If You Could Zone the Mainland, What Would You Do?

[Prokofy Neva]

Let's start by noting that the Lindens will never zone the legacy Mainland. They never have in 15 plus years, and never will. Their notion of zoning is to make the Linden Homes, and put extra rules in them or simply to build them in such a way that it is hard to make problems for other people, i.e. there are a lot of easements and levels so that view isn't so easily destroyed around the coast. They don't allow commercial activity, which is one way they keep out ugliness.

But let's pretend they might consider this, or that groups of residents could actually band together and make rules among themselves that they might try to enforce at least with "soft law" i.e. by banning those who break the rules. I find this even less likely to happen than Lindens changing anything, because as in real life, various communes that get started usually end in tears; one famous socialist commune coddled heavily by the early Lindens ended with the builder bombing and deleting her builds to spite the people who controlled the sim when she had some sort of disagreement with them.

I find that a lot of the time, you can keep areas nice by just informally getting along even in a superficial way with neighbours, so that you don't shock them with big black boxes in the sky or giant billboards or whatever.

But here's what I think are the minimum guidelines:

o No domes or builds of any kind in the view, which means nothing below 500 meters or even ideally 1000 meters for those with higher draw distances. The ability to de-render on some viewers isn't a solution, because when you're driving around or riding around you're not going to stop every few meters and de-render giant domes.

I have studied these more and now I understand something I didn't at first -- it's not that they put them at 100 or 200 meter so that they dominate the view for 4 sims and kill all organic life underneath them because they want their tenants to look *out of* the dome to the pretty scenes that perhaps you and your neighbours created years ago; in fact they tint the glass of the dome so the tenants cannot see out and no one can see in casually unless they cam in. 

The reason they are so low, as it turns out, is because there are exactly 24 or 25 of them stacked up all the way to 4096, after which you cannot build or get teleporters to work. Apparently they guarantee their customers "privacy" that requires more than the mere 20 m required to keep non-IM chat private and not overheard in public chat. Or maybe they want to hamper camming. Or who knows. But it's the need to cram as many domes into a big pile up that puts them so low. Since most of them stand empty a lot of the time, they could cut out one or two of the lower ones and make for much nicer areas. But they don't need to, because usually when they buy a sim or part of a sim, they drive many people to abandon their land. I didn't realize this, either, until I saw the process unfold in several areas.

Of course, the Lindens could figure out how many sims these companies own, and make a "dome continent" where they allow them all in one place to stack up. But that's not likely something they will ever do. The dome rentals aren't going to buy expensive islands; their money making machine depends on cheaper sims, often purchased abandoned or for low prices on the auction; stacking; and as I said, killing all organic life for miles. It's really quite something to fly around and behold -- continent after continent, killed by domes. Making the domes sky blue isn't much of a help when they loom over you like a spaceship. Plus, the undersides are scraggly messes of all the cheap sculpty landscaping they pile into the domes. They could mitigate this with false bottoms but they don't.

o No self-driven vehicles -- People who tout the scourge cars once rode them years ago and retained a romantic memory of them. They maybe ride them more frequently and find them "convenient". But if you have land next to them, you see them coming all day, every day, every few minutes, with no one in them. They are driverless cars WITH NO PASSENGERS. Only the owner knows how many people actually ride them. The Lindens could track this and discover that there's only a tiny percentage of users, relative to the huge number of spam cars. There currently isn't a script that calculates how many *driverless* vehicles go by; only those that have people in them can register on some kind of visitor tracker. In theory, it could be done even manually to prove the point.

But the Lindens always love people with grid-wide ambitious because they love load-testing for free by other people than their paid staff. There are a few forums' regs who howl at any indication that these scourges might be curbed. Still, this spam could be significantly reduced by having them put out ONLY at rez areas. That should be plenty. Every sim or every other sim has Linden rez areas; let the Lindens put out their own created vehicle, or let them choose their spam car friends even, but keep them only at rezzing areas and only when someone actually wants to get in their spam car. Particularly awful are the "out of theme" ones -- buses on the water, airplanes on the road, cars on the railroad etc. There's a green bus with wings that is particularly obnoxious. All of these pile up; get stuck at seams; don't budge even when you get in them to try to push them away. In any other context it would be conceded that these are spam.

o Regulate billboards and signs and ads of any kind as to size, style, and location. Ideally, the Lindens should provide a network of advertising boards at hangouts, infohubs, and roadside. It would be a great sink for them and help the pent-up advertising of SL that then bleeds into other venues where it shouldn't be like the events list or bots that spam things or idiots getting into groups trying to sell stuff, etc. Those types will always persist but some of it could be addressed by advertising on a scale that isn't just the classifieds, which basically can't be seen or can't work unless you spend like $10,000. Sure, you can spend just $1000 and get some click-throughs, but it's rare. 

