Mainland Demands

I think some basic demands are shaping up around the Mainland proposals that Jack Linden is making, and I hope people agree, and we can discuss possibly making a petition around this, at the meeting tonight at 6:00 pm SLT at the Sutherland Dam (search for That DAMMED Prokofy in search/places or use events list sorted for discussion). Here's how I see them:

1. Do not start selling new zoned land until you solve the ad farms blight -- you will be further devaluing the land of people who tried to zone for years before you got around to it, and that's unfair. *Fix the damn ad farms first* -- do not enrich yourselves again at your residents' expense.

2. Solve the ad farms problem globally, promptly, fully, and without conditions. No extortion, in keeping with the policy earlier this year. And extortionists are warned to dispose of their land, not fill it up with a tower and then turn off the price tag -- no, they leave the sim. No spamming -- repetitive signs on one sim -- no intrusiveness -- tall ugly signs in areas where ARs exist because land and view is devalued. Yes, accept such appeals -- because the ad farmers simply have to be sent packing. *Get rid of ad farms*.

3. Place a moratorium immediately and globally on any acts residents take to mitigate ad farms -- putting up prims to block the view of them, putting up trees that may wave into the microplots, putting up ban lines. Yes, we understand rules need to apply to everyone, but Linden inaction and sloth and negligence has created a desperation that needs to be addressed -- the moratorium needs to be instant, and temporary, but global. Just stop. Nobody should be tiering down, leaving for OpenSim, or suffering worsening of their record in SL because of this really curious Linden zealotry for suddenly policing tree-waving into 16 m2 plots or blocking only 3 sides (it used to be 4!), while Lindens remain absolutely indifferent to the extortionist plots, having ceased to discipline such extortionists.

4.. Release zoned sims carefully, to determine if the market will be significantly upset by them -- it may well be.

5. Do not place new content on Governor Linden land, merely repair roads, fix trees or plants, and put on autoreturn. This is to avoid changing of themes, or addition of traffic to regions where residents bought thinking they had "protected," i.e. undeveloped land nearby.

6. Add transparency to the land auctions by publishing a weekly list of winners of auctions. This will help create accountability in the marketplace and help end repeated attempts to extort people by grabbing smaller parcels on sims and trying to sell them to needy buyers at a higher price, and in general promote business responsibility. No, not having the software adaptations necessary for this in the ebay technology at this time should not be an excuse. A simple routine can be added to send all the final buys to one Linden mailbox, and that Linden can cut and paste a table of names once a week, please.

7. Stop arguing policies from edge cases. Edge cases are killers. Edge cases hobble solutions and need to stop crippling progress.

A word on edge cases I've long been wanted to highlight.

"Edge case" is a tekkie, jargony term that Lindens love to use, and their fanboyz can never get enough of: edge case. Wikipedia defines it as cases *at the extreme* and yet it's as if that absolutely rare nature of software and engineering design problems is "the norm" to hear people in SL tell it.

I read this marvelous post by Brian Fling which every Linden should read 10 times, and hang above their desk and read daily -- and yes, there will be a quiz.

I've long thought that the behaviour around this "edge case" stuff is REALLY for the birds, it is not even scientific, as really screwy, wonky bullshit is dredged up in the name of "edge cases," and I've been looking for a way to get a handle on it.

Brian lays it out for you: it's about power over other people; it's about killing their good ideas. It is the root of all evil.

Jack Linden has come up with a completely ridiculous "edge case" that some Linden nit-picker in a conference room swaggering around and trying to kill off the concept of restricting the script kiddies dredged up -- or some fanboy dredged up.

The reason we can't have any solution to ad farms tied to meter amounts, i.e. no land can be cut below 256 m2 or no land can sell for more than $0 if below 512 m2, or whatever variation, is because....wait for it...somebody might have a bit of tier left over they need to use up. The horrah.

Jesus Christ on a crutch. If somebody PAYS FOR that tier ANYWAY, it is NOT OUR PROBLEM as a society, or the Lindens' problem, to find uses for it, or prevent minimal overtierage, or work policy backwards from this patently fake "edge case".

There are 88,000 people who are premium accounts. Yes, there might be "the guy in Cleveland" who has 158 m2 of tier left over and is absolutely verklempt about what to do with it.

