Thanks Bavid

The difficulty (which a few and already touched upon) is the dynamic nature of Second Life. The maps are constantly changing. The only true official map is the World Map in the viewer since it does automatically update. As far as names goes, no matter what we name things residents seem to come up with their own colloquial names for places even if there is a "official" name for it. So in many ways, resident created maps are actually superior in some ways to anything official that we could create. :)

All right, let me try again...

After re-reading Umberto Eco's hilarious essay (1982), I wondered exactly you (collective "you" here, not only the OP) actually .

What, exactly, an "official map"?

One might argue that what you wish is that someone on LL's payroll goes through all 28,000+ regions, marks them up, puts them on a grid with their names, roads, navigation facilities and so forth, draws a beautiful work of art based on that, where larger regions (how large? how many? what criteria?) have "names", such as the continents, Blake Sea, and so forth.

The moment that "official map" would be produced, you'd get thousands of requests arguing about the names of X and Y, because they have been named N and M since 2014, and sometimes F and G, but nobody remembers that they were, indeed, called X and Y...

They will also argue about the road names, or what railroad tracks actually belong to this railroad or another, or if it's legitimate to add a railroad, independently developed and paid for, but which just happens to join the main trunk of railroad X — after an agreement between both — and is now considered "part" of railroad X, except for purists who believe that railroad X is the part that is in public land (i.e. owned by Governor Linden).

Even if that tireless LL employee (or contractor) would work for many, many months, talking to residents, asking them how they name their environment, discussing on Community Roundtables about which criteria would be valid to consider "a continent being a continent" while at the same time claiming that "a big subcontinent which is actually than a continent is not necessarily a continent by itself".

Add to that the possibility that Ocean Regions may become fully navigable (see the corresponding feedback request), and now suddenly even the oceans need names, or perhaps new names, or perhaps some tweaking here and there because the "old" names presumed that area X would be connected to area Y, even if it's just a few regions apart — but they were ocean regions, i.e. non-existing, so there was no way to go from X to Y except by teleporting. , however, X and Y are "joined" by a perfectly crossable isthmus and are planning to build together the largest suspension bridge in SL to fully connect their areas, and, what do you know, now that you see area X and Y "linked together", so to speak, it seems as if they look like a cartoonish version of a dog, and that's why some residents of Yesteryear named these two areas as "The Dog's Furnace" until, more recently, nobody really "saw" the dog on the map and simply thought this was an abandoned name (or perhaps never existed, but was just one of those myths from the past).

Anyway, you know, I could go on and on and on and on, but my point is simple: there is a strong argument to be made that 600,000 residents will agree to an "official map", no matter what the source might be. Even assuming that this insanity would really be picked up by LL paying an "official SL cartographer", it would raise so many issues — not to mention complaints and accusations of favouritism — that such an "official map" would be "unofficially" banned, so to speak :)

And if you think I'm just exaggerating, think again. Talk to some residents of one of the many communities around the Blake Sea. Ask them if Anshe Chung's estate in the Blake Sea or not (you'll see how strongly the Blakians feel about it!). And, in fact, when zooming in, you'll see that some of the members of the Blake Sea concept are not even the Blake Sea itself, but merely on a body of water to the Blake Sea! But... go there and ask around to see what think of that slight objection... and you'll feel the stubborn anger of the Blakians...

... and I'm sure the same happens a bit all over the grid, too, especially on areas that are thought of being "desirable" for a reason or another.

That's why I mentioned the SLGI. They do claim to make official map of SL. Rather, they're working towards cartographing as much of the SL Grid as possible, within their available time, of course. And those who joined the group discuss the many criteria required for classification and try to find a compromise — a bit like real-world cartography looked like in the 17th or 18th centuries. Or how cartography is being done for planets like Mars — with each successive wave of "discoveries", new cartographical elements are added, and what once was thought to be X has now been renamed Y because, well, once you're , you can for yourself — in colour and 3D — that X cannot be X.

