Infographic: 10 Years of Second Life

Source: Linden Lab (URL)

An SL10B-themed advert about winning a new computer at the top of the page when I viewed the infographic on the official blog.

Wherein I Question The Lab's Efficiency

Flying around today I came upon the Former Site of Campus SL (SLurl), a prime-location region simply sitting about with no particular use at this time. It is attractively landscaped with rolling hills and the old school yet still miraculous Linden plants (just one prim? really?). Near by are two Help Island Public regions and an Orientation Island Public plus plenty of other Linden land.

With many Second Life-themed blogs decrying the decrease in Resident landholders, the economic down-spiral this means for The Lab, and other virtually apocalyptic news, a more-or-less empty region like Campus makes me wonder how efficiently The Lab manages its own lands. Yes, yes, yes, I've written about this before (notably here and here) so the concern is not new. But with Second Life 10th Birthday (SL10B) celebrations cranking up, I wonder how much money The Lab is spending on regions that lay fallow such as this one. Surely, moving this one to lend it out for a month to the SL10B organizers isn't practical (there'd be a void where it was, for one), but if the cost of simply leaving it there is neglibile, why can't The Lab donate regions for the celebration's use or for charitable events such as Relay For Life?

Sorry, but going there wasn't really my intent. If you are a writer, you know how thoughts get away from you. The first thought that occurred to me as I explored this region was more like "How could The Lab let Residents use this rather than leave it empty?" I guess it is nearly the same thought, but less specific.

Certainly, there are many, many regions that have been set aside by The Lab for recreational purposes. The Coastal Waterway (read several of my posts about it here) and the Blake Sea among them, plus a host of special places created by the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW) almost litter The Grid. Just walk around Bay City sometime and you'll stub your toe one one in just minutes.

And I'm not going to get into the Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) regions. I don't know enough and there is just too much behind the scenes for mere mortals like me to understand. I refer you to Honour McMillan (and her blog) for that.

Campus and similar regions strike me as special cases, however. They were once important to The Lab but for one reason or another no longer serve as originally intended. Simply abandoning them is rather inefficient, I imagine. So what can The Lab do, particularly to enhance revenue?

As I mentioned, many of these lands are in prime locations. Sell them. There are still land barons in-world that covet well-travelled land near population centers. Set up guidelines such as successful "governed" communities such as Bay City, Nova Albion, and the Blake Sea have and sell them.

Or rent them. The Lab has had a little-known program to lend out retail space in Luna's Luna Oaks Galleria Mall (SLurl) to Residents via lottery, though based on forum posts, I doubt the program is active (but if you visit you'll see active shops though most vendors date to 2008 .... this is something I'm investigating). Why not renew this idea but for pay? A merchant can pay another Resident for shopping mall space or they can pay The Lab. Tie it into the Second Life Marketplace somehow. I'm not the only one thinking about this (see here). Rent space to retailers, big corporations, or just Residents, but rent out the land.

Give away the land. At least for a short period. Reward active Forum users or prominent community members or simply by random chance, lend out the land someone. This could be a great Premium Membership perk ... a chance to have some free land for a fixed period (a month, six months, a year?) just because you pay an annual membership fee. Give every new Resident, Premium or not, a small plot of land to call home for a fortnight on a sim that has a tutorial-based infrastructure. Teaching Residents to use Second Life and helping them start out and retention might be higher.

The land can always be deleted. It's just electrons, after all. Kill the sim, move others around to fill the gaps if need be, and free up that server space. Or move Residents from the hinterlands to these unused Linden lands, much as the big move to Zindra was accomplished. Remember that? Owners of adult-themed businesses such as strip clubs and such were moved from parcels that were about to be zoned as safe for folks under 18-years of age to lands where visitors needed to prove they were of adult age. Then the newly empty lands could be deleted.

Any of these options would be far more efficient than just letting the land lay fallow, though I do admit that it is rather pleasant to see a well-landscaped region in the chaos that often rules the Mainland. Perhaps there is a value after all.

Vick's Wish List

Too often end-of-the-year retrospectives are planned and published well before the end of the year. For example, I was watching a television news piece about celebrities and notables who died in 2012 when news hit that another famous person died just that day. And then each subsequent day saw a notable death. Why can't reviews created when the year is over? Instead, I like previews and wish lists and resolutions. Quite a few bloggers from Second Life have published these but the wish list from Vick Forcella stuck out (see the original here). Here's my annotated look at what Vick would like to see in 2013:

This spot needed a pic and has
nothing to do with the post.

80 people in a mainland sim
No. Sorry, Vick, but avatars cause lag. I don't want to see more avatars on Mainland, especially in areas with roads. Someone who needs to have a high avatar account should consider owning parcels on sim lines and spreading the content/avatar load like they do for big official Linden events. Long ago when my brother and I owned about 3/4 of Nangrim a Brazillian casino opened on much of the remaining land and kept the "agent limit" maxed most of the time. On the rare instances when we could enter our property, the lag was so bad from well across the region, we could barely function. Raising the limit may have seemed like a good idea, but from a functionality standpoint, it would not have worked.

