The Social Engineers

This week, I continue to see grey squares everywhere, sometimes taking as long as 20 minutes on a sim to get the grey fog to clear. I continue to find notecards simply will never open, saying "loading". I have a good connection, the latest drivers, a cleared cache, no packet loss -- yet this is my experience. This week, stuff happened that I've never seen happen in Second Life. I came on a sim early on the weekend, worked hard for two or three hours doing everything from clearing all the prims off the sandboxes, putting out new houses, taking down other houses people didn't want, resetting rental boxes, etc. etc. -- logged off -- and then when I came back a few hours ago, all of it had somehow "rolled back," as if time didn't pass. None of the actions had "taken". Turns out there was (depending on which Linden you talked to) a "power outage" or a "hardware failure".  The next day, two sims completely went haywire. A lot of the builds simply disappeared, some going offworld. Several simply got tossed up in the air like pick-up-sticks so you could see them dotted around the sky -- on other people's land. Totally wierd. Then for days now, dozens of pieces of junk are coming back into my folders, objects I don't believe I ever owned, created by people I've never heard of, with titles like "crab," from sims I have never been on.

So naturally, what I hope and expect is basically that these Lindens would stop fooling around with all their social engineering and tinkering and just go back to doing the hardware stuff -- all of them, in a kind of all-hands-on-deck sort of way. Instead, I find they are only burrowing deeper and deeper into the culture of the world that is supposed to be "our world and our imagination" (not!). They're starting Radio Linden (and I instinctively heard the Mayak signal tones and imagined a stentorian voice saying "Govorit San Fransisko!").

Radio Linden isn't supposed to compete with the numerous creative DJ'ing and Internet streamed radios that people put together -- oh, no! It's not supposed to suck original resident music played primaily in the SL environment -- jamais! No, it's just supposed to um...hmm...I better go back and read that announcement again because I'm failing to get it. Ditto Jeska's announcement on the forums that the whole reason these inmates were allowed to take over the asylum is because...we are being "weaned" from the Lindens and gradually being allowed to take over our own society, like um...the Kyrgyz with the Russian "seconds" or something.

How on earth Jeska could imagine that giving ONLY these new overlords the power to rate threads was going to lead to "empowerment of the communitiy" is beyond me...but then, that's just what the Lindens mean by "community" -- they mean creating a sturdy, spore-like meme that can transmit via readily-fashioned conveyor belts the values, norms, and concepts that they wish to purvey in the world. It's after all, their game, they made it, and if they're letting it go, even by simply letting it get bigger than a bread-basket, then they want to leave their stamp on it. Hey, done the world over, down through the ages, with all ambitious big empires with major scripting and big build projects.

So let us come to think of that giant Hacienda, that huge Zemstsvo, that giant Estate for the Landed Gentry run by the invisible and elusive Governor Linden. On this giant plantation, of course only some of us get to be the "house boys" -- the rest of us are out slaving in the fields.

Tonight, I flew around Grace, helping a tenant. Grace is a PG sim that, like many sims, has had a long and troubled history. Its long and troubled history would be invisible to anybody were it not for someone like me buying in it when it was born, and sticking with it through thick and thin. Originally, it was next to what was then the very second open-market zoned sim (I'd like to think I was the first LOL -- and I'd be happy to dispute this with all comers, and please don't cite things like Lusk or Taber which aren't open-market, when I mean open-market, with strangers living next to each other). That second zoned-sim was Midge, which I urged all those who wanted to have a project to put their money where their mouth was (one of my infamous forum threads, that helped further crystallize my concept of the FIC and their nastiness).

Anshe ended up getting Midge, making a community, which I lived in, but it flopped, for several reasons -- one was foggy mountains, which never sell -- people like to look at them but don't like all that Linden smog getting in their lungs in their actual house. Another was the asswipe on the south border who put up a huge ugly spinning grotesque tower, and set his land for an exotic price, thinking that he might have Anshe by the short hairs, wishing to preserve her community and willing to buy him out. She studiously ignored him. I parked next to him and campaigned against him vigorously, getting many neighbours and passers-by to negrate him for his vicious selfishness, grandstanding in front of an entire community of people trying to force Anshe to buy the view. Finally he sold out, tired of the tier. There were many other problems -- outbreaks of vicious bounce scripts all over, the usual SL mess. Only about half the land sold, and finally the islands came out with the feature of being able to deed, and Anshe picked up skirts and fled, taking her tenants and owners with her.

