Ethical Land Dealers

[Prokofy Neva]

This phrase may sound like an oxymoron, but hear me out.

"Blood Diamonds"

So there's a concept in the international human rights field, that you don't try to stop massive human rights violators you can't stop anyway, but you try to applaud, reward, encourage those who don't violate human rights despite being in the same tough conditions. So, for example, in tackling the "blood diamonds" issue -- diamonds extracted under conditions of civil war, oppression, state corruption etc. because you'll never be able to (although naturally nowadays there's some geek who believes it can be achieved with chatGPT and so on) -- you give a certificate of approval or at least appreciation to the good guys whom you have found do not export "blood diamonds".

Bad Faith

I would always point out that in working with the societies of the former Soviet Union, this was really impossible because these states were schooled in lying, concealing, distracting, etc. as a way of life and a methodology honed to perfection by the KGB with years of disinformation expertise. These countries would sign any treaty or pledge or make any declaration ("We pledge to cut fossil fuels 50%") just to look good, just to make it seem like they played by the rules and were the good guys, and they would use this method to needlessly hammer Western states with a fraction of the state-sanctioned murders or carbon emissions of a Western democracy. The US, which would take this treaty or pledge seriously, would say "We can't sign this because we can't put a carton of milk in every refrigerator" and Americans won't mind this because many will say "We don't want Hillary looking into our refrigerators."

Even so, I think it would be good to work out a set of ethical principles for land dealing. I'm fully aware that the vision of a smoke-pixel-filled back room with greedy land barons wedged in among their big money bags like the Monopoly guy working out "ethics" is like -- oh, never mind. Still.

Ineffective Altruism and Edge-Casing

A problem with these sorts of exercises in SL (I can remember an ill-fated Better Business Bureau and also  an ineffective altruist recycling abandoned land with a pledge you could join to help sell *their* land LOL) is that some people grab on to such "Good Houskeeping" rules as a flag to burnish their reputation and appear "better" when they are not. Some use it as a stick to beat enemies or competitors. There's an ugly sculpty kiosk with principles on it which is used more to despoil the view and simply spite other land-holders and sometimes extort a sales price out of them (I'm looking at one rn that is a 64 on sale for $11,000L "near me") than it is to inspire.

No to BBBs of Any Kind

That's why I'm not for creating any organization around this. They have their place, but I am not interested in joining somebody else's lead-gen rep-enhancer or even rep-launderer. I'm not for making kiosks that are just "one more thing" like a man-child's totem pole from some long ago teen-grid game. I'm not for doing anything with these concepts except debating them in good will and those that opt to do them can do them and I think their customers will only appreciate them.

Land dealers who write "Landlords Hate Us Cuz DO WE HAVE THE DEALZ 4 U!" and engage in lousy manipulations even as they chortle with glee at their rivals' imagined misfortunes are always going to laugh at/game/not do these things and pretend they're crazy or that if someone expresses them as an ideal, why, they must want to impose them on everybody, like an evangelist who gets up in your grill, asking you if you have accepted Sam Altman as your personal Lord and Saviour yet.

SO.

Here is my beginnings of a proposed list:

o All rentals should be refundable for a small cancelation fee.

o No sale, rent, builds, or content on any parcel less than 512 m2 unless part of a contiguous residential, rentals, or commercial area you manage.

o No offering of land simultaneously for sale AND rent.

o No skyboxes below 500 m2.

o No security orbs on the ground or below 500 m2, and there, with a range only of the perimeter of the skybox or sky platform.

o No spinning anything, for any reason.

o No builds over two storeys or [X m] high.

o Towers of any kind should only be placed on sims zoned for this type of structure over and only by owners who own at least 50% of a region.

o If over 6 in number, breedables must be placed in "sleep" or "off" mode at all times except when feeding or riding.

o Airports must be placed on the ground only and not in the sky and may only be two storeys (30 m2) in height.

o Any build of any kind should not obstruct the view, encroach on any other owner's land or Linden land.

o Do not rez large domes in the view but go up at least 500 m2, and if you must stack them, keep them 20 m2 apart so that chat is not easily read/heard.

o Avoid temp-rez plants, vendors, or temp-rez of any kind as it does indeed take from a region's land impact buffers and can confuse the remaining count.

o Don't use textures over 512; 1024 already lags the region that much more; 768, your urban legend neat trick isn't so viable when everyone does it.

o Script usage should be kept to [x] and monitored often.

o Do not enable any of your properties or tenants to take up all 42 avatar slots on a sim; be considerate of your neighbours.

o Avoid the use of any bots, registered or not; if you believe you need a bot to send a group invitation that takes up one avatar slot on a region, then perhaps you should consider why you don't log into SL to take care of your customers OR why you can't have join on demand with a simple scripted prim for immediate rezzing, with other powers like ban, media, etc. added as another group role later at the manager's convenience but ideally within 24 hours.

o Do not tell your customers that your messages cap; they need not cap when you tie your account to any email; it need not be your RL work email which can be inadvertently revealed; it can be a gmail address made just for the purpose of customer support.

So usually when people hear you are cooking up "Rules for Life" they get mad, they think you're going to impose such rules on THEM, they think you are going to "get to the Lindens" or to some  levers of power to change things (you know, like they do, when they keep the levers of power paralyzed to suit their own bottom-feeding agenda).

There, I can only answer: by what authority could I impose any rules on you? I can only impose rules on the region I own or parcel I own unless I BUY THE VIEW.

As a BUYER OF THE VIEW over 19 years in ways you cannot begin to imagine, I shrug off such whining because I do believe you don't even have to BUY THE VIEW (and you'll never afford it on 4-8-12ff sims anyways] to try to make things nicer for you and your neighbours.

Skybox Height

Obviously, everybody has an opinion about the height of skyboxes. The Lindens say 2000 meters in Bellisseria and another prominent suck-up says 2000 meters to which again, I shrug. Lindens control the entire region, create the easements and tier them, and deploy perhaps 12-20 houses per sim (go and count them) which often remain half or more empty. Same with boutique abandoned-land-planners. They don't have to live in the "real virtual world" which is more than 20 units on a sim or even 40, sometimes smaller than 512, because you offer affordable housing, NOT because you are a scumlord, scamlord, or slumlord (I shouldn't have to define these terms for you). Fortunately

So you settle for 500, with 20 m2 space-out beyond which convos can't be seen; you turn on "avatars are invisible" and you try to make it work. It doesn't sometimes. But 2000 is an impossible dream given the limit of up to only 4096 m2, beyond which you cannot place a prim.

