INFOHUB UPDATE: auctioning off the land!

I welcome any and all land releases by LL! It doesn't make any sense to me that 25% of the grid should be left fallow by LL. Think of the money you're losing, and the opportunities for expansion that you are taking away from your residents.
When you're really into SL, you can never have too much land or prims, and people who have long been settled in a place do NOT have an easy way to pack up their parcel and move elsewhere!

Weedy:

Are you talking about land that, prior to 1.9, would be released by a resident and become public land (parcels under either 512 sq. m. or 256 sq. m. I believe, as larger plots relaesed went to the Governor for auction)?

Was it your business to buy these and resell them?

And now after the 1.9 release NO land becomes public anymore, it goes back to the Governor automatically, no matter the parcel size and your business is no longer viable?

Torley, you disappoint me.

My whole point is this.

The public land system was not broken.

I bought land in more than 700 sims at a huge cost in many cases.

I had my script examined by some of SL's finest coders, including the Lindens themselves.

To combat the potential for lag, the active state of my coding was 9 lines, which took less than .5 sec to excecute, the script rested for another 15 seconds. In otherwords, it ran less than 3% of the time, or about 2 seconds per minute.

Being alerted for abandoned land is no guarantee of getting it, because there is no possible way to buy land by script. Other residents operated scanners as well and were quite efficient at getting to the land. Overall however, it worked out for everyone involved.

Once abandoned land was aquired, the objects needed to be returned, the land terraformed and it was repriced for sale. More often than not, land was bought by resellers and then resold at market value to end users. End users also had access to the buying system and often got a great deal on land.

Now thats all gone. Linden Labs has put me and others out of business, which flies in the face of what they are telling the media and new residents. Now they need to impliment measures to make abandoned land available to the public once again. It's no secret that the current auction system is ineffective. Bidding on land is no guarantee that a resident will win it. Likewise, bigger lots will be sold for USD, which amounts to little more than a cash grab for LL in my opinion.

I fail to see how putting resident run businesses out of business and piling the workload onto LL staff is an efficent way of doing things.

Yes it was my business. Now it's gone.

No business, no job, no compensation.

Oh BTW, here is another aspect.

Group land issues, ie misallocated tier, officers leaving etc, rogue officers and lover's spats often lead to group land going public. I have seen this on dozens of occasions, and in the interest of honesty and fairness, I would hear the situation presented to me. In every case, I was wholly willing to return the land to the rightful owners.

What will happen in these cases? I can tell you now. Liasons will say "email [email]support@lindenlab.com[/email]". Weeks later (if ever), support will email them back and say "Linden Lab does not intervene in disputes between residents". Kiss your land goodbye.

Weedy, thanks for explaining more about your situation. And:



by all means if you'd like to contribute to Infohubs and have some actionable things ready, please don't hesitate to say so. That's why I started this thread!

Sigh, Torley .

I posted here because you are using this infohub thread to find alternatives after LL killed my business. It has nothing to do with the infohub land itself, but a flawed policy. Do you understand?

First off, I warmly apologize I personally do not have a better grasp of what you mean and how it relates to Infohubs, although what you've explained about "abandoned land going to Governor Linden" does help. I would certainly like to understand better. I also feel for your harsh situation, as I know you told me about it before too.

The Infohubs were not abandoned though... the above list is planned to go up for auction in a general way.

This is an experiment and I don't know what will happen, which is exactly why I am open to ideas--and even moreso, action!--and that's why I started this thread to inform and communicate. It might be a nasty shock if those 'hubs suddenly went up for bidding without prior notice.

If more Resis have emerging plans to effectively grasp the remaining Infohub parcels and transform them into viable community spaces, I'm all for this. So far I've heard lots of great ideas but little corresponding great action, but this is a Resident-created world so of course I must be very amenable to that and appreciative of the creativity that happens here.

It's a bummer that one of the effects of ending the existence of public land has nerfed your business. I have never been a fan of land scanning for public land, but after reading your comments here and, especially, in the End of Public Land thread, I can see how letting residents handle the business of managing those released plots makes some sense. If there is a lot of busy work required to process all those small plots and there are residents willing to do it, I say let them do it and make some money for their troubles.