But...Of course, we know that the 88,000 follow, um, one of those "power curves" that the Lindens so love. Most 512 m2, from people who wanted the stipend -- old stipend, at $500 -- or just kept that little 512 when they tiered down. They have no scraps of tier whatsoever -- they have 512, end of story. Then the next bigger bunch have 4096 -- either because they are old FIC who got it for life, or because that's just a nice size. These people will have a neat 4096 with 512 used to buy tier somewhere else on the sim to get more prims, or for a little store or something. The next group has 8192 m2 -- and yes, there are several thousand who are land dealers with constantly shifting tier. For them, you do not hobble progress.

These customers are NOT the one to be left with odd bits of 16 m2 tier -- puleeze. Out of the tiny fraction of those with odd bits of tier, there are several cogent options:

1. Donate it to one of the many park or cooperative projects around, like my project, SL Public Land Preserve, or the Arbour Project, or others out there looking for tier, even tiny amounts, every bit helps.
2. If it's a larger but still ragged amount, rather than use any of it for dumbass ads, you could rent it out to groups like the Ninjas (Elanthius Flagstaff) to earn money while it's unused.
3. Rather than tell us that you absolutely must keep a SLex server on *another sim* but your own because yours might go down, use common sense. Does this really ever happen? Aren't they both likely to go down? Is it that big a deal to reset, that you have to blight up somebody else's sim potentially, or keep tier "used" or create a vulnerable area if you have to let it go? Be responsible.
4. Tier down -- gasp, always an option.
5. Release it to Governor Linden who will either a) do nothing with it b) sell it to any owner with 3 contiguous sides.
6. If you are in the opposite situation, where you have a problem with ending up with 16 m2 tier overage say, needed in an undertiered group, and you don't wish to have to tier up a whole tier level, then either sell/release some land or rent some or ask if any neighbours might help. Never a need to create a rare, unsolveable dumbass "edge case" hobbling progress.

Comments

[Tammy Nowotny]

I have mixed feelings about the zoning thing. It seems like it will lead to more harassment and infighting. I think, in spite of the ad blight, mixed-used sims are the best.

It will be almost impossible to define what does or does not belong in a residential zone. Is it OK to keep your SLExchange drop box there? Is it OK to have rental boxes? Is it OK to have rentals at all? Is it OK to have a for sale sign? Is it OK to have a yard sale... and what about a semipermanent yard sale? Is it OK even to have a studio where you build clothes, hair, etc. for resale elsewhere? Is it OK to deed your land to a group which newbies can join, so they can live there? Etc., etc., etc.

Luckily we do have some experience with zoning since most private estates are zoned.

The adfarm blight and the decay of some old mainlanmd sims does undermine the integrity of SL. But overly restrictive zoning also undermines the integrity of SL, not just by creating another means for avis to meddle in each other's lives--- but also because it compromises the fact that a capitalist economy was built into the system from the beginning. You didn't need a subsidy to make (in most case very little) money off SL: anyone could put out stuff to sell. If we make large sections of the grid "non-commercial", then that restricts the grid to those who have an institutional subsidy. Excessive regulation shuts out the entrepreneurs and innovators (like Prokofy Neva, for example.)

[Tammy Nowotny]

Another use for a 16 or 32 is to put up a vendor and sell something useful.

Even though we speak of the small parcel extortionists as "adfarmers" the most hated and most widely banned ones are the ones who either don't put up ads at all (e.g., Austin Hallard, etc.) or who put up blatantly pointless ones (e.g., Kalyrra Eagle.) The ones who put up semiplausible ads (e.g., ChrisChun Fasbinder who is making a rather counterproductive attempt to advertised his software business) or Tyrian Camilo (who is not my favorite avi, but who is actually running a business) attract slightly less venom.

[Darien Caldwell]

I wholeheartedly agree with your comments about edge cases. In the Industry I work in RL, we do substantial testing on things we produce, with specifications they must meet.

We tune functionality to meet the norm, and there are always a few units in each batch which don't quite measure up on the high or low side of some test. These are edge cases.

We don't kill the product because a few don't measure up. They are rejected and the rest are sold. Edge cases are acceptable loss.

LL seems determined to have 100% yield. This is an impossibility, and will lead to disaster. When you start tuning tests to edge cases, you end up losing the majority of your yield.

[Corcosman Voom]

'Jack Linden has come up with a completely ridiculous "edge case" '

That does seem a feeble excuse.

As you say, there are several options for small bits of tier that "have" to be used.

Another thing is that a lot of "edge cases" seem to be hypotheticals - ask for a concrete example and they don't actually exist.

