Jack Linden's Blog
As you’ll have seen me discuss before, we’re in the midst of a long term plan to improve the Mainland as a place to live, work and visit. To make this happen, we plan to act as a more proactive Estate Manager than we have historically. Part of that means addressing issues that have a significant and negative impact on the Mainland experience, like we did when we banned ad farms.
More recently, we began a conversation with you about how we should deal with the practice of commercial subdividing of parcels (land cutting) which is causing the Mainland to become increasingly fragmented.
You can read that original post here and look at the forum feedback that resulted from it here.
We asked for your feedback on the issue of cutting and had hundreds of excellent responses. This has really helped us shape our policy into something that we believe is workable and fair.
After carefully taking your considered feedback into account, we have decided that we will no longer allow widespread subdivision of land on a commercial scale on the Mainland.
The aim here is not to stop you using your land in different and creative ways. We agree with your comments that there are plenty of good reasons to own small parcels, and we have no desire to interfere with that. We are also not looking to take action against people who have bought small parcels in an attempt to gain prim allowance or to simply expand their holdings or use their free tier.
We are specifically talking about the small number of Residents who are cutting land into many tiny pieces for profit, and often doing so across hundreds or in some cases thousands of micro parcels.
We expect this change to affect only a very small number of Residents. In fact, although many of you own micro parcels, and usually for perfectly good reasons, the top ten micro parcel owners hold well over 50% of all the 16m parcels on the Mainland between them.
Your feedback was that this should be a simple ruling, enforced fairly and consistently. So we will be talking to those involved and working with them to end this practice. Thankfully, because we can clearly see who is involved using the data we have, we will not need to use Abuse Reports.
In addition to the above, we will be looking further into whether we need some cap or limit on the way that micro parcels are sold. The very high prices at which these parcels are listed is something that many of you have complained about. But we won’t action such a control without more discussion with you first.
So to recap:
- Large scale subdividing of land for the purpose of selling will be considered a violation. This is effective immediately.
- This policy is not intended to prevent you from using your land creatively or to penalize everyone who owns small parcels.
- This will only affect a very small number of Residents, for everyone else the only impact will be an improved Mainland experience.
- Our governance staff will be contacting those landowners that already own large amounts of fragmented land (micro parcels) to discuss next steps.
We have set ourselves a goal to create the most enjoyable Mainland experience that we can. As part of this effort, a few months ago we took action to limit Ad Farming (especially adverts that are intended solely to drive an unreasonable price for the parcel it is on; think visual spam) on the Mainland. The effects of that program and the response from the community have been overwhelmingly positive. We’re continuing our mission to improve the Mainland and wanted to present a new issue, discuss some possible next steps and elicit direction from the community about the best way to move forward.
Let’s talk about land cutting and why we feel this is an issue that needs to be resolved.
Land cutting is the deliberate chopping up of parcels into smaller pieces in an attempt to sell those pieces collectively for more than the value of the original parcel. Whenever you see land that has a grid of 16m parcels for sale that are all clumped together, or in a checkerboard pattern, then what you’re seeing is an example of land cutting.
To be clear, we are not talking about creating one or two small parcels for legitimate reasons or as part of your normal land management, we are referring to the commercial cutting up of land, usually for profit and on a larger scale.
This practice has a serious impact on the Mainland. Fragmented land is usually unattractive to look at which can lead to lower land values in the region. Rarely, if ever, do the segmented areas get consolidated back into large parcels, and if they do it typically causes more harm than good to local landowners.
Please remember that this issue only applies to the Linden Mainland, it does not affect the private estates.
In early February we would like to announce a policy that makes the deliberate and extensive cutting of land a violation, similar to how we dealt with ad farming. The owning of cut land would not be a violation (unless you cut it in the first place), rather it is the act of cutting it that would be the violation.
Before we do this, I’d like to canvas opinion from the community.
Here’s a list of questions we’d love to get your opinion on in the forums.
- Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?
- Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?
- With land that is already cut up, but still mostly owned by the resident that cut it, should we ask that the land be joined back together?
Please join me in the forums to provide your feedback.
Finally, it has also been suggested that parcels of 64m or smaller have their sale value clamped to be no higher than the current average price per meter. This would obviously involve development work so wouldn’t be something we could deliver quickly, but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.
As we have previously blogged, Homesteads will be launched as a new product on Monday 5th January. Those of you that own an Openspace should already have received emails from us explaining the changes taking place; this post is to ensure that you have as much information as possible ahead of the change.
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Shiver me timbers me hearties! If you’re a fan of all things nautical then we have exciting news! A new Mainland sailing area will soon appear off the coast of Nautilus in a joint community project between Linden Lab and the estate owners of the United Sailing Sims (USS) group.
For those that don’t know, the USS is made up of 9 private estates with 130+ regions between them, themed around sailing, yacht racing and similar sports.
Blake Sea, named after the legendary sailor Sir Peter Blake, will be to the east of the Nautilus City landmass and will cover over 40 regions in size, and almost all of them will be Homesteads. Around the eastern edge of Blake Sea will be the estates of the USS.
 Blake Sea Map This is the first time that we’ve allowed estates to connect to the Mainland in this way, and it is testimony to both the great community the USS has built up, and our desire to work with Resident groups to improve the Mainland experience in different and innovative ways.
