Obligatory Community Partnership Program Thread

[Lias]

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Community_Partnership_Program
We are pleased to announce the Second Life Community Partnership Program, a new initiative focused on expanding Linden Lab's relationship with large, inworld communities. This new program is now open for all those who wish to apply. The purpose of this program is to improve the Mainland and create a rich and innovative overall Second Life experience for all.

Linden Lab blogs that this program is developed to improve the mainland and then they require the applicants to own an entire sim. This means the program is really geared toward private island owners. Most mainlanders do not own the entire sim they own land in.

This is too bad - this program might have really encouraged more community-based activities in Mainland sims.

I applied using the convoluted ticket process. I will post updates of this 'process'.

Requirements to partner with Linden Lab:
1.The Community or Group should have clearly defined purpose or theme
2. It should be a stable community with clear leadership to represent it
3. As a Community or Group, it should have been active within Second Life for at least a year
4. The Group and its Owners/leaders must be in good standing with Linden Lab
5. Must be accepting and open to new users and not exclusive or closed
6. The Group must own at least one full Region of Group Land that is open and accessible to the majority of Residents
7. It will help if you have active social network outside of Second Life; a web page, Group MySpace, Twitter, YouTube account are a few examples

I read everything but I do not see the perks spelled out for anyone to go ahead and do. We shall see.

[GradyE]

I have to wonder if the mainland isn't trashed beyond repair.

[prinţesă nina]

just another project for the lindens to abandon halfway through.

[Charlemagne Allen]

In before FETA SINNER CIRCUS!

[23rdDjin]

I have to wonder if the mainland isn't trashed beyond repair.


no. it definitely is not...


but i'm working on it...

[GradyE]

Abandoned land used to show up as purple on the map. Now it doesn't.

[Lias]

The abandoned land used to go into the auction queue automatically. Now parcels can be given to the land owners in the sim if they request it and have land around 3 sides of the abandoned parcel.

There was a post that Linden Lab gave a large parcel to a Land Baron without offering it to the land owners in the sim or auctioning it. The Land Baron is not saying how he got it.

[GradyE]

So now it's "buy some land, get more free"?

[Amaranthim Talon]

so re land abandoned- can i get the stupid little plots around me- if so -HOW- and if not abandoned- didnt we do away with selling tidbits of land? There are several teeny plots around TF i wd buy up if not stupidly priced... my alt is itching for more land...

[Melodie Darwin]

so re land abandoned- can i get the stupid little plots around me- if so -HOW- and if not abandoned- didnt we do away with selling tidbits of land? There are several teeny plots around TF i wd buy up if not stupidly priced... my alt is itching for more land...

You can put in a ticket for any abandoned small parcels around you. Under 512m, they generally will sell for 1L/m. If there are lots of high priced micros mixed in your land (or even just one) you can put in a ticket for them to get moved, but you have to cut a place for them to get moved to. (I've done those twice, there is only one microbaron who bothers to pick up what gets moved).

There are a number of small parcel owners who aren't active and they consider the land abandoned. LL won't put price caps on the micros, they just won't allow land to get chopped up to create more. Let me know if you need any help with the ones around you.

[Gabe Lippmann]

Mainland is awesome beyond knowing.

[prinţesă nina]

i am sure at the end of it all ll will figure the best way to make mainland more appealing is to assrape private estate owners, so i am selling while i can.

[Morgan Genna]

Mainland is awesome beyond knowing.

Not enough lakes and rivers. I like my trout fishing, god damn it.

[GradyE]

Mainland is awesome beyond knowing.

So is Mogadishu.

[Lias]

Is the Blake sea really a community partner or a successful corporate blackmail?

The guy threatened to pack up his toys and go home if LL made him pay the extra money for the open sims. So he and Jack Linden struck up a little back-door deal. Now LL is using that blackmail plot as the poster child for the Community Partnership Program. And this guy is packaging and selling the entire thing to the general public. Here is his latest blog posting on the subject.

Prokofy's opening comment drums up the old "favoritism" rant about the USS relationship with LL over the Blake Sea Project. It is far from the truth. I will begin with an excerpt again from Prokofy, just a post or two below his "favoritism" claim.

