Pauline Darkfury

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: It is possible that your neighbour's buildings encroach on your land, or the air space above your land. As long as the center of the parent prim of a linkset is located on their own land, the rest of the linkset can reach across the border onto yours. If you notice something like this, you can file an abuse report or a support ticket, but it would be polite to first contact your neighbour and see if the matter can be resolved without Linden Lab's involvement. It's not uncommon for people to have a slightly oversized hollow sphere or cylinder to act as scenery for their skybox. If that's the case and the middle of the root prim of the object is on their parcel, it doesn't remove any available prims from neighbours despite encroaching a little onto their land. Mostly it's better to ignore those cases if they are high in the sky and not causing you direct harm. If you force your neighbour to get rid of their scenic sphere, guess what the answer is going to be if you later want to have something that doesn't quite fit the physical size of the parcel. If it's at ground level, or close to the ground, that's a different matter usually.

Faithless Babii wrote: Hey Pauline speaking as a landlord also , and more specifically providing starter homes on private estates, I can assure you Linden homes have definately impacted greatly on my business. Who would go from premium and having a 512 to renting on a private estate? Surely they will just tier up for more land. I dont see it as a short term effect at all and I have had to change my business plan completely, which hasnt been easy or a short thing to do.Couple that impact with those renting out homesteads in cut up parcels now, private estate home rentals have suffered big time, and in my opinion will continue to do so.I do agree that the customer service will never be equalled by LL for renters, but if they snag them straight away at their start up..how do they know any better? If they have issues they come here to the forums and we all act as unpaid landlords for LL by answering their residents questions for them. Hiya. Yeah, it's largely eliminated the 512 rental market, and sorry that was a sector which it sounds like you were heavily targetting. The other side of it, is do you really want to be dealing with 128 tenants per region (in terms of workload)? I accept that there was a niche there for some, but personally think that 1024 and larger is a more attractive market for both landlords and tenants. That standard 16x32 with 117 prims easily becomes rather restrictive in terms of what you can do with it. It would be very interesting to see some real statistics on it, tbh, rather than just individual reports, but I doubt that LL will ever release that info.

Speaking as a landlord here, I personally think the Linden Homes are approx neutral on eating into the rental market long term. The short term impact was almost certainly greater, but long term they give people a safe and easy gateway to get a taste of land ownership/rental, and I think encourage folks towards wanting bigger land in due course. As for limiting them to the first 6 months only, not really sure that's such a great idea as long as they are the current 512s with fixed choice of building. Some of us with plenty of land elsewhere still keep our Linden Home as just a random personal point on the grid (I'm a multi-region owner now, but still have mine just for the hell of it). As far as a commercial variation of it, hmm, not entirely sure if I like that idea or not. I'm not totally against it if it's done in a similar way to Linden Homes, i.e. relatively fixed build, max 512 sq.m. If such a thing were to be offered, I don't really see any reason why someone couldn't have both a Linden Home and a Linden Shop, as long as they were charged an extra 512 of tier to have both. As long as the Linden offerings are small and limited choice of building, there's still plenty of scope for rental landlords to provide larger and more varied offerings, plus that personal service and advice that LL will never be able to provide to their tenants on starter property. Just my personal view — new stuff will likely have a short term impact, but if limited, we should be able to compete reasonably with it on the longer term.

Farthington Whetmore wrote: I found the object! It is a rapidily spinning box created by WierdLazy1. I have filed an abuse complaint but I think it is very important for the Govenor to change the settings of land "under maintenance" to prevent object entry, build, and script running in order to mitigate this kind of behaivor. Turning off object entry & scripts doesn't work fully and would do more harm than good, as you'd end up with aircraft, vehicles, etc jammed into the bad parcel options. Setting autoreturn is normally all that's needed to keep the land clear, and something that's being worked on for newly abandoned land. Support have been getting much better at responding to these problems recently. You've done the right thing by submitting an AR, but if it doesn't get the object removed quickly, contact Live Chat and ask them to escalate the issue for you

You need a SL viewer to enter the virtual world. Go to https://secondlife.com/support/downloads to find the official viewers (there are also 3rd party viewers which many prefer).

