Feedback on the Mainland

Nikki, the issue I'd have with this is as follows:

We've had our area built as it has, since 2003. Looking at the picture i'm (attempting) to tag, I think folks would be hard pressed to call the area annoying or "blighted".

(Looks like URLS arent working, and I dont want to blast the image in everyone's faces, so I guess cut and paste if you're interested.)

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/5894/lwexamplerb8.jpg

However, the way we keep going is through our avatar sales. (The vendors are inside the tree so they're unobtrusive.)

My concern is that with strict regulations designed to get rid of spinning/flashing signs, (which we've had to deal with, too... we paid L$20,000 for a single 16m2 plot in the past, just to get rid of them) - that we'd get sanctioned pretty hard for something that really isn't causing a problem.

(Our "ads" are only for our own stuff, and our own events, deep within our land.) -- Our nearest "neighbor" is 1.5 sims away.

We've really tried to practice design sense within the theme for the past five years: noncommercial, open space, and we do our own zoning and layout within our (yes, mainland, but almost 4 sims contiguous) borders.

Of course my other concern is, that because pretty much everyone else is dealing with a whole other situation in regards to the mainland and potential zoning, that our "incompatibility" may have to be forfeit for the good of the mainland.

That'd suck. We've been here for a long time and if anything, I hope, provided an area -without- blight and clutter. It'd be to say the least, ironic, if the changes had the net effect of our dissolution or exodus to a walled private island.

On the other side of the same coin though, there is, to an extent, an "I know it when I see it" threshold with advertising abuse. Some of the most egregious stuff really should have gone away a long time ago.

Oversized spinning/flashing/scattered/particle-spewing signs planted atop of 16m2 plots priced at L$100,000 .... it still happens, and there's really no reason it still should.

Mitzy shouldn't have to eregt giant walls to keep ad spammers from essentially destroying the usefulness of her land.

Thing is, I'm sure there's an answer to it... For the longest time, LL said that "no-push" wasn't "technically" possible. And now, here we are, we don't really have to worry about people using "C4 bombs" and blowing us sky high anymore.

I like the suggestion by Byron Ruxton it would stop the harassment many mainland dwellers currently experience at the hands of Adfarmers/Advertisers.

If TAG were going to abide by these rules it would make their advertising much more palatable, perhaps to show real concern for their neighbours they could begin to follow these guidelines from now on and create some more acceptably sized billboards.
That would no doubt show willing and make me respect their appeals of legitimacy.
What do you say Mr Shriner

This would also prevent some of the other vermin from extorting more than 1600L$ for a 16sqm plot, which although not ideal and I feel still to much, is far better than leaving the likes of Primlands to put up any silly price that pops into their heads.
(sorry if you feel singled out Mr Hallard but you are probably the most notorious extortioner in world at the minute, I accept there are many more like you)

A ruling like this would cure much of the problem currently being experienced in the mainland, not affect legitimate operations, like Weedy's.

YAWN....

Excuse me for not getting too excited about this, one way or another. Yeh, doing SOMETHING about ad farms [I would support getting RID of them] would be good as would some sensible common sense zoning. However, given LL's usual junior high school age attention span and the unfortunate tendancy to...well....utter untruthful statements about their intentions*, I expect nothing, zero, nade from this other than the usual talk.

I am unimpresed by talk, especially LL talk. Actions will get my attention.

* For example the touted idea that when the amount of people logged in at the same time mandated a reduction of log ins, that the ?U?NPAID accounts would be limited, not the ones who actually pay for the accounts. yeh...riiiiiiiight.

I've just put my mainland up for sale. Not because of ads but because I feel dwarfed by the builds around me. A year ago, all builds in the immediate area were similar in scale and design: people seemed to want to have a "community look". Things have changed now, of course.

I think goran Matzerath's contribution (earlier on this thread) outlines a splendid idea. If I buy again, I would most certainly consider buying in a community such as he describes: a town with roads, a "shopping" centre, and quiet suburbs. Be nice if it had a public beach a short walk away and all that.

