Self-zoning proposal

After reading about all the potential problems with zoning due to the upcoming teleport change, I came up with an idea that may help: self-regulated zoning.

My idea is simple: each sim would have a charter which would be written by the residents of that sim.

The charter system would work kind of like Congress:

Any resident in a sim (who owns land) can create a "charter proposal" in their About Land box. This would be done by simply dropping a notecard in to the proper place in the box. Once the charter has been dropped in, it becomes pending.

The sim queues each pending charter, in FIFO order, to everybody else's "About Land" box. Once the majority of the landholders (vote by land ownership percentage) has voted yeay or nay, the proposition would take effect or be rejected, and the next one would come up as "proposed". In the event that not enough votes are cast, the proposotion would automatically time out after 2 weeks with no votes or when the author withdraws it. No vote will last LESS than 7 days, unless enough votes are cast to reject it, or enough votes are cast that rejection is impossible.

A proposition must be passed by a majority of landholders based on the percentage of the land they own AND must be voted "yeay" by at least 2 account holders. In other words, you can't change the rules of the sim all by yourself. It can be rejected if a majority of landholders by account vote "nay".

People can submit suggestions to the propostion through their About Land box. The suggestions would be e-mailed to the person who submitted the current proposition.

Once a proposition has passed, it only affects new land purchases. If a charter has passed after land was purchased, the owner can choose to follow the old one or the new one, but not both. (In other words, if the old charter is residential, and the new one is commercial, you can't build a house AND a store on the same land. Also, you can't build a store, then later go back to a house. Once you accept the new charter, you're stuk until a new one passes.) When splitting land, you can choose whether to apply the new charter to each section that was split off.

Once enacted, a new charter cannot be passed in less than 30 days. A new one may be proposed, but voting will not close until 30 days after the last one passed.

Enforcement
Since the charters are community develped, LL will not enforce the charter by means of account suspension or banning. Instead, if the other residents of a sim feel that a build violates the sim charter, they can vote the owner out of the sim. (To counter the "vote by land percentage" in the charter process, voting out is done by landowner account. One account, one vote.) The vote will only pass if 3/4 of the sim residents vote yes. It will expire after 15 days if not enough votes are received or if at least 1/4 of the residents vote Nay. The owner will then have 15 days to either comply with the charter or sell his property. If the property hasn't sold in 15 days, it will enter an auction process, and the aution proceeds go to the owner.

Before a lot is auctioned, it will have the option to be appealed by Linden Labs. A Linden will decide:
1. The property is not in violation.
2. The property IS in violation, the owner has 7 days to comply. At the end of 7 days, the property will be reviewed. If it appears that the owner is moving toward compliance, the case will be closed.
3. The property is in violation, owner does not want to sell or comply. Property will go to auction.


In no event would zoning compliance affect a user's account in terms of conduct strikes. In other words, zoning stuff should not cause LL to be more likely to suspend or ban an account if someone files an abuse report against an account who may have had a zoning violation.

Also, there would be guidelines set up by LL that would determine what is and is not allowed in a charter. For example:
"You cannot post billboards" would be an acceptable rule.
"No political advertising" would be acceptable.
but "No 'ban bush' signs" woudl not be acceptable, since it targets a particular person or group.



What do you guys think? If you have input, I'll edit this post to reflect your suggestions.

Some notes on the practical aspects of this system:

voting on the charter is naturally biased toward large land holders. Buying half a sim works in your favor.

This is countered by two things:
1. The grandfather clause: you keep the charter that was in the sim when you bought the land.
2. Voting "nay": it takes 50%+1 by land ownership to vote FOR a proposition. It takes 50%+1 by account to vote AGAINST.

In other words, if there are 10 people that own a sim, and 1 person owns half the sim, it takes 2 "yes" votes to pass a proposition. However, if 6 people vote no (regardless of how much land they own), the prop would go down. To make sure that owners are real stakeholders, I think you should have to own at least 512m of land for your vote to count. This would prevent someone from giving a bunch of 16m plots to his friends to vote down a prop.

Time limit: no matter how many people vote, it still requires a majority of the landholders to pass or be rejected. In other words, if only 3 people vote, and those 3 people don't account for 50%+1 of the land, the prop wouldn't pass.

with all the talk about zoning, I thought this might some attention.