The Linden search system is rigged by their own admission to be "fair," so they don't let the highest bidder or the store with the most traffic rise to the top, as these are "gamed," but they use whatever they use, their secret formula, like Google, which they change -- various key words, picks that aren't paid picks; who knows, perhaps something like snapshots taken or purchases made. But whatever, search doesn't work very well and frustrates people trying to start or maintain a business. Perhaps the point here is to drive people to the MP, where search might work better, and the Lindens can skim off their 10%. So that's why I don't think we'll ever see any change here.

Still, it can be posed as an issue and a need, and perhaps independent entrepreneurs could make better billboards. Currently, the lion's share of them are political messages bought up by people with strong views, money, and time on their hands. There's Trump, Sanders or the French yellow jackets. Or spammy things that aren't even in SL, but some kind of click bait Internet sites. Or "fishing games" where you can "earn Lindens" which don't really work. I fly around a fair amount and I don't think I have ever seen a thing on a billboard that I actually wanted to click on, except for the ones I maintain at some infohubs that people rent, and possibly a few other managed communities with ad signs like Mieville.

o No photo-real "privacy" boards; flat trees and bushes, giant pictures, walls, etc. I find these things the ugliest manifestations in SL. There are very nice areas with really nicely maintained builds and landscaping for a 24 sim radius, but some idiot will put up a giant photo-real mountain picture or something, completely out of place, for "privacy" or because they "like to look at them". I ban them in my rentals because while you may like to look at them, those outside of your picture box don't. The ones that have sandy beach scenes from Florida in New England sims or other out of place things are the worst. This is something that I think absolutely nothing can be done about, as the Lindens won't police it and some forums regulars likely are hearty practitioners of this aesthetic barbarism. 

It's worth pointing out that if you are doing this for "privacy," it's insane, as anyone can came over or through those big boards. You can uncheck "avatars can see me" and be invisible. You can put up 3D trees and discourage most casual look-sees and look so much better. There are very cheap good-looking 3D trees -- I see my tenants put out all kinds of them. You can go up in the sky in a skybox with an orb. Or you can stop obsessing about someone seeing you on your cheap Mainland parcel and live with it, if you don't want to spend on a humper bunker island or homestead.

There's more -- like not building smack on the property line for 16 or ideally 32 m -- but that's also something people endlessly argue about -- although when it happens to them, and a giant black box club modeled after the Black Sun in "Snowcrash," they get it better.

What could you do to incentivize this better behaviour? Perhaps group gifts by a neighbourhood association. Perhaps the Lindens could hand out free land to "best neighbourhoods" or something. It's easier to envision the disincentives. For example, I know a store I will never shop at if they don't texture their outward-facing plywood pretty soon....

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by Prokofy Neva

[ChinRey]

I don't think I would have any general rules for all zones or at least not many. The idea would be to allow each zone to have its own rules as much as possible.

I think I would start with five main zones: realism, fantasy, scifi, art and open. Open being pretty much the same as mainland is today. The number of sims allocated to each would of course depend on how much interest there was. It's probably a good idea to have separate continents for them so their sizes could be adjusted independent of each other.

The first three main zones would have to be split into several sub zones with more specific themes and they should be grouped together with related sub zones close to each other if possible.

To me the whole idea with zoning is not to limit the possibilities in SL but increase them by giving each ample space to develop.

Edited November 29, 2019 by ChinRey

[animats]

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Posted 13 hours ago (edited)

13 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

o No domes or builds of any kind in the view

o No self-driven vehicles

o Regulate billboards and signs and ads of any kind as to size, style, and location.

o No photo-real "privacy" boards; flat trees and bushes, giant pictures, walls, etc. 

I agree with most of that. Not for all of Mainland, but for designated areas.

YavaPods seem pretty harmless; I'm OK with those. And SLRR stays on their tracks. There are a few ferryboats, like the one from Heterocera to Sansara. Those are harmless. And there are a few freighters off Jeoghot, which may have something to do with military roleplay there. Other than that, there just aren't that many self-driving vehicles in SL that go off private property. Did I miss anything important?

Agree strongly on the giant wall thing. Those things are ugly and visible from a long way off. People who want to wall off their space should get space intended for that, not mainland. Some of the big private landlords have sims of little islands for exactly that purpose.

Same for skydomes and skyboxes. Prohibit those completely on mainland. I'd go so far as to say that mainland ownership stops at 256m above ground level. Above that point, the space acts like Linden protected land. If you want to be a skybox landlord, buy your own isolated sim to rent out. LL could offer skybox landlords and tenants a free land swap and move to an isolated sim. This encourages people to devote their prims to ground level builds where they benefit the overall value of the area.

Billboards mostly need enforcement of the existing rules. The "giant billboard on 4x4m parcel" thing has to stop.

This would be worth trying in a few areas, to see what happens. Say, one urban area, and one good rural area to start.

[ChinRey]

19 hours ago, animats said:

Same for skydomes and skyboxes. Prohibit those completely on mainland.

...

This encourages people to devote their prims to ground level builds where they benefit the overall value of the area.

There's a slight problem with that one. As a rule of thumb, with well optimized content I calculate with 1,000-2,500 land impact for each level. Let's say 5,000 for good measure - very god measure that is. More than that and you simply run out of space.

25,000 prims restricted to ground level only is a very strong signal to encourage people to fill up with laggy inefficient and, above all, slow loading content.

(This is not a new situation caused by the modern LI and increased prim limits btw. Take a look at Cuge's Village of Kintyre. That entire village was made as a quarter sim skybox back in the pre-mesh days to put the spare prims from a homestead sim to some use! That's what any competent builder could do back then. Today we can do far more.)

If I could get the prim quota for my sims reduced to what there is actually room for on a single level and the tier was also cut accordingly, I would be very happy indeed. it would save me a lot of money and I'm not really fond of sky installations on mainland at all. But since I have to pay for 25,000 prims to the sim, I demand the right to use them all in a good way and that means 14 levels of skyboxes and sky platforms to make room for it all.

Edited November 30, 2019 by ChinRey

[Pussycat Catnap]

I'd look at some RL urban planning - not the stuff done to destroy Black communities like in the 50s and 60s... but the stuff done to revive cities long after that era... Modern stuff, or stuff in Europe / Asia.

First step:

declare continent wide maturity ratings - 6-months for people to relocate, and Linden Lab would slice off any desired piece of abandoned land on a continent of a different maturity rating to make your new plot: first ticket filed first access... WITHIN the rules of the zoning...

I'd clarify the heck out of the maturity policy so it was EXACTLY clear what you can do on G, M, or A land. I'd split A into 2 types: violence and XXX. I would either have to make a line halfway through Zindra for this, or give one old continent to the new rating. Horizons is easy to split as it's a series of islands around a central 'Linden Game'.

- A-viol and A-sex would be seen as 'M' for the other kinds of 'A'... This would essentially mean 'snuff venues' would have NOWHERE on mainland they could be... and I'm fine with that... Personally I'd ban them even from estates... but I suspect I'd get vetoed by management on that...

Where there is ocean between 2 differing ratings the border of maturity ratings would try to be as close to the middle as possible... giving both ratings as much usable water as possible. We would error on the side of favoring M-rating or favoring A-XXX over A-violent.

Over time I would consider phasing out A-violent on mainland. If I could get it approved I would never have an A-violent period; mainland or estate, and split 'M' instead for a less graphic form of violent sims - equivalent to 'mainstream mass-market video games' like Final Fantasy, Overwatch, etc... but not as graphically violent as 'Skyrim' or 'GTA'.

 

So... the ratings divied out... we'd have to think about actual zoning of the lands.

 

I'd declare 1/9 sims commercial, 2/9 mixed use. 2/9 entertainment, 4/9 residential. By default that's a square grid. I would make exceptions where logical. I might even toss this out for whole areas that already had themes.

 

Stronger rules I would not toss:

1. No banlines. Or... flip the banlines code so it works from max height on down instead of ground. So... putting up banlines would block from 4096 to 4056m

2. Scripted ejection methods would not work below 200m off ground. From 200-1000m they would take 15 seconds to execute and be limited to parcel eject. From >1000-2000 they would have the same time limit but be any action. - creating them would also create a SOLID wall at their edges that could not be walked through and was opaque on the outside (transparent to those looking out, solid to those looking in), even to the owner of the script. >2000m they would still make the solid opaque wall but you could have a 0-second instant action.

3. Maturity rating actually enforced on G-land. So no skin shops or mesh body shops on G-land that have displays of the full product - presently there are a LOT of shops with nude art on G-land because this is not enforced.

4. Nothing violating a maturity rating can be seen from that land. There have long been venues that placed graphic nude art on the borders of M-land facing the direction of G-sims. My dividing on continents would make this almost moot... but there is likely to be a border 'somewhere' and it would get enforced...

