A Secret Garden in Second Life
by Alphaville Herald on 05/02/11 at 9:42 pm
Why is adding a memorial to Linden Memorial Park so hard?
by suzy Honi
One of the greatest secrets of Second Life is a huge region owned by the Linden’s but open to everyone. The land is beautifully landscaped and formed with beaches, flowers, woods and streams. It is one of the most beautiful open spaces in SL. The traffic count is only in the hundreds. It is hard to find though and not well known in SL. It is known as the Second Life memorial park.
This region was opened April 22, 2009 by the Lindens for people to put up memorials to friends from SL who have passed on in Real Life. There is also a flower garden there where you can have a flower put in that will have your friends name on it.
Many of us in SL are here because disability limits our real life. In SL we can live our fantasies without disability. We can be a pirate sailing the seas, a cowboy riding the range, a pilot flying jets or a star ship commander There are no limits on our dreams here.
We also make many friends here. Some of the best friends in my whole life I have met here in SL. Friends who comforted me when my mother died. Friends who gave me hope when I lost my job. Friends from all over the world who I have never met in real life.
In fact for me there is only one friend from real life who knows about my second life.
Often times when people disappear from Second Life we know nothing about what happened to them. Other times we find out that they passed from someone who knew them in real life. In either case we miss our friends.
the late, great Kendra Bancroft memorialized
Recently a young woman I knew passed suddenly. We learned of it from someone who knew her in real life. Many in our group were grieving for her. What followed for me was 6 hours online just trying to figure out how to get a memorial placed for her. Then several days of waiting for a response. This added to the pain many of us felt.
The memorial garden is a wonderful place. We can build memorials there so our friends will be remembered as long as SL exists. I know many sims have built memorials to friends who are gone. But someday the sim could be gone. The Linden garden will remain.
Unfortunately to place a memorial requires going through the Linden red tape. You must submit a support ticket with your request to have a memorial. Your memorial must be built to the standards set by the Lindens. It can be no more then 10 meters in height length or width. Everything on your memorial must be linked also. It must be appropriate for a G rated sim.
Linden Memorial Park – you’ll have to look hard to find it
It is suggested that you take a photo of your memorial and submit it with your support ticket giving the dimensions of the memorial and the prim count. You must then wait for the head of maintenance to approve it. He then passes it to the grounds keeper who will again review it and after everything is approved the grounds keeper will ask you to give the memorial to him and he will place it and send you a landmark as to it’s location.
When you build a memorial you and many of your friends will be grieving. It is a painful time. While the Linden staff I have dealt with were courteous they reacted slowly. It would ease the pain of residents if the Lindens could act more quickly on these requests.
Finding the memorial park is also difficult.
When you search SL memorial park you find nothing. When you search memorial park you come up with several listings but nothing to identify which is the Linden park. You want to go to the Garden of Remembrance which is in the center of the park.
It would also help if the Lindens made the park more easy to find. This should not be a secret. The Lindens should be proud of what they have built here and should publicize it’s existence and the procedures for installing memorials here.
To learn all the rules for the park read https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:How_do_I_request_a_memorial_placement_in_Linden_Memorial_Park
Rawst Berry
Feb 6th, 2011
Wtf. All the criteria you listed is perfectly reasonable, and it would keep people from submitted penis statues in honor of Tizzers Foxchase.
Have you ever had to organize a funeral in real life? Lots of expenses, and lots of decisions to make regarding what to do with the body, buying caskets and headstones, picking a funeral home and cemetery, and possibly putting a house up for sale, etc, if there was no will outlining what to do.
James Freud
Feb 6th, 2011
I wouldn’t piss on the memory of a loved one from SL by using LL’s piece of turd memorial sim. I would build my own. In Avination. And get everyone to join there and leave SL.
Orca Flotta
Feb 6th, 2011
Around xmas 2009 my partner Trapez and me went on a sailing trip from the southernmost parts of Sailors Cove estate up and around Nautilus, Gaeta V and Corsica. On our way we found the Linden memorial park by incident, since it marked the most northern point of our journey. I was immediately smitten by its dignified setting, something you won’t find too often in SL, between all those tasteless, poor builds and all the typical broohaha. We didn’t have much time to look around tho, our journey wasn’t easy and we still had some hundred sims to cross on the way home. But I returned a few days later for a second look.
The memorial somehow touched my heart and made me stop and think for a while. Something that doesn’t happen very often in SL neither.
Oh noes
Feb 7th, 2011
The key to keeping something secret is to not tell anyone.
You’ve exposed this place to anon trolling by reporting on it.
General Drama
Feb 7th, 2011
Oh noes,
If you think that place wasn’t already known to trolls as lulzcow central (other than Ravenglass and GYC) then you are quite the pubbie.
Pappy Enoch
Feb 7th, 2011
Can we fake my death so’s I gits a statue there? I wants one of a big jug o’ Shine held by a nekkid gal who am boo-hoo cyryin’ while she am sittin’ on the hood of a F-150.
Now that am art.
Oh hell: it gots to be a G RATED memorial? Fo’git about it. I ain’t dyin!
Darien Caldwell
Feb 7th, 2011
It’s not a secret. LL made all kinds of blog posts and hoopla about it when it was created. In fact even the Herald had an article about it. You’re just learning about how crappy search is these days.
Edna
Feb 8th, 2011
No doubt it is kept secret to keep Pappy from finding it and setting up a squatter’s camp.
@Orca you could have spent more time there. The great thing about Second Life is that you can teleport. You didn’t actually need to spend so much effort trying to cross hundreds of sims, you could have instantly teleported back home.
hobo kelly
Feb 8th, 2011
hey, the family that squats together stays together (o.O)
brotherd core
Feb 9th, 2011
This is a very nice place. Also as she mentions since this is Linden land it will last as long as Second Life does as opposed to memorials on private sims which will only last as long as the sim is here and someone is paying teir. We have all seen sims that disappeared. However the slowness of the Lindens in acting on placing something is not good as it causes pain as in RL the lose of a freind here is painful the placing of the monument would give some closure.
Orca Flotta
Feb 24th, 2011
@Orca you could have spent more time there. The great thing about Second Life is that you can teleport.
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That’s the same stupid answer all of us sailors and aviators get from LL when we complain about borked sim crossings.
Teleporting, bah! Where’s the fun in that?
See, our journey was supposed to be a journey, a roundtrip of the northernmost continents. That Linden memorial park wasn’t our destination, just one of the many waypoints. As already mentioned we found it by incident.
When I returned there, a few days later, I used TP.
wabb
Mar 21st, 2011
Who actually gives a toss anyway? Not me for one!
You honestly think that LL cares that we know IF there is a “memorial” garden to its users? IF they did care then you’d know a lot more about it and if they actually wanted you to find it they’d tell you!
I found this place purely by chance as I did a search on the map.. I typed in Linden and on the list was Memorial Garden.
Now.. if it was something like a Memorial for people who died in conflicts, then I for one would appreciate it more.
This is LL just trying to score points with it’s users… “oohh aren’t we the lovely caring “gods” of this world.
My answer to that? NO!
Get real.
LL could do a lot more with the land they “own” in SL.