You have my vote if this is the way you want to go with it.

But of course that requires server-side work as well, and doing this purely as a mute in the viewer would be a good test.

1) Ban, wholesale, all images owned by a given indivdual
2) LSL hook to add and remove folks from your private banlist

then projects like arbor list or others could provide personal attachments that add and manage your Ban list. So one could then provide a means tolocate all folks who own these plots (weather or not they created teh plots) and then create a global banlist so that end users could subscribe tot he banlist and thus become advert free in SL. the idea can also be extended to other banlists – imagine a hud that mutes and render ineffective all greifer owned weapons. Put that into a club bracelet or some such and all of a sudden becoming a greifer gets real lonesome, real quick.

That said, it does prevent the 16 sq m2 plots from cutting into land or preventing full use of one's land. Also, folks using alts can get around this idea very easaly – just get a new email address and volia! instant work around :<

However if you add the idea of the LSL hooks to your orinal idea I'll vote for it and promote it. It's a fix that may just work as intended.

A potential work around: Block all items created and / or owned by X in region Y and / or in all regions.
Even better if you could add owned by group X objects as a filter as well.

In my region I'd only need to add about 4 names and the problem would be gone. Ok so one of the ad placers also has buildings in this region, but I can happily live with them vanishing as well.

It's a relatively small amount of data to store then to have quite an impact on a region's visual representation. Griefers can still be blocked across all regions.

The only real drawback is the floating objects that will be left behind not owned or created by that person when you block a building.

And yes, I liked the potential for updating "spam" lists as well. Kind of junkbuster for SL.

But ANYWAY. I'd rather see search working, objects not re-rezzing on my bum, my inventory not loosing the odd item, you know. SL working ;P

Does this make ad farms potentially less profitable? YES! Yay.

a) Flagging a parcel as 'advertizing' wont help, advertizers will just not do that then.
b) 'Mute' items wont help either, ad spammers will simply use temp-rezzers then for displaying their ugly spam ads. new prim -> new UUID -> mute broken.

Maybe use something like an enhanced mute feature on people:

[x] mute chat/im from avatar x
[x] hide visual stuff from avatar x

But that could be misused then, too... for example to remove attachment clothing. .-P

So I have no really good idea how to hide spam ads.

Visual muting has a variety of uses – currently, I find myself using Client menu's Hide Selected as a temp method to make unwanted stuff in the backdrop disappear when taking snapshots! (Especially if there's a beautiful forest with some unsightly ad boxes in the back.)

Some of you may be familiar with the extensive history here, including all the hubbub (and related forum conversation) about Prop. #905 from the old-skool Feature Voting Tool:

» http://secondlife.com/vote/get_feature.php?get_id=905

There's no end of history to this and it is even more relevant today, in light of the above comments.

If a parcel had it's own mute list, to mute other parcels around. SO that anyone standing in your land, would nto see things in muted land. It would appear as an empty plot

Since each resident has their own unique list of muted objects, visibly muting an object (or a parcel) would only mute it for you, not for anyone else. Nicholaz is right – this is really how the feature should work, as something each person decides on their own.

The alternative (of somehow being able to mute parcels for everyone) is actually far worse than the existing problem of visual spam, because it would create a new form of griefing. Imagine if someone went to a place like NCI or the Ivory Tower of Primitives and muted the parcel that those builds were on. Suddenly every resident who happend to visit would see everything there disappear, because parcel mutes would affect all users. (There is also the related problem of who would be able to un-mute a parcel, which is equally problematic.)

There needs to be a mute list maintained by the parcel owner that I just get simply by being on the parcel. Worst case some kind of llInstantMessage-based protocol sent by an object with the same owner as the parcel.

"Imagine if someone went to a place like NCI or the Ivory Tower of Primitives and muted the parcel that those builds were on."

In any even vaguely sane implementation... unless they owned the parcel, they wouldn't be able to do it, any more than they can change the access list or media texture for that parcel.

Now they could hide the Ivory Tower from their parcel next to the Ivory Tower, they could, but why shouldn't they be able to?

The best overall option, in my opinion, is Avatar level prim hiding with LSL hooks to allow your personal list to be updated (added/removed) based on a master list by a reputable group. This way you eliminate all of the constant idiots intent on profiting by extortion and abusing of the Community standard.

If this was implemented I'd buy up 16m2 plots next to adfarms, plant a tree and a little vendor that gives out free attachments to update the wearers Hide List.

As a resident, if I were provided this option, I would most certainly use it - but that would mean that as a business-person, I'd be blind to any possible abuses against my patrons as well.

