Midge: A Chance for Projects

Oh no. My very first post contained only a modicum of rational argument. The rest of my posts contained nothing but vitriol and expressed nothing but my anger at Prokofy after he dismissed my comments by labelling me as a "content baron" and mocking the way I phrased my dissent. Everything after that first post was an unconstructive response to the ridiculous ways in which Prok distorted my statement, and would have been omitted if Prokofy weren't such an infuriating and grating person.

By the way, these are the minor rational arguments to which I refer. 1) Asking people to remit a hundred dollars in payment to a complete stranger is probably not very wise. Until such a system offers some sort of systemic protection against fraud, then I am reticent at best to participate. Simply using PayPal to send money doesn't strike me as wise. 2) If the project has no defined goal or common interest, then I would be unwilling to participate. I do not intend to participate in a project without such a goal, because it becomes exceedingly likely that the individual goals of the constituent members of the group will clash. If I want to build a Tudor cottage and my neighbor is deadset on producing a Bauhaus modern design, we're going to clash. Whereas if the project were presented as being an attempt to reproduce a 1930s style futurist/Bauhaus community, I would know upfront not to participate and I would not be risking my money on a venture with which I do not agree.

I think that the Lindens would be wise to implement a specific structure for securely allowing collaborative projects and the communal purchase of sims. When someone comes along with a plan that has a well-defined goal and which has members who are devoted to pursuing that goal, then I would be willing to participate. As it is, his proposed purchase of Midge was so hastily thrown together and so poorly planned that only a fanatic would participate. The positive group collaboration of Bedazzle was what I was attempting to refer to. Unfortunately, Prokofy used this an excuse to launch into his tired tirade about content barons, and completely lampooned everything I said. When someone reacts in such an egregiously buttheaded manner, I'm not going to back down.

The flakey outer crust is like that sometimes

blaze once you bring "STFU" into things you kinda lose the moral high ground to be saying people lack respect. you're like Lance LeFay only not funny. or right.

You are absolutely right, Zuzi.

I'm a fucking jerk - so please don't be like me.

I, um. . .

wow.

I came in right after BETA. I played for quite a while, and was constantly amazed by how helpful and generous all who had come before me were. Back then, you couldn't make $4000 a month (I didn't put an L in front of that!!) by playing the game. You paid $14.95 a month, and made your way in the world through creativity and social kindness alone. It really was only appealing to a certain type of creative type that did what they were doing because they enjoyed. When I first came in the game, there were huge swaths (relatively) of public land available because so many of the BETA players had decided not to continue playing the game because they would now have to pay. The $160 Lifetime Membership must not have been the sweet ass deal that's described here, eh?

After BETA, the Lifetime Membership was $225. I so wanted one, but I tend to budget food and stuff (when even that's possible) first. Basically, in buying a Lifetime Membership, you were saying "I believe in this SL thing, I want to see it succeed." You weren't buying a set tier, as has been suggested above, because the idea of tiers didn't even exist. You were paying your $160 or $225 to not have to pay the $14.95 monthly fee. For all people knew back then, SL could be gone in a month.

It was an expression of good faith and hope in a LL and the amazing project they were undertaking. The Lifetime accounts provided LL with quite a bit of starting capital and helped SL survive in general.

When the 1.2 changes were being proposed, suddenly, LL was faced with a handful of their most dedicated, involved players who had been told that they wouldn't pay monthly fees again. Now, as of the changes, they were looking at much higher monthly fees for (in most cases) much, much less land. LL had to grandfather them in some way - hence the 4,096 lifetime land tier. Please note, that for most lifetimers, this still meant cutting way, way back.

Now, LL could have stopped the sell of Lifetime Memberships on the day they proposed the 1.2 changes - they were completely within their right - but they didn't. There was a grace period (up to Dec. 2003?) where they were still available.

It was an Extreme hardship for me to come up with $225 extra to spend on a game - but had I not, I'm not sure I would still be around.

Yes, in retrospect, it is a sweet deal - but it was open to anyone and everyone around at that time.

