When you purchase land in Second Life from an estate such as ZoHa Islands, one of the things the salespeople often say before you purchase the land is, “Be sure and read the covenant before you purchase to make sure you can abide by the rules.” Much like when you install a new app on your phone, you must agree to the TOS (which most of us never read; because you can’t have the app without agreeing, so what does it matter,right?). However, in Second Life, when you purchase a parcel, you must agree to abide by the Covenant, and often people will just click yes without reading it, purchase the parcel and go on their merry way.

This is all well and good until a resident bumps up against a violation of the covenant. Then they get upset when contacted by estate managers to correct violations such as large buildings, screens, items that shout, when asked to reduce scripts, or when their land is reclaimed and their items returned due to non-payment of tier. Outraged residents will then kick up a ruckus and more often than not, the EM points out the covenant that they have violated. What we end up with is an unhappy customer, and all of this could be avoided simply by reading the covenant.

Unless you rent a whole sim (either a full prim region or a homestead, which have no covenant other than you must abide by Linden Lab’s Terms of Service), you must abide by the covenants of the estate. The covenants are essentially the rules of the sim. Much like RL, we must all get along when we live side by side on a sim, and in order to make sure everyone is reading from the same playbook, we have a set of rules that everyone must follow in order to have a pleasant living experience for all.

There are different covenants for different types of land. To see the covenants, please click on the links below.

• Residential Only Sims
• Residential and Commercial Sims
• Commercial Sims
• Business District Sims
• Adult Sims
• Gorean Sims
• Full sims (Homestead and Full Prim)

Residents should note that our covenant provides both a building code and a conduct code, among other useful information. Please take the time to read the covenant carefully for your type of parcel. Knowing your rights and what the rules are goes a long way towards good neighbor relations. Should you have a problem, please contact an EM by asking for help in the ZoHa Islands group chat. We have 24-hour staff available to help you resolve your issues.

Vacations and Tier Payments
As we ease our way into the summer months (at least in the northern hemisphere), one of the things that always crops up is tier payments while people are gone on vacation. When planning for a vacation, please plan ahead in SL the way you do in RL. If you’re going to be gone, please make sure your tier payment is paid up ahead so you do not go into arrears and come home from vacation only to find a vacant lot and all of your things returned in a bundle in your lost and found. Plan on paying your tier far enough ahead so that if you are delayed in returning from vacation, you don’t have to stress about whether or not you will lose your land. Make note of the date your tier will expire, and if something happens while you’re on vacation that delays you beyond even the cushion you paid ahead on your tier, then please file a support ticket on this website to get help with your situation. Bottom line is this: In order to avoid losing your parcel or full sim, pay ahead on your tier when you will be out of Second Life for any period of time. People work very hard on their parcels to make them exactly like they want them, sometimes paying a landscape designer a lot of money to landscape their sim. Please don’t take the chance that it will all be returned to you. Always plan ahead and pay your tier ahead.

Rez Boxes and Lag
One of the worst culprits for lag in Second Life are rez scripts. Often when neighbors complain about lag on a sim, and the EM comes over to investigate, someone has left out their rez boxe s for several builds. Residents often leave their rez boxes out when they rez their structures, gardens or whatever item has been packed into a rez box for ease of placement. One of the tricks people are told about is to leave the rez box out, edit the box so it is phantom and invisible, and that way if something happens to your build, you can simply re rez another copy of it. While that makes things easier for the resident, it creates a significant amount of lag on a sim. Those rez scripts in the box, when not deleted after the structure is out, continue “talking” to the structure, and this script chatter is what causes lag.

A better idea is to delete the rez script and take the tier box back into inventory, or delete it if it’s copiable. Let me give you some tips on an alternative solution to leaving the rez box out that will help you should you accidentally delete part of your house or need to re-rez a structure for some reason.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Blogger/Social Media