Prokofy Neva

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1. Bring back the police blotter, only this time in full, every single AR, every single action taken or not taken -- yes, taken or not taken. In an automated system this shouldn't be an issue. The only thing you don't save here is face. 2. Name names, as you would have to in a court of law in RL. So ARs that didn't work, or are specious, also become highly visible. People who speciously AR will stop from the public shame; griefers will be documented and shamed and may or may not stop, but then it's obvious to the Lindens. If the argument is that you can't publicize names due to the fear of retaliation, well, wait, what kind of show are you running here? You mean people whom you are banning retaliate? Then perma-ban them? Since this is unlikely to happen, someone should start a blog where they document griefing. The only thing I can do is publicize names at my store of those who grief or vioilate my rules or the TOS and will no longer allowed to rent.

Fortunately, there's only one of me, however.

http://alphavilleherald.com/2012/09/linden-lab-nukes-sandvich-sim.html

It's simply not true that if you AR isn't answered and the problem eliminated, that therefore it isn't justified. Absolute. Not. True. I have posted such situations on Twitter where groups of people then come an AR the situation and it either gets dealt with finally by the Lindens, or some "altruistic soul" comes and buys micro-parcels and links them up to re-sell. I think that isn't helpful because it only enables the land cutters. I have had grief prims on physics in the air and on the ground at neighbours' parcels for months on end, some rooted and encroaching that I can't return on my land, and my multiple ARs and neighbours' and tenants' ARs do absolutely no good. Finally, at the MonCierge meeting I manage to nab one of those Lindens with a numbered Governance name, and they fix the problem. One told me I should file tickets for persistent situations like this. Oh? But we're told NOT to file tickets and filing tickets on governance issues is a path to a reprimand and/or ignoring the problem. I find that group ARs do work.

Yes, it's a glitch, I fixed it. It's BJoyful's claim about CC.

Re: commercial rentals at L$1/m2 per LI per week, Wait. $1L per meter? As in 1024L for 1024 m2? Per week or month? Or $1 per LI? As in $351 for a 1024 m2? That isn't a cheap rent. A dollar a prim is what I charge in the most prized areas where I am consciously asking people to support the land preserve along with their enjoyment of the natural beauty. But that's rare. You can't get rentals for $1/prim. I would charge $250L/350 prims or $225/300 or something like that. My idea of cheap rent -- consistent with the whole market -- is 0.65/prim or less (prims and land impact are virtually indistinguishable). I used to charge 0.50 in the very community whose histories and realities appear to be so contended (I thought the land visibly for sale over the past 3 years told the story graphically LOL). I recently raised the rent to 0.60 and lost some customers, it happens. Then new ones came because they appreciate cheap rentals -- elsewhere there are overstuffed fancy high-end rentals for $1 or even $2 in that area. Rentals are not usually offered by the meter; usually it's by the prim, especially if on group land.

This is fairly silly and oblivious of history. For four long years, a group of us land dealers and Mainland residents complained to the Lindens at their then-inworld town halls and side meetings about cynical land cutting like "the Bush guy" and extortionist ad farm sales as with "Mr Lee's Hong Kong" (all long gone now). We protested with signs in the welcome areas and at the Governor's Mansion. We wrote on the forums and in blogs. And finally Jack Linden who was VP of customer relations at the time, relented and created the policy regarding limitations on ad farming. In part our protests worked, but in part the Lindens themselves realized that they could roll out new regions, but no one would buy them on the auction (in the system of that era) because they were too quickly ruined by cut-throat land cutters. Must of what we have in SL comes from resident protest. I had an entire exhibit on this phenomenon at SL20B. This exhibit wasn't banned; it was admitted and Moles even helped on some of its difficult aspects. It was appreciated and visited. It tells the story of significant curbing of griefing; protections on privacy against bots; hundreds of zoned sims -- these all came about due to strenuous resident protesting to create their ideal world, which is a positive, not "negative" phenomenon. The Lindens openly and cynically sell microparcels to known land-cutters and ruinators of the view. They are documented again and again. Sometimes group ARs and confrontation at the MonCierge meetings curbs this. The Lindens don't have the staff they used to have to respond to every complaint. So they need to hear a sustained chorus. We offer solutions like making it impossible to sell land under 512 m2 or making it impossible to build on land under 64 or similar measures. There are always various solutions provided with protest which is LEGITIMATE. Just because the forums are neutered, don't imagine that every other venue, public and private is. The Lindens read social media and even have their operatives on it. ARs seldom work for land issues as distinct from mass griefing or serious violations of other TOS statues. The Lindens have an answer for the many problems of the Mainland: it's called Bellisseria. If you want, you can live there. If you don't, you can keep trying to make Mainland a better place -- which we have done for 20 years, thank you.

