Feedback on the Mainland

Give your feedback on the Mainland blog post to Jack Linden

We hope to be talking more about how this will happen towards the end of the quarter.

QUOTE]


Jack...................... you have thrown us a kibble and there are 18 moderators hopefully maybe possibly reading all of these responses. But this statement is as disturbingly vague as the endless Office Hours promises of "a policy is coming".

When is the end of the quarter? End of August? September? A quarter past never?

Is LL waiting that long to talk more about what to do about the endless ad towers and fake ad networks? That is too little too late.

Or is it to wait that long to see if zoning new mainland improves the bottom line of the next quarter?

Finally, is this thread going to go for that long? The 18 moderators would be better served getting off their collective rumps and using the magic Linden powers to go delete every fake ad tower and repossess every extortion plot.

Enough already.

Parcel basements; basically an area "under" the simulator that is completely private. You can't see into, or even download content from another person's parcel basement unless you're in it. It's a much simpler solution, but a lot better than what we have now. I still favour proper zones, but recognise the greater complexity of them:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1138

As much as I welcome Jack's announcement on new policies for Mainland, I also have a concern. As others have noted, if LL is seriously thinking of introducing zoning to new continent lands but not for the existing land because of the impact this would have, wouldn't this devalue existing land? Residents who run residential areas in unzoned land may be seriously affected by this choice.

Enable flying at defined altitudes - even when access and object entry are allowed, a full parcel can still de-rez the vehicle and leave you and passengers falling out of the sky;

One could start by preventing land less than 512sqm from being sold, preventing people from owning less that 512sqm in a sim, and or preventing the prims in sub 512sqm land from being used.

Enable flying at defined altitudes - even when access and object entry are allowed, a full parcel can still de-rez the vehicle and leave you and passengers falling out of the sky;

One could start by preventing land less than 512sqm from being sold, preventing people from owning less that 512sqm in a sim, and or preventing the prims in sub 512sqm land from being used.

In RL, signs are heavily regulated.

I'd been a community manager for over 10 years for an online service popular in '90s. Though not an employee (only a contract holder), through that experience I had the chance to see what it meant to run a large online community from the point of view of the managing company.

I know too well how people can get passionate and make all kind of theories about a managing company being in the game only to exploit users, milk them of their money or being totally careless. My idea of LL is not of a greedy, monolithic company in the game to screw everyone up. If that experience taught me something, I can imagine that there are lots of debates and passion inside LL on how to deal with problems.

So, frankly, I find some of the criticism and plotting theories exposed in this thread excessive. The fact is, there have been oversights, some problems are long overdue. The amount of passion, frustration and sour feelings coming from the many residents who contribute to this discussion is telling of how much each of us care and want to see effective solutions to problems which seriously affect everyone's experience in SL.

I own mainland and private sim land. I run a business which is wholly about advertizing; this is conducted at 350m and doesn't spoil the beautiful beach below. I sail and fly. What I like about mainland is the variety and the potential for long distance travel. Here are my thoughts:

Land access and ban lines:
- Make the visibility of ban lines optional, for example in Advanced -> Rendering;
- Enable flying at defined altitudes - even when access and object entry are allowed, a full parcel can still de-rez the vehicle and leave you and passengers falling out of the sky;
- Make Maintenance owned land visible - for example a new View Landowners and Map color


Land use
- it should be possible to circumnavigate all continents via Maintenance owned land and eventually fly / sail between them all
- nobody should buy land next to an open water Maintenance sim and then discover that the Maintenance sim gets sold, developed and filled up, cutting off their access to the oceans - so if that's the eventual destiny of a Maintenance sim, figure out a way of making that obvious to potential buyers of neighboring land
- Maintenance sims should not be sharing servers with inhabited open sims (which, if over-inhabited, cause lag in the maintenance sims)
- Pro-rate avatar limits by parcel size if necessary to prevent people being kept out of land that they own by over use of small parcels
- Fix sim crossings especially in vehicles
- Build the roads

"Ads lots" and extortion
Most likely any rule that is automated will cause the behavior to evolve rather than discontinue.
We should start by figuring out what we want to achieve. Is it ok for one person to destroy the value of another's land? If not, then make it stop.
Despite what Jack said, I can see no purpose to filling up unused tier with 16sqm cuts in other sims. I do see the point of using cuts as landing points within other land owned by the same person. So cutting isn't the issue, it's selling the cuts individually.
One could start by preventing land less than 512sqm from being sold, preventing people from owning less that 512sqm in a sim, and or preventing the prims in sub 512sqm land from being used.
Existing cuts should be able to be adopted at average price per square meter by neighboring owners.
After the announcements on this topic earlier this year, I don't know why selling cuts at prices up to L$10K for 16sqm is still being tolerated. Abuse reports that have been filed should be actioned.

I agree to that, but I don't think we should just leave it to Linden.
I suggest a structure for concrete suggestions of what to do...there has been a lot of talking, but not many concrete suggetions. This is mine for Ads.

