Das Infohubbens!

Caroline, there's one process that doesn't involve calling a Linden or giving 'special powers' to some unlucky person who gets burdened with the administrative work. But the process is awkward for a number of reasons.

We're discussing a problem analogous to the abuse of prim allotment by people who wander in, and rez junk on land where the owner does not have autoreturn clicked on, and seems to be absent for months.

I saw a visitor rezzing a cute but inappropriate shack on an absentee owner's waterfront land beside my site in Miramare. It took a while to convince this person to give up the obvious benefit of free prim allotment to display his build. Eventually he consented to replace it with a tree. As soon as he left I scrambled to jam as many green plants as I could onto that parcel. They cover up the abandoned canoe and the abandoned plywood cylinder and they partially mask that visitor's PINK tree. : D

I did consult a Linden before taking this action, of course. After all, it's somebody else's land. And I sent the owner an IM to explain the situation.

It's an awkward solution, but it could be a temporary measure -- concerned citizens post graffiti that the rest of us like, and post it with enough frequency that it crowds out stuff that we have agreed is inappropriate. I like this forum as a venue for getting agreement on this sort of thing. But we need more Nova Albion residents participating here. I keep wondering where they all are....

Yes, the resident advertiser will be there. We can definately take advantage of that.


Currently the graffiti wall is a three prim object that is up against the pedestrian bridge support column inthe Sistiana portion of the hub area. One would be able to add graffiti textures to the display prim of the object in some way and then can cycle through them and leave one displayed by clicking a brick prim on either side. So the graffiti wall, in it's current design, would never be more than 3 prims and always appear at the same location in Sistiana.



Though Sistiana is a Mature region, the display in its current location can been seen from the PG region of Grignano. So we may have to check from time to time if there is anything violates the Second Life Community Standards or Terms of Service. Good idea about the 2 week expiration. That might help to automatically get rid of images from infrequent contributors who might place something innapropriate -- and it will help to keep it fresh. At the very least one can always dial an offending image out of view and replace it with a differrent image.

My current thoughts regarding the land settings at the new city Infohub is to have the entire hub area set to an autoreturn of 5 minutes, like the current Miramare hub is. That would give folks enough time to rez a vehicle or show some inventory item to a friend and quickly auto-clean up any stray prims left behind. Alternatively we could request the five minute autoreturn on the parking strips only (for vehicle rezzing) and have the rest of the hub area set to no build.

I'd like to request that the Lindens allow us to experiment with this hub area some more by allowing the Governor to become a member of the City Slicker group and set portions or the entire hub land to the City Slicker group so we could manage it ourselves better. All City Slicker content on hub land would be group-deeded (owned) so that any City Slicker officer/member could modify them. That way any City Slicker could jump in and edit City Slicker content, like the grafffiti wall for example, to remove an innapropriate object.

Perhaps as we start using this group forum for more and more things, more and more folks will begin participating. We need to advertise the existence of it inworld more in our city parcels to help direct people here.

Here is a copy of the Nova Albion Infohub Installation Plan I just sent to Jesse Linden:

Nova Albion Infohub Installation/Maintenance Proposal
2/14/06

Drafted by Salazar Jack
Nova Albion City Slickers group

Figure 1. "The New Nova Albion Infohub"


MAIN GOAL
Installation of the new resident-constructed custom Infohub for Nova Albion. The new hub is complete and ready to be installed. Final tweaking will be done on-site to blend in with the existing surrounding structures.
* Provide space for current Linden Infohub content at existing hub landing point in Miramare.
* Expand Infohub area to connecting parcels in neighboring city regions and allow for a more structured and uncluttered installation of Linden content

1. The New Hub Land Needs To Be Reparceled
To accomplish our Main Goal requires some work on the Lindens' part to reparcel the existing land that will make up the new Nova Albion Infohub. In addition to the existing Miramare area, the new hub will include parts of Grignano, Sistiana and Barcola. Currently the Linden land in each city region is one large parcel. Would the Governor be able to redivide the city regions and designate new landing points as indicated in the attached aerial photo?

(Please see Figure 2. "Reparceling The City Land."


The teleport routing on all Linden-owned, non-hub land would be set to "Anywhere" so that folks would land close to where they intended, unless the Lindens wish to route all inbound Linden land teleports directly to the Infohub regardless of where a user double-clicked the map.

2. The Land Needs To Have AutoReturn Turned Off
At the very least, the autoreturn on the new plots needs to be turned off while we install the new hub structures. Once everything is installed the Governor (or a Linden) would have to claim all the content and assign it to the Lindens' Maintenance group so that when the autoreturn was turned back on, all the new content would stay. The downside of this is that all custom city content created by the residents becomes difficult to change or update.