I had clung to the edges of that first Ansheland like a leaf in the banya with mountain-top rentals in the rather unpoetically named Stump. While some of my houses rented out to people making dungeons who never went outdoors, I had the misfortune to get sandwhiched in between one of those Big-Time Sky Uglies and a Huge Overbearing Castle. I literally couldn't open the door to one of the houses. I tried to explain to this wit on the forums who built the giant Fighting Armoured Blimp (yes!) and huge sunflowers that they were...well...scaring my tenants. Though I had the most up-to-date Juro and Barnes politically-correct housing, he insisted on calling my houses "Swiss chalets". I finally sold out...and decided to "invest" (I always laugh at using that term in SL, when the action is more akin to "Russian roulette") in Grace.

Grace captured my imagination from the beginning. First, I offered Scripts and Scripture, bankrolled a young fellow who wanted to build a church, set out some cabins and helped sponsor a gay community next door in Pickering -- the thought of GBLT and born-against mixing on the neighbouring sims was too funny...it was an uneasy alliance, and the GLBT area went through at least one nasty hate-signs attack. I had bought Grace dirt cheap at $2 and $3 back in the days when PG was really in the toilet, but no one ever wanted to rent it. I suppose it was because of the giant mansion run by mafiosi, attracting gun fire, massive fire prim attacks, sim crashing, and brutal bounce scripts sending you two sims away to the unpleasantly-named Stump.  There was Canada...that came and went...then a giant mall, that was nice and fairly low-impact but by its optics and name alone scared away tenants in droves.

I resigned myself to using Grace as a place to rez out houses for people to look at, for events, and the odd brave PG sky-boxer. I wasn't going to let go a sim with a name like that however...

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!

When the telehubs crashed, I was compelled to think of how to utilize or sell every single square meter of land, and not have the luxury of sandboxing or wait-and-see space. When the malls skedaddled because Wixom went down (these were typical one-sim-over malls), I decided to get all the houses put out on the hillside and try to get them rented. 4 rented, and I sold one of the parcels to another long-time tenant from another sim, in a new practice which I have been increasingly doing, which is to make agreements with people who seem they can be trusted to keep a sim looking nice to buy land, and then offer me first chance to buy back if they should sell. This enables me to turn over some land and move on to new sims, which unfortunately, is a harsh fact of life in the rentals business -- few appreciate fine, old sims honed to a keen sheen, they want the fresh fast new stuff (even though the old stuff is often in fact less laggy for all kinds of reasons.)

It's amazing when a sim begins to turn a corner. It's what makes it all worth it. It's why you bother. First, one person tentatively bought the now liquidating ex-mall land to build a castle...then another one came in and created a beautiful garden cafe...yet another made a store with Victorian items...each person who took hold to make something interesting or good lucking --even if it wasn't the Taj Mahal or some kickass high-traffic build or shopping sim -- was contributing to the health of the sim. Indeed, this is the grassroots effort to claim or reclaim sims that needs encouragement -- and to pretend that a handful of feted and cossetted and arrogant architects working in the city sim of Miramare are "grassroots" is to mistake a giant, heavy block of sandstone for a green growing shoot.

More tenants came...more sales...although of course some of the cheaper PG land was now getting picked up by the smut queen and the quick bux people...still...it was holding. People began to come out and talk to one another in their yards.

Then all of a sudden...BANG SMACK. A 8192 that had somehow become consolidated out of bits and pieces of ex-mall liquidated land and smut-queen land was appearing under the ownership of a notorious casino/camp-chair/ugly sign extortionist/low-life. Sigh. More Huge Pine Tree deployment. Then it went up for sale today...and the cheaper smut-queen land was purchased and increased in price...why? Because other people had worked to make the value of that sim and now the parasites were coming around on the edges. People looked out fearfully to see if the area would fill up with stupid camp-chairs, griefing and lag...instead, it sits for sale at a too-high price, doomed to being endlessly flipped between land barons.

Pity, but that's how the free market works. Perhaps someone will "value the land more," as a certain land baron often argues to me. Sure enough, a fellow came to buy one of the plots and put up a philosopher's shack...we got into a conversation and went for a balloon ride to the amazing Tree of Life in Techra (see it soon, it's coming down!). So Grace holds...nothing spectacular, nothing for the top 40 list, but just a sim trying to turn the corner, with strangers who do not know each other beyond a hat-tip trying to create a residential area with low-impact shops. It actually happens a lot all over SL, and practically nobody cares...and does even less to help it occur faster, or better, or with less pain.

