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


Therese Tammas
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18 hours ago, Therese Tammas said:

I understand now why small homes are so popular....most mainland can only support those small homes.

Small homes can also fit most 512 and 1024 land, both sizes which I think are quite popular, since you can own them without an extra charge ontop of the premium fee.

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On 10/16/2019 at 10:41 AM, Vega Firelyte said:

I'm not 100% sure, but it's a group of people who want to see the mainland improve, look better and be more interactive, which is my guess.  If I am wrong though, someone please correct me.

This is what is in the description of the group, "A group devoted to appreciating the Mainland by living, working or visiting the legacy Mainland outside of Linden Homes. Members get a free ad board with "Visit the Mainland" texture created by Jack Linden and a portal script to put in the location of your choice. Gifts will also regularly be provided. Chat is encouraged with recommendations, help, causes. We advocate for Linden policies to encourage Mainland living. A hangout is being developed."

I do admit, I hesitate to join because of that second last sentence, which I have put into bold.  I have seen that abused quite a few times and it all started innocently but went downhill at some point.  Myself personally, I would rather build a good communication between the Moles, Lindens, and Residents where we can work together without the word "advocate" involved and I don't really believe in policies being changed, to make it where you force people to do what you think is right.  I am a believer in people making their own choices.  I may not always agree with someone's choice but I do respect people having that right to make it.

This is strange. Do you behave this way in RL, where you don't advocate anything to the government, say, better treatment of refugees or not building a wall, or not leaving the European Union, or not ending sanctions against Russia? Or whatever your political beliefs are -- you don't advocate them? Of course you have to advocate policies to the Lindens, who are a kind of government, even if they are more like an old-fashioned corporation with a company town and company store. It is the only thing that has ever worked. This answer is in red so that you all remember it after I die, and cut and paste it and remember SL history properly, not as some of the victors are writing it now.

Lindens didn't change their odd prim policy that enabled some people to destroy the commons by taking up all the prims on a sim on their tiny lots; they made a different system where prims were tied to purchased square meters, with some Linden Land easements, after the "Tea Party" prim protest years ago.  Lindens didn't finally end ad farms after four years of blight and loss of land value and destruction of second lives from "the Bush Guy" and "Mr. Lee's Hong Kong" who are gone from SL now; they made a policy and enforced it due to residents' persistent advocacy, including pickets at Governor Linden's manor and the welcome areas. Lindens didn't make the opportunity to buy grandfathered sims, initially only privately available to their special friends; they opened it up to everyone after this unfair policy was exposed. Lindens didn't change language in the TOS and follow up on DMCA policies regarding intellectual property theft; they changed them not only due to advocacy but RL lawsuits. When the Lindens crashed the land auction by rolling out low fixed-price full sims for a time, some of us ceased buying them and sold our land in protest. They stopped that.  Lindens didn't create the telehub buy-back plan (after the land bought for huge prices at auction was devalued when they implemented point-to-point teleportation) until land barons got together as a group, confronted Philip Linden in an inworld meeting, and invoked the possibility of a "bait-and-switch" lawsuit. This was done politely but firmly. The raising of island prices sparked some very raucous protests with graphics I found too bloody and I didn't take part in them because a price hike is basically a business choice you can only respond to by not buying. The Lindens didn't lower their prices that year, but did years later when they could afford to.

Lindens didn't stop concentrated and deliberate griefing rooted in RL institutions until enough of the bad behaviour was published and enough of the user base protested. Lindens didn't crack down on child pornography until RL prosecutors launched probes against them. They didn't end ponzi schemes and fake banks and stock markets and later illegal gambling until credit card companies threatened to withdraw their services. 

Lindens didn't stop punishing people who put their gatchas in the wrong category, and enable a category just called "gatchas" on the MP until they dealt with enough people protesting constant notices of infractions that they devised a new policy.  We have more prims per square meter and lower priced sims today because legions of users grumbled about the cost and limitations over the years. Lindens changed policies about their own zoned land like Belliseria -- does Belliseria have a policy that you can't have skyboxes, the way Brown does? Of course not.

I could go on and on with many other examples. I myself was involved in a number of these protests and even breaking the news on this, actions for which quite a few Lindens, especially after they left the Lab, praised me and urged me to continue because they themselves advocated them internally.

The other day, the head of a group that claimed they bought water to keep it free for sailing which owned a parcel in front of some land for sale -- land itself not put to sale, put that land to sale after I bought the parcel behind it. I protested this bad, duplicitous practice. The owner then claimed he knew Philip Linden and now he understood why Philip said I was banned from every party in SL (LOL). By that he meant the community conventions, from which I was *not* banned -- I attended three. But not before a group of connected residents I called the Fetid Inner Core advocated my banning from the second one in Chicago in a planning group, with a Linden who didn't protest it. Why? Because of my past history of protest about favouritism (which in fact, together with others, led the Lindens not only to create a code of conduct for employees but to cease the practice of having Lindens promote residents' inworld businesses).

And specifically because I protested a contract that would have removed the copyright protections for music bands playing at that SLCC. None other than Robert Scoble published a column in a RL newspaper condemning this idea, and it was withdrawn. I wasn't banned from a later one I didn't attend, although some griefers -- whose islands were later seized -- chalked "Ban Prok" on the wall of Linden Lab's RL building, with Lindens who opened the doors to them standing by (who are no longer at the Lab). Who's still in SL? I am. Who isn't? Lindens who griefed me on their alts because I protested against against their pet projects like the open-sourcing of the viewer, the cause for much griefing and loss of content and a factor in the dispute between Philip and Corey after which Corey left.