Many of us who have stuck with the mainland over the years have done so because it offers flexibility, options to change and a mixture of commercial and residential. I would hate to see those options limited by zoning, but I also do not want to see all the old sims devalued by new policy. With 5000 sims, even with all the abandoned land around, that's an awful lot of land owners who might get so pissed off they just up and leave.

I agree with others that some of the major issues now are ban lines and temp rezzers and advertising. What's the purpose of having those ban lines visible and bleeding onto the surrounding land?

I can't see how limiting the size of parcels will make much difference. The price of land is now so low that 512 has become the new 16. That means many GIANT revolving signs with particles, light, glow, flashes - you name it. 117 prims available just to annoy the neighbours into buying.

People will always find a way around rules restricting advertising (witness the new use of ban lines). There won't be a one solution - it's an ongoing management issue. LL should put more resources into that ongoing management- then the issue of abandoned land etc might just go away and there would be no need to go through the process of zoning, changing rules for sims etc.

Or is there another reason we are talking about abandoning the idea of multi purpose mainland sims?

I wish to send the Advertisers Guild a hearty SCREW YOU.

Ads in SL are worthless and they make people's land worth less. End of story.

In my opinion the most important thing about mainland is to reduce the current visual blight. Most mainland is an eyesore, and the majority of the blame is on 16m parcels.

I know that there are people asking for 16m parcels to remain available for legitimate uses, although personally I'd love to see there be a minimum parcel size of 256m. I would like to propose a few alternative suggestions.

1) No parcel set for sale may have any prims left on it, if the parcel is less than a certain size (64m?)

2) No parcel less than 512m may have ban lines. No parcel set for sale may have ban lines.

3) Parcels of a certain size (64m?) or less may not have any VISIBLE prims. The prims must be either transparent textured, buried underground, or above cloud-height.

4) An object on any parcel must not be higher than the length of that parcel's shortest side.

5) There should be a maximum sale price for small parcels.

Most important - ARs for parcels like this (excessive advertising/spam, offensive builds, land scamming) should actually be dealt with promptly.

Speaking of which, it has always seemed to me a reasonable idea to make water, water.

I was looking for land lately, and found so many places where you just fell through to the bottom of the water, and people lived on little platforms above!

I always thought it was kinda lousy that water was chopped up into parcels and sold. In real life, people can't just put floating houses all over the oceans and rivers.

coco

I didn't know that bots buy land that is 9999L or more for a 16m?

Another insane step by LL to try and pasteurize the grid.

Like finding a universal definition for "gambling" or "mature", "advertising" is impossible to confine to a universal definition.

Draconian zero-tolerance laws will have to be put in place, making many people to wonder what constitutes advertising and what doesn't. If I use a TV that has the Media texture logo of the TV station on it - does that count as a billboard?

People will find ways around the law's loose interpretations and create more obnoxious and devious ways of getting their products or services in the eyes of others.

And if advertising is regulated, how is the young start-up company to get any exposure?

Basically an advertising billboard is no more than a prim with a texture on it. How can you enforce laws against what textures we can put on prims? Will these laws plainly state what sizes are unacceptable, what makes a texture with your logo on it constitute an ad, and where you can legally display that logo?

Will these laws be enforced on RL corporations as well as the struggling resident who is simply trying to make enough L$s for tier/rent, or is this just a thinly veiled attempt to allow big corporations to overshadow the individual Second Life content producer's products?

Personally, I think advertising is essential. Ad farms are as much a part of the SL skyline as Profiles are to Search.

LL can hardly enforce puritanical laws on things deemed "universally offensive" - how can they assume to be able to control the display of one's product logo?

You can be positive that companies like IBM, Coke, Fox, Microsoft, Millions of Us, Electric Sheep, Swanson, and others will be most catered to with ads in the splash screen, pop-ups, Popular Places search tabs, anywhere they can. In the future, expect to see those ghosted logos in the corner of your screen like the TV networks do in RL. Maybe even a permanent "sidebar" with ads taking up 1/4 of your view on the left side of your SL client window!