Now, maybe the best thing would be to leave it alone, let nature take its course? Possibly.

I have to say that when I see Linden announcements about zoning, land, rentals, housing, I always feel a sinking of the heart. I know it's going to be one more hardship to overcome. When I see forums tekkies and chronic socialists cheering about these plans, I know I have even more to worry about. The Lindens seem to want to do everything they possibly can to create fiercely-exclusive, tight-knit communities of like-minded arrogant types, and do nothing to enable a few strangers who just don't want ugly in the view to live together on a sim. In fact, as we are always wearisomely told, why should proximity be the basis for community like RL blah blah. Why, we should all be able to move our sims around like bag ladies move around their shopping carts, and walk through portals into each others' spaces like kids running around in their college dorms.

While everyone huffed and puffed in some 8 focus groups, the Lindens had an idea, had a series of tests, and were hell-bent merely on implementing it -- that seems clear. Certain ideas get into their heads, and no amount of dissuasion can occur.

Robin Linden writes today

What I'd like to see happen is the ability for groups to use permissions to express a set of standards (through roles, access lists, and their charter) and for those standards to be able to be applied to the parcels owned by group members without them having to deed their land to the group. This way group members in a contiguous area on the mainland can in effect create a homeowner's association. Hopefully, we'll be able to implement something like this in phase 2 of the group tools improvements (Phase 1 will open up the roles and permissions system to create greater flexibility and usefulness).

Ok. But let me break it down to you. What I'd like to see happen is NOT ONLY a system engineered from the perspective of groups attempting to use permissions or set permissions. I'd willing to concede that should be a CHOICE. But it troubles me deeply that this is the primary perspective because it constitutes a deep, deep myth: that there are things called "groups" in SL that actually wish to live together in organized and themed communities.

There aren't. Oh, there's Ingrid who pays the tier on Boardman. Or those 4 people who have absolutely identical sliced pie on Lusk, and so on. These are the exceptions. They aren't the rule. There aren't groups who are asking to have anything -- except maybe the group of a girl and her girlfriend annoyed that they can't iron out the bugs in group builds.

Therefore, the first question to ask about this is, what is the problem this idea is attempting to solve? The problem it is attempting to solve is "difficulties for groups to come together to share land safely". But...groups come together when they can share land safetly, i.e. in fierce little clans of like-minded...and they don't when they can't...but they don't try very hard because they don't really want to.

Most "groups" are really individuals paying the tier, or couples, or two-three business partners strictly interested in profit (please, again, let's not overstate all these utopian projects of collectives that don't really exist) or most of the time, individuals who are the sole officers, or the most active officer, in land groups in which there are many tenants or vendors. This is the reality of the structure of land ownership in SL, and rather than study that, realize it, help it, once again, the Lindens are tinkering, tinkering, tinkering with their utopian notion that there are "groups wanting to do something".

There are not.

Now, let's just pretend for a moment that such groups are now going to suddenly spring up because the Lindens are going to create this powerful um "empowering" tool. Robin wants to make sure that they don't have to deed their land (currently a less common form of group land participation is for a couple usually, but sometimes 2-3-4 people, to deed their land to a group -- something most are very reluctant to do because they can't retain control over it.

So the idea is that they will use these fabulous new tools to "associate" their land and across sims, even, groups could establish norms and standards and ensure that their "look" is kept up. So on Grace, let's say 10 or 12 of these owners and tenants could get together and make a "homeowners' association" and decide...what now? That they don't like malls or camp chairs? No. That configuration -- the one where people get to settle across the mainland sims randomly and freely, and clump together here and there as they can coalesce, is not one the Lindens have ever been interested in. Instead, the idea will merely be that these groups, that will somehow get together, perhaps on their first -land patch, perhaps through clubs or events, will buy sims together off the auction, or private islands, and create the kind of "coveted covenanted coves" that they dream of.

How can you prevent such communities from becoming closed, gated communities that become discriminatory and even hateful in time? You can't.

What tools or policies will be in place to help the open-market, freely-settled sims leverage people's cooperative powers? None -- because the model of the One Hail Holy Grid is being broken down.

But let's ask yourself. You're in one of these new groups, "associating" your land. Let's say 3 people who have known each other for 3 weeks associate their land. They even get to pool the prims. A fourth person builds on that land. Then suddenly one of them gets a RL spike and pulls out -- and the build is destroyed.

