Madlands

[iamyourneighbour]

Which continent would you call the true madland and why ?

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, iamyourneighbour said:

Which continent would you call the true madland

The better (or rather worst) part of all continents really. As much as I love mainland, I can't deny that most of it is in a very poor state.

But if I have to pick one, it'd be Nautilus. The main body of Nautlius that is - many of the small islands around it are really nice.

Why? Because it was made as a themed antique style area and since they are double prim sims, half the land is covered with Linden owned builds still in that style. But most of the private parcels there are owned by people with no interest in the Nautilus theme whatsoever, they bought land there for the extra prims and/or because it was hyped up to be the fashionable part of SL. Most of the madlands areas never had any theme to start with. Nautlius did but it's been completely broken right and that's why I think it's the ultimate Slum of Second Life.

Edited February 12, 2018 by ChinRey

[Theresa Tennyson]

13 hours ago, iamyourneighbour said:

Which continent would you call the true madland and why ?

The jumbled terrain that is the mind of the one forum poster who routinely uses that term.

[encidious Opus]

Zindra is pretty awful. Why? Just take a leisurely stroll down main street. 

[Qie Niangao]

I'd nominate the former Teen Grid, the mini-continent from Hyperion to Appalachia and some very strange pixel property. Part of its freakiness is that it's a narrow, void-surrounded strip of regions copied from Sansara (from Barcola in Nova Albion to the Valmorel snow sim). It also has some funky old content such as the trolley system. And somehow it still evokes the mountain outposts of teen battle factions if you were around back when it merged with the main grid.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, encidious Opus said:

Zindra is pretty awful. Why? Just take a leisurely stroll down main street. 

At least you can walk straight there - you have to in fact.

 

20 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'd nominate the former Teen Grid, the mini-continent from Hyperion to Appalachia and some very strange pixel property.

Umm, that's "mad" in a positive sense, right? In that case, the sims right south of Omidyar are strong candidates too.

Edited February 12, 2018 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

Those of us who haven't been around for more than a few years may not fully understand what this madlands thing is all about. Followmeimthepied Piper gave me this old picture today to explain why she has all but left SL for smaller grids. She added that it's by no means the worst she'd seen on mainland.

 

[Resi Pfeffer]

19 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The jumbled terrain that is the mind of the one forum poster who routinely uses that term.

Btw, where is she? I miss her posts. 

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

Btw, where is she? I miss her posts. 

was here with some comments at other threads past week

but if you see the pic in Chinrey's post... not that weird to call it madlands..../me sniffs... good old times....

[Resi Pfeffer]

18 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

but if you see the pic in Chinrey's post... not that weird to call it madlands

Absolutely true.
Thats why i prefer being restricted to 30 prims at my small private owned sim corner rental, instead of moving to madlands, where space and prims are plenty, but neighbours mostly perform horribly as architects.

[Akasha Sternberg]

guess I´m glad I didn´t go for madland after all, instead rented again (not tiny and with more prims madland would allow me at any reasonable rate...) 

[ChinRey]

7 minutes ago, Akasha Sternberg said:

guess I´m glad I didn´t go for madland after all, instead rented again

Keep in mind that the picture I posted is an old one. Not even the worst parts of mainland are anywhere near as bad as that anymore.

[Akasha Sternberg]

5 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Keep in mind that the picture I posted is an old one. Not even the worst parts of mainland are anywhere near as bad as that anymore.

tbh yeah, I was really tempted to give it a go but I´d have to up my tiers anyways and the offer on this parcel was even better than premium access to locations and 60 groups   

[Qie Niangao]

6 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Keep in mind that the picture I posted is an old one. Not even the worst parts of mainland are anywhere near as bad as that anymore.

Yes. I made a little tour of one then-new road around the Atoll continent (back when the wiki was a wiki). It includes SLURLs so before/after comparisons are possible. I also made an "installation", as did others, to highlight the problem and try to shame the Lindens into doing something.

At the time, some folks such as the Arbor Project went to considerable effort to convince the Lab that Mainland customers deserved better treatment than to have their parcels overwhelmed by a pox of fullbright floating eyesores.