5. Ground based builds would be limited to 20m above ground on all but full entertainment sims, where they could go to 80m - in both cases needing to attached to ground. Nothing could be in the sky below 500m. From 500-1500 sky based builds would need to have a 'logical sense' - like an airshiip, floating rock, etc... not like a 'basic prim to stand on' or unthemed cube or something. >1500-3000m builds would need to have a 'logical space theme' from the outside. >3000m would be no limits other than the maturity rating and 'commercial / entertainment / residential' rules.

 

Other things:

• - no advert signs externally visible to a build.
• - no photo/texture prim privacy walls. Privacy walls would need to look like logical objects.
• - no sculpties AT ALL.
• - no temp-rezzers AT ALL
• - rules on script usage based around 'script time' - exact numbers would need hashing out. But a general guidline of 'excessive use of a sim's script resources' would be a violation.
• - no light sources crossing into another resident or mole owned build. Essentially the 'light' rule from Bellisseria but extended to mole 'LDPW' builds as well.
• - No 'fullbright' visible from the outside of a build.
• - A rule that residents need to have care and concern for the character of the sims they are on and for being good towards their neighbors, and that moles/lindens could return things violating this.
• - builds designed to harass or intimate one or more neighbors or to get neighbors to 'move out / sell' would be in violation. This would include such things as hostile signs, glow, giant prims, etc...
• - All land set to default of '5' on autoreturn, and a setting of '0' not permitted.
• - rezzing for non-group members only allowed on designated 'sandbox' builds which would need to apply for that status and risk losing it if their build was ever used by ANYONE to grief another parcel - unless the sim lacks a protected 'rez spot'.
• - All sims with protected roads or water would need to have a rez-spot on that road or water.

 

I would ALLOW auto-mated vehicles provided that are phantom and stick to protected land. I would slowly require all protected road and water plots to have something in their name that cold be checked by a script to verify for use in routing such vehicles. Conversely if that is too difficult, a guide prim similar to that used on the public railway system.

 

----------

Lastly I would open up a regular weekly text-based meeting between some key moles, lindens, major mainland land owners, and a limited number of 'concerned residents' (some system to win a spot to attend) to rehash the rules above and talk about ways it might be going wrong and need changing or locations that have become trouble spots. Maybe 8 people at most in this meeting: 1 linden, 1 mole, top 4 landowners (from among those that apply to attend), 2 'ticket winners'.

Why text-based? To allow people to preserve their identity as that avatar AND to make it 'accessible' to the disabled community.

The meeting would allot 1/3rd of it's time to an 'off the record' moment that was not recorded, but the remaining 2/3rds would end up being a weekly blog post. Why? Because that 1/3rd time would allow for some opinions to be more frankly stated, and the other 2/3rds would force people to be civil when on the record, and stick to the point. Anyone who posted the contents of or spoke about the off-the-record part of the meeting would be permanently barred from future meetings and suffer some time of a suspended account. The on the record part of the meeting would begin by each of the 2 ticket winners getting to post up to 500 words of a topic they wanted to bring to the meeting, and 15 minutes of discussing that topic. After this 30 minute period other topics could be discussed.

This meeting would probably be the most important part of my entire list... because I would fully expect the ENTIRE LIST to get revised by this meeting as the above ideas are just 'off the cuff' thoughts that very likely have some severe flaws...

In fact you could almost replace my entire post with just this last part about having the weekly meeting and that would achieve my real goal... making sure there WAS a covenant and that it was thought over and decided by the people with the most experience in what is needed, while still making sure regular residents like me could be heard.

 

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Punky Starchild]

What I love about mainland is no rules, the wild wild west. Private sims are for rules!!!

[ChinRey]

37 minutes ago, Ziggy Starsmith said:

What I love about mainland is no rules, the wild wild west. Private sims are for rules!!!

I don't exactly disagree with you but there are more than 5,000 mainland regions and there simply aren't enough people interested in living in an anarchy to fill up all that space. There is plenty of room for other alternatives on mainland and no, private sims are not usually an option there for a number of reasons.

Prokofy, Animats and Pussycat all seem to argue for new rules applied to mainland as a whole and that has nothing whatsoever to do with zoning. At least it doesn't according to Merriam-Webster. It specifically means that each zone has its own purpose and thus its own rules (or lack of rules). The idea is to open up for more variety and less conflict, not the other way around.

Edited November 30, 2019 by ChinRey

[Pussycat Catnap]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Prokofy, Animats and Pussycat all seem to argue for new rules applied to mainland as a whole and that has nothing whatsoever to do with zoning. At least it doesn't according to Merriam-Webster. It specifically means that each zone has its own purpose and thus its own rules (or lack of rules). The idea is to open up for more variety and less conflict, not the other way around.