One of the features of the new hub area is a series of parking strips where visitors to the city can rez a vehicle right alongside the road. For this, and other reasons, the final autoreturn setting for the whole hub area should be set to 5 minutes and building allowed, like the current Miramare hub is today.

CALL THIS AN EXPERIMENT...
A better solution for us, one that would allow for the optional goals listed below, would be for the Governor to set the land to the City Slickers group. Governor Linden would still own the land and the City Slickers group would be able to place, update/maintain and have some limited ability to manage content it has permissions for at the new hub. Perhaps we could try this out for a month and see how it goes -- a sort of experiment with local landowners managing the custom content for their local Infohub? If not for the entire hub area, maybe we could designate a few spots where smaller parcels are set to the City Slickers group to allow for some local management?

OPTIONAL GOALS
* Allow city residents to place non-commercial, Nova Albion related content in the expanded hub area
* Allow residents to update/modify/manage Nova Albion content in the expanded hub area
* Less maintenance needed from the Lindens for local custom content

1. Set Governor Lindens' city Infohub land to the City Slickers group -- the Gov still owns it!
The City Slickers group (according to founder Caroline Apollo) is open to all Nova Albion residents. All city landowners can be invited as officers and all city residents can be invited as members. As a whole, the group could organize, plan, create, update and maintain all the custom city content that would appear throughout the Nova Albion Infohub. With the land set to a five minute autoreturn, all non-City Slicker content would be automatically cleaned up while content assigned to the group would remain.

There would be no commercial or advertising content allowed. There would be a city-wide directory display in the center span of the pedestrian bridge where each city landowner would be allowed one identical prim marker to place that they could use to dispense info about their location when touched. No "hover text" would be allowed on any city custom content to keep the area clean and visually noise-free. City-wide events and non-profit events could be displayed in appropriate areas, like a poster wall. All commercial advertising would have to be done with the Lindens' Resident Advertiser Kiosk.

Current proposed city resident content includes:
* an exhibit of historical city artifacts provided by Xenon Linden from Magellan Linden
* a city wide directory with each land owner represented
* a graffiti wall -- visitors can cycle through an inventory of graffiti images and, perhaps, add their own
* trash cans where city residents can throw away items they no longer need, or wish to give away -- visitors can claim the items by rummaging through the cans and taking copies or originals
* a small wading pool that visitors can make a wish at and drop coins in
* a public chess table game
* a poster wall announcing civic & non-profit events
* like the parking strips alongside "Trolley Avenue," docks could be installed along the west edge of each Infohub parcel, in Sistiana and Barcola, where folks could rez a boat or arrive by boat


Thanks for the opportunity to create a custom local Infohub!

The City Slicker Group

WOWZA. My eyes popped out when I read this. I'll likely be discussing more specifics with Jesse shortly. And ah, I'd like to make it vocally clear that this is SO KEWL and really such a well-coordinated, pioneering effort--truely fitting this happens to Nova Albion after all that's been built up. The so-called "city sims" are unique this way. Those pictures make it very understandable too.

Love the sound of your experiment--letting you "do your own thang" is consistent with the core Linden philosophies of a Resident-created world, after all! And I'm all for letting you guys update your schtuff instead of letting it go stale. That's what my heart feels, hopefully technical blahs don't get in the way of it.

That's an eclectic list of Resident content too--I laughed so much when I read about the trash cans. All of it is great tho.

Dreams have gotta come true...

OKAY COME ON IN!!!

I CALL IT AN EXPERIMENT TOO!

Here's what was done:

1. Four parcels partitioned from existing Governor Linden land as you requested, with a little ample room in the water!
   

1. Land set to City Slickers group!
   

1. Autoreturn time set to an hour for now!
   

1. Landing point set to Anywhere!
   

What I will be wanting in the not-so-distant future includes a pretty snapshot that I can put in the ABOUT LAND options, as well as the coordinates of where you want the nice light blue "i" to show up on the Map.

I can assist with any other fixins you might want done... just lemme know.

Sound good?

Sounds good, Torley!

I'll start moving the Infohub structure from Phobos to it's final destination in the city this evening (Thursday). I should have the basic hub all set up by Friday evening or Saturday. Then I'll get you the photo and coordinates you requested.

Thank you very much for giving us this opportunity! Your assistance is appreciated.

WONDERFULICIOUS. As they say, we'll be in touch!

And hey I totally love seeing this come true.

I am so excited to see this happening! Thanks for your help Torley!

Nice work guys! Cn't wait to see it up.