That was enough effort, with enough effect, that I for one resent the "Madlands" label. 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Akasha Sternberg said:

tbh yeah, I was really tempted to give it a go but I´d have to up my tiers anyways and the offer on this parcel was even better than premium access to locations and 60 groups   

Fair enough.

Personally I don't see any reason why anybody would want to build their private little hideaway on mainland. The islands are far better suited for that. Mainland makes a lot of sense if you want your slife to be a part of a bigger whole but that will only work if somebody - a group or an individual - cares for and protects that bigger whole. There are quite a few such places on mainland but apart from Bay City, they do not receive any support from the estate owner and as often as not you have to fight against Linden Lab if you want coherency on a bigger scale than what is better done on a private estate.

But that's my opinion. Others may see it differently.

Edited February 13, 2018 by ChinRey

[Perrie Juran]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Fair enough.

Personally I don't see any reason why anybody would want to build their private little hideaway on mainland. The islands are far better suited for that. Mainland makes a lot of sense if you want your slife to be a part of a bigger whole but that will only work if somebody - a group or an individual - cares for and protects that bigger whole. There are quite a few such places on mainland but apart from Bay City, they do not receive any support from the estate owner and as often as not you have to fight against Linden Lab if you want coherency on a bigger scale than what is better done on a private estate.

But that's my opinion. Others may see it differently.

We do get into some old history here.  As I recall the Lindens thought the Mainland would develop in a 'natural' way around the old telehubs.  Businesses would set up near the hubs and the outlaying areas would be residential.  But it never happened the way they expected.

I for one always maintained that a very modest level of zoning was needed with some areas being rated as 'residential' only.

I myself lived on Mainland for several years and outside of a griefer attack things remained pleasant where I lived.  Maybe I got lucky with good neighbors.  We respected each other.

[ChinRey]

10 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

As I recall the Lindens thought the Mainland would develop in a 'natural' way around the old telehubs.

That's what I've been told too. They must have been incredibly naive.

 

10 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

Businesses would set up near the hubs and the outlaying areas would be residential.

Here is one of the bustling business centers near a hub:

 

13 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

I myself lived on Mainland for several years and outside of a griefer attack things remained pleasant where I lived.  Maybe I got lucky with good neighbors.  We respected each other.

That's the secret.

[iamyourneighbour]

On 14/02/2018 at 3:14 AM, Perrie Juran said:

We do get into some old history here.  As I recall the Lindens thought the Mainland would develop in a 'natural' way around the old telehubs.  Businesses would set up near the hubs and the outlaying areas would be residential.  But it never happened the way they expected.

I for one always maintained that a very modest level of zoning was needed with some areas being rated as 'residential' only.

I myself lived on Mainland for several years and outside of a griefer attack things remained pleasant where I lived.  Maybe I got lucky with good neighbors.  We respected each other.

Living on mainland has allowed me to experience anarchro-capitalism in real time

[Prokofy Neva]

On 2/13/2018 at 4:56 AM, ChinRey said:

Keep in mind that the picture I posted is an old one. Not even the worst parts of mainland are anywhere near as bad as that anymore.

Yes. There's abandoned land instead. So that's a good thing. But the Lindens need to sell it on demand.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 2/13/2018 at 12:14 PM, Perrie Juran said:

We do get into some old history here.  As I recall the Lindens thought the Mainland would develop in a 'natural' way around the old telehubs.  Businesses would set up near the hubs and the outlaying areas would be residential.  But it never happened the way they expected.

I for one always maintained that a very modest level of zoning was needed with some areas being rated as 'residential' only.

I myself lived on Mainland for several years and outside of a griefer attack things remained pleasant where I lived.  Maybe I got lucky with good neighbors.  We respected each other.

This is only your take on it, and applies only to certain hubs that certain oldbies developed a fixation on.

It did actually happen the way they expected, using Jane Jacobs' theories which were perfectly sound. It's just that the gaggle of techno-communists, sandboxers, freebie account holders, oldbies with 4096 free tier etc couldn't stand that commerce *gasp* was uprooting their notion of a world that should have either a) no commerce, like a giant Burning Man or b) no business but their business.

The Lindens *could have* zoned by just putting a label on a sim, and that might have gone quite far on its own. But they didn't want governance and support tickets so they let it go wild. Worse, they refused to develop basic policies about spam and extortion that took four long years to finally be cleared. There were cynical reasons for this: the blight of the Mainland helped sell their more expensive islands.