"Bellicosia" is one of your more brilliant neologisms as it sums up that angry, defensive stance that so many of the group leaders and resident government RPers assume as they protect their land -- and their "special relationship" with the Moles, whom they expect to come over for coffee regularly and to enjoy recreational activities with them on their poor contractors' salaries. It reminds me of what Yury Afansyev, the Russian historian, described as "the aggressively-obedient silent majority". That by and large, the Soviet people weren't just content to avoid or ignore dissent; they would become "aggressively obedient" to the regime and silent about the obvious problems like food shortages. I actually think Bellisseria is the Lindens' greatest invention and actually represents a very mature awakening on their part to the fact that they have to serve customers and give them what they want if they want to get their server and staff costs paid. An old forums' denizen who worked as a computer programmer in a big firm called this attention to *customer requirements*. The open source ethos is about serving oneself on one's whims and perhaps some tightly-knit like-minded community of hackers. But fulfilling *customer requirements* is what the grown-up developer has to do. Lots and lots of people enjoy Bellisseria. And that's ok -- let them. Most people want a replica of American suburbia as an ideal. I don't but then I had it growing up and found it fairly ghastly. I think virtual suburbia was selling itself, so I've been mystified as to why the Lindens felt they had to encourage aggressive resident roleplay and fiercely territorial DJs to make it work. It competes directly with Mainland rentals but I myself maintain 4 stamp venues in Belli and I enjoy taking train rides through it -- where I never encounter a soul. Mostly what people get out of Bellisseria is freedom from blight and lag caused by unscrupulous neighbours -- and predictability. Hell is other people. Bellisseria to some extent protects you from the other people in hell. To be sure, there are those Trumansville moments when you see on repeat the same flowerpot and the same lady on the bicycle and the Volkswagen again. But it's ok, they're nice flowerpots. I don't feel that people with a different philosophy than mine interfere with my enjoyment of SL until: o they dominate the forums and browbeat people and AR those they dislike and make it stick o they imply that newbies are harmed, those precious innocent creatures who more likely than not make six-figures as computer programmers or graphic designers o they imply that if I express dissent I suppress *their* way of life. Somebody in the view with miles of parking lots causes chagrin and annoyance, especially when it is empty much of the time (like the spam cars). But in many cases, I can move. Dump land. Get new land for $1/m. Or put up a wall. Or expect the tenants to put builds on de-render. Sometimes it doesn't last, and it's empty fields with Linden kudzu again...

