Rock The Vote

Travis Lambert has proposed a vote (although several months old... even more valid today) that has received a decent amount of support from SL members. Please check out this proposal to increase land owner control/ tools and if you agree, please add your vote and support :

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=244

Ooh... shiny. New tools are good. I want them as much as anyone! ;^)

New tools. Yummy. :d

Thanks guys - somehow I didn't catch this till just now

Since its got well over 500 votes now, sure wish we could get some Linden Comments attached to the proposal (Lee: nudge, nudge)

Just so it's posted somewhere:

Criteria for my choices: not some over-the edge tool that has limited value only to scripters, but general, all-around, often-stated-need tools. Also, in no way do I intend anything in this post as a slam against LL or individuals. This is a plea for improved tools... not a slam for not having them. In the words of literature, "please sir... may I have more?"

* ESTATE TOOLS MANAGEMENT. The ability for a sim owner to make a list of people who have access to Estate tools.

* BAN POWER UPDATE. When a user is put on a "ban" list.. they need to be immediately removed from that land. In the case of a private sim, they need to be immediately teleported out of that sim. The need for external security tools or the need to call a Linden just to protect our sims from griefers is pretty sad.

* BAN LIST UPDATE. Ban list needs to be expanded to more than 50 people and include groups as well as individuals. (That would put an effective end to the known griefer groups... and by popular vote rather than LL action.) It would let folks know, "If you belong to this group and what it supports...your activities on SL are going to be limited". After all, every land owner should have the ability to say who is allowed on his land.

* EXTENSIVE SCRIPT FINDER. A tool that provides an extensive, lengthy, copy/past/printable list of all scrips present on a piece of land/sim. This list should be sortable by both owner name and script location. It should contain: Name of script, name of owner, location, resource requirements (in ms or some such). If an individual script is clicked, a very visible beacon should lead to that script (not one of those teeeny tiny nearly invisible thin red lines... but a honker such as the MAP beacon). If an OWNER name is clicked, it should beacon the location of every script owned.

* EXTENSIVE PRIM FINDER. Same concept, but for prims. It's great the system tells us who owns how many prims... but we often need to know WHERE those prims are... and cannot find them. How many times have griefers hidden prims under a piece of land to avoid detection? And how many times have people accidentally deleted prims because they thought it was a griefer... only to wipe a legitimate build they'd forgotten about? We need the ability to locate prims by owner name... again, with beacons triggered by both owner name and individual prim location.

BOTTOM LINE: If we're going to make our sims run better... we need to tools to do so.

* OFFICER TO GROUP COMMUNICATOR. (How many times has this been brought up over the last several months? When will LL do this?). Communications is the center of any organization. Good communications provides good results. Poor communications can destroy armies. We need the ability for OFFICERS to be able to contact ALL members of their group, both online and offline. This communication would take 2 forms:

1) Group Notecard. Just give us the ability to drop a notecard on a group! If a member is offline, a notice is sent to them that a group notecard (name of group) awaits them on SL.
2) Group Announcement. This would be kind of like a group IM... but with a lot more room than a couple or three lines. It's different than a notecard... because the whole text would be sent across email if the user is offline.

Of course, any member of the group should be able to opt out of group announcements... but in that case... why belong to the group? Still, this feature would be very, very useful to the fundamental "FAMILY" unit of Second Life. It is well-known-- the center of any society is the family. Make the family strong-- society becomes strong. As it is now, we can't inform groups of upcoming events, of group meetings, of group needs, or send out group newsletters. That's just pitiful. Please, give groups the tools we need to function! (and no, the CALLING CARD feature does not work and is as cumbersome as it can possibly be).

* STOP TRUNCATING LISTS. I was looking for a user with a specific last name other night. Couln't quite remember the first name. Was REALLY frustrated when the list truncated to 100. STOP THAT! When we try to FIND something... give us a scrollable list as long as it takes. I don't want to see the first 100 dance groups on SL... I want to see ALL of them. Make ALL the info available to the searcher! Chee.... shouldn't that be kinda like... obvious?