Without rules you have conflict.

Zoning is actually all about making rules about what can be built where.

Compare cities like Lima Peru against perhaps... Cleavland Ohio.

- In Lima there is no zoning. Skyscrapers get built next to single family homes, next to trash dumps next to churches next to the national capital next to a whore-house next to a cathedral... it's basically anything goes and it's a mess and a pile of lawsuits.

I don't know Cleavland actually so it might be a bad example... but I am just guessing that it is a US city built after zoning laws came out... so there is probably logical planning to the BOTH the neighborhoods and what people can put in them, AND how they can act towards neighbors... I probably could not place a lead-smelting plant in between a local school and a sex-toys shop in Cleavland... Maybe I'm wrong... but I suspect the rules prevent that...

 

I imagine if you made only 1 single 'no-rules' continent on mainland... it would still be between 20-50% abandoned land...

 

ps: While I suspect Prok and I don't agree on a lot of specifics... I'd actually vote to defer to Prok over deferring to me on this one... Prok's a very long term major landowner... My idea for a weekly meeting basically mentally had someone like Prok in mind: someone who has owned and rented enough land to actually know what the vast majority of residents find 'livable'... My opinions just can't outweigh that experience...

- BUT it does make me want to add one more note to my rule about what landowners would get a seat at that meeting: The only land that'd count would be land currently rented... Because there are some landowners that actually hold 50% or more of their land off-market... so they don't actually know what the residents want... Someone like Prok "appears" to have most of their land in active use... and that should count for more than a 'holding company'.

 

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Mollymews]

if zoning was to be introduced then I would go with theme type

main theme types being: Rural, Urban and Sandbox

then sub-types: Rural Residential, Rural Commercial. Urban Residential, Urban Commercial.  Sandbox doesn't have a sub-type as on Sandbox there are no rules

Linden have begun this kinda classification with Belli. Houseboats and Campers are Rural Residential.  Traditional houses are: Urban: Residential (urban in this case includes surburban)

in the first instance all legacy mainland regions would be Sandbox. And as time permits then the LDPW changes out the right-of-ways aesthetics to the chosen theme. Converting some Abandoned land to the LDPW to help with this. Like a pond on a Rural Residential.  A Mole feed store on a Rural Commercial.  A plaza on a Urban Commercial. A park on a Urban Residential. etc

then the Belli rules could be applied to these themed regions (Patch Linden has indicated that Belli will get some Commercial regions, so whatever those rules are/will be)

essentially these themed regions would be Belli without a LPDW house and with tradeable parcels. Probably with a min. parcel size of 512m. No terraforming, but subdivide and joining allowed

with the Sandbox regions then because anything goes then all the skydomes, privacy walls, rampant advertising, etc etc will end up here 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Mollymews
terra subdivide

[Mollymews]

Beth, as you seemed to be confused, a question raised by the OP posit is: What to do with all the abandoned land on legacy mainland going forward ? Of which there is heaps

the options are:

1) Do nothing. Leave all the regions as sandboxes, as they are now

2) Do something. Progressively convert some regions from sandboxes to themes. And if themes were to be introduced then the Belli rules would be the simplest way to go from an ongoing Linden governance pov

 

[ChinRey]

32 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Without rules you have conflict.

Zoning is actually all about making rules about what can be built where.

Yes, I'm with you this far. But are you talking about having one large "zone" covering the entire mainland? And if you are, why?

[Beth Macbain]

23 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

Beth, as you seemed to be confused, a question raised by the OP posit is: What to do with all the abandoned land on legacy mainland going forward ? Of which there is heaps

the options are:

1) Do nothing. Leave all the regions as sandboxes, as they are now

2) Do something. Progressively convert some regions from sandboxes to themes. And if themes were to be introduced then the Belli rules would be the simplest way to go from an ongoing Linden governance pov

 

That’s a sad face not a confused face, and I don’t feel like getting on my computer to type out the reasons why I don’t like these ideas. 

Maybe tomorrow, but tonight is for binging the First 48 and playing on my phone while sprawled on the couch.

[Pussycat Catnap]

26 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Yes, I'm with you this far. But are you talking about having one large "zone" covering the entire mainland? And if you are, why?

No I had a couple different types of zoning for themes: maturity and 'purpose of use' (commercial, residence, etc)... but then I did also some new mainland wide rules ideas for the intent of reducing blight.

But as I got further into my typing I started thinking that what is really needed is a 'governance body' that is mostly composed to 'experts'... which I consider to be people who have a massive amount of experience in managing large amounts of mainland used by a LOT of residents... in other words... people like Prok.

NOT land barons... but people that actually have occupied plots and tenants they answer to...

