I'd like to let you all in on something incredible!
There is a huge continent of over 500 sims faaaaar to the south on the grid, all named "Democristan" this and "Democristan" that - mostly names like 'Democristan Franklin', 'Democristan Jefferson', and so forth. The shape is vaguely like that of France though.
There were other casual explorers there, and I flew over to a cluster of them. Seems they were having a bit of an argument.
After a few short minutes I soon discovered why. There are new government tools enabled on these sims!
The way it works, is that on this continent there are both regional and continent-level controls. Members of a region can 'elect' a provincial governor of a sort, through complex formulae I couldn't quite fathom. I think it was Borda-style vote counting.
Furthermore, it seems the regions could 'meta-elect' a leader, and not only that, a form of government! There were a fixed number of choices, but with enough clicky-boxes that just about any sort of population-based government, even ridiculous ones, could be created.
Now let me get to why there was an argument.
Apparently, to define a region on this new territory, all you had to do was 'walk the border' of it. So you could have a tiny, parcel-sized region or a whopping big one. The caveat, however, was that you had only one Second Life 'day' to do it.
Apparently, a number of people tried to delineate regions in this manner, but just try to stay logged in for one whole Second Life day!
Harder than it sounds, and furthermore, people were being pushed away using weapons and whatnot upon near-completion of their region-boundary. If your feet come off the terrain, all the effort is wasted and you must start again.
The Company personnel seem to be hands-offish, wanting to let this area develop 100% on its own, and possibly didn't expect this area to be found (or the greed with regard to defining regions) to occur so quickly.
People did find it, however, and are rushing in to buy plots for $L 1 per meter. Nobody's stopping them. Cheap, though of course, your neighbours may be able to 'vote' and change the limitations/abilities of what you may do on your land.
I'm now the self-elected Provincial Governor of a sim called Democristan Cromwell (I went way off and defined my own region to one sim before I was seen by others, and got all the land in it). I suppose I could get even *more* regions but one full sim was brazen enough.
These sims don't seem to be in search yet, but I'm sure that by 2 April SL time the location of the area should be clear to everyone.
Be sure to scan the map at highest zoom and look waaay south, well over 1000 sims south. Happy hunting!
