A Suggestion on Improving Mainland

[Annie Evergreen]

Quartz Mole had mentioned in another thread that if anyone had suggestions on how to improve mainland, start a topic. Here I am, starting one! I've been thinking about this for a while now. There's lots and lots of empty abandoned mainland. Suppose LL took some of those odd irregular parcels, and let people decorate them in a way to enhance the world. Let's say, set a place temporarily so one resident can build a little pocket of interest. No longer than 2 weeks. During that time, the resident can place buildings, landscaping, trinkets to be found, whatever they think will make the world a better place. At the end of the two weeks, the moles come out, change the permissions so the temporary decorator can't make additional changes. Then they decide if it's actually an enhancement or a giant detriment, and either lock the items in place for enjoyment by all, or remove/return them and make a mental note not to let that person try decorating for them anywhere else.

With 20 years of items that members have purchased, there's an enormous variety that can be put out. Obviously not no-copy items. But for anyone who sees something and think it's amazing, they could click on an item and get the name and maybe purchase it for themselves. It could drive sales. It could also encourage people to move into abandoned land that's near a nicely decorated area.

It could be sort of an ongoing contest, do a certain number every month, the only prize would be bragging rights.

[Persephone Emerald]

Perhaps you can change the thread title to "Suggestions on Improving Mainland, since we're sure to get many now that you've started this thread?

 

Let me see if I can think of something relatively easy to implement....

 

What about removing the 10% group bonus and giving that 10% bonus instead to anyone (individual or group) who owns at least 1024 square meters in a region?

Those of us who know about the group bonus love it, but does it really benefit LL to keep individual landowners from using it too? If the requirement for getting extra land were simply that an individual has enough land for a home or small business (rather than a few 16 m  parcels) this would encourage people to buy up those small parcels for the added tier.

I don't think it would be easy to restrict people from buying and selling 16 m parcels, but maybe LL can make them more attractive for landscaping rather than for ads?

p.s.

Also, while this might be hard to enforce, I think all ads on mainland parcels smaller than 64 square meters should be against the rules.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Persephone Emerald
to add p.s. - a 2nd idea

[Aethelwine]

I would like to see some active purchasing or reserving from sale parcels being used or that potentially could become protected waterways along areas like west and north nautilus. I think there is potential to increase value and customer experience at a relatively modest cost of time.

[Qie Niangao]

The other thread was about a Mainland problem that's the polar opposite of profound, so not the most important, but increasingly urgent at the moment: the asymmetrical Tragedy of the Commons impact that "advertising" microparcels have on every other resident within drawing distance, and the resulting exploitative, extortion-based market in those parcels. Over (many) years a wide array of proposals emerged for alleviating this problem.

I now think the main factor in success of any proposal is its efficiency: it's just unrealistic to expect Governance to perform some investigation before resolving the many such land exploits that are formed anew every day. Governance, too, has more important things to address, no matter the urgent need to address the microparcel problem. The old saw, "don't try to use technology to solve a social problem" is usually daft, but especially here; let's reserve Governance's responsibility for fixing this to the exceptional cases, and make the general problem one of accounting.

This is to favor others' proposals to raise the minimum amount of tier cost incurred on a region. A landowner can continue to hold a single 16 m² parcel on a region, but it will cost some much larger amount of tier. Some propose 512 m².

An alternate minimum might be whatever the minimum size a parcel must be to appear in Places search (192 m² if I recall correctly), because at the same time parcels below that threshold should be absolutely restricted from appearing in any kind of Search, especially not Land For Sale search, nor would they be distinguishable on the map when for sale because whatever server messaging populates that information simply wouldn't do so anymore.

Now I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this would completely finesse any fussing about such changes being a "taking" of anybody's virtual "property", so much so that even Libertarian Lab shouldn't have qualms about it: You can still own microparcels, we've merely adjusted the Land product pricing to meet Mainland marketing objectives (which would be absolutely true). You can still sell them at any price, we've just decluttered the sales information for larger parcels (also 100% true).

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

@Patch Linden, @Derrick Linden, @Quartz Mole

Dear LL. Please...

1. Complete all uncompleted mainland continents (Sansara, Gaeta I, Zindra).

2. Give all mainland continents fully navigable protected coastlines for sea traffic.

3. Connect Bellisseria and mainland continents to each other with permanant road and rail bridges or tunnels, so that Residents and "Bellidents" (Bellisseria Residents) might actually start to move around the rest of the world with their cars, trucks, bicycles, boats and trains without feeling like they're trapped in individual continents.