Assuming that you bought the L$ on LL's LindeX (that's what's used if you use the in-viewer buy L$ button/feature), you should put a billing support ticket in or use Live Chat if you're a Premium account. https://support.secondlife.com/start-chat/ https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/

If the road is a Linden-owned road (owner Governor Linden, the Maintenance group, or Linden Dept of Public Works), it should have autoreturn set (normally to 5 or 10 minutes). They do have a very large number of road parcels, however, and it's not uncommon for one of them to somehow have lost its autoreturn setting. Putting a support ticket in in category "Linden Lab owner Parcel Issues" with the exact location and asking them to set autoreturn to prevent junk accumulating usually gets a fairly quick response. If it's a privately owned road, ask the owner if they can remove the junk and consider setting autoreturn.

Marianne McCann wrote: I don't necessarily think an automated solution is the best solution. That said, I use Auto Return on my own lands, and I highly suggest it to others. In some ways, I wish it was made a simpler part of the viewer, and people were better educated about how it works & will improve their Second Life experience. IMO, nothing works better than educating people about how it can make things that much better for them and their neighbors. Yes, a strong educational campaign by LL to educate landowners who have problem parcel and new landowners could go a long way towards addressing the issues.

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Sure, that's one definition of 'responsible landowner.' Under that definition there's plenty of irresponsibility in the mainland. It's not the Lindens definition though. They set out two responsibilities: Follow the TOS Pay your tier. Since they don't ask for more than that it doesn't seem reasonable to have them enforce more than that. I'd like my neighbors to be considerate too but I'm not expecting the Lindens to force them to be. That's why the private estates are so successful. Well, those are more obligations that they can't avoid. The issue with irresponsible landowners and junk on their land does in fact break ToS if it impacts negatively on adjacent landowners being able to use their land (not talking ugly here, talking spam, encroachment, unfair use of resources, harassment, etc). Ok, it's arguably other people breaking ToS on their land, but one could argue that the landowner bears some responsibility for that if they do not either have autoreturn set or actively police the usage of their land for cases of abuse. The underlying issue is that these problems generate a large support load for LL as the estate managers of mainland. If they were to either require some form of autoreturn on all mainland parcels or gave an incentive to set autoreturn, they could both significantly reduce their support load and improve customer satisfaction with mainland.

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: /me reads covenant of mainland parcel....... There is no Covenant provided for this Estate. I think you're asking people to be considerate, not be responsible. Rather than asking for a technical solution why not ask your neighbor for that authority to remove anything from their land that you object to? No, it's asking them to be both considerate and responsible. A responsible landowner takes steps to ensure that their land does not cause issues for other landowners. The problem with land permissions as far as asking them for responsibility to return problem objects on adjacent land is that it has to be done via group abilities, and there's not enough group slots to make that a workable solution for many (even with 42 slots). Also, many landowners will not be happy to give out that ability to neighbours unless they know them well. It also doesn't help when it comes to semi-abandoned land (still owned and tier paid, but the owner is never in-world or just doesn't care).

Here's a classic example of the problem. Some yob/idiot with too much money gets drunk and drives his absurdly oversized roadster down the railway until it breaks down because cars just don't work right on rail tracks. Then would you believe it, he gets rear ended by a drunk cabbie who's done the same thing!

Yeah, I don't see a mass problem with bots grabbing the parcels, but I do see a problem with excessively greedy people trying to jump on them then flipping them to try to extort L$ from existing landowners in a region, where in the past Concierge would have done a direct sale for L$1/sq.m. on 512 or smaller to someone with a reasonable claim. The thing which should limit the bots is the extremely high cost of tier.

I don't really see how the slope of the land comes into it as far as priority goes, tbh. The landowner who has greatest adjacency is really the one with the priority claim. As far as the pricing itself goes, anything above L$1/m (unless it's in the form of an auction) is a bad idea, as all L$ spent on buying abandonments is lost from the economy, unlike resident to resident sales. As far as the earlier comment about it not being feasible to offer the land to more than the 1st priority person, I don't think that necessarily requires a viewer change. It could easily be implemented via a web app, similar to the auctions site, to progressively open up to more and more residents who own land within the region over perhaps 2 weeks, before going to open sale in-world.

