Poll: Getting The View You Pay For

Yes, this is a pretty clever post indeed. Until you stop and realize that SL is optional and is competing for entertainment dollars. I'll provide money to the airlines in spite of your described scenario because a flight is a means to getting to a destination. Now if I get to my destination and find myself with a view of the garbage dump, I will not consider my recreational money well spent. SL is the destination not the flight to get there.

As big as SL is, there isn't room for more options? This pitting those who want a total free for all against those who would voluntarily opt into some form of restrictions is not necessary imo. I cannot see why this has to be either/or.

Btw, not liking the lack of options does not make someone part of an angry mob. I don't feel angry at all, in fact I'm feeling pretty calm as I evaluate how much money I want to throw to LL.

There are already other options people can take. They can buy more land so that they have a lot of buffer between themselves and their neighbors. They can go rent land in a zoned community. They can get together with likeminded people and buy adjoining plots with pre-agreed rules. People aren't availing themselves of these options. Instead they're trying to make LL force other people to conform to their tastes... people who aren't breaking any rules. People with this kind of entitlement mentality aren't suddenly going to be happy if they get their way. They're just going to feel more entitled to bully and whine about the next issue, and the next. They just want what they want without having to do any work for it themselves.

Can't answer the poll since the most obvious option was left out.

The only view I pay for is the land I own, and I do control that.

Angry mob, whiners, and bullies. Lazy people who don't want to work and invest the time to make an entertainment venue which they pay for worthwhile. Entitlement; the same word you use for people who want to enjoy SL without paying for it. Thanks for providing me with this insight and the alternative view of the paying members that it presents.

I just call 'em like I see 'em. Why aren't people using the options already available to them?

If the choices are adequate why are group tools being reviewed (ref: Frans' post)?
We can talk all day about your opinion and my opinion and so on. You know Chip, I listened to you a year ago. I became premium right after the drama over the cut in stipends and event support about one month after I joined. I didn't whine or in any way suggest an attitude of entitlement and steadily increased that support up to a half of a sims worth of tier for about 8 months now. People do evaluate how they spend their monies without drama or hysteria. I wouldn't come in here "threatening" to withdraw my tier. Most who do so, just do it without you and LL ever knowing why. There is no exit poll. You can state your don't let the door hit you on the way out attitude, no problem with your opinion here. I only seek to provide some insight into factors which keep the percentage of tier paying members low. If that number is good with you and LL, the just ignore what I have observed in the past year. I have stayed; I know that I'm not representative of the norm.

Ditto.

I understand, Margaret. I hope LL makes it easier for people too, but only if it expands on choice instead of reduces it. The simple fact of the matter is that there are things people can do now to get something closer to what they want. If people choose not to is that LL's fault ultimately? Because of free accounts a lot more people are checking out SL than otherwise would. SL isn't for everyone so that will create a lot of churn. It's simply too soon to expect SL to be all things to all people and for many who come and go (probably the majority) there's nothing at all LL or anyone else could do to turn those people into paying members. SL simply isn't everyone's cup of tea. What I find so annoying about this issue is that LL has already stated their position. Whether people like that position or not, it is what it is. I fail to see how this incessant harping on the issue serves any prupose other than to be more annoying than the signs.

I meet a fair amount of new people in SL in my stores and when I ask them how they like SL so far they almost always rave about how great it is. I just don't see the doom and gloom that everyone else seems to.

From my own experience with new residents, land ownership isn't the initial concern. The biggest complaint up front is lag, lower-than-expected client FPS, and futile attempts to run SL acceptably on subminimum hardware.

A month or more down the road, a subset of the folks that make it thru the initial pains convert to premium and get first land. When that happens, their biggest gripe is the scant prim limits - not concerns over view... at least at first.

IMHO - concerns about view come up after one has truly become an SL addict, which changes the equation a little bit.

You find incessant harping annoying. I find the same old story after all this time and LL not having improved the group tools a whole lot more than annoying.

I meet new, enthusiastic people as well. I helped one unable to get her prefab house set up last night and another last week who asked my opinion on a parcel he sought to buy. What I am focusing on is what I feel is a relatively low numbers of people who convert to premium and the retention of those who do. If I am wrong, or at least inconsistent with LL, about that number being low please tell me. You say people aren't willing to work to create something good. I say the provision of adequate tools to do so is a reasonable expectation and really resent the picture you paint of me for saying so.

Wow.

Say it with me, ladies and gentlemen: false dichotomy.