I partially agree with a parcel-based version of this proposal, however that does not negate the fact that these advrtisements - sometimes plain old prims, sometimes scripted network adfarms, or a huge bunch of rotating 'for sale' signs - are still being a major drain on a region's resources.

I may be wrong, but i believe this also does not address the willful spamming of neighboring parcels from these adfarms, in the form of hover text, automatic notecard and landmark givers, as well as object shouts. Again - how might a business owner control issues such as this?

One, muting actual solid builds is going to cause a heck of a lot of confusion when people who have forgotten what (and where) they muted try to move around and bump into invisible objects. Give a visual muting process to newbies and I guarantee the complaints and questions will soar through the roof!

Two, there is a video out on the net of Daniel Linden at some kind of university seminar, saying that they've considered this idea, but the graphics designers are dead set against it - simply put, it won't happen, because too many LL employees would vote against it.

I think a much more viable solution for this problem would be to vote on making ad markers a form of griefing spam. It's a policeable offense, much like copyright issues or child pornography. Don't do it, if you're reported as doing it, you'll get in trouble. On the other hand, I'd question whether LL actually polices 99% of abuse reports in the first instance... The mainland is notorious for being an anarchic free-for-all zone where you can do anything you like, including griefing people, fully sanctioned by LL (yes, again in Daniel's video, he clearly stated that they don't care about low-scale griefing that does not harm the grid (i.e. lagging/crashing servers)). So basically, I think ad farms are here to stay as long as LL's strict 'leave well alone' policy continues to apply to the mainland.

If someone else wants to start up a thread to vote on ad-farms as spam, I'll vote for it, but I'm not starting it myself because I don't believe LL will take any notice :/ I'm sorry to be so negative but I think this needed saying.

http://ablewhitman.org/viewer/

However, I have to echo what WarKirby says. What good is this if you invite someone else to your home, and they still see all the junk you no longer see?

It would find it highly annoying in general, ad farms or not, if different Avatars were not all viewing the same things in SL from the same vantage points (yes I know this already occurs to some extent with draw distance). How could you even comment on your surroundings? If we're not all living in the same metaverse, then why are we in there together at all?

If I could mute visibility and control the view for everyone on my land, then fabulous. If this is just a personal muting, where heaven knows whether you're seeing the same thing I am, then no way I'd vote for it.

Avion,

actually it's Able Whitman who invests the effort. All I did was picking up the idea from a comment in another issue and open it's own topic for it so it doesn't get lost. So credit goes to others mostly.

However, if the "why are we in it together at all" approach were true, you shouldn't be able to turn on/off audio streams on other parces, should not be able to have local light settings, should not be able to personally (audio/chat) mute residents, etc.

Personally I am strongly against any attempts to have my experience influenced by others (I've heard similar requests in relation to WindLight where a land owner wanted to control the visual experience by only allowing their choice of sky on their land).

Despite this, imagine flying or walking over land with smaller parcels where stuff around blinks on and off all the time, depending on what the land owner deemed nice or ugly.

Visual muting is a change of experience, I fully admit that. But as with communication muting, I expect to make my own choices here.

I have to admit that I find all of those personal choices annoying also. I travel around with a friend, and say, "Oh, great song!" He says, "What are you talking about? Oh, I have streaming audio disabled." I say, "Wow, look at those stars." He or she says, "Oops, I have noon forced!" Don't get me wrong: I don't advocate removing the functionality; None of those situations are the end of the world; I just find them annoying.

So, chances are, if I'm strolling SL with a friend, especially in unkown territory, it's unlikely either of us would have anything visually muted at all. I suppose I have no real opposition to a personal visual muting choice, so I retract my "no way." I'll go ahead and vote for it and support you.

But let me give a last-ditch appeal for making a parcel-based visual muting controlled by the landowner:

You're right, stuff would blink on and off as you move across parcels – this could be fairly amusing. And it's a drawback. But from my perspective, I own about 1/4 of a Sim, so I wasn't thinking about hopping across a bunch of 512s. But SL behaves with this blinking behavior already, really – you move to the left, and a bunch of stuff in the distance gets "drawn." You move back over, and it's gone. But here's the big deal: What effect does it have on the Ad farmer if people have their own personal vision mute settings? Are visitors to my Sim going to bother to mute objects there? Unlikely. One of my neighbors is a very tasteful little shopping village. An ad farmer tries to take advantage of the customers there. And every visitor is going to see the ad first even if they do choose to mute them. If my 1/4 Sim parcel, plus a couple of my very cool land baron neighbors who own more than I do, all mute the jerk, then NO ONE WILL EVER SEE HIS AD AGAIN. Sorry to shout, but I thrill at the prospect of ad farms being rendered useless.

