New Zindra Blog Post

It's also one way of saying that they have been practically keeping this shit a *secret*. It's the equivalent of a newspaper burying the retraction of a story in the classified ads section.

They made an effort to *keep* as many people as possible from hearing about this, and put out a bunch of propaganda that has convinced many people that they will not have to move, even though they will.

They have tried to drive wedges between the affected populations by seemingly offering a "favor" to the merchants (which is probably the only way they could get the few content creators they consulted in the early stages to go along with the plan), while planning to line their pockets at the expense of everyone else.

In every step of this plan, LL has show their disregard and contempt for their customers.

And they have *not* made their customers adequately aware of what is happening, and what the ramifications are.

*that* is why they have had "fewer" land requests than expected. Not because there are fewer people being affected than any of us claimed (in fact, this affects every single SL resident), but because LL has pursued a strategy guaranteed to depress the number of of customers who are even *aware* of the changes, much less those who are aware that they will be be forced in to actions they would rather not take (giving payment info, age verifying, moving, flagging their land a different content rating, or moderating their behavior to *keep* a content rating).

OF *course* they had "fewer" requests than we expected! They *arranged* it that way!

^V^

Hmm- hadn't though about the harlequin effect- How about "a nude man and woman Lozengy, Sable and Argent"

But yes you're right about the blazon- It's been a long time since I did heraldry

^V^

Well, everyone *was* able to *apply* for a swap, and Blondin's exact words were "I don't think that you would be denied".

Note the obligatory Blondin qualifier, there.



My position exactly. LL is the one who started this ball rolling, and they are the ones who refused to re-design their plans to correct pretty obvious flaws in it, simply because it was a group of residents telling them what they were.

They told me what would be happening, I told them what would happen if they did it, and they told me to get bent, and get with the program, or else I wouldn't be able to carry on my business any more.

So I got with the program, because the only alternative was watching them point and laugh while they took my toys away.

those toys cost money. Those toys mean something to me. I don't want them taken away. they offered me an alternative, and I took it.

That doesn't mean that I *chose* their screwed up plan, nor does it mean I *support* their screwed up plan.

It doesn't even mean that I won't be a pain in their ass, when I *could* have been one of those "helpful-type customers"

and it most *especially* doesn't mean that I'm *happy*.

^V^

Breianne, When you are sold land, and given a certain number of prims to work with, do you use them all, or do you say "gee, I'd better limit my prim use so that LL's servers aren't overworked"?

LL Sold my group and I a sim that had all the square footage and a quarter of the prims and told us that we could do anything we liked with it. there was no talk of ""only use so many prims/scripts/thus-and-such traffick"

And besides. "openspace sims" have 150 prims according to the TOS at the time, and that's not what we bought. We bought a sim with 3750 prims, and that manifestly was something *different*. Later, even LL recognized that they had, in fact, introduced a new product, and that if they wanted special rules for that product, then they needed to specify them.

You *can't* abuse the system when you are obeying the rules as set down in the TOS.

The product was sold under certain conditions, and frankly it worked just fine. But LL decided that it was some sort of disaster that OS owners were actually *using* the number of prims they were alotted, rather than filling an expensive and useful sim with water and a couple palm trees.

Pardon me if that sounds just a *little* like LL's mistake and not mine, k?

and the same thing is true of Zindra. it is LL's fault, and not anyone else's (except maybe Ray Burdeyna and Cheddar! )

^V^

Eh, I don't know that he's being *dishonest*, but he definitely pulling facts out of his ass on the fly. A more accurate statement would be that jack has no idea how many zindra support tickets have been received.

and I also want to know how many people got the "you might have already won a trip to Zindra!" e-mail. If LL could sent those, then they could have done something similar as soon as the search filter was up and running (at least for *english*- Still nothing for any other languages)

^V^

They also, as I now recall, " decided to open up more of the Zindra landmass, earlier than planned" because "[t]he parcel sizes being requested have been larger than expected"
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/land/blog/2009/07/03/a-zindra-update-more-land-on-the-way

The natural explanation, at least it seems to me, for their receiving fewer requests than expected but for larger parcel sizes is that people must have consolidated their applications, so rather than, for example, receiving 4 requests for small plots from 4 people, they received one group request on behalf of all four of them for one large one.

OK well maybe not totally dishonest, although I do hold with the fact that he as the Land man should know the correct answers to these questions, that is why I feel he is being as LL always are and that's being economical with honest answers or should I say truthful answers as that can be manipulated to suit the situation whilst honesty cannot

Just my thoughts though.

The other thing that happened was people combined their requests into one ticket, which explains why they got fewer, but larger area per ticket.

This was an obvious self-defense move. If you run a club and are in danger of having another club move into the same region, the thing to do was combine with some shopping and rentals and move one large area. That way you know what your neighbors will be.

Another reason for combining requests is simply if you had neighbors you liked who wanted to move together.

Yet a third is when they surveyed the adult places on the mainland, they didnt count the prim support parcels that contributed to a main store or club. They have made enough dumb mistakes that I could easily see them missing that when they did their survey.

If they had fewer requests than expected, for whatever reason, why the hell are they denying anyone?

