Land is a bad investment; it's worth isn't protected.

It looks like the middle of my last message was missing, here is the complete version.

I recently started selling off what land I have left in SecondLife because what used to be a beautiful, rural, area has become overrun with goth clubs, dark shops, a garbage bin, and a plot filled with sexually suggestive spinning, blinking, pictures.

Linden Labs has done nothing to protect the intrisic value of property in terms of zoning, easements, and height restrictions. As a result, I am forced to either spend huge amounts of money purchasing enough land such that any of my neighbors are too far away for me to care, or to sit idly by while the land I decided to purchase is transformed into something completely foreign almost overnight.

I used to disagree with the idea that SecondLife had become nothing more than a giant interactive advertisement, effectively dominated by those who only wished to make money. I don't disagree anymore. As such, I'm selling off all my land and reducing back to a basic account.

Below I recount my recent experiences. I do blame Linden Labs for rampantly exploiting the idea that it is possible to make money using SecondLife without putting in place any protections for those that just wish to have fun. Community? No way. All the mentioned incidents below were completely selfish; with thought only given to scraping in a few Lindens at the expense of the community.

First, I had someone buy an all-water plot in front of my waterfront land and put a wire-mesh fenced in literal representation of a garbage dumpster (Hibdon 56,76). There has been no traffic and I have not seen them since. Of course, now, I don't actually have waterfront property. I have dumpster-front. I honestly believe that this person put this here in hopes of driving me out so they could have the waterfront property.

I purchased land on the edge of a large cliff overlooking a river valley (Hibdon 163,246). Somebody purchased all this land, covered up the river valley, and built a giant dark goth club with walls right to the edges of the property extending into the sky. What was a series of properties overlooking a river valley are now a series of properties under a dark giant wall. This person didn't care about the five previous residents that ending up leaving. These weren't so-called "corporations"; these were people that had set up homesteads and were online virtually every day for months. Now they're gone.

I had my other neighbor, who had a beautiful, fitting, property, sell (Hibdon 143,52). The person who purchased the land built a giant gothic cathederal within a foot or so of the property line. Now I have a giant wall on my border. They didn't even consider their surroundings.

The land behind me was sold to someone who decided that their need to place secually suggestive spinning and blinking pictures was far too important to consider what his or her neighbors would have thought (Hibdon 243,144).

None of these items are small. They are obscenely large, extending what appear to be hundreds of feet straight into the sky with doors that are easily thirty feet high.

Do I ever see anyone using them? No. But before they appeared, it was a vibrant community where we were actually working together so our lands would fit well together and there would never be any issues.

I have had the same experiences. I was so excited when I first started to get my little 512 First Land plot. A Mentor helped me look for land and gave me advice on where to buy and where not to buy. She actually went to a couple places and found a nice sim with no stores or clubs. I bought my lil land and set up my lil house. Everything around me was very 'neighborhoodlike' and nice. I had a neighbor who came over to talk and she was so very nice. It felt so homey there. There were a few plots around me for sale, mainly other 512's, and there was a big plot next to me that was owned but empty. A few days after I got all set up, I logged in one day and there was this humongous building that had went up right next to me. My cute lil house looked like a shed and was dwarfed in comparison. I ended up buying the surrounding 512's and put up a bigger house so it wasn't so bad.

My neighbor had a good bit of land and a nice house, well she accidentally returned all of her objects to herself and was upset so she ended up selling her land. I offered to help her put things back but she was upset and moved on. About 4 days later I logged on and a big ass club was all around me. I was lagging very badly and had to move. I ended up selling the club my land. Which is what they wanted to do in the first place, I believe. It is upsetting when you put a lot of work into your land, making it look nice and then have to move because of the big buildings and clubs that go up overnight around you.

I now live in a very nice residential, naturistic sim and am very happy. I would like a place with more land but am afraid to move because of what has happened in the past. I am a firm believer in the fact that stores should be in store specific sims, same with clubs. Some people need to think about how them building a big ass club in a residental looking area will affect others. It's all about respect. If I see a club or store go up in one of theses areas, I refuse to go there. If they didn't have enough respect for us, then they will not get my business.

Welcome to Libertarianism. As bad as the Republicans and Democrats are, if we ever see a swing towards Libertarianism in the U.S. as a result of dissatisfaction with the Republican/Democrat way, you can expect to start seeing more and more actions like this in RL.

I agree that the Lindens themselves need to tweak the (lack of) rules about property building to help folks out in this regard. My partner and I had a similar near miss on our waterfront land. We managed to quickly purchase the all-water plot in front of us, but our neighbors on one side built a large monstrosity all along the edge of their adjoining water plot, completely hemming us in on that side and ruining the esthetics of our entire plot. And they are building residential stuff, not even commercial.