Places where advertising is allowed will be naturally avoided by most, so advertisers will want to find alternative venues. Imagine big FORD and STP logos on the podium when a Linden CEO makes a speech, big NIKE logos on the stage behind him, and several product plugs sprinkled throughout the session. Imagine Philip's AV with a permanent bottle of PEPSI in his hands. Avatars carrying huge signs and t-shirt logos.

The scope of any laws banning or regulating advertising will be huge and will require incredible resources to enforce. Why LL would even consider such an invasive and resource consuming effort just so someone with a transient 512x512 parcel doesn't have to look at a texture?

There can only be one reason - profit.

The big corporations would like nothing more than you to buy their KOOL-AID Sneakers, than a more quality product sold by a talented individual. There's big money in the competitive sale of inferior brand-name products over the small entrepreneur's higher quality one. Companies pay big money to squash the little guy to further their control of sales to that demographic.

This seems like a groin-kick to freedom of expression and enterprise in the future of virtual worlds and is the type of "decision" that only an amateur script-kiddie with a popular MySpace page would announce without thinking through all aspects and repercussions of the plan.

Sure, it SOUNDS like a good idea at first blink, but follow any logical path and you run into innumerable roadblocks, bottlenecks, conflicts, obfuscations, misunderstandings, defenestrations and loopholes.

My solution: I can't honestly provide one at this point, except to say let it regulate itself. If you think it's bad now - consider for a minute how bad the alternative might be. Think of the future before making hard-wired decisions.

Consider - if you had a time machine and went back in time, how any small thing that you do affects the future. Well, we have that power of change every day of our waking lives. "Planning" involves the ability to acknowledge that power of change and it's potential effect on the future.

Please consider giving full-sim owners some of the estate controls that island owners have. Maybe give the same controls to those who own the whole sim except for Gov Linden land, like a road.

I like the words, I like the message. Now I wait to see the action plans be announced and put in to action.

For me, there are 3 key areas which need improvement to back-up the message:

1) A review of the policies
2) An improved Abuse Reporting system
3) Land price regulation

1) The Terms of Service and Community Standards should be reviewed to ensure they meet the new plans. They probably are fit for purpose but it would be nice to see they've been considered.

2) The current Abuse Report system isn't fit for purpose and, as we've seen in previous posts, can actually be used to harass individuals. I find it ridiculous that, when I create an Abuse Report, I have no way of knowing its status, or even the outcome of the case. Therefore, I have to continue to report the same offence again, and again, and again, until the issue is solved or I give up. This is not satisfactory. What I would like to see is a tiered level of AR - All AR's should be reviewed within a short space of time and 'triaged'. The simple cases can then be immediately dealt with (e.g. when someone has clearly breached the TOS or Community Standards). These front-line AR Lindens should not be bogged down with paper-work and process, leaving them free to 'police the front-line'; resolving the problem, issuing a warning and moving on to the next case. Meanwhile, a 'back-room' team could produce statistics on the 'simple' cases and decide if further action needs to be take (e.g. for continual breaches).

More complicated cases can still be dealt with as now, but the reporter should be able to see the status of the case, to avoid the same issue being continually reported due to the length of time of investigation. (I can't think why a company would encourage a customer to log tickets for the same issue - Ask your local IT Helpdesk if they would like you to log 5 tickets for your broken PC, or your insurance company if they would like 5 reports of the paint on your carpet....)

Maybe this could be the topic for another open forum discussion?

3) Hopefully if the above 2 items are handled correctly, land price regulation shouldn't be necessary, but I really feel there should be a limit to the number of L$ per m2 anyone can charge.

At the moment, I believe I can hold a 16m2 plot, in the middle of someone elses land and sell it for a ridiculous amount (e.g. $1000). Provided I don't 'block the view' or put up ban lines, I'm not in breach of the TOS. (The knowledgebase article on Ad-Farms talks about 'restoring their view' and not 'restoring their land'.

I've been in this situation and AR'd the owner, but nothing happened - I didn't even get any communication as to whether my claim was valid (see point 2 above!)

So, to resolve this, either the policy should be updated to include this scenario (and similar situations) and the AR system improved; or a limit should be imposed on land sale prices (which may even be tied to parcel size - I can understand why a large, waterfront parcel facing on to a protected open-waterway goes for a high price, but should the same apply to a 16m2 plot?)