Microparcels

Obviously, there are edge-casers galore who can do all kinds of nip-ups and tricks around the micro-parcel and make all kinds of silly claims around them. But the reality was never better articulated there by the Linden who was once VP of Product years ago, when she confronted one of these annoying edge-casers operating in entirely bad faith: 

"What are you doing on that 16 m2, your knitting?"

Because there isn't anything you are doing there that isn't a) advertising b) data scraping with bots or scripts c) annoying other people d) extorting a sale to "buy the view". There really is never any legitimacy about the claims of their "necessity" although I realize there will be someone who says they need it to deploy their virtual 3D printer that is going to print a tiny, needed plastic part that goes in a piece of equipment that will save a little child's lung, somewhere. Truly I do.

Airports

And on and on. I never understand the fascination of airports at all in a world where we can fly; I never understand why they need to be up in the sky when they can fly from the ground up to the sky and keep the view whole.

Salentals

Yes, I get it that search is broken and that's why people invade the map with "salentals", and yes, no doubt somewhere I even have one lot like that for sale although in general, I avoid the practice because I really don't like the feeling of leaving land out for sale, logging off, and risking a tenant coming in, paying the rental box, and then having someone else snipe it out from under them in a sale. Sure, I can refund them. But they may have an unpleasant 4-8-12 hours waiting until I get onliine again. No revolution is worth it if even one child's tear has to be shed, eh, comrade?

Script Time

On script usage, Fantasy Faire has one number; Stop 'n Shop has another (I hope); somebody else's event has yet another -- we get all that. A number can be developed.

Height

Again, these are not rules anyone can impose grid-wide; the Lindens will never impose them except in part in Bellisseria -- they already do in some areas. Not sure there's a rule against putting up giant spires 64 m or higher in Belli, but I think there must be, because I never see them. And so on.

These would only be a set of rules that some group of land dealers would evolve and implement. It wouldn't necessarily even be good for business.

Some people want to ban the heck out of everyone on a sim except their immediate sexual partner from the ground to 4096 and in all four directions of the compass. Even so, not everyone wants this and I think the majority can live in peace if the height is 500, and the orb is 20-40 m in range for the perimeter of the skybox, only.

I do these things.

So can you.

 

 

 

[Persephone Emerald]

TLDR

I read about halfway through your post. I think there are some good ideas here, but also too many restrictions. 

Why limit buildings to 2 stories when some people want castles and cities with tall buildings?

If you can't enforce standards - not even with public disapproval - they won't be followed. Just look at how often people toss trash on the ground in RL. Many people are just self-centered pigs. (Apologies to actual pigs.)

Edited December 14, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[Diablo Lioncourt]

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Here is my beginnings of a proposed list:

1 All rentals should be refundable for a small cancelation fee.

2 No sale, rent, builds, or content on any parcel less than 512 m2 unless part of a contiguous residential, rentals, or commercial area you manage.

3 No offering of land simultaneously for sale AND rent.

4 No skyboxes below 500 m2.

5 No security orbs on the ground or below 500 m2, and there, with a range only of the perimeter of the skybox or sky platform.

6 No spinning anything, for any reason.

7 No builds over two storeys or [X m] high.

8 Towers of any kind should only be placed on sims zoned for this type of structure over and only by owners who own at least 50% of a region.

9 If over 6 in number, breedables must be placed in "sleep" or "off" mode at all times except when feeding or riding.

10 Airports must be placed on the ground only and not in the sky and may only be two storeys (30 m2) in height.

11 Any build of any kind should not obstruct the view, encroach on any other owner's land or Linden land.

12 Do not rez large domes in the view but go up at least 500 m2, and if you must stack them, keep them 20 m2 apart so that chat is not easily read/heard.

13 Avoid temp-rez plants, vendors, or temp-rez of any kind as it does indeed take from a region's land impact buffers and can confuse the remaining count.

14 Don't use textures over 512; 1024 already lags the region that much more; 768, your urban legend neat trick isn't so viable when everyone does it.

15 Script usage should be kept to [x] and monitored often.

16 Do not enable any of your properties or tenants to take up all 42 avatar slots on a sim; be considerate of your neighbours.

17 Avoid the use of any bots, registered or not; if you believe you need a bot to send a group invitation that takes up one avatar slot on a region, then perhaps you should consider why you don't log into SL to take care of your customers OR why you can't have join on demand with a simple scripted prim for immediate rezzing, with other powers like ban, media, etc. added as another group role later at the manager's convenience but ideally within 24 hours.

18 Do not tell your customers that your messages cap; they need not cap when you tie your account to any email; it need not be your RL work email which can be inadvertently revealed; it can be a gmail address made just for the purpose of customer support.

 

1) This would raise prices and make it much, much, much easier for "barnacles" to shop around for someone without a working prim counter, who sends manual invites and doesn't track who's still paying, etc. Landlords have every right to be paid for the work they already did. There is no free time - always an opportunity cost (you could have made money doing something else in the time you spent setting Mr Refund up. You can't get that time back, so your price eventually has to go up)

People who request refunds, in my experience, are virtually always people who didn't read the lease, and therefore already took more time than everyone who did, just to ask basic questions covered therein. These people already cost you more than they needed to, by thier choices, BEFORE requesting a refund. Some of them are inexperienced, but not everyone is out to play fair. All businesses have shrinkage. Per very basic economics, this "rule" would cause segments of tenants that adversely impacts profitability already to GROW, and therefore raise prices for all tenants. The most conscientious would subsidize the least.

2) Nonsense. Your rule, as written, would make it "illegal" for a land company to rent out a single stall in Brown, a single booth in Port Kama, etc. Governor Linden doesn't follow your rule and never has. That alone makes it unrealistic.

3) Why not? People ask to rent land I put up for sale only all the time. Its their money, their time, their SL. I can often rent it to them cheaper than their tier would be owning it! I'm getting a much lower rate than they would.

4) This one I agree with. Its a common sense thing that ground people don't need more texture above them lagging it more, and sky people don't need the ground textures lagging them. But if we're going to force this to make "average joe" (who only actually cares about looks) feel good, why not force everything sold on the MP, ESPECIALLY avatars and attachments, to be graphically optimized to make geeks feel good too? Lag is lag, and Joe's laggy.

5) No, no, no. There's many ways to effectively use orbs on the ground without causing annoyance and if you actually used them you'd see it. I can set a bounding box to match a structure, so the orb only impacts people that physically enter a private home. This is MUCH more effective than antiquated locking  door systems anyone can cam around and ugly yellow lines! You and 2023 might wanna meet bc 2024 is almost here!

6) I like girls spinning on dancepoles just fine:)

7) WTF? Only way you get most people to live on the ground  is pop them in a tower, or pop their house on the edge of the grid. All those old fuddy duddies  lagged it up!