Not all Prok... It needs diverse opinions... but people with that level of experience in running mainland communities.

- I have some general rules, but I am just seeing it from my own POV...

I really want the experts to be able to shape and evolve the rules as time goes on...

 

Case in point: I like the concept of the automated vehicles roaming the grid. It makes it look more alive. Prok dislikes it. Honestly Prok is more likely to be right here - having seen their impact across a large number of rentals over the years. I've just 'observed them on the road' as I wandered around. They're a neat idea... but I don't have the perspective to have seen the impact of that idea not being 'perfect'...
- So while I know what I want on mainland... I think what it needs is for people with a wide-perspective to have the authority to hash out the details they have the experience to know about.

 

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Mollymews]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

That’s a sad face not a confused face, and I don’t feel like getting on my computer to type out the reasons why I don’t like these ideas. 

Maybe tomorrow, but tonight is for binging the First 48 and playing on my phone while sprawled on the couch.

this whole thread is pretty speculative, what if this, what if that, maybe this, maybe that

at this time given how much work there is for the LDPW to rehouse the 1,000s of people still in the old Linden Homes then any action by Linden regarding the legacy mainland is pretty far off, if at all

i join in these discussions because I live on legacy mainland and quite enjoy the sandbox aspect of it personally. But I do get why some other mainlanders would prefer a more themed/curated experience with tradeable parcels of size up to the whole region where possible

 

[Alwin Alcott]

3 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

 what is really needed is a 'governance body' that is mostly composed to 'experts'... ... people like Prok.
 

you hate mainlanders? 😵

[Prokofy Neva]

21 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I don't think I would have any general rules for all zones or at least not many. The idea would be to allow each zone to have its own rules as much as possible.

I think I would start with five main zones: realism, fantasy, scifi, art and open. Open being pretty much the same as mainland is today. The number of sims allocated to each would of course depend on how much interest there was. It's probably a good idea to have separate continents for them so their sizes could be adjusted independent of each other.

The first three main zones would have to be split into several sub zones with more specific themes and they should be grouped together with related sub zones close to each other if possible.

To me the whole idea with zoning is not to limit the possibilities in SL but increase them by giving each ample space to develop.

Oh, I think the Lindens should have done that ages ago.

You could have:

o residential

o experimental (scifi, art, etc)

o fantasy/RO

o commercial

o club

The clubs could have extra avatar space.

Since "open" is the default, what the Lindens could have done was set aside 4-square areas here and there that could only be clubs or only experimental or whatever.

Zoning also implies the rules I suggested so these could apply to residential/covenant or however you would refer to those rules.

I wouldn't bother trying to sub-divide because they won't sell. It should be as broad as possible.

But the Lindens do not want babysitting or anything that makes them more responsible than they are already.

Once Section 230 is redacted and there is more regulation of the Internet as there should be, that may change.

I don't think there would be enough financial incentive for the Lindens to build entire zoned continents.

They started in fact with zoning for residential, and created Linden Homes, like it or not. No commerce, no re-renting, no putting in search. I suppose they do allow skyboxes?

But there aren't that many people who want the things you have put out like "scifi" and "art". If there were, they would appear, but they didn't. A few of the muck up the mainland now but if they were consolidated they wouldn't make up a continent.

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

No I had a couple different types of zoning for themes: maturity and 'purpose of use' (commercial, residence, etc)... but then I did also some new mainland wide rules ideas for the intent of reducing blight.

But as I got further into my typing I started thinking that what is really needed is a 'governance body' that is mostly composed to 'experts'... which I consider to be people who have a massive amount of experience in managing large amounts of mainland used by a LOT of residents... in other words... people like Prok.

NOT land barons... but people that actually have occupied plots and tenants they answer to...

Not all Prok... It needs diverse opinions... but people with that level of experience in running mainland communities.

- I have some general rules, but I am just seeing it from my own POV...

I really want the experts to be able to shape and evolve the rules as time goes on...

 

Case in point: I like the concept of the automated vehicles roaming the grid. It makes it look more alive. Prok dislikes it. Honestly Prok is more likely to be right here - having seen their impact across a large number of rentals over the years. I've just 'observed them on the road' as I wandered around. They're a neat idea... but I don't have the perspective to have seen the impact of that idea not being 'perfect'...
- So while I know what I want on mainland... I think what it needs is for people with a wide-perspective to have the authority to hash out the details they have the experience to know about.

 

 

No, I would definitely oppose a resident governance body, even if I were on it. and the Lindens would, too, especially if I were on it.