I just wanted to thank Lordlfy for getting the ball rolling on this project. He laid the ground work, got the dialog started with the Lindens and designed/inspired the look for the pedestrian bridge that will be the focal point for our new Infohub.

This will be an exciting project for all City Slickers and Nova Albion visitors to contribute to for a very long time I think.

I find it supremely smile-inducing that Nova Albion, when the ground was laid... was a pioneering city. And this--in 2006 AD--is like full curcle, with new innovations on top of a trusty bedrock.

If you City Slickers need any help or accomodations, just let me know.

(Gosh, this is the kind of beautiful schtuff I wish for more of! But, it's gotta start boldly somewhere.)

Hey, dont' look at me. It's all Sal's doing.

Did I see right? Will there be a new bridge?

Yes!

Sure is great to see this project working out well! Sal, you've done a top-notch job. I've been over to your worksite often enough to realize how many hours you've put in.

Torley, many thanks for your comments and your work on behalf of Nova Albion. : )

you know.. i remember when this project was first being discussed and how amazingly cool it sounded..

and sure enough, it's turned out amazngly well!

but dang nabbit, i also remember wanting to be part of it and i've spent my time being busy in RL (argh) and busying myself in these forums (is there a patch for that?) and as a result have missed out on most of the opportunity.

if i ever get around to it, maybe i'll try to contribute something small, but mainly due to the fact that i would like to see all the land owners in Nova Albion contribute something.. however large or small, to this awesome project.

looks great guys! i can't wait to see it implemented!

This is not a one shot deal and there is no ultimate deadline. Just a starting point. The new general look of the Nova Albion Infohub will be a base to work from for an everchanging and evolving body of city-related content. All City Slickers will have a direct impact on what goes there and how it works. Our contributions to our hub should be of a non-commercial nature and geared toward providing a fun and interesting experience for visitors, expanding their knowledge and skills of living their second life to the fullest and promoting our fair city as a whole.

The Infohub area is set to the City Slickers group. When it is fully installed (this weekend) there will be areas where we, as a group, can set up interesting city-related content.

This has potential to combat empty sim disease! You know when a new attraction is built, typically a new island like Midnight City, there's a surge of attention, and the retailers there do well. After a while the novelty fades, particularly due to competition by newer attractions. Then the retailers notice that their sales have fallen off, and usually when you look at the map that sim is empty.

Nova Albion is fortunate to be on the flight path of new residents leaving the Welcome Area to explore. If they notice that our infohub is lively and interesting they might return sometime. If they return, and the infohub has new interesting stuff they might decide it's one of their favorite places.

Personally I think a great lure for new residents would be an interactive display to step them through personalizing their profiles. I talk to a LOT of people when I'm building on my site, and usually I take a fast look at the newcomer's profile to make sure they're really a newbie. Nearly every profile is boring and blank. Helping a new arrival through the steps of taking a snapshot, and putting it in that first blank image field might make a very positive experience.

!
A photobooth with different backgrounds
!

Similar to how Osprey Therian conducts her Photography contests with backgrounds that folks can use to create their photo entries.

What a great idea, Traxx. Helping folks fill out their profiles.

Sal, if you give me a rough idea of dimensions you feel would be appropriate for a photoshoot background, I'll create a couple of them. That should encourage everybody else to say, "I can do better than that!" Soon you'll be flooded with them. : D

Okay, sounds good. What do ya'll think? Some sort of photobooth where folks can choose a background and pose in front of a screen to make a snapshot of themselves to place in their profile? Maybe the camera can auto-adjust for the best veiwing angle for the pose? We could have the booth walk them through adding a photo to their profile, like Traxx suggested -- along with filling out the rest of their profile.

Now it's up to us City Slickers to add some fun stuff.



We need to nail down some official guidelines to make sure everyone is aware of what is appropriate for a City Slicker to contribute to the the public space. I touched on that subject in the plan I wrote up for Jesse:



Let's discuss!

Your no advertising and no hovertext rules make sense, Sal. You might also want to restrict the construction materials used for any future additions. You've already chosen a set of materials that allows considerable variety. Keeping to that set would preserve the overall look.

I've created the first background for the photoshoot booth, and started thinking about how the enclosure should look. Not too large...unpretentious style, but not starkly utilitarian. The signage could be low key, and the booth could fit into the park theme by using foundation planting. I'll do a sketch, and drop it on you to see what you think.

If you have a specific spot picked out for it, let me know. Otherwise I'd pick the waterfront area. Assuming you want the infohub build to terrace down to a stone or brick quay, the photoshoot booth could be at the transition where the level changes, but not taking up space on the quay itself.

Those ruins look interesting.... Wonder what else is buried there. : D