The mainland is broken

[feather Lindman]

I think the owners of this game should hire new people to manage the Mainlands. I think new policies need to be created to address the most common fair use issues. I think residents with experience in managing mainland should participate in finding fair and equitable solutions. I think having the right to do something doesn't always make it right.

[Prokofy Neva]

I agree. That is, technically, it isn't that the Mainland perse, as a set of equations or bits of code on servers is broken, or its representation as a "virtual world"; the real issue is what is known as the "crooked timber" problem.

The MonCierge meeting is coming up this week (the meeting with the Lindens where both Mainland and island/homestead owners can go and ask questions).

I think you'll have to formulate your issues a little more strenuously. On the forums and in those Linden meetings, you can't name names of miscreants, and you can't just complain about some isolated situation you face on X sim. For that there are in theory tickets in the system (although the ticket system refuses to take complaints against ad farms and griefing, sending you back to the inworld abuse report system where they "go nowhere".

I finally got Governance3 Linden or some other numbered Linden to come and remove grief objects on physics in huge numbers from my no-show neighbour's lawn, where they kept spilling over to my land and of course lagging the sim. *It took six months to get that done*. Repeated ARs by me and neighbours and tenants were insufficient (a chorus can help; it's not a guarantee). This Linden told me I should have filed a ticket -- but that's incorrect, because when you do file tickets of these types they usually ignore them or send them back. You are discouraged from using the ticket system for ARs on griefing matters. But file a ticket in the system for persistent annoyance problems anyways.

In my view, the Lindens should treat things like objects on physics on a no-show owner's land affecting the sim as they do "the weather". They shouldn't bog down in "agency" and "who is to blame". They should be like, oh, the ICRC is on Ukraine, and not like the ICRC is on Israel. You know? Like that. A server crashed. We must put it back up. No judgement.

Because then they should ACT. If I said "Your Linden tree is in my house" or "your Linden kudzu grass that spills over the road shoulder and on to my property is preventing it from renting", they may act. If a Linden tree of a neighbour is encroaching and I can't return it (you often cannot), they act, slowly, but eventually. If a sim is "down" you can request it be put back "up". These things should be dealt with like garbage detail and not "a disciplinary matter which we can't talk to you about".

So that's a concrete proposal I often make but of course it goes nowhere.

I could give you a lengthy exegesis on the problem of the tall Sith spires that blight the Teen Grid and behind. This has been aired and re-aired and petitioned and even led to threats against earnest people raising this in good faith with "being banned" if they keep raising it. The Lindens, for religious reasons, or reasons of politics, or perhaps old agreements with high tier payers, or perhaps with the knowledge that the perpetrator is a Linden alt -- or who the hell knows what, we can only speculate -- will not act even when the sources of blight are "targeted harassment" clearly -- when 3 of them pile up around one lot and force a sale; when 3 of them converge on 2 sims to be technically "not a problem" etc. But that is not a subject to "move" at these meetings or anywhere except in the privacy of your home where you decide to abandon your land near these eyesores.

Spam cars? We could talk spam cars. Shall we?

How about ad farms that proliferate in unconscionable ways, not roadside; in the middle of a sim; by water; in forests; targeted so as to annoy; more than one on a sim; violating all the known rules. Want to try your hand at raising an issue we've all raised for [checks notes] TWENTY YEARS?

How old are you? I'm nearly 20 years old in SL; my rez day is September 28. Happy Birthday, Prokofy!

I actually think some of the land Lindens, some of them even older than me, can you imagine, do a good job, but their hands are tied by certain policies decided not by them.

Should you NOT deploy a giant 64 x 64 flat prim board with an ugly photo-real wall picture on one side and ugly plywood from the prim on the other? No, you shouldn't. You're up in the sky with your baby clinic; you have no objective need for "privacy" or anything of the kind given your operations are in the sky; why are you doing this? PS why is autoreturn not turned on your busy store lot? There are at least 100 prims on your lawn far below your dizzying citadel heights above. Could you care? You should care. Can we get the Lindens to make you care? No we can't. Can we get groups of people to file petitions with such careless, oblivious and sometimes really mean-spirited folk? We can. Does this require the Lindens? No.