4. Invent some kind of new separate localised physical water layer, or a boat lifting system like canal locks, so that transferring boats from higher to lower water surface levels (and vice-versa) becomes possible and practible. This way, boats could then travel through continents like Sansara without becoming trapped by mountain ranges, different level water levels and dams.

5. Place snow permanantly on top of SL's tallest mountain range in Campion region. Because SL's tallest mountains without snow on them look really stupid, especially as smaller sized mountains and molehills further south in the Snowlands and Sakura are covered in the stuff!

6. Create a permanant and official SL history museum inworld in the original Sansara continent. A museum which doesn't only exist temporarily during annual SLB events.

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Love Zhaoying]

30 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The other thread was about a Mainland problem that's the polar opposite of profound, so not the most important, but increasingly urgent at the moment: the asymmetrical Tragedy of the Commons impact that "advertising" microparcels have on every other resident within drawing distance, and the resulting exploitative, extortion-based market in those parcels. Over (many) years a wide array of proposals emerged for alleviating this problem.

I now think the main factor in success of any proposal is its efficiency: it's just unrealistic to expect Governance to perform some investigation before resolving the many such land exploits that are formed anew every day. Governance, too, has more important things to address, no matter the urgent need to address the microparcel problem. The old saw, "don't try to use technology to solve a social problem" is usually daft, but especially here; let's reserve Governance's responsibility for fixing this to the exceptional cases, and make the general problem one of accounting.

This is to favor others' proposals to raise the minimum amount of tier cost incurred on a region. A landowner can continue to hold a single 16 m² parcel on a region, but it will cost some much larger amount of tier. Some propose 512 m².

An alternate minimum might be whatever the minimum size a parcel must be to appear in Places search (192 m² if I recall correctly), because at the same time parcels below that threshold should be absolutely restricted from appearing in any kind of Search, especially not Land For Sale search, nor would they be distinguishable on the map when for sale because whatever server messaging populates that information simply wouldn't do so anymore.

Now I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this would completely finesse any fussing about such changes being a "taking" of anybody's virtual "property", so much so that even Libertarian Lab shouldn't have qualms about it: You can still own microparcels, we've merely adjusted the Land product pricing to meet Mainland marketing objectives (which would be absolutely true). You can still sell them at any price, we've just decluttered the sales information for larger parcels (also 100% true).

Did someone make a serious suggestion yet to "Add Derender to the Official SL Viewer"?  That would go a long way for dealing with certain issues.

[Qie Niangao]

Derender isn't good enough, though. I only ever use it for photos (which I very rarely take) because 99% of my interest in how my parcel looks is how it looks through others' eyes, and viewer-side derender is basically the opposite of that.

What I very much would favor, though, is a land-based derender with a server component, such that land owners could choose which if any items outside their parcel would be visible from avatar (or cam?) positions within the parcel.

I imagine this would need some design effort to be performant.

It would also violate Philip's various old (obsolete?) dicta about a "continuous world" because it definitely could create extensive differences, moving from parcel to parcel, in how stuff looks. Honestly, though, in that way it's not that different from EEP.

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It would also violate Philip's various old (obsolete?) dicta about a "continuous world" because it definitely could create extensive differences, moving from parcel to parcel, in how stuff looks. Honestly, though, in that way it's not that different from EEP.

Blurring the lines between SL as we know it and "Instances" like in Sansar.

[Marigold Devin]

Of course Linden Lab should scoop up all the odd little parcels and clear out ALL the ad boards. Every single one. That would pretty up the mainland such a lot. And instant fines for anyone putting up ad boards onto other sized parcels too. 

Any business worth its salt becomes successful through word of mouth not ad boards. 

[Nukasa22]

58 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

A landowner can continue to hold a single 16 m² parcel on a region, but it will cost some much larger amount of tier. Some propose 512 m².

I'm not sure what my final suggestion would bet yet, but the problems I see with this one are 2:

1) I see the danger of this turning into a scheme like this: Somebody just holds 512m² worth of micro parcel space in a region and just rents this out. In which case the amount of ad parcels could actually skyrocket.

2) There are legitimate reasons to not own more than 16m² in a region. I think it's connected to vehicles, too.

The micro parcel topic would probably deserve a whole own thread since it's a very complicated issue.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

Of course Linden Lab should scoop up all the odd little parcels and clear out ALL the ad boards. Every single one. That would pretty up the mainland such a lot. And instant fines for anyone putting up ad boards onto other sized parcels too. 