So basically I'm going to say that your proposal does no real harm, and I'll support it, but think about the real change that parcel based muting could cause. And I propose we call it "blinding." haha!

I think it would be better to mute objects by owner and/or creator. It would be easier to keep track of in the system (I would think) and it would save time compared to having to select individual objects and mute each of them. It would also make sense that if you don't like that guy's one ad farm, chances are you won't like anything else he has set out in-world. Why not save time?

General visibility issues...

Don't want to see porn? np turn it off.
ads? ditto.
strangers flying over your land?
strangers being able to see your land/things/etc turn it off.
no need for glass wall forest of banlines.

this issue speaks volumes about privacy and personlizing the users' experiance.

I whole heartedly support this proposal

Choose your magic bullets wisely. The reality is going to be just as magical.

I want to be able to go to a parcel and just have the objects that parcel's owner deems unsightly gone while I'm on the parcel. I don't want to have to think about it, or select and mute them myself, or have the viewer maintaining permanent lists of objects all over the grid that I don't like.

There needs to be a mute list maintained by the parcel owner that I just get simply by being on the parcel. Worst case some kind of llInstantMessage-based protocol sent by an object with the same owner as the parcel.

===== Now Quoting Avion Raymaker : ======

What effect does it have on the Ad farmer if people have their own personal vision mute settings? Are visitors to my Sim going to bother to mute objects there? Unlikely. One of my neighbors is a very tasteful little shopping village. An ad farmer tries to take advantage of the customers there. And every visitor is going to see the ad first even if they do choose to mute them. If my 1/4 Sim parcel, plus a couple of my very cool land baron neighbors who own more than I do, all mute the jerk, then NO ONE WILL EVER SEE HIS AD AGAIN. Sorry to shout, but I thrill at the prospect of ad farms being rendered useless.

===== And now, for my POV... ======

I think that most SL users are like Argent Stonecutter.
They might be squeamish about giving landowners more control over their SL experience, but they certainly do not want to have to mute ad farms every time they see them. They would rather such things just be auto-muted thanks to landowner settings.

Giving each resident the power to "mute" (either "everything on parcel X", "all objects owned by avatar Y", or whatever) may make them feel better, but it is unlikely to be as effective against spam and advertisements as giving parcel owners the ability to hide other parcels within their sim from all guests currently on their parcel.

I still think giving each avatar the ability to control their SL experience by muting visibility by object / object name / object owner / parcel is a good idea. I hope that the third party patches for this (if good quality and not prone to introducing bugs) get included in the SL viewer.

I just also think that landowners ought to be able to instruct the clients used by guests on their parcel not to render certain other stuff. Like, for example, certain specific other parcels. Or perhaps "all other parcels" (that would be easier to code).

Fundamentally, landowners need the ability to control :
1) what is visible on their parcel to people outside the parcel (off topic, but related!)
2) what is visible outside their parcel to people on their parcel

In terms of implementation, for #1 I suggest that landowners should have a "hide land from people who can't visit it" toggle under about land -> access, or about land -> ban. When this toggle is set, people who cannot access the land are not sent any information regarding anything which is on it (avatars, objects, etc).

For #2's implementation, I suggest:
A) At the very least, a "Guests see" drop down menu in about land -> general, with the values "all sim", "only parcels with same owner" "only this parcel". If left at the default of 'all sim', things behave as now - guests can see everything. If 'only parcels with same owner', guest clients are sent something telling them to hide by default all content on parcels nearby which are not owned by the same person/group as the land they are currently on. If it is set to "only this parcel" clients are instructed to not render content on any parcel except the one they are standing on. Of course, clients should have an override for this in preferences : "Ignore landowner content location filtering". If this override is enabled, clients always render everything.
B) Landowners should have a parcel 'ignore' or 'mute' list to which they can add other parcels. If parcel B is on parcel A's mute list, then nobody on parcel A sees anything on parcel B while they remain on parcel A. Clients should be able to override this too, but if both implementation A and implementation B are put into SL, there should be a separate toggle so one can listen to specific "ignore that nasty parcel over there" ignores without listening to more general "ignore everything except that on my parcel" ignores. The toggle for "Ignore landowner content location filtering" could be changed to a drop down menu called : "Allow landowners to hide content on", with the options :

• "Any other parcel" (default)
• "Specific other parcels only" (option)
• "nowhere - always display everything" (option).

I think that would be the most effective solution against ad-farms. What's the point of having a towering ad block next to a popular club... if nobody at the club ever sees your ad?