8 ) Many people have called a certain SL landlord who's been featured on the cover of Forbes a "Nazi". She's pretty lenient compared to you:)

9) That's landlord's call. There's many effective means of managing clock time.

10) Buy your own island and make that rule there. Then you'll be known as the intolerant narrow-minded estate that doesn't understand airports or flyers. There's plenty of other market segments you can serve. Maybe SL residents over the age of 55, for instance:)

11) Talk about so broad and vague any court would throw it out in 2 seconds!

12) Common sense here. But people have the freedom to be stupid.

13) We're in mesh. Temp-rezzers don't work.

14) "Never use 1024" isn't it. 1024 is your best choice for some applications, like skybox backgrounds. You can afford a few, especially when you're using modern mesh structures and rezzers to minimize what's out to what actually has a tenant in it. What's idiotic is  putting 2d walls around  parcels with textures on them. I've never seen this tolerated anywhere but mainland.

15) From you, this is just funny. Your old scripts are incredibly heavy and laggy compared to those updated to reflect all the efficiency gains since...

16) Common sense. Mainland clubs with 20+ avatars present are already lagging even at 4k z. But I can't police stupid and don' try.

17) Scripted agents don't need to be in congested areas to work. Considering the amount of land we have abandoned and the number of people willfully wasting resources with cheap old laggy crap because they're too busy sending manual invites to notice its 2023, something like this would be grossly unfair. This is people starving while 5 palaces are kept heated in Russian winter in case Stalin pops in kinda unfair.

18) Getting people to collect their thoughts and put things down succinctly enables you to efficiently serve a large number of people and offer low prices. Making yourself available for 24/7 IMs has the opposite effect. IMs are not a reliable means of communication. Their own get capped, they don't know it,  and they're getting things from a bunch of stores and clubs.

Apparently you like everybody to pay high prices and have bad selection of offerings because you despise free markets. One could deduce you may not be competitive just from what you post here. This seems more aimed at protecting your dated business practices than creating a better environment for tenants, especially the core longtime skydwelling netizens of SL who don't need to be babied and appreciate flexibility and low prices.

I, on the other hand, feel absolutely zero need to regulate people like you. My theory is that markets choose winners. I think you actually believe in what you're doing - but conviction alone isn't enough. You're missing way too much knowledge about the market as a whole to speak about it. I understand you want us all to starve because you choose to, but this is a free market that encourages innovation, which keeps making housing in SL more and more flexible and affordable for everyone.

Of course someone who sends manual invites and wastes LI and clock time on fossils is going to be grumbling about competition. But every manual invite you send you're raising your prices, per "no free lunch". All the old stuff on the floor hurts sales - stores will trash it if they have to to keep stock fresh! This isn't Russia! Consumer demand wouldn't just downsize to your high prices and dated methods without a LOT of upset residents and a downturn in population. Everyone implementing these practices would ultimately raise prices, reduce consumer confidence, reduce competition, and raise market entry cost. Landlording in SL is already a cut-throat business most fail at.  I'd prefer not to live in old Soviet Russia.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[BilliJo Aldrin]

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Microparcels

Obviously, there are edge-casers galore who can do all kinds of nip-ups and tricks around the micro-parcel and make all kinds of silly claims around them. But the reality was never better articulated there by the Linden who was once VP of Product years ago, when she confronted one of these annoying edge-casers operating in entirely bad faith: 

"What are you doing on that 16 m2, your knitting?"

Because there isn't anything you are doing there that isn't a) advertising b) data scraping with bots or scripts c) annoying other people d) extorting a sale to "buy the view". There really is never any legitimacy about the claims of their "necessity" although I realize there will be someone who says they need it to deploy their virtual 3D printer that is going to print a tiny, needed plastic part that goes in a piece of equipment that will save a little child's lung, somewhere. Truly I do.

 

 

[Diablo Lioncourt]

Dibacco bus stop.

Sister Eve Shapes

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

14) 1024 is the least likely to lag on a modern machine. 512 loads slower because of upscaling in a modern GPU. Again, you need an update.

Not sure what graphics operation this is intended to refer to, but I can't see how it could possibly be applicable to 3D rendering of dynamic scene content, especially when a surface wears three—now four—material maps, and especially when downloads are so expensive and cache hits are so few and far between. Is there really any reliable source for a claim that specifically SL graphics performance is better with larger textures? Really?

(Admittedly I haven't even skimmed this thread yet so I'm not arguing for or against anything. But that quote just jumped out at me.)

[Diablo Lioncourt]

8 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Not sure what graphics operation this is intended to refer to, but I can't see how it could possibly be applicable to 3D rendering of dynamic scene content, especially when a surface wears three—now four—material maps, and especially when downloads are so expensive and cache hits are so few and far between. Is there really any reliable source for a claim that specifically SL graphics performance is better with larger textures? Really?

(Admittedly I haven't even skimmed this thread yet so I'm not arguing for or against anything. But that quote just jumped out at me.)

You're right. I was confusing with something else entirely.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[Prokofy Neva]

8 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

TLDR

I read about halfway through your post. I think there are some good ideas here, but also too many restrictions. 

Why limit buildings to 2 stories when some people want castles and cities with tall buildings?

If you can't enforce standards - not even with public disapproval - they won't be followed. Just look at how often people toss trash on the ground in RL. Many people are just self-centered pigs. (Apologies to actual pigs.)

No one needs to read my posts if they are pressed for time.

But since you didn't read it all the way through, you don't realize I addressed these two concerns of yours within the text already.

I put them for debate and put empty brackets on some issues because -- guess what -- they're debatable.

So to reiterate:

As I said in my post, there should be zoned, separate sims, where people can put tall buildings who have such a yen for them. I don't have such a yen. I get enough of them in SL, living in a 34-storey tower among towers even higher, including the Empire State Building a few blocks away. But I realize some people live in Texas which is as flat as a pancake, or what a Russian author called "one-storey America" in the west. That's fine. Each to his own. I think just as in RL, there should be zoning rules. The Lindens don't, because they don't have the staff, the time, the will, or the concern now that they have Bellisseria, where they tried to make up for past mistakes on the wild, legacy Mainland. Even so, as I prefer the Mainland, I suggest various things.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

51 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Not sure what graphics operation this is intended to refer to, but I can't see how it could possibly be applicable to 3D rendering of dynamic scene content, especially when a surface wears three—now four—material maps, and especially when downloads are so expensive and cache hits are so few and far between. Is there really any reliable source for a claim that specifically SL graphics performance is better with larger textures? Really?

(Admittedly I haven't even skimmed this thread yet so I'm not arguing for or against anything. But that quote just jumped out at me.)

No, Qie.

The rule is NOT to use textures more than 512 because they lag the sim more. That's everywhere. 

