Mainland Zoning: 4th Quarter Progress

Jack Linden's August 8th Mainland Zoning Blog announcement http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/08/05/the-future-of-the-second-life-mainland/.

Jack Said:

When I went to his office hours last week to inquire about the progress of Mainland Zoning - Jack indicated there was no progress and no group had been chosen to head up this initiative (he thought the concierge team would develop committees to start working on this). He mentioned that this was a 4th quarter issue. So since the 4th quarter (and the end of the year) is right around the corner - Is Mainland Zoning a dead issue? Did they throw us the carcasses of the adfarmers in hopes we would be satisfied? And Jack had mentioned in his Auguat 9th forum post that And then he announced in September that Old mainland would be zoned to prohibit adfarming. So now old mainland is included in this new Mainland Zoning initiative.

Will this truly move forward in the 4th quarter or will we be too distracted with watching the adfarmers topple to care if Linden Lab actually follows through with the Mainland Zoning initiative?

/me sniffs the adfarmers' carcasses and lifts a leg to pee on them. Nope, not dead yet - they're still kicking and squirming.

When they're gone, let's see what happens. My thoughts are, they have to get rid of the adfarmers first because with them, any attempts at zoning mainland will be a farce.

Could you point me to where exactly he said this? Adfarms will be prohibited by the new rules and network advertising regulated but that's kind of hard to qualify as actual zoning. I haven't heard anything about the rest of the current mainland being zoned or regulated in any new way.

Seems to me that the option of real zoning for existing Mainland will need a lot of careful thought, above and beyond whatever they devise for new Mainland. I'm totally in favor of thinking about it, but to be honest: it's difficult to think constructively, until we have some idea how the new Mainland zoning will work.

At this point, I'd assume that an existing sim would have to choose (somehow) to "opt in" to one of the zoning models that will be used in new sims, or possibly one of the existing models (Bay City, or Brown/Boardman), or less likely, some slight variant of one of those models.

In fact, my guess would be that LL would be trying to "normalize" zoning somehow, to make Bay City, Brown/Boardman, new sims, and opt-in sims fit into some coherent framework, just to manage complexity of enforcement.

So, maybe current community effort would be best directed at informing LL's plans for zoning new sims, trying to keep in mind the needs of existing sims when (if?) they're able to opt in to zoning.

LOL @ carcasses of the adfarmers, nice line

If they did then I would be satisfied. Ad farms were a bigger problem than zoning. Still, Q4 doesnt start for 2 more days so this conversation should be put on hold till the end of the year. Give them a chance to fail before we pounce on them.

I would be satisfied as well and already I am seeing a better view and it's not even Oct 1 yet

The ad farming issue isn't a zoning issue, it's a visual spam issue. Zoning existing mainland is too problematic.

Jack has always indicated that zoning the existing mainland would be too hard and that it probably won't happen. This seems pretty reasonable to me, I just can't imagine what a logistical nightmare it would be even with sims that are owned by just a few people. This doesn't include ad farming which I suppose is a kind of zoning but not really what people mean when they use the word.

As for new zoned areas of the mainland I'd say it's almost a certainty. Bay City was a massive success, parcels there are still "worth" L$100/sqm or more (not to me I hasten to add, but to someone). Next time they'll probably sell the land for US$ though so that the income for SL is actually real.

Jack Linden August 9th post (The last one before he locked the thread)/346/d3/274884/40.html#post2102899

I do not think you saw the quote from Jack Linden that started this thread. In August he announced that there WOULD BE mainland zoning (out of the blue). Please look at first post in thsi thread for the link to the blog announcement and the forum conversation he started concerning Mainland Zoning.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, I just can't imagine what a logistical nightmare it would be even with sims that are owned by just a few people.[/QUOTE] If Anshe can do it - so can Philip.

It is hard not to accept that the adfarming regulation is not the first step in steps in Mainland Zoning. They tried to call it extortion and that did not put a big enough dent into it. Most claims of visual greifing did not work either. So they imposed a ZONING RULE on mainland advertising (and mainland only - old and new). So this is the first step in mainland zoning - old and new mainland. But since the blog announcement and the August forum post they have been silent on the issue.

