Tyche Shepherd has done another amazing job of analyzing sim statistics. But scraping data and putting it into pie charts doesn't tell everything there is to tell about human society. It's the sort of thing people use to push their agenda and is rapidly politicized. One of the main political messages that it seems even Tyche, who is otherwise "scientific" as well as "the Guvnah" Desmond want to push is this: Mainland is crap, Mainland is largely abandoned, Mainland has to go because people have it for sale.
Of course there are three reasons for these problems:
o The Lindens' policies of three years to allow ad-farming and abuse of resources with clubs, as well as deliberately ugly grief-builds, has done a lot to scar the land.
o Mainland is abandoned because of two factors a) Zindra b) Linden land-glutting which devalues land
o People's land is for sale because...it's a commodity that sells. People like selling land because it makes money. Land for sale often sells at a good price, despite the tinkered statistics that Jack puts out. I just bought land for $1.9 the other day; I just sold land for $8.5/meter the other day. Life is good.
In fact, Tyche's statistics show an amazing thing: 187 regions of abandoned land is a small fraction of the total of the mainland of some 5000 servers. I would have thought it was far more. Tyche skews the results, of course, by describing "30 percent" of the land as Linden land, when in fact there are two types of reasons why land is "Linden land"
o it's abandoned -- but ALL abandoned land eventually goes on the auction, where a good deal of it is sold in real US dollars for LL's profit; the rest is sinks which are needed in the economy, and a good chunk of it is bought by land barons who continue to run businesses reselling land. And that's a good thing. I'm not interested in the Mainland becoming a socialist paradise so that Desmond can have an island business.
o it's easement in the form of waterways, roads etc which ads a lot of value to mainland -- roadside land, land next to "Linden protection still has a higher value and that's a good thing.
Desmond may be acutely troubled by the fact that mainland simply sells for a lot more -- WAY MORE -- than island parcels, which for for $1 a meter or even $0 nowadays! Even allowing for higher island rentals, over a year's time, somebody buying and developing a *mainland* sim and reselling it can still likely make more money than someone doing that with an island, when all is said and done. It has a greater risk, and greater reward.
Tyche says "Total Mainland monthly tier paid is US$1,076,694 supported by 37909
unique premium account entities (25160 individuals and 12749 groups)."
I'm not sure Tyche has calculated the tier accurately, but it seems as if she has counted both groups and individuals. And frankly, 12,749 groups on the mainland? That's AMAZING news. That's more than I'd ever have imagined. That's tremendous, because it means 12,749 organized groups making the mainland better. Most groups don't make it *worse*. There might be a few griefers, but most landowners who go to the trouble to make a group try to run a household, a business, a rentals, a non-profit -- something. Those are 12,749 people who survived all the terrible Linden-induced depradations over the years and still exist. The Lindens should kneel down and kiss their feet instead of thinking of how to delete them or drive them on to barons' bantustans -- or their own artificially-created gateways on the mainland that are hugely expensive. The reality is, most people in those 12,749 groups do NOT live in Bay City or Nautilus or Zindra -- when Tyche says Blake Sea is the largest land-holding group on the Mainland with 138 sims -- well, that's because there are all those void sims for sailing, duh, they're empty. BTW, 37,909 people with individual parcels is a great thing too, spread over less than 4,000 sims? That's a *miracle* and should be allowed to THRIVE. If there are only 65,000 premium account holders now, down from 100,000 in the glory days, that's bad, but the Lindens need to restore value, not subtract it.
"The fourth largest is a non Linden Group which owns 1,150,224sqm (0.3%) in 481 parcels". I wonder who that is, it might be me, but I don't think so. Tyche may be able to calculate what one person could own spreading over multiple groups (as I do).
Desmond is such a little tool and such a nasty, smug burgher. Get your paws off the mainland, Desmond, just take care of your own estates and leave the mainland *alone*.