I suggest that we form some concrete proposals of what to do for the different areas of the discussion. One of the first thing would be to devide the problems into sub-items and put forward suggestions on each sub-item that can be commented/improved.

Anyone ready to do this? Is this your task Jack Linden?

ADFARMING BANNED in Second Life but not QUITE yet

Following taken from Jack Lindens Blog Febuary13th 2008
So whilst advertising in itself is okay, where it crosses the line into harassing behavior or visual spam, where the intent is purely to compel another resident to pay an unreasonable price to restore their view - then this will be covered under Harassment in our Community Standards. Such cases should be abuse reported as you would any other Terms of Service or Community Standards violations, so that the governance team can take the appropriate action. See below for detailed advice on how to abuse report these.
It will obviously be difficult for us to define exactly where example A is an abuse issue as compared to example B where it is not - but the intention is to be as consistent as we possibly can and to remove the content as it is reported to us.
So to recap:
• Advertising on small parcels is fine, we are not outlawing the use of small parcels for this purpose.
However..
• Using content, particularly advertising, to deliberately and negatively affect another resident’s view so as to sell a parcel for an unreasonable price, will be deemed unacceptable and dealt with as a violation of our community standards.

Why the current ruling isn’t working.

The above statement looked as if finally Linden Labs were going to act, preventing the further destruction of the mainland in the name of personal greed, however it is now June and no real change has occurred due to the looseness of linden labs initial statement, particularly the consistent level they mention using when consider removing content. What is that level?
The greedy few responsible for the majority of adfarms currently littering the mainland, instantly saw the loopholes left by Linden Labs and now continue to act as previously with no real restrictions upon their activities.
The main differences are that previously they would have towers with prices exhibited on their land now they have either towers with no land price or land just set to an exorbitant price, usually with banlines setup to cause access restrictions and annoy their neighbours.

So what needs to be done now?

A tightening of the Terms of Service is obviously required to prevent continuous Harassment from these parasites.

Considerations

Should 16 sqm plots be stopped?
Many legitimate uses for 16 sqm plots do exist, for instance in my travels campaigning against adfarming, I have met avatars who use small plots to sell goods they have created, run scripts such as land scanners even legitimate advertising and information booths. For this reason I feel 16sqm plots should remain as this enables new avatars to build up a legitimate business cheaply.

Ideas to prevent misuse

Builds should be ground based only and to a height of 5metres only, in addition to a maximum land price being enforced of 5x average land value per sqm on all smaller plots below 128sqm in size.
Banlines on smaller plots below 128sqm should not be permitted.

How would this stop the current spate of adfarming?

The main weapons, used by the adfarmers include placing a huge imposing tower or for sale sign high in the air, or surrounding their parcel with banlines. Essentially to grief and harass the avatars owning land nearby. Forcing them to use big walls in their builds to block out the unsightly view or buy the land for an inflated price, restrictions on build sizes for smaller plots effectively prevents this form of Harassment as small walls could be put up to block out the view without loosing continuity with the rest of a build.
The limiting of land price to 5x average sqm sale price, on smaller plots prevents the adfarmers ability to extort huge amounts out of their neighbours and yet also allows legitimate users of small plots to put up the price for especially well positioned plots ie. road side or plots on other protected borders etc.

Why choose these measures? Was 5 just the number pulled out of a hat?

The average avatar is no higher than 2m in height with camera set as normal while moving around a 5m high ground based ad board would be picked up perfectly in the camera view and provide effective readable advertising, but yet not be imposing on the surrounding landscape.
How good is a build with less than 14 prims going to be? If you make it much larger than the 5m in height, it will just be a series of ugly blocks like the ones adfarmers are using now. Prevent the abilty to create an eyesaw on smaller parcels prevent the land extorters ability to apply pressure.

Why not allow floating adboards? this allows the adfarmers to place objects high up to harass their neighbours still, Also when you are flying do you notice what an adboard says? No of course not you are moving to quickly and having far to much fun, to stop and think about adboards
The reason they are built high is to cause maximum disturbance.

5x average sale price per sqm works out to still give plenty of scope for profit to entrepreneurs who have built up a legitimate business but prevents the unscrupulous ones from asking 1495Lindens for 16sqm of land as this would make the maximum price around 500L for these plots at this moment in time.
This still provides a decent opportunity to make profit. When selling land legitimately, after building a small Seller or advertising business.

With regard to the banlines well common sense is the answer simply ask why would someone place a piece of land up for sale and also restrict access to it? Hmm that’s a difficult one to work out, for that matter why would anyone put up ban lines to protect access to their three prim wonderland? Yes there is one possible reason perhaps they did it by mistake, we all suffer from the odd blink or breathe moment.
Another reason though is deliberate obstruction ie. HARASSMENT

How hard would this proposal be to administer for Linden Labs?

This is the great part
Very easy! as it is not really anything new just the provision of a carefully thought out consistent level which Linden Labs can apply to the rule they have already implemented, in response to abuse reports as they are filed regarding ADFARM HARASSMENT.