In 2005, I was banned from these forums for a time because I protested that the FIC were able to post horrendous posts advocating violence against me and accusing me falsely of a RL crime (Internet witch-hunters found a journalist with the same common RL name as mine who was fired for plagiarism and mixed that person up with me -- I've never been accused of plagiarism). I then posted a question for the then-Town Hall about the open-sourced viewer and griefing, for which a Linden banned me -- and when I went to the Town Hall, a griefer made a day-old alt with the name "Prokofy" and spouted nonsense during this town hall, and *I* was banned although it wasn't me. A Linden was recorded in an IRC channel plotting to get rid of me with the FIC. But eventually after a year or so when the management of the forums changed to a different Linden, I was restored, because I hadn't done anything wrong. 

And all of this is important when you read false claims that I am banned from all SL forums and blogged (I'm only banned from Sluniverse where these oldbies congregated) or banned from conventions they don't even have any more (because of all the problems associated with them), keep in mind that a reason you have a better Second Life today is because people like me were willing to endure abuse and harassment to bring about change. The only place I remained ban from among the LL properties is the JIRA, where I advocated repeatedly for a change to the group code to end the bug (admitted to be a bug by the Linden who originally programmed it) that enables the return of group-set objects even if group-set item return is NOT checked off on the members' powers. Lindens who banned me want to keep that function which they view as a feature of group builds, heedless of its effect on relationships in groups when prims are returned against your will, much less its havoc in group rentals. That's ok -- you can't vote anymore on the JIRA as you once could, so it is better to go to an office meeting and discuss a proposal.

The Mainland is a far better place to live today, and SL is better in general, because residents ADVOCATED for change and it CAME. You can't respect bad choices that injure your second life. And the Lindens realize these changes were in their best interests; after all, they like SL too and many of them have "civilian" alts, some of which preceded their work at the lab, where they had lives and businesses they enjoyed. 

Advocacy isn't "forcing people to what you think it is right" because you can't -- THEY ARE IN POWER, not you, and never forget it. You merely express your opinion of what is right and frankly, they come to see it is in their best interests not to keep rolling out new sims and let them be destroyed by blight and griefing. I don't see that any of this advocacy was disrespectful. In the earlier days we met directly with Lindens in groups and office hours, some of which still persist today, and I don't see that this is "disrespectful". You can't be in a Kumbayah circle holding hands with people who devalue your land and ruin your virtual life; you have to speak up. And because they are largely decent, and not like, say notoriously indifferent and abusive MMORPG companies, here we all are. 

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21 hours ago, Therese Tammas said:

@animats my house on Alloy has river (if you can get down the cliff) and road access. I've struggled with it and ended up hiring a "pro" decorator to help me solve the cliff problem. Stay tuned for pics for that. I am hoping it will be magical!

That's when you need a pro architect.

Fallingwater%20in%20the%20Fall.jpg

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

Custom designed for the site, of course. One of the most famous houses in such a location. Gives a good idea of how to layer levels to fit terrain. A combination of glassed in levels with balconies on stone supports can fit most hills.

 

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On 10/18/2019 at 5:39 AM, animats said:
  • How to clean up terraforming messes. Where the original moles built rolling terrain, parcel owners have often flattened their lots.

This is probably splitting hairs but set the record straight, those rolling terrain sims were made before LDPW was founded so it was the content Lindens, not the Moles who did them.

Moles do some elaborate landscaping for purely LL owned sims but for regions that are open for users' homes, they tend to go for the famous pancake style. For good reason I have to add, the landscaping of some of those older sims may look fantastic but they're not very practical for teh poor landowner who wants to put a house on their parcel.

Edited by ChinRey
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On 10/17/2019 at 12:26 PM, Syo Emerald said:

I would disagree that a warehouse (why do I want to keep writing werehouse?! 😂) is in itself ugly. Just as a little cottage is not in itself beautiful by default. Steal and concrete can hold its own beauty and a well-made building is a well-made building, no matter what it is. A 2006-ish cottage with fullbright on on the other hand is not beautiful just because its a cottage.

I wouldn't mind that warehouse animats posted on a neighboring piece of land. Its decent looking for what it is and I have accepted, that a matching theme is not going to be archieved on mainland. I've adapted a "at least its not" thinking. I mean...its a proper building and the owner created a parcel with a consistant look. Thats more than some land owners on mainland seem to be capeable of.

 

Edit: And thanks for answering my question! I was just curious, if there was anything concrete planned to be done.

I agree that by definition a warehouse need not be ugly, and beauty can be achieved with steel and concrete, and quaint cottages can be ugly. But that's not the point. You must not have GTFO near you. It means that in many areas that are quaint roads or Linden bridges or waterfront, you have this mammoth structure that clashes with nature and its surroundings by its industrial nature. Make it beautiful or not, it's still INDUSTRIAL. Once again, there are almost NO GTFO sites that are like Larsson's for example, a quaint cafe.  Compare and contrast Larsson and the one near my land on Lake Caldera. WHEN you have a GTFO right next to you, do write. Others have different experiences. Anything that threatens to take over the entire grid needs a pushback, like the "pod tours" which a few forums regs love and therefore feel shouldn't be criticized. Stand on my parcels and watch dozens of flying green buses limp down the roadside with no passengers, and you will feel differently.

