Mereille

Jack Linden put this new blog entry up:

The Future of the Second Life Mainland

And began a new thread on the main forums.

I don't know what to make of it. To me, it's fairly fluffy, and he doesn't say anything about existing mainland.

What are the experts' thoughts?

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Fade Languish

First of all, wow. I never thought I'd see the day when they'd come down from the clouds, create zoning, and regulate advertising. If they manage it well, I think that would generate more goodwill towards LL, and make a lot of their customers happy. It's a pretty radical departure from their long held hands-off stance.

What they need to do though, is not be half-assed, and maintain their attention span.

Lucifer Baphomet

They'd better not zone Clearwing...

Its mostly residential, but Io's shop is going up there.

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Aki Shichiroji

I disagree with rezoning of existing mainland, but wouldn't mind seeing new regions zoned before sale.

I do, however, believe that a solid policy on adfarming needs to be applied to ALL existing and future mainland areas, as soon as possible.

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Fade Languish

The existing mainland will be problematic for them. Go charging in, you'll piss off current owners. Leave it alone and create more idyllic new mainland, you could end up with it being some sort of wasteland. (Or more so in some cases).

Wildefire Walcott

I'll believe it when I see it.

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Lily Joliat

Does he mean they're going to rezone everywhere, or just new mainland that they create?
And by active part? What does that mean? It is fluff, and vague. Probably to get us to stop AR'ng ad farms and hope we stay quiet for awhile.
As someone who has land in one of the older sims, I do appreciate the care the lindens had in building roads and bridges and mountains, waterfronts, etc. But I kind of would like to be left alone.
Just get rid of the damn ad farms. I think thats been my only gripe.

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Fade Languish

They should retain some anything goes other than the advertising mainland, because there's also plenty of customers who enjoy their freedom to do whatever.

Lily Joliat

Hey, wait a minute. How can they change or rezone someone's property? Will I get a refund?

However I'm rereading his post and I'm pretty sure he's talking about rezoning new mainland. However "remodeling" existing governor linden land?

How is that any different then having someone buy land next to me and screwing with my existing view? Or should I trust that the Lindens will keep it nice.

Walker

Ha. Exactly what I thought when I reached this sentence:

If they really can regulate the ad situation, great, but having read about what happened to Stank's penis farm recently, I have zero confidence in their ability to distinguish between builds which constitute griefing and builds which do not.

Interesting news though because mainland problems are generally what trigger my frequent hiatuses from SL.

Fade Languish

Yeah, it didn't sound like they were about to start zoning existing mainland. As for trusting them to keep it nice, I dunno, I always thought the great wall was a great eyesore.

Lily Joliat

I agree with the anything goes. When I first started out I got a lot of help from decent neighbors, and was showed how to do things, and we all coordinated with the way things looked. I never had to pay for anything that they made for me. I think within the last year, people would buy property next door, NEVER say a word to you, even after I send a welcome IM, and put up the dreaded "no entry" signs.

But they can do what they want with their own property. They just suck.

Sooz Pascale

It was an interesting piece and, on the face, seems well written and sincere.

The problem I have is that I am so jaded by LL's past history of dropping the ball, and broken promises, that I really can't bring myself to believe anything they say.

The impression I have is that the majority of the Lindens are junior high school students who have somehow manged to reach drinking age.

Sooz

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Walker

Well I just bought a roadside parcel on that tiny new continent that's shaped like a flaccid penis. Or at least somebody told me it was but despite much head turning I couldn't see it.

Anyway, the Dept. of Public Works he mentioned is due to lay a proper, asphalt road some time soon, so I'm now wondering if that continent is going to be subject to zoning rules.

ETA: This is the one:



And I just discovered it's known as "Helfell".

Cocoanut Koala

Well, it would be pretty bad if they decided I couldn't have my shop on my sim. (Which I own most of.)

Would that be what they would do?

I don't understand this. At all.

coco

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Cocoanut Koala

What happened to it?

coco

Fade Languish

It didn't sounds so Coco, no. What I was trying to say, is they need to find a way to also give perceived value to existing mainland owners, whilst not screwing them over, and not just make a new special land and give nothing to everyone else.

Cocoanut Koala

Good.

I think it's a great idea to do something about ad farmers, but . . . I'm pretty used to "changes" being "things we won't like."

coco

Edit: From Jack's original post: "This made sense during the pioneer period of early adopters and rapid growth, but to echo Mitch Kapor's recent speech at the Second Life birthday event, as our audience widens we have to take a more active part in guiding their experience."

