Community Partnerships - What are they upto?

Community partnerships, there's a blog post, a faq, a wiki, and not a lot of actual substance. This makes me suspicious and my suspicion is doubled when I see the first resident to post on the blog is the captain of the USS FIC. What are they upto now?

The concept claims it is designed to improve mainland, so why am I not getting a mainland vibe from this? Surely if the aim is to improve mainland, they should first be working with existing mainland communities? After all, if you're not an existing mainland community, where are they going to fit you in? The criteria states:

"As a Community or Group, it should have been active within Second Life for at least a year"

So surely by the same token, you should provide evidence of your current commitment to mainland. However many mainland communities will be ineligible for this because, the criteria also states:

"The Group must own at least one full Region of Group Land that is open and accessible to the majority of Residents"

Note, it doesn't state they need to own a mainland region. This sets the alarm bells ringing, will the people of Bay City and Nautilus be able to participate? They already have a community, indeed they're organising a halloween parade with those communities and have been speaking to Blondin about it. However they're an alliance, rather than one group owned set of sims. The same goes for Zindra, adult communities are not (for a change) refused entry to participate, but I see alliances in Zindra.

The policy documents are pretty vague, they keep pointing to the USS sims, but that's a sailing community. What next, flying? What can flying bring to the mainland?

More to the point, is the mainland landscape going to change due to any of these community partnerships? As a mainland and Estate owner I won't be impressed if my mainland parcels have their views messed around to accomodate people who have shown little interest in mainland until this point.

If this turns into another way for some estate owners to gain rentals off the back of mainland involvement, a mainland they've been ignoring for some time and talking down, then I'll be far from impressed. Mainland is already owned by the mainland community, they should get first dibs at any sort of community partnerships.

I have no intention of applying for this, I don't meet the criteria and I don't have the time. That's not something that concerns me and I have no objection to Linden Lab laying down a criteria for such schemes, indeed I welcome new initiatives, but something about this doesn't smell right. Time will tell.