General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

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Lyubov
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General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Lyubov »

At yesterday's RA meeting a concern was discussed regarding private parcel sounds spamming visitors outside of the owner's parcel itself. There was general agreement that all non-natural non-environmental sounds must be restricted to the owner's parcel on privately owned land. Furthermore, there was also a consensus that greeter scripts must also be limited to the boundaries of the parcel.

An open question is whether *all* sounds must be restricted to the parcel. The About Land setting "Restrict gesture and object sounds to this parcel" is a checkbox, either On or Off. Individual objects may have their own settings. Many people find the CDS soundscape a thing of beauty, others do not. Many public spaces in CDS, such as those owned by the LV group, offer a rich natural sound environment. The Firestorm viewer does contain discrete controls for sound, to reduce or mute the volume on items such as Media, Music, Ambient, Sounds.

The General Covenant for CDS (https://cdsdemocracy.org/cds-themes/) is the relevant place to list these limitations and it would fall under the Chancellor's discretion to enforce the policy and determine which sounds may be inappropriate.

In the spirit of the least restrictive policy, I propose the following text to be added under General Rules:

  • All non-natural, non-environmental sounds must be restricted to the parcel boundaries.

I also propose the following to be added under Scripts and Particles:

  • All greeter scripts must be restricted to the parcel boundaries.

Please share your thoughts on these items. The RA would like to vote on these updates to the General Covenant at the next meeting on 20 October.

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Rosie Gray
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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Rosie Gray »

This proposal sounds really good to me. Thank you Lyubov!

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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Tanoujin Milestone »

It is a good proposal.I think there is a minimal consensus regarding this regulations. Lets insert that passages in any case.

Nevertheless I have my thoughts about the minority proposal to restrict *all* sounds to the parcels. First I had difficulties to understand the reason, but I was told some short looped or intensive natural/environmental sounds (like crying cats, howling wolves, barking dogs or bonfires) from a private parcel could disturb a neighbouring citizen who does not want to mute this kind of sounds alltogether.

Now, why isn't this kind of sound an issue if it comes from public land? Because we have reason to believe there is a quality assurement and public control - if someone feels disturbed, he can use the usual channels to find a solution.

I would like to expand this principle by offering a mediation/arbitration process:

"By approving this covenant you agree to accept the chancellor as confidental mediator in case of private conflict regarding natural or environmental sounds from private sources that affect you on your own property. If mediation does not result in settlement, the Chancellor can forward the case to the Scientific Council for public arbitration."

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation for technical details)

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Rosie Gray
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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Rosie Gray »

Tanoujin, your additional proposal sounds reasonable to me. But, I do think that with the inworld tools available to mute individual objects and to lower the volume of different types of sounds that there shouldn't be a lot of reason for it.

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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Lyubov »

Thank you Tan, you offer a good suggestion. Perhaps we can expand the concept of mediation even further and generalize it to all items concerning the Covenant, and not limit it solely to the issue of parcel sounds.

We can add a new section to the Covenant following "Commercial Zoning" called "Compliance".

Compliance:

Purchasing land in CDS constitutes acceptance of this Covenant and any relevant region-specific Covenant. The CDS Chancellor ensures compliance with the Covenant and may employ discretion to issue variances as appropriate. In the event of any person-to-person dispute, the parties agree to mediation by the Chancellor, and final resolution by the Scientific Council.

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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Laura Azalee »

I still think it is not enough to restrict "non natural" sounds.
Imagine your neighbour is an animal lover and fills their parcel with miaowling cats, barking dogs, cows and chicken and maybe a screaming parrot or two - that DOES happen - those are all natural sounds but - are you sure you'd like that?
It happened to me a long time ago when I did not even know you can restrict sounds to your parcel - my neighbours hated me because I had cats (NOT silent ones). How do I know? Because a friend heard a comment about "that bitch and her damn cats"...(they did not have voice restricted to their parcel either! :lol: )

If you'd like a good example at CDS go here:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/L ... 202/134/21
That is my swimming deck (which you are welcome to use any time by the way). Just stand there and you'll hear a mixture of animal sounds - cows, chicken, frogs, crickets - which do NOT belong to the seafront - apart from being annoying, they are just "wrong". Of course I could just ask the owner of that little farm to restrict sounds on that parcel but would every neighbour comply?

To me, it should just be a question of principle. You keep your stuff on your land. And that should include sounds. Period.

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Tanoujin Milestone
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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Tanoujin Milestone »

Thank you Laura for providing the Landmark.

I went there, turned music down and had some Instant Messages going. At first you get it is the wrong sounds for the location. Then you start to identify them and find out it is a bit much all at once. After staying there for about 5 minutes you get the loop effect and it really starts to become very annoying. I made 10 minutes before toggling it off because my mood started to rapidly drop. I would say it is the acoustic equivalent of a field of rotating signs.

I do not see why Laura should have to go and find all those crickets, frogs, cows, chicken and other birds and mute them to have what should be there: just seagulls and the surge of waves. This is too much asked in my opinion. Not because of personal taste or sensitivity but out of principle. The soundscape is objectively inconsistent and of bad quality. Furthermore personal muting does not change the bad experience for everyone.

CDS soundscape, as much as we love it in certain corners, has a quality assurance issue in this place at least. We might want to locate the spots with poor soundscape throughout the CDS and eliminate them, starting with sources from public land and going on with convincing private owners to restrict/adapt their sounds as appropriate or ban private sounds to the respective parcels if nothing else helps.

I believe this would be a topic for the LUC

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Rosie Gray
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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Rosie Gray »

I know exactly what Laura is referring to with all of those animal sounds, and I do agree that there are too many of them and they carry too far. Especially the cows and chickens. I'm not sure about other sounds. The answer right now is for Laura to restrict sounds to her own parcel and add some appropriate sounds there such as water lapping and perhaps some seagulls. I'm still in favour of being more liberal with nature sounds than restrictive though. Perhaps we could ask the cow and chicken owners to either restrict their sounds to their parcels or to simply turn off the animal sounds which I think is possible with most SL critters.

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Re: General Covenant - Restrict Parcel Sounds, Greeters

Post by Sudane Erato »

Reading this, it suddenly occurred to me that the chicken sounds might be mine! I'm totally sympathetic to Laura's position... so I went to the parcel which is a goodly number of meters from the LM posted, and set the parcel to "Restrict sounds to parcel". I THINK that this turned them off at Laura's LM place. Please let me know!

I do understand the desire to have nice and natural sounds available to visitors as they walk around. I'm especially a huge fan of seagulls and crows, tho I know that many people feel they make a god-awful racket. But in general, if there's any feeling from anyone that certain sounds are too much, the owner should be asked to restrict them and should be expected to comply.

Just my two cents. Oh... and if there's any other sounds elsewhere from things (usually birds) that might be mine, that annoy people, please let me know.

Sudane.....................

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