I was thinking about "how" to do this.  I think, instituting a new Mainland Covenant is one way.

[Marigold Devin]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I was thinking about "how" to do this.  I think, instituting a new Mainland Covenant is one way.

Yes, the covenant for mainland regions does need to change, and when people sign up as premium members they need to also agree not to put up ad boards. 

I hate that mainland has often been looked down upon, when there are truly some fabulous people living in parts of it, and some great places to encounter and explore, but I hate also that it gets abused and treated like a "council estate". There are no typical council house dwellers or mainland dwellers, but the lowest common denominator does tend to pull the reputation of the rest of the place down. 

[Qie Niangao]

20 minutes ago, Nukasa22 said:

I'm not sure what my final suggestion would bet yet, but the problems I see with this one are 2:

1) I see the danger of this turning into a scheme like this: Somebody just holds 512m² worth of micro parcel space in a region and just rents this out. In which case the amount of ad parcels could actually skyrocket.

2) There are legitimate reasons to not own more than 16m² in a region. I think it's connected to vehicles, too.

The micro parcel topic would probably deserve a whole own thread since it's a very complicated issue.

Re #1, yeah, I've been wondering if the minimum should apply to:

• total owned land in the region (so one 16 is the same tier as one 512, say, or the same tier as up to sixteen 16s), the usual form of this proposal, or instead
• individual parcels (so sixteen 16s would amount to 16*512 = 16,384 m² tier).

I'm now thinking the latter. Of course in theory they could still rent out pieces of parcels, informally, but I'm not sure there's any realistic market for any of this. It's not as if Mainland "advertising" has actual value, but I suppose in SL even time-shared extortion could become a thing. Such hopefully exotic exploits may be the "exceptional cases" for which Governance would still be responsible.

Re #2, agreed, and my rail holdings group has a few 16s scattered around the SLRR. I'd have to give them up if they weren't worth the minimum tier to me. I can live with that.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Re #1, yeah, I've been wondering if the minimum should apply to:

• total owned land in the region (so one 16 is the same tier as one 512, say, or the same tier as up to sixteen 16s), the usual form of this proposal, or instead
• individual parcels (so sixteen 16s would amount to 16*512 = 16,384 m² tier).

I'm now thinking the latter. Of course in theory they could still rent out pieces of parcels, informally, but I'm not sure there's any realistic market for any of this. It's not as if Mainland "advertising" has actual value, but I suppose in SL even time-shared extortion could become a thing. Such hopefully exotic exploits may be the "exceptional cases" for which Governance would still be responsible.

Re #2, agreed, and my rail holdings group has a few 16s scattered around the SLRR. I'd have to give them up if they weren't worth the minimum tier to me. I can live with that.

..I was once dumb enough to pay someone L$$$$$$ for a micro-parcel they had, that was completely surrounded by my land.

So, there's that scenario: Micro-parcels surrounded by land with just 1 owner.

[Qie Niangao]

14 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

So, there's that scenario: Micro-parcels surrounded by land with just 1 owner.

The market theory of the case, though, is that making it tier-expensive enough will discourage anybody from owning those microparcels.

[Quartz Mole]

It would be good to hear ideas that don't involve micro-parcels -- I think that topic has been very thoroughly explored recently.

[Extrude Ragu]

To agree on how to improve the mainland, we first have to identify its intended use, what makes land ownership on the mainland special vs. renting in a private sim, and what our success metrics are.

The following are just my opinions:

Why should a Resident want to own a slice of Mainland instead of a private Sim?

Unlike private sims, where the appeal is ultimate privacy, the appeal of land on the mainland should be to be to be connected to something bigger.

• Exploration: Residents should prefer to rent on the mainland if they want to be able to leave their home or business and explore.
• Neighbors: Residents should prefer to rent on the mainland if they like that they can bump into neighbors outside their home or whilst out exploring.
• Recreation: Residents should prefer to rent on the mainland if they like to be able to walk from their home and find recreational activities such as Parks, Museums, Clubs, and other activities.
• Great Views: Residents want to feel happy in their homes.
• Shopping: Residents want to be able to walk out of their home and go on a shopping spree, or just window shop and see what's new.

What makes a successful parcel of Mainland?