People in contiguous areas already form community associations, or merely cooperate loosely, looking out for each other or the sim, i.e. when cheap land goes up for sale. What they ask of Linden Lab is 1) enforcement of the TOS on the three counts I've hammered on incessantly regarding Lazarus and similar signs (ending spam, interference with the enjoyment of SL, and land extortion) and 2) a procedure for ajudication of disputes, run by the Lindens who sadly, are the only acceptable authority in this very divided and incoherent society of SL.

What people want way more than tools, or zoning even, is a way to have someone view what they see as legitimate complaints, assess them, and take action. A person lagging the sim, blocking the view for others, can currently do this with impunity, with no consideration even of real US dollar cost. Right now on Cub, for example, one of my communities, a mixture of tenants and owners have a precarious existence -- all of them beautifuying the sim with residences or nice low-impact businesses and builds except one, who has mounted a hateful, ugly, glaring pink monstrosity replete even with pig signs in a satire of "Rentals" designed to be um his uber-sophisticated artie comment on people he views as gouging money for rent or something.

His sim uglification campaign -- a deliberate act of war from someone actually capable of creating beautiful builds -- followed many skirmishes when once drunk, he launched huge wooden-soldier prim attacks all over the sim, displacing people's prims and causing tenants to flee, and others were forced to place him on ban. The nasty behaviour and images continue, and no one on 3 sims looking at this mess can expect anything to be done about it...because there is no court of law where any one could go and sue for damages -- damages not to one's aesthetics, which are hard to measure, but objective damage to business, loss of income, and destruction of property. No one has seriously attempted creating such ajudication processes, always stopped in their tracks by the thought of "no enforcement" and so we simmer and stew...and the Lindens think they will paper over such social strifes with more "code-as-law".

Meanwhile, the Lindens are flogging the Blumfield model. It's not just that the Linden test is skewed with the house style, or that the result is unfair (Blumfieldians get to buy more than the original 512 land with an insiders' deal, at a subsidized price of $1950 half of real market value in the newest sims -- a fact that many keep overlooking in their indignation at "making newbies pay so much".  Probably the only thing to make right by the Blumies was to let them have the insiders' dibs first, but it creates an unpleasant aftertaste as the rest of us eye all this abandoned land in our sims that the Lindens aren't going to sell to us at insider rates, but will hack up as first land that will go ugly, or second-hand land that will go on the auctions and get grabbed by barons and priced out of reach.

When I read the full account of the concept (these Linden social-engineering ideas which you experience butt-end first in-world always take a long time to see from the other end), I began to realize to my horror not only that the Lindens are incentivizing the wrong class of people, as I've said before, playing to basics to get them to step up to premiums, instead of wooing premiums who didn't buy land yet to buy their first land and then more land to tier up.

They're also talking about preparing a business model that they can drop down like a kind of prefab to "democratize" SL. Of course, I personally engage right at the front line of this democratizing effort, which I seized upon myself and pioneered in many ways -- the open market of zoned land and the open market of rentals not sold to insider tribal friends. I went into rentals for precisely the reason outlined by Reuben, that jobs involving content creation or club ownership require skills, staff, or investment that I didn't have or didn't want to acquire. Rentals or creating of communities offer an important alternative to the kind of creator-fascist guildizing of SL that informed its early culture but which is beginning to erode, thank God, with the influx of new people competing with the first guilds.

Having struggled in this field, I can't imagine what it is these Lindens think they are going to do that will "help" if they begin doing something like controlling tools so as to control business models with a pre-conceived notion of what those businesses should look like -- which is one again, as demonstrated by today's Linden posts, of the collectivist group-grope variety.

The horror I feel at this is enormous. Nobody needs a prefabbed business template from any Lindens. Indeed, those businesess that have struggled against the odds need the Lindens to do things like fix the servers and get the buy limit orders going on the LindEx and to figure out monetary measures to curb the falling rate of the Linden. What they don't need are more shocks and harms to existing business.

Accordingly, this is how I would formulate the demands to LL (although recognizing we have no viable political process to articulate demands, with the idiotic voter mechanism upon which you can't vote "no," now further invaded and "democratized" not only by Goreans but by tekkie-wiki flashmobs like "Rock the SL Vote" -- ugh).

1. Recognize that the reform of the group tools must view the engine of reform from the objective needs of those who make and work in groups -- namely, sole proprietors, individual entrepreneurs, managers, and couples. These are the people who group their land currently by and large; these are the people who must be protected and not destroyed by changes to the group tools.