"De-render" says some forums imp. But I want to use the regular SL viewer that doesn't have de-render options -- and shouldn't, in my view, in keeping with the Founder's philosophy. Get along with your neighbour on the Mainland. Plus, I don't want to make ALL my visitors at my home/hangout/store/whatever have to de-render that ugly thing -- like a whopping huge racist and ablist ridiculing photograph that has been in place for 10 years which all of us have AR'd regularly. Landing on the sim, before the Felix walls deployed to try to cover up the view of this hideosity can rez -- we have to look at that monstrosity that really is obnoxious and also in my view actionable. It was put there because some of us asked this owner to put "clear" on the side of his "privacy walls" because they were so ugly, we didn't want to see giant photo real pictures in the middle of the sim. He knows full well that walls don't give you privacy; and now we have "avatars can see me" as an option to UNCHECK and make you INVISIBLE. So why blight four sims in every direction with these monsters?

I don't allow them in my own rentals -- except where in a few places I myself have to deploy some kind of tall wall to block the view of some absolutely stupid, hideous, amateur, spinning build that someone put up in 2004 and forget, yet they still have their land because either they are Charter members with the free 4096 (a status visible on their account), or else received a courtesy industry freebie of 1024 from the Lindens during the Great Inundation of RL Business in 2006-2007 (my theory). 

I could name 10 other situations -- including the deployment of that plug-ugly sculpty "Thou Shalt Not" supposedly "Good Neighbour" Commandments tablet all over hell's half acre. Often in bad faith, by ad farmers and land cutter/flippers.

But I'd advise you to hone in on the details, and use the formula I used to use in lobbying Congress for various NGOs:

o Somberly explain the plight of the victims briefly, succinctly, compelling, in a talker as big as your hand, and leave a copy of the talker with your contact info;

o Give the Congress member [or Linden] something very easy they can do to respond to this horrible situation -- all you need them to do is make a mention in a speech after their aides research it; all you need them to do is vote "yes" on X or Y bill; all you need them to do is ask then to send a query to State to include this in the Country Reports. In other words, all actual fruitless virtue signallers which don't really do anything but make them feel good and make them feel they have served you; you've left happy; and everybody gets paid.

EXAMPLE: Ask the Lindens to clarify whether you can have political ads on your SL parcel NOT at roadside, are there any limitations as to the nature of the content or rules about size or disposition.

o Close with a request for a hard thing they likely can't do, but should do, like passing a bill to bar the sale of helicopter parts to the government of Guatemala or whatever, involved in human rights violations; pass a bill barring the entry to the US of any member of the Wagner mercenaries group out of Russia, responsible for atrocities. In most cases, making a whole new bill and passing it to do a thing will be impossible for all kinds of practical and political reasons. So then you fall back on saying "Well, make the Sullivan Act apply to X" or "This could fit under the Magnitsky Act" and leave your sheet explaining how.

EXAMPLE: Ask the Lindens to require that any build on any microplot anywhere can only only be X meters in height (10? 5?) and/or pass a law or make a code that makes it impossible to build on a 16m2 microplot UNLESS you already own 512 m2 on that sim. 

Therefore "targeted harassment" -- language that is in the AR system and recognized and acted upon -- is what I usually focus on. They can do that much. A global removal of their 2003 kudzu roadside glass from the asset server would also be a great kindness. Yes, it makes a precedent. Yes, someone is sure to mention their dead palm trees next. But they know full well that grass is ugly and needs to go.

Never forget that just as the horrible situation on the Mainland was allowed to fester in 2004-2005 to get many people to buy the more expensive islands in the years following, so the horrible situation in some parts of Mainland today (there are nice parts people do work to maintain) are due to their need to fill up Bellisseria. Bellisseria is now larger than the Mainland. 

 

Edited September 23 by Prokofy Neva

[belindacarson]

Wtf have you been smoking.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

I stopped reading after the OP's "the owners of this game " comment...

Edited September 23 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Love Zhaoying]

HOA.