There are lots of people, myself included, who think they are helping the community by creating a park or an activity. And they don't get used because...guess what, people don't need you to do that for them. For 1024L they can buy some abandoned land on their $11.99 premium account, and if it bets blighted, move to Bellisseria, to a new treehouse for example, and if they tire of that, back to the Mainland. It's a buyers' market. As long as you keep it clear in your mind that land purchase is an expense, a loss, a cost center, and not an "investment" you'll do fine. You don't spend $12 on a movie these days and wonder if you can re-sell your experience of the movie! You don't get a brunch special for $13.05 (the cost of a premium with tax in NYS) and say, let me re-sell that! The same with SL land. Love Z. made the point that people providing open spaces or waterways or parks are doing so for some mercenary motive they cloak under altruism. I have never done any cloaking. Since the very first day I opened my flagship sim, I put 10k m2 open space in it so it wouldn't seem crowded like so many other places and would encourage people to buy or rent the land. It's more or less still there today with KittyCats and refreshments and a pond. I think it almost never gets used, except by me and a tenant who also adores kitties. But it's there to dilute the view. I've always said I want the rentals to pay for the land preserve. In the last few years, I've noticed the emergence of what I call the industrialized Nature movement. This was personified by NatureCon, which featured...urban sims and transportation, with a laggy train running through it and booths for drivers' groups. So "Nature" is something like Eisenhower's idea of creating a system of national parks and the roads to get to them, encouraging people to buy gas-guzzling cars, promote domestic industry, and the drive to a place surrounded with all kinds of expensive gear that blocks out Nature. This is a very American and modern phenomenon. With industrialized Nature, you get the blessing of mass transportation games, bus and car tours, walks where the rangers outnumber the visitors, Nature sims where the quests and content for sale drown out the actual natural vistas, etc. It's fine, people can do what they want, they need to make tier, if that works for them -- and judging by the group members and activities, it does -- why not? I don't view people implementing a philosophy different than mine as somehow a hindrance to me -- you can do what you want on your land under the TOS. That doesn't mean I can't criticize it in public debate. Hell, no. I just observe that along the way, other groups got killed off or folded and pushed out of business. Not mine, because I'm in a parallel universe completely. I was already in a process stretching back years where I was gradually downsizing my Land Preserve or converting at least the edges of it to rentals to get the tier paid -- or selling it off. I've accelerated that process more these days as I notice that with industrialized Nature and Bellisseria Nature, such as it is, I have less visitors to all but the perennial favourites, most of which are religious in nature. So I have upgraded some areas to mesh and dumped others. After all, this is mainly about pleasing myself, making places *I* find comfortable and which I calculate *others* will as well (not everyone wants a driving vacation; most people sit on one sim and sit in IMs while logged on to SL). It has to pay for itself! To cite another "ineffective altruism" story I really had a chuckle over: there was a little Mainland island where I used to supply a treasure chest and I would replenish it every few months, it had both copyable freebies and no-copy gatchas including some really nice ones. I noticed that people stopped coming to it in the last year WHEN I put it in search/places. Before, they would find it if they had the patience to go down the whole list of locations in the preserve. So I doubled down, put out new gatchas, kept it in search. Still nothing. Finally I decided to divide it in two, and make half of it a rental rather than selling it. And THAT"S WHEN I noticed the description on the parcel I hadn't focused on before: "New Content August 2015". ROFL. OF COURSE no one is going to come to a place they've found by hunting for "treasure" if it says "AUGUST 2015". It might as well have the title of Solzhenitsyn's novel. On another large venue built around an infohub, the comments on the bulletin board have been like "Man, this place is prims!" or "This place looks like the 1990s!" The funny thing is, as I begin trying to replace prim buildings with similar mesh shacks, I find the mesh houses are double and triple the land impact of the original rather elegant and nicely textured shacks. So that's not on, and I'll have to decide whether to merely meshify some of the old shacks or buy expensive new ones with less impact or rent out more land to cover the tier. In yet another place, where one visitor said acerbically that it "looks like a Texas fish camp" (not a compliment, I guess), I have rented out the sky and put less fairy and elf stuff on the ground. There's already enough fairy and elf stuff in SL. I think basically, if you are going to get in the altruism business, you either have to be independently wealthy (I'm not) or have a notion to please yourself and cover your costs on the way to pleasing others, or else just not care. I probably wouldn't have so many different kinds of religious sites if I hadn't realized that people really want, need, and love such places and come to them and tip well. Also horse-riding and boat-riding are in demand. Now that the Lindens have put in treehouses to Bellisseria, anybody in the tree-house business will have to get out it. But I'll keep mine built by Foolish Frost, who long since left SL for greener pastures, because I like the feel of it -- even as I get a Linden treehouse as well which I probably won't keep but will have fun with for a time.

PS I think given this tangled and tortured account, I'm not the main problem in the "interference of the enjoyment of your SL". I think others even closer to the action didn't wish to believe in the folie a deux, either.