The oldbies who had boutiques on the first sims were furious that later sims that had telehubs on them drew traffic away from their boutiques. That really is all it's about. I ascertained this fairly quickly. The degree of howling on the forums about the telehubs which provided a more democratic way of reaching the buying public, even with high rent costs, was directly proportionate to how far away the oldbie's boutique was. If she or he had 4096 free tier, of course they could have moved and bought telehub land off the auction but their allergy to commerce -- except their own -- was notorious.

To break into the market in the earlier days, you had to friend up the oldbies, be part of their social circle, get a corner in their store perhaps, or go in with them in a store or mall -- but on the old sims. That meant the overwhelming majority of people who wanted to sell things, who could create things, who were in other lines of work besides scripting and creation, whether in the sex business, or whatever, had no way to get to market. The telehubs were inevitable because they gave them that way, and that was a good thing -- and hated by oldbies.

I studied the telehubs very closely, bought land around them, rented from Anshe, even rented TO Anshe and learned a lot about them.

o Philip told me most of the economy's revenue came from them

o They sold for dollars on the auction so the Lindens made money from them

o The land was highly prized and Anshe Chung and Blue Burke and a very few others were able to monopolize the market.

o But one thing they did was have contracts with top merchants who paid them a flat amount for them to put their stores everywhere -- I found this out when some of them were willing to come to me when I charged less.

o The telehubs were not the lag heaps or avatar traps always claimed by howling oldbies on the forums. There was exactly one avatar trapping telehub -- with all oldbie businesses in fact, and clubs. The newest hubs were positively bucolic -- fields, waterfalls, etc. The Lindens minimized and finally ditched their squat brown buildings and made very nice builds (like the Moth Temple)

o There was actually nothing magic about "a telehub". It was a scripted disc that could be put anywhere. In fact, the function of creating a landing on an island IS a telehub. The same thing. Yet the Lindens kept the telehubs out of their new Moth continent in the crazy Burning Man type of belief that it would make the land less "blighted" and "uglified" by commerce. Instead, all that happened is that those who bought land on Linden auctions and paid tier on it had no way to conveniently get to it! I created a group for people just to set home and log on to that continent when it was new due to this crazy Linden policy -- which again, was driven by forums howling. One of the early lessons I learned about how the Lindens were influenced was THAT. And I and other land owners learned to petition the Lindens with actual people and their actual businesses and tier payments to get them to stop catering to an idealistic few who owned little or no land -- or got free 4096s.

o Oldbies needed p2p so that people would come to their stores. They were threatened by search/places that didn't always reward them, even when they used traffic gimmicks.

o Basically, the telehubs, which were completely normal and necessary as they are in RL became a totemic symbol of hate by those who were losing in the economy when lots of new people came in and made land rentals and sales a business that challenged their more specialized Ren Faire sort of craftsmenship of content creation and scripting. It was like the Age of Iron coming to the Bronze Age. The way the oldbies and those close to LL who became its employees would try to eliminate the inevitable transition to the Iron Age is by condemning it as crude mass culture whereas they and their creations represented high and select culture. It failed. High culture could appear in a mall, too.

o For a time, some of the oldbies made an online marketplace that they thought would circumvent malls in world which were losing them business. But then the Lindens created their own marketplace and closed them down essentially.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Love Zhaoying]

On 2/11/2018 at 5:26 PM, iamyourneighbour said:

Which continent would you call the true madland and why ?

Any mainland where noobs congregate in their vile, stinking masses, voicing and gestures, and griefing and being griefed and..oh, the humanity!

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

This is only your take on it, and applies only to certain hubs that certain oldbies developed a fixation on.

It did actually happen the way they expected, using Jane Jacobs' theories which were perfectly sound. It's just that the gaggle of techno-communists, sandboxers, freebie account holders, oldbies with 4096 free tier etc couldn't stand that commerce *gasp* was uprooting their notion of a world that should have either a) no commerce, like a giant Burning Man or b) no business but their business.