I'd hazard a guess that if ad farms disappeared in the next ten minutes, 99.999% of the mainlanders wouldn't shed a tear.

[Prokofy Neva]

Of course they wouldn't. I was just out surveying the long-term ones that have been maliciously planted next to my rentals deliberately, because I've been very vocal in opposing them and have AR'd them assiduously and proposed JIRA solutions and such.

And, even where there are plots for a "normal" price, I never see anyone buying them "to put my Slexchange server as a backup" or "because I need to use up a bit of tier so I'll just put a tree here".

No. It's the same well-known leading jackasses like Austin Hallard and Cytherea and they use it to extort or blight, plus some copycats who may be doing this on a smaller level but still extorting.

Of course Weedy Herbst pushes in and buys a piece often for her *cough* private projects which involve scraping data from sims where other people are majority owners. I find that a despicable practice, and not putting ugly ad signs and not extorting doesn't sanitize it for me.

If these "edge cases" were valid, I'd see slex boxes, odd names with nothing put on the lot, etc. Never do. It's all bullshit.

[Ciaran Laval]

There's something fishy about this three sides issue. Did you see the chat log from a person who erected walls and was told they were blocking the plot and when they said they weren't blocking all sides they were told something like "Yes, but on the other side is a plot that bans everyone", hello?

So extortionists put banlines up in collusion knowing damn well that any attempts to block them will lead to the person protecting their view being painted as the guilty person because heck, the guy who use banlines to block access isn't considered part of the blocking access equation.

I'm getting to the stage where I'm pissed off with all the BS over these extortion issues, it's common bloody sense who the guilty parties are. They don't need to pussy foot around with new policies, the TOS covers this abuse already.

[Ann Otoole]

How many ad farmer accounts are there?

How many residents have been adversely affected by ad farmers?

Linden Lab needs to simply delete ad farmer accounts and be done with it.

And then polygraph the governance team or whoever is handling the abuse reports and find out who is taking kickbacks (from anyone) or who is behaving or has ever behaved in an unethical manner in relation to Secondlife and terminate them for cause.

[Sean Williams]

Getting rid of ads? Good. Attempting to control how 'land' can be used by all users of Second Life? Bad.

Let's be realistic here hmm?

You say you don't see people buying tiny plots of 'land' for use as an SLX server or Magic Box location or as a method to use up that last little bit of tier - that is fine, you do not see it being done.

However to then go on and say that because you do not see it being done means that it is not done is the height of fallacy. You cannot be everywhere on the Grid - you have no way of knowing who is using their 'land' for what ... and no, Polls do not give an accurate measure.

[Athanasius Skytower]

The reason we can't have any solution to ad farms tied to meter amounts, i.e. no land can be cut below 256 m2

There's a much simpler reason why we can't have this particular solution: media. As long as media streams remain tied inextricably to land parcels, the only way to have multiple different media screens on your land is to checkerboard it. That'll have to be changed first.

[Tammy Nowotny]

I have a somewhat snarky JIRA proposal to create sims with nothing BUT 16 sqm lots on them which cannot be joined into larger lots. You could probably fit all the existing ad farms into something on the order of 10 sims.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1461

I also suggested allowing terraforming of plus or minus 40 m on these new sims.

[Prokofy Neva]

Athanasius, most people don't need to have multiple media streams. They can make do with one, or paste in another or turn on a different TV and the script moves that list into the parcel menu. I think it's not such a widely used thing such as to make a fuss over stopping cutting. But it's precisely because of all these what-ifs that I made the suggestion not to bar cutting, but to bar sale of 512s for anything but $0. There simply is no good argument against that. The arguments people came up with with hypothetical literalist trolling.

[Chrischun Fassbinder]

"*Get rid of ad farms*"

Have to agree wholeheartedly with Prok on this one. Something needs to be done about the existing mainland sims blighted by ad farmers, driven by greed for short term profits.

"bar sale of 512s for anything but $0"

Yes, that's a simple solution suggested by many for years now. Legit advertisers, being those making profits from advertising services and nothing from land sales, are all for such a solution. If only the Lindens would accept the denial of a minor freedom, ability to sell microparcels for profit, for a far greater return to ML sanity.