[BJoyful]

7 hours ago, feather Lindman said:

I think the owners of this game should hire new people to manage the Mainlands. I think new policies need to be created to address the most common fair use issues. I think residents with experience in managing mainland should participate in finding fair and equitable solutions. I think having the right to do something doesn't always make it right.

Have you ever spoken to any Mainland owners?  I don't understand what you feel is broken?  So many question I have... but perhaps this is just an angry venting of frustration with one tiny portion of Mainland?  Anyway, my first instinct (if I was in your place) would be to try to put myself in the place of the person/people you are upset with, then review the Covenant, then submit a Support Ticket if you feel something is unfair to discuss the issue(s).  It will solve nothing and possibly upset those you have issues with even more to make such a statement here in the public Forum.  Further to that, take some deep breaths and consider the remedies in your control like move, rent somewhere in space with some rules which you do agree with and can abide.

Lastly, posting a gripe here is probably the least productive as there are many frequent Forum users who are Mainland owners and residents and will scoff at your insult of our beloved home (and probably not want you for a neighbour either, if that's your attitude).  The Forum users represent a rather small segment of SL Residents so your claim/gripe is essentially only to be seen by people who will not be able to help you, nor sympathize with your vague statement of Mainland being broken.

I wish you luck in your enjoyment of Second Life.

Edited September 23 by BJoyful
missed part of a sentence

[rasterscan]

Got in a wall war once with a neighbor. Made a higher edge wall of derelict tenements to hide his ugly one. So he made his higher. So I did. We hit the ceiling before I abandoned and moved on.

Edited September 23 by rasterscan

[Qie Niangao]

There are limited, self-contained changes that could be made that would improve Mainland without making it "too tame" nor incurring the kind of enforcement overhead of an elaborate covenant such as on Bellisseria. It's true that most discussions of such potential changes don't have much effect, although the fact than unlike old Mainland, Linden Homes has a covenant at all is almost surely a result of longstanding arguments about how Mainland could be (or could have been) better. Those discussions didn't fix Mainland but they ultimately resulted in the Lab's most profitable business decision in a decade, with many satisfied customers on Belli.

I'll just mention, apropos @Prokofy Neva's comments, the idea of a minimum parcel size to exercise certain features has precedent, and more than I appreciated until recently. It's well known that parcels under 512 m² cannot be listed in Events and that parcels under 144 m² can't be listed in Places nor All Search. (In the Linden viewer and on the Web, Land for sale won't list parcels under 512 m² but some TPVs are somehow permitted to list them regardless of size, which I'd favor fixing by not populating Search with any of that worthless noise.)

What I didn't know until fairly recently is that parcels must be at least 128 m² to have their own Environment ("EEP") defined, which makes sense because travelling cross-country could be pretty disorienting if the "weather" changed every few meters. But that's really not the worst way a microparcel can asymmetrically disrupt all the reasonably sized parcels in the vicinity. Prok's suggested microparcel build height limit sounds quite practical to me as a first cut, and should be enforceable automatically perhaps as part of baking Pathfinding terrain.

[Love Zhaoying]

What about those of us who like mainland the way it is, who are happy with our area, parcels, choices, security, etc.?

Would our rights just be taken away?

Why can't people who have such mainland criticisms and requirements go live somewhere like Bellisseria, and build a sky platform for expressing their individuality? Huh? 

 

[ZortyTheExplorer]

some people on forums could use their own blogs. many not just with this essay but those who have much information but lost in all the pages i know i'd reach such helpful stuff. why post so long on forums nobody reads he he

[Coffee Pancake]

6 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

I stopped reading after the OP's "the owners of this game " comment...

Oh god, please don't let me have been playing a game for the last 20 years.

What will the children think.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

@Coffee Pancake

😎

Edited September 23 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[diamond Marchant]

11 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

I stopped reading after the OP's "the owners of this game " comment...

This phrase got me to wondering... who exactly are these owners people speak of.  According to Inara Pey's post , the owners are “an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager”. Note that the official Linden Lab post has been taken down. To my knowledge we have never heard from Randy and we were supposed to hear from Brad at SL21B but that got canceled and not rescheduled. It's a mystery.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

I think mainland has become less important "to the owners of this game" (*wince*) than certain other more recent premium areas of SL.

