Where to build?

Hello all, i was wondering, where are you allowed to practise putting prims together?

My girlfriend wanted to experiment with making a prim, and putting a texture on it etc... just beginner stuff really. She found a quiet place - so as to not be in anybodys way, and she made a ball, and was playing around with textures etc.

Then our internet connection failed, so she was logged out, two minutes later she was back at the same place experimenting. then the int went down again. when she was back online (2 min later), she tried going back to her 'experiment' only to find she was banned from this place. She is rather upset about this all as she had no intentions to piss anyone off.

Why was she banned?

Because she left her 'ball' there? in all fairness, she would have deleted it when she was done 'experimenting' hence the reason she wanted to go back to the place she was doing it in.

Nobody can control there comp/the system crashing? Was the above reason enough to ban her?

Basically, she is now very nervous to experiment with prims anywhere, for fear of being banned. Surely if a sim allows you to place an object on the ground, you are allowed to do so?

Thanks for your time,
S

Gee... Surely because I can walk onto your front lawn, and my shovel works there, it's permitted for me to dig up your yard? No? Why not?

Most of the land in SL is owned by someone. That land owner paid money for their land, and continues to pay monthly maintenance fees for a limited amount of SL resources. When you walk onto someone else's land and start building stuff, it's like me walking onto your front lawn in RL and practicing digging a landscaping pond. You are destroying, damaging or using up part of what someone else pays for.

Your girlfriend was trespassing on someone else's private property, and was using resources (prim count) that someone else pays for. The land owner almost certainly banned her for littering their land with her prims, and for building on their lawn without permission.

To practice building, if you don't have your own land, you need to find a place called a "Public Sandbox". Those are publicly available places where any stranger may come and build. Sandboxes get wiped every few hours, so keep a copy of your work.

I am an artist, as are many of my close friends. When I invite a friend over to visit, I want them to be able to rez prims so they can show me some of their latest art projects. But that doesn't mean that my land is wide-open to any stranger to use as they see fit. So no, the fact that you could manage to rez a prim on my land is certainly NOT an open invitation to use my lawn as your private building practice space. It is because of people like you and your girlfriend that we have had to ban access to all new residents who have no payment info on file. Too many people just like you, who littered our land with prims, interruped intimate moments inside our homes, and otherwise treated our land with less respect than they would have for a real world mall.

Now, I will admit than a mere single prim isn't much of an inconvenience to most people. It is, however, an indication that your girlfriend had no respect for or concept of the land owner's property rights. For most land owners, it's far easier to return the offending prims and ban the maker, than it is to bother tracking down someone who in all probability couldn't care less that they were trespassing or using their resources. One incident like your girlfriend isn't much. Multiply that by dozens, or even hundreds of similar incidents, and maybe you will see why a land owner would be quick to ban someone who littered their land with prims.

As another newbie, I can somewhat understand both viewpoints. I did quite a bit of reading about SL before joining, which turned out to be a good thing because I certainly didn't pick up on that critical piece of information during the orientation period.

People are coming onto SL so quickly that they're more or less being shoved out the door without really understanding how to conduct themselves (or not, as the case may be). And when you add in some of the cultural and language differences I've observed recently, it can definitely make for some problems.

I wonder if the Lindens would consider opening a newbie grid...

Alyse, I completely agree that a lot of the problem is that the Lindens completely fail to provide orientation information on things like property rights, land ownership, or even things like where it's acceptable to play with firearms. The older residents have brought this up repeatedly, but every time I have checked, those points are still not covered. So we get new Players who seem to think that everything and everyone in the world, other than them, is a computer-generared creation, there for their sole amusement - like in so many computer games.

If they would just cover such simple matters in new Player orientation, a lot of problems between new Players and older residents would not happen.

no need to yell at him (and his girlfriend), ceera.

they just admitted they were new and hadn't any clue what they did wrong. and asked how to behave. and as you know, it's not their fault.


now, scott, go into the search, under places and type in "public sandbox." or, go into the world map and in the third box, type "sandbox." you'll find several places where us 'homeless' people are allowed to experiment and build stuff. :)

Bloodsong, if either Scott or his girlfriend feel that I was "yelling at them", then I apologize, for that was not my intent.

I fear that I reacted rather harshly because of his comment "Surely if a sim allows you to place an object on the ground, you are allowed to do so?". I have, unfortunately, been on the recieving end of far too many individuals with such an attitude, who felt that they could do anything they pleased on my household's land, even when politely informed that their behavior was inappropriate. As I said, too many new Players treat others in SL with far less respect for their property rights than they would have for a public food court in a mall.

As I said in my second post in this thread, I believe the Lindens are doing a very poor job of informing new Players of even the most basic rules of behavior for interactions between individuals in SL. The last time I was on Orientation Island, they still made no mention at all of things like property ownership in SL.

I got to agree with Bloodsong on this one. But I sure see Ceera's point of view too. A public sandbox is where building practice is intended to happen........but I know I was never told that almost a year ago when I came into SL. I practiced on other's private property myself not knowing it was not really accepted.......but an owner "caught" me one time and very politely told me the "rules". He also allowed me to continue my "project" with the suggestion that I ask first next time or go to a sandbox. Very helpful and understanding.

Now, I have my own land and I can practice all I want.......but with the massive growth of late I have had to restrict any building on my land by anyone not on my access list or in my group. It's a shame I've had to do that but so many "griefers" and careless people have made that necessary.

Scott...............best to go the the public sandboxes. But those places are sometimes full of griefers who try to make life miserable for everyone.......that's a shame. So, if you can ask politely, and explain what you want to do and make sure you "clean up" after yourself many owners will allow that if they have the prims to spare for a temperary time. You might be surprised how well you will be treated. We've all been there, done that...........but just make sure you ask and get a firm okay before you even start.

....sigh...
Yes, we've all been there. Dont' get discouraged, Scott (and yer GF).
None of us had 'SL parents' to teach us manners when we were still 'SL youngsters.'

After I figured out to use a 'Sandbox', it then took me awhile to figure out that there are TYPES of sandboxes...private and public and special ones for shooting and vehicles.

if land owners didnt want you to build there they can turn off building or set auto return.
but as all ppl are some are asses dont feel bad, just find a better place a linden
sandbox is not a better place... there are some personal sandboxes and some group
sandboxes join one or just cleanup afteryourself when you can
-LW

You're not the only one, and when I'm feeling unfriendly or just can't be arsed I do admit I'll deal with it with a swift boot - and if they come back, a boot and ban. Aoutoreturn deals with it when I'm offline. When I've explained to someone and they ignore me then I get RAARGH even more swiftly. But then, from experience I do wonder if many new players are aware of their IMs, notice when they have a new one or know how to respond to it. Sometimes I really think not. But like you say about the lack of 'induction', people can't be expected to know the 'rules' when they land, and I don't think it's fair to blame them - if you're not told how a place works, it's not your fault if your attitude towards that place ain't on target.

So I agree - people seem to be dumped in world with no real idea how to deal with things - even the common sense things. I can't count the number of times I've told people to "Just remember everyone you meet here is a real person too, and if you wouldn't do it to a stranger in RL don't expect it to go down well here".

That said, I think the OP had a good question to ask that didn't really deserve the aggro (that I admittedly dole out myself in world when I haven't the patience!) They came to the forums to ask about something they didn't know about/understand, which is so rare - half the people I boot for doing what they did don't even listen to me asking nicely (or laugh at me and tell me they own my land?!), let alone find the forums and ask what they ought to do about it. Basically, he wanted to know if there are public building areas beacuse there was no explaination that *not everywhere* is a public building area.

The fault isn't with the OP or his woman. He wins for being in the minority who realise they might be doing something wrong and try to find out why and how to fix it. The fault is something to do with the number of new players who get dumped into SL every day without the slightest hint as to 'how things work around here'.

(Edit - that wasn't as long in my head!)

I think banning people for such a minor mistake is very bad behaviour. As many people have pointed out already there are good ways to prevent people building on your land or to have their garbage removed from your land.

Banning is an act of agression. If I am banned from a lot or even ejected by some petty security system I make a mental note the guy who owns this land is not my friend and probably never will be.

I often see people who park their spaceship on my group land and I don't mind. As soon as I need the ground or the prims for something else I return the spaceship to their inventory. (No, I do not delete it, it may have been expensive!)

On one occasion someone dropped several hundred flames on my private land. He effectively "bombed" my garden. I think that is a deed of agression. I have not banned him, just sent all the flames back to his inventory, leaving him to delete them himself.

Hello again, and thank you for your replies.

i must say my girlfriend has a lot of respect for this game. This is why i posted this thread, because we want to learn, and the fact were open to admit our mistakes surely says a lot. Ceera, you were rather harsh - but thats ok.

She even went to Ivory tower the other day, and when the tutorials told her to rez a prim, she was too scared to do so, as she wasnt sure if she was actually allowed, and for fear the comp may log her off before she had time to clean up - which would result in a ban! Our wirelessl connection has its days, and sometimes it just doesnt wanna stay connected!