-

"ChrisChun Fasbinder who is making a rather counterproductive attempt to advertised his software business"

Tammy, I'm interested in knowing how you have arrived at the decision my distributed advertising network, of one build per sim, has resulted in "counterproductive" returns. Or is this a personal view extrapolated to a global level? I'd be happy to discuss real numbers and proven returns with you. :)

[Prokofy Neva]

Chrischun,

You're such a totally cunning asshole, and I know many agree with me on this.

1. For YEARS you EXEMPLIFIED this sort of greed by setting your 16 m2 parcels to sale for a whopping and extortionist $9935 -- an obscenity. Many people paid to get rid of your ugly shit from their pristine waterfront, mountain, pastoral views. Your claims of "swapping" were hollow as you arbitrarily considered them and if you didn't like someone's criticism of your extortionism, you ignored them or heckled them further.

When the Lindens made a new policy, you cynically and duplicitously kept your signs uglifying the view, merely turning off the price tag. You shamefully hijack the eyeballs and attention of people coming to sims where you own nothing but the 16 m2 -- a disgrace.

2. The denial of sales of microparcel is only one aspect of controlling the devaluation of ad farms. It is not just this literalist addressing of the immediate price-tag extortion; there is also the problem of parasiting off others' business traffic and hijacking the view to devalue their land to run your "business". So this is not a total solution, and regulation of signs as to zones, heights, etc. is an absolute must.

3. Chrischun, you constantly claim you have all these clicks and all this income. But any idiot can see that you don't even have ads on your towers except for your own stupid software, or non-SL websites that are merely spam sites selling cheap gimmicky crap. If you claim you have software orders due to your ugly ad towers, who's to check? And frankly, who sells software this way? It's a tacky and stupid method of sales and there are other ways to get better returns.

Nobody can POSSIBLY accept a thing you say after your proven and public track record for 4 years as an extortionist, an abusive cynic, a liar about the claim of "swapping," and a hijacking of other people's business value.

[Chrischun Fassbinder]

> "For YEARS you EXEMPLIFIED this sort of greed by setting your 16 m2 parcels to sale for a whopping and extortionist $9935 -- an obscenity."

Yes, I used to have each of my one parcels per sim set for sale. Your figure is incorrect, though it was around that amount. As for the price, I'm not sure what you consider your time worth, but to replace a lost location... buying, rezing, placing, updating the older advertising software and chatting with the new neighbors, I considered that price sufficiently covered my time. Sold about two a week, swapped far more than that every week.

> "You shamefully hijack the eyeballs and attention of people coming to sims where you own nothing but the 16 m2 -- a disgrace."

No need to say this to readers of this blog, as it's the umpteenth time, you've make it known you dislike near any use of smaller land parcels. While, distributed and networked using builds really get your goat.

> "there is also the problem of parasiting off others' business traffic and hijacking the view to devalue their land to run your "business"."

That's the main land for you. Don't tell me you yourself haven't setup rental communities next to locations offering the same service. Hope you continue to enjoy the traffic brought to your one mall from being next to the Freebie Warehouse. :)

> "So this is not a total solution, and regulation of signs as to zones, heights, etc. is an absolute must."

I'd be interested in hearing any ideas you may have on how LL could enforce such regulations without greatly increasing their AR and grid monkey time spent inworld. Not sure a software fix can or LL is willing to do, as we're all still waiting on a solution to prim overlap across parcel boundaries.

> "But any idiot can see that you don't even have ads on your towers except for your own stupid software, or non-SL websites that are merely spam sites selling cheap gimmicky crap."

Actually, I've hosted over a hundred ads, over the years, for SL based products, services and locations I haven't any direct relationship with other than being friends, paying clients or nonprofit in RL and SL.

> "And frankly, who sells software this way?"

Really Prok, you've never seen an affiliate program offering direct download software? Perhaps I misunderstand this jab. Yeah, I know, 3D, web pages aren't shared locations... concept of picture advertisement that can be clicked on remains the same.

> "Nobody can POSSIBLY accept a thing you say after your proven and public track record for 4 years as an extortionist, an abusive cynic, a liar about the claim of "swapping," and a hijacking of other people's business value."

Liar? I've offered swaps for years, given I usually don't work with people who insult my work by calling it a "fucking piece of shit" a minute into a first time conversation. I find it's so much easier to resolve a win/win when both parties are able to be civil towards each other, even if they disagree. Just go look at some of my more recent swaps, archived as a forum.

http://www.mlghk.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=1

[Tammy Nowotny]

Open Letter to ChrisChun:

I don't want to antagonize you Chrischun... I had a minor but disturbing run-in with you once. I carelessly built an object which overlpaped one of your adtowers (one of your two near the southeast corner of the Huckleberry sim.)

