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Is there, like a "Mainland Lovers" of sorts SL group in -world?


Therese Tammas
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/puts-on-bitter-hat-of-history

 

I used to be in the 'Arbor Project' which started that was but over it's history was more about abuse-reporting violations of the mainland rules that dealt mostly with blocking or advertising.

- But it's lost it's influence over the years. Anytime you see a giant 'sale' or 'rent' sign on the map or in world... that's a failure of the 'Arbor Project' to have any influence with the Lindens anymore... One reason Arbor lost it's influence is that it came out that another similar group was using it's connections with the Lindens to grief people under the guise of community betterment... ie: people abused the access they had, the Lindens seem to have chosen to pull back rather than try to vet who was good and who was bad and risk getting it wrong...

There have been groups like that in the past - for various regions and purposes. Most of them limited in scale.

 

"Bay City Alliance" is the best of them - lots of activities together and lots of inroads with the lindens and the moles that help to keep Bay City and the nearby sims looking good. There is a reason that outside of Bellesaria the place you are most likely to find moles putting out a new build is Bay City or a sim within avatar-walking distance of it... and it's that community and the fact that it's run by an SL user who is high regard in almost all circles.

The polar opposite of 'Bay City' is Zindra... and Zindra is also very likely the reason Bellisaria happened in 2019 and not years ago... The moles and lindens got burned very hard with Zindra. Explore around Zindra and you will see several mole builds made before it opened, and then half-done things like the Zindra Mall.

- Zindra shows the risk Bellisaria now faces.

There are signs that this risk is already brewing, but small in impact.

 

With Zindra the Lindens held weekly office hours in world at places like the downtown Zindra cafe. But the meetings turned extremely bitter when 2 different groups started showing up claiming to be the SOLE AND ONLY LEGITIMATE community group representing ALL residents on the continent. The Linden who hosted those meetings was subjected to an hour of foul mouthed fighting between different camps demanding he grief the other camp, ban them, mute them, and so on... I went to a few of those meetings and every time I saw a meeting start out with a Linden nicely trying to note some new stuff the team was bringing everyone, and then F-bombs and worse being dropped in response as the two groups fought in front of him to claim the right to be the one receiving control over all the new shinies... and then turning on him when he refused to be partisan.
... and by the end of the meeting the Linden would just leave (a few times he TP'd out in the middle of his own meeting), and the new shiny... had 50/50 odds of being pulled and not released... because after that treatment who would do it?
 

Now... search Bellisaria under groups and you will find... just a few too many results that share themes. A few of them even say "we are the real residents who do not like the jerks in that other group"...
- if that conduct continues... Bellisaria is doomed.

 

Before Zindra many Lindens held weekly office hours and Lindens were easy to find inworld and very approachable. After Zindra they went dark for some years, and the few that now do Office Hours seem to be rather quiet about it - not something openly advertised. It's very hard to find a linden or mole 'in the wild' unless something is happening, like a new sim opening in Bellisaria...

Nothing like Bellisaria has happened in years, but things like it used to be common...
- I just hope people don't abuse the opportunity this time.

 

Bay City managed to avoid it... so if you want a great mainland community, look to Bay City Alliance.

But there is a reason why there are so few similar communities in SL... and the story of Zindra reveals it...

 

I think after Zindra... the wider SL just got shy about doing community on a large scale...

Edited by Pussycat Catnap
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15 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

One reason Arbor lost it's influence is that it came out that another similar group was using it's connections with the Lindens to grief people under the guise of community betterment... ie: people abused the access they had, the Lindens seem to have chosen to pull back rather than try to vet who was good and who was bad and risk getting it wrong...

This is all news to me, and I've been a member of Arbor Project since the early adfarm wars. As far as I know, it never had any special pull with the Lindens, it only had a huge, highly motivated membership that descended on adfarms and microparcel land-splittings announced in group chat to flood Governance with abuse reports. There's much more that could be said about the heyday of the project, including an eventually successful lobbying effort to get Jack Linden to impose and enforce some basic rules about Mainland advertising, and herculean efforts every few months to offer Project-owned microparcels for free to adjacent landowners. But I'll spare all that history because the group was never intended to be precisely relevant to the topic of the thread.