You, Shack Dougall and the others in that thread are making some great points and I encourage anyone wanting to educate themselves more about this to check that thread out. As well as older threads that show how public land has evolved over time. One can do an Advanced Search for the term "public land" and see a whole list of public-land related threads.

I did a quick search of the Feature Voting Page but didn't find any references to either public or released land. If folks are interested in bringing back public land start a Feature Proposal. If there is enough interest in it, I'm sure the Lindens would consider it. Especially if it saves them a lot of time and effort that they could spend on better things. Perhaps they had not considered this outcome when they ended public land?

As far as this thread goes, I am very interested to see what other ideas are out there regarding what will happen with the development of ther former Telehub/Infohub areas. I have been working with the residents of Nova Albion on an expanded Infohub community area. The process of which is documented in the Nova Albion City Slicker group thread concerning our Infohub area at the middle of the Grignano, Sistiana, Barcola and Miramare regions.

It's an ongoing experiment that will continue to evolve as time goes by... just like the rest of Second Life. And, I suppose, could end at any time.

This is fantastic documentation and I highly recommend it as an example to see what's really happened! I feel it's come together really well.

Thank you Salazar for your objective observations. It brings me great comfort to know that other residents are able to see this and comment as you have here.

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I think this is a poor idea for a number of reasons:

1) It goes againsts what landowners near telehubs were told when the telehubs were converted to infohubs. Now I know many of those landowners were able to take advantage of the buyback offer--but this really screws over those who decided to stick it out.

2) It makes it very difficult for LL to ever reinstitute some form of the telehub network should it become desirable.

3) It eliminates the ablity of the residents to use the free resident advertising feature of the infohubs.

4) It will decrease the value of the land next to the existing infohubs, as it will turn Linden Protected Land (which is supposed to stay Linden Protected Land) into oridinary land that any one can build a hugely laggy club on.

5) It eliminates any future possiblity of letting nearby residents develop the InfoHubs--as InfoHubs. Groups consisting of business owners adjacent to the InfoHubs could develop them in cooperation with LL. This has been suggested but never followed up on.

I urge LL to reconsider this decision.

Carl, you make some excellent points here. And Lewis made some earlier with his comments:



It's not too late or a done deal yet!

To prevent these auctions (or at least stay them from being implemented right away) residents will need to take action. Community members in the regions being affected by these proposed auctions need to communicate to the Lindens, especially Torley as she's in charge of this, that they would like to do something with the land to benefit their local community.

Travis Lambert voiced concerns about the adjacent Infohub area in Isabel. It's possible that the Shelter, and it's neighbors, could take over the operation of that Infohub with the ownership of the land remaining in the Governor's hands. So no increased tier needed.

This is what we have begun doing in Nova Albion and it is working well so far. The emphasis has to be on the surrounding community and as a resource to the greater community at large, not on individual landowners or businesses. We will continue to use the Linden Resident Advertiser, or some form of it, for the future. More importantly, we are looking at ways of providing additional (and fun) ways to educate new residents about how to live thier second life, especially how it relates to the city regions. Give it our own spin as it were.

I think the Lindens should hang on to that land as well. Either keep it protected and, at the very least, leave it a nice empty green belt or park... or, if there are interested local residents, encourage them to cooperate and put together thier own version of an Infohub area. Perhaps there has not been enough good communication to the residents at large to know that this is possible? When we were getting started with the Nova Albion hub there were a lot of questions that we bandied back and forth until someone actually approached a Linden for clarification. Once we did that, answers were very forthcoming.

The telehub/infohub plots aren't very large. Keeping them protected land, at the very least, would help preserve:

1) The existing neighbors land values.

2) Allow the Lindens to use them for some future uses. Even if the uses were temporary, like a place to exhibit local art, or have special events inworld. The spots have always been good starting points for travellers--a necessity when they were telehubs and a point of reference on the map in the recent era of Infohubs.

Perhaps more direct communication with the existing hub local landowners is in order. To help make them aware of the possibilities available to them before their hub land disappears? I have read that only a fraction of folks regularly read the forums here.

Maybe the Lindens' need to knock on some virtual doors?