Finally I have read an entire paragraph from Prokofy that I can agree with and I invite Prokofy to come address the very minor but very vocal members of the SL sailing community who would like to see The United Sailing Sims (a business comprised of 9 sim owners who have joined together to create a great place to sail and "live" in SL) become just what you say, a hippie democratic, nay, anarchic community where each individual feels they have a god given constitutional right to tell the business how it is to be run.
But I digress, let's take Prokofy's admission. The USS is a business, not a country, not a people, not a community. The USS is very closely related to the SL Sailing community because it exists to serve that community. The nine owners of the USS have one rule that governs all they do and all the money they spend: improve sailing in Second Life.
In the history of Second Life to date the USS has made two business deals with Linden Lab. First, the founders of the USS made a business proposition to LL for a product that became what we now call Open/Homestead sims. This product offering did not come into being because LL "favored" the USS, they came into being because Business A (the USS) made a business proposition to Business B (LL). The result was the creation of a commercial product of which the USS was the first to purchase: Open Space Sims (now split into open and homesteads). I have a lot more to write about that deal at slsailing.com at a later time.
The second deal was the Blake Sea project, but I will address that one a bit later.
All this clamor about LL showing the USS owners favoritism is counting on a false premise. Favoritism is "family" terminology. "Mom loves you more than me". Dad always liked you better". If you consider M Linden or Jack Linden your father, and you consider yourself his child, then you can speak of "favoritism".
How would you react to the following opening sentence of an article in the Wall Street Journal? "Acme Publications showed favoritism today when it partnered with Jones Printing on a new print and distribution arrangement. Representatives from Smith Printing, Adams Press and several other printing houses protested that Acme was not treating them equally with Jones."
I bet you would think that was pretty silly. In business deals are made, joint projects are created. No company would respond by calling such arrangements "favoritism".
Blondin has done a good job addressing many of the questions in this thread, but I think it might be time for everyone to hear from the other partner in this deal.
The growth of the United Sailing Sims from the original one owner (MarkTwain White) and one sim (Hollywood) to its present 9 owners and 135 sims has always been about providing waters for the sailing community to enjoy. Obviously there needed to sell/rent land since the 9 owners are not wealthy in real life and are certainly not land barons in the way that some SL residents describe the USS owners. I cannot speak for the other 8 owners but between Nber Medici and myself we own 33 sims and struggle to break-even. I don't get the feeling the other 8 owners have been able to quite their day jobs in any fashion either.
When LL announced their ludicrous 67% land price increase something like a year and a half ago the USS was in serious trouble just like everyone else. We clearly could not continue to support all the open water the USS owners were paying for with that sort of an increase. I believe that the protests of the SL sailing community (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duM2ttpqT5Q) along with the voices of hundreds if not thousands of SL land owners turned that around. We are not completely happy with the solution any more than most of you are, but it was a solution we could live with. In the meantime the owners of the USS were huddled trying to figure out how many water sims we were going to have to abandon to keep our heads above water, so to speak.
It was at that time that Jack Linden approached us with a proposal that any good business person, as pissed off as he might be with the company making the offer, would listen to. He offered the USS 36 sims of water attached to the mainland for the purposes of supporting SL sailing which had proven itself as one of the strongest and best organized communities in SL. In exchange for this LL wanted to move the USS sims and attach to the new water sims which in turn would be attached to the mainland. What did they want in return? They wanted our help in creating sailing events in the area, improving the waters of the mainland, and generally work together to build the SL sailing community. Having the well controlled development of the USS attached to the mainland was a plus in their view. Of course sailing activities already existed on the mainland and there were several yacht clubs already holding races on the mainland. But it was felt that the combination of a large water area dedicated to SL sailing first (but open to all) combined with the strong community in the USS, combined with our advice to them on how to create conditions on the mainland to improve the sailing experience would be a winning combination. One example of that is the on going process of connecting the mainlands by water way bridges which you have seen happening since the Blake Sea project started. You also are seeing improvements in the navigational pathways throughout the mainland where it can be done, but that is a separate topic.
Some have portrayed this as some sort of "hand out to favorite residents". That's not true. We were approached as the first pilot project based on a new policy LL had announce months before in a seminal post by Jack Linden called "The Future of the Second Life Mainland" (https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2008/08/05/the-future-of-the-second-life-mainland). The first manifestation of the new vision was the Ad Farm removal. The second manifestation is the pilot project with the USS. The third and subsequent manifestations of that very fundamental change in the LL approach to the land and content will be future projects between those of you in representative communities responding to the Community Partnership Program (https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/09/30/community-partnership-program-is-now-open).