One other thing I will say about Arbor, is that its function and success depended in no small measure on the involvement of major Mainland land barons who provided tier for absorbing hundreds of donated microparcels. It was a case of enlightened self interest: their holdings could be rendered worthless overnight by an adjacent adfarm, the tragedy of the commons applied to asymmetrical warfare. Point is, partnership with some community-minded land barons (do any exist now?) could contribute a lot to any new effort to beautify and promote Mainland as a tourist destination.

I don't know where I was when I recently saw it, but I encountered persistent evidence of the group once known as "Greenlaners" -- of possible interest to a new or renewed Mainland promotion.

Also, I'm thinking GTFO might present some opportunity here, although I know nothing about it myself.

Finally, I'm responsible for the current land holdings of the Virtual Railway Consortium which tries to be a good neighbor along the Mainland rails. The group is pretty inactive (all my fault) but we have some locations that might be relevant for helping with a good Mainland promotion should one arise.

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47 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

This is all news to me, and I've been a member of Arbor Project since the early adfarm wars. As far as I know, it never had any special pull with the Lindens, it only had a huge, highly motivated membership that descended on adfarms and microparcel land-splittings announced in group chat to flood Governance with abuse reports.

The NWN Blog had a whole thing going for almost a year about some group that had a Justice League like name that was using influence to go after people.

Arbor Project used to be able to file an AR and within minutes you'd see a linden show up and deal with an issue. Over time that stopped happening - around the same time as all the news about the Justice group came out.

 

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Hmmm. Factions never help in any area. We are all adults here, and I don't understand how things could be brewing quietly over at Belli like that. I love Belli too and I think it will, to me, not fail. I did not realize how much effort and love residents put into Mainland, and I am sad that such efforts were stymied in the past. I was around when Zindra happened but  was so busy IRL that I did not get familiar. 

Just like in private parcels, maybe the way to go would be a 'light' application of community.  Too intense and you get the shouting.  The poor Lindens :( so much stress I can see happened, and can't blame them. 

 

There are land barons like that still exhisting- I don't know how big they are as I am not as familiar -- but I am seeing really beautiful areas done up with covenants in place for aesthetics and behavior and it's because of the land barons. 

Edited by Therese Tammas
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7 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

The NWN Blog had a whole thing going for almost a year about some group that had a Justice League like name that was using influence to go after people.

I think that was earlier.

The "Justice League" was one of two griefer groups who fought each other and any innocent bystanders during the griefer wars.  I do hope and believe the lindens were intelligent enough to spot the difference between that bunch of hooligans and the Arbor project.

 

7 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Arbor Project used to be able to file an AR and within minutes you'd see a linden show up and deal with an issue. Over time that stopped happening - around the same time as all the news about the Justice group came out.

Not at all. I've taken part in Arbor Project actions myself and I joined long after the griefer war had ended. It's been a few years since I've seen any activity in the group though.

 

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8 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

With Zindra the Lindens held weekly office hours in world at places like the downtown Zindra cafe. But the meetings turned extremely bitter ...

I didn't know that history.

adultusergroupcancelled.thumb.jpg.2598f01776280dbb4cedc9cb04794697.jpg

Is that the story behind this sign?

Around Zindra, there are other remnants of that effort - the mall in Mosh, the Zindra Alliance tower, the Zindra Help Vortex sandbox.

Things seem to be looking up in Zindra in and near Kama City. In the past month, I've seen five new gas stations, one a GTFO hub. Zindra hasn't had GTFO before. People are moving in and setting up non-sex businesses. I'm seeing more people show up at my workshop.

Southern Zindra, which is more suburban and has less mole work, has a huge amount of land for sale or rent.

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23 minutes ago, animats said:

 

I didn't know that history.

adultusergroupcancelled.thumb.jpg.2598f01776280dbb4cedc9cb04794697.jpg

Is that the story behind this sign?