Fortunately, they were compassionate enough move the thing to a different place when we asked them to do so. For now, the three residents of the immediate area seem to be working more or less in accord as a community to make the entire area look as balanced as possible given that each person is creating their own "look" for their property.

Unfortunately, this could change at any moment. One of them could decide to sell off their land and some new person could come in and do exactly the things you described.

I know that LL wants the community to work things out amongst themselves rather than being forced to play the cop role, but we get to see how human nature *really* works in this game (yes, it's a game, face it) when there is an absence of authority enforcing some basic rules to benefit the commonweal. There will always be good people who are considerate of others, but there will also ALWAYS be plenty of selfish mofos who will use every dirty trick in the book to get their own selfish way without care or consideration of others. That's what legal systems and societal rules are for.

Lindens -- if you will remain so lasseiz-faire about helping people to deal with griefers (and yes, this type of stuff is griefing, pure and simple), then you need to give us the tools to deal with griefers ourselves. Either make offenses such as this poster has described reportable and bannable, or let us use counter tactics without fear of being banned ourselves.

There is no investment in SL that is safe. At any tme, for any reason, LL could say, "We are done, SL is closed forever." The all investments are gone.

What rules are you proposing that wouldn't step on the creativity of many many people?

Someone said it best on the forums a long time ago...

"If you like the view, buy it."

That's the only way to keep it.

LF

Freedom of expression is a double edged sword.
While your idea of a perfect build may be a quaint house overlooking a pristine valley, your neighbor's ideal build may be teh rawking techno blingorama and casino. No, that is not griefing.

I suggest looking into one of the many zoned sim options that are availabe. Or perhaps finding some like minded people and buying or renting a private sim.

A little bit of zoning would go a long way with this problem.

coco

If people want zoning, they should move to a zoned sim. LL should not be expected to enforce zoning rules.

But what's wrong with zoning on the main grid? Why can't a few sims here and there be put under the leadership of an elected zoning overlord?

If I'm not mistaken, there is zoning on the main grid, in a few selected sims - Boardman and Brown come to mind.

PG and Mature are already a form of zoning in a way. You can't put up giant spinning pornography prims in a PG sim. If SL should seperate some land aside for those who want PG material, why should there not be land set aside for people wanting simple residential sims. If anything is done it should be done in great moderation, but it seems even people in virtual worlds don't want to live in commercial areas.

My suggestion would be to set up 2 zoning types to work along side of PG and Mature; Commercial and Residential. Residential couldn't be used to sell goods or run events from. Commercial could be free of restrictions. Again it would have to be done in moderation, you don't want more restricted areas than unrestricted areas. If people wanted a greater number of restriction ares, than the PG sims would not be more expensive than the Mature sims.

Who is going to patrol these designations? How are we going to stop the people selling things in their homes? It's easy to circumvent.

LF

Well who patrols the PG sims? At least a residential sim could be regulated by disabling the buy feature and not allowing events to be run out of that sim. If they are going to have something like a PG sim, then it is not unthinkable for them to have another type of sim.

You want a zoned sim on the main grid? get together with some people and BUY IT.

Don't impress your wants on me.

Wow, ppl have some strong opinions. I am another person who can't stand the tacky flashing sign buildings in my area, that is why I buy in Dreamland.

I understand how some of you feel that zoning is a great idea in order to prevent the 'ugly' builds from occuring and ruining the land value of your plot.
But, even if the main grid was zoned, such as in sections of Residential and Commercial, who is to judge what is ugly and what isn't? To someone who wants a cabin on the water may not like the goth look - but does that mean it's ugly? Because that person that enjoys the goth look may not like your cabin.
So, then what? Is zoning the real answer to the problem?

Fortunately, this doesn't appear to be a major issue in the real world. It's very obvious what's appropriate in a certain area and what's not. Patently simplistic terms like "ugly" don't help anyone because they allow a broad interpretation of meaning.

In my case, certain quantifiable items would have gone a long way. Particularly, height restrictions and easements. A height restriction would have prevented someone from blocking out a river valley, and an easement would have prevented me from getting walled in.

Euphamisms aside, builds that are questionable are not the issue. It's the builds that are wildly inappropriate and do obvious harm to those residents already in a community. Even broad categorizations for "realistic", "abstract", "fantasy", "natural", etc. would mitigate a lot of content-related issues.

To be clear, my reason for the post was to draw attention to the problem. I can think of many ways to tackle the problem; but I, myself, don't want to. So I'm casting my dollar vote and not giving anymore to Linden Labs. This post basically serves as my explanation to them of what went wrong, thereby allowing them to deal with it as they see fit from a business standpoint.

It is my hope that others share their experience, and that Linden Labs does something about zoning and maintaining community standards in this regard. If not, that's fine; I just won't be a customer.