And that's because it's not elected democratically, and doesn't exist under the rule of law but is an artifact of an authoritarian company, it wouldn't work. Even if you could somehow hold a Soviet-style ballot, you'd still have the problem of the lack of independent press and judiciary.

The only point of this discussion is to see if there is any broad agreement on certain themes so that eventually the Lindens might put in rules or experiments. But no one will put up with resident government.

[Prokofy Neva]

11 hours ago, animats said:

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Posted 13 hours ago (edited)

I agree with most of that. Not for all of Mainland, but for designated areas.

YavaPods seem pretty harmless; I'm OK with those. And SLRR stays on their tracks. There are a few ferryboats, like the one from Heterocera to Sansara. Those are harmless. And there are a few freighters off Jeoghot, which may have something to do with military roleplay there. Other than that, there just aren't that many self-driving vehicles in SL that go off private property. Did I miss anything important?

Agree strongly on the giant wall thing. Those things are ugly and visible from a long way off. People who want to wall off their space should get space intended for that, not mainland. Some of the big private landlords have sims of little islands for exactly that purpose.

Same for skydomes and skyboxes. Prohibit those completely on mainland. I'd go so far as to say that mainland ownership stops at 256m above ground level. Above that point, the space acts like Linden protected land. If you want to be a skybox landlord, buy your own isolated sim to rent out. LL could offer skybox landlords and tenants a free land swap and move to an isolated sim. This encourages people to devote their prims to ground level builds where they benefit the overall value of the area.

Billboards mostly need enforcement of the existing rules. The "giant billboard on 4x4m parcel" thing has to stop.

This would be worth trying in a few areas, to see what happens. Say, one urban area, and one good rural area to start.

It's completely unacceptable to have land "ownership" extend only to 256 because zillions of individual parcel owners have skyboxes and you couldn't accommodate them all. There are likely more individual owners with skyboxes than rentals, but maybe not. Even so, it's not a solution to end ownership of the sky above land; the solution is to prohibit what ruins the enjoyment of SL everyone else, the old community rule 2C.

There is a big difference between skydomes that are taking up an entire sim and skyboxes that sometimes are very small and fit above a 512 or less.

There are too many spam cars, period, and once we have the numbers that prove that hardly anyone actually rides them so there is absolutely no purpose in letting them continue to spam the highways, the Lindens might be persuaded even if the spam kings aren't.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, Mollymews said:

Beth, as you seemed to be confused, a question raised by the OP posit is: What to do with all the abandoned land on legacy mainland going forward ? Of which there is heaps

the options are:

1) Do nothing. Leave all the regions as sandboxes, as they are now

2) Do something. Progressively convert some regions from sandboxes to themes. And if themes were to be introduced then the Belli rules would be the simplest way to go from an ongoing Linden governance pov

 

The Lindens are selling the abandoned sims on the auction list; you can also simply request an entire abandoned sim if you have the funds and tier. It's not going to end the abandoned sim tomorrow. But I see more the dynamics of abandonment now, and how it is a reaction not just to high tier or the inability to get tier paid with rentals and businesses, but it's the antics of a few destroying the view and commercial viability of the many.

The Lindens ended the reign of the Bush Guy and his various imitators by finally realizing that they couldn't sell sims any more on their auctions, which used to have more on them and move faster. They couldn't entice people to faster more expensive sims on later auctions -- when they would be instantly crapped up. So while it took 4 years, Jack Linden finally made and enforced the ad farms rule and stopped caving to the notion that this was "creativity" or "freedom" when it led to tyranny of a few over the many.

Edited November 30, 2019 by Prokofy Neva

[Syo Emerald]

6 hours ago, Mollymews said:

No terraforming

Only after a complete reshape of the continents surface, please. Mainland surface is shaped like complete wilderness, like it never occured to anyone, that its new owners would like to put up a house on that, instead of planting a forest.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Build platforms in the sky are very helpful for creators who need an area to do whatever needs to be done inworld before they set something out for sale. Prevent those on mainland and store owners will have to either cram their work areas into the ground level build or leave mainland. (And "nothing above 250 m" however it's done will guarantee more low level sky platforms - better to have them above 2000 m, which means ownership and ability to set security if needed up there too.)

Separating living space and store space makes sense for those with busy stores, but mine's always been small and low traffic so it's best for me to have them nearby. It's just easier and also increases the chances of a conversation with a browser or customer starting, which is my favourite part of owning a shop. Having a shop and residence on the same sim used to be a done thing. I don't know if it still is. But being on mainland increases the chances of someone with a sense of curiosity and adventure happening by and dropping in for a wee nosy. Those are often the best conversations.

Just some thoughts from a "hobbyist" creator in a niche market. Please bear us in mind - collectively we're important to the vibrancy and diversity of SL.