Around Zindra, there are other remnants of that effort - the mall in Mosh, the Zindra Alliance tower, the Zindra Help Vortex sandbox.

Maybe. At the time it all ended, it was still pretty packed. But... near the end it was only packed with angry shouters and a people like me who would show up now and then to see if things had calmed down yet...

Zindra itself turned pleasant years ago...

But the lindens, to my knowledge, gave up in the first or second year. It took a while after that for the blight to move to rental estates and for Zindra to end up mostly residential, with a few odd blighty builds and the occasional strange thing... but mostly nice stuff...

Yet it has no community, because it all went toxic early on.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Therese Tammas said:

@Pussycat Catnap Is Nautilus City a thriving city in your opinion too? And Shermerville?

I've never seen any community out of Nautilus. There are some groups but they appear to be dead and for as long as I have known of the place they were dead. Shermerville has a good number of Bay City people in it. It has community the way a suburb of a city does... Not one of it's own, but one by extension.

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1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

I think that was earlier.

The "Justice League" was one of two griefer groups who fought each other and any innocent bystanders during the griefer wars.  I do hope and believe the lindens were intelligent enough to spot the difference between that bunch of hooligans and the Arbor project.

I was in Arbor before and after Justice had their moment... What I noticed over time was that Lindens stopped showing up to ARs. By the time I joined Arbor, in 2009, any other purpose of the group had died off. I saw that they owned a lot of land, and they were active about buying micro plots, but only slightly so... It was mostly a "hey can you all come here and AR this with me?" group...

- Abuse Reports of mainland rules violations. Eventually the Lindens stopped showing up - but they were still showing up while the Justice thing was happening. Whether there is any connection there is just my theory - but it does seem like a series of 'toxic community' events occurred in those years, after which the only place I ever saw moles or lindens outside of a griefer attack was Bay City, and this one linden that used to attend live music events at a place I frequented when a certain singer was there, but who never said anything in local.


My point here is that I saw them withdraw... and it feels like Bellisaria is an attempt to see if it's time to engage again, if only lightly. It looks different than the old Linden Homes, seems more managed. I could be wrong though - maybe they will vanish again as soon as the last sim is live.

Right now Bellisaria has an unusually active set of groups (2 of them at least)... but if you search groups way down the list there are a few 'protest groups' - that's not exactly how the drama started on Zindra... but it's close. If it was an exact repeat of Zindra history the drama would already have overtaken things and sims like the Fairgrounds would be avoided by the Lindens and moles while regular users would already be rapidly leaving the groups...

 

I think the best thing anyone wanting good community can do is talk to some Bay City people. That's a mainland community that has held a good vibe for longer than Zindra has even existed. There's also the 'East River' community but I have almost no experience with them so I don't know much there. I don't think the lindens or moles are active with them like they are in Bay City though.

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I was in Arbor before and after Justice had their moment... What I noticed over time was that Lindens stopped showing up to ARs. By the time I joined Arbor, in 2009, any other purpose of the group had died off. I saw that they owned a lot of land, and they were active about buying micro plots, but only slightly so... It was mostly a "hey can you all come here and AR this with me?" group...

- Abuse Reports of mainland rules violations. Eventually the Lindens stopped showing up - but they were still showing up while the Justice thing was happening. Whether there is any connection there is just my theory - but it does seem like a series of 'toxic community' events occurred in those years, after which the only place I ever saw moles or lindens outside of a griefer attack was Bay City, and this one linden that used to attend live music events at a place I frequented when a certain singer was there, but who never said anything in local.


My point here is that I saw them withdraw... and it feels like Bellisaria is an attempt to see if it's time to engage again, if only lightly. It looks different than the old Linden Homes, seems more managed. I could be wrong though - maybe they will vanish again as soon as the last sim is live.

Right now Bellisaria has an unusually active set of groups (2 of them at least)... but if you search groups way down the list there are a few 'protest groups' - that's not exactly how the drama started on Zindra... but it's close. If it was an exact repeat of Zindra history the drama would already have overtaken things and sims like the Fairgrounds would be avoided by the Lindens and moles while regular users would already be rapidly leaving the groups...