Also when she went to this place she actually very carefully chose where she went... she searched and searched for 'free land' - and somehow this one place came up. This place also had absolutely nothing in it. So being Naive she thought she was doing the right thing.

Another thing is newbies can get this 'free box of mushrooms' - which my gf got at the free dove, and its full of pretty mushrooms - and the notecard for them tells us to place them all around SL to make the place pretty etc - and that there only purpose is to make SL a prettier place... blah blah blah - and this is very misguiding information to newbies, cos really, if they find a nice tree, and put a pretty mushroom under it, they could in fact be banned.

Anyway, thanks again, atleast we know the facts now...
take care,
S

I'm constantly finding things on my land that are owned by other people. I usually just right click and return them to the owner. I'm kinda surprised that your girlfriend was banned....seems a little "extremist" to me.
Perhaps the owner that banned her thought she was a griefer?

I've rezzed in world and found 12 missiles set up on my land. When I IMed the owner, he apologized and said he was "playing" with a friend of his and he must have left them there....yyeeeeeaaahhh....riiiiggghhhtt...ok buddy
I deleted the missles and have never had another issue.

another time I came in world and found tons of fires on my land. Once again, I IMed the owner and asked them to come clean up their mess becasue teh fires were not only on my land but were on others as well. He said his nephew used teh computer and must have done that......yeeeeeaaahhh...riiiiigggghhhtt.....ok buddy

I always threaten the owner that I'll contact the Lindens and have them reported and they usually oblige quite quickly.

Moral to my story....There was no need to have your girlfriend banned. the owner that did it could easily check very quickly and see that she was a newbie....ok, what if she was an alt and was going to start griefing?.....a quick check of the contents would show that there were no scripts in the prim and that it was harmless.
A simple IM telling here that she shouldn't leave trash laying around on someone elses property would have been sufficient.

I recently helped out a newbie who didn't know how to remove something from a box. Once done getting it figured out, she was about to leave when I told her to stop and clean up her trash before she left. (she was about to leave her empty box behind on the street)

Wierd things sometimes have happened when parcel or sim prim limits were reached. Wierd things like the land owners' personal stuff being returned to inventory (I'm sure this was something raised during the postmortem of a replicator attack). You can imagine the faint undercurrent of paranoia that brings. Add to that the irritation of people who's most helpful response might be "oh lol sry! rofl" to cleaning up their stuff, and there's a siege mentality building amongst landowners.

I used to have 10 minute return or so on my land, including my store on a private island. Then I found my store's sim time dilation down to 0.01 and 200 objects called "bullet" in the top scripts, with some chucklehead with a gun playing gangsta. So build rights on my parcel got switched off.

So, don't worry about being banned from one parcel- there are plenty of ignorant antisocial people who ban *everyone* from their parcels already. The net result is the same, just it feels a little more personal. It's worth keeping in mind that a landowner's power over you stretches only as far as their land border. There's nothing of "official punishment" in being banned from someone's land. One private person decided to stop you using their private resources, nothing more.

Finding a nice quiet sandbox is the key- they're out there.

I've used sandboxes a lot and one word of advice... go airborne. Make a prim, sit on it, edit the prim and set the Z location to 300 meters or so. That will shoot you up into the sky. Then just set the prim X and Y size to 10M and you've got yourself a platform that is fairly lag and griefer free.

Yes! this is the same tactic I use. Remind people to 'clean up their litter'! Said once politely, and it'll stick forever. Usually, the newbie doesn't even know about "TAKE" and "DELETE" until you show them. This is just another step in teaching others about polite society in SL.

I have told a friend many times to clean up, always in a polite way, and he never listen, so not so sure it actually helps that much *G*. I hope he won't read this..

Ive been picking up leftover junk on my prop for years. You hit return and they are gone.
Never banned somebody for leaving a cube on the lawn, but have banned the schmuck who put plywood across the front door. I cut the newbies some slack because I used to be one. I was the guy with no clue trying to get over the learning curve. Actually I still have no clue half the time, but what I have learned I dont mind sharing with those who have finally discovered this cool place we have here. If Im not home and somebody wants to experiment trying to make a barstool in the backyard, no big whoop. Pick up your cubes when your done screwing around and dont block my front door. If I dont want trespassers building stuff you will find the auto return sending your stuff back every ten minutes. Have fun you meddling kids!!

you need to use a sandbox lots of people are busy experimenting on my land and sometimes i come and find like an entire lot of garbage prims. Many of us can't turn on autoreturn because of games and such which require things that would get returned. This doesn't mean that becauseyou can build that you are allowed to.

