Outlaw Plots Smaller Than 512sqm

Reasons for small plots:
1. Vendors in a large marketplace.
2. Prim count.
3. People who want to donate small plots of land toward a group.
4. Signs are already against the TOS. We should enforce this before taking action in addition to it. The easiest way is simply by reporting abuse, which Lindens do listen to.
5. Being able to change settings on your land and being able to split up your land with different settings.

-Hiro Pendragon

Spinning signs that overlap other people's land on 16m2 plots are not against TOS.

If they are, then the Lindens are using a different TOS than you are.

Also, setting that 16m2 plot to 30m high terraform (in an older sim like I'm in) and having it spew particles and play sounds constantly - and setting the price to L$100,000 is also not against TOS.

i support the idea that the uses to which those small plots can be put are wrong, i dont support having no plots less than 512m and in fact ive ended up with lots of 320, 240 type plots at times , even if they were later absorbed.

Often I have received new land and wanted to share parts with others which are near to their home plots and I've cut off pieces of say 320 to 380 m, these are perfectly valid lands

What I do think is that the use of such things like 16m plots for huge signs, particularly ones which are larger in the air than the ground plot their owner possesses shuld be classed as abuse and then removed. We had this in the past and I ended up paying to remove such signs. Such a thing can often be garish vulgar and ruin an otherwise nice area. But as long as you use a small plot to do something which is not destructive or intimidating its no problem, i think.

Right from the bat I admit that I have been purchasing 16 & 32 sq meter plots for the very purpose of advertising my company and my malls. One reason being is the high price of land forces me to by smaller plots to be economical. Yes, I do place the land for sale, but have been doing so at the price I paid for it and sometimes even at a loss.

I would prefer not to do this, but with the Lindens imposing their new event posting rules and banishing mall owners/managers like me to the forum classifieds, I had to take a novel approach to advertising. None of my signs revolve, but they do show the logos of my malls and all of the vendors. To me, its good for the SL economy.

Now, as far as no plots less than 512 sq meters I think is unreealistic as the Lindens auction off plots of less than 512 sq meters in the new sims. The Lindens are not going to cut their own financial throats by imposing such a rule.

That's different, Alexander. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't like that, either, but what I'm talking about is far more blatant than that.

Come to Perry some time, and see the 16m2 plots for sale for L$20,000.

Why not simply impose an overhead price per m2? Even something as simple as 16m2 can't be sold for more than L$1,000 and just add L$1,000 per 16m2 (Honestly, even 1,000 for 16m2 is a bit high). This will help stall the exploding land inflation, give newer users a chance at owning land, and generally calm crazed "land barons"

Michi,

I agree, trying to blackmail someone into paying L$20,000 or more for a 16 sq meter plot is highly unethical, but as stated, its not against the TOS. Now, the question is, if the land is in Boardman or one of the other "protected" sims set up by the Lindens with land build convenants, would that "for sale" constitute a violation of that convenant therfore be eligible for an abuse report?

I know I accidently violated the convenent in Lusk by purchasing a 16 sq meter plot and putting up a sign, but the situation was quickly rectified.

Maybe Lindens started to enforce the convenenants again, it might ease the problem of these land blackmailers.

Now, to address the issue of the misnomer "Land Baron". I am a land baron by easy definition because I own more than 512 sq meters. I own more than 9000 sq meters in fact, but most of my land goes undevloped as I use it for prims to support my major development, Castle Hyde Park. There are land barons and then there are land speculators. I think the latter term should be used more.

It should be against the TOS to do all that.

Technically I think you can get these guys on the checkerboard clause from last year. At the time, people were buying 4x4 plots in a checkerboard pattern, so that others wouldn't be able to buy a useful amount of land in a certain area. The targetted residents were usually people with neighboring plots that the griefer wanted to "hem in." LL eventually posted a new rule outlawing the practice.