I've been here since July 2003, and only last month sold my first ever item (check for my Rubik's Cube replica at the web services - Oneir's Cube /shameless plug). I've made tons of things in world, so it wasn't a lack of content that meant no sales, I just never had the time or motivation to market anything as a good deal of my time over this year has been spent conducting Mentor events to help out new people. I do this because I like to help, but also to Pay It Forward for all the help that I received as a new person.

Prokofy, the really ironic thing here is that, from your obvious passion and wealth of ideas for SL, you are EXACTLY the type of person that SL would have been able to draw in and keep back when profit was measured in social respect, not US$.

You equate oldbies with Land Barons - that is so wrong - land barons didn't exist until this became a money draw - post 1.2. The worst of the Land Barons - Anshe Chung - look at her birthdate - she is in no way part of this feted oldbie elite. Now, look at people like Torley - Really new, but still part of that 'elite'. Why is that? Because she likes helping. She wants to add to SL, not rape it for what its worth. She's here out of the pure joy of this wonderful shared world. That's it, that's all.

As always, didn't mean for such a long post as I know most won't read it. My main point is: if you take even a moment to get to know some of the oldbies in the game, you'll find that they are some of the most willing to help out and encourage new people. They're probably some of the least likely to be here to 'rape the system' as they've never really adjusted to this new rapeable situation. They're here for the joy of SL and want to see it grow and grow.

You wonder why people are up in arms. Personally, I can't speak for everyone, but I know it's quite hurtful to me to be accused of being part of a group that is harmful to SL when I know that's the opposite of my intentions. I'm hugely invested (emotionally) into the future of SL, and to be told that I'm rotting it from the inside out is just plain wrong.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Prokofy, IM me sometime inWorld. I'll introduce you to some of the people you're railing against.

Well, of course if I get approval at one of the secret meetings

Oh, and a side note - I played TSO from BETA on until a few months after launch - at first I couldn't understand why people didn't pool resources more in SL like they do in TSO as well - then I saw the fate of most group projects. SL allows us so much creative freedom, but the other side of the sword is that freedom allows us to be much more human.

Oneiro, I read your post in its entirety and wholeheartedly agree with you.
This must mean I am your alt.
You have managed to fully express my opinion in a much more eloquent way than I ever could.
Please have a sex change so we can get married. I shall cover you in whipped cream and sprinkle cherries on top for the rest of my life. Oh, and you get free pot, too

w00t for Onei!

stereotype, noun; something conforming to a fixed or general pattern; especially : a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment.

This is almost always a bad thing.

Indeed.

Thanks Eggy.

Usually the whip cream and cherries comes after the pot though

Eggy's in a marryin' mood lately. this is like the third proposal in the last couple days and now he's proposing to men! got your biological clock ticking?

Coming from your mouth this is like title of honor.



The one time I remember big rape go on was when I was raped by you and your alts / friends with mass neg ratings after I refused to give in to your bullying me into not using my own land. I guess me not following your orders did not fit into your kinda hierachic thinking that player with late birthdate has to kiss ass of player with old birthdate.



One group that includes you is by definition not an elite, sorry. And this whole concept of "oldbie elite" is nothing else than utter arrogance, pushed by people who lack real achievements to be proud of. Maybe some people think they are special because they have early SL birthdate. Reminds me of other people who think they are special because have white skin. Both is rubbish. You are special if you have achievement. Signing up for some game account is no achievement. Oh, and did I mention that people outside America/UK were not even allowed to sign up before January 2004?



You don't qualify to be included in the honorable group of land barons. Your contribution to Second Life economy has been much too neglectible. Unlike "oldbie elite" our contribution and achievement is real and goes far beyond spend 5 minutes to signup game account. We "land barons" have helped Second Life grow, my person alone spending tier fee of more than 4000 US$ per month and giving tens of thousands of L$ week after week after week financing building projects, events or simply giving money to the n00bs.