And I said that.

I get it that there is more than just one layer nowadays in many places. 

Recently you encounter some events (Fantasy Faire) where they have come up with this 768  notion.

I personally find it to be the birds, when I look at the time it takes something to rez when I test it, without even getting into sim performance.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

1) This would raise prices and make it much, much, much easier for "barnacles" to shop around for someone without a working prim counter, who sends manual invites and doesn't track who's still paying, etc. Landlords have every right to expect to be paid for the work they already did. Ultimately those who aren't won't stay around. There is no free time - always an opportunity cost. People who request refunds are virtually always people who didn't read the lease, and therefore already took more time than everyone who did, just to ask basic questions covered therein. Some of them are inexperienced, but not everyone is out to play fair. All businesses have shrinkage. Per very basic economics, this "rule" would cause segments of tenants that adversely impacts profitability already to GROW, and therefore raise prices for all tenants. The most conscientious would subsidize the least.

2) Nonsense. Your rule, as written, would make it "illegal" for a land company to rent out a single stall in Brown, a single booth in Port Kama, etc. Governor Linden doesn't follow your rule and never has. That alone makes it unrealistic.

3) Why not? People ask to rent land I put up for sale only all the time. Its their money, their time, their SL. I can often rent it to them cheaper than their tier would be owning it! I'm getting a much lower rate than they would.

4) This one I agree with. Its a common sense thing that ground people don't need more texture above them lagging it more, and sky people don't need the ground textures lagging them. But if we're going to force this to make "average joe" (who only actually cares about looks) feel good, why not force everything sold on the MP, ESPECIALLY avatars and attachments, to be graphically optimized to make geeks feel good too? Lag is lag, and Joe's laggy.

5) No, no, no. There's many ways to effectively use orbs on the ground without causing annoyance and if you actually used them you'd see it. I can set a bounding box to match a structure, so the orb only impacts people that physically enter a private home. This is MUCH more effective than antiquated locking  door systems anyone can cam around and ugly yellow lines! You and 2023 might wanna meet bc 2024 is almost here!

6) I like girls spinning on dancepoles just fine:)

7) WTF? Only way you get most people to live on the ground  is pop them in a tower, or pop their house on the edge of the grid. All those old fuddy duddies  lagged it up!

8 ) Many people have called a certain SL landlord who's been featured on the cover of Forbes a "Nazi". She's pretty lenient compared to you:)

9) That's landlord's call. There's many effective means of managing clock time.

10) Buy your own island and make that rule there. Then you'll be known as the intolerant narrow-minded estate that doesn't understand airports or flyers. There's plenty of other market segments you can serve. Maybe SL residents over the age of 55, for instance:)

11) Talk about so broad and vague any court would throw it out in 2 seconds!

12) Common sense here. But people have the freedom to be stupid.

13) We're in mesh. Temp-rezzers don't work.

14) "Never use 1024" isn't it. 1024 is your best choice for some applications, like skybox backgrounds. You can afford a few, especially when you're using modern mesh structures and rezzers to minimize what's out to what actually has a tenant in it. What's idiotic is  putting 2d walls around  parcels with textures on them. I've never seen this tolerated anywhere but mainland.

15) From you, this is just funny. Your old scripts are incredibly heavy and laggy compared to those updated to reflect all the efficiency gains since...

16) Common sense. Mainland clubs with 20+ avatars present are already lagging even at 4k z. But I can't police stupid and don' try.

17) Scripted agents don't need to be in congested areas to work. Considering the amount of land we have abandoned and the number of people willfully wasting resources with cheap old laggy crap because they're too busy sending manual invites to notice its 2023, something like this would be grossly unfair. This is people starving while 5 palaces are kept heated in Russian winter in case Stalin pops in kinda unfair.

18) Getting people to collect their thoughts and put things down succinctly enables you to efficiently serve a large number of people and offer low prices. Making yourself available for 24/7 IMs has the opposite effect. IMs are not a reliable means of communication. Their own get capped, they don't know it,  and they're getting things from a bunch of stores and clubs.

Apparently you like everybody to pay high prices and have bad selection of offerings because you despise free markets. One could deduce you may not be competitive just from what you post here. This seems more aimed at protecting your dated business practices than creating a better environment for tenants, especially the core longtime skydwelling netizens of SL who don't need to be babied and appreciate flexibility and low prices.

I, on the other hand, feel absolutely zero need to regulate people like you. My theory is that markets choose winners. I think you actually believe in what you're doing - but conviction alone isn't enough. You're missing way too much knowledge about the market as a whole to speak about it. I understand you want us all to starve because you choose to, but this is a free market that encourages innovation, which keeps making housing in SL more and more flexible and affordable for everyone.

Of course someone who sends manual invites and wastes LI and clock time on fossils is going to be grumbling about competition. But every manual invite you send you're raising your prices, per "no free lunch". All the old stuff on the floor hurts sales - stores will trash it if they have to to keep stock fresh! This isn't Russia! Consumer demand wouldn't just downsize to your high prices and dated methods without a LOT of upset residents and a downturn in population. Everyone implementing these practices would ultimately raise prices, reduce consumer confidence, reduce competition, and raise market entry cost. Landlording in SL is already a cut-throat business most fail at.  I'd prefer not to live in old Soviet Russia.

 

 

The great thing about my post is that when people answer it, the general public can see some of the basic problems here, and I don't have to keep talking.

Maybe I'll find time to answer them this week; maybe not.

I will note that messages don't cap at all unless:

1) You don't log in every day

2) You don't tie your SL account to an email and check that email;

3) You don't provide multiple ways for people to get the same information so that they solve their own problems and therefore don't write you;

4) You use automated systems that send numerous unnecessary messages;

5) You needlessly subscribe to various merchants because you don't have enough groups because you didn't get Premium Plus or restrain yourself.

And on and on and on.

"My messages cap" is the biggest lie in SL; it's a dodge and a scam; it's a way for merchants or service providers to dodge responsibility and not take care of their customers, even as they posture and strut and pretend they are so busy and so important that "their messages cap."

Mine don't.

Anyone is welcome to walk my properties as I do in person with script meters and tell me where they see a laggy script. Do you walk your properties? I do, and I remove scripts and watch the numbers on the region.

A certain popular rental device is far laggier than my open-source rental script, which was worked on over the years by a dozen people and open to anyone to use.

With some rental boxes, they have so many scripts and so much lag that you have to wonder where they are phoning home and why. A problem with having web-based rental boxes is that they are laggier and you force people to de-immerse and deal with the laggy web. People's web pages are sometimes atrocious.

The idea that devices that only secure the house itself are not disruptive is ludicrous. Many of them bark and shout and repeat insanities endlessly which is as disruptive as being bounced. Just as you can use the sit hack on doors, you can sit-hack through some of these house watchdogs. 

If you worry about someone coming in your e-house and getting their AIDS on your e-furniture, you have more problems than I can help you with.

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Diablo Lioncourt]

34 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

"My messages cap" is the biggest lie in SL; it's a dodge and a scam; it's a way for merchants or service providers to dodge responsibility and not take care of their customers, even as they posture and strut and pretend they are so busy and so important that "their messages cap."

 

Its a polite way to hopefully get them to slow down, READ THE DIRECTIONS and then send  you a detailed notecard. People who send notecards tend to be considerably more detailed and give you more information that's actually useful toward helping them. The process forces most people to collect their thoughts.

My stuff is now capped due to automation (reminders delivered to them when they log in, because THEIR messages do get capped and I want to be sure they *GET THEM*. Manually handing notecards to offlines wasn't getting that result. 

Before I switched to "no IMS" I was repeatedly asking people to please tell me where they were and explain what things like "the bed doesn't work" actually meant to them, over and over, via email, repeatedly explaining I can't teleport to them when I'm not in world. It got so old I almost quite. It's just too easy to not read directions when you can just type something like "I rented your skybox and I cannot rez. Come change permissions for me" and hit "send". But how long does it take to open up the lease and click on "Setting Objects", see you need a group, and get it from your rent meter?

Is teaching them to wait over and over for basic information they can get themselves, by enabling exactly that, really the best possible service?

I do have a scripted agent that can answer most common questions instantly 24/7. It's mostly asked about the same stuff I am. Its all information that's available in the lease.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[Prokofy Neva]

22 minutes ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

Its a polite way to hopefully get them to slow down, READ THE DIRECTIONS and then send  you a detailed notecard. People who send notecards tend to be considerably more detailed and give you more information that's actually useful toward helping them. The process forces the to collect their thoughts.

My stuff is now capped due to automation (reminders delivered to them when they log in, because THEIR messages DO get capped and I want to be sure they *GET THEM*. Manually handing notecards to offlines wasn't getting that result. 

Before I switched to "no IMS" I was repeatedly asking people to please tell me where they were and explain what things like "the bed doesn't work" actually meant to them, over and over, via email, repeatedly explaining I can't teleport to them when I'm not in world. It got so old I almost quite. It's just too easy to not read directions when you can just type something like "I rented your skybox and I cannot rez. Come change permissions for me" and hit "send". But how long does it take to open up the lease and click on "Setting Objects", see you need a group, and get it from your rent meter?

Is teaching them to wait over and over for basic information they can get themselves, by enabling exactly that, really the best possible service?

 

[Prokofy Neva]

28 minutes ago, Diablo Lioncourt said:

Its a polite way to hopefully get them to slow down, READ THE DIRECTIONS and then send  you a detailed notecard. People who send notecards tend to be considerably more detailed and give you more information that's actually useful toward helping them. The process forces the to collect their thoughts.

My stuff is now capped due to automation (reminders delivered to them when they log in, because THEIR messages DO get capped and I want to be sure they *GET THEM*. Manually handing notecards to offlines wasn't getting that result. 

Before I switched to "no IMS" I was repeatedly asking people to please tell me where they were and explain what things like "the bed doesn't work" actually meant to them, over and over, via email, repeatedly explaining I can't teleport to them when I'm not in world. It got so old I almost quite. It's just too easy to not read directions when you can just type something like "I rented your skybox and I cannot rez. Come change permissions for me" and hit "send". But how long does it take to open up the lease and click on "Setting Objects", see you need a group, and get it from your rent meter?

Is teaching them to wait over and over for basic information they can get themselves, by enabling exactly that, really the best possible service?

I find it shocking how much unnecessary notecarding landlords are doing these days with a barrage of as many as a dozen cards in people's faces through automatic systems.

People don't -- and in many cases -- can't read them.

They barely read one line of an IM, let along a notecard, although sure, you have to give them a card so you say you did when they claim not to know orbs weren't allowed. It's like the Linden Lab TOS when you sign in to SL.

Triadic repetition of the narrative, as in a Russian folk tale. 

Go there

I know not where

Fetch that

I know not what

You don't need to make people tell you where they are when:

a) you see their payment event on "My Accounts" with the name of the sim, the name of the housing development and the unit number on the rental box itself and you know your rentals and have them in spread sheets or merely look at the groups in My Accounts.

b) you see the tenant touch a group joiner which reports the sim it is on and the name of the group in an IM to you -- better to send messages to you, which you can act upon, then barrage them on people who may not even speak English.

c) you walk/fly your properties and pay attention to what is going on.

The advantage of rez-on-demand upon join-on-demand is that you don't have to fly anywhere or be online to issue permissions like a medieval lord. They just move in and decorate. Most people are decent. Griefers occur far less regularly than people imagine. A 1L fee to join a group dispels day-old alts. You then add the granulated powers of media, etc. after you confirm payment.

People don't have to send me IMs because I see the information without them telling me.

Many people do not have English as a first language, and will not type in their language on a notecard or in an IM, but prefer to have you in room chat where their translators work. 

And they have easy-to-understand ways of taking charge in their self-service rental immediately.

Only unnecessary fear and imagination prevents the use of this system -- which works.

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Diablo Lioncourt]

Nobody that I know sees anyone touch any public group joiners for land groups:) Most tenants who have rented skyboxes these days expect the group you get for free or some nominal fee in the office is so you can hear about new skyboxes, and you gotta pay a rent meter and then accept that invite that automatically pops up to use your rental. The Lindens don't own Casper because your way of dong things is the future, sir.

I have over 500 different tenants at any given time. Most of them have never had any need to contact me. They don't even need to know who I am most of the time. It's very, very, very easy to do what you want yourself whenever you want to - that's the best possible service, and I learned that effective, "empower them to do stuff themselves" style from the biggest and most successful landlords in SL.

There's no way I'd know where any but a small number of people who've been with me since I started are,  just in my head - seeing those names always makes me happy because they're the only ones with faces to me. I miss when we were getting started and all together in just a few places and I knew everybody

You wanna search transactions you do that. On your mobile phone during your lunch at work because you're trying to be a good landlord like I have. Not everyone is the age you sound!

Or, if you put "rental location" on a form to fill in they can always miraculously provide it:) People are less likely to "not understand" (and therefore eat up your time) when its less of an option. Basic human nature. Again, your time, your opportunity cost, your prices.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[MoiraKathleen]

I may be misunderstanding that point of the original post, but I took it as not a list of things that should become regulated, but rather as a list of items that land dealers might want to consider in how they, themselves, approach developing rules for their tenants on parcels that they rent out, or in how they set up land for rent or for sale.  If I were to rent land, there are a number of things in the list that would be things I would be looking for as a tenant and if I was deciding between otherwise similar parcels between two landlords, I would probably choose the landlord with the rules and terms that I most agreed with.

