If I were King Of The World, I think it might be time to declare that Second Life is well beyond its infancy. Time for the employees to act fairly and justly at all times, adhering to company policy in every instance. Treat the Residents in an equitable manner, keeping in mind at all times that they are the source of income which keeps this enterprise functioning. Privately held mainland by Lab employees should be liquidated, absolutely no businesses in world on an alt account and insider knowledge. No special favors or information for friends or friends of friends.

The poor condition of mainland is in the responsibility of Linden Lab. Ad Farmers or other racketeers are not to blame, you have this people in every real or simulated population and we will always have to deal with them. It is the Lindens fault.
They made one policy after the other and never enforced them. Ad Farmers are laughing at them. One could think, there some special connections between some of them and the Lab.
On one hand Lindens making policies to keep mainland population quiet, on the other doing nothing against Ad Farmers cutting their microparcels and behave more and more aggressive against neighbour residents.

I got a bit suspicious after the Jack Linden Office Hour June 25th 2008 with a well known land extortionist talking absolute rubbish and Jack Linden replying ‘Austin.. thanks for that, and if you can drop me that feedback on a notecard that would be helpful’.
I nearly spew my coffee reading this. I expected a harsh reaction, not friendly encouragement. It seems it is not longer necessary to keep up appearances.

I agree: Someone has to take over administration. Either the Lindens or we residents. I lost my faith in the Lindens ability or will, to take any action in the case of mainland sims.

Putting down banlines on mainland could be the first step. Perhaps making them last for max. 24h. then closed events can still be hold, even with pay to enter.

An option to buy abandoned land for residents of that sim and transparent auctions would definitely making things better.

Imagine where we could be today, what could have been achieved up to today, if Linden Lab would have enforced their own rules from the beginning. Oh my….

Tommy Brouwer

If they’re going to enforce and administrate, that’s fine. If they’re going to implement a reasonably fair system that lets resis do it instead, that’s also fine. But letting things go to seed like this seems like a very, very, very bad idea.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

The removal of names making purchases on the auction wins has fostered that climate of unaccountability. Extortionists can spot a recycled plot on the auction and move in and run up the price, then make you pay a ridiculous price for it — or chop it to plague you with ad farms.

I’ve also proposed that they have some kind of internal sim auction first, or a “for sale” that cannot be clicked on except those who already own in the sim. Surely this is scriptable, or even managed on a manual basis — there aren’t THAT many abandoned parcels, now that a major clean-up took place.

I’ve had Lindens refuse to give me a 16 m2 abandoned by would-be extortionists with only 2 sides near it, but when I have 3 or especially 4, they will. I’ve also had them turn over a 448 m2 that had only 2 sides just because I happened to hit a goodwilled Linden that day. But other times, the requests do get ignored, or worse, they take my alert of abandoned land, and then put that little piece to sale for only $1 on the open market, letting it fall prey to extortionists again.

I do wonder about the concept of people who chose to start mainland communities having some sort of “right of way” on neighbouring sims. It seems to me that if you want that, you need to either start out buying contiguous sims, or else buy private islands and string them together if you grow. It’s an awfully hard row to how to try to make mainland sims coherent — I know, because I’ve done it in a number of areas, and here I face a brand-new challenge from the reprehensive Woodbury University and specifically Shaun Altman with a new ad-farm specifically advertising to urge people to “come and buy next to Prokofy and do..whatever…”

Still, the Lindens need to develop rational policies. They are absolutely insanely literalist about never touching a thing on land, even when the people never log on literally for years. I have a parcel near me owned by a Linden with all kinds of accidental newbie and griefer trash that no other Linden will touch, citing this extreme propertarianism that no land can EVER be handled. There really should be a clause that if you do not log in for 180 days or something, autoreturn will go on at least to remove non group-set items. I see newbie first land from *four years ago* where people somehow keep paying tier but never, ever come and take down their plywood half-finished builds. It’s nuts.

I think the Concierge and Governance team have gotten better about responding to requests to clean up land and problems and get abandoned land in the queue, but this non-enforcement of their ostensible existing ad-farm policy is absolutely appalling.

I don’t think the answer is to empower residents who make communities. It pits communities, which are always going to be few in number, against individual residents who may have accidently wound up next to them. I think the Lindens are the only fair adjudicators.

I also think that frankly, Fleep, you can get the same lecture people give me. If you face these intractable problems on one sim, then you have to eye all the new land coming up that is fairly cheap, and move. Cut your losses, cut your frustration, and go to a new sim that you don’t have to face the agony of piecing together bits from.

Of course I don’t do that, because I want to stay on the sims I’ve grown used to, with their names and geographical features. It’s sentimental. The Lindens don’t care about my sentiments. They’re here to make software and sell server space.

~ Tara