Mainland definitely isn't broken. It's just become neglected.

Some commited long-term attention and love by LL to mainland would help iron out the 'abnor-malities'(heh!) and 'patch' (heh!) the holes. They do some fixes, now and again. But they have other priorities right now...

I've been waiting years for the things I'd like to see fixed or added in mainland. Some have happened, most have not.

'Just be patient', they say.

*sigh*

Edited September 24 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Prokofy Neva]

13 hours ago, ZortyTheExplorer said:

some people on forums could use their own blogs. many not just with this essay but those who have much information but lost in all the pages i know i'd reach such helpful stuff. why post so long on forums nobody reads he he

I have a blog, thanks. Actually, multiple blogs.

I don't know why you feel you have to comment on a post you don't wish to read. Scroll past.

if someone wants to read all or part of my post they will and respond to it, and you won't be able to do a thing about it.

I don't know the OP but I don't see that he needs to be ridiculed. 

If someone happens to own a little patch of Mainland that is nice and doesn't look beyond their own nose; if someone mainly sails and looks at empty Linden water, that's fine, but that's not the entire experience of the Mainland, and those of us who routinely travel across dozens and even hundreds of sims every week see a lot more problems and also see that they are fixable *with political will* but that is absent.

The idea that if the Lindens act on ugly spires deployed to harass people who object to them, or if the Lindens remove ugly, spinning, encroaching, and violatory ad farm signs, that this "takes away your freedom" is patently absurd and doesn't deserve a serious debate.

[Prokofy Neva]

15 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

There are limited, self-contained changes that could be made that would improve Mainland without making it "too tame" nor incurring the kind of enforcement overhead of an elaborate covenant such as on Bellisseria. It's true that most discussions of such potential changes don't have much effect, although the fact than unlike old Mainland, Linden Homes has a covenant at all is almost surely a result of longstanding arguments about how Mainland could be (or could have been) better. Those discussions didn't fix Mainland but they ultimately resulted in the Lab's most profitable business decision in a decade, with many satisfied customers on Belli.

I'll just mention, apropos @Prokofy Neva's comments, the idea of a minimum parcel size to exercise certain features has precedent, and more than I appreciated until recently. It's well known that parcels under 512 m² cannot be listed in Events and that parcels under 144 m² can't be listed in Places nor All Search. (In the Linden viewer and on the Web, Land for sale won't list parcels under 512 m² but some TPVs are somehow permitted to list them regardless of size, which I'd favor fixing by not populating Search with any of that worthless noise.)

What I didn't know until fairly recently is that parcels must be at least 128 m² to have their own Environment ("EEP") defined, which makes sense because travelling cross-country could be pretty disorienting if the "weather" changed every few meters. But that's really not the worst way a microparcel can asymmetrically disrupt all the reasonably sized parcels in the vicinity. Prok's suggested microparcel build height limit sounds quite practical to me as a first cut, and should be enforceable automatically perhaps as part of baking Pathfinding terrain.

Note that even as I suggest this as one solution for some problems, a microparcel build height limitation would NOT cure some of the worst phenomena that I think can be cured only be firm political will using the DISCRETION that the platform owners DO HAVE.

They often get their own knickers in a twist imagining that if they do a thing, why, everyone will want them to do other things or that thing everywhere. No. They have discretion. They have a TOS that is vague enough to allow for discretionary action as they interpret their own rules. That is known as jurisprudence. They can decide that "targeted harassment" is exactly what is going on when a sim sprouts a dozen spires and say no, we're not falling for this, take your game spawners (if in fact that's what they are, although that's dubious) elsewhere to your own land.

Sadly, Article 2(c)(3) of a previous redaction of the TOS, which said "interference with the enjoyment of one's Second Life" was removed as "overbroad" by some zealous lawyer looking to limit liability -- to be sure no one would *sue* LL in a *RL* court of law if they failed to maintain this standard of care, so to speak. And that's too bad because that language is exactly what they need as their rule of thumb in handling many bad situations -- and ruling on the side of those who pay tier, rather than ruling on the side of forums noise-makers, the FIC, griefers, or small-time scofflaw land dealers.