2. Recognize that while the perspective of "the group" or "the collective" that purportedly wishes to "group their land" or "not have to deed land but associate land" is a nice option that should be allowed, remains a utopian ideal whose achievement should not be allowed to cloud the perspectives for freedom and prosperity of those in point 1.

3. Refrain from adding "rent me" tools to the client because of the necessarily simplistic model this would induce, without the ability to create the mixture of human judgement and more customized automated systems that individual managers can create.

4. Get out of the business of providing communities for residents such as Blumfield, and instead create the conditions for people to make their own communities.

5. Auction some sims with a minimal labeling based on geographical look or location, i.e. waterfront sims for residential, flat green mature for building, roadside for commercial, etc. If nothing else, create sims labeled "entertaintment/club" possibly even with greater capacity for holding more avatars or even double prims, to siphon away the laggy clubs that destroy many sims' performances and harm the enjoyment of SL by many people.

If nothing else, cordoning off clubs better, or possibly even making those who use such great server resources pay more for those resources required for executing script and holding avatars, would vastly increase the viability of SL.

6. Get out of the business of providing first land completely and allow the market and various philanthropies and non-profit groups to pick up the slack. Barons buying auctions off the sim, or do-gooding philanthropists, should be given the incentive of a tier-free 60 days from point of purchase if they provide up to a certain amount of first-land on their sim -- this can be achieved in the same way the buybacks of "Governor Linden" land are supposed to occur on bulkauction sims.

7. Don't shirk from the hard tasks of figuring out how both Linden-based and resident-based mediation and ajudication procedures and processes can be established. The resmond program is NOT a good example of such a viable system. The creation of a resident Ombudsman system would

be a good example.

8. A recognition regarding Reuben's points, to wit:

• The owners of Mainland Regions can resell land, but cannot provide zoning
• Island Estate Owners can zone but cannot resell land

that:

o Mainland region owners ALREADY provide zoning in the form of rental communities and even resale of land and this should not be disrupted but enhanced.

o Island Estate Owners ALREADY have a brisk market of sale of land deeds on zoned sims and this should not be disrupted but enhanced.

I note this not out of any belief that the Lindens are capable of this recognition, but more to set for the record the points that the these things the Lindens thought they themselves were going to create with their vaunted "tools" are ALREADY existing IN SPITE OF THEM, and that as they go about destroying them and putting in something "better," not only will much be lost, but their end product will fail due to their failure to respect the realities of what has ALREADY BEEN DONE IN SPITE OF THEM.

8. According, with the stated objects of new tools and/or policies that will enable "Resident entrepreneurs" to

• Set up and operate Neighborhoods and Communities -- the Lindens must be mindful that these ALREADY exist and deserve far more consideration, protection, and enhancement through better enforcement of the TOS and CS and better community communications, rather than force-breeding them on bulk-auction sims, private islands, or other new mainland sims and stepping on what is already achieved on the mainland by leaving those existing areas completely unprotected. In fact, such neglect of existing mainland communities, or massive disruption through forcing such communities to move to new bulkauction or auction sims in trades or new buys, will doom even the new communities by providing a visible example of how Lindens cannot step up to the plate to enforce their own TOS.

• Parcel and sell the land in those Neighborhoods/Communities -- a recognition that this very essential, important activity is currently achieved not by groups for the most part, i.e NOT by those of the equal and like-minded collective bent, but by strong-willed, well-resourced, and capable entrepreneurs who buy in bulk and have the technical skills and management abilities to add value to land in already-existing neighbourhoods and communities.

• Have a direct relationship with the end-user and provide support and zoning for them -- Literally hundreds and hundreds of people rent out land to others in SL -- it's so hugely widespread and completely invisible now for the most part as only the old, feted "communities" get the attention. Many buyers of whole sims now routinely make interesting "ecologies" of private homes, rental units, stores, clubs, gathering places as a way to make the sim "pay for itself". Such interesting and often quite viable "ecologies" completely belie the narrow-minded and stubborn concept, prompted by certain architects seeking every-fresh and every-changing build jobs for themselves rather than the stability of sims, that no rentals can ever be viable or that retail islands can't work and shoppers abandone them (the failure experiences of this or that big-deal investor shouldn't be taken as the norm).

The viabiliy of these internal economies for individual or couple sim owners, and some groups in themes or businesses, is far better ensured by better land control tools, a better monetary policy, better enforcement of the TOS against griefing, and better working servers, than it is by the ability to forcibly pop-up a notecard on a land tool into every fly-by's face to tell them that he is entering a zoned sim under the control over Master and Mistress So-and-So and they better get out if they even so much as think of putting up a newbie beach house and not a Goth dungeon.