Instead who is harmful? How about people who gang rape others with neg ratings, forum mass flaming? People who try force their neighbours to not terraform the land they bought? People who constantly insult and libel one profession that greatly helps Second Life grow? You should reflect on your actions and attitute. I am proud to be land baron and I am proud I am not you.

you can accuse land barons of rape and yet you are pleading for your personal hurt? ....
land traders are "hugely invested" in this game financially. anyone who profits from sl and is rational will promote this game. your overly emotional attachment to this game damages this game and causes you to attack those of us in SL who are not part of your bullshit elite list. stop trying to shylock us just because you frown upon dealing with money/land as dirty. you are behaving like an anti semite. if you prick us do we not bleed?

anyone who thinks SL can scale up without land traders is naive and shortsighted.

Yeah Zuzi, I'm like that. Sorry. I'm like that IRL as well.
I have known Oneiro since the dawn of time. He is one of my best friends. We instantly hit it off the first day we met, since I was like the first person to know what his name meant.
Besides, we were both friends of Taggy. All friends of Taggy are friends of mine.
I dont really want to marry him or cover him in whipped cream though

yeah, someone needs to shut up this morron. who is that guy anyway? oneirowhat? lol.

hey, wanna join guni's official bullshit elite list? lololol. FREE SIGN UP! lol

Hey, somebody has finally come up with a term that is the *opposite* of "inner feted core" and they're welcome to apply to me if they wish

I agree that land barons have advanced the game tremendously, as much or as more as content barons who make scripted things like vehicles or realistic skin makers. I think of them as something like boyars in Russia, the stewards of the system that the tsar handed the administration to in exchange for various privileges. The feted inner core are more like the creative and technical intelligentsia and regional Party secretaries. Yes, they are different categories, but anyone can take their status of either 1) age 2) content creation 3) money 4) land or 5) influence with Lindens and parley them to an advantage. And that such people who have that advantage can advance as well as hinder the game for the masses ought to be obvious. If Philip says any economy is top-down, then he should look at the difference between say, Russia, where the state former Party elite and the oligarchs former Party elite manage most of the economy and most of the other people get stiffed, versus America, where there might be a small percentage of people who control more wealth, but where there is a vast swath of middle class that can do all right, i.e. have a house, a car, a refrigerator, etc.

If people got grandfathered a 4096 deal, it does no good to say "but tier meant nothing back then." It means a lot now! Should people who helped in beta, bug-reported, suffered, and gave out the wazoo to make a game world succeed be rewarded? Sure. But then don't pretend you were *not* rewarded and it is no big deal, and don't flinch when people challenge your feted rewarded status if it appears that it significantly hampers game expansion. How would it do that? Well, by suggesting that only projects like Bedazzle should be worth of cooperative group activity, and that no feted, rewarded, content baron or oldbie or landbaron will bestire themselves to make sims decent "for the rest of us" by enabling more group cooperation. Currently, group permissions on jointly-built objects and land are among the game's persistently buggy and annoying problems, and yet the Lindens show a shocking lack of concern for this, given their purported support of players doing group projects.

I wouldn't ever ask 14 strangers to give me $100 each on Paypal. That's insane. I never asked that. I pointed out that people can pool tier easily and safely because it stays attached to your account and you can give it or withdraw it instantly at your wish. I pointed out that a price *can* be divided up to more reasonable packets if there is a group founded. There are various groups of friends or creative groups hanging around in the game. They have already trusted each other with money. And I had in mind that such groups, if they existed, might find each other, and say, hey, you know, we have purchasing power, we could be getting ourselves a sim.

And frankly, it's still out there as an opportunity. Any 10 people could get together now with say, $110 each if they know and trust each other, and say, Anshe, we'd like Midge, here's $1100. She might just sell it for that to save herself the tier headache and the chopping-up chores. If you're all fussy about trusting each other, since Anshe herself is such a known and trusted and large quantity, each of you could pay her directly, and she could hand the parcels over one by one. To be sure, there's the problem of the charge-back misuse on PayPal. But you can try to work this out, possibly by paying all in Lindens.

In other words, in the next 7 days, while Anshe juggles tier, sells land, and decides what to do with Midge, anybody reading this post could get their act together to take over this sim.