Well the concrete things are being done, Therese is getting a HUD designed of recommended places. If anyone wants to host a node and be on a circuit rid of MAS locations, IM me, I now have an object (pot of daisies) and an Experience key with that name, "Mainland Appreciation Society" which is basically just a fast teleporter.

 

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9 hours ago, VenKellie said:

@Prokofy Neva if you don't like what others do on mainland then go get your own regions or better yet go make your own opensim grid.

Are you a Mole on your other account? OpenSim isn't really viable, it doesn't have a market or even things like grouped land for rentals.

You might like to review the Community Standards. There are certain things one "doesn't like" which in fact "interfere with the enjoyment of Second Life" (as art. 2C of their old standards used to say, but the same concept is in the latest redaction as well). I have land on 50 sims which I share with other owners. And most of the time, people are decent and try to make way for each other. But every once in awhile you get a total a$$hat who does something like put a giant figure up in the water in the view on 4 sims, or a giant concrete parking lot boxing in others, or a giant refrigerator, or a giant dome that blots out the sun on 4 sims and creates a huge footprint on the map and in the sky just above you. These things aren't violations unless they encroach on your land, but they are inconsiderate and it's more than fine to call them out and advocate against them. 

The Lindens could simply make a rule that all builds in the sky have to be put up at least 500 meters from the ground, and we won't have those awful overbearing domes anymore, or other structures like stacked up layers with junk on them in the sky. I have that rule in my rentals. They could make that rule, and it would go very far toward improving the mainland. They don't make rules like this because they are afraid of edgecases, of "what ifs," of suppressing "creativity," of endless policing, of overload of ARs, of lots of things. But those are all excuses, as they were for ad farms. It is possible to make rules and enforce them, as it finally was against ad farms.

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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On 10/20/2019 at 3:30 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

I agree that by definition a warehouse need not be ugly, and beauty can be achieved with steel and concrete, and quaint cottages can be ugly. But that's not the point. You must not have GTFO near you. It means that in many areas that are quaint roads or Linden bridges or waterfront, you have this mammoth structure that clashes with nature and its surroundings by its industrial nature. Make it beautiful or not, it's still INDUSTRIAL. Once again, there are almost NO GTFO sites that are like Larsson's for example, a quaint cafe.  Compare and contrast Larsson and the one near my land on Lake Caldera. WHEN you have a GTFO right next to you, do write. Others have different experiences. Anything that threatens to take over the entire grid needs a pushback, like the "pod tours" which a few forums regs love and therefore feel shouldn't be criticized. Stand on my parcels and watch dozens of flying green buses limp down the roadside with no passengers, and you will feel differently.

Well the concrete things are being done, Therese is getting a HUD designed of recommended places. If anyone wants to host a node and be on a circuit rid of MAS locations, IM me, I now have an object (pot of daisies) and an Experience key with that name, "Mainland Appreciation Society" which is basically just a fast teleporter.

 

I went and had a look at the one on Lake Caldera and I see what you mean. And whilst there are a lot of ariports on stilts around, I am not so bothered by them. Their form is functional so the aircraft take off above banlines. They at least indicate public rezzing which allowed me to rezz a vehicle there and explore a bit. Also where I live it is not so unusual to see industrial sites or airports out of town in the countryside. The GTFO hub near my place at Fudo just north of the Bremmer dinosaurs is an example of a nicely done rural airport.

The positives GTFO bring, in terms of bringing mainland alive, providing clearly marked welcoming rezz areas, giving an appreciation for travel and exploration, connecting people and the many nice public builds that wouldn't otherwise be there far outweigh the aesthetic negatives.

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Thanks for going to have a look, so often people don't even log in! It's a hulking build that overpowers the area. I understand why builders like this choose a nice area like this -- they like the view, too! They love looking out at the view. It's just that they seem heedless of the fact that...now THEY are in the view for everybody else!

And as I've said repeatedly: GTFO is good in that it is a nice game to engage people across the grid and get them buying or renting land and having fun; it gives them "something to do"; it builds skills; it doesn't translate to real money so it stays fun. 

And as I've said repeatedly, I rent to GTFO warehouses and some of my tenants with these stops have been there for years!

Notice that while it took awhile and I had to offer discounts, my land there did finally rent to a dedicated customer. You can always face out to the lake, not look behind. I did refrain from buying further land there in that nice area, however.

But since I see A LOT of these warehouses I do feel the balance has been tipped. It seems to take over the map and the ground in places. This game is expanding, not contracting. So sure, there are aesthetic areas, some not like warehouses at all, but like country cottages, i.e. the Larsson shop in Molesworth. But most are not like that. Maybe they can consider making more like that and not have all the freight be heavy. But it's not my game. I don't play it. I rent to those who do, sometimes I imagine, even at the expense of my own residential rentals, but long-term, higher-priced rentals are to be favoured.

Life is not an Amazon warehouse and Amazon trucks and Amazon deliveries, although it seems RL is dominated by this now, creating more burden for our doormen and postal workers nt to mention truck drivers!. There is more to life, and I would like to see it reflected in SL.

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On 10/21/2019 at 4:28 AM, Aethelwine said:

What a beautiful place and not far from the LCC parcel in Sanchon.

@Prokofy did a great job!!! Ooh what is LCC?

 

@animats check it out =D my decorator did a great job and only spent 166 of my prims!!! At first we tried a deck but it extended too much into the canal, we went with cliffs and ladders and it looks good!