I agree. I think having fewer Infohubs is better. At least, fewer infohubs as they are now, all with the same content, all with the same purpose.

Don't put the freebies at all of them. Don't put the notice boards at all of them. make them different.

I think that you ought to consider giving them a better name (I previously suggested "town squares".

I also think you should encourage people to set home to the infohubs rather than the welcome area, up to and including rehoming people randomly after a few months if they're still homed at the Welcome Area.
Didn't Khamon come up with a long distance taxi thing that would fly stuff from one location to another, and handling the special routing problems of the main continent?

You could script that to go to each Infohub sim and llGiveInventory the updates.

If that doesn't work for you, how about letting objects llGiveInventory other objects cross-sim. that would make a LOT of people currently using networked vendors very happy. You're a Linden, push the developers a bit.

As for the Infohubs, I would love to develop one. I haven't offered because I was sure there would be so many people going for it that it wouldn't be worth competing. If there's really a problem getting people into it...

Torley,

Very often these telehubs are either joined with or dually designated a Rezzing area for the vehicle enthusiasts of the community.

Of the list you provided, the following are either joined with or co-designated a rezzing area:

Daikoku - adjoining a rezzing area. (Fittingly it has a hippocycle built by Wyle Edelbrock at the infohub.)
Nuba - Infohub AND Rezzing Area.
Shinda - Infohub and Rezzing Area, also has a designated rezzing area joined to it as well.
Tridens - Infohub and Rezzing Area.

Really that doesn't tell the full story, since all the Infohubs allow rezzing that I checked. Linden roads don't allow us to rez our vehicles generally, and it's rude to rez on someone's property and drag to the road IMHO.

Auctioning off the existing InfoHubs just seems silly. LL is removing a lot of public spaces from our access and I can't imagine the net gain for LL or the community will be very much. I understand the process of updating the content at the telehubs can be burdensome without automation (which could be done, really).

Why not have someone at LL design, or open up to the community a generic infohub pavillion with a specific footprint. Something the size of an old Telehub build should fit, right? No dynamic content, no bells and whistles, just a gathering place. The community is large, but the sweeping changes of moving to P2P from the Telehub was a lot to handle all at once, and most users don't read the forums, so they don't know about the opportunity to build the infohubs.

Mauve, Bear, Ambat, and the Nova Albion Infohub builds CAN lead the way for people to 'Build the new infohubs' but the community still needs more time to fill in the gaps.

Sorry, this went all over the place but I hope I gave you and the rest of the involved personel something to think about.

One other thing--you may have not gotten much resident response on designing new InfoHubs for two reasons:

1) There is a perception that building contracts always go to the same small group of people. This may be because no one else bids, but it is a very common perception, nonetheless.

2) People interested in providing InfoHub type content are already doing so--just not at InfoHubs. New Citizens Plaza in Kuula (which I am director of) is an excellent example of this. We have most of what is offered by an InfoHub--and much more. Entirely resident created and supported. Feel free to park a "Blue I" icon over us.

I guess I'm missing why they can't just do the same thing that networked vendors use everywhere? Have a central object repository and when someone clicks it tells the server to give them the item. Yeah, okay so what if the server has to update 100 infohubs or whatever it is. That's what, half an hour if you do one email at a time? And it's not like you have to watch it. Just update the server, hit update and walk away. If LL doesn't want to invest the time in making a system, just go buy one of the many many nice networked vendors available for 1000-2000L.

Additionally, I never use the infohubs, but some people here made some good points about them being worth keeping. All the infohubs I've seen are in the 1536-2048 size range for the most part it seems. Doesn't seem like a lot of gain to auction them off. If you don't want to maintain them all, you could just turn the ones you don't want to maintain into parks and just leave them as public green space until you need them again or the residents near them want to take up maintaining them.

Having more time would be VERY helpful toward getting the community, as a whole, more informed about the possibilities available to them with these spaces. It has taken us A LOT more time than we thought just to get where we are with the hub area in Nova Albion -- and we only have the basic structure in so far and a few content items. All this even with working with Jesse, Torely and the members of the Linden content team. Many folks commute to Second Life from Earth (and other places it seems), have other jobs and may not have the time to focus entirely on projects such as this.