Deltango Vale wrote: It is, of course, a matter of opinion. The best way to approach it is to ask yourself which situation you would prefer: You own a parcel on a sim border. There is an abandoned parcel adjacent to yours across the sim border. You own a parcel anywhere. There is an abandoned parcel far away in the same sim. My experience after four years in the mainland business is that most people would identify with 1. I'm not hard and fast about this. It can go either way. I guess much depends whether someone has built an ad farm beside you just on the other side of a sim border :smileywink: That's an extremely easy choice from my point of view, always the same-sim parcel. I can put up stuff to block the off-sim parcel if it goes bad, I can bug Concierge support until I get an in-world response if it gets ARable content that causes me a real problem that visually blocking it won't solve, but the same-sim parcel lets me do more with the land I'm really interested in, my existing large holdings on that sim.

Deltango Vale wrote: @ Pauline, I added this before you posted: Remember, it is impossible for an out-sim neighbor to be on two sides. By definition, an out-sim neighbor can only be on one side. Remember too, most parcels will not be on the sim border. Most will be interior parcels. Yes, agreed, the off-sim case only applies to a minority of cases, even if this proposal was to be expanded to <= 1024 sq.m (I think it should be). Whether the size is <= 1024, or <= 512, I really don't see how an off-sim neighbour has any legitimate priority claim over a same-sim landowner. They do have a marginal claim ahead of "anyone", but not ahead of same-sim where the extra prims could make a big difference to an existing landowner, even if not adjacent to them.

Deltango Vale wrote: @ Liisa, The order is correct. I feel that adjacent neighbors should have priority. After exhausting all same-sim neighbors, the out-sim neighbor should have priority over same-sim, non-adjacent owners. From long experience, an immediate neighbor trumps distant prims. @ Everyone Seven days is fair considering many residents log on once a week. As I mentioned earlier, I believe the parcels would sell quickly in the overall process. Same sim neighbours do indeed have a good claim and should be given priority. Off-sim neighbours have absolutely zero claim over it in my book, and I feel it's overall harmful to give them priority over same-sim but distant people, as that needlessly damages the ability for existing landowners in the region to expand their max prims. 7 days would be fine if the process was vastly shorter. WIth 10+ steps, 7 days per step is far too long, and 2 or 3 days per step would be far more appropriate, since the people who have priority have had 3 days grace period after the abandonment to notice that it's going to be coming up for sale, and considerably longer if they are further down the list.

I don't agree with giving out-sim neighbours a bite at the land before same-sim. People in the same sim may be struggling for prims and have a greater claim over it, in my opinion. I also think with so many levels to the process, 7 days is far too long per level and makes the process cumbersome. If such a process were to be implemented, the need for longer times per level could be mitigated by making each level inclusive of previous levels (i.e. at level 4, anyone from levels 1,2, and 3 would still be eligible). I also think that this should apply for all parcels up to and including 1024 sq.m., with larger parcels going to the traditional auction process. Step 10, the open sale to same-sim owners should also be L$1/sq.m., there's no reason that they should be hit with inflated pricing. The final step should be a reverse auction, starting at L$10 and dropping L$1 every 48 hours, until it bottoms out at L$1, introducing a system where those who feel it's important to them can jump in early, but otherwise it steadily drops to minimum and avoids taking excessive L$ out of the economy (remember all L$ paid here is lost from the economy, unlike normal resident to resident land sales).

The 3 days is actually pretty generous. It will keep the land unmodified, not return any objects, and give the former owner a chance to change their mind, in case they abandoned in a rage, drunkenness, by mistake, or similar. If I correctly understand what Kelly & Andrew have said, this automatic process only kicks in where someone chooses to abandon their land, and is there to both remove the support load of tickets from people who want their land back for whatever reason, after choosing to abandon it, plus the load of processing the land back onto the market.