Given the above, any single parcel of Mainland to be successful should therefor in my mind have

• Access to public right of way and connected travel infrastructure
  Without access to public rights of way, there is literally no benefit to renting on the mainland vs renting on a private sim as it negates all of the positives the mainland might be able to provide.
  At minimum, every single parcel of mainland should be accessible via footpath.
• Access to recreational activities within the sim.
  Walking is the default mode of locomotion in SecondLife. Whilst purchasing a vehicle will let a resident explore further, A resident shouldn't need a vehicle to enjoy the mainland. There should always be access to a park or something fun to do close to any residents home on the mainland.
• A Guaranteed quality of living
  Where possible, Covenants should be updated to guarantee a level of enjoyment for residents free from intentional blight created by land scalpers. We don't expect perfection, but expectations of virtual worlds are higher today than they were in the past. SecondLife is trying to attract a new generation of players who are used to high quality 3D worlds, and blight items intentionally created by scalpers should be seen as against SecondLife's long term business interests and dealt with as such.

 

Every single parcel on the mainland should be measured against these success metrics, and if they do not meet them, a plan should be made to meet them.

This might sound brutal, but it's the only way I can see the mainland ever being appealing to a new generation of SecondLife users.

These are just some initial thoughts.

[Love Zhaoying]

In general, if a Mainland covenant were instituted for "any changes" - then I see a general challenge:

- How to notify users that there is a change?

- Many users may not log in often at all - so "changing / removing / etc." anything for them, if they only login every few months, etc. will be a big "question mark".

 

[Persephone Emerald]

Could there be a way to replace the old terrain textures and sculpted plants with nicer textures and low land impact mesh landscaping plants en mass, rather than Moles having to replace them one by one? They might still have to manually adjust them for height and so they wouldn't be growing out of the roads.

One of the reasons I moved from mainland to Bellisseria was the ugly, slow to rez plants and roads. LL may have problems with controlling resident builds, but they should have control over LDPW created content.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Persephone Emerald
Spacing

[Persephone Emerald]

43 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

To agree on how to improve the mainland, we first have to identify its intended use, what makes land ownership on the mainland special vs. renting in a private sim, and what our success metrics are.

The following are just my opinions:

Why should a Resident want to own a slice of Mainland instead of a private Sim?

Unlike private sims, where the appeal is ultimate privacy, the appeal of land on the mainland should be to be to be connected to something bigger.

• Exploration: Residents should prefer to rent on the mainland if they want to be able to leave their home or business and explore.
• Neighbors: Residents should prefer to rent on the mainland if they like that they can bump into neighbors outside their home or whilst out exploring.
• Recreation: Residents should prefer to rent on the mainland if they like to be able to walk from their home and find recreational activities such as Parks, Museums, Clubs, and other activities.
• Great Views: Residents want to feel happy in their homes.
• Shopping: Residents want to be able to walk out of their home and go on a shopping spree, or just window shop and see what's new.

What makes a successful parcel of Mainland?

Given the above, any single parcel of Mainland to be successful should therefor in my mind have

• Access to public right of way and connected travel infrastructure
  Without access to public rights of way, there is literally no benefit to renting on the mainland vs renting on a private sim as it negates all of the positives the mainland might be able to provide.
  At minimum, every single parcel of mainland should be accessible via footpath.
• Access to recreational activities within the sim.
  Walking is the default mode of locomotion in SecondLife. Whilst purchasing a vehicle will let a resident explore further, A resident shouldn't need a vehicle to enjoy the mainland. There should always be access to a park or something fun to do close to any residents home on the mainland.
• A Guaranteed quality of living
  Where possible, Covenants should be updated to guarantee a level of enjoyment for residents free from intentional blight created by land scalpers. We don't expect perfection, but expectations of virtual worlds are higher today than they were in the past. SecondLife is trying to attract a new generation of players who are used to high quality 3D worlds, and blight items intentionally created by scalpers should be seen as against SecondLife's long term business interests and dealt with as such.

Every single parcel on the mainland should be measured against these success metrics, and if they do not meet them, a plan should be made to meet them.

This might sound brutal, but it's the only way I can see the mainland ever being appealing to a new generation of SecondLife users.

These are just some initial thoughts.

Focusing on what makes mainland uniquely desirable is great. I agree with these points.

I'd love to see finished, navigable coastlines for all the mainland continents. I doubt LL would be able to afford enough server space to do so, but adding a few key water regions might be possible, especially if the old Linden Home regions were eliminated. 

I'd like to see more roads and Linden owned public green spaces.

A mainland covenant requiring skyboxes to be at 1000 m or higher would be good, but it would be impossible to enforce given LL staff limitations.

[CarlaWetter]

There are certain blights on mainland that I'd like to see whisked away. Namely those stacked skydome rentals that do nothing for the ground, airspace or surrounding regions apart from being a complete pain to look at. Having those relocated to their own subcontinent would be some serious progress for mainland at large. And may be there'd be a re-use for some day to be vacated old premium home lands?

