Covenant provisions

[Aliasi Stonebender]

Diderot asked me to share some thoughts on the covenant.

I think the first thing is simply making citizens aware. A surprising number never even look at it; while this is ultimately their problem, not our own, a list of provisions as well as simple tips such as "If you turn group access on, this means ONLY that group can be on your land" - which seems to escape many newer users of SL - would be very handy. That's a matter I can handle.

The covenant itself is mostly reasonable, with a few sticking points. Those who were present for Ranma's protest in regard to things like the hot tub and pornography provisions will understand - while the Chancellor can exempt specific items, this depends on a Chancellor with common sense who won't call a statue of Michaelangelo's "David" porn. As a real-world [i:dg6o2143]John[/i:dg6o2143] Ashcroft in the US demonstrated, you can't always trust the art defense to work.

I would not make the current covenant a major point of the platform, as it is mostly reasonable. We may need to examine specific points regarding use of security devices/banlists, but I don't see it as a priority. However, I think it would be consistent to support the covenants of any future sims as being "as much as needed to support the theme, and no more"; the old covenants specifying specific window sizes and roof pitches are a prime example of how NOT to do things.

[Diderot Mirabeau]

[quote="Aliasi Stonebender":3tyetulv]Diderot asked me to share some thoughts on the covenant.[/quote:3tyetulv]

Aliasi thanks for your thoughts on this issue: I find them very well balanced and operational to the point where it should be possible to put them in practice as principles directing our development of covenants in the future.

I agree especially that a major point is making (new) citizens aware of the covenant provisions and about the maybe unintended sideeffects of their actions vis a vis their neighbours. Hopefully, this can achieved mostly through a vigorous ongoing debate among the citizens and without the need for much government intervention. If we perceive that there is an upward trend regarding covenant violations it might be prudent to review the issue and see if the government can do more to inform (new) citizens about the provisions of the covenants.

I propose that we move to make this our policy on covenants. Does anyone have comments, additions, corrections or suggestions in extension of this?

[Diderot Mirabeau]

I have been in dialogue with some citizens, who point out to me that our current covenant provisions regarding scripts may be too coarse compared to what our aims are.

Obviously, the purpose of our current limitations on scripting (one script per 100 sqm) is that we do not want our sim(s) to lag.

However, I can think of several examples of script usage where the number of scripts is not of importance in this regard:

Consider the case where somebody wants to open a record store where all the records on display contain a simple script functionality to open and stream original music to the user upon being touched.

Similarly, consider an exhibition of pictures / artists where in the interest of userfriendliness, the visitor can get displayed on the map where the picture was taken / the gallery of the artist at a click on the picture.

These scenarios may well take place in a little shop of around 100 sqm, which in principle would be entitled to one script (which would be the door script in the case of Neufreistadt). However, since all of the above scripts are activated on touch and do not lay much claim to the performance of the CPU it seems unfair and unnecessary to me to demand that the shopowner acquires 1,000 sqm of land at the current land fees simply in order to be able to provide a few simple and undemanding scripts to his land.

If there are any other good arguments against limiting the use of scripts in the way that the current covenants do I'd be very interested to hear them.

Otherwise I'd recommend that we campaign to have the current provision replaced by something more reasonable. Such as "citizens are advised to exercise good judgement in the placement of their scripts and in the case of active scripts use only one per 100 sqm" or similar. Alternatively or complementarily we may require executive review of any scripted objects that residents want to place on their land.