 4 hours. It would also have a delay of 10 seconds before ejection from the parcel, and an annoucement window to warn the target of impending ejection. A warning to the parcel owner of impending experation would be helpful as well. The resident who sets it can renew it as needed, even immediately. Using a bot or scripted object to continually renew this would be a TOS violation. Eliminate the use of any "security" device that does not conform to this standard. This would completely eliminate the need for the banlines textures and would also make travel across the mainland much easier and more enjoyable.

Zoning
Some zoning such as height restrictions for land attatched builds might be welcome. Zoning a full sim as residential or commercial might as well, as long as existing uses are grandfathered in until the property transfers. Creating themed areas in existing mainland, with strict build covinents would most likely be met with much resistance and probably would not be productive either from the standpoint of implimintation or enforcement. It would also be patently unfair, but that argument does not seem to hold much water with LL.

Vehicles
Change parcel prim limit code so that any object at or below the current vehicle prim limit, with a seated avatar, (possible variation would be one not owned by parcel owner) would be regarded as temp for the purpose of prim count. There is simply no reason a moving vehicle should count against parcel prim count. Again, the purpose of this is to enhance and encourage exploration on mainland.

Well, thats my thoughts. Hope it helps with the discussion. While long, I have enjoyed reading this thread. It is obvious from the number of posts, that cleaning up mainland is a really important topic for many.

DRD

I still don't like the idea of disabling ban lines - if it's 'my' land and I'm not using ban lines to grief my neighbors, people shouldn't be able to go there unless the covenant says otherwise.

This feels like the request that parcels shouldn't be allowed to be cut under 512m2 - it's a change in functionality and land owner rights to address a problem that LL says they're working on.

Please don't remove my ability to keep people off my land.

Why do they have to be visible in the main viewer window at all ??? I understand they're only there as a visual guide for people who fly around. Which I do alot.

I would much rather have banned parcels show up in my minimap as red blocks. That way I can see all of them at the same time and know which way not to go before I slam into them, which is what mostly happens now.

And when I do slam into a banline and I havent got my mini-map open, a simple blue dialog telling me that I need to go another way would be preferable.

That's how I envisioned it.

Yes, I understood that. I was responding to your "this would nver happen in RL". SL is not RL, analogies between SL and RL are useful for illuminating a problem, but you can't automatically say "SL should be just like RL"... I would hate to have to get council approval every time I wanted to rez a new water tank or solar panel or replace my fence or paint my house, like in RL... and that applies both ways. Do I want to be restricted from selling any parcel I buy? No. But you need a better argument than "RL isn't like that" against it.

I understand why this is disturbing to you, but SL isn't like RL... if you can't even tell if someone has been there, if they can't interact with your land in any way, why should it matter to you that your neighbor was able to walk across the corner of your yard from one parcel they own to another? Because that's what virtually every "intrusion" when you're not there represents.

If the ban lines were restricted to something like the interior of a building, and didn't stretch out to the very edge of the parcel, then they wouldn't be "griefing the neighbors". The current behavior of ban lines is disturbing to me, and I've had three years to get used to it.!

I understand why this is disturbing to you, but SL isn't like RL... if you can't even tell if someone has been there, if they can't interact with your land in any way, why should it matter to you that your neighbor was able to walk across the corner of your yard from one parcel they own to another? Because that's what virtually every "intrusion" when you're not there represents.

If the ban lines were restricted to something like the interior of a building, and didn't stretch out to the very edge of the parcel, then they wouldn't be "griefing the neighbors".