Is there "an official map of Mars"? Well, possibly, but I'm not sure if space agencies fully agree on a source for the map — especially when different probes explore certain areas and discover new features which were previously unknown. What is known by NASA as "Riker's Ridge" may be called by the Chinese Space Agency as "Chian's Gully", and it might be a time until agrees to the name. Ultimately, it might be Elon Musk's colonists who will go to that place and name it "Wilson Valley" because the first colonist placing there a pressurised cabin was one James T. Wilson. The three names might even coexist for a while, to the amusement of Wilson and his fellow colonists who are terraforming the place.

SL is the same — while most people might agree on how areas are called (e.g. Zindra is Zindra because LL called it that), the of features will always have dubious and contested designations. The SLGI knows that — perhaps better than nobody! — and therefore try to converge towards some naming .

Outside the SLGI, well, of course anyone can name things differently, and justify such names with the eternal truism "I've got opinion and the right to disagree with ".

One might claim that it's exactly groups like the SLGI (there may be more, I didn't find any others though) who come together, argue and discuss, and then claim " have and the right to disagree with — even if have been hired by Linden Lab to draw a map". In reality, the SLGI goes a step further. They don't simply name things randomly, as soon as a name presents to them. Instead, they have a rigorous cartographic method (one, however, that is flexible enough to accommodate for oddities and exceptions!), a series of classifications and criteria, and when they "pronounce" something as being labeled under a certain category and with a specific name, . You can obviously their logic, their assumptions, their metrics, even their whole method. But once you engage in such a conversation, to be taken seriously, you'll have to present — you'll need to present your own method of classification, your own logic, your own starting assumptions, and explain how your is much better adapted to do a cartographical survey of the SL Grid than the method employed by the SLGI.

Obviously, some choices arbitrary, just like in real life. Where, exactly, runs the invisible border between Europe and Asia? Several criteria have been established over the centuries, and it's not easy to find a significative number of criteria that can account for a border between the two continents. And then you have some oddities, such as countries who claim they have always been "European" (culturally and linguistically speaking) since times immemorial, but the border between the two continents to place them in Central Asia rather than Eastern Europe. Or, to go to extremes, you have vast territories in which happen to actually be in (not even merely part of the European Union; they even use the Euro as the official currency, and are therefore technically part of the so-called "Eurozone" — the group of countries that officially use the Euro as their only currency) — essentially because France considers them French provinces, so that's France too, and therefore cannot be anything else but... Europe. No matter where they are physically located. Until 1997, parts of China were in Europe, too; the last bit of Europe there was released to China in 1999, so it never was part of the "Eurozone" (established in 2002), but close. Very close.

Does that make any sense?

But there are for all of that in real life.

Similarly, groups like the SLGI have strongly argued for reasons to name certain areas of SL as they did — sometimes daring to go against "established conventions", merely because, when applying criteria, some feature should be named as the locals name it. And sometimes there are several regions that are logically connected — say, a mountain range, which just has two or three regions with proper names, the rest being mostly Linden protected land — and so they apply the same name to the region, even though nobody lives there, and nobody who lives calls those mountains by any other name than the region's name; the notion that region X and Y are actually part of the same mountain is unheard of by the residents of regions neighbouring X and Y.

Which, again, is what happens in real life as well. With the benefit of satellite imagery, we can actually see how a lot of regions are closely-knit together — and thus apply the same name to both — but local inhabitants might traditionally never travelled much further than their own village or valley, and are thus ignorant of their surroundings at a planetary scale. Consider the Andes that "become" the Rockies. Are they "the same" mountain range, or two different ranges, because, well, they have been given different names since times immemorial? Such examples abound in real life, and they're not different in Second Life.

So...

Instead of claiming for an "official" map, LL-sponsored, with the Lab's Stamp of Approval, and setting in stone that this is the Truly Official and Real Map of All Land in the Second Life Grid and Woe To The Heretics That Claim Otherwise... rejoice in the diversity of the many maps that can be drawn!

If you dislike the SLGI's names and maps, go ahead! Create your own cartography group! Challenge the SLGI's assumptions and criteria, and come up with your own! Draw maps than the SLGI does, and push them as Your Real And Unique Map of Second Life, More True Than The So-Called Official One Which We Utterly Despise Because It's So Wrong!