Oh, but maybe they did that, see, and we can't tell, because we can't see just how much tier a certain party is paying; we can't see if that person is a Linden alt; we can't see if that person is a former or current Linden staff person or their relatives; we can't see if that Linden is the relative of a famous Silicon Valley hero (there have been a few like that). Etc.

So against my proposal, you would get this: But we have 512 so leave us along, nyah nyah.

To which they *ought* to say: Oh, you have a 512 or even a 4096 on that sim and therefore you don't fall under, say, any notion of ad farm or even Prokofy's suggestion? You get to keep having that 4096 or that 512 AND put around the spires across a dozen sims and ruin land value for miles? Well, no, because we are a private company; we think you're preventing people from the enjoyment of our product; you are costing us money as they abandon their land in large swathes and we have to foot the bill; you don't pay all that much tier or not much more by contrast to the other land owners here on these sims -- so it's not in our business interest to have you on our servers if you behave in this manner.

A Linden once took me aside -- a junior Linden to be sure -- and explained that while I had not technically violating any rule -- public in the TOS or private as to moderator secret instructions -- I had to be removed from the forums because I was criticizing top content creators with whom LL preferred to do business, and whom LL preferred to tout in their comments to the press and so on. I had objected to this as unfair as I didn't think that was any way to run a country. You wouldn't think that if Mayor Adams threw contracts only to his friends or accepted campaign donations from foreign state actors that this was "okay" and not something to be investigated under the law. So why have it in a virtual world? That it's a private platform creating a product and not a real country doesn't matter. It's the prototype of the Metaverse where we will all have to live some day and we should get it right.

At least that Linden was honest.

That this was a lawless action even under the Lindens' own arbitrary Wild West rules was clear when I was reinstated to the forums without any comment or explanation when certain Lindens left the company. That's all. That's all that was about.

I can cite many, many MANY things like that over the course of the 20 years I have been here. So it's patently ridiculous to me for any of them ever to complain that they can't because "it's a rule" interpreted geek-style literally as a search-string -- and then if they do it for one, they have to do it for all.

No, because there aren't dozens or hundreds of different ways that huge builds appear such as to annoy in SL. There's...two. Or three, maybe. These abstract notions the Lindens live with as if they are in some ideal Metaverse of self-executing code-as-law are for the birds. They did not create such a world; they do not live in it in RL or SL. 

When the Bush Guy's signs got to be just too much -- when even the Lindens, who would have been happy to "Impeach Bush" found it really was getting out of hand, devaluing land, causing havoc, generating enormous numbers of complaints, and leading in some cases to extortion and various kinds of grifting -- they stopped it. It got gone in a day as things do when you have an asset server and you don't have to have staff go around in person to every sim lol.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

I think mainland has become less important "to the owners of this game" (*wince*) than certain other more recent premium areas of SL.

Mainland definitely isn't broken. It's just become neglected.

Some commited long-term attention and love by LL to mainland would help iron out the 'abnor-malities'(heh!) and 'patch' (heh!) the holes. They do some fixes, now and again. But they have other priorities right now...

I've been waiting years for the things I'd like to see fixed or added in mainland. Some have happened, most have not.

Just be patient.

*sigh*

Just the other day I caught myself saying to a tenant, "I can't get my game to work" -- and a friend said to me "my game hasn't been working right."

We all get that SL is NOTAGAME. THE HORRAH. NOTAGAME! But people call it that just by habit. It feels like a game, as many online things do because gamification is hugely widespread. I never got involved in war games online like WoW but some of my tenants have come up through them. Or I have old friends that were in The Sims Online which, despite its "freeform play" or whatever you want to call it still had rigid game mechanics, like the need to fill up the "motives" and keep them green (hunger, etc.)

I think it's obvious that neither Moles nor Lindens proper have any time for the Mainland. The Bellisseria project is so enormous and has so many complexities to it and requires so much effort it to keep it from BECOMING LIKE the Mainland (which it could easily do) that they can't afford the luxury of policing the Mainland, reacting to the Mainland's issues, etc. 