If LL doesn't have time to implement this landowner-set ignore list feature, then, as a less preferable alternative, they could support the client-set ignore feature where possible. Say, they could ensure the client has sufficient information to be able to ignore "all content on parcels owned by ____", for example.
Wouldn't it be great if, why flying over the mainland, we never had to see those ugly, giant, rotating "for sale" signs some land companies use?

My essential two points in this postzilla are :
1) Both user-set and landowner-set mutes/ignores with flexible options about what to ignore (object name, objects with certain owner, parcels by name, parcels with certain owners) are a good idea, for different reasons. The idea of making these ignore lists scriptable (both for landowners and for clients) is also a great idea. Attacking sims with particle spam will be a lot harder if landowners have their land set to tell clients not to render any texture with a certain name, and most particles are just projected textures. People who don't want to go to the trouble to make their own lists of ad-farm runners (or who don't know how to!) can just wear an object provided by their choice of third party which updates their ignore list to auto-block those ad-farms for them.
2) Given that it seems people can implement user-set ignore by themselves (as Able seems to have done at http://ablewhitman.org/viewer/, very impressively!), I'd urge LL to consider landowner-set ignores. I know LL is very busy, and other things may have priority, however, at some point in the distant future when you have free time on your hands, please consider the proposals marked by 'A' and 'B' above. I think that if B (or the simpler but less kind solution, A) were implemented, it would really help cut down on ugly in-world ads. This would be a very good thing for the quality of the grid's content. The grid would look nicer, and thus attract more people. Plus it would be a great way to compensate all those people whose land has been devalued by ad-farms moving in nearby.

Summary :
1) All these mute options are potentially very useful, but I think landowner-set parcel-based muting is the most useful.
2) Unfortunately this requires LL to step up to the plate and implement. There are good reasons for them to do so, and I hope they get around to it eventually. In the meantime, thank you to Able for his work on a client enabling user-set muting

Meanwhile, Arden Logan's fairly simple proposal – a parcel mute set by each parcel owner, with a resident option to accept or ignore parcel-defined muting, seems very attractive. It does leave me with one minor concern, though. Wouldn't this tend to make lots adjoining the Linden maintenance "roadways" all the more attractive to ad farmer/visual spammers?

I'm very much looking forward to checking out http://ablewhitman.org/viewer/ to see how that approach actually works when put into practice. Thank you again Open Source activists!

I believe that Angel Fluffy's idea is great and can't wait for Able Whitman or whoever is capable of coding just such a viewer to make it available.

I'd gladly pay for that!

There's no need to wait for LL on this.

• Hide the contents of a parcel
• Hide all objects by a particular person

The best solution for this would be to have it blocked by owner and do-so client side. The items should become visible if you bump into them, this allows you to know that you have collided with something owner by someone whose objects you've hidden. This then also provides a hook from which you can un-hide the owner's objects.

Simply blocking by object as originally proposed is incredibly easy to work-around as it is a simple case of having the advert rezzed from another object as this will cause the ad's key to change regularly.

As for the client-side ability to visually block objects, it could cause some confusion since you would be able to bump into objects you don't see, so the objects would have to be visible somehow. The good old black "CENSORED" sign comes to mind. Although it would be nice if it appeared like property "no-entry" lines - only if you're near it.

However, depending on how fast you're moving towards the ad-farm it will become more visible, or if you are standing right next to it, so you can still see if it's there. If you aren't moving then it would fade from view (for people who are directly adjacent to an ad-farm) except within 1m or so so that you can still select the objects and un-hide them if you wish.

I oppose this measure. The mission of Second Life, as articulated by Linden Lab, is to connect everybody to an online world that advances the human condition.

We live and work in a shared, interactive, collaborative 3-D world. Imparting the ability to mute out and erase other people's content destroys the very essence of Second Life. It completely defeats the purpose.

Being able to erase other people is the dream of the security-state advocates like Angel Fluffy. But it is a dream that historically has been realized by tyrants like Stalin who used to erase parts of photographs containing his enemies, and thereby alter the historical record.

How can you accurately render the history – or even the present! – of Second Life when anyone can erase it?!

When Second Life is open-sourced, I suppose there is nothing to stop someone hosting their own sim to add the feature of "turning people into non-persons". But while we are in a shared world, I don't see that it is advisable.

The problem of ad-farms needs to be solved not by tools, by by a simple policy, in conformity with the existing Community Standards and TOS, that they constitute spam and interference with the enjoyment of Second Life of another. Full stop. They are a crystal-clear example of how the TOS and CS of the company in charge can be used at their discretion – and in a perfectly legitimate manner in the letter and spirit of that TOS and CS – to close down this menace. Linden Lab could do several things with the sign infestation – sell ad space itself, as it sells land, on the auctions, for roadside use only or some designated area that doesn't then devalue the purchases made by residents of areas prime waterfront or pristine mountain wilderness. Residents themselves should also start a class-action legal suit in real life against the real-life companies now funding these extortionist, blighting signs.

But the answer to this social and legal problem isn't to wipe out the view of other people's expression. Residents already have the option of living in themed areas; zoned areas; and even simply turning down their draw distance or putting up a fence.

Good fences make good neighbours. Erasing your neighbours is not a better world; it's a dystopia. It has unforseen consequences both in providing impetus to other forums of griefing and removing the normal and desirable function of advertising which businesses require for sustaining themselves and providing information about their products that in fact people do want.

By starting mob campaigns, those with RL resources of money and media access, or Second Life resources of Linden connection and tekkie qualifications, will be able to claim that certain people should be "erased". That mob mentality will have no recourse, and people who have in good faith purchased servers and developed them for the public will be blackballed and unable to express themselves.

Freedom of expression contains within it an intrinsic value of tolerating – not erasing – the expression of others.

I dont particularly want Mr. Lee's whatever wasting my bandwidth and cluttering my view, so being able to turn it off or hide certain objects increases my ability to control my own experience. Its only "censorship" if someone else decides what I should and shouldnt see.

Also, just because I erase someone, doesnt mean they are "erased" for everyone, its just me. So Im not eliminating anyone, simply "looking away" SL style.

If someone else wants to see spinning ugly forsale signs then they could chose not to use this mute additional feature just as those of us decide when and where to use the current mute for ourselves now. When we chose to mute someone or object/s it does not affect other residents experience unless they chose to mute as well.

The same would be true with this mute visibility tool. It would only mute the invoker's view of said object/s and so is not forcing 'censorship' in any way on anybody else.

It would be a great boon for those moments when one finds oneself bombarded with swarms of ugly multiple objects. It would give control back to the resident and give the resident the freedom to choose what makes their experience better.

Freedom from visual spam is much needed and freedom to make that choice for myself has my vote.

Make it so muting a user's textures means that all of that user's textures don't render, otherwise you'll get people with ad-based skins, 'streaking'..

Sure, eventually, they'll just use sculpted prims to spell things out, and you can certainly have offensively shaped Objects, but that takes up a lot of prims, which adfarms don't have.

I think both of these issues can be solved, right now, by us. I hope that someone (Nicholaz? Able?) patches up a new viewer with this feature implemented, as proof-of-concept if nothing else.

My proposal is this: Add a checkbox in the preferences, marked [ ] Visual Mute on Banned Avatar's objects. The box is checked by default.

We can use the Parcel Ban list to implement visual mute. The ban list is available to all clients. While you are on a parcel, any object owned by an avatar on this list is muted. It doesn't render, chat, show particles, etc. If you're a land owner, you can mute someone's objects by adding them to your ban list.

It's not perfect, but I think it would get us 90% of the way there, and be a lot better than nothing.

You need to be able to put parcels, identified by coordinates, into the ban list. This can be done directly, or by allowing the parcel ban list to be updated by a script.

I also think that a personal ban list is desirable. If it can be updated by script then you could use "shared killfiles" so you won't even see adfarms in areas you've never visited.

Finally, both these lists should be able to be ignored, by preference or menu, so that you can see what's being hidden if you want.

For the user interface... make the objects invisible unless you're within a few meters... then and only then would they show up as smoke-grey-textured objects so you can tell they're there but they still don't obscure stuff.

Prokofy's solution of a policy is nice in theory, but there are thousands of sims, and very few lindens able to enforce that. In addition, for true freedom to exist, LL has to not interfere with content on parcels as much as possible. What is offensive and ugly to one person, might be beautiful to another. Those who find things ugly should not be forced to look at them, or go somewhere else.

And finally, as to controlling other people's experience, the answer is simple. Since this would not stop the data being sent ot the client, but merely from displaying it, there could easily be an option in preferences.

Allow parcel visible mute lists: Always (o) Never ( ) Ask ( )

If you don't want landowners controlling your SL experience, you could simply disable this, and you would see everything, as it is now. As long as the option is enabled by default.

If ask is selected, you would be presented with a dialog when you enter a parcel which has a visible mute list, asking if you want to use it.
Also, that dialog should not steal focus, and should automatically vanish if you leave the parcel without giving an answer. so as not to impede those flying around exploring.