I have been approved for a swap to Zindra and quite frankly I'm gobsmacked, I was hoping they'd agree with me that the content was mature.

wow and meanwhile the profanity tramp stamp seller with sex balls in the shop cant get approved.

What type of content was it? So we now know what is "Adult" not "mature"

A link to a nudie website and a vendor selling SL joints. I titled my ticket "Clarification" and to be fair to this parcel this content has been there for ages and he had flagged it "mature" but I am surprised they deemed it adult.

The Lindens FREQUENTLY change the rules when they see something isn't working out. Used to be, you paid a linden for each prim you rezzed, and anyone could rezz any amount of prims up to the limit of the sim. Didn't matter if your neighbors could build or not. Now prim allowance is to the parcel size. When I started here, the stipend was L500 per week--till the lindens figured out it cost more than they were getting. There was a program called "first land" There were banks and gambling--till the credit card companies threatened to stop accepting payments for LL. The lindens used to absorb VAT till they got too many european customers. When they saw that the opensims were being abused, they changed the rules and pricing again. Now adult content is being shuffled off to Zindra, and there has been talk about allocating script memory according to land size similar to the way prims are.

There's always going to be someone to abuse the system, or game the system or threaten legal or punitive action because of the way things are. Therefore, the Lindens are going to change the rules to keep the money flowing in. It's a given. Adapt or quit.

I'm not picking on you. Just pointing out that the rules have changed many times, and will continue to change. It's a given.

No, it wasn't aimed at you, it was aimed at all those people who are effectively turning resident against resident with these AR binges. From bots all the way through to zindra, this is turning out to be a pastime that I find unpleasant. If LL want to enforce their ToS then let them do it rather than relying on what are effectively neighbours snitching on each other.

It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I make no apologies for that. In particular it makes my skin crawl when I then see people bragging about it.

If however you feel these remarks fit you then take them as you will.

As for allies I can't think of any reason why I need them. Usually all I do is provide information and people can use it as they see fit.

They were NOT being abused. Right from the very first private void sims, owned by the "Hollywood Insiders" group for their regattas, they were being overloaded: sailing dozens of physical boats through a sim is going to bog things down even if it's *not* a void. The vast majority of residential and even business opensims had less overhead than that.

Linden Labs realized they screwed up in estimating how many sims they could run on a server, and then claimed people were abusing them to save face. All the while concierge was telling people all this "abuse" was legitimate.

That's why I started documenting what Blondin was saying on the Wiki this time around, and why the slapt.me wiki was started. So we could point at the conflicting statements.

Since server version 1.27 was unleashed to the grid recently, I went and checked the adult filter list again. "Boobs" is now off the list. That's the only change I noticed. I started a new thread about the changes to search generally, since sometime in August it is likely these changes will become mandatory. That means everyone will be forced to use the new Viewer, and will therefore be confronted with the new search features.

Update: another resident asked about UK spellings of Paedophile and Paedophilia. Turns out the latter is on the always banned list, but the former is not even filtered at PG. Both words are on the always banned list in the US spelling.

We're looking for merchants to participate in the first ever Zindra grid hunt.

The hunt will be both a traditional treasure hunt and a competition to find the most boxes. It's designed to raise your profile, generate some traffic and hopefully boost your sales.

http://themarkofzindra.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/hunt-merchant-information/

We're using Jim Gustafson's hunt system for this so it will be both a traditional treasure hunt and a competition with prizes for the most boxes found.

You can read the overview here: http://themarkofzindra.wordpress.com/

The basics...

* It will run from 22 August - 6 Sept

* Applications in to me by 1 August

* Zindra businesses only

The rest of the merchant requirements are just the normal hunt stuff about advertising, putting boxes out, original content most of you know the drill...

the good bit is you can be as evil as you like in hiding the boxes.

Have a read of the web pages and if you've got any questions drop me a line inworld.

This is great I just used Jim's hunt system and it went very smoothly. Looking forward to this event, Couldbe!

Maybe they knew exactly what they were doing.

I agree with everything here about the rules changes, but care to explain at what time has there EVER been 1$ per prim rezzed? Since Nov 04, when my first alt got to SL, its been by parcel restriction. The first land, the 512, had 117 prim limit. The fact that the Lindens constantly change the rules is not due to the fact the residents abuse them, its more so the fact they do not think things out properly, and do NOT listen to the residents when we say.. "that will/won't work". They screw themselves, and us to, more times than not by their failure to pay attention.

When we protested putting mature & PG land side by side, they *knew* what they were doing. now we have a mass shuffle to Zindra and a new *adult* rating, because of it.
If they had simply enforced the rules from the beginning, PG would have STAYED PG, and Mature was everything else, simple.

~Brie

Regardless of whether it was incompetence, malice, or a Monday morning meeting... calling the people who were following the guidelines they got from concierge "abusers" is unfair.

See if this link works for you:

Doesn't work for me, says I have reached my viewing limit for the book.

how about this?

http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

I see the message too, but it disappears after a while (30 sec here) and the book is on screen. While scrolling the message can appear again, but after ca. 30 secs the pages are there.

(Just if you maybe gave up too fast?)