* FIX THE MAP REGION list. "Too long to be of use"??? Now it's totally unusuable. I can understand the concept of limiting the search parameter. Sooooo.......BASIC COMPUTER THEORY 101-- When doing a list SEARCH.. trigger the list from the first character entered and reduce the list in size as successive characters are entered. That screwy "trigger on the 3rd character" is (if you'll pardon me) goofy. It makes the whole region list difficult for experienced users, and totally unusuable to newbies. So please.... FIX IT!

* In similar vein... FIX THE EVENT LISTINGS. We are 110% tired of our group members not being able to post events on our own sims. If ANY piece of land (no matter what size) is set to group (no, not deeded... just set) then any member of that group should be able to post an event there. Or, if you don't want to do that, let ANYONE post ANYWHERE and require the land owner to verify the event. Either way works fine.

* IMPROVE THE VOTING SYSTEM. Users can't let you know what's really on their minds or whether they really need a feature when they're limited to 10 votes. I have *never* seen this screwy voting system anywhere else. Who wants to remove a vote from one important item to vote on another important item? It's messed up. Allow each user ONE vote for EACH PROPOSAL in a YAY / NEUTRAL / NAY vote. That's how you'll really find out what's on user's minds... and what tools are REALLY needed.

* That said, there are some tools that are so logical that they're needed regardless of the vote...and some heavily-voted items that are basically majority mass-misconception. So as in all things... moderation and common sense.


OK, that's all I can think of right off hand. Basic idea at this point is to keep the tools simple and POWERFUL. PLEASE... NO MORE HALF-BAKED, HALF-USEFUL TOOLS (such as the prim count tool that doesn't tell us where the prims are located... or the "active scripts" reading that says we have a certain number of scripts on the sim... with no way to locate them). If you're going to create a tool, give us something that WORKS and WORKS WELL, the way you'd want them to work if you had to use them every day.

The above presented with all due respect... with mild voice raising at times to catch attention. LOL

That's it. Surely more to come.

Only problem with this is it could be used in reverse. Go ahead and ban the "greeters", "mentors", "live help" group.

And I just -know- there will be a published 'laundry list' of groups that comprise certain ah, 'subcultures' in SL, griefing or not, that would be blanket banned.

Clubs and malls that don't allow gays, republicans, christians, furries, goths, anime fans, giant robots, gamblers, people from California, Canadians, tekki-wikkis, you name it - if a group exists for it.

It'd be the ultimate in pre-emptive justice. As much as I don't like W-Hat's antics, I just don't think group bans would end up being used for nothing but a noble purpose. It's one of those things that would end up being abused more than well used.

A good time would be had by all.

Yeah, I thought of these points too. And you're right... there might be some abuse of such a thing. That knowledge *almost* caused me to not post that feature. But one thing overrode those objections in my mind: No matter what the core reason, a landowner has the right to determine who is allowed / not allowed on his land. And if we have the right to ban individuals... we should also have the right to ban groups.

Not that we would use such a right. But that ability should be there should a land owner decide to exercise that particular choice. In RL, if I decide to not allow someone in my home, it doesn't matter why. That is my right; it's my home. Same applies to all residents of SL.

So, that's what threw that decision over in my thoughts. Basic landowner concepts. Yeah, it might be abused. But as things stand, there's no way to express user contempt for group activities (it's obvious the forums are ineffective). So banning an entire group from a private sim can be a pretty effective way of dealing with such matters... and if enough sim owners decide to do that, it might make groups think twice about griefings done by their members-- and might make members think twice about belonging to griefer groups.

I wouold love to vote on these, but I have a bunch of votes tied into items that now exsite. I can't take my votes from them, and yet they sit there already done. http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=82 and http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=348 are just some that have votes the need to be returned to be used for other places.