1. I don't have an "arts background" unless you mean "liberal arts". I have a B.A. degree in Slavic Languages and Literature. 2. Prokofy is "he". 3. I think all landlords should "eat their own dogfood" -- and house creators even more. If the makers of skyboxes in particular would spend one evening in their own skybox with the mesh bouncing off their floors, they'd fix it so I don't have to do so with workarounds. 4. I think perhaps some of your own friends might have a quiet word with you to put you back in touch with reality -- but you may resist it. I report what I see accurately. You're not required to read it. I don't need any "happiness counseling" (what a weird "Brave New World" sort of concept!). Reporting the facts of SL as you see them and as others agree they *are* doesn't "interfere with the enjoyment of others' SL" because...they aren't required to read the forums and can block people they dislike. One of the greatest fallacies invoked on social media and forums like this one is that one person expressing their thoughts and reporting what they see somehow "cancels" or "suppresses" a dissenting opinion. Obviously it doesn't. 5. A lot of history has been rewritten here, and the participants in the story with more direct knowledge than I am, aren't talking because a) they don't bother with the forums; b) they don't like getting banned; c) they don't wish to engage in drama. 6. Freedom of speech is not what we have in SL. But complaining about land cutters and ad farmers is legitimate and needed and that can't be white-washed. I'm not aware that any "doom" has been foretold in my posts. PS Useful to compare and contrast old threads on this topic with different histories.

What sims are those? The rail fanatics have caused more trouble! When I abandoned land that a tiny claque of furries kept demanding I turn over to them instead of "getting in the Lindens' way" to put through a RR in Juanita -- for example. That abandoned land sat there for months on end. Gosh, no Lindens who tidied it up or came through there later seized it to use for their SLRR. You know? And then the Lindens sold it to land cutters who flipped it to ad farmers. Mission accomplished, eh? I wonder why those transportation games require such MILES of empty concrete parking lots when they don't get THAT much use, and there are no employees in these factories to require the parking spaces. And you know? We can fly.

I'm giving a truthful and accurate report on a real situation in a virtual world. I suggest you do the same without trying to psych out people's real lives or prevent them from expressing the truth of the situation. I don't have to justify what I do in RL or SL. I struggle to comprehend how people who virulently protest against everything in RL, from local to international politics, can then lapse into pure Pollyana-ism when they get into SL. Why can't we criticize SL?! Of course we can. It's a world both run in authoritarian fashion by a company, like all platforms, and made by fallible human beings at the secondary level. OF COURSE we can criticize it, and that's how you make things better. Many people have deep, deep illusions about how they are "helping the commuuuuniity" and selflessly providing for others. I know, I'm one of them. I pay less tier now that I've shorn myself of some of these "altruistic" disasters, and that frees me up to be of more genuine use.

That's very nice. The tree really makes it. GTFO-as-morgue seems appropriate to me. I will check back in a year! So far, this isn't an example of ineffective altruism unless you're saying no one visits.

I am still dithering with the paint on the walls on my treehouse so not ready to show it yet. It seems the Lindens have provided the very same paint they did for Sakura, which I like, but which isn't working for me. So I am trying to find my own shades. But 8f8's new set, like a lot of others of his since his gatcha "story" days, take some breaking in. I think start by getting just one or two pieces so it doesn't overwhelm, and you see why you'd want the others. I think this works as Boho or sort of Victorian decadant or whatever. With flowers growing out of the table and tex change, I put it almost anywhere including in Milk Motion's Fantasy skybox which I completely re-did (it's very white and plastery). I put the lamps in a very downbeat fishing village wharf to finally replace Jessica's Populuxe ceiling lamps which I love but which are primmy even when convexed. I don't know if these are meant for the PBR viewer but they are very shiny and reflective. If I keep going I'll let you know but I think this set fits in the treehouse too, maybe not all of it.