Now comes the question of how the new sims (now 43 in number and called the Blake Sea) could be best used for sailing. It was clear that some sort of rules of conduct were in order to keep the Blake Sea open to all without getting cluttered and abused by those who would not honor its intended use as a sailing area first and foremost. It was also clear that LL was not going to provide the staff to monitor or hold activities there in support of sailing. So how do you allow the resident sailors to help without giving them powers beyond what was absolutely required?

The Blake Sea Group was formed. It was to be populated with Lindens and select non-Lindens to build, enforce TOS and certain special rules that would guarantee safe sailing and other marine activities in the target area. How were the non-Lindens to be chosen and empowered? That you can now read in the Blake Sea Code of Conduct (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Blake_Sea_Code_of_Conduct) and the Blake Sea 2.0 Administration Protocols (http://slsailing.com/?page_id=1497). These two documents spell out in concrete and transparent ways how the Blake Sea is to used. By the way, there are still signficant components to be added to this. For example in the near future you will find the offical Blake Sea calendar of events posted in Barbarosa sim as well as other media outlets. This will facilitate joint use of the Blake Sea for both sailing and non-sailing events.

Let me say that it has taken entirely too long to get to the point of releasing these documents. I will be candid and warn any of you that plan to apply for special projects with LL, be sure you have the patience of Job and the temperament of Elisha (he was the prophet who sicced a she-bear on some kids who joked about his bald head). You will need patience and tenacity to get the behemoth across the line. Actually to be fair to the Lindens a lot of the delay was due to the fact that what we were hammering out with the Lindens had to work within the larger framework and template of the entire Community Partnership Program, not just our own Blake Sea project.

The negotiations between the USS and LL were lengthy, arduous, and sometimes contentious. I believe that the end result is worthwhile.

I hope this post has cleared the air and answered some of your questions. If you want to follow events and developments with the Blake Sea Project please bookmark http://slsailing.com and watch the BLAKE SEA topics on the top menu.

[prinţesă nina]

too much to read, but if uss managed to make linden bend after that openspace assfucking i reckon good on em hey.

[Lias]

I agree also. but I think the Blake Sea people are now just trying to get more freebies from LL by backing up the Community Partner Program.

[Amaranthim Talon]

You can put in a ticket for any abandoned small parcels around you. Under 512m, they generally will sell for 1L/m. If there are lots of high priced micros mixed in your land (or even just one) you can put in a ticket for them to get moved, but you have to cut a place for them to get moved to. (I've done those twice, there is only one microbaron who bothers to pick up what gets moved).

There are a number of small parcel owners who aren't active and they consider the land abandoned. LL won't put price caps on the micros, they just won't allow land to get chopped up to create more. Let me know if you need any help with the ones around you.

Thank you - i had missed ur response til now- i get sidetracked but will tk a look see at what's out there around me- bunches of tiny bits right at the foot of my land and some bigger pieces abandoned.

[Lias]

What we can safely say about the Community Partnership program is that it is something most residents haven't even heard of; that even most of the "SLintelligentsia" has not heard of it or grappled with its issues; that those bothering, either on forums or quietly following along and chatting inworld, have huge issues with it. This thread gives an accurate anatomy of this discontent.

So how can we fix that? It's been up on the MotD for a while now so it's had some good visibility. How do you think we can get the word out further?

I won't disagree with you that this thread 'gives an accurate anatomy of the discontent'. I think its a good representation of what those who do not agree with the program are feeling. And this is great as it gives Keira and I a chance to address some of the concerns. What the thread doesn't represent however are the feelings of those that support it.

It is difficult to support a cat in a bag.

If this is to support mainland why is a pre requisite that the participants own the entire sim to participate? Most mainland groups do not own the entire sim they function in. When you say full sim owners ONLY - you are saying private estate owners - here is a gimme for you. You want private estate owners to run the mainland for you. And in return they get a break in tier payments (kick-backs) and free advertising.

This concerns and saddens me. After settling on the mainland and supporting it for for years - I have just been tapped on the shoulder and been told I have a new overlord, I am powerless, the new overlord's business will be advertised more than mine and you will also be connecting land to my waterways and killing my views.

What's not to like?

And the only way to stop this from happening is going to the land store and buying a $1200 USD island or my voice will not be heard.

It just keeps getting better.

Next, my mainland tier will go up to subsidize the kick-backs the new private sim overlords receive.

I will just sit here and wait for the gang-bang to begin.:vibrator: