Land management

You: so,
You: I have a couple of "opportunities" to pass along
You: the Alliance Second Life Library folks are looking for volunteers , if anyone is interested, to put together collections on topics, work the

reference desk, put together exhibits, or the like
You: if you're interested Rocky Vallejo is the person to talk to there
You: also, I have gotten an offer to open a law library branch in a copule of places & if anyone would like to set up exhibits or any other type

of help, I wouldn't say no :)
You: all right, now that is out of the way
You: Unless folks have questions, I will give some info on land management
Azure Bisiani: no questions
Helen Brun: sounds good
You: There are several options for acquiring land in SL
You: you can purchaes land from Linden Lab, who runs SL
You: you can purchase land from other Residents/players
You: You can rent land from other residents
You: If you purchase land, you will still have to pay monthly "tier" charges based on how much land you own
You: sort of like a condominim situation, I think.
You: And of course you never really "OWN" the land, it is a metaphor for server space dedicated to your use and if linden were to decide to

shut down, you would be left with nothing
You: you do, however, have many rights to control the use of land you 'own'
You: including the right to resell your bundle of rights
You: or rent space to people with any, all, or none of those control rights in the rental agreement
You: The rights include the ability to exclude individuals, restrict entry to only group members,
You: allow anyone to build, no one to build, or just group members to build (as I have it set here)
You: If you own, or if you rent and the owner gives you the permissions, you can set up a music and video stream on the land
You: a new feature is the ability to set up a web page instead of a video, so people can actually view a web page in SL
You: I haven't played with that much yet
You: One major issue if you rent or purchase is the number of "prims" your parcel includes
You: each region/island/sim has about 15000 prims maximum
You: and if the region is divided into parcels, each parcel will get some prims - but the owner can decide how many
You: so you may find big spaces with very few prims available
You: or a small space with a lot of prims -- the second one would be more useful in many cases
You: you can always build UP, you have building rights from the ground up through the sky in your parcel
You: for example the Office levels in this parcel basically triple our space
You: so prim count is very important when shopping for land
You: another thing to consider is neighborh ood
You: there is no 'zoning" by Linden Lab
You: so if you purchase land, your neighbors can be anything they like -- they can put up gigantic buildings that block you in, they can

have loud, laggy parties, they can build ugly advertisements, etc
You: there are areas in which the owner of the region sets the theme
You: here for instance only libraries and educational groups are allowed to rent
Tink Rang: like Renaissance Island?
You: yes, Ren. island is a really good example
You: not only do they screen renters but you are required to build in a certain theme
You: in that case Renaissance england
Azure Bisiani: What's ren island?
Azure Bisiani: ok
You: Renaissance Island -- it is our neighbor to the west actually
Azure Bisiani: cool
Jeanell Jorysch: What about this island?
You: behind that big wall
You: they don't like to look at our eclectic mess over here on edu ialdn :)
You: the island i have a cottage on, imagination island, is more eclectic but also limits the style of building
You: you can build whatever you like above groudn, though.
Tink Rang: still limiited to the same number of prims, right?
You: so, when I chose the space for this workshop I chose to situate in an educational setting
You: yes, Tink sorry -- always prim limts
You: another thing to look at when shopping for land is whether it is rated PG or M
You: you can see this in the listing at the top of your screen - and usually ads for land will mention it
You: PG land is intended not to include sexual or other mature content
Jeanell Jorysch: Why is this island mature?
You: I think most of the ieducational and library sites want to be able to present material on whatever topic without being questioned

whether it fits PG
Jeanell Jorysch: OK
You: also, I think mature is just the default
Tink Rang: I met the neighbor behind Cat, they are setting up a library on the occult
You: It is possible to avoid most "objectionalbe" content by avoiding mature parcels, but, you will also be avoiding lots of content where

people just don't bother
You: As a land owner it is also possible to set your parcel to exclude anyone who has not affirmatively verified their age with Linden Lab
You: this is relatively new
You: and many, many people have not bothered to verify their age
You: but if you were running something where you would actually be breaking the law by exposing minors you might use that setting to

protect yourself
You: So once you have your land, you can choose from a variety of options -- you can see the options by clicking "about land"
You: right click on the ground and choose about land, or click on the name of the parcel at the top of the screen
You: general can have description and such
You: covenant can be set by the owner of the entire region/ island and require certain behavior, etc
You: so this is how you would find out if you were required to build in a certain architectural style, etc
You: objects give you info on how many prims you have to play with and also gives the land owner the tools to return objects to their

creators (as I had to do earlier this week to free up prims)
You: you can also set the land to automatically return objects after a certain lenght of time -- often sandboxes (public aresa you can build in)

have this setting on
You: Options lets you adjust some of the characteristics of the land, such as whther people can create objects there, whether flying is

allowed, you can turn off "safe" if you want to make a game involving contact/fighting, etc
You: media controls what website, movie, and/or sound people will hear or see on the land
You: (you also have to install a media player, and the resident can turn audio/visual off and on too)
You: Access lets you limit access in a variety of ways
You: you can allow anyone, block people who are not age verified (as we talked about), [here is a screenshot of that in action] block people who have not given Linden any

payment info (this blocks people who create accounts on the fly just to harass folks), and you can also require people to buy passes to enter