Let me give you ANOTHER "ineffective alturism" abandoned land reclamation experiment. This one ran for more than a decade. It wasn't until I TP'd in a friend to review it with me that I realized just how awful it was. I guess it was when she started chuckling at the flexi-prim dresses for sale...marvelling at the all-prim construction not even convexed where it could be...and then guffawed outright when she saw the free bits, circa 2007. This was a "Flea Market" where I let people put out stuff for free. I got the land abandoned, and thought I'd let the prims on it go to support a mall which actually did cover tier, and let newbies have a chance to sell things without the huge rents that mall merchants demand. So I had a limit of like 30 prims and 90 days -- then a year -- then I dropped even that, especially with COVID returnees. I encouraged people to put out gatchas, but oddly enough, they sold better in the other area where I charged rent. There's something about free places with free things that has free placement of things to sell that just doesn't draw quality. I had to constantly remove copyright theft and "business in a box". Interestingly, it got a fair number of tips, but never from the people who actually sold things there. Perhaps five years ago, I cleaned out people who hadn't logged in for years. I tried to advertise it more. This land was like 3072 and cost me $9 or $10 US per month. It never broke even or came close to covering costs. The tips while they seemed brisk only made up perhaps $1-2 of the tier. I never examined it as I should have, and just let it go. When I abandoned 10k on that sim when a long-term renter left (after it didn't rent or sell), the "Flea Market" parcel didn't even serve the purpose of providing prims any more. The prims were simply not used. I abandoned some corners of it and persisted when I should have nuked the thing. After I TP'd that friend out of there and served her tea as she kept laughing at the flexiprims (I *like* flexiprim skirts in fact)... ...I came back the next day and took a weather eye to this altruistic scene which SERVED NO ONE. I could advertise it and never get new people. That's because newbies don't need places to sell things -- they don't make things. If they have a breedable or a gatcha, they either find a place with traffic and pay the rent willingly, or find one of the many people with little communities or homes they are happy to half-rent out. I looked at the prim placement and last log-in date of my "tenants" and removed those who were gone from the People List or who had not logged in for 2 years. That didn't leave many! Perhaps I had 20 people to contact then. I wrote to them all -- only one, a neighbour on another sim, answered -- the rest never bothered. I put the entire lot to rent. But who needs even cheap snow roadside? I then put it TO SALE for $3/m. Nothing doing. It was then that I entered the great and glorious Cycle of Life that is abandoned land. Today, I see somebody picked it up and put an end user's house on it, not bad. Always nice to have nice neighbours. And you?

I call experiments in "reclamation of abandoned land" to be "ineffective altruism," like SBF's now criminally-sentenced "effective altruism". Do you still believe in them? I don't! I see lots of failures around me, compounding the failures that led to the abandoned land in the first place. It would be particularly instructive to tell you the history of another nearby "Blake Seaview" sim in the last year or more. But as that would get the thread banned, I'll just tell a few tales on myself as I always apply my philosophy to myself first. So I got this ENTIRE SIM on the auction for A SONG -- $32,000. It was actually a Linden who persuaded me that it would be cheaper and no-risk to buy on the auction and not request it inworld (which was also not allowed as my account was in arrears). Maybe he had to show progress on auction sales but I bit on this chum because I LOVE LOVE LOVE pink mountain sims. I guess few others do as there is enough abandoned pink-mountain sim to make a continent! So in the lovely sim of La Montana Rosa, as I call it, I set about making a community of: o low-cost skyboxes o mid-cost skyboxes o mid-cost mountain homes + sky platforms o budget sky platforms for store or home o land preserve venues in the ground and sky The goal here was NOT to make money but break even -- something it never really did, except for short periods. That's why it goes in the "altruism" basket unless by "altruism" you mean "I spend thousands of US dollars playing Lady Bountiful and don't make back even half the tier" -- because I do see a fair number of THOSE experiments around, and PS I'm guilty of them TOO. So first, it took A SOLID YEAR to make back that $32,000L. Yes, mountains and pink mountains in particular with no water in sight are a tough sell. People hate living on mountains, even if you create little flat terrain wedges for them to put their houses on or give them a a house for free. Maybe they just feel exposed? Even with "avatars can see me" turned OFF. So it wasn't a problem to fill up the sky at 0.70/prim (now 0.71/prim) or the 25/50 prim skyboxes. But the mountains were and are just a tough sell. I tried different things. I allow tier to be donated to the group in lieu of rent. I offer deals of various kinds. I also had to move in some people at like 0.60/prim because I had to rescue from the failed "Blake Seaview" experiment Along the way, I had to remove griefers and over-primmers and squatters, and also put up some Inca-type walls because there was a guy with a god-awful ugly build in the view. The rest of the view was EMPTY on all sides because -- see above. I huffed and puffed on this for almost another year, and then finally I abandoned 3-4 lots on the mountainside that just never rented. They may stay empty -- such land does, for years. Or they may fill up with something awful, in which case, hello Inca wall. You?