Whilst the Sea will be Linden Land, we will be working closely with the USS to provide Sailing and other water activities, games and fun things to discover.
For all Residents, as well as the USS, this offers unprecedented open water to sail through, hang out in or just explore. There will be islands for viewing the regular USS race events and scripted boats or planes to ferry our intrepid residents safely across the Sea from Nautilus. If you haven’t tried sailing inworld, it might soon be time to give it a whirl!
As this project moves along, expect to see updates either here on the Blog or on the DPW wiki page.
Please also visit the USS website and their Events Listings.
Jack Linden
Following our previous announcement on Openspaces, and many thoughtful conversations with the community, I wanted to thank you, and let those of you who own Openspaces know what will happen in the New Year.
The transition from Openspaces to Homesteads is on course for 5th January, 2009.
Unless you have already filed a support ticket declaring that your Openspace is suitable to remain an Openspace, it will automatically be converted to a Homestead on the 5th. As a reminder, the definition of an Openspace is a low impact region used for scenery, whereas Homesteads are for light residential and commercial use. The new agent limits and prim limits will also take effect from January 5th and you should expect your region to go down briefly as the change is made.
For Openspaces that bill from the 1st to the 4th January, you will be charged as usual at the current level. From the 5th January onwards, Homesteads will bill at the new rate of $95 per month. We will be sending an email explaining the process to all current Openspace owners. Mainland fees are unaffected by these changes.
We’re pushing hard at the moment to complete the conversion request tickets that we have received ahead of January 5th. Please be advised that any conversion requests filed after 22nd December may not be completed ahead of January 5th, though we’ll be doing our best to get as many through as we can. Regardless, the conversion fees will continue to be waived through January.
Finally, you should expect to see some changes to the Land Store as the new Homestead product is added. If you are interested in purchasing a new Homestead, they will be available on the Land Store starting January 5, 2009. Homesteads are only available to owners of full islands.
As always, if you have questions or concerns please contact Support via the Support Portal so that we can help you.
As you may know, on October 1st our new policy for Mainland advertising took effect.
Before the new policy, between 15%-18% of parcels were being used primarily to advertise, mostly on micro parcels. As of this post, that figure has dropped to 2% and is still dropping.
I’ve written before about our drive to significantly improve the Mainland, and one of the first areas you told us we needed to tackle was Advertising, in particular the practice of Ad Farming. After some great feedback from the community, I wanted to publish a short post to let you know how this is going so far. Remember, this policy was just concerned with Mainland, and does not relate to private estates.
The last few weeks have seen a huge clearance exercise take place as we have worked hard to remove advertising that violates the new policy. As a means to understand the impact of policy changes like this one, we have been running surveys of the most affected areas across the different Mainland continents. We hope that you have seen, as we have, a substantial improvement in a short space of time.
Clearly this is just a start, but it’s been a very positive one so far.
The Mainland is looking significantly better already and we’re committed to continuing this push to create the best experience we can for residents living on or visiting the Linden Mainland.
Over the last week we have been listening to your feedback and working hard to revisit the original announcement. This blog post is just a short message to let everyone know that we’re now close to being able to share our thinking more fully with you.
Tomorrow M will post to the blog. The post will be our response to all of the great feedback you have provided and will include details about how we intend to proceed regarding Openspaces.
Immediately after the post tomorrow, we will open another forum thread where we will do our best to answer your questions. We understand that many of you are anxious for news, and so I wanted to be sure to let you know that the waiting is almost over.
Following our previous post on changes to the Openspace products we have had a great deal of feedback from the community, particularly in the forum thread but also via email and IMs. I would like to offer up some feedback of our own.
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In March of this year, we announced improvements to our light use land product that we call Openspaces. Not long after this, the new Land Store opened allowing estate owners to buy Openspaces and have them delivered almost immediately, an enormous improvement over the old method of ordering them via support tickets. As a result we have seen tremendous demand for Openspaces – with many thousands of them being ordered. We’re delighted that so many of you have found them to be a useful addition to your estates.
Read on after the cut..
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Much to our delight, the intrepid explorer Magellan Linden has stumbled upon a new and beautiful land that had until now been mysteriously hidden from view. His ‘experiments’ with a new vehicle appear to have lead him to this discovery.
The abandoned city appears to have belonged to a great seafaring civilisation and while the culture and language of the original inhabitants isn’t immediately apparent, Linden Lab has decided to name the island “Nautilus” in honor of its maritime nature. Having claimed Nautilus as Linden Mainland, we would like to offer our residents the opportunity to live in this unique area and so will be selling off some of the land at auction.
If you would like to visit this new wonder, the regions are now visible inworld, all of the regions are prefixed with ‘Nautilus -’. There are many beautiful sights to be seen. The old harbour and nearby dry dock, the great canal and raised inner city, even the seas around Nautilus are rich with things to discover.
There look to be several hundred parcels available, all of them 1024 square meters in size. They cannot be terraformed and have twice the usual prim allocation. Our engineers are investigating how these regions came to exist, and whether they were always part of the Mainland, or were perhaps part of some earlier history. Residents who discover information about the true origin of Nautilus should contact Magellan Linden. We’ll also be adding to a public wiki page soon, where the latest information about Nautilus will be collected.
Auctions for the new area will go live on the 24th October with all auctions starting at L$2000.
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