How Many Islands have gone so far?

Considering that the "Friends Online" page is still broken (WEB-609) after having been reported in April, I'm tempted to apply Hanlon's Razor in this instance.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-609

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

This is what i tought initially... but im start to guess that you won't see any positive number there until something change.. i expect a damn flat line until ...whoknows... or (worse) the numbers are heading again in the deep (negative).. that would explain why they removed the raw data also. The golden age is finished.

For those still interested in the numbers (and too lazy to check out Tyche Shepherds blog http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/business-land-economy/8523-new-second-life-sims-past-13.html ), I quote this week's post:

This week Linden Lab decided to remove direct links to the SL economic statistics. The daily produced figures can still be found at Second Life | Economic Statistics (Raw Data Files) but as of Friday LL removed the statistics about New Islands and added the following footnote

Note: Private Region data has been temporarily unpublished while we correct our reporting mechanisms to account for the recent addition of Openspaces and Homesteads. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Luckily enough my surveying doesn't rely on their published statistics so here is this weeks report.

The grid contraction moves closer to flattening out this week with a net loss of 73 regions
187 new regions were added to the grid whilst 260 were removed (65 of these were renames).
Total number of regions is now 27148 of which 21782 are private estates & 5366 Linden mainland.

Great! Please keep post these numbers here as well once they are updated. Great job, much appreciated!

Overview of new and closed regions the last weeks:

http://www.metaverse-business.com/regionweek.php

I'm following the number of regions on the grid since december 2007.

Let me know if you would like to see other graphs or statistics.

This gives the appearance that Linden Lab simply does not want anyone to see how rapidly things are disintegrating. This is especially troubling since it is possible for a third party to verify or corroborate the numbers from their reports, and that these third party methods still work.

Rather than fix it, they're hiding it, or so it would seem.

This might be true if the numbers were still going down, but they are not. I am just taking them at their word that they are going to rework the summary to break islands up into more classes including homesteads.

Uh? Did u look at the numbers (yes including today), now look at the numbers prior to the homestead annuncement... they aren't bad? They are the worse numbers we ever had on SL, because they aren't just about a week, the data are bad across months and they continue to be red. We used to have many islands added each week, actually the best you may expect is a flat line, damn far from what we had just few months ago.
So it's not the islands lost, it's more about the islands that won't come.
They have nothing good to pubblicize, so they simply have taken em out. There's no "tech" problem to solve, to list how many islands we have on the on the grid (and so any other possible calculation/cobination), it's a single query... my cat would do do it alone in seconds (ye she's a smart pussy).

Exactly. Looking at the numbers of regions that SL lost since the end of october is only one half of the drama - the other half is the approx. 1000 regions that would have been *added* each month without the OpenSpace disaster. So right now we are in the region of 7000(!!!) SIMs less than would have been without the LL Street Robbery.

They are still going down but we're close to reaching the bottom of the curve, all the stats are still showing a decline, it's very minimal now though.

Never said the numbers were not bad. I am contending it is kind of late to be trying to hide the numbers, especially since they are flattening out. Intentionally hide them now and someone could surmise that the numbers were continuing to go down at the same rate. If it was on purpose then the numbers would have been pulled back in October.

So yes, I have looked at the numbers.

Well... Sorta.

The pre-october openspace product was a great seller - most of those 1000 regions that you say would have been added would have been openspace regions. Even if LL had only made the pricing change on new openspace sims, these 1000 regions would still be missing.

First i would remember you that they have hided the data, at least the "public" one, they didn't done it the first day probably because they didn't expect those so big (negative) numbers, but then they did (and with a stupid excuse... imho); after that they were waiting the finish of the bailout expecting a return in sale (January), but that's not happened.. so they have decided to hide em all. you say that would invite to any sort of speculation, that's right, but they still not official data... at least into their heads, because many sources proven how easy is to obtain reliable data even without the contribution of LL.
We will see some sort of official data returning back? Yes they will return back but only with two possible conditions:

1) If the numbers will start to raise again by double zeroes (so they can start to tell to the media again: hey see how we're growing!);

2) if 1) doesn't happens (and it's likely to not happens) they will (litterally) invent a new method to calculate the land mass, based on a empiric-exotic-alien formula that would give out good (apparently) numbers whenever the things turns on the opposite way.

Jesse, the land mass is the LAND MASS it's the square meters, you don't need to be a scientist to calculate it, and you don't even to be to separate it by: mainland / openspace / homestead ...c'mon. Technical problems my arse.

Wow chill out. Kind of makes all of this rant meaningless if they do exactly what they said in the footnote on the page. Rework how it is presented and post it again.
You are mad as heck about one thing and taking out on the info which until this week has been there. It was never hidden, if it was then they would have taken the raw data down also. The raw data is down now but the footnote said it will be back. After a couple of weeks, maybe a month, if it is not back, then it is time to rant and rave.

I get your point, but sometimes waiting is too late.

I agree that ranting and raving isn't constructive here, but people feel cheated over this whole issue and when people feel cheated they tell people loudly and they tell people often.

The issue with the data is that it has been apparently wrong for months. There was a footnote stating this for a while when they pulled the figure from the general economic stats page, so then people went to the raw data files.

Tyche Shepherd's independent counting mechanism is probably more useful than trying to pick the bones out of stats here, but growth will come in the very near future.

I recall awhile back - like 4 or five months ago - there was a humongous spike in islands. There was like a 40% increase in land in about 2 months. Obviously that kind of increase is unsustainable when coupled with the much slower increase of concurrency.

I see the reduction in total land in the last couple of months put against the extreme growth just prior to that as a wash. Possibly not a bad outcome, considering the worldwide economic crisis at hand...

Just something to consider.

Especially when your company's solution to unsustainable growth is to say your customers are cheating you, raise the prices to absurd levels and force them to pay more or lose everything they've invested thus far. And let's not forget, you keep selling more of the same faulty product, all the while you blame your customers for your own tech shortcomings.

But it's water under the bridge now. They won't need to worry about unsustainable growth ever again - not after kicking us all in the teeth when we followed the written rules, spoken rules, and examples shown at Mos Ainsley. If you can give me one good reason to trust LL again, I'm all ears.

LL was the sole cause of that increase,they created their own problems then punished those who bought their product by increasing the cost to a point where it becomes unaffordable
They sold an afforable product and then they raised the tier and in the process crushed many lovely creations and dreams of one's own private island

To be honest I was expecting a crash in the product at some stage, people were carrying around a lot of tier unfilled when Openspaces weren't paying, however I expected to see a natural market forces crash, not a Linden Lab hammer to shatter the product.

It could have been avoided.. Some foresight, assuming that it was all honest mistakes on LLs part, would have told them that a +65% price increase would do bad things for the market. A 25% increase with added script/avatar limits would have done far less damage..

Obviously not affordable for them.

You're allowed to have a private island. You just have to pay something more than what it costs LL for it.

If that "crushes your dreams", your dreams need tuning. I have all kinds of dreams, but I don't expect someone else to pay to make them reality.

My dreams don't need tuning at all.i got my openspace when they were $500 to buy with 1875 prims,i got fed up with no privacy and people walking all over my land.
I got mine way before LL lowered the price and raised the prims.
I just got caught up in LL debacle,
Anyway cost was never the issue with LL,their claim was they were being abused,and not being used as intended

ok, well....
hmmm
let me get back to you on that.

Thus running up the total cost to support them, and making them unprofitable.