Zindra swaps on hold, more land on the way

I have mixed views about the latest blip in the adult content saga. All land swaps are on hold until Wednesday July 8th, as blogged by Jack. This is good and bad news. The good news is more land is coming online, more waterfront and more choice.

The bad news is that it yet again exemplifies what a shocking display of customer service ineptitude this whole process is. Throughout this process Linden Lab have had feedback on how to improve the process, how to make it less painful, suggestions of far superior alternatives and all they have done is put on their "Blah Blah Blah we're not listening" headphones, they've done this from day one and they're still doing it today.

The whole thing is a disgrace, the people involved should be hugely embarrassed at how badly they've handled this. However there is hope during this pause that maybe someone will take the whole fiasco by the scruff of its neck and whip it into shape.

Anyone who owns mature mainland should be entitled to a swap to Zindra, absolutely anyone. They purchased that land under terms that are no longer valid, Linden Lab should use this pause to give those people what they paid for. Linden Lab moved the goalposts, for what reason is still a huge mystery because I still haven't seen people congratulating LL in any sort of large numbers over this policy. I still can't recall huge debates about the issue of adult content.

All Linden Lab had to do was:

Default all mature mainland to mature content, putting the onus on the parcel owner to identify if it was PG safe.

Ditto with classifieds on mature land.

That alone would have gone a long way to cleaning up PG search and would have placed the onus of maturity rating in the hands of the parcel owner and therefore left them open to suspensions and banishment for misrepresenting their content.

Then they could have opened the adult  continent and offered people free moves if they wanted, to the land where more liberal advertising and images were allowed in public, a land where your escort workers had the extra security of people needed to be account verified to get there and therefore a place where plenty of responsible adult businesses would have wanted to setup home. Voluntary moves would have been easier all around for everyone, that includes Linden Lab.

Then they could have finally imposed their community standards on those who didn't move but breached said community standards. This would have been a win-win situation.

An example of how badly they've handled this is that they have allowed people to move from landlocked land to waterfront. Sims may well be merely server space to the execs at Linden Lab who have no clue about the inworld experience, but to residents waterfront means something, hence why waterfront mainland sells for more than inland plots.

They've still offered nothing at all to estate owners who are having to rearrange their land holdings not due to their own incompetence, but due to Linden Lab moving the goalposts.

The whole thing stinks from head to foot and I still think this is paving the way for a merger with the teen grid, because you can't merge the grids with PG search full of such explicit material, not that PG search should be full of such material anyway but Linden Lab are moving said continent far away from mainland.

I fail to see any other reason why Linden Lab have been so hellbent on such a poor policy, I give them more credit than being totally inept in customer service, this seems to be a pain before hopeful more gain from making the main grid teen safe in large parts. Nothing else makes sense, the policy, the implementation, the feedback has all been too painful for this to be anything other than part of a bigger plan.

Personally I just wish they'd tell us what that bigger plan is and get it over with.