No doubt people will give me lots of reasons why land price limiting isn't enforcable, etc. but maybe this is yet another point for discussion?

So, to get back on-track...I like the message, I like the brave new world. Don't forget the old mainland though please. A lot of people live here and we can't all move over to the new zoned areas.

Limit prim size to the shortest dimension of the parcel. And I'd add to your list, no scripts or particles on parcels under, say, 64 sq m.

I wish, Anya.

We own *all* of Perry except for 144m2. And that little chunk is owned by a guy who hasn't been in SL since 2004. (Dead 'beta lifer'). Yet there are still situations where we'd have to "check with that neighbor" potentially if something were to come up. Pretty crazy. The guy may live in Bhutan in a yurt by now in RL.

If you're about to make the mainland as the private sims, with the restrictions, then I must prusume, that you also raise the tier for that mainland, otherwise the private simowners don't stand a chance.
As it looks to me, LL don't care at all about the private sims, and only want to get rid of them. The tier is 50% more on a private sim, than on mainland, and the benefit of paying that much more is, that people don't have to fear, that their neighbour will place an addfarm og an eyesore. This will totally ruin every single benefit of having a private sim, as the rental have to be those 50% more, just to cover the tier. So either you have to raise the tier on the new "improoved" mainland, or decrease the tier on the private sims, if you'd like to keep just a little credabillity. Otherwise, be honoust, and say, you don't give a damn about private sims.....

I don't agree that advertising in SL is moot and futile. It is only the methods and true intent of advertising that can be. People putting up signs outside of their businesses is still advertising, and I think that is useful and should not be abated. People putting up billboards INside their venues is also useful and acceptable. I see a lot of that, and I am very content to cope with those kinds of advertising.



Well, honestly, I don't know what your business is, so I wouldn't know how to take advantage of it. I suppose you approach people directly who might have an interest in your products/services, and that's cool, but as far as I know, you're just into postage-stamp microplot collecting. Not that that is bad or anything, I just can't say anything positive or negative about it, simply because I don't know what it is. It is true that I can't compete or undercut you as a result, but I can't recommend you with WoM advertising, either.



That's true, though you do run that risk by owning a "hole" in, or next to, someone else's land. If someone wants to put in a build, which would incidentally cover it, they have to deal with your presence, which is kinda "in your face". To your credit, you have made efforts to be fair to other folks in the past, and work with them regarding your microplot locations.



Well, that is unfortunate to hear. You have a 16sqm donut hole in my much larger mall plot that I was hoping to someday soon trade with you once I acquired the plot I wanted to trade. Failing that, you'll just be another nuisance hole that I have to build around, a la land extortionists. *shrug* I can't see how that will help your image problems any, really. You're not punishing LL, but people who would otherwise be willing to deal fairly with you and treat you fairly. I understand your frustrations, believe me; I share many of them. However, you're not going to win my sympathy by punishing me over it. :-/

Let's face it folks, this "discussion" is merely an attempt to whet resident appetites for the next wave of themed mainland like Bay Cities. LL made a killing at the auctions of those plots and they are letting us know that another wave is coming, this time with zoning to make the land even more valuable. This is wonderful news for anyone who wants to shell out big bucks for a new small plot of land.

But trust me, existing Mainland is a lost cause. You can't undo five years of "anything goes" building and land carving. LL does not have the manpower to go sim by sim and make the 5000 existing sims more attractive. Even if they did, there is no incentive for LL to clean up or regulate existing Mainland. LL does not care that your resale values are nil. They don't make a percentage of your private land sale. All they care about is tier and getting the highest prices possible at auction.

Sure, they might remove an ad farm here or there, or fix a road or two. But don't look for any action that will impact the majority of Mainland sims or their value.

I vote for a visual mute feature that allows us to simply remove unsightly ads and builds from view.