Distribution quota so that each parcel (>255sqm >2) on the mainland is always accessible.
This would work, especially for the situation mentioned above. There is a club in part of Bay City that often uses the full agent limit of the region but they have only 1024 sqm of land. That is an abuse of region resources, but it not a ToS offense (many have tried filing and failed).

Tier reduction
This might work. The Lab certainly has quite a bit of unused land laying about in unsold and abandoned spaces so I see that if tier fees are reduced, folks might buy up more land.

my.secondlife.com moderation tools
Yes,  please. A lawyer would be needed, though, to decide if this would be legal or not. An abusive comment is free speech, at least to a point. MySL is public to view, like comments on news/blog posts and can be moderated by the thread originator by deleting comments (again, just like other public forums). MySL might have to be taken private to enable a more expansive tool selection.

my.secondlife.com moderation based on TOS
Again ... Yes, please! I further suggest that MySL users be required to take a mini-tutorial and comprehension quiz to be able to access the microblogging service. Come to think of it, the same should be true for access to any part of Second Life. Violators should be required to retake the course after a to-be-determined number of offenses, too.

Linden Lab unmuted
No idea what Vick means here. Really, Vick? Did the whole Lab mute you?

Linden Lab finding a single platform for communicating with residents
Excellent suggestion. Several different blogs, status report pages, Dashboards, and in-world announcements that lag (I'll change viewers, for example, and see notifications in the second viewer that never showed in the first one).

Pro-active griefer reduction by Linden Lab, policing
This would require more tools or better tools in the hands of the Residents because even with GOD powers, the Lindens can't be everywhere at all times. And when you do see a Linden, they are often "back office" staff that may not be as familiar with Governance as we'd think they would be.

What should be implemented is a form of limited access for "free" accounts, the types that are often used by griefers. For example, limited resource sandboxes or tiered-rights to resources as an account "ages" –– this assumes that many griefers are just noobs that don't understand now things work but also rewards learning and loyalty.

A Jira that gathers errors instead of covering them up
My opinion of the JIRA is well known. I almost believe it should be suspended until it can actually become useful. C'mon, now ... why should ANY Resident be able to close my JIRA without Lab review just because they think they are smarter than me? And JIRAs can go years without being looked at ... ask my brother.

A Jira that welcomes improvement suggestions
Not gonna happen. JIRA is too broken.

A new policy for the Linden Memorial Park and re-opening
Hear, hear. I whole-heartedly agree. What the LMP needs is a caretaker. Make it a fee to place a memorial if you have to, but please open the LMP.

Clean up of micro parcels
This would require a complete rethink of how land is marketed and sold. Then thousands of parcels would need to be claimed under Eminent Domain for redistribution.

Clean up of abandoned parcels
I agree, but The Lab doesn't see an economic issue here otherwise they would have done it by now. If a Resident wants to buy an abandoned parcel, there are tools available here.

Clean up of parcels owned by inactive residents, plenty of oceans
Same as above ... not seen as an economic imperative.

De-activation of new (*) accounts that do not enter world in two days
Yes and no. If The Lab wasn't trying as half-hard as it was to be a social network, I can see this being viable. As it is, people are encouraged to have accounts whether they come in-world or not because they can still use MySL.

From the game Lili, available for iOS devices here.

Noob micro learning continent where noobs are forced to remain for one week 
The current new Resident experience is bloody awful. I had more of a tutorial from an iPad game I downloaded the other day than new Residents get now. The tutorial in Lili (see a a review here) is not only more intensive, but it is brilliantly implemented. The lessons are progressive in that they "pop up" as a skill is needed. If The Lab wants Second Life to be a gaming platform, it could create a day-long game each new Resident would be required to complete before accessing the full world and during which they would learn all the skills and conventions of Second Life.

A forum that is no longer Béta
What? The forums are still relevant? Any time I look the are filled with trolls and 'experts' that never seem to be in-world. Rather they seem to enjoy being big fish in the little pond of forum-life.

my.secondlife.com that is out of Béta 
My Second Life (MySL) is a wonderful tool that has been officially abandoned. I've been told that except for basic maintenance, no more development will be done.

Webcontent more tablet friendly 
Amen. Flash is dead but some of the world just doesn't know it. Heck, my iPad has a faster, more powerful processor and more RAM than did the first computer I used to access the Web on "back in the day." There is NO reason Second Life itself couldn't run on a tablet or even a more mobile device. Scalability is the key. Oh, and effort. And caring.

Scalable sims: Optional more/less residents/prims = higher/lower price
But this would require work on the part of someone. The Lab no longer has a focus on developing the Second Life infrastructure.

Linden Lab Gaming Viewer (LLGV)
Huh? Sounds like it would be a second world. Third Life?