A few hours later, I log on, intending to remove the objects....I and in my email inbox, I find... not an IM politely asking me to remove the object, but a warning from the Lindens following an AR which could only have been from you. A couple of days later, I was in the police blotter, right there with the griefers and the Nazis. Not a good experience.

You were within your rights, and no hard feelings... but I still think you mishandled it.

As for "counterproductive," I meant that your ads do indeed bring people's attention to Code4Software and your other clients.... but not in a good way. I do understand that advertising does have to be a little annoying and a lot repetitive.... but an advertising program which attracts open hostility and even makes enemies does your customers (e.g., Code4Software) no good.

As for your statistics, I am sure you do get clickthroughs... but how many of those clickthroughs lead to revenue? And some of those clickthroughs actually damage the clients' bottomline.

I do understand your concern about the cost of acquiring, prepping and managing the land... but you know what? NONE of that effort benefited the abutters. Why should the neighbors feel obligated to compensate YOU for doing something which didn't make the land more valuable and which in fact made their land somewhat less valuable? It's not as if they asked you to go to all that effort.

[Prokofy Neva]

Chrischun,

One again, you are an abusive, conniving, lying piece of shit, and I will go on exposing you.

1. Um, gosh if it was $9835, shoot me. We all know it was at least $9000, and set to an odd number, some "Masonic" formula no doubt.

And one per sim? False. And...that would make it ok anyway? False.

I have to laugh out loud uproariously, with the rest of the Second Life public, about the idea that your "time" is covered by this, and that removing this shit which takes a mouse click and a second, would be worth that cost. Liar. We've heard that bullshit before, in office hours and such, and not a soul buys it. Apparently being a stubborn ass and continually in the wrong is more important to you than the facts: your time is not worth that. Nobody's time is. And it is extortion, pure and simple.

2. I've made a very good argument, one that came to me recently, that what these ad towers do is in fact worse than extortion and viewjacking -- it is parasiting off other people's hard work in making stores or nice-looking communities, and draining attention away that is not rightfully theirs, without any return. It's not like a city, where advertising space is sold -- it is merely a greedy land grab and a hijack -- pernicious, and criminal.

I think there are few people that find anything redeeming in this baldface, lying avarice -- except other ad-farmers.

There is little use for networked ads that destroy other people's value. Advertising networks gain trust when they are in wanted venues, and when they really deliver value, and when they pay back people. They don't. Most ad farms sell ad space that is never filled. If it worked, they'd be filled. Indeed, YOUR towers are not filled with anything but your own ads for your own software and ads for ad space that is...not filled.

Nobody wants to be associated with something hated by the public.

3. My mall existed, and was filled, and did very well LONG BEFORE there was any tacky and exploitative and avatar-trapping Freebie Warehouse. I was among the first in the sim, and in fact it's my mall that made that sim attractive, and why the freebie warehouse was put in next to it, in fact. Worse, I have had tenants leave occasionally because it is laggy and they can't get into their own stores due to the avatars stuck on the freebie warehouse -- there is a pernicious system where they can fly in through clear walls, but then the walls turn opaque so they can't see the way out. Nasty.

4. Regulating ad networks and any advertising is a simple matter. It's been proposed a zillion times; there are a dozen JIRAs on it. All that is needed is political will and spine. It is not an administrative hassle, one the Lindens make up their minds. Some strategic bans and police blotters and blogs -- and they're done. That's all. It's not rocket science. They can ban by height, size, type, or size of land or simply use their existing discretionary TOS as to "spam" and "disturbance of the peace" and respond to ARs. Not complicated.

5. The ads were for gimmicky bullshit that is not even in SL. Most of the towers are NOT filled with ads as anyone can see, but ads for ad space and your own ads. If in 4 years of blighting the landscape, you found 100 suckers, that wouldn't be a success story.

6. There are tacky, gimmicky, crappy software sites all over, the kind of places that promise to "clean your registry" and all that kind of idiocy. You're in that category, yes.

7. Once again, yes, you are LYING about your swaps. I'm hardly the only person to make this claim. Your controlling, passive-aggressive bullshit around the shops, such that a person has to be "civil" or you have to "like what they say" IS lying, because it's not a straightforward normal swap, but a power play.

You will not get any civility from me, ever.