Avatar based muting would be important, to curb griefing. A common griefer tactic is to spread big, self replicating, particle spewing boxes across a sim. It wouldn't be good if you had to mute your neighbor's land to curb that griefer, so being able to add just him to your parcel mute list is important, and thusly prevent his particles and goatse boxes from annoying your visitors.

Individual objects, would be for certain purposes. ie, one of your neighbors puts up something ugly, in their otherwise pretty land. They of course, disagree about the ugliness. Being able to only mute that specific object, without the rest of the parcel, would be good.

And lastly, parcel muting is obvious. Mute ad farms, megaprim malls, particle spammers, etc. This could also be used if you're in a PG sim, and don't want the sex club in the next (mature) sim to be seen.

Ultimately, it's impossible to make all problems go away. People will always have disagreements on taste, and what they should be able to do with their own land. Someone will always be offended by something that most people find innocent and harmless.

This option will allow people to ignore things they don't like, making it much easier for people to live in harmony.

By the way a workaround is to go live (get yourself land) on a Private Estate. Usually covenants forbid ugly adds and other eyesores and the service is better and faster there also.

In light of age verification, I would like object mutes to also apply to objects which are flagged by owner to be mature, and be automatically invisible to people who are not age verified. (I would like such a feature to be used in place of the silly parcel based age verification system - which threatens to cut up estates with unsightly banlines - just mute the objects that are mature, leave what is not mature to maintain a continuous world)

I agree with others that object and owner based muting is too difficult to deal with ad farms, but that doesn't negate its usefulness as a spam deterrant. I believe there is room for both, not either or. I'd like to see all features.

For any of the following, any avatar visiting this parcel should have an option in their own preferences, as stated by someone in an earlier comment here, to accept land owner visual mutes, to ask first, or to not accept land owner visual mutes.

Say I own a parcel of land:

Being able to visually mute a single object, such as a tree that has branches swaying through my wall might be quite sufficent. The tree is fine for the neighbor, and inoffensive to people in general, but I can make it invisible to those visiting my home. Click the object, and visually mute that one thing, for those on my land.

Being able to mute any object owned by a particular individual or group could make all ad farms in visual range of my parcel vanish, for those visiting my land. Click the object, and choose to mute all objects owned by that individual, or set to the same group as the object. Also be able to explicitly enter a name or a group name to the parcel ban list, or affect this via an LSL hook.

Being able to visually mute whatever is on a given parcel would prevent a parcel owned by a specific ad farmer from being passed around to infinite groups of alts to circumvent muting. Click the parcel, and that area, as bounded at that time, can be muted. If they combine it with other parcels or chage owners, that area remains muted.

None of these mutes would affect anyone who was NOT on my land. So while I could decide that the Ivory Tower of Primitives was something I didn't want to see from my nearby land, that would do nothing to hide it from anyone visiting the Tower, or from any other parcel.

I also agree with Profky that abuse of ad farms should be an AR-worthy offense, that could get someone banned. While this won't stop the ad farmer from coming right back with an alt, it WILL cause them to forfeit all their ad farm land, each time they get banned for life for ad farming!

Sorry, this suggestion is really STUPID!

Profitability would be insanely hard after this: Out of sight :: No one touches, no one buys advertising, the network dies up.

Mainostaulu Network, is my advertising network, and while we have very beautifull billboards, nicely placed and unobtrusive, a lot of people would "mute" them, and never see what's on them, no entertainment, no information, no ads.

Btw, we run A LOT of campaigns for different non-profit organizations, completely for free too, so people wouldn't see them either! Some of the campaigns we've been running for non-profits are Feed The Hungry and Save Net Radio. Also the informational stuff would go unseen!

I mean, I have the ability to block banner ads on the Internet, but I choose not to, because advertisers have learned to make their ads unobtrusive yet interesting, and because I know that I'm getting a benefit from them being there... they're subsidizing the content I want to see. Billboards, in RL or SL, don't provide any similar benefit... but I still enjoy them when they're interesting (like the Ford "Escort" ones, or the Chik Fil A "Cow" ones)... the rest, well, what benefit do I get from the "A A A Ambulance Chaser Attorneys" ads on weed-filled lots?

If you have to actually produce interesting content to get people to look at your ads, well, welcome to the real world. I have to make stuff that people like to get them to buy it, why should your experience be any different?

http://ablewhitman.org/viewer/#Download

p.s.And LL load with ARs about horrible ad parcels will decrease a lot -

On websites like somethingawful, I tolerate advertising because it helps keep the site running, and subsidises the frontpage content. In SL, all your ads do is ruin my view, and impede people who have a better use for the land.