We shall see what announcements we get this week during the fourth quarter. Hopefully this was not just an empty promise.

I'm referring to the conversation you had with Jack after that announcement in which he said zoning initially will be for new land, not for existing land which I took as a polite way of saying that zoning existing land is impossible and will never happen. It's possible I read more into it than he meant.



In addition I think you're misreading the blog because the interpretation I have is that he is talking about zoning only on new sims. He specifically says he will be "creating areas" not changing existing areas.



*edit maybe we're talking at cross purposes, when I say zoning I pretty much mean either enforcing a theme or enforcing residential or commercial builds. You might be using zoning to mean something more wishy washy like "don't build crap all over tiny parcels and deliberately annoy everyone". I agree that second sort of zoning is indeed starting to happen on existing sims.

I am glad that the ad-farming issue is finally being tackled. However, beyond this, I am actively opposed to further zoning restrictions on existing mainland. I like the way these areas have evolved organically with mixed usage and building styles, even if that means an occasional ugly build. I have no desire to live in the middle of a vast housing estate. I think mixed usage also makes for better communities in RL.

I realise that there are plenty who would disagree and for these people there is the option of estates, and the promised new, zoned mainland. I would like to see a mixture of zoned and unzoned sims on new mainland, so everybody could find a spot they like.

[emphasis mine]I've been following this, and it's just my general impression that eventually there will be a mechanism for existing Mainland sims to opt in to full-blown zoning of some sort, but that it is very unlikely to be imposed any other way. I don't think they've seriously considered exactly how that will happen. Perhaps by petition from some overwhelming supermajority of land in the sim? Or even unanimous?

One might wonder why opting in would make sense for a sim that's already fully controlled by like-minded residents--or even wholly owned by one--but considering resale, that could make sense.

I really do not think LL has committed to doing any of this kind of zoning on existing Mainland during Q4. I'm not arguing that they should or shouldn't, but I don't think they're on record anywhere saying they will zone outside new sims in Q4.

The mainland doesn't need to be Martha Stewart pristine.

It needs to just not be horrific.



The idea that 'Governor Linden' will actually come over and pwn you if you are being an abusive, extortionist jerk may be all the zoning they will ever need.

Heh, that's pretty much 90% of how it works for me...

I hope Lias realizes that truly fair zoning will spell the end of her eyesore builds in Bear. But I imagine she thinks she should be the exception to the rules.

Oh wow thanks,I didnt even see that response from him - so much adfarmer carnage going on. I would have countered that with a few keystrokes he was able to squash the adfarmers and zone the entire old mainland in that aspect - so obviously it is not as difficult as he said it would be. And to say no zoning on the old mainland and then to zone the adfarmers off of the old mainland in the same breath seems a bit like LL standard operational procedure.



But then again - he zoned all of the old mainland away from the adfarmers - so it seems he decided that zoning will apply to the old mainland also. Cannot have it both ways. Well actually in the world of Linden they seem to very much want to.

Zoning in every RL context I've ever encountered would translate into SL as such: this parcel/sim is zoned as <insert category>. You can only build these particular types of things on this land.

The new rules on advertisements is nothing like this. It's an ordinance, not zoning. It regulates a particular category of builds, not land. You can still make an adtower on any parcel of any size that you own, wherever it may be. The tower itself simply has to comply to certain design standards and can only be 1 per sim/50 total on the mainland. You could even still get the equivalent of an adfarm again if several people chose to cluster their ads next to each other.

Maybe it's pickier than I should be but it does get both annoying and confusing when people mix different terms and change their connotations. Kind of how adfarm started out referring to landcutters who put out advertisements but now gets applied to all land extortionists, network advertisers and any microparcel owner, regardless of what they use it for. Sometimes in any number of combinations of the above.

A new 78 region continent has slowly being developed since 3rd August . Its not yet publicly accessible but has been on the Map and recently began to show non-terrain infrastructure - Search for "von spee" as thats one of the component regions.