Yet that's all the more reason why they need to bite down hard and take some actions with political will that remove some real chronic problems. As I noted, discretionary acts on their part are legion and vast over the 21 years of their existence. They reduced griefing significantly by putting in various code-as-law solutions like not allowing "grey goo" or self-replicating prims to spawn over sim borders, deprecating Starax' wand along the way (workarounds for Starax could have been found but he declined). They incorporated all kinds of stuff -- I remember DISTINCTLY the days before they had ANY child avatar limitations which are accepted today as rock-solid law to the point of a recent enormous scandal. That would have been impossible 15 years ago because they had no policy or TOS or even common practice interpreting the TOS. 

BUT THEY ALSO MADE PURELY DISCRETIONARY DECISIONS such as to ban a certain university group after giving them many second and third and fourth chances due to their commitment to universities in SL. Ultimately, they realized this commuter college is not a university.

You don't wait for things like that in real life -- if I fall and trip on the sidewalks near my house and hurt my leg, I call 311, I file a complaint with the city and the owner of the property responsible for fixing that sidewalk, and eventually, if I and my neighbours complain at least for half a year, that sidewalk is fixed. One even sees politicians saying "I will come and pour the concrete here myself if the city doesn't get off its...." etc.

So why wait years in a situation where you actually pay to live there as well, even if the amounts are relatively small? Why call that acceptable?

I could add that your wish list of things they need to do would *to me* fall into the category of "avatar foot shadows" -- I don't need them to be fixed because I don't sail. My list of things that needs to be fixed contains things that everyone pretty much agrees on and wishes to be better. It's political. You'll get the ear of these Lindens you've felt confident enough to ridicule because you have interesting script/sim seam/techie things for them to do and they like that. I'm not going to get their ear because I have political actions that require them standing up to their bullying pals among techies, designers, and oldbies 

I'm patient, too. I waited four years, as did Qie and others who regularly raised these issues for them to develop an ad farm cutting policy. There is one now. It is often enforced. But in some key areas it is not. And a too-strict interpretation of what fits under this law enables scofflaws to thrive.  

 

Edited September 24 by Prokofy Neva

[animats]

It would be interesting to try tighter restrictions for one of the mainland continents, as an experiment. One of the smaller ones, such as Sharp or Corsica.

• Bellessaria's skybox, security orb, and ban line rules.
• No ads on any parcel smaller than 512 m^2.
• No sim surrounds. Screening trees are fine. Must look good from the outside.

These are less restrictive than the Belli rules, which seem to be working.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, animats said:

It would be interesting to try tighter restrictions for one of the mainland continents, as an experiment. One of the smaller ones, such as Sharp or Corsica.

• Bellessaria's skybox, security orb, and ban line rules.
• No ads on any parcel smaller than 512 m^2.
• No sim surrounds. Screening trees are fine. Must look good from the outside.

These are less restrictive than the Belli rules, which seem to be working.

 

The usual claques and cliques will say this hurts their "freedom". They get to do WTF they want on their land.

It is not possible to have a skybox rule of 2000 or higher on a sim where you do not have the luxury to put in easements everywhere and where you, not LL, has to pay the tier for the easements. It's simply not comparable. I cannot have a sim of 65536 meters divided up into smaller lots, whether 4096s or 1024s or less, and rationally have a skybox regime of 2000 or higher. There simply isn't enough sky space. I have to make the rule 500 and above which is generally good enough as most people don't have their draw distance that high. It's not great, but in practice, most people try to get up to 750. Given that at 4096, you can no longer set prims, there is a hard stop to all of this. Skyboxes aren't the issue. Giant domes that block the view on 4 sims are the problem. These giant domes occasionally encroach but the real issue is those owners will not lift them up even above 500, let alone 2000. They put them at 50 or 100 because they don't care.

No, screening trees are not "fine". No 2D item is "fine". All of it looks terrible from the outside. The "look good from the outside" is hugely subjective. But if you say "no privacy screens, no 2D anything, no 2D trees, no fences that are merely prim boards with photo-real pictures -- ONLY 3D trees, fences etc but NO "privacy screens" of any kind -- those are my rules. Because they all look terrible from the outside. There is never a 2D item that looks good -- ever. The only reason I myself have a few of them is to hide the view of ugly builds on the next sim or same sim.