Ads would surely survive; they would just have to be creative and fun enough to watch so that parcel owners would not mute them.

Just the individual client-side mute per avatar would be great; make it mute by owner so I can get rid of all the escort signs in one go!

I think this feature would be on top of my wish list for SL, now that windlight rendering has come.

Most of you have been legitimately asking for regulation when if comes to ad farms.
It seems to me however that this proposal is closer to anarchy rule than regulation...
What is needed is a more aggressive mainland regulation and enforcement from LL.

When it comes to mainland, I would suggest TOS amendments along those lines:

1. Require that billboards or advertising content be "attached" to the ground and/or a build,
itself attached to the ground, unless the build is a "skybox" sitting at a min. altitude of 150m.
2. Require that the advertising box or associated build x,y or z dimensions be no greater
than the maximum x,y or z size of the parcel it is sitting on. (megaprims included)
3. Set a maximum cap price on the price of land to L$100/sqm when setting a parcel for sale.

I think such rules would be more effective against many abuses, as long as LL is willing to enforce them...
I'd love to hear your thoughts on such alternative proposal.

This proposal minimizes both cost and collateral damage.

Wishing that Linden Labs will magically hire the hundreds of mainland building inspectors it would take to enforce the kind of TOS you want isn't going to get anywhere.

I am not against muting visibility on a temporary basis for the valid reasons mentioned.
Permanent muting of objects or parcels is however setting in my view a very bad precedent,
and I am very concerned about Second Life being fragmenting on a per user basis like that.

And for what? Because you are "very concerned about Second Life being fragmenting on a per user basis".

If that's what you're worried about, then get behind the "per parcel" muting push, that will work. Limiting the price of land to L$100/sqm won't, forcing spammers to follow trivially bypassed guidelines won't.

Hell, if I didn't know better I'd think you were trying to push a set of rules that the ad farmers wouldn't find in the slightest bit inconvenient... because setting up a 4x4x100 column of flashing temp-on-rez boxes "attached to the ground" is no problem, and getting L$1600 for a minimum 4x4 parcel is no punishment.

1. Linden Lab has or will make the resources available. As a company, it's LL's responsibility to make sure the resources are there for important matters and they are working to achieve it. It's only a matter of time. e.g. As of today there are 3 ad farms incidents reports with disciplinary measures given.

2. A 4x4x100 column is not allowed under my suggested regulation. You would need a parcel with a width of 100m to be able to allow for 4x4x100 column.

3. L$1600 for a 4x4 parcel is about creating a disincentive to buying and selling them as a business and regulate land pricing with a reasonable cap to prevent abuse and mistakes. It's still a bit high of price and could be lower, but I view it as fairly considering of high end larger land pricing
Is not about punishment either. You can't punish someone from doing something that wasn't clearly stated as prohibited in the first place in the terms anyway. Hence the call for regulations in the TOS.

And frankly, I don't see the point of being on the mainland if you are going to mute neighboring parcels. It's only hiding the problem not resolving it.

Thank you for your thoughts.

2. So your proposal is that you would not be allowed to build higher than 16m on a standard "first land" parcel?

3. Buy 512 square meters for L$3000, sell it for L$51200, and this creates a disincentive to ad-farms?

4. I used to say the same thing about filtering spam. It's only hiding the problem, not resolving it. Unfortunately, without more will than any government or corporation has ever shown, that's the best you will ever be able to do. Spam is just too profitable.

Of course it doesn't have to be exactly that, you could also limit the building size to the minimum width of the parceI to be more restrictive. I am just making suggestions like everyone else. Lindens are the ones getting paid to make such appropriate decisions as they see fit.

As for Prok's idea that giving us this tool would mean splintering the community and create isolationism? Welcome to ban lines, security orbs privacy screens, skyboxes and the ability to eject others from your land. Oh, and let's not forget private islands, where if you're banned, you can't even SEE the place.

I think that instead of hurting the social aspects of SL, this kind of tool would actually help us in the long run. It could be a giant stress relief for neighbors. If your neighbor builds something that you feel is prim torture, you can simply turn it off and go about your SLife. No need to confront them about it, which usually turns sour instantly.

Ad plots would become useless, because if everyone turns the prims off, well... who's going to be clicking 'em if they don't see them? Plus, extortion becomes futile, if the person you're trying to pressure into buying doesn't see your attempts to pressure.

And why do you think it matters if it's connected to the ground or not? I just can't make that bit out at all.

Argent, I am talking about ads as the major eyesore issue here. Putting restrictions for all buildings is a much bigger challenge...