Comments

[Andrew Burton]

Prok> What people want way more
Prok> than tools, or zoning even,
Prok> is a way to have someone
Prok> view what they see as
Prok> legitimate complaints,
Prok> assess them, and take
Prok> action.

This statement directly conflicts with your earlier rhetorical question, "How can you prevent such communities from becoming closed, gated communities that become discriminatory and even hateful in time? You can't." By "[taking] action" against someone who owns land in a sim, you are gating the community. If you "take action" against someone who's lagging a sim by taking away their land, tearing down a build, or stopping a script, Prokofy, that is Socialism. That is the majority of people owning the means of production -- in this case the computer resources -- and enforcing their will en masse on the individual.

How can you prevent that kind of Open Free Grid from degenerating into a gated community that's descriminatory and even hateful in time? You can't.

[Prokofy Neva]

Andrew, I'm merely reporting what people want to do, what I see them complain about on the forums, and what they attempt to achieve in various ways within the game. A typical example is on the forums now, where someone who is new is struggling with a completely indifferent and even hostile neighbour who won't take down laggy scripts or ugly builds blocking the enjoyment of the new person's home -- under the flag of I get to do WTF I want on my land and fuck you.

I realize it's great literalist tekkie sport to try to play "gotcha" with some sort of "Prokian internal contradiction" but you're merely putting words in my mouth.

What did I say? I did not say that "taking action" against people who build giant ugly towers with lagging scripts would involve taking their land away (I would never be for the state or any "empowered home-owners' associations" a la Cuba having such a horrid communist power!). I did not say it would involve taking away their scripts either.

Again and again, in many forums posts, and here on this blog in past posts, I've advocated a simple thing by this "take action": MAKE THEM PAY. I have to pay more tier for more land. They need to pay more fees for drawing on CPU power. They want to run lagging scripts -- they need to pay more than me, who does not run lagging scripts. Once they have to PAY FOR their overdraw on the community resources, they will cease to draw them at that same irresponsible rate. What's happening now is that Daddy Philip is subsidizing the script kiddies with a huge trust fund of free accounts, huge reserves of CPU power, and giant sandboxes of subsidized, nearly-free land.

Instead of going this route of making script-executions be a COST that must be borne by those who make them execute (rather than the rest of us), the Lindens have instituted another kind of socialism -- they've made each sim forcibly perform at the 45 FPS and the .99 dilation, etc. etc. and then they've merely slowed down the scripts. So that if I'm on a sim where 35 avatars have gathered in a sex club to use all the sex balls, and all I want to do in my quiet lot next door is open up a notecard or get a card out of a notecard-giver or set a rental box...I'll be laaaaaggggging while those scripts slowoooowly execute. It won't be the sex balls that slowly execute. It will be my notecard-giver LOL. That's the Linden socialist solution to the lag and resource problem.

The concept that those with the most land on a sim are "socialists" who "enforce their will on the masses" or on the "individual" is absurd. They are the opposite. They're capitalists. We can call on them to be responsible capitalists. But I'm not for banishing their right to enjoy their land, which is greater in meters and cost, by sacrificing it to the little anarchist fucktard commie with his scripts sucking off the public tit.

I've gotten my computer resources the honest way, by paying for them. The script kiddie is sucking the tit. Please don't talk to me about "socialism" when people PAY TIER. They are anything BUT socialists.

I believe that you can maintain an open, free, grid and have people voluntarily, without tools, come together to make associations that very lightly manage sims, without coercion and without a lot of endless meetings about what constitutes a bad build. Most people actually know what an obstructive build is. I could show you dozens of situations where people are willing to live in harmony with builds they don't like, that aren't to a theme, but that still more or less keep to a few rules like "no spinning signs" or "no builds over two stories" or "no building at the property line". I think the job is to voluntarily disseminate and inculate these basic norms of civilized behaviour through sims, as slowly as it needs to be done properly, without social engineering and fake tools but real human participation.

As I've indicated in my other essay, I'm very concerned that in fact these Linden-induced HOAs are going to be just that nightmare you're describing, where 16 people on 2-3 sims can bully "holdouts" who refuse to go along with their "charter". They may not even have tools to do this, but they might have peer pressure and all those "mild" forms of griefing like tree-waving on to property, etc.

Or think of the one person who rebels in an HOA and makes the rest miserable. As I said, HOAs from Hell is sure to be a new rubric for the SL forums.