Feedback on the Mainland

Dekka, there used to be a scheme called First Land. The Gov sold premium resis their first 512m for 512L. What happened was that many people then sold it on at a huge profit almost straightaway (I still have my original parcel and will never part with it as long as I remain in SL) leading to a glut of land for sale and a mass of "For Sale" signs.

I suggested that to avoid that, the purchaser was not allowed to sell in the first 3 months of ownership, except to Gov Linden, and then only for 512L. Others put up similar suggestions. You can find the discussion in the archived Land Forum. LL's response was that they didn't want newbie ghettos, so their solution was to close the scheme.

A good start to improving the look of Mainland would be turning on auto-return on Linden-owned parcels. This is a particular problem where land has been abandoned. In addition, when someone abandons land, it would be great if banlines were automatically deactivated. There is nothing more irritating than a pile of random cubes, pyramid-selling schemes, and objects emitting various screaming noises, the whole lovingly protected by banlines, to discover that the proud owner is none other than our Lord and Master, Governor Linden.

Of course you can raise a ticket - and wait 3 months or so before anything is done about it.

Why not make all land auto-return and no-build by default and allow owners to change that in Options? I've a feeling one objection will be the strain on the asset servers (oh will no one think of the asset servers?), so why not set the time to the longest period allowed?

I endorse this completely - its not only about ad farmers. There is sadly a small number of sly and spiteful peeps around who grief within the TOS with no commercial intent.

Working off a very small budget, my friends and I rent a 1/4 sim on Mainland in the (potentially) pretty coastal area of "Linda". We were lucky to meet a terrific landlord who is very supportive of creativity in SL & she rents to us for little or no profit..

So, with some confidence, we threw ourselves into developing our parcel in a sensitive and (hopefully) aesthetic manner - creating a fisherman's wharf and themed stores with as much quality, originality and humor as we could muster. We even engaged our neighbors in open discussion to make sure we didnt affect their parcels or views.

One of the aims was to unify this pretty coastal area by example. However, one Resident had different ideas. Our efforts were quickly dampened by a spiteful neighbor who owns a handful of small empty surrounding parcels.

He built a number of ugly day-glo towering structures directly against our parcel "because he could". His builds also transgressed onto Governor Linden waterways

W tried to engage him in friendly listening discussion to resolve any issues he may have had - we even asked if we could modify our parcel in some way to satisfy him. (We simply didnt know what his issue could be, so were floundering as to why he was doing this)

His response was to mute and ban-line us & he heightened his griefing structures seemingly for "fun".

Here's the thing:

Filing ARs only worsened the situation - which persists even now. He was warned, then suspended for 1 day for the transgression onto Governor Linden land, but he re-doubled his griefing behaviour as soon as he returned. (He changed his functionless structures from multi colored dayglo to black and white checkered patterns in order to stay "inside the TOS"

Repeated ARs from a broad range of affected people including our landlord met with stony silence and zero action from LL.

Consequently, we stopped putting in as much effort to our parcel - there seems little point when LL makes no effort to protect small fish like us.

(And on a positive note, well done LL for finally taking action to make things better on Mainland, but where were you when WE needed you, guys?)

Thats a great suggestion to split the company into several sections, because my thoughts concerning this are started from the same cogitations. I guess they have internally a mix up of implied powers and this mix up lags the support and deranges the quality of work.
LL has from my own visual angle to renew their image to their customers; the main website suggests its a familiar company and the most of us are assossiating that closely to our own believes to SL. The back side of this "picture" is that the mix up of powers incommodes the run of SL.
The first thing you can is to make a movie which shows us a in a few minutes how LL is working and what kind of technologies you run. My thought behind this is, to show the users a bit more from the knowledge of LL and that not all of them are "beginners". (excuse this word but i use this as synomym) You can say this is a reverse way to split up the image of LL into several sections but when the users feel confident with the things LL is doing they will few reask their solutions in the future. Or has EA a forum like that where ppl can "stand on the feets" of the staff of the respecting company? No. Ubisoft have one who is working similar but they split strongly the needs of their customers from the run of the company.
So whats the conlusion of this? We all are really get fewer pissed off!

To start... I am not sure how Forums work; I have never done this before...

I have been very happy to read the text from Jack Linden, especially the part about the advertising. I am landlord and I do have some places where I was forced to plant lots of trees or separating screens against all those advertisingplaces.
I do not understand why people try to advertise that way, they should understand the view of the surroundings will be destroyed by them....
The second great point of the plans is to give some guidelines throughout some (groups of) regions. In that case we will not offend people unnecessary. Because SL is worldwide we are not always aware we hurt other people with what we are doing, consiously or not.

For those points I have to say I think the ideas of Jack Linden are great, and very welcome. I will certainly try to keep up reading these blogs !!!


PS: Sorry for my mistakes with the English language .

LOL

Typical Linden Labs short sightedness, so they allow a few Wan*ers to make the whole mainland one big Shi*hole.
Stopping new customers getting hold of new land, and then wonder why they are not getting any more new premium membership.

LMAO

MUPPETS

Damn right there Raymond



Because while we carry on putting our money into this cesspit they don't really actually give a S*it !

It's a shame but till they ban ADFARMING properly the cycle goes on and on a few people spoiling everything for the rest of us, my advice is to do exactly what I did, don't rely on Linden Labs, get yourself a nice bit of land with protected waters on the edge of the world then you can be Jack as JACK and forget all about the worries of the rest of the Mainland.

Leave it to the scumbag ADFARMER'S and GRIEFERS.

When it is a desolate wasteland of AD SIGN's and tiny 16's costing thousands of Lindens with a sea of empty yellow ground between them.

Then and only then will Linden Labs step up to the plate.

because until then as Raymond said

The cost of maintainance is high enough to expect some returns for your monies, ie: help with bad adverts near you, land editing and helping get the best out of your land. Zoneing is a great idea which possibly should have been done on the outset of mainland.

Dear Jack,

I have invested thousands of dollars in building the Chilbo community on the mainland over the past couple years, as have others in my group, and spent countless hours of time working with mainland residents, dealing with abandoned parcels, griefers, and ad farm jerks. This is a very serious investment for me. Further, I've extolled the virtues of Second Life and virtual worlds to literally thousands of educators and administrators at workshops and conferences all over the US. I can't even calculate how many residents, universities, and colleges have come into Second Life directly due to my hard (uncompensated by Linden Lab) work. I feel I have paid my dues as a Second Life resident and then some with a cherry on top.

Regarding the mainland, in the past 6 months, representatives of Linden Lab have kicked me in the teeth in several ways: they have placed abandoned parcels for public auction despite the fact that our community owns the land on three or even all four sides, at least once resulting in me paying over $20,000L for a 512m parcel because it was literally right next to our Town Hall in the heart of our community; they have worked out private deals with other residents who are NOT members of or invested in the area around Chilbo, giving them abandoned land for $1L that they then turned around and sold for extortionist prices; they have sold huge tracts of abandoned land near Chilbo through private deals rather than putting them up on auction, which were then cut up into small parcels and sold for extortionist prices; they have left griefer objects on abandoned land for literally years; and they have failed to address nearly every single ad abuse report we've filed despite a supposed change in policy all those months ago.

I, too, am quite skeptical that a change in mainland zoning policy will do anything but hurt honest community building groups like Chilbo, and will indeed like so many other changes, only help those who want to make a quick buck. In all my years in Second Life, I've always been working towards creating open, diverse, pleasant mainland communities, and no one at Linden Lab has ever bothered to take the time to look and see that our community owns land in 6 neighboring mainland sims, that our community actually uses the group tier donation model, that we ALREADY HAVE community standards but no way to enforce them, that we meet regularly to resolve our own disputes and issues, and that we are very serious and dedicated in our investment into Second Life and the mainland. They just pop in when they finally address an abandoned parcel, sometimes dole it out to someone who has a connection with them and sometimes just throw it up on public auction, and it as if our community, our hard work, and our investment of time and money doesn't even exist. We're left to fend for ourselves and pay through the nose if we want to try to continue to grow and keep a cohesive feel to our little tiny spot of goodwill in the anarchy of the mainland.

My suggestions:


1. Remove blanket banlines and pay-to-enter barriers from the mainland PERIOD. If you want absolute privacy, buy land on an island or eject jerks and implement individual bans. Blanket bans and pay to enter zones are the bane of mainland existence, worse than ad farms in my opinion.

2. Make the process for reclaiming land absolutely transparent so mainland communities can plan ahead and not feel subject to Linden Lab's whims. If you don't pay your tier after X months, your land is cleared and reclaimed automatically the very day after that period expires. 3 to 4 months is more than reasonable.

3. When a parcel is abandoned or reclaimed for lack of payment, all landowning group owners and private landowners in the sim should be notified FIRST and get FIRST SHOT at a private, closed auction. This should be relatively easy to automate. This would allow existing residents to work it out amongst themselves who wants to compete for the land. This would encourage cooperation and self governance by people who already have an investment in that region. Only after a set period of time if no existing landowner in the sim bids should that parcel then be put up for public auction. STOP ALLOWING EXTORTIONIST PROFITEERS TO BENEFIT MORE FROM LINDEN LAB POLICIES THAN GOOD HONEST COMMUNITY BUILDERS DO. IT IS THE COMMUNITIES THAT RETAIN RESIDENTS, PROMOTE PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS, AND INCREASE USER HOURS, NOT LAND FLIPPERS.

4. Linden Lab has for years claimed that they eventually wanted to put more governance in the hands of residents since they do not have the staff or the time to resolve all disputes. So do it. Where organized communities exist, empower long-term residents with established records of good payment, good stewardship, and good relations to manage the sims instead of Linden Lab. Enforce our community-generated standards or allow us to enforce them. Whether through appointment or elections or petitions or through some other means, give community managers the ability to remove offensive ads, griefer objects, and banlines. Put your money where your mouth has been for the last 5 years.

5. Do what you say you will do. Consistently. Across the board. In a timely manner. Quit making special deals with residents who are friends of Lindens at the expense of those of us who don't cultivate insider relationships.



A short forum or blog post can barely do justice to the injustice I feel Linden Lab has done to its best customers. I rarely ever speak of it, I keep a good public PR face, I do my best to soothe the irritation of the residents of Chilbo, newbies, teachers, and students. I am a good citizen of Second Life, but I am angry, frustrated, and distrustful of the company who repeatedly says they want to do better but somehow ends up implementing policies that make my work harder. Maybe this time will be different, but I won't hold my breath.


Sincerely,

Fleep Tuque
Founder, Chilbo Community Building Project
Web: http://fleeptuque.com
Email: [email]fleep.tuque@gmail.com[/email]

Chilbo Community in the Mainland of Second Life
Web: http://chilbo.org
SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Chilbo/112/222/121

Here you have yet another resident who obviously works tirelessly to help welcome new members acts fairly, indiscriminately to make Second Life in his area all that it should be.
Wake up please and start caring about the genuine people like Fleep here.

Jack, not as a company executive but as a real person with a heart and mind surely common sense and compassion says,

Oh perhaps we are really hurting people and their view of us, with our current direction and should think about doing a little something, not a huge technical task, but a small policy change to prevent the greedy profiteering for a change.

so I will repeat it again

POSTED 08-07-2008, 05:49 AM

Date now 08-09-2008, 07:49 AM

It seems that , just like the mainland, we have been abandoned.

4 posts from Jack on the 5th, 1 on the 6th and 1 on the 7th.
and nothing since.

A reliable source told me he has gone on holiday.

That is not a joke by the way

He is set for a holiday, it was mentioned at his office hour,

Please rename this blog.
"Mainland Discussion without Jack Linden"

Agrees !

It seems like i have a deja-vu : during the meeting last week i had to repeat my questions too, since Jack was too busy with his IMs ...

/me changes topic : Mainland Discussion Among Residents !

Ban lines like anything else have been exploited. I have no acceptable alternative other than to make them visible by option from the menu. This comes back to parcel size and whether its an exploit tactic by griefers/extorters. Again I suggest .. permits. You need a "fence" you apply for a permit to put one up, stating the reason why.

When I got a 1/2 land for my store , it was for store and my home & sandbox. I needed to differentiate between the two. Work was work, my "home" was my private space. Unless invited, you are not welcome on my sandbox or in my home, period. What is the point of offering for sale land if you cannot have a fence/line/barrier that says what is acceptable to enter what is not.

Yes security orbs work well but instead of sending someone flying a "locked door" sends the same message.

Zoned areas for sailing flying etc etc sound like a much better alternative than removing a paying upstanding citizen/business owner ability to say where they want people visiting.

Apropos of a request earlier in this thread, Torley Lindens latest video tutorial is, wait for it ...


And now, I show you how to make a glowing neon sign which will surely stand out.


Should be useful for any wannabe ad farmers out there.

(Fleep/Esther, thanks for the feedback and yes, that is a key driver for this change)

--

As promised I'd like to now wrap up this forum thread by summarising a little. Once I've done that I will close the thread but there will be more opportunities to give feedback soon.

Most people are very positive about the post, but eager to see early results and rapid change. No surprise that advertising is your highest priority for things to tackle. You want action as soon as possible and so do we. I would hope to have a clear policy statement in front of you very soon and to see the situation inworld change dramatically for the better in September. Remember that this isn't just about removing ad farms, which we clearly need to do and soon, but also about providing a scaleable framework to control responsible advertising in terms of where and how it happens and how much we allow.

Ban lines are a problem, especially on small parcels. This is part technical fix and partly down to policy on usage so we will look at whether there are short term changes we can make there.

Overall you are very supportive of Zoning, with the caveat that applying zoning to old regions may be unpopular. As I've said in my earlier posts, I was referring to Zoning on new Mainland, not changing the zoning on existing regions.

Lots of excellent feedback, some new ideas and some creative thinking. I have read all of the posts and I would thank you all again for taking time to write. Watch the blog for more news when we have it.