 

I think the best thing anyone wanting good community can do is talk to some Bay City people. That's a mainland community that has held a good vibe for longer than Zindra has even existed. There's also the 'East River' community but I have almost no experience with them so I don't know much there. I don't think the lindens or moles are active with them like they are in Bay City though.

 

 

Yeah I just checked and maybe I spotted some groups that could be termed as such, however to talk about it is to give it room to breath and I Think maybe we should let them have their free speech and eventually those groups are for people who want to nurse their own wounds and nothing more.

 

I think maybe the Lindens have a just right approach this time, what with Pickle Parties and building gorgeous homes and providing a covenant but that is it.

 

I am exploring Bay City right now, and trying to see how I can be involved, thank you for the tip!!

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2 hours ago, Therese Tammas said:

I think maybe the Lindens have a just right approach this time, what with Pickle Parties and building gorgeous homes and providing a covenant but that is it.

It may work if they enforce the covenant. That's what went wrong at Nautilus City. It started off as a lovely themed area but most of the inhabitants couldn't care less about the theme and LL didn't attempt to enocourage or enforce it. So it ended up as a slum. Yes, there are actually even uglier places on mainland but not many and the fact that you can still see remains of the beauty that once was there makes it so much sadder than seeing the Mainland wastelands that enver were any good anyway.

Even if Bellisseria manages to keep its consistency and don't go out of fashion, it's still not for everybody. It's high lag, rememeber. Emtpy it's about the same as the old Meadowbrook sims, which is bad enough, but whereas the Meadowbrook houses tend to be sparsely furnished, the Belliseria ones tend to be loaded to capccity with the most render heavy furniture and garden items you can buy on MP. I'm sure Bellisseria is great for those who have high end game computers and for those who can tolerate 32 m draw distance and/or single digit fps. BUt that isn't everybody in SL and the rest have to find some other palce to go.

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9 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

It may work if they enforce the covenant. That's what went wrong at Nautilus City. It started off as a lovely themed area but most of the inhabitants couldn't care less about the theme and LL didn't attempt to enocourage or enforce it. So it ended up as a slum. Yes, there are actually even uglier places on mainland but not many and the fact that you can still see remains of the beauty that once was there makes it so much sadder than seeing the Mainland wastelands that enver were any good anyway.

 

Yes agreed!

 

Quote

Even if Bellisseria manages to keep its consistency and don't go out of fashion, it's still not for everybody. It's high lag, rememeber. Emtpy it's about the same as the old Meadowbrook sims, which is bad enough, but whereas the Meadowbrook houses tend to be sparsely furnished, the Belliseria ones tend to be loaded to capccity with the most render heavy furniture and garden items you can buy on MP. I'm sure Bellisseria is great for those who have high end game computers and for those who can tolerate 32 m draw distance and/or single digit fps. BUt that isn't everybody in SL and the rest have to find some other palce to go.

Okay :).  Maybe it is. Let's not pick sides, let's not decide whether something is empty or not, we're all Mainlanders right? 

 

Just became a Mooseheader hehe, this parcel is so cute!

eyTkgko.jpg

 

Edited by Therese Tammas
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6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

It may work if they enforce the covenant. That's what went wrong at Nautilus City. It started off as a lovely themed area but most of the inhabitants couldn't care less about the theme and LL didn't attempt to enocourage or enforce it.

Yeah...

I may be forced to test the limits of that soon... which I hate...

But someone started building a tower on top of their houseboat yesterday in Lollipop, and then rezzed trees in the water and rocks outside the bounds of their plot (trees overlap ramp, rocks only go a few meters into channel, and then... prim water about a half meter ABOVE the water level...

Looking to see if there's something in the covenant that can be used to deal with it...

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55 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

 someone started building a tower on top of their houseboat yesterday in Lollipop, and then rezzed trees in the water and rocks outside the bounds of their plot (trees overlap ramp, rocks only go a few meters into channel, and then... prim water about a half meter ABOVE the water level...