As for the reason to connect ads to the ground, I have pretty much outlined this here:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-605?focusedCommentId=41529#action_41529

PS: If you have other direct follow ups please IM me or this proposal is going to become a one on one discussion board. ^^ Thanks

However... thanks for the link... the fact that you run an advertising network really helps me understand your motivation.

Obviously I'm wasting my time trying to convince you that this kind of thing won't "fragment the community" when that's just a red herring.

I guess I'll just link my comment to Tyrian Camilo: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1017?focusedCommentId=46713#action_46713

Aside from ad farms, megaprims the size of an entire sim, and excessive number of objects on the edge of a parcel, some people just want residents on their sim to have better performance and no distraction from what the landlord is offering.

Advantages: Less eye sores, better performance overall as you don't have to see any large forest in the background if you don't want to, all eye sores not on your own land out of sight in one click.

Disadvantages: can't think if any, if you can think of one just put the viewer to not accept the landlord's visual mute (not a complex banlist, just on/off will do enough to discourage spammer-type behavior).

This solution is better than muting on a per-name basis because as soon as a ban-list thing is implemented, you can be sure each 16m parcel will have each and every advertizing object made by a different account and deeded to the account of the greedhead, and 16m parcels will line up just long enough to make sure you can't put all ads in the banlist because there are too many (like the situation with the griefers). So parcel-per-parcel bans are more like it.

P.S.: add sound-source and particule-source to that "mute" because advertizers will use them next, as well as megaprim being physical and blocking everything despite being made invisible. Then you have a decent anti-bad-neighboor tool. (-;

P.P.S.: it's likely some persistent spammers will trade the parcel daily (landbot-style scripted) to attempt clearing the parcel off the visual-mute list daily (forcing daily maintenance of the list by the landlord), which is why the "mute all things not on my land" thing would work better than a banlist. Or "Mute new neighboors by default" as any unix sysadmin knows is a really good solution against attackers willing to take new identities every minute.

P.P.P.S.: if you still want to implement a banlist, consider implementing whitelisting instead of just blacklisting - it would be much more efficient and easy to maintain as good neighboors don't trade land as much as 16m plot holders.

That's what I was proposing, yes, on a per-parcel basis.

I like the functionality of Able's patch, tho it's missing the owner-based mute.

I personally would prefer things how he did it, with some additions/changes:

• Visually muting an object only mutes that object.
• Visually muting the object owner mutes all their objects.
• Visually muting an object turns it gray/transparent (optionally invisible), loses sound, loses floating text and particles. Physical objects having an independent setting for gray/invisible status, so you can keep physicals at least visible somewhat, if wanted, and make the rest vanish.
• Don't have visual mutes affect attachments. that's where plain avatar muting in 1.21 comes in, since it now turns people into a gray mass.
• The visual mute list and normal mute list should be seperate. Give the mute list tabs to switch between muted residents, muted objects, visually muted residents and visually muted objects.

I don't think a parcel muting feature is really necessary. In the case of ad networks, which will be way less of a problem after October 1st, it would suffice to simply mute the owner of the huge ad tower, and poof. all the ad objects (and potentially all their ads in the network) are gone.

It's a matter of "regardless of what else is implemented, it must be possible to mute a whole parcel for everyone on another parcel".

Also, visually muting a parcel must completely hide (no grey boxes, no avatars, NOTHING) everything on that parcel.

Otherwise it will do nothing for land griefers/extortionists.

Otherwise it will do nothing for land griefers/extortionists. '

How does that differ from using the owner-visual-mute functionality on the parcel owner? Especially in the extortionist/land griefer case. The owner-mute would even make sure all the other extortionists parcels in other sims are muted as well.

It sounds like a good idea, but only if parcel visitors can decide to deactivate getting mute-list data from the parcel they are on.

Personally, I think visual muting should always be under user control only. I'd hate to be standing there having a private conversation, unable (due to choices made by the owner of the parcel I was standing on) to see someone on an adjacent parcel who was within range to overhear my chat text.

The original point here is all about other people controlling what you can and can't see with obstructive or offensive builds is it not? I don't believe the solution is, or should be, allowing yet another person to have that control in another form. That shifts the domain of the problem, but does not solve it.

Muting won't hide green dots, and it could turn avatars into ghosts, but if someone's got an alt wearing a giant penis avatar sitting on his extortion plot you gotta hide that. And while I agree that you should be able to ignore a parcel's mute list (I believe I've already noted that), I wouldn't phrase things in terms of "other people controlling what you can or can not see", because after all if you're on a parcel the parcel owner can do that already with prims, if you don't trust them to be "reasonable" you shouldn't be on their parcel.