The U.S. government did this in the 1970s in a bid to rein in exorbitant gasoline prices. It resulted in terrible shortages. People were waiting in line just to tank up. If LL did impose something like this, it could result in shortages, particularly for people who just want to buy land for prims. It's something you have to be extremely careful about.

the problem with that example is that gasoline is a commodity and land is an investment (you always need more gasoline but you don't always need more land). So i don't think there will ever be a time when land prices would reach that high an average. More over LL said they would release more land to combat this problem. Finally this limit could be *gasp* changed to match land prices as they rise and fall.

Surely you must be joking

the "Big sign" problem could be helped if we could FINALLY return objects that over-hang our parcels, even if the center of that prim/object is over someone else's land. (What happened to easment laws anyways?)

The snooper/sniffer problem: Perhaps the number of cycles that unattended scripts can use should be under quota based on the amount of land in the sim as well.

As for the extortion prices for fragments... heh well, personally I think anyone that offers land for 10x the average going rate per sqm needs to be thwapped with a flyswatter a few times. Anyone adjacent to those empty parcels should be able to buy them up at the average going rate per sqm.

What the heck... let's have an emminent domain ruling too... If a parcel is completely surrounded, give the surrounding player the option to buy out the surrounded parcel for 3x the average going rate per sqm. (Anyone up for a game of othello?)

rant rant rant.

charge people $100l a week to list a plot for sale

suddenly 'stupid' prices as advertisements no longer look so attractive, and chances are people will price land REASONABLLY so it will actually move.

as far as i have seen it *IS* against TOS to build 'over' someone elses' land and as such those large rotating signs may be removed by a linden if asked

(in this case i've avoided doing that cause i don wanna piss the guy off just yet) and we jus blocked the signs with giant trees (which are phantom so block only advertising, not parcel access)

Essentially he would have to remove the 10m signs and replace them with 8m signs that fit on his 8x8 plot there.

another option is simply calling them up wiht IM and making a 'fair' offer

this works especially well if yer the only one buying, (and would work even better with the aforementioned listing fee). Basically something along the lines of 'lets not kid ourselves i'm the onyl one who cares about this plot and if you want money for it, I'll offer ya the more than reasonable price of $x lindens, take it or leave it

you'd be suprised how many just ooh, and shrug and take (over market but 10-100x less than they were asking) offers.

Here's my solution: zoning!

No advertising, selling, gambling, clubbing, etc in residential zone. That's for the commercial zones. That means no random signs, no random slot machines, no flashy clubs near your nice log cabin. Or your floating pink cube house, just as long as it doesn't sell anything

Holy crap, that's a good idea.

Think of how many plots of land out there are set to 9999999999 just to be cute.

We have all seen how effective zoning is in SL. Just look at Lusk or any of the other "planned" sims. Unless there is enforcement by the Lindens, its not going to work.

Nope, I reported those small plots under the checkerboard clause, they responded with a big...

NO!

And said they couldn't do anything about it, or just closed the tickets with no real response (a canned message is not a response, and doesnt actually resolve anything). Frankly, they don't give a rats ass about the mainland anymore or "small" issues like this. Their focus is on the newer sims and private islands.

That sucks, Hank!

Aah... I remember 5/03... I was new, and I lived in De Haro, and the place was actually zoned in those days... It looked so nice...

I think there should be more sims like De Haro (during its zoned days) and the city sims.

100$ a week would weed out the idiots all right.

I lived in De Haro for a while my self; i had a badly built tent (with exquistly placed trees). If i were premium i would look to buy land there again. I just wish there was some way to do zoning. As much as i *hate* self governing, i don't think the lindens will make any zoned sims again.

Hmmm this gives me an evil idea.... Make a sim where you can't pay objects & you can't buy objects for anything more then 1$. Now do that to a few sims in a group and you have residential sims. All it requires is a little hack to the sim code...

There's a clever idea, but you don't have to pay 10m rotating cube signs, etc.