Simple Land Buy/Sell Solution

I have gotten into land sales awhile ago, and I rather enjoy the business. However, I do notice a *lot* of land disputes (luckily, never involved in one myself). But, awhile ago, me and a few colleagues were talking, and with a minor change of a couple buttons, land disputes and mistaken sales can become (almost) a thing of the past.

On the land options screen have two simple buttons:

PRIVATE SALE (Sell to Individual/Group)

PUBLIC SALE (Sell to Anyone)

Once you press a button, have it then ask for the price (and in case of a private sale, the person/group) you wish to sell the land for before actually setting it for sale.

This solution does not add an extra layer of complication to land selling, nor does it add an annoying array of click boxes and pointless warnings. All it does is make the current setup more intuitive and easier to understand by novice sellers. It would make the buyer's life easier because nearly all sells would be legitimate sales and it would make the seller's life easier because there's crystal clear options for public and private selling.

I hope you consider this simple and effective feature for the next release of Second Life.

But doesn't the "Sell to:" field take care of this? I you are selling to someone, just type his name in and noone should be able to cut in. It's his responsibility to deed it to his group.

My thinking is that these people who wind up in disputes and wrong sales just set a price and wait for the agreed buyer to pick it up, however opening themselves to someone who finds the same plot and snaps it up first. The above should be sufficient security against th wrong sale problem.

Yes and no. While it is there, it's not an intuitive GUI setup. Many sellers assume you have to check the sale button first, set the price, and then click the "Set" button and set the person's name..... because that's the order in which the options appear on the screen, and for many it's assumed to be a step by step process, when in fact its the reverse.

Little do many know, and I mean many, as soon as you checkmark that sale button it is a public sale. And if someone is offering a fairly hefty discount on land to a friend, by the time they even get to put in their friend's name that land will be sold. And not everyone will be kind enough to give it back at the price paid.

Many? Really? I thought it was kind of obvious. You change the land value, you're made aware it's going on sale at the price to everybody there and then. So it makes sense to change the sell-to field first if you're selling at a discount to an individual.

Granted...LL have created a GUI that's unintuitive in many areas...but I'm surprised anybody trading in land would see the About Land screen an 'ordered' step-by-step wizard instead of the individual options screen it really is.

I don't see it as an ordered step by step process, I'm saying that's how it is assumed to inexperienced people. As someone who uses CARE and Telegence I'm an expert in horrid GUI.

As part of a land group, I hear of (and sometimes get invited to watch) a dozen disputes per day, and the #1 reason: "I was selling to my friend, I was just about to set his/her name....." You would be absolutley surprised how many mistaken 1 L sales pop up because of the unnatural layout of selling.

Is it really a stretch to give people two buttons for two different types of sales?