Looking to see if there's something in the covenant that can be used to deal with it...

report it... wait a few days and if not solved, post in the Homes thread .. tag some Moles and Lindens... will get attention very soon.
 

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3 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Yeah...

I may be forced to test the limits of that soon... which I hate...

But someone started building a tower on top of their houseboat yesterday in Lollipop, and then rezzed trees in the water and rocks outside the bounds of their plot (trees overlap ramp, rocks only go a few meters into channel, and then... prim water about a half meter ABOVE the water level...

Yes, that's exactly the kind of things you have to expect on unmoderated mainland. I get the impression not everybody udnerstood what I was saying in my previous post, thank you for illustrating it so well. 🙂

Here's another example of what no building rules mean btw. This is an old one - it's how Mainland used to look.

image.thumb.png.2df82305d4fee70b74b283a1523efe33.png

(Picture by Followmeimthepied Piper. She gave it to me when I asked why she had fled SL.)

Even so, there has to be room for a houseboaty with a huge tower on it somewhere on Mainland. It wouldn't be mainland if it wasn't.

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2 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

🙂

image.thumb.png.2df82305d4fee70b74b283a1523efe33.png

Oh yeah... yesterday I noted Arbor project, intended as an aside but I noted them too much so it became the topic... Arbor Project was big in cleaning out a lot of that image... :P

That said... that sort of stuff is exactly what I am starting to see more of in mainland, albeit not like this at all. These days... I see ONE of those signs and it's freakout time because they had become so rare over the years after Arbor Project AR'd so many of them.

As for houseboats with towers on them... that's what Blake Sea is good at. Then again you can get a linden houseboat for the cost of a premium account. A Blake Sea houseboat... 90,000L is considered a cheap 'fire sale' price for a plot there... O.o

 

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On 10/13/2019 at 1:39 PM, Therese Tammas said:

If not, there should be. And we should come up with a colloquial name for it that fittingly describes the beauty, delight and exploration bliss Mainland brings!

There's a group called "Mainland First" that is mainly moribund now, the founder, who was once very active with all kinds of public venues left SL in frustration. The Roads group is rather sectarian. I was expelled *I think* because I criticized those idiotic "good neighbour" pillars they put everywhere that in fact blight the landscape. So a new one should be made for a new generation.

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3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There's a group called "Mainland First" that is mainly moribund now, the founder, who was once very active with all kinds of public venues left SL in frustration. The Roads group is rather sectarian. I was expelled *I think* because I criticized those idiotic "good neighbour" pillars they put everywhere that in fact blight the landscape. So a new one should be made for a new generation.

OMG the great and infamous, famous Prokofy Neva, hello sir! 😍 Nice to meet you!!

Great! I was thinking of starting small, maybe a Flickr account getting the old Mainland Flickr groups active again, but eventually scale up to offer a teleporter HUD (need to find a scripter, and also save money for said scripter lol) that would be updated for free and distributed regularly, for free, as a community resource. Start light, start with a common interest, start with beauty, I say. If anyone's interested joining up this and:

  • Doesn't take themselves, OR Mainland, OR Second Life too seriously, but  also takes it seriously enough to treat it with love and respect;
  • Shares the vision that, no matter what continent you are in, whether you're from Zindra or Bellissaria, we're ALL Mainlanders
  • and we ALL love mainland and what's awesome about it!

....  I'd welcome the help, and friends come to think of it, too, lol.

I'm on nearly every day, and work somewhat European-ish hours while residing in New York (you want to know what I do for a living don't you?)

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4 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Oh yeah... yesterday I noted Arbor project, intended as an aside but I noted them too much so it became the topic... Arbor Project was big in cleaning out a lot of that image... :P

That said... that sort of stuff is exactly what I am starting to see more of in mainland, albeit not like this at all. These days... I see ONE of those signs and it's freakout time because they had become so rare over the years after Arbor Project AR'd so many of them.

As for houseboats with towers on them... that's what Blake Sea is good at. Then again you can get a linden houseboat for the cost of a premium account. A Blake Sea houseboat... 90,000L is considered a cheap 'fire sale' price for a plot there... O.o

 

I remember mainland like this! For years I avoided it like the plague cause of this. But yes it is so much better now I don't ever see these horrible prims anymore when I was exploring and usually when it's a giant for sale sign it at least looks decent...they're more tasteful these days. I think people overall are mindful now, and also I think you get people, like me, who go over from being Private Sim all the time and are mindful of trying to keep things pretty

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On 10/13/2019 at 4:54 PM, Pussycat Catnap said:

/puts-on-bitter-hat-of-history

 

I used to be in the 'Arbor Project' which started that was but over it's history was more about abuse-reporting violations of the mainland rules that dealt mostly with blocking or advertising.

- But it's lost it's influence over the years. Anytime you see a giant 'sale' or 'rent' sign on the map or in world... that's a failure of the 'Arbor Project' to have any influence with the Lindens anymore... One reason Arbor lost it's influence is that it came out that another similar group was using it's connections with the Lindens to grief people under the guise of community betterment... ie: people abused the access they had, the Lindens seem to have chosen to pull back rather than try to vet who was good and who was bad and risk getting it wrong...

There have been groups like that in the past - for various regions and purposes. Most of them limited in scale.

 

"Bay City Alliance" is the best of them - lots of activities together and lots of inroads with the lindens and the moles that help to keep Bay City and the nearby sims looking good. There is a reason that outside of Bellesaria the place you are most likely to find moles putting out a new build is Bay City or a sim within avatar-walking distance of it... and it's that community and the fact that it's run by an SL user who is high regard in almost all circles.

The polar opposite of 'Bay City' is Zindra... and Zindra is also very likely the reason Bellisaria happened in 2019 and not years ago... The moles and lindens got burned very hard with Zindra. Explore around Zindra and you will see several mole builds made before it opened, and then half-done things like the Zindra Mall.

- Zindra shows the risk Bellisaria now faces.

There are signs that this risk is already brewing, but small in impact.

 

With Zindra the Lindens held weekly office hours in world at places like the downtown Zindra cafe. But the meetings turned extremely bitter when 2 different groups started showing up claiming to be the SOLE AND ONLY LEGITIMATE community group representing ALL residents on the continent. The Linden who hosted those meetings was subjected to an hour of foul mouthed fighting between different camps demanding he grief the other camp, ban them, mute them, and so on... I went to a few of those meetings and every time I saw a meeting start out with a Linden nicely trying to note some new stuff the team was bringing everyone, and then F-bombs and worse being dropped in response as the two groups fought in front of him to claim the right to be the one receiving control over all the new shinies... and then turning on him when he refused to be partisan.
... and by the end of the meeting the Linden would just leave (a few times he TP'd out in the middle of his own meeting), and the new shiny... had 50/50 odds of being pulled and not released... because after that treatment who would do it?
 

Now... search Bellisaria under groups and you will find... just a few too many results that share themes. A few of them even say "we are the real residents who do not like the jerks in that other group"...
- if that conduct continues... Bellisaria is doomed.

 

Before Zindra many Lindens held weekly office hours and Lindens were easy to find inworld and very approachable. After Zindra they went dark for some years, and the few that now do Office Hours seem to be rather quiet about it - not something openly advertised. It's very hard to find a linden or mole 'in the wild' unless something is happening, like a new sim opening in Bellisaria...

Nothing like Bellisaria has happened in years, but things like it used to be common...
- I just hope people don't abuse the opportunity this time.

 

Bay City managed to avoid it... so if you want a great mainland community, look to Bay City Alliance.

But there is a reason why there are so few similar communities in SL... and the story of Zindra reveals it...

 

I think after Zindra... the wider SL just got shy about doing community on a large scale...

I had to blink in amazement at this highly subjective and strange post.

The Lindens don't think in terms of "pulling back" or "growing closer" to groups like this -- they've always had a policy of keeping them at a distance. Yes, in the very early years, there were things like Jeska Linden posing for SL Boutique billboards and other Lindens TPing in their friends to hear musician friends and things like that. But gradually as the land barons' group began to demand written policies and more fair policies -- a whole saga in itself -- and as they drew from the existing resident population less for Linden staff, they became more professional. I don't know what this curious reference is to the "similar" group but that isn't really the story. 

As for Zindra, Brent Linden, who was assigned to handle the "community" had to deal with a very aggressive and only partly liked individual who arrogated himself as leader -- as happened for a time in Nautilus, BTW. It seemed as if Brent was broken by all this but in fact when I followed up with him several times later, including oddly enough recently, he said his reasons for leaving the Lab were actually unrelated to all this. I'm bewildered why anyone really needed a leader or even a Linden for Zindra. There was the initial skirmishing about how to transfer people who had Mature but wanted to be moved to Zindra because their activities were publicly adult, and the question of how the sims would be built (people hated the roads) and whether child avatars should be allowed (they never should have been, but they're a powerful lobby). But after that was settled, what were Lindens needed for except to turn over land purchased on the auction or stop difficult multi-sim griefing. I'm not getting this. People made their own homes, clubs, etc. and the Lindens were not relevant.

Nautilus was not different, with a guy declaring himself mayor, and multiple people, including me, starting newsletters and groups to try to track it all -- with the main issue there being people building giant towers that ruined the view for others who had bought the same hugely expensive land, and the Lindens refusing to make a rule about towers.

I think the reason Bay City was more successful was because it grew out of an already-existing "city sims" community with people like Lordfly or Osprey, although the people today might not want to admit that. There was already a solid group of power players and Linden favourites who wanted to make the themes there. Really, the theme is partly what makes the community. I don't think the Lindens ever had their heart in Zindra because it was being done as merely a way to avoid lawsuits or credit cards pulling their services or whatever, to sort of cordon off all adult activity (which didn't work). I don't think they even liked Nautilus much. But I think Michael Linden and some of the other moles liked building the Art Deco stuff and hanging out with residents they liked and there were some who liked 1950s diner stuff and it worked.

The reason Bellissaria has a great chance of success is that the Lindens have put their top staff to work on it (they didn't with the other communities, but assigned it to lower-level liaisons as they were called then. They eliminated all the wrangles about tall buildings or encroachments or ugly builds by having it all completely controlled and zoned with only a set list of housing. The theme of Wonder Bread 1950s suburbia also helps along the atmosphere where the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Her Chums, along with Veronica and Archie, can go on healthy walks together and sock-hop dances where they won't be necking in parked cars. So it's all good.

The Lindens didn't go dark because of Zindra. The Lindens went dark because of lots of things, which one could debate endlessly -- I would point out Woodbury and its banning (deserved) was a factor, but also the departure of Jack Linden. Jack was in charge of the community and had the title VP as well (not sure if Patch was) and he was responsible for at least trying to clean up the welcome areas, Brown & Boardman, etc and creating the themed continents. Michael Linden was also very willing to sit for hours in meetings with residents. When those two were gone -- not to mention Robin Linden who was really the heart and soul of community relations for some years, there was really a gap. M Linden came in who pushed the "creator" stuff even more than Ebbe does, as if SL is only a boutique sandbox for developers, which it is only in pnart. He ignored communities completely except for the art galleries for which he had a personal affinity.

The question all of you should ask yourselves is why you need the Lindens to build communities. The Lindens should only be facilitators. They shouldn't even be like the GMs on Club Med, organizing your parties. You should be doing this. The cult of Moles and Lindens and looking for the fanboyz relationship to sustain your social life is doomed because Lindens burn out on it and residents become resentful. Companies always send out some really friendly person, often female, but not always, to listen to players' concerns -- and then, like the famous Tigger in TSO, they get squeezed and ground between the massive indifference of the corporation and the wrath of the player base. So don't go there. "Don't burn down Party committees, build your own," as Poland's Solidarnosc used to say. Don't orient yourself always to the autocratic leaders of your closed society; make your own society. While you're all nattering about Zindra or Bellissaria, I see all kinds of groups that I happen to belong to, such as Fallen Gods or Historical Hunts of EVO, who have thriving communities, with meetings and town halls to decide issues large and small, all kinds, events, dances, fairs, etc. etc. without any reference to any Lindens. Lindens are far in the distance, re-setting a sim perhaps, or helping with the HUDs that won't work. They are plumbers. They're not your local assemblymen; you didn't elect them.