[Qie Niangao]

We don't really have to live with real world constraints in how zoning works in Second Life. That ol' fuddy-duddy Rosedale would disapprove, but has nothing to say in the matter now, and anyway we have per-parcel windlight and Experience-based portals so we're far beyond his stuck-in-the-mud view of virtual worlds and now we can do better:

Each of us should get to "zone" the surroundings of our parcels as we see fit, and all the surrounding parcels get to do the same. I don't like your urban warehouse build? fine: I can make it completely invisible to any avatar on my parcel. You don't like my bucolic Olde English Cottage and cow pasture? No problem: just hide it from everybody on your parcel. No muss, no fuss, no extra work for the Moles (so maybe instead they can minimally landscape some abandoned land to look a little less desolate -- and if the neighbors don't want to render the landscaping, they can hide that, too).

Yeah, there's some development involved here, both viewer- and server-side, but every viewer has some de-render functionality already, and the server side can't be much that harder than EEP (more data, true, but less Windlight kludgery).

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Oh, I think the Lindens should have done that ages ago.

They did that long ago. Some of the earliest regions are themed and when they introduced the telehubs, the idea was that the regions right next to them would be commercial and public ones while the ones further away would be residental. There were also the "I am" notecard givers (I think they were disguised as mailboxes but I may be wrong). You put one of them in fron of your house, added a notecard telling a bit about yuorself and your interest and when somebody were looking for a new home, they would walk around and check the info notecards of the established residents until they found a community of people who shared their interests.

What they totally forgot to take into account that their customers are humans.

I'm afraid the horse has fled now so it's too late to close the barn door. The existing mainland is what it is and drastic changes are bound to backfire badly.

 

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't think there would be enough financial incentive for the Lindens to build entire zoned continents.

Isn't that what they are doing with Bellisseria?

Bellisseria is only one zone though. We need a lot more variety in themes and it's simply not possible for the Moles to cover them all simply because there aren't enough of them. There aren't enough of them for all the work that needs to be done and, perhaps even more important, there aren't enough of them to provide the variety of creative input that is required.

 

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The Lindens are selling the abandoned sims on the auction list; you can also simply request an entire abandoned sim if you have the funds and tier.

It may be rude of me to say this on LL's official forum but to be absolutely honest, if you want to buy and develop an entire sim, at least not unless you're a well established and experienced landowner already.

Yes, there are far more people in SL than on all other grids combined but the chances you  are going to be noticed by anybody outside your close circle of friends is microscopic and the the tier is more than ten times what you have to pay elsewhere.

I don't know but I'll probably leave this thread now. Not because it isn't interesting (it is) but because it's rather fruitless. As I said, there's no point closign the barn door after the horse has fled and not matter how good the dieas here may be, they're all about could-have-beens and should-have-beens.

[ChinRey]

I didn't actually say I was leaving so here's one more.

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Each of us should get to "zone" the surroundings of our parcels as we see fit, and all the surrounding parcels get to do the same.

Something like this then.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No, I would definitely oppose a resident governance body, even if I were on it. and the Lindens would, too, especially if I were on it.

And that's because it's not elected democratically, and doesn't exist under the rule of law but is an artifact of an authoritarian company, it wouldn't work. Even if you could somehow hold a Soviet-style ballot, you'd still have the problem of the lack of independent press and judiciary.

The only point of this discussion is to see if there is any broad agreement on certain themes so that eventually the Lindens might put in rules or experiments. But no one will put up with resident government.

Ok. I do see some themes if we step away from specific in the various ideas.

My desire for a governance body is about making sure the residents have a voice to the lindens, without it being pure chaos... as in how do we all tell them what we want, without meetings that dissolve in a mess of yelling at each other... I figured you'd not like the idea... but I would also say that groups like this are worst when they're composed of people who wanted that power... best when made of people who are resistant and wary of abuse.
- If there's a better way to make sure they know general resident ideas, I'd be for that... to me that's part of zoning - figuring out how to decide it... BUT... it's probably a different topic.

---------------

So... as for the rest of my post...

It looks like maybe half of the ideas everyone is putting forward 'partly match' other people.

 

• We all seem to want to do something about sky clutter
• We all want something done about those privacy walls that don't 'fit in'.
• I think most people think ban lines and security orbs are not being used right.
• We all dislike the advert spam
• I defer to others on vehicles... as I noted in one of my posts up there - while I like them as a concept I'm just on my land, I don't have the broad experience to see the flaws in how a cool idea actually ends up working...

(obviously when I say "we all" above - the people creating these issues are not in agreement... )