[Diablo Lioncourt]

Its a mixture of things that are standard policies in many estate communities, and completely off the wall things that don't really make any sense. In the context of mainland, it feels like a futile and somewhat misguided soapbox.

I suppose I take offense at someone I perceive as out of touch telling new people how to run their business.

I'd encourage anyone seeking to start a successful SL real estate business to think on their own, think outside the box, do their homework, and be prepared for some hate.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[Diablo Lioncourt]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

 

I didn't build a tower of prims across the street from the prim "trailer park". Whoever that is, he bought it from a land flipper who bought that land from my original buyer.

I only sold land there to get rid of it after realizing that road had no traffic and I wasn't going to attract people to "10L Rentals" there. It was priced cheap and sold fast.

A lot of parcels I have sold below market, all sizes, are purchased by idiots who slowly resell them (or try to) for way more, often with big stupid yellow signs and ban lines around the parcels. They do this anywhere land is sold cheap, including auctions. They can cut up a cheap roadside they buy at auction, from someone like me, or from someone who just wants to move, abandon 80% of it, and still triple their money or more.

I'd have purchased that abandoned land myself if I owned rentals across the street and cared about that lake view. 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[Zalificent Corvinus]

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Recently you encounter some events (Fantasy Faire) where they have come up with this 768  notion.

Yeah, I don't know who came up with that, and I really don't care, but...

Texture uploads can only be "power of 2" in sizing, so any texture that's under 1024 on one axis is auto-resized to 512, so uploading a 768 x 768 will result in a blurry 512 x 512.

As for banning 1024's, most of your tenants will have NO control over the texture sizes in the houses/skyboxes and home& garden items they buy and rez, so that is simply unrealistic and unenforceable.

 

People passing "Laws" need to remember the 3 Laws of Legislation.

1. Don't pass Laws against things that never happen, it makes your Legal Code look stupid, and people ignore the rest of it.

2. Don't pass Laws you can't enforce, it makes your Legal Code look stupid, and people ignore the rest of it.

3. Don't pass Laws that anger more people than they please, because Comrade, the proletariat will storm the Winter Palace, and execute the Rentals Czar!.

 

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Any build of any kind should not obstruct the view, encroach on any other owner's land or Linden land.

This is a classic case of Legislation Laws 2 and 3. Everything taller than a floor rug "obstructs the view" to  degree, and even the rug obstructs the view of the dirt under it, unless it's invisible.

 

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Don't use textures over 512; 1024 already lags the region that much more; 768, your urban legend neat trick isn't so viable when everyone does it.

Effectively unenforceable, trying to enforce it will anger more than it pleases, violates Legislation Laws 2 and 3.

 

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Script usage should be kept to [x] and monitored often.

Kept to [X] what?

Number of scripts? A handful of very small lean and fast scripts might well use less resources than one large laggy script.

Reported script memory? Mono script reports 64kb for all scripts, even when they are using way less, so memory reports are unreliable, also it's not 2005 anymore when regions only had 300mb of script memory.

Script time? Anavatar teleporting into their rented home, will report a script time 10 times the usual, as the scripts start up, for the first 30-60 seconds, since the script time for any tenant will be their house/skybox AND their home & garden items AND their avatar, you risk punting your tenant because they actually teleported into their home, because your Checker is a tech fail-piece of obsolete drek.

This is going to violate Legislation Laws 1, 2, AND 3 at some point.

 

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Avoid the use of any bots, registered or not; if you believe you need a bot to send a group invitation that takes up one avatar slot on a region, then perhaps you should consider why you don't log into SL to take care of your customers

Some people, well, they have this irrational need for this thing called SLEEP. Crazy I know, but there it is. Telling Landlords they must be awake, logged in and vailable 24/7/52, is likely to violate Legislation Law 2, and certain to violate Law 3.

 

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Airports must be placed on the ground only and not in the sky and may only be two storeys (30 m2) in height.

Yeah... I've never seen an airport on a rental, Airport spammers usually BUY a parcel for their Airport Spammer Group. And 30m high? What the HELL. That's basically granting people permission to build abominations like that half region sized "Airfield on stilts", that was the topic of a now locked thread, the one built by an "ambassador" from the Bellicosian Bigot Bureau, and their partner. The one that overshadowed all it's neighbours.

That clause will be sure to violate Legislation Law 3.

 

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So usually when people hear you are cooking up "Rules for Life" they get mad

I remember a thread where *cough* a certain somebody *cough* seriously suggested that people in SL should be legally prevented from building "within 16 or preferably 32 m of their parcel boundary".

A proposed Covenant Law that, if it had been enacted, would have made it illegal for ANY builds to exist on ANY parcel less than 68m x 68m. Instantly rendering all 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, and most 8192 sized parcels utterly unusable, and completely worthless.

Of course, when the owners of those parcels sold up for 0.1 ls/m, to Megaflip Landlords, said landlord could join all those small parcels together into one region sized parcel, leave a 32 m wide gap round the edge, and crap rental hovels into the interior close enough to touch.

That proposed law seemed like a self serving piece of nonsense, a clear Legislative Law 3 violation.

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[diamond Marchant]

I am fine with the way things are. Just hope that SL continues to exist. As long as I can shop, all is good. It seems inconceivable that LL would enact any rule changes in the OP. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No one needs to read my posts if they are pressed for time.

But since you didn't read it all the way through, you don't realize I addressed these two concerns of yours within the text already.

I put them for debate and put empty brackets on some issues because -- guess what -- they're debatable.

So to reiterate:

As I said in my post, there should be zoned, separate sims, where people can put tall buildings who have such a yen for them. I don't have such a yen. I get enough of them in SL, living in a 34-storey tower among towers even higher, including the Empire State Building a few blocks away. But I realize some people live in Texas which is as flat as a pancake, or what a Russian author called "one-storey America" in the west. That's fine. Each to his own. I think just as in RL, there should be zoning rules. The Lindens don't, because they don't have the staff, the time, the will, or the concern now that they have Bellisseria, where they tried to make up for past mistakes on the wild, legacy Mainland. Even so, as I prefer the Mainland, I suggest various things.

 

You prefer the mainland, but you seem to hate everything about it. LL answered all your concerns by creating Belli, oh but wait, you can't do YOU in Belli, so you stick to mainland, and expect everyone else to do as YOU say.