Qie Niangao wrote: … Anyway, my point is that empty automated vehicles as environmental ornament is fine with me, in concept. In fact, I like them. We may have to agree to differ on this matter of aesthetics. I understand that a rule of "no non-LDPW-approved unoccupied automated vehicles" creates a clear frontier between allowed and forbidden. But unless LDPW has more capacity than I appreciate, that rule would forbid stuff that I rather like. I'm with you on that, Qie. My main complaints with auto-vehicles are road vehicles on the SLRR, road vehicles blundering their way onto non-road areas, residents being pushed by auto-vehicles, and littering. I own a SLRR region and am very happy with the random auto rail vehicles in general, they make the place more alive, same with auto road vehicles when they actually are on the roads, auto-boats on the water, or auto aircraft. They key for whether an auto-vehicle operation is ok vs. not in my mind is whether it has any significant negative impact on residents. If it frequently causes a litter issue, it's not ok (occasional littering has to be allowed because SL is imperfect, and a glitch or lag spike at the wrong moment could cause litter from a normally very reliable vehicle). If it pushes residents around (either an AV standing there, or an AV in a vehicle), it's not ok. If it's used as a commercial advert/begging on Linden land, it's not ok. If it's totally out of theme with specific themed areas (i.e. road vehicles on the railway or water), that harms the immersion for others and is not ok.

Ann Otoole wrote: If LL dropped tier then people would simply grab a little more up to their existing limits. What people are comfortable paying in disposable income, and SL is 100% disposable income (because nothing in SL actually exists), does not change if the prices are lowered. Just more stufff is got up to the same disposable income level. For LL to do remarkably better requires the world economy to improve. Period. An unlikely possibility given the midievalites are going to take over the world and put Earth back in the stone age. Yes, some would stay within the same RL cash upper limit, but I think a lower tier overall would help retain people as tier payers for longer, and encourage more people to become tier payers

Latisha Pexie wrote: Having a messy land is not an ARable offence. While it may be unsightly to you, it is not up to any resident how another resident makes use of the land that they pay for. As long as the objects rezzed are not in violation of the land's maturity rating a resident may be as cluttered as they wish. That's true, but also entirely misses a major issue with parcels which don't have autoreturn set on mainland. If the landowner doesn't pay attention to them, rarely logs into SL, or whatever, they end up filling with junk which causes problems for other landowners and harms their ability to use their land. Some of the junk objects may well be against ToS, but can be extremely difficult to get something done about them if the landowner doesn't act responsibly and either police the usage of their land or enable autoreturn. A non-exhaustive list of issues which can be caused by junk objects, cause serious harm to adjacent parcels, and are difficult to get resolved if the landowner is nowhere to be found: Encroachment Particle spew Excessively chatty objects Excessive glow Excessively laggy scripts The main issue is normally not with objects owned by the landowner, but with the random junk which will accumulate regardless of no-rez and no-object-entry permissions (neither of those prevent junk from random people accumulating).

Robin Ivory wrote: I like this idea for selling abandoned land and believe if LL would also takes steps to lower tiers, especially for the people with smaller lots, this would invigorate the mainalnd. Change tier levels to: 1024m 0.00usd/month 2048m 8.00usd/month 4096m 15.00usd/month 8192m 27.50usd/month 16384m 50.00usd/month 32768m 95.00usd/month 65536m 179.00usd/month and give a 25% Group Bonus Mainland would sell because Price does sell !!! Your numbers are a bit off for the 65536 level, that should be approx US$150/month based on the numbers above it. Aside from that, yes, I think dropping tier prices a bit could be a major enabler for growth and ultimately boost revenue from tier in the long term.

It's worth noting here that autoreturn is the only reliable way to keep junk objects away without manual policing. Both no-rez and no-object-entry do not keep junk objects off your parcel, particularly on mainland. If it were up to me, it would be impossible to leave autoreturn set to 0 on any mainland parcel for more than 24 hours (long enough to change ownership or group if you need to do that).