This idea that there have to be so many checks and balances to doing a project, and everything has to be just perfect, is one I've tried to prove wrong by being just an ordinary person who bought a sim and sold it. It's hard, and it would be better to be doing it with more people, but I had a lot of help from a few architects who put in their time and effort to make it work, and I had some early buyers who helped, and various others who contributed time and expertise on how to do it. Others could be doing this and trying to secure themselves the minimum -- sims free of lag. Then once that is secured, they could then begin to figure out how they or others could make reasonable projects on them.

Just doing my part I used to argue vocally about "land barons" in the past when SL was going through a severe land shortage. It seemed to me that land resellers were jacking up the price of what little land was available in order to line their pockets without actually adding anything of value to the game, while making it more difficult for people who actually wanted to use some land to get started. Now that land is plentiful again my position on it has mellowed a lot. Frankly I hate labeling of any kind, and the whole "elite" and "baron" labels are nothing more than petty bullshit. It's unecessary, artificial, destructive, and antithetical to what SL is about. Anshe has earned my respect. She is, without doubt, one of the hardest working people in SL, no matter what anyone thinks of the practice of buying and selling land for profit. You're obviously a rather passionate guy, Prokofy, and if you applied that to something other than trying to stir up a kind of class warfare (that petty people are unfortunately starting to buy in to), you'd probably have my respect too... but you don't have it, because you've done a lot to damage SL in the short time you've been here. If I were omnipotent, I'd ban you. The topic you started this thread with was constructive and a good thing, but unfortunately you ended up reaping what you've sown over the past few weeks. SL needs every kind of participant, from the hardcore dedicated content makers to casual clubbers and everything in between. What it doesn't need is petty and demeaning class warfare.

Actually, Prokofy, I have often thought about providing zoned sims with rules such as "no clubs", "no malls", "no xyz crap lag thing".

But here comes problem: Imagine I sell off Midge to 14 interested people who all come to me with nice promise and nice intentions. Each of them I hand notecard with zoning rules before sell the land.

Then one of them starts building club. Huh? Or maybe just resells the land. Or quit SL and land gets released to public. Then what?

The ONLY way zoning in sim as Midge could be enforced is this way:

1. I make one group, with me as ONLY officer, everyone else as member.
2. Everyone gives me money
3. Everyone joins group as member and donates tier
4. People would build and I would have to play cop indefinitely to enforce nobody builds club or mall

Now as investor I am not exactly happy to have to be indefinitely involved in some way with this sim, after only receive one time payment. This *could* be compensated if everybody pay tier fee to me instead of Linden Lab, then I could use arbitrage of higher tier to get money for my time, without anyone have to pay extra.

But would people want that? Yes, I have trustworthy record both online and traceable in real world. Still, people would pay me, but I would have to maintain control of land. Then what is advantage compared e.g. to just renting land from me? Yes, maybe would cost less in long run. And everybody would know that I would only act as trustee and not really own the land.

So... if e.g. 8 people show up, provide me with zoning rules they can agree on and each pay me 40$ per month tier and 1/8th of sim cost, then Midge is all up and running as zoned sim with certain rules for you. You also have option to resell land later to whoever wants the land and agrees to abide to the rules. This way I described it is possible - if there is enough interest

this is what i do in larsen. i rent three parcels at similar rates to LL tier fees, leveraging my lower tier cost as insentive to watch over land usage and insure it's being kept lag free and conforming to my loose "no club - no mall" zoning.

for those who want to have a certain limited amount of zoning and guarantees on good neighbours, renting land can be a good option.

Well, Svan is just next door to Larsen. I still own 90% of that sim, some of it rented residential. If somebody want rent: there is even beautiful snow village that can be used

With Jauni's project, this would make almost 2 zoned sims next to each other if all would rent out...

Anshe, I do what you describe in Alston and Maryport, I make people members of the group, I pay the tier, I leverage the tier I already have and the bonus, I charge rent which is at or near tier cost in Lindens, or I have people donate their tier and live rent-free, and yes, you do have to make rules and play police but by and large, most people are considerate and don't take advantage. Of course there's always one in 50 who takes even a dinky parcel obtained at $100/week and builds a sky-high tower on it and tries to re-rent it out to others on your dime -- but most people just do what you ask in your simple rules.