 

nkWzG2M.jpg

 

@VenKellie  I think Prokofy  loves Mainland and is why he is expressing his opinion ❤️ 

Edited by Therese Tammas
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On 10/17/2019 at 11:39 PM, animats said:

Some of the problems with mainland builds could be helped with a class, perhaps at Builders' Brewery, on "how to build in difficult terrain". Topics such as:

  • How to build on hills. Most prefab SL buildings are for flat ground. Putting them on hills is usually done either with terraforming or with some huge blockish slab underneath. Some examples of best practices would be helpful.
  • How to connect to a Linden road. This is often hard to do neatly. Some roads have rocks or high curbs or jaggy parcel boundaries. Linden advice on allowable encroachments would help. Sometimes you just have to reach a bit beyond your parcel to make the connection work. Such work needs to look like it belongs there. This is especially important for GTFO hubs, because they will have truck traffic. For the hard cases, it should be possible to pay for mole work and get a curb cut.
  • How to clean up terraforming messes. Where the original moles built rolling terrain, parcel owners have often flattened their lots. A few generations of ownership later, each parcel is flat, at a different level from its neighbors, and there's a cliff at the edge of each parcel. Much abandoned land looks like that.

If someone good at this gives such a class, I'll go.

I personally don't need a class on how to connect a Linden road, as I have done so zillions of times. What you might need a class on is how not to aggressively try to take over the entire grid because you have one idea about one thing, and not how to file aggressive ARs against people who in fact are encroaching only a small amount because the Lindens have an outrageously bad lumpy and rocky road and bad line-ups to their road prims, and also realize that your problems in driving everywhere are not caused by someone's minor encroachment, but the Lindens sim-connector prims underneath the ground.

It may be hard for you to believe since you feel master of all your survey that some of us spent many, many, MANY years before you came here trying to get the Lindens to fix some of their lousy builds, and change some of their lousy policies. And the fact that today, the Moles have built many nice new roads, and we now have an ad-farm policy are the fruits of those efforts, which were important and necessary though unappreciated by new people.

There's a simple reason why people flatten their terrain -- so they can place a house. That's a laudable and understandable reason, even if it's not one you share and you prefer to drive around or build large garages. Houses. With little picket fences and gardens. So people learn how to push down the terrain inside their house AFTER they place; others try to flatten first and then place and get frustrated or frankly cannot place it because universally throughout the Mainland, even the flattest land has odd terraforming in it because the Lindens felt they needed to be creative and "like real life," and they loathed suburbanism and middle-class mass taste. To see Bellisseria today, you would never know that, but that is indeed how the Lindens were for many, many years. They made flatter sims in their later years, and then people marvel that they lack character and get abandoned, but they did it because people want to place their houses, the end. As time goes on, it has become harder and harder for people to use those early basic skills like "rezzing my house" and "terraforming" and "making a foundation" -- they either want a house ready to move into, which many agents provide, or they want the agent to do it for them. The Lindens know that, which is why they created Bellisseria. 

With most Mainland challenges, you can put up a foundation and texture it with the same terrain as the land, but that doesn't actually look good often, especially with grass. Rock is usually better. You can bevel that foundation and slat it using "top shear" or "taper" -- that can go a long way to making a foundation bearable, and especially make it so it doesn't stick out into water and look ugly from any perspective. There are now a wide variety of cliffs and ready-made landscaping for sale, although they can be frustrating as they are often very high prim and hard to reduce or expand without changing their prims in a worse direction -- they often don't have dead-flat tops, either, necessitating a foundation on top of them. Still, they are a solution for some unbearable Mainland textures. There's also the JVTEK system that enables you to craft a sculpty over the entire lot and texture as you wish. It requires some patience but it's well worth it.

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@Vega Firelyte Oh, hey, I see you're my new neighbour in Tuliptree.

And that what you decided to do was to find some abandoned land near one of my areas, buy it, and put up one of your delightful GTFO outlets and get in my face, ensuring that those parcels near it will be unlikely to rent (as is usually the case with GTFO pops up, something I tolerate in my own rentals even when I rent to GTFO at the expense of other parcels, it's a balancing act). I researched this, and I realize you're going to claim you didn't do this, but that's what you did.  

This one is called "FarmFresh" although it has neither a farm or fresh food, but perhaps those are to come? More to the point it has two gigantic, unnecessary billboards. One is on your land, and the other is on a 112 m microparcel you sold to an ad-farmer who put your GTFO ad on his board.

Ugly, unnecessary, and not viewed by anyone, except put deliberately in my face because I dared to criticize your blighting of the Mainland. It's not enough that you entirely blight the map with GTFO every few squares; you have to put up these big billboards which hardly anybody sees except my tenants in small residences who aren't going to do GTFO -- those who want to already rent large parcels. 

You bought land which has literally been abandoned for something like 12 years, since the Lindens cracked down on first-land flippers (they don't have the first-land program any more) and banned some of them and their land was abandoned. The nearby railroad apparently bought it and then abandoned it much later when they needed to tier down. So you requested it, with a mission in mind, I saw what you did there. It's ludicrous, because if speed and efficiency are a function of your game, trying to worm your way out of that tiny entrance and through the railroad works to get out to the highway -- it's NOT roadside - is a ridiculous time loss. 

So when people deliberately try to harass me over my opinions on the forums -- which are valid, and my experience, and my right -- I abuse report them , although it goes "nowhere". But I do think the Lindens need a policy not to sell abandoned land to people who then cut up microparcels for ads or to sell to ad-farmers. They may feel secondary purchases are impossible to police but that's what ARs are for. Abandoned land, which the Lindens now are unloading in large numbers, contrary to their past much slower and more miserly policy.

Remember, those tuning in, my VALID criticism of GTFO's blighting of the map (it's everywhere) and warehouses taking up the view in most of their views, is not my personal opinion, and not driven merely by me having residential lots for rent, but a feeling shared by many, including even in this thread. And our expression of this criticism doesn't harm the increasingly monopolistic and oppressive GTFO, which hasn't lost any business because a few of their neighbours complained on the forums, read by 5% of the user population. If anything, it's GTFO that hurts the business of other businesses next to them, or hurts the pretty view that someone thought they had when they bought, say, lakeside property. It wouldn't occur to me to someone try to sabotage or boycott GTFO merely because I don't like their builds -- that's wrong. And as I've said numerous times, I have tenants doing GTFO! 

But when people attempt to harm me or my business in SL, I fight back. I AR them. I ban them -- that's the minimum, let them taste banlines.

I wait 30 days. Most things go away in 30 days, for all kinds of reasons. Since escalating action often leads to the opposite effect -- you complain about an encroaching build and sim crashing, and you get a giant refrigerator on your cost for four or more years -- I wait.

Then I go to the next steps.

o Brick walls on all sides of the billboard. I have the prims to go up to 4096 if need be. The Lindens have a rule that you cannot totally block another's property on all 4 sides -- this method of fighting the ad farms was something they used to punish users for, as they sat idly by letting their fellow computer programmers sell 16m parcels for $10,000 and remove giant IMPEACH BUSH or MR. LEE'S HONG KONG ad boards. But you can block on 2-3 sides, and with cooperative neighbours, that's often enough.

o Constant publication of bad behavior

o Continued ARS, urging all those affected to AR.

o Mass petitions -- I have a tenant on one sim who got so tired of ONE PERSON blocking the sailing on an entire lake because the Lindens were foolhardy enough to sell water inside lakes and not create Linden protected land inside them that he got dozens of people who lived there to petition the person doing this. She hasn't taken of "access only" yet but he will keep at it. People who put "access only" have the right to do so, and they believe it is necessary for privacy. But there are several ways you can do this and mitigate it:

-- Only put your land to access only when you are actually logged in. If you are mainly not logging on to SL, there's no reason to block boating around your land for everyone. If you're afraid they might fly up to your skybox and go on your sex furniture, understood, but you can either put that away or put up an orb just for the perimeter of that skybox. To block your entire parcel of 4096 plus, when you have no builds on the ground, is insanity.

-- Cut a 32m strip around your land -- leave that open. Put the rest of your land on "access only" but for the love of God, at least let people pass by on water or roadside without being bashed by banlines or orbs.

The Lindens have gotten lax about policing ad farms, and I see them back again with the same insanity, ugly builds and ridiculous prices to "buy back the view". Their rule is that you can't have more than one per sim, I think it is. So that's a basis for ARs, but sometimes just an AR for the extortionist price, if there are multiple instances, can be enough.

When you deal with me, you'll find that I can wait forever. I can wait years for situations to be righted. You can try to harass and bully me off my land or discourage me from expressing my views, but it can't stand. So give it up. Mind your own business. You have enough of the grid under your control without deliberately coming to harass me and my tenants.

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On 10/14/2019 at 6:08 PM, 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.

UPDATE: It wasn't the Linden Roads Group that has those obelisks, or that expelled me, but another one who mysteriously indicates that I should "just know" why I'm expelled. I think it's because I criticized their aggressive attempts to put a Linden-sponsored railroad through my land on the partially abandoned WARR project, to which in fact I had sold land and gave right of way. Or who knows, it could also be due to criticism of the misuse of the FLW legacy in SL for businesses around an effort to have an FLW museum, which ultimately was cancelled by the RL FLW. I'm a critic. I criticize things that need criticism. This is normal. This is how RL is run. Unless you are in Singapore or Russia or Iran, you can criticize the authorities and other groups in society, it's more than fine.

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On 10/25/2019 at 11:12 PM, Therese Tammas said:

@Prokofy did a great job!!! Ooh what is LCC?

 

LCC is short for the Leeward Cruising Club, the oldest and largest cruising club in SL. It has run weekly and now twice weekly cruises for ten years. You can find the group in search, membership is free. You will find it to be a welcoming community of experienced travellers. The LCC signs you see on world map advertise members parcels and open rezzing for vehicles. 

Edited by Aethelwine
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16 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

@Vega Firelyte Oh, hey, I see you're my new neighbour in Tuliptree.

And that what you decided to do was to find some abandoned land near one of my areas, buy it, and put up one of your delightful GTFO outlets and get in my face, ensuring that those parcels near it will be unlikely to rent (as is usually the case with GTFO pops up, something I tolerate in my own rentals even when I rent to GTFO at the expense of other parcels, it's a balancing act). I researched this, and I realize you're going to claim you didn't do this, but that's what you did.  

This one is called "FarmFresh" although it has neither a farm or fresh food, but perhaps those are to come? More to the point it has two gigantic, unnecessary billboards. One is on your land, and the other is on a 112 m microparcel you sold to an ad-farmer who put your GTFO ad on his board.

Ugly, unnecessary, and not viewed by anyone, except put deliberately in my face because I dared to criticize your blighting of the Mainland. It's not enough that you entirely blight the map with GTFO every few squares; you have to put up these big billboards which hardly anybody sees except my tenants in small residences who aren't going to do GTFO -- those who want to already rent large parcels. 