Such a move may come together with establishing some rules about minimum height for skybox installations. Which, I admit, needs some serious thinking about, considered that the idea of 'flying islands' could well be seen as in context with the lands below.

[Marianne Little]

Create lakes in those huge amounts of abandoned land. Inland has no interest. People can ask to buy abandoned land cheap, but they do not want it. Water add interest. It is calming to look at. If the water is like 1/4 region size, it is wide enough to feel open and airy. Such a lake placed where 4 regions meet, attract buyers in all the four regions.

Make more protected land. The moles has made a lot of good content lately. What is best, a server run for a region who has one 512m parcel that's sold? Or use 1/6 region resources, or even less, on protected land with a bit of trees and rocks, and have people buy up more land there?

Change ugly ground textures.

Add more roads. Where private parcels are in the way, ask the owner if LL can move let us say 32 m of their land, to connect the roads. Benefit for land owner, they get a parcel next to protected road.

Same with railroads.

When we sign the TOS, we agree to let LL do just what they want with us. If people has not logged in for years, and do not reply to emails, LL could even shuffle some of their land. If they log in and is not satisfied, LL point to the TOS and also say "Well, now you have a road in front of your house, and all we did was moving 32 m of your land to the East. Your land is still the same size, and it is more valuable now".

I know a covenant is a very difficult theme. Mainland is where people can do just what they want, as long as it is legal. And many old residents will go totally mad if Mainland get a rule or two. No matter if it is as sensible as "no skyboxes under 2000m". People hear "rules" and go amok. They say it is ruining their freedom. "I need to have my skybox at 1879m height, you tyrants!"

But when the first generation Linden Homes is emptied out, LL should make a Mainland 2.0 of it.

The most important thing is fixed land sizes that can't be divided. Make these plots the same as the tier steps. This is what has ruined Mainland, people slice up land in all kind of weird sizes. And I understand it, who will pay tier up to next step, when they can avoid it by cutting off some land and abandon it? This way Mainland has become an insane mix of all plot sizes.

Add some of the Bellisseria rules like no skyboxes under 2000m. Ban 64 m privacy walls. To take away ban lines would be the big question. Yes or no? It could be yes, keep banlines and LL could make it easier for traffic; let the protected land along the roads/railroads be wider. Residents could extend driveways to the road. They already do it, and LL think it is fine as long as it is not blocking access.

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Marianne Little

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Go and take a look at Bellisseria on the world map and you will see a huge network of roads inside it.

Look more closely inworld at it, and you'll notice there aren't any parked cars, trucks or trains anywhere. Despite all the vehicle rez zones in Bellisseria, not a single person drives vehicles around Bellisseria either.

The roads and rails are completely empty, unused, completely redundant and pointless. Even if all the roads there were suddenly removed, I doubt they would even be missed or changed resident's behaviours. Perhaps the roads are merely decorative features instead of actually being used for transport?

Why are the roads unused? Because there's nowhere for Bellisseria's residents to actually drive to!  There are literally no roads, bridges or tunnels out of Belisseria to get over onto the mainland, with all its mainland Linden Roads, mainland destinations, mainland events and mainland shops. Or just to go out for a long exploratory drive into the wilderness of the mainland!

Connecting Bellisseria to mainland with roads bridges and tunnels would undoubtably be beneficial to both areas. So why doesn't LL actually do something about it?

Edited June 9, 2023 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Marianne Little]

Lower your tier, and also, let people pay for what they buy in square m. Not for the next tier step.

It would be much more tempting to buy Mainland, if the tier wasn't measured so weird as it is today. Let us pay for what we use.

A system like that would also limit land cutting. People could buy more weird land sizes and join them, they would not have to buy more than they need and then slice off parts because they are a few m over a step in the tier system.

It must be possible in these days, to have the technology where people pay per m?

[Nukasa22]

Why does mainland have so much unprotected land at all? It contradicts the overall logic of mainland.
If the purpose of mainland is to be a connected world, then it is failing its purpose, since all unprotected parcels are not connected. So mainland is supposed to be a connected world but most of it is not connected. Doesn't make sense in my eyes. And this is reflected by the looks of those parcels that are next to protected land and those parcels that are not next to protected land. People on a parcel next to protected land often try to fit into the neighbourhood. People on an unprotected parcel put a skybox on the ground. Or create mountain tall walls. Of course there are few examples of the opposite, but this is the general situation.