*clips and saves to review in one year -- five years -- longer*

@BJoyful, @Cranston Yordstrom, and @UnilWaySpiritWeaver You can have both an open public beach AND beachfront rentals when you have an entire sim or most of a sim. It isn't about there being waterfront elsewhere; it's about revenue to keep your community alive. While it may seem like a dramatic, noble and selfless act to buy expensive waterfront and keep it open to the public (I do this myself), it's a recipe for instability and burnout. And it's unnecessary. You can make combined use, up in the sky if not on the ground. You can also charge artists for rent, as poor and starving and sensitive as they may be -- it can be very low rent, or a percentage of sales. These are not sins. That they are viewed as sins is part of what makes Mainland so unviable and actually feeds the worst form of criminal activity by making any kind of commerce seem dirty and unrespectable. The Lindens, with their Silicon Valley ethos ("no business but my business") and their combination of tech communism/tech libertarianism, feed this ideology big-time, and continued it even to the middle-class suburbia of Bellisseria, where there is not so much as a 7/11 where you can buy milk, or a used car lot to buy a vehicle. You can't even set to sale a pretty artwork in your own home. They could have made it work without such draconian rules that make it impossible even to put land in search, but they decided to let groups, which can be exclusive and vicious, particularly when it comes to DJs and travel, and let them do the dirty work of profits for the few at the expense of the many. The lessons of Campbell Coast may be studied for decades of virtual world students, but they can't without names, dates, and wind-chill factors which we can't get on the forums. But it's not about personal disputes, as these factors are eternal and repeat endless and explain why both selfless non-profit communities fail and cut-throat profit-making ventures fail: o The non-profits usually depend on only one person, and a person who, by nature or design, has to be tyrannical to herd all the cats involved. But if that person gets sick, dies, or has to leave to RL for family or RL business reasons -- examples of this abound in islands and mainland -- the communities fail, because the load was not distributed. One person might come in again and selflessly buy up miles and miles of worthless Mainland and even not do anything with it. But sooner or later, the bill comes due. Maybe you are in a state with no Internet tax or are independently wealthy, but I'm not, I'm more poor than many of my tenants and have NYS tax in the Vampire State so SL costs me US 0.0030/meter (this includes the cost of cashing out Lindens to pay tier). o The business ventures may be run nicely (one thinks of a late, great beloved furry landowner) or viciously (land-cutters, ad-farmers, etc. to whom the Lindens are caught selling micro-parcels time again) but they still are often dependent only on one person, and on market conditions that aren't stable at all. SL has seasonable busts like summer where people go outdoors and don't want virtual land, or the recession, or mass terrorist acts, or the pandemic (that killed or impoverished people as much as it forced them indoors to spend time in their pixel homes). Inherently, virtuality is less stable than reality -- something which the original designers like Philip Rosedale or true believers like me didn't think was true at first. "Wish I could just wake up and it not be true But it is, oh it is Living in the new world With an old soul These rich men north of Richmond Lord knows they all just want to have total control Wanna know what you think Wanna know what you do And they don't think you know But I know that you do Cuz your dollar aint' !@#@#$ Cuz it's taxed to no end." But it's actually more complicated than this viral Appalachian singer believes, and in virtual worlds, it's not so much "The Man" and his varieties of cult beliefs, but these two hard-set factors: 1. Shelter is not a necessity in a virtual world. Virtual worlds are not required even if good for the soul -- they are a form of entertainment, education or a hobby or a side hustle at best. 2. The rule of law does not pertain. The TOS is an unconscionable contract of adhesion, as one judge described SL. In RL, you couldn't put up a huge, tall, glowing spire on 16 square feet of land, there is no government that would allow it. You couldn't disguise past features and sale prices of land -- they would be on record in a deed office. You couldn't put a hole in the middle of a parcel that you would keep and not sell on. You couldn't keep your