You bought land which has literally been abandoned for something like 12 years, since the Lindens cracked down on first-land flippers (they don't have the first-land program any more) and banned some of them and their land was abandoned. The nearby railroad apparently bought it and then abandoned it much later when they needed to tier down. So you requested it, with a mission in mind, I saw what you did there. It's ludicrous, because if speed and efficiency are a function of your game, trying to worm your way out of that tiny entrance and through the railroad works to get out to the highway -- it's NOT roadside - is a ridiculous time loss. 

So when people deliberately try to harass me over my opinions on the forums -- which are valid, and my experience, and my right -- I abuse report them , although it goes "nowhere". But I do think the Lindens need a policy not to sell abandoned land to people who then cut up microparcels for ads or to sell to ad-farmers. They may feel secondary purchases are impossible to police but that's what ARs are for. Abandoned land, which the Lindens now are unloading in large numbers, contrary to their past much slower and more miserly policy.

Remember, those tuning in, my VALID criticism of GTFO's blighting of the map (it's everywhere) and warehouses taking up the view in most of their views, is not my personal opinion, and not driven merely by me having residential lots for rent, but a feeling shared by many, including even in this thread. And our expression of this criticism doesn't harm the increasingly monopolistic and oppressive GTFO, which hasn't lost any business because a few of their neighbours complained on the forums, read by 5% of the user population. If anything, it's GTFO that hurts the business of other businesses next to them, or hurts the pretty view that someone thought they had when they bought, say, lakeside property. It wouldn't occur to me to someone try to sabotage or boycott GTFO merely because I don't like their builds -- that's wrong. And as I've said numerous times, I have tenants doing GTFO! 

But when people attempt to harm me or my business in SL, I fight back. I AR them. I ban them -- that's the minimum, let them taste banlines.

I wait 30 days. Most things go away in 30 days, for all kinds of reasons. Since escalating action often leads to the opposite effect -- you complain about an encroaching build and sim crashing, and you get a giant refrigerator on your cost for four or more years -- I wait.

Then I go to the next steps.

o Brick walls on all sides of the billboard. I have the prims to go up to 4096 if need be. The Lindens have a rule that you cannot totally block another's property on all 4 sides -- this method of fighting the ad farms was something they used to punish users for, as they sat idly by letting their fellow computer programmers sell 16m parcels for $10,000 and remove giant IMPEACH BUSH or MR. LEE'S HONG KONG ad boards. But you can block on 2-3 sides, and with cooperative neighbours, that's often enough.

o Constant publication of bad behavior

o Continued ARS, urging all those affected to AR.

o Mass petitions -- I have a tenant on one sim who got so tired of ONE PERSON blocking the sailing on an entire lake because the Lindens were foolhardy enough to sell water inside lakes and not create Linden protected land inside them that he got dozens of people who lived there to petition the person doing this. She hasn't taken of "access only" yet but he will keep at it. People who put "access only" have the right to do so, and they believe it is necessary for privacy. But there are several ways you can do this and mitigate it:

-- Only put your land to access only when you are actually logged in. If you are mainly not logging on to SL, there's no reason to block boating around your land for everyone. If you're afraid they might fly up to your skybox and go on your sex furniture, understood, but you can either put that away or put up an orb just for the perimeter of that skybox. To block your entire parcel of 4096 plus, when you have no builds on the ground, is insanity.

-- Cut a 32m strip around your land -- leave that open. Put the rest of your land on "access only" but for the love of God, at least let people pass by on water or roadside without being bashed by banlines or orbs.

The Lindens have gotten lax about policing ad farms, and I see them back again with the same insanity, ugly builds and ridiculous prices to "buy back the view". Their rule is that you can't have more than one per sim, I think it is. So that's a basis for ARs, but sometimes just an AR for the extortionist price, if there are multiple instances, can be enough.

When you deal with me, you'll find that I can wait forever. I can wait years for situations to be righted. You can try to harass and bully me off my land or discourage me from expressing my views, but it can't stand. So give it up. Mind your own business. You have enough of the grid under your control without deliberately coming to harass me and my tenants.

So what you are saying is, this is your manifest for harassing, stalking, and hounding someone who you figure, deserves it or that you have decided to try to force them to leave.  You know, I have a policy that I adhere to quite closely, "don't assume anything because you tend to look like an a** when you do that."  You just gave a great example of why I have that personal policy. 
1.  The land was actually requested and bought by a friend, who donated her land allowance to my group.  She figured it was a great spot to put up a GTFO information depot, one that covers a little more than the railroad does.  

2. I found out who the neighbor was AFTER the land was bought.  Sorry, I hadn't thought about you in the last couple of weeks and this literally had nothing to do with you.  

3.  The small area you are talking about, that is right next to the group land was never owned by the group.  Someone else bought it.  It was never mine, the groups or my friends land.

4.  You really are not important enough to harass but you seem to feel that I'm important enough for you to attempt to harass me and my group.  

The building and a bit of landscaping is done tastefully and not gaudy and does not encroach on anyone's area, unlike your boardwalk, which is how I found out you owned the land next to the group land.  Your boardwalk is on the group land but since the prims are not on it directly, I just shrugged and figured it wasn't worth the headache.  The fact that you have literally outlined your manner of harassment here, with repeated false ARs and attempts of intimidation does tell me that I should start keeping record, so your manifest has been screen grabbed.

