Allow Known & Trusted Users to Perform Minor Mainland Road Fixes
tracked
Lethra Resident
LL should work with trusted users (well-known builders/creators) to fix some of the most glaring deficiencies on mainland roads.
(EDIT: I understand people have proposed this before, unsuccessfully, because it involves giving people rez rights on the mainland. I get that, but one workaround would be for a Linden to take a copy of the relevant pieces of road, let the builder/creator fix it in a sandbox, then give the fixed version to a Linden who can rez it in-world.)
Many roads on the mainland look way out of date, and there are a number of trouble spots that vehicles consistently have a hard time handling. I've attached some pics, but any resident who drives regularly can name 4 or 5 spots off the top of their head. It seems that some roads were designed to be “bad” to make them challenging, but the ever-present lag issue, among other things, makes them more frustrating than fun. Not to mention some of these roads are just plain ugly.
In the ~20 years since the Mainland first opened, users have demonstrated the capacity to build roads on their own property that are at least as good as the current mainland roads, and in many cases substantially better. There are plenty of content creators who already sell road pieces, and I’ve even made a few myself even though I’m terrible with Blender.
Many of these issues can probably be fixed in just a few hours by a competent builder, and would not require any interference with private property or significant changes to land impact. Users can work with LL staff to design the fixes in advance and simply “drop them in” when they’re ready, with minimal interruption to the traffic flow. Picking users for different projects could work just like a RL city picking a contractor.
The Moles seem mainly focused on Bellisseria, and there simply aren’t enough of them to do much beyond that, but there are enough users who are more than capable of doing this for very little compensation, so why waste that talent?
The mainland is at risk of becoming a wasteland, and while some problems might take a lot more work, these defects are low-hanging fruit that would noticeably improve the mainland experience with minimal investment of LL staff time.
Log In
Oatmeal Linden
marked this post as
tracked
SarahKB7 Koskinen
Oatmeal Linden Put my name down please for coasts and roads! However, I don't want to be a Mole. :)
Aogashima Astral
Oatmeal Linden Me too put my name down for coasts and roads too. I don't want to be the mole and lindens too! :)
Caroly Rossini
Good taste and aesthetic judgment are not very abundant qualities, even among those who know how to build. It's a matter of looking at most of the structures and buildings that break into OUR landscape in Heterocera, with worse aberrations than some errors created by the maintenance team (little respect for the environment and no sense of optimization to reduce lag).
In short, a better standard is needed for evaluating the constructions or modifications carried out by the maintenance team (that way they would do well from the start), but considering users “responsible” is not a solution but a cure that can be worse than the disease
Oatmeal Linden
Lethra - I have reviewed the rez zone location in Gourdneck, and will at some point in the near future attempt to make that side road a bit more passable for modern vehicles.
Oatmeal Linden
marked this post as
needs info
Hello Lethra! We appreciate your concerns for the aging infrastructure on mainland, however we have our Content Creation team to handle repair and rebuild requests. If you wish to be a part of this team, please see the application process detailed in the wiki: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Department_of_Public_Works
For your more immediate concerns, if you could provide all of the locations from your images, we can review these for repair or rebuilding. Thanks!
AlettaMondragon Resident
Oatmeal Linden You know we wouldn't come up with these suggestions if you fixed the things we reported. The things in Lethra's photos are poor design, the more pressing issues are for example the missing autoreturn setting on the road parcel in Ess. A month should have been enough time to get to it before it gets blocked by an abandoned vehicle or something else again? And the broken switch on the north leg of the wye in Pawpaw. Both are things that for some of us would take 10 seconds to fix, it is literally faster to fix each of these than typing up your responses of why you can't do it at the time.
We don't want to be Moles. At least I don't. We don't want to build shopping events and Bellisseria (although the quality of a lot of builds in Bellisseria is abysmal, too). What we want is quality and clear roads to use on Mainland. Why is it so difficult for you to provide it?
AlettaMondragon Resident
Oatmeal Linden Before you might say I wasn't clear about the locations, details about the missing autoreturn in Ess are in this ticket: https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/2441173
And the broken SLRR switch in Pawpaw is in this one https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/2443600 and https://feedback.secondlife.com/ldpw/p/railroad-switch-broken-on-pawpaw-wye which you have already seen.
4 and 10 December 2025. 10 seconds to fix in Ess, 1 minute in Pawpaw (if the script reset fixes it), but all this time somehow just wasn't enough yet.