build encroached on a city street or another person's land. If you had a dispute with a tenant or landlord or neighbour YOU COULD GO TO COURT where the rule of law is upheld. We don't have that in SL. There is no rule of law, no independent judiciary, and no independent media required to make law and courts function well. We can't publicize the misdeeds of land barons or community owners on the forums because the posts are removed. In real life, they are part of the record. So unless virtuality becomes a necessity (and it may, as my health records and my laundromat are already in the Metaverse), or unless these worlds are run under the rule of law with independent judiciaries and a free press, as the most habitable and viable countries are in RL, these failures persist. When you infer that there is some cut-throat commercial way of doing things that you didn't follow, I think there are two things you are missing: o Those cut-throats don't last for the reasons I noted above even without the rule of law because the market isn't sufficient. If you had $2000 real dollars to invest, you'd be better off putting it in a CD rather than a virtual world that is high risk and high personal involvement. Notice that Anshe Chung hasn't logged in for years and the legions of Chungs doing business with that name were sold those accounts. o You may enjoy a certain amount of reputational equity with affiliations with the BBB the Lindens and Moles that you may not realize ads to your clout in terms of free advertising and traffic. I have seen some people put up land for sale next to my rentals which they describe as "protected" because they've been there for 19 years. But I personally don't rely even on Linden Land, which is increasingly auctioned, let alone a long-term nice neighbour, as I've seen them go or change. "Never make someone else a priority when you are an option". You owe nothing to your neighbours although it's always nice to follow good neighbour policies which BTW most certainly DO NOT include putting out that ugly sculpty kiosk with beautification mantras that is mainly wielded by reputational-launderers trying to sell ad farms and odd artists with a grudge. Again, if you do land cutting and dumping of roads and easements, it's not somebody's name-calling that is your problem, it's your bad deed. I don't know why this requires defense but it's because the virtuality we live in here starts in our minds. Abandoned "reclamation" projects are often self-serving, illusory, delusional, and reputation-enhancers as I know from even my own projects which I now dub "ineffective altruism". Nobody needs you to offer rentals on the side of the mountain with helicopter homes at a loss of half the tier covered. Nobody needs you to flatten a lumpy abandoned land. Just as newbs and non-Americans are not helpless creatures as so many think, and often turn out to be programmers with six-figure income or at least a marketing job that gives them plenty of disposable income, so the typical land-buyer is capable of asking the Lindens to sell him or her abandoned land for $1/m. I certainly do not "scoop up" prime coastal that can't pay for itself in rent, tips, or content sales, as I'm poor in RL, unlike so many of you. If someone else does to play Lady Bountiful, great, but what happens when RL intrudes or she gets sick or dies? Then you'd wish there was a real commune, but except for certain old furry communities (and not really even them), there are few true communes in SL. "Trads" is the plural of "trad" which referred both to the original Linden Homes AND the later model of "classic" homes that aren't cabins, fantasy, stilts, etc. They are smaller than other homes and many find that a real negative. Even the newer, re-done ones are smaller. A LOT of people still live in them, as I've found. Yes, there are ancient "modern" Aspen type homes and elf homes that are largely empty, although when I got a "modern" ancient home near the dragon build, I saw lots of people logging in, more than in the Belli areas. Yesterday I noted that 50 people were logged on to the "continent" of Sakura which is about 78 sims. A lot of the homes remain unclaimed. Linden is as idealistic a community owner as any of us but this can't go on forever. Yes, Patch has talked about removing those very ancient homes made of sculpties, and we've said again and again that we hope he keeps the builds like the dragon quest. The Lindens may remove those just as they remove any or all Bellisseria builds, the Mainland, or the entire world of SL. They haven't, apparently because they're busy or they still have customers. Unlike some Mainland dealers, from whom they've taken away customers.