Your notion of playing police and having other administrative chores is exactly why it would be better if 14 people made a group, bought a sim at auction or from you at wholesale, and agreed among themselves what the ground rules were, and all became enforcers instead of sticking this job with one person whose project it really isn't. However...it is worth considering if there was a way to scale down the hassles and figure out a way to say "here's a wholesale zoned sim everybody, come and get it if you have a) b) c) d) criteria, and that could be payment in Lindens, written agreements, 60 days or older, or whatever.

You're suggesting a long drawn-out administrative headache, and that's not rational from your position as a volume dealer but from my position as a small dealer I take on these headaches to see if this system could really work and what is involved in making it work. What I was thinking is that 14 people could get together and just buy this sim from you, and if you were worried about charge-backs or something, well, put one parcel to Lindens, let them buy, put next parcel, whatever, or put whole thing.

But all discussion of this nature is purely speculative and not really worth wasting business people's time, because there are no 14 people, there aren't even 2, and I personally have enough to do without adding this on at this time.

What people in the upper classes always hope for, Chip, is that the people in the middle and lower classes will never *notice* there are classes, much less class warfare. And yet there is, if you but listen to the forums and the troubles in the game.

I did not *stir up* class warfare, I described it. And I didn't let one class -- the uber feted content baron smug inner core elite -- decide my game for me. I pushed back.

I can't possible have "damaged" a game that has 20,000 subscribers on it, run by a powerful and influential game/entertainment company in California, in which thousands upon thousands of people just do their thing, yourself included, some of them taking out a tidy sum in profits -- yourself included. You're hallucinating. You think a tiny dent in your own considerable self-aggrandizement is "damage to the game". I can't image how a person who does not lag a sim, extort high land prices, grief with weapons, or do anything else of the sort can be "damaging to SL". What on earth can I do to "damage the game"? It's your own self-important exaggerated notion of yourself and your lordship of this game that maybe "damaged" -- but Godspeed if that's the case!

There's no petty and demeaning class warfare, except that I *describe* coming from every one of you, each time you hector, bully, lord it over, harangue, intimidate, extort, and blackmail people on these forums by implying that if they express a criticism of the uber-class, they will be run out of town on a rail.

Not!

Anshe, I've never given you a negative rating and have encouraged everyone I know not to do the same. I don't think you're worth it. I only have one alt (created recently) and that's because my real life name was available. I never log in with him, he's never given a rating. Once again you are spreading bullshit and I notice your affectation is getting worse.

Chip, I agree, I've mellowed quite a bit on the whole Baron thing.

Juani, the only person I consider a 'baron' in the derogatory sense is Anshe, and that's just her personally. We've discussed this before. I've never tried to influence what someone does with their land until, as in Anshe's case, she chased me out of one property by purposefully raising a wall of land to block the view of my "ugly game build that no one want to see in pretty land development" and then bought up the land next to where I moved to and said she was going to do the same (luckily, it wasn't an old, completely terraformable sim). I was just contending the fact that above the useless stereotypes of 'baron' and 'feted inner core' were being lumped into one category. I try and consider people on a case by case basis, and so far, all of the people who'd been lumped into the evil 'baron' category that I've met personally have more than shown they don't deserve to be judged badly for what they do in SL - excepting the one mentioned case. Juani, I think you bring a lot to SL.

And Guni, who is this moron? Exactly. I'm no longer famous. I don't have influence. And yet, I'm being told that I use my fame and power to ruin SL?

Prokofy, I said, in retrospect, it is a sweet deal. However, we are no more privileged in game than anyone else who pays for and owns 4,096 meters of land.

Wrong.

When I buy 4096, I have to pay tier on it forever. You got that tier paid up by paying a premium price up front. Now you have it paid up. That's golden.

What part of "privilege" don't you understand?

That's a real life privilege based on time of joining. NOT an "in game" privilege.

Just as some people are privileged enough in real life to buy a whole sim.