No one needs to you to devise policies and practices for the Mainland. *Fuck off*. Desmond describes these numbers falsely as "deeply troubling" and "only 70 percent occupancy" which is patently ridiculous. *The Lindens don't have the fixed cost of tier that we do, so they don't have to worry about occupancy numbers in the same way." I'm all for pointing out the jeopardy of what I call "Mainland Math," that 80 percent occupancy means already, your income has *halved* because you have fixed costs -- you have to keep it higher to cover costs and still higher to "make bank". But the Lindens don't have to pay $295 a month tier per sim -- duh. That's glaring error number one.
The Lindens also have the luxury of a captive audience when selling that none of us have, by having the auction system -- where they *do* make money*.
The Lindens getting $1 million in tier (and I think that's not quite accurate and it could be more) because non-parcel owners with tier contribute tier to groups at a non-discount tier rate) is great. Desmond should try zooming out and looking at the entire land mass of islands and seeing their occupancy. They all represent terrible losses as a whole, for their class of owners. They don't represent losses for the Lindens, as every person going out of business has to pay or get $100 transfer fee to sell his sim even at a loss -- in fact not everyone bothers. How much churn and abandonment is there?
As you can see in this thread, Desmond is busy proposing the idea of removing some of the Mainland and whining about how it is a poorly-maintained estate showing poor occupancy and therefore in need of reform by trimming.
Here's his very self-interested obviously blatant self-serving statement: "And to support the mainland ~ whatever added appeal it must have, sure
won't help the private estates stay in business. It needs to shrink,
just like private estates have to when times get tough."
No. It doesn't "need" to shrink so that Desmond's business can capture people or some other island can ensnare them into higher rates and larger parcels and less freedom. (The average size of 2048 is what people want and need, and usually you don't find that on islands, that start at 4096 so they can make money faster).
Again, Desmond should fuck off and mind his own estates.
Every single piece of resident-owned land in the Mainland has tier being paid on it in one form or another, whether for sale or owned. The relatively small percentage of Linden Land (if you subtract abandoned land, which will sell, it's more like 20-25 percent) is there because the Lindens want to make the land more valuable and make group living by strangers on sims more doable.
The abandoned land is larger than usual due to abandonment with Zindra -- people dumped entire half sims and sims, unfortunately -- but eventually this goes on the auction, where the Lindens *make real US dollars* in income from it, not just sinks from Linden dollar payments. So, no wheeping there for Governor Linden.
Governor Linden does own a lot of land, but it is largely in the form of roads, waterways, parks, easements, etc. that make the Mainland look better! There are several things that could be done if the Lindens felt there was "too much" land in Governor Linden's hands and they "needed" to shrink because Desmonds had to bulge (but they aren't identifying that need; Desmond is being a little snotty busy-body and claiming it for his own agenda).
The first obvious thing they could do is sell the waterways or easements on some sims to the people who own on those sims already. People would love to finally get more prims and get rid of the plague of griefer safe areas and crashed vehicles. They could colour it some other colour and make it be required to be free of prims, but it could still feed the prim count elswhere. That would syphon it off, if that was a professed need, yet keep it clear for boating. I'm all for *leaving* the Linden land, but it's a nuisance -- griefers use it as safe areas all the time, and it's a leading reason for attacks -- the ability of people to set prims on Linden land where the autoreturn is on for a long time and anyone can rez -- even one minute is long for an attack. Or where griefers can go who want to harass you -- they can stand on the Linden land and you can't band them (and Lindens don't ban either).
If there is "too much" abandoned land than can be rationally absorbed on the auction, the Lindens could easily take these larger plots and make first land again and police it better so that it is not gamed by bots and land barons. They could do this very easily by making premium accounts that have you buy land that you arrive owning and logged into already, so that the initial new person doesn't have to compete with land flippers to get his land. Yes, land flippers could conceivably try to buy 20-50 accounts at once, but that's not easy to do these days even with changing payment information so it wouldn't work. It worked before because the Lindens didn't have breaks on the system; now they do.
But these two actions -- turning over some land for sale to owners, putting abandoned land out as first land tied to new accounts -- would require more staff time than they have available for this exercise. In order to recoup tier on X number of sims, they'd have to put Y staff time and Y is greater a cost than the X of revenue.