No security orbs on the ground. This is Caledon's rule; Desmond Shang invented this rule IIRC and it's an excellent rule that enables people to have their silly security orbs that bang people around while they're banging each other, but not do that on the ground where it's a real nuisance to other tenants or neighbours merely trying to fly home.

 

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

... But I do agree with the OP.  Perhaps the Moles or Lindens should consider temporarily appointing or "deputising" some appropriately skilled and knowledgable people into helping with some of the backlog of mainland maintenance work thats required, which LL clearly don't have the time or numbers to do?

There could be unpaid volunteers, who would, in their own free time, roam around the mainland continents and seas, returning wrongfully placed objects, griefer litter, find faults and formulate fix ideas for improvement and report them back to Moles or Lindens, who would then assess, approve (or disapprove) of solutions to mainland's huge backlog of neglect issues?

Yes I know that sounds just like the SL Feedback thing, but there are only a limited number of Moles and Lindens to go around to deal with it all. They clearly need help! It would put the "Your World, Your Imagination" element back into SL too, something which has definitely declined in the last decade.

I can think of several people (cough..!) who have a love of mainland, who are good at in-world building and editing, who are imaginative, good at communicating and who have excellent museum-curator levels of knowledge and respect for historic mainland areas, objects and artifacts...

Edited September 24 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Love Zhaoying]

When I read "deputy", the answer is Barney Fife.

[Diablo Lioncourt]

2 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

...  temporarily allowing or "deputising" some appropriately appointed skilled and knowledgable people into helping with some of the backlog of mainland maintenance work thats required, which LL clearly don't have the time or numbers to do?

This sounds like a perfect job for @BilliJo Aldrin.

I'm too busy with all these new cufflink and necktie shoppes opening. A gentleman can never have too many cufflinks and neckties.

 

 

[animats]

10 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

No, screening trees are not "fine". No 2D item is "fine".

Agreed. If you don't insist on totally opaque, there are better tree options.

Long row of trees on grass base. 5 LI. View from Linden sidewalk outside of my place in Vallone.

Not a  solid barrier, just a nice visual break. There are better trees in SL, but this low-prim set is enough for this situation.

Oversized picture of forest on parcel wall. Please don't do that.

This is in Corsica, and it surrounds a small store on three sides. There's nothing inside or outside that needs to be hidden.

It's not hard to do a good job with this. People just need to know what's possible and easy.

[Eowyn Southmoor]

On 9/24/2024 at 7:33 PM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Perhaps the Moles or Lindens should consider temporarily appointing or "deputising" some appropriately skilled and knowledgable people into helping with some of the backlog of mainland maintenance

To quote another fairly blunt forum user.. Hell no!

The last thing LL need to do is to put residents in charge of any kind of clean-up.  The mess, unlawfulness, chaos, or however you want to describe it, of mainland, is directly due to the residents in the first place - your world your imagination remember

It doesn't matter how skilled or knowledgeable the resident is, they will make decisions based on their personal opinion , which may or may not be in line with what LL think, or what other residents think.  You only need to check all the threads on this forum over the past few years where every Tom or Sally has a sure-fire way to "fix" mainland, and the resultant arguments that follow because no-one can actually agree.  Even in the last few posts we can see that people can't even agree on a style of tree 

I love mainland, even if every day I see things that i'd like to burn to the ground (I also see the same in Bellisseria by the way)... but there's a reason why mainland is the way it is - it's because generally, every single owned parcel on mainland is already just how the owner wants it , and individuals tend to have individual tastes

 

 

 

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

On 9/24/2024 at 2:33 AM, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Perhaps the Moles or Lindens should consider temporarily appointing or "deputising" some appropriately skilled and knowledgable people

Absolutely not. No way. Nope.  Uh uh. By no means.  Negative. Nay. Non placet.

 

To OP: Mainland should remain the wild west with complete freedom of expression even if someone else thinks its ugly.  There are other options for controlled communities, private rentals, themed communities, and Linden Homes for people who want their views protected.  Are you talking about the infrastructure being broken - roads and stuff?