the land
You: the land owner can also ban certain people , really at their whim -- no due process here :)
You: usually that is used to exclude harassers, also
You: Griefing is a term that covers a wide range of behavior - anything that deliberately causes trouble
You: it can be setting up an item that self-replicates and fills up the prim count on the land
You: it can be just hanging around being disruptive in chat
You: it can be shooting items at players to bounce them around
You: or creating cages around them
You: or whatever the griefer thinks is funny or will get attention
You: it's important as a land owner to be aware of these issues
You: on a group parcel, giving a couple of people administrative rights (the ability to ban people and return objects) can be a big help if the

owner isn't around all the time
You: I've been fortunate not to have any griefing problems
You: but some folks on the Info islands projects have
Jeanell Jorysch: How did they handle it?
You: some of these same things can happen by accident - someone makes an item they don't realize will cause a ton of lang for instance
You: there have been some indiviuals banned from info island
Abierta Janus: can they just create another avatar to return ?
You: much of the time, as library types, they use the same skills we have to use with the public anywhere, and calm them down or confuse

them with kindness, lol
You: yes Abierta, if they want to do that they can
Azure Bisiani: ; )
You: that is why some people choose to set their land to only allow people with payment info on file with Linden
You: you can also file an Abuse Report (which you will see people refer to as an AR) with Linden
You: usually you don't hear much back from Linden afterwards, but they do look into them
You: for what that's worth-- most of the folks who do this stuff do use a disposible avatar
You: if there was enough of a pattern they might ban anyone using that persons' IP
You: Another issue a land owner needs to know about is rollbacks
You: sometimes something will go very wrong
You: a building gets accidentally deleted
You: a mountain took hours to scuplt gets bulldozed
You: etc
You: it is possible to petition Linden for a "rollback"
You: Linden saves each region every so often
You: every couple days I believe
You: so you can request that your latest save be restored
You: this is a dramatic thing to have to do since anything built or changed since the save date is lost
You: but it is available as a last resort
You: I think (not 100% positive) that the rollback will affect the entire sim/region/island
You: so as a land owner another thing to keep in mind is to keep back ups of your objects -- save a copy to your inventory
You: since it's pssible to lose work to a roll back unexpectedly
You: Have you had to deal with that at all Tink?
Tink Rang: no, not yet
You: good
Jeanell Jorysch: is there any limit on inventories?
You: it has happened at least once on Info Island, where my main branch is, but I hadn't made any changes lately
You: Jeanell, I don't think so
You: if you have an enormouse inventory it can acutally slow your performance
You: but I don't know of a limit
Jeanell Jorysch: OK
Tink Rang: I try to delete duplicates and empty trash
You: i know of people who have 15000 objects
Tink Rang: I'm up to 8,000
You: the big downside is that it gets very hard to find anything - you can search for the name, but that requires you remember what you

called it :)
You: you can organize by folders, too, which can help.
Azure Bisiani: I have a question
Azure Bisiani: The other day I was shopping at one of the freebie sites
Azure Bisiani: It kept telling me that I didn't have enough money
You: ok
Azure Bisiani: Something about my request being "stale"
Azure Bisiani: Does that happen often?
You: i've never heard of that particular message
Tink Rang: I ran across that too
Azure Bisiani: Today I tried again and it was fine
Tink Rang: I think the vendor was broken
You: They have been updating the SL software
Azure Bisiani: ah
You: sometimes when they do that, scripts are incompatible
You: and things act funny
You: just one of the joys of second life
Azure Bisiani: ok - thanks
Azure Bisiani: I have another question
You: sure
Azure Bisiani: Why do our name have member above them?
Azure Bisiani: I see that Tink's says North Shore Beach
You: i just checked btw, they do saves every couple hours, and it is the whole region or nothing
You: Each avatar can join groups
Tink Rang: sorry, forgot to change it
You: up to 25 groups at this time
You: as a group member you can activate any of your groups and your title from that group will show
Azure Bisiani: So you can change it depending on where you go?
You: you can change it at will at any time
Azure Bisiani: Is that in your inventory, too?
You: select the groups option from the edit menu
You: and you will get a list of the groups you are in
Azure Bisiani: got it
You: select one and click activate, or you can choose to activate none and have no title
Tink Rang: I have several for musicians that I like to hear in SL
You: this is also the window where you can find out more info about yor groups -- recent group notices, members, etc
You: and where you can leave a group if you choose
Azure Bisiani: So mine says member. Do others see it as something different when I'm on different islands?
You: no, your title stays the same in everyone's view until you change it
Tink Rang: I have to have North Shore to build in my house
Tink Rang: or to change furniture
You: i should be Publisher now, because I activated the group Galileo Law Directory
You: as Tink says, many places require you to have your group active to build on the land
Jeanell Jorysch: yes--it just changed from coordinatior to publisher
You: if you have trouble building here, check that your group is set
You: also if you want a title of your own choosing, you can make your own group (minium 2 members) and make up your titles :)
You: if you're dying for something other than 'member' i can make you a custom title in this group too
Azure Bisiani: Yes, I've seen some odd ones
Azure Bisiani: Thanks, Cat. I've got to get going - I've got to be back out at the reference desk (RL) soon
You: thank you