Resident created games for LLGV
The Moles are very clever and have a ton of game/experience content in Second Life even as I write this but it isn't promoted. Let's get people using the world they have before luring them away to yet another world.

Second Life doesn't need to be a game. It is a way to have a life that isn't possible in Meatspace. No way in heck you'd catch me dressing like this iRL and laying on a boat. Not that I haven't, but you wouldn't see it. You should see what I've done on boats.

Linden Lab Communicator Client (IM/Voice/Groups without in-world avatar)
Sooooo .... like MySL? They could just buy Plurk and be done with it.

Pro-active copybot policing (used client, use of proxies)
I don't think that The Lab sees any economic advantage to this. At least none to them.

UDP(*) type implemented for SL (i.e. SLDP, blocking of SL ISP side)
Sound like a good idea, but I don't know enough about it to make a cogent observation.

Life membership reward if premium >5 years
This idea works for me and I can think of lots of rewards.

Tier-free 1024 sqm when Life Member
Like this one. This is a good idea. Or even double-prims on any land a Life Member owns.

LL attaches it’s hired developers with a life maintenance contract
Not sure I understand what this is. Could you explain more?

Easier ticket escalation towards Linden Lab
I've told you twice now .. JIRA IS DEAD. Take its wallet and walk away.

Return of the quarterly Linden Lab report, more in depth
Yes, please. Not gonna happen, but yes, please.

Linden Lab that treats it’s residents for what they are. Owners and creators
That is done, but selectively. Look around. There is a cadre of Residents that is regularly hired as "outside contractors" to do work for The Lab ... not to mention the beloved LDPW Moles.

Linden Lab that acts as a trusted provider
Again, I'm lost. Reason #9087 why folks just shouldn't listen to me at all.

A TOS that protects the residents
Ideally, the ToS does that now, but the way it is implemented is lacking.

World peace!
Still wraping my head around whirled peas. I'll have to get back to  you on this.

MORE RESIDENTS THAT STAY
Alas, therein lies the rub.

ETA: Flying over parcels that are Full
Allowance does need to be made for occupied vehicles to cross land that has reached its agent limit and its prim allotment. Too often I've crashed or had my vehicle returned or bot just because I'm travelling.

 * This is the Usenet Death Penalty (see here).

Interesting list, Vick. Thanks for sharing. I can't add anything, really, as I'm pretty happy with Second Life overall or I'm rather accepting of the status quo. If I had to pick one item, it would be Web/mobile access to Our World. It is possible and shouldn't be too much work. Maybe Google needs to buy The Lab. I've suggested it before.

The Lab's Land Use Strategy

When The Lab introduced gifts and sandboxes for Premium subscribers (Web) it was a no-brainer that a whole region would be set aside for the latter benefit.

The Premium Sandboxes are really nice and some have Premium Gift Kiosks

What surprised me is that there are more sandboxes than the 16 shown in the Destination Guide as extra regions have been added to some of the sandboxes for vehicle testing (see pic above). But it makes sense that the gift kiosks would be located in the sandboxes. I mean, who would waste a whole region just for such a limited use.

The Lab, apparently. Atroth, Nysray, Unttan, and Saminekim are in a four-region cluster and each has some nice landscaping with a gift kiosk each, but nothing else. I haven't checked all of the gift sites listed in the Destination Guide, but seeing these four regions was enough to make me ask "Why?" That seems rather wasteful to me. A whole server (four regions to a server, I understand) for just the gifts?

Premium Zone: Nysray (SLurl)

The idea of empty regions for little purpose is not new to The Lab. It has four regions landscaped in the Elderglen theme (Elderglen Party 1 at SLurl, for example) that were used for one Linden-sponsored party. A few Lindens had planned regular events and even had set out a fine selection of Linden bears for explorers to find. There is no public access at this time, but for some time after those staffers left The Lab anyone could roam freely.

Hover your mouse over the Cornfield Noobs at the fire for a laugh.

The four Cornfields are still accessible (SLurl). There was a time that misbehaving Residents would be banished to the Cornfield with no teleport, script, or build rights until their "sentences" were served. A few years ago the Cornfields were decorated and used for an official Halloween celebration. I seem to recall the fun Lindens behind the Elderglen party were the same ones behind the Halloween fun (you are missed, Mia and Molly!).

Then there is Space Base Mos Ainsley (SLurl), an example of one of the several Themed private islands you can buy from The Lab (Web). This isn't the one set up as an sample (SLurl) for prospective buyers, but one that is just sitting about and empty except when I or someone I know goes there (Web).

Island Examples from Linden Estate Services (SLurl).
For a laugh, check out the movie posters in the Theater region (SLurl).

I suppose the island examples make economic sense. You want someone to buy an island then you should be prepared to show them one. That's a lot of money ($1,029 USD setup; $295USD/Month) to give up sight unseen. But what about all the other under-utilized land that The Lab has laying about for no purpose? You'd think they could lend it out for large community events such as Burn2.