Torley, may we have a temporary stay on those hub auctions and, instead, more direct communication with the local landowners around each infohub location. Maybe they, like Travis and The Shelter, don't realize the opportunity they have to become more involved with shaping the future of the areas around their properties?

I agree with Carl. The first thing I thought of was - no more public advertising areas. And no more hippos!

I also agree with him regarding the perception of telehub design. I would have tried my hand at it, but I thought it was one of those deals for people who are always designing commercial spaces and winning the bids for them.

I agree with Weedy that destroying the business of hers and others regarding public land is unconscionable, against stated Linden policy, and makes no real practical sense in terms of LL labor presumably involved - except insofar as they hope to make a few U.S. dollars off of it.

Attempts to make these small bucks at the expense of individual resident businesses and resident morale (in addition to being counter to stated Linden policy) is a bad idea, I think.

coco

Continuing passionate discussions are exactly the reactions I'm hoping for--and if you are similarly enthusiastic about Infohubs and want to work with me to get things done, please post. I really need more of a diversity of individual opinions here!

I'll elaborate on some points (my there is always so much to explain):

A lot has already been tried. Time (several months now) has elapsed. Some of what's been brought up in this thread, and previous ones, was investigated and didn't work out. For example, I've communicated directly inworld with many landowners around Infohubs--consistent with our original designs--for their ideas over the last stretch of weeks. I've also sent IMs to many random Resis asking about this. You know how I like to get around. This is precisely why I am both on the SL Forums and inworld a lot.

I've heard good ideas, but not a lot of actionables willing to be undertaken. Also, more good ideas that can't be done given current limitations. Things that are nice to "say" but, sadly are not realistic! There were, of course, some laudable exceptions, and it looks like after this thread started, there may be a few more! That's encouraging.

About the "networked freebie givers": I've tried a number of networked vendors, with gracious help from the creators, but encountered the delay times and was told about the script delays in each case:
Not something that can likely be changed soon, and I want to keep it simple. If you have a speedier solution, please do more than say so: I want to give your thing a spin for myself.

Regardless of "perception", practically put, the way things are shifting, like how Telehub-bound TPs transitioned to direct TPs, we may be moving from a model more akin to "Linden Locations"--phrasing it generally--than the word "Infohub". What this is means is, for example, as mentioned earlier, the Stillman Free Bazaar is a good candidate for being marked with a "blue i" (or whatever successor of an icon there may be) on the map, and so is the Linden Village in Ambleside. Heck, so's the Governor's Mansion in Clementina! Pooley Stage and Oak Grove Stage are gathering spots! And what about a certain chalet and campgrounds? This has by no means been finalized, however, and is still open for discussion--right here!

History has a valuable place, but at the same time, we cannot be tied back by anachronistic limitations. Especially in a world so quick-progressing as SL--that some expect to move even faster in the way of fixes, features, and overall development! L$1 ratings won't come back, so Telehubs won't either--except to a museum near you.

You see, I am confronted with the flipsides of the coin. It's not as binary as this, but to simplify:

1. If the land is auctioned off, again it goes into the hands of the people. Governor Linden owns so much land, it's not like we're starving! It also gives the nearby landowners an opportunity to take it, control it for themselves, and do what they want. Some say "I don't have the money, let someone else do it--but I don't want them to build X or Y kind of thing!" I don't doubt it's a difficult call: be the change.
   
2. On the other side, there is a pride in historic Linden land. The comfort that, well, Lindens are watching over, provides a feeling of safety and security. While Infohubs are not marked Protected Land per se, they nevertheless are owned by Governor Linden. This creates a sense of trust. This is a fundamental part of our culture. A lot of people will speak very loudly about this, including myself: I celebrate that pride.
   

There is great diversity in Infohub parcel sizes--flying around to the almost-50 of them will confirm that.

The world has changed so much from when I first started my Second Life. There are already so many lush parks, so many educational facilities for new Resis, SO many things to see and do! As many have pointed out before, and you really don't need a "blue i" on the map to make a difference.

It is difficult for me, in addition to all else that I do, to keep an eye-in-hand on many Infohubs. This was a frequent complaint when the gridverse was smaller, and has become even more challenging. That is why instead of diluting my duties, I've chosen to focus on a most excellent few. It just isn't scalable otherwise (yes, some have already wondered why there aren't Infohubs in the southern continent). I do, however, want a nice variety of the active Infohubs we will be keeping, each one unique--like SL itself is.

Since the initial posting in this thread, several have contacted me directly to make a move on several more Infohubs. That'll round out the batch. We'll roll those into motion, and then--

if you find that removing the "blue i" but keeping certain Infohub parcels "Linden Land" is more agreeable than auctioning them off, please say so in your most energetic voice. And you will be heard.

I am looking forward to plenty voices more.

I am the watermelon spirit, here to channel your thoughts + feelings. And I want the best for us.

What about the infohub in Miramare that Salazar Jack just completed?

Lordlfy Digeridoo initially contacted Jesse Linden when the first Infohub design requests went out. Lordfly wanted the opportunity for the residents of Nova Albion to create a custom hub area that reflected the city regions. He made a request and got many city residents involved in the process as our group hub thread illustrates.

Torley has been working with us in Nova Albion as an experiment to see how the local landowners might work with the Lindens to help manage their local hub area. Uncharted territory. We have worked through what the land settings needed to be and how the land needed to be set up so that a resident group could be able to manage thier own hub ona limited basis. It is an ongoing experiement to see if that sort of set up would work and to see if traffic can still be maintained at a hub to a certain degree.

The Nova Albion hub land is still owned by Governor Linden, but set to the City Slickers group, so we can install content and change/update it as needed. As long as it works, I think we'll be able to continue doing it. The other hub land owners need to work together and get something going in a similar way to have that sort of opportunity.

Be a squeeky wheel so the Lindens know what you want, and be prepared to lubricate that wheel with some elbow grease if they hand you the oil can.

Just like the new wave of machinema sweeping Second Life.. it's lights, camera, ACTION!

There are no quarantees that the new Nova Albion hub area will stay, it's up to us there in the city to make sure that it is relevant.

I really hope the infohub area in Zermatt is going to be left alone; it's a beautiful area, and I'd hate to see it marred with some sort of big, ugly, laggy build.

Agreed, auctioning off infohub land is a bad idea. If the plan proceeds, it's only a matter of time before half of it ends up with Impeach Bush signs or other big gaudy things.

Keeping it as Linden-owned parkland seems like a good idea... it would be public land that everyone could enjoy, and a variety of builds or activities could be located there, so that people could gather in a non-club situation and enjoy the space. Residents could develop and help maintain the space.

Why sell it at all? Surely LL could easily afford to keep the spaces, as it did when they were telehubs. Residents who wanted to help develop or maintain the spaces could be added to a group, maybe, so they'd be able to build on or clean up the land. Does every parcel of land have to be owned and built on by residents? Can't we have some spaces that are left alone, to be undeveloped (or less developed) public areas, to be enjoyed by all?

Then again, I know already how LL feels about Linden-owned, resident-maintained parkland; I suggested something like it long ago. If it doesn't make them money in some way, they aren't interested.

Unless LLs email system is failing, most networked vendors deliver in a second or two. Typically it says 'Please wait while your product is delivered...' and them it arrives a second later. Why is this unacceptable? I don't understand the complaint here with it not being workable. I don't make a networked vendor system myself, but I use one, and have used other before, plus you can't go to any mall without most of the vendors being networked these days. Buying from them is no different than buying from a regular vendor except there's a delay of a second or two before your item is delivered. Nobody cares, and I doubt the newbies will care that their freebie arrives in 1 or 2 seconds instead of 1 or 2 milliseconds, honestly.

Done! I put together a quicky proof-of-concept server and vendor and showed Torley that it is possible for a networked vendor system to deliver rapidfire with no interruption. Going to get in contact with a networked vendor maker and see about incorporating it, or barring that, find the time to write the rest of the infrastructure myself for a freebie delivery system.

The system also has the interesting potential of making a useful bulletin board system. Like have a billboard with 20-30 panes that show small textures of something like 'FREE BUILDING CLASSES' or 'FREE MONEY TREE' and clicking it would deliver a notecard with info and a landmark. Headlines, basically, to draw attention and get them to click for more info.