Also new to the Grid this week are Castle Valeria and Mos Ainsley - These are both Linden Mainland but unlike normal new mainland sims, these have builds on them - Castle Valeria is Pirate Island themed whilst Mos Ainsley is Space themed (I assume Star Wars) , currently neither are for sale but then no Bay City ones were to begin with. There are also two companion regions to the Mos Ainsley (Preon Star and Quark Star)

I monitor and weekly report on new regions over on SLUniverse in the Business, Land and Economy forum , sorry if thats a plug but people here may be interested.

EDIT: Here links to some pictures of the new continent and region
http://www.tycheshepherd.com/images/28sepa.jpg
http://www.tycheshepherd.com/images/castle_valeria.jpg
http://www.tycheshepherd.com/images/mos_ainsley.jpg

Fascinating - I see that the land regions that are surrounded by von spee and the other water sims all have "Nautilus-" as a prefix, like the Bay City sims do, so that would lead me to believe that's the next phase of zoned mainland. I wonder if they are waiting for 4th Q to announce it. They certainly tried to hide it by placing it far, far away from the other mainland continents. The others are connected to regular mainland sims. I wonder if they're planning to move the new Nautilus sims over and connect them to what is known as the Nautilus continent.

Looks like to the west is a number of water sims extending out and even a couple small islands so I'm betting they do connect it to one of the continents via waterway.

I guess all the Mainlanders need to abandon their lands that aren't covered to Governor Linden to have better home and have LL give them better estate management services?

Surely jack is not saying anyone that bought their mainland before October 2008 is on their own. What happened to valuing their customers? Seems odd to leave us to wild west while the newcomers live in zoned bliss.

There has to be someone at Linden Lab putting a plan of action in place for the old mainland zoning.

I don't want to be zoned in any fashion. Finish the roads and make sure we have access to help, etc. - as we should anyway - and I'd be content enough if that was all they give us. I chose to settle on the mainland because it's an unzoned, free and random kind of environment. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I personally don't like adfarms and such so the recent changes I can go along with but I'd want them reversed in a heartbeat if it meant everything else was going to be zoned and regulated too.

Anyone who wants to be zoned or live in a tidy, predictable landscape can go to a private island or move to one of the new mainland areas. I'll enjoy my Wild West thank you very much.

It all so very much depends on what the heck "zoning" means. For example, if one visits Brown--what one might suppose to be the most extreme form of zoning--it's certainly not the kind of environment I'd imagine would succeed on a very large scale (the astronomical land values there notwithstanding).

I'm even not sure what the basic "residential" vs "commercial" zones actually mean, operationally. Does it mean that every "commercial" parcel must have stuff for sale on it, listed in Search? Or Classifieds, or Events? Or, maybe "residential" parcels can't have these things, or can't be listed in Search at all?

Or is it an architectural thing, where building in commercial zones has to look like a business, and in residential zones structures have to look like houses? (And who would want the job of judging *that*? This must be wrong. Right??)

Although I don't think it's the case, if "zoning" only means more enforcement of the anti-griefing policy on land and builds... well, it's premature to say one way or another whether that would be good or bad, inasmuch as we don't have a hint as to what that would be.

I don't think this is "zoning" either, but I do think LL will have to take some more aggressive role in restoring usable parcel sizes--meaning they'll have to somehow pry microparcels out of the hands of non-advertising extortionists. Because the problem has been allowed to get so horrendous, there's no remotely appealing way to achieve this, but if they want to both auction new sims and continue to collect tier to keep the existing servers humming, they just won't have any choice.

I can put up with ad plots and builds I find less attractive by builidng higher up and hoping they don't follow up in sky but what gets to me is when neighbors of current or neighboring sim use up all the resources of every sim near them.
That is whole more important to me, neighboring sims shouldn't be able to bleed all the resources from their neighbors nor should some near by lot be able to do the same.
The policy seems that if you're neighbor sim the land owners can generate so much lag with maxing out the current residents visiting that it effects other sims near by. A friend who now in process of downsizing was told by a Linden when she mentioned this was happening due that they can't do any thing about it.
Great management of mainland?
How many business or users would pay for server space and not be able to use it due to other customers using up all the local resources of the server space they pay for when the company refuses to do something about thus allowing other users to take all the resources?