Oatmeal Linden
AlettaMondragon Resident: Thanks for your input. We will review and repair issues as time permits. As you have mentioned, other projects may have some priority. :-)
Submitting support tickets or reporting the issues via Canny will get the information to us. Please also be aware that others are unable to view your support tickets.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Oatmeal Linden You and other Lindens can view the tickets from the links, that is why I linked them here, it is not the general public I want to view them, however I might post screenshots of them in the future.
Oh and there is this thing at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Donalbain/42/243/39 a large random object occupying half of Route 12. This is also more important than the steep intersection in Gourdneck and a few misaligned road prims.
Oatmeal Linden
AlettaMondragon Resident: Thanks for the report at Donalbain. Unfortunately, this looks like an issue for our Trust and Safety team to review, as we are only able to repair or alter our own properties. Please file an abuse report for this issue. Thanks.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Isn't it LL that always preaches in blog posts and other platforms how important the community is as well as Second Life's future? Is this how Philip Linden imagined this back in the beginning? By making things even more difficult when a problem occurs instead of doing your best to resolve it? Sadly I can't find Mr Oberwager's Linden name now to tag him as well.
AlettaMondragon Resident
But look at this, I have already cleared this! No abuse report needed and certainly not your "help", and no superpowers. All clear 3 hours and 32 minutes after I had found it. This is what I do.
Lethra Resident
Oatmeal Linden Thanks for getting back to me, and sorry for the delayed response. Personally, I don't think my building skills are Mole/LDPW-level, nor have I spoken directly to anyone that good who might be interested.
I mentioned this in a group chat right after I made this post, and the most common response was "good idea, but it will never happen because LL doesn't want to give people rez/build rights on protected land," which totally makes sense. (Followed by some anecdotes from years ago.)
What does make sense, at least to me, and what to my knowledge has not been proposed before, is letting people build fixes in a safe environment, then have LL/the Moles review it, and when it looks ready for prime time, have someone already approved for that kind of work just "drop it in" in-world.
For example, with Gourdneck, you can make it known to a select group of builders (Moles or whatever you want to call them) that that intersection is a mess and needs fixing. You give these builders the dimensions of the area that needs fixing, copies of the current objects that comprise that section of road, and the terrain. The builders submit an improved model of just that section of road. LDPW tests the model, approves it/asks for changes, etc. When it's ready, a LL employee, or whoever you guys already trust, just deletes the old road and rezzes the fixed version in the exact same spot. Boom, you're done.
That way, the fix gets done quicker and with less work on LDPW's part, and without the risk that someone will vandalize/otherwise break the Mainland. There are so many builders out there who could make so many improvements that it seems silly to let that talent pool go to waste over some risks that are understandable but easily mitigated.
Sijora Ravenwood
YES, free us from those ugly and misbuilt roads please
AlettaMondragon Resident
Sijora Ravenwood It is funny you said this because I was so annoyed by the ancient poorly built roadways too, and all of those in Lethra's photos are those old ones, but sadly this is not unique to old roads. Some of those actually might have been built properly but since the terrain lives its own life and probably because of float drift, there is a mysterious "prim shift" effect happening to many objects, which leaves a mark on road prims over decades. However there is this absolute madness in Dammastock which is quite recent. We wanted to have Route 8 connected here so bad that we kept lobbying for the connection but LL always rejected it saying some time ago (probably 2009-2010) a landowner in the region didn't want a road behind their property so they never built this part. This apparently wasn't a case anymore in 2021 so in December 2021 they finally built the connection. For some reason the road prims weren't laid down by Abnor Mole who has built Route 8 originally (and many other roads by the way, pretty much perfectly), but by Guy Linden, and the result was so bad some of us thought it wasn't even worth having the connection built.
First photo is the reference in Bietschhorn facing East, Abnor's perfectly placed road prims (the original ones).
Second photo is the new road prims starting to climb to Dammastock. The rez zone sign was left at its original position, that's why it is buried halfway into the ground. Okay it is a sign for dinkies now, no problem, but those road prims... but wait.
Photos 3, 4, 5, 6: It was already suspicious that something wasn't right with the road prims leading up here but once you climbed up to Dammastock, my goodness all hell breaks loose. Not a single edge is aligned with another.
Last photo: The west side was rebuilt by Abnor in June 2025, and it is clearly just the way you'd expect, perfect. He must know some magic because this is really great quality. I see Oatmeal has done something with Guy's prims between this rebuilt section and the top of the hill, where I am standing in this photo, and it looks good, if at least the whole thing looked like these 4 slices it would be OK.
This clearly hasn't passed QA in December 2021 but at least there is this little improvement on the west side of the region, that is quite reassuring.