Anyway, I'm not supporting much at all. I don't care about the impeach Bush business. It's exhausting and stupid and effects me not at all.

But Eggy's post was incredibly effective and persuasive from any perspective.

We all want better tools for any number of reasons. Myself included. We can ask for them and offer our suggestions of what we feel is needed. I'm not sure that requires 400 threads on the same subject that border on hysteria (not that I think your posts on the subject are hysterical at all... my comments have been on the general tone of discussion on this issue, not your posts in particular. You're a very reasonable poster). LL isn't staffed by morons. They read and hear our concerns. It's not likely to change the pace of development especially considering any time they add new features they get an almost equal amount of hysteria about doing that in lieu of fixing bugs. There are plenty of annoyances and plenty of things that need improvement and lots of new features or expansions to features that would be wonderful, but at the end of the day we have the current set of features that we have.

Well no I don't expect to keep my view. I do expect to be able to build what I want on my land without having it pulled down because some people on the forums don't like it.

Does your right to build what you want necessarily include the right to broadcast it's image into other people's virtual land?

The image that people object to is not occurring on the land of the problematic object builder.

Broadcasting an image across your property lines onto someone else's land is not of necessity included in the concept of "building what you want on your land".

If your rights extend up to but stop at your property line then you have no right at all to produce an image in your neighbors property except by their agreement.

People's virtual photons need to be kept on their own property and off the neighbors property unless the neighbor consents.

Huh? Hate to break it to you but you can see across property lines. If this is a problem for you make sure to buy a parcel of land at least 128 meters on a side, set your draw distance to 64, and stay in the middle.

Yeah but is it broadcast? is this a question of me projecting my build or you looking at it. You always have the option of re-orienting your build to not see mine. Part of the nature of virtual real-estate is that you have to look at it as land and not photons. Inotherwords what is on my land is on myland. The fact that you can see it is not really me projecting out so much as you peering in.

This is perhaps one of the most critical and fundmental question is SL. Is a build a broadcast? I would argue no, becausde that preserves the fundamental analogy of SL as virtual land. But it is a valid and interesting point.
Another question I have is that If I don't consent to my neighbors club being next to me, should I be able to take it away?

You have said it perfect Chip. The angry mob is what happens so often in SL, and used to happen all the time in the forums.

The only time I've seen anything close to a mob in SL is after a grid wide outtage due to someone not playing nice. And even then it was just alot of huff and puff and no organization or action. I am curious about these other mobs in SL that happen 'so often'. Anyone have examples of an actual mob forming up and doing something in SL? And I dont mean mobs of happy shoppers during a sale or w-hats after a paint chip eating contest.

talk to me in sl and i'll tell you.. not in here.

The properties of things in Second Life are changeable, not immutable. Done by choice.

People say " I have a right to build anything I want on my land." Sounds like someone claiming to have a right to control their own resources and experience, but it's not. What they are actually claiming is the right to control other people's resources and experience, to produce effects that extend beyond the boundaries of what they pay for.

The right to do whatever you want with what is yours stops when it reaches the limits of what's yours.

If you want to build anything you want and not have to deal with the results of having the image of what you make affect others on their own land, buy a private island and set the land to restricted access.

This statement must cut both ways. Logically, applying this statement to the question posed in this thread, you should not expect to own the view either, as stated by "stops when it reaches the limits of what's yours".

Well actually its more like if you don't want to deal with the results of other images affecting your view, then buy the land around your plot to draw distance, buy your own island, turn your draw distance down, build a wall at the limit of your property with a pleasing texture or join (or make) a planned community with rules about what builds can or cannot be made.

Ufortunatley, in SL as in RL we are forced to see what the neighboors build, even if it spols the view of our land. But you have no entitlement to view, you do have an etiltment to put ywhat you want on your land. The very fabric of SL is virtual land, not virtual enviroments thus the ability to control how things look beyond your parcel is non-existent. The only real justice is that while you have to look at your neighboors build, they have to look at yours.

But this notion that You have any interest in what I build on my land because you can see it is misguided.

That's right, you only get to say "no, this image can't come on my land or onto my screen". Controlling what comes into your land is not exerting control beyond it.

Second Life recreates aspects of physical reality that insure conflict because of effects that extend beyond one's land boundaries. Things could be done in a different way that eliminates such conflict.

Taking it the club down is different than being able to say no to the effects that it produces outside of it's boundaries on the land you are paying for.