New mainland rules: be and do anything you want, subject to these 100 or so rules we have made up. 😂

Edited December 15, 2023 by BilliJo Aldrin

[Prokofy Neva]

Those with a "code-as-law" and/or nihilistic attitude toward the rule of law often try to disqualify lawmaking as "impossible because it's not 100%" or "impossible because the individual doesn't have full control over their domain."

HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT PERFECTIBLE BUT CAN BE ENABLED AND ENCOURAGED TO BE GOOD

Nonsense. Nothing in human life is perfect; humans are not perfectible (that's really the crux of the disagreement here -- humanists, cosmic engineers, effective altruists and other cult and camp followers think humans ARE perfectible, and that in fact they themselves are already perfect).

NOT RULE-BY-LAWS BUT RULE OF HIGHER LAW; 87% IS GOOD ENOUGH

So your imagined "three laws of legislation" founder because to start with, you don't have a philosophical understanding or acceptance or belief that there is a power higher than yourself. It's not "rule by laws" or "a law-based state" as in the German and Russian concepts of Rechtsstaat. It's rule OF law as "the president is not above the law". 

So if you can only achieve 87% compliance or 62% compliance with a rule like "no 1024 textures" than of course you do. Some rules might be hard and fast ("no child avatars and don't give me that guff about how you're just a short adult woman"). 

RULES FOR CREATORS, NOT ONLY RESIDENTS

Other norms might be suggestions like "Avoid textures over 1024". You are aiming at the actions of people making stuff, putting stuff out, texturing things themselves, especially in a mall (rental agencies aren't just dealing with residences). So in a mall or a Fantasy Faire, you can insist on only 512s, not 1024s, and enforce it by not letting them rent or participate in the event if they won't play. I don't know why this is hard. Of course you can, and it's all to the good.

If you corner-case the suggestion to death and say, "but how can they tell the size of a texture of a house on no-mod," you are losing the opportunity to MITIGATE the textures of those in a MALL which ARE under control -- and that's the use case obviously.

AGAIN THE RULE OF LAW, NOT BY LAW

The Tsarist and later Soviet and Russian regimes would pass draconian laws that no one obeyed, encouraging bribe-taking because the state always had a case over someone. Russians would develop axioms like "the law is a bridle, it can be turned every which way" the harsher the laws.

But not if you have a state under the rule of law which understands it is not above the law and can be arbitrary; and usually that requires a liberal democratic state. So thank you, now you are getting at "why SL doesn't work" because we don't have such a country. We have the "platform providers" who are the semblance of a totalitarian state. Even so, in our rental domains, we can establish the rule of law. And so I do. I don't worry about scofflaws because once people grasp that there's a reason not to put out six breedables, they usually participate.

LET'S NOT PRETEND WE DON'T KNOW WHAT AN OBSTRUCTIVE TOWER IS

You can go by common sense, or you can go by the ancient maxim, "Although reason is common to all men, most men have their own private understanding."

We actually all know what an ugly, laggy, build is and a list of what is de-rendered in a region, if you could collect it from every Firestorm, would confirm that obvious point. It would only be a few impish envelope-pushers who would pretend not to know and be in your face.

Re: "any build should not obstruct the view" only becomes a welter of confusion and edge-casing and "never happens" when you avoid common sense and the obvious and aren't operating in good faith. 

YOU HAVE DISCRETION

If someone edge-cases to get over your rule about two storeys by putting up a hut on chicken legs, insisting that legs are not storeys (I have had that happen a few times), you say, no, that doesn't fly, take it down. You know what two storeys are. If someone puts up a castle with turrets that go above two storeys, you look at it and as the enforcement is at your discretion, you call it, yes or no, a small castle may pass; a giant gothic pile will not. 

Re: scripts. As I noted, I put empty brackets for debatable things. It might be 1 or 2 or 3 -- read the FF guidelines or whatever event you're in. They have no problem figuring out a reasonable limitation and then asking people to stick to it and then booting people who don't. It's done all the time; THAT is the norm, not whiny nit-picking. A script radar reads the scripts and gives you a number, it's not rocket science.

It's not the overbroad or vague rule that's the issue here. It's the inability to admit that you can have a regimen where fair rules that make sense can be followed, if you have someone applying them in good will, that creates the chaos. Lots and lots of people get along in SL despite wildly different beliefs and walks of life.

It's the tech edge-casers bent on gleefully malevolent boundary-pushing that undermines the rule of law. So when they play that game, they end up expelled from my rentals after enough griefer raids.

MOST PEOPLE TRY TO BE GOOD

The reality is, most people are decent, most people do the right thing. It's not that humanity is perfectible; it's that most people try to be good. That shocks the cynics. But that is my experience in 20 years of SL.

When you have a norm that people should not lag the sim with a slow-loading texture, first you educate people and they realize that's "a thing". Second, they can try to mitigate their own textures.

DO UNTO OTHERS

If someone is angered at the law regarding orbs on the ground, they can find another rental. It's my belief that this is a good rule, leads to the maximum number of people being happy, and is good for business.

There is nothing stupid about "Do unto others..." -- and have a rule against bouncing other people around when you know yourself it is unpleasant to be bounced around when all you are trying to do is get home, or sail, or simply fly over a place.

I put a simple phrase in my notecards to make it clear if someone doesn't want to read a lot of text:

YOU ARE IN THE VIEW/MAKE THE VIEW OF YOU NICE, TOO

I'm the only one managing my rentals, with very occasional help from my RL son now who has a family, and a few good-citizen long-term tenants who I have empowered to remove group-set prims. I sleep, and I even go in the hospital for 2-3 days at a time, imagine that. If you have self-service rentals -- isn't that what you have with all your claims? -- then people serve themselves, and if at any time they are unhappy with the service they are giving themselves, they can fire themselves and click "refund". I'm there to settle disputes BETWEEN self-servers or keep the whole system moving along smoothly. 

To claim "but I need eight hours of sleep" when there are 16 other hours in the day, at least a few of which you could be devoting to customer service in your rentals, even if you have had a RL day job (I have always had them) is to admit that you don't think virtual customers in a virtual world are real, and therefore you can be virtual about your service. 

Once again, as I am not limiting two storeys to a fixed 10 m x 2 out of pre-64 m mesh, I don't know if it makes sense to have a number and I arbitrarily put "30". I think most people get what "two storeys" are and it's pretty obvious, and most buildings in SL are roughly similar in height when they make them. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE RULE, NOT THE EXCEPTIONS

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. But you make the rule your center of gravity, not the exceptions, which, of course, is a certain geek keyhole view of the world in which only  "code-as-law" can prevail. I don't want to live in an entirely automated world. I'm human, not a robot, and so are my customers.

The viewpoint you are espousing is not common to you; it's common to many people who code for a living and trained themselves to adjust to computers. And now we all have to, even if by and large humans aren't robots but more complex and nuanced and varieagated.