Log-in light. Somebody's burning their leaf piles again over in Slosser, tsk, tsk.

You know how in certain books and movies, the macho honcho says "This guy *needs* killing!*. That's the morality of what you're endorsing.

@Zalificent I just spent 30 minutes wandering around Sakurasseria, blessing the Moles for not allowing the spam-cars in the Linden homes. I saw...one motorcycle parked outside an unfurnished home. @BJoyful, you may not have flown out of Corsica much. I have. So I have seen lots and lots of examples of this land baron's "handiwork" including on sims where I had a presence, and also on sims where I didn't, which were empty, and where his overstuffed rentals never sold. You notified me that land was going up for sale and cheap prices and I said I'd get some, although you didn't ask me to take over the entire place, and I never would have volunteered, because "inland flat nothing" (to use the virtual land dealer's term of art) no matter how much you decorate it, is simply not rentable, even if you add roads and decor. The big mistake still ongoing in CSC is that the prime waterfront is not rented out to make revenue to support the entire community. Among the many strange decisions made under that baron's tenure was to have live music/live DJs NOT at the site on the Mainland where supposedly the point was to build community (and get the rentals moving) but on an island, with an exact duplicate of the build and decor (!). I didn't do any griefing or stone-throwing and I don't know who you mean; my point is that when they dump miles of road and easements either for way under market (inviting further ad farmers), or they abandon it (forcing anyone to have to get Lindens to cut it up), they are frankly despicable. It costs nothing to link the road/byways to existing parcels to sell. Your friend in the group was right to warn others because a few bit hard into this chum and were burned, so at least some were warned. If that led to some being skittish and leaving or pulling tier when they need not have, I could note that a fair number returned, and large swathes were recovered by a few generous and hardy persons. The galleries and the artists who fled are now back. It shows you what is required for communities: not shrew land barons, but people willing to donate time, talent, and treasure not to "get back at least what they paid" but just to get the experience of a virtual community. There's always a few holding up the entire thing while the rest pay pittance or nothing. Your hope is that they don't burn out or die in RL. Eh, how can people get so emotional over land! If you can't pay the tier, you put the land to sale or abandon it in a rational way, after first offering people to buy the land they were on (not sure that was done). It's not always possible to leave gracefully given all the real difficulties land barons face. And while not a baron, I do grasp all these difficulties, and yet I avoid the pernicious practice of cutting and ad-farming, unlike other top dealers who enjoy the Lindens' favour and chronic selling of abandoned micro-parcels -- they should be ashamed. One thing I've learned in the land business is never to believe people that they will stay "forever" or "permanently" or "long term" -- they're the first to leave. The people who say "I just need this for the weekend, can I refund then?" Answer: yes -- they're the ones you find returning again and again or staying for five years. I think it's great that you ran this very high-quality, nicely landscaped (thanks to kitty and conscientious residents) community. But it's not great you put in your own money. It never is. I speak as someone who has done that time and again and can no longer now that I'm old and sick. So youngsters -- beware. Land is not an investment. It is a cost center. Ultimately, it is a loss. Can you look at it as an experience far better than dozens of nights of RL spent at movies, restaurants, crowded gallery openings where you spent as much in less than a year and had a so-so time? YES, YOU CAN.

Imagine an entire Linden sea sim in Heterocera with not a single build on it. Now imagine TWO such sims. Yay! $1700/2048 prims 5,968 m2 Flat for building. Great for sailing. Amenities in this community include breakfast and lunch areas, pool, sky saunas, ice pool, chapel, art gallery. Teleport to Silva Beach in Sylvia Tenants get right to ban, media, set landing, change parcel description and features like "no build," terraform, etc. Refund any time for a small fee which is returned if you rent elsewhere in our system.