What if the ADFARMERS continue to not put on a price but still say they want more than 5x land value for their plot?

This is still extorsion so they could be Abuse Reported and a copy of the conversation could be passed on to Linden Labs with the report, for action to be taken if allegations are proven. However remember if an adfarmer cannot HARASS then they cannot pressurise people into a land purchase, so would have to sit on the land paying tier with no means to force their inflated sales prices.

Will this proposal actually work?

There are never any garantees but if Linden Labs provide the outline of a consistent framework they will work to when dealing with adfarming Abuse reports, then we will all know our rights and can act effectively when we come up against these instances on smaller plots.
It is in my opinion, not economically viable for adfarmers to use bigger parcels as the land tiers become unmanageable, but current TOS on HARASSMENT could still be used in the event of large parcel sharing taking place to cause disturbance, sim lagging etc. Another consideration is if larger plots are used by adfarmers atleast they are confined to one area of a sim not spread all over it and linden labs could just up the size of the plots that fall into the adfarming net, if it does become a problem in the future.

This has to work out to the benefit of all SL users. Unless of course they are making a living by upsetting all those who own land around them!

This is completely off track for what I clearly meant. It was in reference to people being on the parcel of another person, not about stealing textures, scripts, or using a copybot and you knew that. I can not come on your "land" and hurt anything, and I don't leave behind any forensic evidence I was there either. LOL

I don't know if you are trying to start a flame with me, or playing lawyer, either way, your post has no bearing on what I said.
DRD

The common cry of those that like to infringe law and cause hassle to others... "I can not come on your "land" and hurt anything, and I don't leave behind any forensic evidence I was there either. LOL"

You made a statement indicating that its not real... there is enough evidence to support that a person can suffer psychological damage... thereby you or anyone entering can cause psychological damage and therefore it can be seen as being a hurt.

If you will note, the legal definition of trespass was among the meanings.

I'm sorry, but I don't usually see the law equivocating copyright infringement with some pixel toon walking over an imaginary line in an imaginary world.

Well, I tell ya what, when the first case of virtual "step over the imaginary property line" criminal trespass case gets to court, and someone gets convicted and goes to jail, come back and we'll talk. Until then, I will feel quite safe from prosecution over it.

Getting a little bit on the esoteric side of things, aren't we? Money is not nearly as large a factor in a criminal case as a civil case. In addition, "people" don't "pursue" a criminal case; the State pursues criminal cases, sometimes on behalf of the victim(s).

Cool. Keep studying.

O.o I've never heard that "cry" for such a thing. Probably not quite as common as you let on.

Oh please. Voluntary participation in an imaginary world, one which has MANY controls to "prevent" unwanted interaction and is founded on mutual consent would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove any "real" "psychological harm", especially over something so trivial.

At the worst, the judge tells the plaintiff to grow some skin, get psychological help, or DON'T USE THE SERVICE.

I've spent the past year and literally 1,000s of US dollars, not including tier, attempting to turn 5 sims worth of mainland around the grid into pleasant communities. Much of the purchases I made were to "buy the view," since LL has refused to deal with the ad farm issue as promised. The challenge and therefore the value in holding mainland has been long established as to whether it lacks blight and ad farms. Now I find out that all of these these continents are all about to turn into the abandoned and forgotten armpits of SL. I am pissed beyond measure. In one posting, I find that all my mainland business strategies and expenditure have been a folly.

I think that you need to deal with the ad farm issue as your current customers are demanding. We're not all just going to pack up and abandon our land and move. Putting the screws to existing landholders by simply rolling better land off the presses elsewhere is going to lose you a lot of money and a lot of customers.

--Avion Raymaker

A couple little analogies to suit this thread:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My whole point being, despite all best intentions, sometimes things to be nuked entirely before they can fixed, otherwise it's a vicious circle of failures.

To me, SL2 is the only REAL solution.

Then you obviously have not used the internet much. The cry is often "its only internet, its not real" and this is not true.



If I am in a place and you or another comes there and harasses me, this is not voluntary participation. I did not sign up to SL or the internet to be harassed, nor did you.

Whereas the fabric is fantasy, the fact that it is consists of real people, that actually make a living from the transactions that take place in SL, makes it a lot more than some imaginary world. This particular issue is the topic of major discussions currently.

Yes, I agree that it may well be difficult prove, and there may be some controls, but I do not accept that there are many... there is mute, and some security orbs... and perhaps if a person owns land, the ability to ban... yet, each one can be subverted in one form or another.

It is merely an opinion to state it is trivia. It may well be to you, but to another it may not be, and this needs to be taken into consideration.

The popups from the RL web need to disapear. I don't pay LL to be spammed by out of world items. In world or "in-game" ads tastefully presented maybe ok as part of the game but no earth spam. Exspecially 50 m high.
The immersion is lost with this trash.
And the incredible beauty of SL and all the builds in it ruined by a few trash people. Orbit them.