The Lindens *could have* zoned by just putting a label on a sim, and that might have gone quite far on its own. But they didn't want governance and support tickets so they let it go wild. Worse, they refused to develop basic policies about spam and extortion that took four long years to finally be cleared. There were cynical reasons for this: the blight of the Mainland helped sell their more expensive islands.

The oldbies who had boutiques on the first sims were furious that later sims that had telehubs on them drew traffic away from their boutiques. That really is all it's about. I ascertained this fairly quickly. The degree of howling on the forums about the telehubs which provided a more democratic way of reaching the buying public, even with high rent costs, was directly proportionate to how far away the oldbie's boutique was. If she or he had 4096 free tier, of course they could have moved and bought telehub land off the auction but their allergy to commerce -- except their own -- was notorious.

To break into the market in the earlier days, you had to friend up the oldbies, be part of their social circle, get a corner in their store perhaps, or go in with them in a store or mall -- but on the old sims. That meant the overwhelming majority of people who wanted to sell things, who could create things, who were in other lines of work besides scripting and creation, whether in the sex business, or whatever, had no way to get to market. The telehubs were inevitable because they gave them that way, and that was a good thing -- and hated by oldbies.

I studied the telehubs very closely, bought land around them, rented from Anshe, even rented TO Anshe and learned a lot about them.

o Philip told me most of the economy's revenue came from them

o They sold for dollars on the auction so the Lindens made money from them

o The land was highly prized and Anshe Chung and Blue Burke and a very few others were able to monopolize the market.

o But one thing they did was have contracts with top merchants who paid them a flat amount for them to put their stores everywhere -- I found this out when some of them were willing to come to me when I charged less.

o The telehubs were not the lag heaps or avatar traps always claimed by howling oldbies on the forums. There was exactly one avatar trapping telehub -- with all oldbie businesses in fact, and clubs. The newest hubs were positively bucolic -- fields, waterfalls, etc. The Lindens minimized and finally ditched their squat brown buildings and made very nice builds (like the Moth Temple)

o There was actually nothing magic about "a telehub". It was a scripted disc that could be put anywhere. In fact, the function of creating a landing on an island IS a telehub. The same thing. Yet the Lindens kept the telehubs out of their new Moth continent in the crazy Burning Man type of belief that it would make the land less "blighted" and "uglified" by commerce. Instead, all that happened is that those who bought land on Linden auctions and paid tier on it had no way to conveniently get to it! I created a group for people just to set home and log on to that continent when it was new due to this crazy Linden policy -- which again, was driven by forums howling. One of the early lessons I learned about how the Lindens were influenced was THAT. And I and other land owners learned to petition the Lindens with actual people and their actual businesses and tier payments to get them to stop catering to an idealistic few who owned little or no land -- or got free 4096s.

o Oldbies needed p2p so that people would come to their stores. They were threatened by search/places that didn't always reward them, even when they used traffic gimmicks.

o Basically, the telehubs, which were completely normal and necessary as they are in RL became a totemic symbol of hate by those who were losing in the economy when lots of new people came in and made land rentals and sales a business that challenged their more specialized Ren Faire sort of craftsmenship of content creation and scripting. It was like the Age of Iron coming to the Bronze Age. The way the oldbies and those close to LL who became its employees would try to eliminate the inevitable transition to the Iron Age is by condemning it as crude mass culture whereas they and their creations represented high and select culture. It failed. High culture could appear in a mall, too.

o For a time, some of the oldbies made an online marketplace that they thought would circumvent malls in world which were losing them business. But then the Lindens created their own marketplace and closed them down essentially.

 

 

I stopped reading at “techno-communists”. You seem to have a mild case of Tourette’s Syndrome.

[Pussycat Catnap]

There's a part of mainland that was built by a 'major land baron' - the parcel cuts are horrible and the land itself looks as bad as estate land tends to look. Start here:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Schwanson Schlegel/128/132/23

And just look around.

And here:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Key Largo/32/242/40

And the sims around that.

- This is what happens when you let someone who's only concern is "make a quick buck" design a portion of mainland... They just don't understanding the idea of making it into a 'place'.

Generally though, mainland is better than the vast majority of estate land - including the parts of mainland with old abandoned ugly builds. At least those builds are on places, and not badly cut blocks slammed around to maximize short term profit.