As for the billboard, it was placed in a way so that it's not overly done.  It is just over the building and it's not close to the rental property that is on the other side of the group property.  You're welcome.

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Er, I'm not the one who is hounding and harassing when in fact it is your group that has purchased abandoned land next to my rentals deliberately, despite its awkward location for your purposes. 

You have put up two giant billboards to get in the face of anyone next door, one of them on ad farm to which your group sold to an ad farmer in fact related to you as I discovered when I visited his headquarters and found your GTFO vendor for sale for $699 in his warehouse. While it may be true that players of this game do not make real money, you do.

I don't know why you take us all for naive children given the facts in front of us on the grid.

I don't believe you whatsoever, because every other statement you have made about GTFO has been demonstratively false.

And these statements are demonstratively proven as false when you claim "someone else" bought it" and it was "never mine, the groups, or my friend's land" when it demonstratively has a GTFO sign on it. Or did, until I returned them, but I have no doubt they will be back.

It's particularly a stretch of the imagination to say that your group has "literally" nothing to do with the microparcel when your GTFO billboard is on it, and when the group which owns that parcel is a GTFO hub with your vendor on sale in the building. Hello! 

No one could believe that you thought this was a "great spot" next to the railroad because it literally is not in the view due to the railroad on one side, nearly underneath the overpass, and would be seen only by my tenants on the other, not the general public. It is far from the road.

It's also not at all true that this landscaping is "done tastefully" and "not guady" [sic] and "does not encroach on anyone's land" since....I was able to  return these billboards because they encroached on my land. If my boardwalk encroaches on land that was abandoned for the last 12 years, you'll be able to return it. Yet it hasn't been returned. Please don't claim this is about your "good will". There is nothing false about an AR for encroachment when I am able to return both of your billboards and when abandoned land has been purchased for the purpose of creating an ad farm on a microparcel.

So again, it is of course overly done because....I was able to return it. Hello! The rental property -- mine -- is right smack next to the billboards (the wooden boardwalk), improbably placed facing them in the middle of the sim and not roadside, where they would get more views. (You've amended your text to say you now realize its mine but this beggars belief).

Every response I have listed here is legal and indeed encouraged when people in SL face the kind of overbearing over-building and literal encroachment that your group represents to the map, the grid, and the neighbourhood. Everyone should be banning such neighbours so they feel what it is like to live with such domination. They should certainly AR encroachment and ad farms which are certainly related to your group. This isn't about me being important or you being important but about the basic norms of society.

 

 

 

48990217546_9b2a2d0472_c (1).jpg

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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3 minutes ago, Vega Firelyte said:

3.  The small area you are talking about, that is right next to the group land was never owned by the group.  Someone else bought it.  It was never mine, the groups or my friends land.

So this is very important to know for absolutely certain -- can you please confirm with your friend that she requested the GTFO-related 512 sq.m. as abandoned land from the Lab, and somebody else requested the 112 sq.m. "advertising" parcel separately?

The reason it matters so much is that the Lab had always promised never to sell abandoned land smaller than 256 sq.m. to anyone without other land in the region (with a few very special one-off exceptions). I can imagine a new generation of "Land and Concierge" Lindens not realizing how crucial that rule was to curing the Mainland of adfarms -- and if so this would be an opportunity to raise their awareness to the need to stick to that policy at all cost.

As you probably know, it would have been a violation of the Lab's Mainland "landsplitting" rules for a private owner to subdivide that 112 and sell it separately, but if that happens to be what your friend did, it would be better to know about it now than for us to be accusing an innocent Linden of making that mistake. That could cause a chain of unhappy experiences we'd otherwise avoid.

(I've already confessed to Prokofy: Although I'd forgotten about this specific parcel, nonetheless I almost certainly was the one responsible for abandoning it from VRC Holding's group, likely during a tier crisis a couple years ago when I had to make some difficult decisions. I wish none of that had been necessary, but that's life... Second Life, even.)

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Note the whole scene:

1. GTFO is far from the road -- why is a spot in the middle of a sim an "ideal spot" for a warehouse in a game where you are trying to move freight quickly???

2. GTFO will have a hard time even driving out of the warehouse in the middle of the sim, given the VRC railroad in the way.

3. The ad farm is definitely related to GTFO. And the only people who will see it are my tenants -- did I mention it is not near the road at all. Look at the map.

4. My boardwalk is not encroaching -- look at the red lines.

 

Reality.png

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1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Note the whole scene:

1. GTFO is far from the road -- why is a spot in the middle of a sim an "ideal spot" for a warehouse in a game where you are trying to move freight quickly???

2. GTFO will have a hard time even driving out of the warehouse in the middle of the sim, given the VRC railroad in the way.

3. The ad farm is definitely related to GTFO. And the only people who will see it are my tenants -- did I mention it is not near the road at all. Look at the map.

4. My boardwalk is not encroaching -- look at the red lines.

 

Reality.png

I had a lovely chat with my other neighbor.  That building is the GTFO information area.  It's not an actual hub.  It's a compliment to the train and travellers.  The boardwalk you are talking about, I just watched you move it, so you are lying.  It WAS encroaching and you moved it so you could try to claim that it wasn't encroaching.  The person who owns that small piece, is someone else.  It was never the groups land.  As for getting out of the land, pop over to the train station which is just a few feet away.  Prok, you are not important enough in my book or anyone else's to go to the trouble you are describing.  Maybe you get fixated like that and stalk people to that level but that's just too much trouble for me.  If you don't believe me, that's fin, I don't really care.