CONSIDERATION OF YOUR NEIGHBOUR

Do you have a bad cold? Sounds like a nasty cough. I'm happy to claim ownership of, AND endorse "build 16 or 32 m from the parcel boundary" because it is doable, the 256 m parcel where that becomes the rule is not the norm, but the exception, and because when you do, you create easements and less feeling of claustrophobia. In my rentals I have the simple basic rules that are not negotiable, like "no security orbs on the ground," and then I have suggestions in a notecard, not a lease card, which suggests. In human societies, "personal space" can be defined differently in, say, Western or Eastern societies, but THAT there is SOME kind of space is universally understood.

CHOICE AND CODES OF ETHICS

You're forgetting that as owner of your property, you can set a rule and enforce it. It's best to make it reasonable if you want customers -- and I've rarely had people complain my simple rules are unreasonable because they have freely chosen to live there after reading the info card. People who didn't read it and keep arguing about why they need security orbs on the ground can find another rental. They will be paying more for it.

@diamon Marchant I made it clear that my Rules for Live are not a laundry list for the Lindens to code and impose, not a demand for everyone to implement, but something else: a code of ethics. By and large, the computer professions do not have codes of ethics as doctors and lawyers do. Now why is that? There is an AMA or an ABA that licenses or establishes norms, but there isn't an ACPA. (There is an ACPCA, and you wish we had at least THAT much of a set of norms from coders.) That's because of code-as-law and not rule of law, and I would suggest that goes to the heart of much of our modern misery

This is about a group of landlords to discuss to see if they wish to make a set of ethics and norms to establish themselves as "Good". If you think "Good" is another thing, then you'll make your rules on your island or sim. 

I certainly don't expect this from the Lindens, as I made clear: they are on an entirely different trajectory, fiddling with avatar foot shadows, colours in the sky, and now shiny things. None of this is relevant to me nor most of my customers, who just want to shop and do the other popular activities. 

@BilliJo Aldrin I can certainly do "me" in Belli and until recently had a half dozen Belli houses, mainly public venues with various activities which I had a lot of fun creating and which got a lot of visitors in the stamp game. 

I think the Lindens shouldn't have their products compete viciously, as they have enabled the platform to do, chiefly by refusing to stop ad farming and land cutting and ugly towers on the Mainland. This may be deliberate.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

I am fine with the way things are. Just hope that SL continues to exist. As long as I can shop, all is good. It seems inconceivable that LL would enact any rule changes in the OP. 

LL has all the mainland rules it needs. They know better than to try and change things now. On the other hand when they realize Belli is maxxed out, and any new homeowners are ones that abandoned a Belli house they already had, perhaps LL can embark on a brand new venture: Mainland 2.0 not a free for all like  mainland, and not a suburban dead zone like Belli.

THAT would attract the ones that want more freedom that Belli has, but less of the anarchy of existing mainland.

Perhaps parcels on Mainland 2.0 couldn’t be bought, subdivided, or sold, but can be requested from LL, for free, and as big as a parcel that you want to pay tier for.

New thread anyone?

 

 

 

[Diablo Lioncourt]

It would be just too ironic if someone were to take over this land you abandoned right after nagging the Lindens about across the road so much they did something special just for you.

Don Quixote boomers who view themselves as the lords and caretakers of land they abandoned in SL are an interesting breed. This species is actually growing in population. The Lindens have even built an ever-growing retirement home where people like that could possible become volunteer returners of non-complaint orbs and expired decorations.

Another basic thing we learn in business school is that emotions and preinstalled beliefs don't make data-driven decisions. Anything that resulted in unprofitable assets being sunseted helped your bottom line.

 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Diablo Lioncourt

[Zalificent Corvinus]

9 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So your imagined "three laws of legislation" founder because to start with, you don't have a philosophical understanding or acceptance or belief that there is a power higher than yourself

The 3 Laws of Legislation are common sense.

Any "higher authority, that for example, passed a law forbidding people from levitating, in RL, would be laughed at because in RL people can't levitate, and people would start ignoring that authorities other laws.

Any "higher authority" that passed a law stating you must never think of pink golf balls, would be laughed at and disobeyed, because that law is un-enforcable.

Any "higher authority"  that puts in a law hated by the majority of the people, tends to end up out of power, one way or another, lost elections, impeachment, bloody revolutions, military coups, civil war, you name it, there's 6000 years of recorded human history to back that observation up.

 

And on to nonsensicle guff.

17 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Other norms might be suggestions like "Avoid textures over 1024"

No such thing in SL, max size is 1024 x 1024.

18 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

They have no problem figuring out a reasonable limitation and then asking people to stick to it and then booting people who don't. It's done all the time

BY MORONSD who don't understand the tech, and THINK it helps when it doesn't and in fact makes things worse. The same CRETINS that for example, boot people for having complexity scores over a random limit, claiming it helps region performance when it does nothing of the kind, as region servers take NO notice of rendering complexity, because the don't do ANY of the rendering.

25 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

he viewpoint you are espousing is not common to you; it's common to many people who code for a living and trained themselves to adjust to computers

I don't "code for a living" and I'm basing my opinion not on "code as law" but on "law as law". Take Rule 3...

Once upon a time there was an evil right wing fruitcake witch, who passed a law abolishing property taxes and replacing them with a head tax, slanted so rich people would pay hardly any tax if they paid at all, while poor people got hammered.

There was rioting in the streets, and people shouting "Death to the Great Tyrant, Burn the Witch", and the law was repealed, and replaced with something else. It has nothing to do with "computers" and everything to do with PEOPLE.

29 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Do you have a bad cold? Sounds like a nasty cough. I'm happy to claim ownership of, AND endorse "build 16 or 32 m from the parcel boundary" because it is doable

How exactly do you build 32 m away from the parcel boundary on a parcel 32m x 32m ? Answer you can't, 1024 parcels made unusable by a stupid "law". The same is true for 2048, 4096, and most 8192's. And before you try that backpedal tactic you tried before of claiming it was 32 square m not linear m, 32 square meters of "easement" around a 1024 is a strip a 1/4 of a metre wide, on a 4096 it's a 16th of a metre wide, too damn small to be of any use.

You meant 32 linear metres from the parcel line, and that's a way to drive small parcel owners off their land so it can be bought cheap by Barons.

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

re setbacks, years ago I purchased a 512 roadfront somewhere on Zindra in one of the urban areas, and proceded to do a zero setback build. A person who bought after me imed me as I was building and said, hey can you move back from the property line a bit, I was like ummm no, its in the city core, zero setbacks are acceptable. She then said she was good friends with a genuine Linden  and she’d fix me.

Twenty four hours later she had moved out 😁