This is one of the (many) cases in SL where I'd rather prefer that LL does interfere. Leave things deliberately vague. Let residents — not Lindens — figure out how to name things. Let them argue about contradictory and historically inaccurate names of areas in SL. Why should LL get involved in the discussion? They do inhabit those regions; do. And, as such, any one of us can claim the right to name all geographic features in SL according to criteria, and draw the most beautiful maps around those. Why should we to do so by getting an "official map" imposed upon us?

Last but not least... there's not even a valid argument that "but other platforms have a map!" (because that isn't true; no other virtual world is physically contiguous at the sheer scale that SL is; it's just that might have maps drawn by the company's graphic designers, but that's a completely different environment) or "but this would help newbies greatly!"

Well, would it really?

We've been around for twenty years lacking an official map, and we seem to have survived — nay, even flourished — rather well. Indeed, we have conflicting names for territories, different organisations and groups naming features differently, and so forth. So what? Isn't the same true for the real world? I mean, until very recently, we had this concept of a set of Caribbean islands being collectively known as "West India", and its native inhabitants, "Indians" — although they have to do with India, the subcontinent, or its inhabitants! Look how long it took to re-name the "Indians" as "Native Americans" (or "Native Brazilians", if you wish to go further south...). Nevertheless, Europeans think of the native inhabitants of the Americas as "Indians". Why aren't they called simply "Americans" — just like the inhabitants of Alsace are called Alsatians, or, to go further, the native inhabitants of Europe are called Europeans; those from Africa, Africans; those from Asia, Asians...? But in the Americas... the natives are... Indians. In Oceania, the native inhabitants are also not known as Oceanians; in Australia, until recently, they've been just called "aboriginals".

Anyway, I digress. My point is that naming things is and will be a source of discussion and dissent. possible way of dealing with the issue of "conflicting names" is merely accepting that things are named differently, depending to whom you ask :) The other is to accept the names that have been given according to some criteria and methodically applied to the whole of SL as, at least, an authoritative source (and thus useful to describe unambiguously some of the features of SL), even if we reject the actual name that was chosen, or the area it represents.

Again, my disclaimer — I have nothing to do with the SLGI, I'm not even a member, and I just stumbled upon them two years ago or so, when editing the SL Wiki (SLGI used to have their pages hosted there, but, eventually, they preferred to move to their own wiki instead), which is still full of references written by the early members of the SLGI (many, if not most, having been deprecated over the years). I fully respect their continuous work over almost two decades; if have any doubts about how to call one area or another, I use the SLGI as a reference . There might be more! Perhaps this feedback article is just the right pretext for other geography/cartography groups to make themselves known, by posting here! Or maybe this might kick off new cartography groups, who might even start from the legacy of what the SLGI has been doing over the years, but go much further and correct all "wrong" names and classifications and so forth.

Seriously! Go wild :)

... and then come back with a map, of course!

There is probably no map. However, there the SLGI (Second Life Geography Institute). They've been around since... always, I guess! They're a smallish team which travels to in SL and meticulously have documented all the things they found, and given them names.

Their maps might not be the "best" — the SL landmass is huge — but they're probably the most complete set that exists.

Also, even if someone disagrees with the nomenclature they used, at the very least, one might appreciate the way they have organised their work, the divisions and subdivisions they have created (some are similar to how cartographers do it in RL; some, of course, have been specifically invented for the specificities of SL).

It's worth giving their Wiki a look. It's being kept up to date by the SLGI team, BTW; at the time of writing these paragraphs, the last update was only 20 days ago.

I agree, an official map, naming the continents and other geographic features such as lakes, rivers, straits, mountains, etc, would be wonderful! It would also avoid confusion where different in-world entities might use different names for places, creating confusion.

It is desirable to have an official map with geographic names. For example, the Blake Sea is a recognized area, but its name isn't on any official map. That makes it hard for new users to find such areas when they hear about them. Even Bellesaria isn't labeled on an official map. The world map is the only official map we have, and the only geographic names on it are region names.