Every one in this discussion seems to forget that on a mainland tier, the Lindens can get $400, not $195, because people are paying the top tier levels, not the bulk discount levels. I *think* Tyche has factored that in, but forgotten that some people who pay for the 512 or even 4096 don't own land; they contribute to groups.
If anything, it's heartening to see that there are lots of land groups. That's REALLY GOOD NEWS! I had always wanted the census of this to be done to see if the 10 percent bonus was being used, to see whether the Lindens, driven by nasty little tools like Desmond and Ewan Mureaux or Jauani Wu, would say "OMG, we can't have this 10 percent bonus anymore, it's too much benefit to give to the mainland, it's not fair to islands.
Well, um, of course it's fair. It's definitely fair compensation given the 4 years or more than many of us have had to endure the outrageous conditions of the mainland with devaluation from the Bush Guy, ad farms, extortionism, abandoned land never picked up, etc. etc. And even starting the clock today, it's more than fair, given that you have less control over view and your own land. People on the mainland do not have "estate manager powers" that would enable them even to see top scripts and colliders and manage bans better, etc. So the lower tier, and the group tier bonus, are all to the good. I'm terribly impressed with it in fact and it's really heartening to see.
Getting rid of mainland or privileges like lower tier or the group bonus serve no objective purpose. If removed, they would put quite a few non-profit projects out of business, and few people would respond by paying the tier -- they'd simply shed 10 percent so as not to pay it and then the Governor would have more abandoned land and less tier. I see no advantage to LL in doing this even if they are willing to take losses for a year to end the system over time. The fact is, people for groups and manage more land effectively and the Lindens need to incentivize that -- and this is an excellent way.
Desmond fears the Mainland, because it's competition for him. I wouldn't think that it really was, given it's smaller amount -- other themed islands are his competition, aren't they? But the zeal with which he attacks it all the time lets us know that his tenants must leave to go back to the mainland at enough rate to concern him. It's apparently great competition because since the very first day of his opening up his islands, he had to invoke the fake and hyped horrors of the mainland to try to sell his claustrophobic steampunk sims. Maybe now that he has two other Victorian/steampunk continents competing with him, he feels only by flogging the Mainland can he drive people to his product.
Desmond's Caledon was a project I always supported. Despite my differences and frankly lack of personal respect for him due to his showing his true colours a number of times, I still felt it a place to tell people to go to, to link to, to put notecards and landmarks too, etc.
No more. Not when Desmond mounts a direct, frontal, malicious attack on the Mainland and tells the Lindens to "shrink it". I fight back by shrinking Desmond when he does that.
Why shrink the Mainland, for God's sake?
What, and take our land or move us to islands where we will not have the same features and neighbours? For us on to the reservations with people like Desmond?!
What, and take out waterways and parks that make the Mainland good looking?
What, and reduce the supply of abandoned land on the auctions, some of which people have waited years literally to get a chance to buy, as it is the only prim expansion they could have on their sim?
And so on. I can only say PAWS OFF the mainland, Desmond, it's seriously not on. If you don't want to see pitchforks and torches on Caledon, knock it off.
Ban lines are seriously exaggerated. I have seen way, way more of them on islands -- way more! -- and let go several of my islands I rented from other landlords to add to my collection because I couldn't stand subjecting my tenants to all the red, and they hated it too. I only have it up very temporarily in some areas to solve some immediate griefer attack but I discourage it as much as possible.
In short, the Mainland is a great Linden Lab product. They've improved it vastly by finally introducing policies against traffic abuse, bot registration, ad farmers, and adult content. They went to all that effort not to then "shrink it' or even delete the whole thing or disperse it among FIC barons, but hopefully, to keep it.
Until I hear it from Jack that he "needs to shrink" the mainland, which he can shrink, er, by selling less land to glut what's there -- hello! -- I will continue to go by his statement to me of some years ago:
"Thankfully, there will always be a Mainland."
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