I guess this means it needs to look better for all the real-life companies, educational institutions, and government entities they are interested in attracting? Or does it mean, they will be doing things for those people rather than average residents?

Or maybe it doesn't mean a thing?

FlipperPA Peregrine

Here's a dump of my wall of text, since I know a few here can't read there:

WARNING: wall of text ahead. Prepare for major tl;dr.

Wow, I have to admit I'm pleased after reading the post, when I went into with great apprehension. As someone who has owned land on the mainland for almost 5 years, and never on an island, it is good to see some proactive steps being taken. Off the top of my head, some ideas:

(1) For plots 512sqm or less, give all neighboring residents an exclusive one-week grace period to purchase the land before non-neighboring residents can. Or, perhaps, allow neighbors three days; then allow anyone in the sim an additional four. Keep it in the family, if possible. This will minimize a lot of the current problems with land extortion - the current M.O. of the bad guys seems to be: buy, mark-up, put up ugliness, never visit the simulator again (except perhaps to extort by putting up more ugliness).

(2) Min / Maximum building height configurable by sim - if you have a flat sim at water level, and set a + / - build height based on the water level, you could preserve views automatically, and provide the popular "beach front / suburban" options without having to play police.

(3) On advertising: this is much trickier. I hate the "Impeach Bush" ad-farm problem as much as the next, yet I've been involved in legit advertising in the past. I always tried to keep it road-side, to fit in with the decor, in the SLBoutique days, and would always sell to a neighbor at my cost, upon request (in fact, I made some good friends that way). I also provide value in advertising with my free Gogomodo Trivia game; it is free for anyone to use, but I cover the bandwidth and server costs by driving revenue by advertising. It is quite popular with over 200 locations, but with many of them going 24/7, the bandwidth adds up. The revenue driven by our sponsors offsets this and provides a free game a lot of people enjoy. Our sort of implied ToS is, "Show our sponsors, and you get a fun communal game to play."

(4) Better controls for the mainland. I'm not going to touch "shared ban lists" as this is too controversial, but how about ability to change textures on a land plot? Or a whole sim, by vote of residents by square meter ownership? Philip's argument against this was that the mainland would look too much like patchwork - but honestly, ever flown in a place? That's how RL looks, especially over the farmland of the United Kingdom! If you want to encourage the mainland to be a place of themes and collaboration (I'll echo eltee here), giving self-organized communities the ability to vote themselves to develop the neighborhood in new and interesting ways in an automated fashion would be huge.

(5) Better ability to route people to continents where they speak the language. This is already underway, but perhaps tagging each region on each continent on the map with a predominant language spoken would help new residents find their target destinations. Sorry, but the newbie HUD doesn't cut it.

(6) Build a historical area around Morris / Ahern / etc. Ben's is dead. So is Luna's. A lot of that space is completely unused now. There was talk of building an SLCC museum in the area, with memories of each year. The same could be done for major events, like one for birthday celebrations (perhaps details new features added that year, and pictures from the event). Giving people a sense of how SL evolved over the years... and a reminder of just how much it has improved... would be a good used for that space.

Just a few ideas. I'm sure I'll share more later.

Regards,

-Flip

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Walker

I don't remember the exact details because I noticed the info in the chat window (maybe Jessy can jump in and explain?), but I think somebody ARd his build on the basis that it was created to grief, and LL suspended him.

FlipperPA Peregrine

Let's also not forget:

There's a big difference between a shop / boutique and a mall. I've always hated main land malls, but I don't have a problem with people having a primary shop... just nothing taking up a full sim!

FlipperPA Peregrine

I may be overly optimistic on this one, but Jack has always been a great help to me in the past, and come up with good ideas.

Cocoanut Koala

Wait, I think I just figured it out! While making taco salad, no lie.

"Better relationships with our advertisers."

I think they are planning ways that Coke, Nike, etc., can advertise on the mainland. And then this will apply to ad farmers, too.

Maybe there would be ways WE could advertise our things, too, in a non-blight fashion. Because you know, we ought to be able to.

However, I think this is mainly for Coke, Nike, etc., so I don't know if it would be financially so that we could use it at all.

coco

Cocoanut Koala

They suspended Stankleberry? Is he still suspended?

coco

Cocoanut Koala

Wait now. I hope my shop WILL fill up a full sim one day. (God knows, I'm already paying for it to.)

Plus, I would hate it if they outlawed malls. People should be able to have malls if they want to.

As for your other ideas, I think you are maybe getting a bit too optimistic about all this, lol.

coco