Ad farms are a tiny fraction of the problems with the mainland. A larger issue is resourse allocation for a sim and it's surrounding sims. All it takes is a popular club on a small plot to ruin the experience for anyone unfortunate to own any land next to it, even with the avatar imposter function that is now in place. There needs to be some sort of way to divide the sim's processing resourses fairly among the landowners instead of the 1024m2 landowner being able to have fifty gazillion scripts, 40 avatars and a parcel limit filled with tortured prims so that the 8000m2 landowner can't move on his/her land that they are paying dearly for every month.

Another problem with the mainland is contiious, unblocked easement through sims that connect with other sims, especially trying to use waterways. One of the pleasures of SL is to take a boat ride and tour SL.. until you actually try it sometime. Start out on a Gov. Linden owned riverway and try to follow it for any distance. You will soon discover that although the river continues, the Gov. Linden easement has shifted to a road or another river and suddenly the waterway is choked with builds and banlines. It's my opinion that SL mainland would benifit greatly if it were established that no continious waterway can be blocked to traffic by builds or banlines. The value of such waterfront property would be enhanced knowing that someone can't block the river view by building a neon green cube club in the middle of it.

Make land no build, no entry and no scripts by default when sold so that recently purchased land isn't a griefer haven and a trash pile until the new owner comes around to check it out and maybe clean it up. In the case of some land barons who never even look at the land, it can be a source of misery for weeks and in some cases months. (I had this happen where I had trash that was partially on my property for 7 months before they did anything about it and that was after I threatened AR's. I had to since the land was being used by griefers to attack the sim and the ones surrounding it and they couldn't have cared less)

Dino, I just want to insert here:

1) There was a time when 'private sims' were not available. Mainland was all you could get, that was all there was, so many of us made that "choice" without there really being a choice available at all. And when that investment is sizeable, "switching" to private sims isn't really possible or feasible.

2) For years, we saw new features and aspects added to estate controls while mainland continued to get nothing. We were told in 2006 that enhanced controls would come, but they never did. This was "justified" in the pricing, but honestly, when it comes to blight and control of griefers, the value of an unusable item is still $0, which is a far cry from the $195/65536m2 paid.

3) Most of the issues affecting private sim owners are server-software wide, and are likely to be addressed in a broader scope. (and, moreover, more likely to be addressed period.) Mainland issues are more of a governance and social issue than a technical one. Those teams generally don't intermingle, so there isnt really any resource-robbing going on.

They won't be raising Mainland tier. They will be collecting the money upfront when people get into bidding wars resulting in ridiculously high auction prices.

There's a lot more benefits to owning private sims beyond the lack of ad farms that make them command a premium.

I think that is an excellent plain speak definition of one key issue.

To deal with some possible valid objections I'd like to define "outdoor advertising" as adverts which are visible and obvious from parcels of land owned by others. I would also exclude from this what a reasonable person would describe as signage. So the name of a shop over the door or on a sign just outside is OK. An advert for the store on an unrelated plot of land that affects the view from someone elses land isn't.


I would like to propose...
The banning of advertising that is visible from parcels of land owned by others.
A mechanism for residents to report problems with objects in-world.
A fast review / deletion process taking advantage of the fact that the object(s) have already been identified.

If mainland starts getting better support than estate for less tier I think one or two eyebrows may be raised.

Banlines have no effect on bots. Either they tp in above the banline range, or they simply TP in to a protected area of the sim (like over a road, or water, or over a microplot owned by one of the landbot network owners).



Unfortunately, that will have little effect on the extortion, since the victims the extortionists are targeting are the neighbors of the plots, so listings on land search are useless (and the most notorious one right now rarely puts anything in the land title/description). Landbots aren't really the problem in these cases.

Raymond, while I kind of do share your cynicism in a broader sense, I'm pretty sure from experience that Jack doesn't roll that way. He's speaking honestly.

Nonetheless, you may be right in that:



It may indeed be too little too late. Some of the blight is -so entrenched- that LL would really have to do an about face, and be a bit disruptive, to fix it.

But I'd guess, I'd say, give them a chance.



That should have been implemented a very long time ago. And, it seems, would almost be a panacea. (Though I wonder how it would be 'griefed'.... sometimes the ingenuity of the griefing population is sadly striking.)