Yes, people have all kinds of different takes on the history of SL. History is not only written by the victors, but those with time on their hands...

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On 10/13/2019 at 5:40 PM, Qie Niangao said:

This is all news to me, and I've been a member of Arbor Project since the early adfarm wars. As far as I know, it never had any special pull with the Lindens, it only had a huge, highly motivated membership that descended on adfarms and microparcel land-splittings announced in group chat to flood Governance with abuse reports. There's much more that could be said about the heyday of the project, including an eventually successful lobbying effort to get Jack Linden to impose and enforce some basic rules about Mainland advertising, and herculean efforts every few months to offer Project-owned microparcels for free to adjacent landowners. But I'll spare all that history because the group was never intended to be precisely relevant to the topic of the thread.

One other thing I will say about Arbor, is that its function and success depended in no small measure on the involvement of major Mainland land barons who provided tier for absorbing hundreds of donated microparcels. It was a case of enlightened self interest: their holdings could be rendered worthless overnight by an adjacent adfarm, the tragedy of the commons applied to asymmetrical warfare. Point is, partnership with some community-minded land barons (do any exist now?) could contribute a lot to any new effort to beautify and promote Mainland as a tourist destination.

I don't know where I was when I recently saw it, but I encountered persistent evidence of the group once known as "Greenlaners" -- of possible interest to a new or renewed Mainland promotion.

Also, I'm thinking GTFO might present some opportunity here, although I know nothing about it myself.

Finally, I'm responsible for the current land holdings of the Virtual Railway Consortium which tries to be a good neighbor along the Mainland rails. The group is pretty inactive (all my fault) but we have some locations that might be relevant for helping with a good Mainland promotion should one arise.

Jack Linden, God bless him, took four very long years to declare ad farms illegal, when it could have been done on day one, and saved the Lindens' bottom line to boot. I recently came across my photos of them at the time -- don't forget initially, they appeared because abandoned land chunked automatically into 16m squares (!) under the hugely hippie crazy collectivist belief that people would just take a few they needed for prims and leave them empty. Sigh. Then they stopped doing that crazy thing, but then land barons themselves chunked them up to force sales.

I'm glad you pointed out the very salient fact that land barons were needed to hold the tier on all this craziness, and did.  And yes, it was indeed enlightened self-interest but I think some of them genuinely wanted to see a decent Mainland. The problem is the unenlightened selfish land barons who didn't even need the money -- Mr. Lee's Hong Kong told me in RL once at a conference that he was a highly-paid computer professional who just enjoyed watching what happened when he set 16m parcels to sale next to my waterfront rentals. Indeed. 
 

GTFO is, on the one hand, a welcome thing because it "gives people something to do," it engages people in building and driving and exploring and such -- I had some tenants who created GTFO warehouses on my rentals. BUT the big problem with them is that they create huge, ugly warehouses on a sim, often by waterfront and roads, of course, and that brings down the whole sim. So it's a mixed bag. Not to mention their blighting of the map with their insignia. GTFO is everywhere, like Tiny Empires even though it doesn't offer any cash value, as I understand it, but is something to do. Maybe someone can beautify GTFO and get them to plan trees and put ponds on their big warehouse sites, but it's not really a solution for Mainland beautification.

As we've said before, the main problem with the group claiming to "salvage" and "beautify" microparcels is that they put up these ridiculous, stupid, ugly plinths with these ridiculous, pointless "good neighbour" aphorisms that leave out even the basics, like not building over two storeys. They are absolutely impervious to common sense or entire sims of people pleading with them to remove these idiocies. They are as bad as the Bush Guy in their way.

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