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12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

So this is very important to know for absolutely certain -- can you please confirm with your friend that she requested the GTFO-related 512 sq.m. as abandoned land from the Lab, and somebody else requested the 112 sq.m. "advertising" parcel separately?

The reason it matters so much is that the Lab had always promised never to sell abandoned land smaller than 256 sq.m. to anyone without other land in the region (with a few very special one-off exceptions). I can imagine a new generation of "Land and Concierge" Lindens not realizing how crucial that rule was to curing the Mainland of adfarms -- and if so this would be an opportunity to raise their awareness to the need to stick to that policy at all cost.

As you probably know, it would have been a violation of the Lab's Mainland "landsplitting" rules for a private owner to subdivide that 112 and sell it separately, but if that happens to be what your friend did, it would be better to know about it now than for us to be accusing an innocent Linden of making that mistake. That could cause a chain of unhappy experiences we'd otherwise avoid.

(I've already confessed to Prokofy: Although I'd forgotten about this specific parcel, nonetheless I almost certainly was the one responsible for abandoning it from VRC Holding's group, likely during a tier crisis a couple years ago when I had to make some difficult decisions. I wish none of that had been necessary, but that's life... Second Life, even.)

Qie, you have merely to look at the owner of the microparcel, and go to their group and their headquarters, to realize that it is all related to GTFO, a GTFO hub, selling the kit from GTFO vendor. Let's not be children here.

This land was abandoned in full, in one parcel, as you well know, for years. First it was abandoned a very long time ago -- 12 or even 14 years ago wnen the first-land flipper who was banned -- and then later purchased and abandoned by your group. Indeed it sat there for years. Why? Because land in the middle of the sim next to a railroad and the boardwalk in my rentals isn't ideal except for your group or mine. I left it merely because I didn't need the prims and figured you had more need of them. I didn't think I needed to make a defensive purchase -- of the type I've done so many times!!! -- for an 878 m parcel in the middle of a sim. There is half of the sim abandoned there with roadside and my rentals, which many view as "protected land" by now since they haven't changed in 15 years! So if someone really needed land in that sim, they could ask the Lindens to carve off a 512 or 1024 roadside.

If they had a felt need to create an ad farm, they could also do that roadside.

Having two different groups -- one directly GTFO management and the other a RR fans' group that is in fact a GTFO hub and vendor -- may technically satisfy the notion that you can't have more than one ad farm in a sim, but there are TWO BILLBOARDS on TWO VERY MUCH RELATED GROUPS HERE so they definitely should be AR'd and not get away with this sleight of hand.

That Lindens may connive with GTFO to do all this or not take action against all this wouldn't surprise me WHATSOEVER given the vast amount of tier that GTFO and its affiliates may pay, but I actually don't think they are to blame here, as nowadays they basically satisfy any request to obtain abandoned land by anybody for any reason or no reason.

 

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17 minutes ago, Vega Firelyte said:

I had a lovely chat with my other neighbor.  That building is the GTFO information area.  It's not an actual hub.  It's a compliment to the train and travellers.  The boardwalk you are talking about, I just watched you move it, so you are lying.  It WAS encroaching and you moved it so you could try to claim that it wasn't encroaching.  The person who owns that small piece, is someone else.  It was never the groups land.  As for getting out of the land, pop over to the train station which is just a few feet away.  Prok, you are not important enough in my book or anyone else's to go to the trouble you are describing.  Maybe you get fixated like that and stalk people to that level but that's just too much trouble for me.  If you don't believe me, that's fin, I don't really care.

I can merely Laugh Out Loud at this land of your supposedly "not actual hub" that has a sign that says GTFO Hub out in front of it. Pretending that a "compliment to the train and travellers" which has an ad for GTFO on it, from a group with a GTFO hub sign out in front of it, selling the GTFO kit from its vendor is truly a stretch. If technically that group owner is "not your group" it sure is hell affililated with, and making cash with, your group. See below, the GTFO sign, in front of a GTFO warehouse in a sim, which I might add, is spectacularly blighted with all kinds of junk in the air and on the ground, but of course, that's their God-given right to do WTF they want on their land because we must champion "creativity" uber alles.

I just now went to my land, saw that I was WELL WITHIN the red line so it could not be returned, but merely shrunk it slightly to make extra sure. See the "before" picture below and the after I will have to post on my blog as I am out of bytes now. Once again, I could point out that no one returned my boardwalk in the last few days. That's because it's not encroaching. If there is some microscopic encroachment of this boardwalk on the border of what was abandoned land for years, hey, sue me. Oh, and return the boardwalk. But you can't. Because it's not encroaching.

Anyone trying to maneuver a truck out of your FarmFresh warehouse (neither a farm nor fresh) will have to be quite the skillful driver and turn themselves into a pretzel to drive under and out of the train station. It's insanity. 

When a group (and another group which both pretend are not affiliated) put up giant billboards in the face of my tenants, I push back. That's not on. I return the signs -- twice now! -- because they ENCROACH, hello! 

I notice that instead of admitting the facts of the case, visible to all, you're distracting with efforts to comment on whether I am important or not, or you are important, and making a false claim that ARing and returning giant billboards and calling out bad behaviour is "stalking". The stalking is what is done by your giant, overbearing corporation. That's visible to the naked eye.

Trash Can_387.jpg

Not encroaching.png

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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