There are a lot of sanboxes around start with places like the shelter and NCI to get information. The big problem appears to be that for some reason people are leaving the orientation area before they actualy get oriented. All over that island is information about such things.

First stop you should take is to a place for new players to learn the ropes. All land has prim limits when people start leaving prims around intentional or not the parcel fills up and then the people who are actually permitted to use the land for its intended purpose end up unable to play games use items that can be rezzed for recreation.

Its really frustrating for land owners to feel that they can't allow certain events due to the fact that new players who have not taken the time to be informed before they enter the world fill their land up with boxes and spheres etc.

so yeah some people have a really low tolerance over time. One of my last experiences was a player when went to my area where people play golf i had to autoreturn something like 57 prims which had the parcel at capacity I was getting chats that no one could rez a golf ball. I returned the items and he swooped in telling me "its okay that you returned my items I dont mind" umm yeah I kinda laughed and said good because this is my park and your not allowed to leave trash around. I then had to orient him on prims and parcels and ownerships and everything

Please slow down go to the orientation areas and learn the do's and donts of SL. I spent like 4 days on the orientation island before I left I saw no reason to leave I was busy with information overload there and prims etc etc. Since basic membership is free and has no time limit it should not be a huge issue..

This is what I have started doing, only I have one of those 'instant platforms' you can purchase pretty cheaply. I find a sandbox that is quiet to begin with and shoot up to about 400 m. I can then torture prims to my hearts content without any intrusions, so far at least.

I also make use of the auto return at my home and business, especially since I forgot once to turn it back on (after I had a customer who needed to rezz some items he wanted to sell), and came back to find a 1/2 finished car of some kind and some other flaming stuff. *rolling my eyes*. I don't forget anymore.

As for newbies being clueless...I was clueless too (still am sometime) but I did spend some time at Orientation Island reading the basic do's and don'ts. Unfortunately, you have to be proactive and make the effort yourself, cause no one is going to ensure you get the info.

I just created a alt week ago and they did change Orientation island a bit from 3 months ago but the building area they don't allow you to keep anything you make or perhaps it seem that way nor did I find one sign about respecting other peoples land.
Once I got to build area and was trying to find another area with water it sent me to mainland before I wanted to leave.
When I was new I had no clue even where I was or that I couldn't go back.
Luckly there are places to go back and relearn what you missed but there aren't any places to teach other stuff except us I guess.
I own land but sometimes I lose items and people don't seem to return items. It not that I am intentionally littering there place its just I lost the prim and have no clue where the prim is.
I had some neighbor who overcharging for land call me newbie because I wanted private access only property that I spent over 133 usd on. She said I spent 1000 usd, I never do that and started to argue with me about how I shouldn't do this who was only month older then me.
I tried to be nice, I even explain situation eventually got mad about it muted and banned person.
I am not anti-social, it just don't have energy to deal with just everyone and anyone who pops in on my property. If someone approaches me nicely for help or to build on my lot, for access I will try to help but catch me on bad day I just might not.
I don't always know stuff either and there isn't always others to ask questions to without annoying them or being ignored too. I get very grumpy sometimes and sometimes someone shows up just at wrong moment, doing exactly the wrong thing and I am stop being nice, helpful and I am usually one of most kind and well behaved guys you will met.
Even I have limits and can't always be eternally nice to everyone all the time.
I also don't have endless amount of prims that I can allow just anyone to build there too, except my friends and those who want to help with projects,etc.
Even though its been almost 3 months I have my moments someone says or does something and I just want to be with myself.
I don't want to deal with just anyone in 2nd life, just like I don't hang out and socialize with just everyone on 1st life.

NCI is great. In addition to their own sandboxes, they have a card with a list of other sandboxes. Of course, just searching places for "sandbox" turns up a reasonable selection.

But as for that information being all over the orientation area, I beg to disagree. The info isn't all there, and what is there isn't easy to find or recognize as relevant. Perhaps "all over the island" is part of the problem - it needs to be coherent, not scattered.

Weird, everything I allowed at the free dove is wearable, meaning, skins, clothes, shapes, accesories, hair, shoes...and a few wings I put there

Where did you get that you can get mushrooms at The Free Dove?

I doubt it, sorry, gonna check. Everything has been approved by me before placing there. Thanks for the heads up!

Scott...I have some space available which I can offer to you and your G/F to use to experiment with building. The land is on my estate so there is practically no lag and it is a residential area so it is very quiet there. All that I ask is that you use less than 50 prims and clean up before you logout...or when you login again if you crash

Contact me in-world for a landmark and invitation to the group. I am usually in world during the evening, SL time.

-2fast