Ad Farmers & Extortionists

That sounds "More of a demand than a request"
Only one "please"!

Or, was that the problem with my message to Weedy?
One "please" is sufficient, but it has to be at the *start* of the sentence and not the end?

"Please" at start of sentence = Request
"Please" at end of sentence = Demand
hmmmmmmmm...

Oh these social niceties! It's like walking on eggshells here.

Never, at any location in many years, have we used "spinning ads" or any annoyance.

I spoke with Weedy about this issue. Yes, you contacted her. However, your inquiry was more of a demand than a request. By your own admission, she explained to you, trading a plot which has two neighbors (one of them Governor Linden) was more preferred than having 4 different neighbors and the probabilty of being asked to trade again in the future. We inspect every plot prior to trading lately, because we have experienced excessive lag in some areas and trade requests by people scamming roadside plots for inferior land, when they don't even own the ajoining land. We currently trade about 5 plots per day and have met and traded cards with a lot of new and interesting friends.

The land our group currently owns in your sim Sling, is under water and is the greatest distance possible from building and border conflicts. I'm sorry Sling, but it's one of the very rare exceptions to our trade policy. Weedy is instructed to trade protected land, for protected land only. Please understand, it requires a considerable amount of time on a daily basis to manage these plots. Would you rather we abandon our policy all together and simply ignore everyone? Would you rather we forget the requests to unblock us and file abuse reports on each case, without attempting resolution? It's not our choice to escalate anything, as we would rather conduct our business in a peaceful manner and move along. Escalated incidents are the result of intransigence, abuse and continued violations of the TOS. Trading plots is a privilege and a goodwill gesture, because we do care about our neighbors. It's not an expectation to be taken for granted upon demand, though. Again, please accept our apology for slipping between the cracks of an imperfect situation. We do our very best to be good neighbors, but the right of refusal is ours and our's alone. On our last inventory run, nearly 10% of our land was blocked or encroached upon. Can you imagine being needlessly blocked from 10% of your land? I'm quite sure you would not be impressed. Requesting access to our own group land is time consuming, and makes an already lengthy task, more prolonged. It makes it difficult to proceed with inventory management and further burdens labor intensity.

It is against the TOS to block anyone from their land. Period. There is no excuse for it.

There is nothing on our land which warrants being blocked from it. We not restrict others from transiting through our land with ban lines or security scripts. We have owned alot of our plots for as much as four years, yet not a single plot has been used for ads or annoyances, nor have any been resold at exortionate prices. Our scripts have been inspected by LL staff on numerous occasions and we have always enjoyed a clean bill of health in our perfomance and resource usage. Never in four years have we been warned, banned or advised to change anything in our codebase or land usage.

We allow builds atop our land by request not by expectation or defiance of the TOS, provided we can still access it and don't get orbitted by landing in the middle of a prim on teleport. Each request is noted in our records and cross referenced when it's discovered as blocked.

We are a global data network, capable of many projects for business, education and research. In a rapidly changing world, we need to access our land to make changes, adjustments or queries. We continue to grow at a regular rate, because we realize the value of our land base, are adaptable to changing times and entertain new and innovative ideas or proposals. We go to great length to operate in an ethical and respectful manner and wish to continue as such. We pay tier like anyone else and are the rare exception to the legitimacy of 16 meter plots, where dependancy on a land base is essential. Apart from tier fees, we have invested huge amounts of time and effort in being agreeable with the neighborhood and contributing to community in positive ways.

Simply put, it's not right to treat us like ad cutters or land extortionists. Please trust me when I tell all of you, they are a bane to our existance and we would rather see them eliminated, but as long as Linden Lab refuses to address them, we will continue to be blocked, accused, threatened and otherwise needlessly griefed as a result of them, in conducting our business.

Please take this private dispute somewhere else. Everyone posting to it knows it does not belong here.

You're right. I don't /need/ any of those things. But I do it anyway, like I said, it's a folly.

I think you understand how terrified and defensive a Mainlander becomes at sight of a 16sq.m. parcel. So I hope you'll actively and vocally support the several initiatives, public and private,* to render the abuses a quaint footnote in SL history.

We certainly do Qie. This why our policy of land swapping and not placing annoyances is important to us. We much prefer peaceful coexistance than an "in your face policy" that the ad cutters abuse with regularity.

I posted to this thread, because Dragger asserted here prior myself, he had no intention in complying with our request. He conveniently left off the parts of the log, where he attacked the Arbor Project, accused Weedy of being an ad-cutter/extortionist, made rude comments while TJ Linden was onlooking and pushing Weedy's avatar around. He even said directly to TJ "So I'm forced to pay this extortionist?"

How does one constructively reason with something so unreasonable?

In his own words. it's clear in the log he posted, he refused to accept Weedy's request from the outset. He then chose to take abuses to new level. The matter would have been immediately resolved, had he removed the objects as requested. Instead, he chose to escalate the matter AND posted here in the forums. It settled nothing. In the grand scheme of things, it does not matter what language was used, nor it's inflections. Blocking someone else's land is against the TOS and. He attempted to use the "I been here longer" thing, but that backfired and then resorted to *own more land than you, therefore my rights supercede yours*. He has no such rights and to his own detriment, will likely see the object removed by the Governance Team and a black mark on his record. We cannot remove the obstruction ourselves, therefore giving us no other alternative but to file a complaint with the Concierge and an abuse report.

I find it rather humorous though, he would build an ad tower surrounding us after the fact, essentially shitting in his own nest. To boot, his verbal abuses and pushes only serve to bolster our complaint against him.

Removing the obstruction would have been a whole lot easier and any reasonable person would have done so willingly and 99% of our requests are complied with. At the end of the day, the only he point he will succeed in making, is blocking other's from their land will result in a warning for himself and a waste of Linden Lab's time.

Yet another useless feud generated by those who feel it's their right to control what others do with their land. To me, that is worse than anything else said here.

and if your friend or what ever she is would have approched me in an appropriate manner

What part of "Please unblock access to our group land at Aragonese: <237.90620, 114.51128, 77.59470>" was too difficult for you to understand?

This little drama really needs to be taken into private. Either IM each other or wait until the Lindens make a decision. This is not the place for personal disputes.

This is much more than a personal dispute. It goes directly to community standards. How can the claim be made that the community has set a standard, with out discussion?

With point to point teleporting, there should be no such thing as "blocking land".

how can your land be blocked?

In the days of P2P teleporting, how is this even possible?

well yeah - I agree

I just want to know how its possible to block land these days.

Back before P2P i could see it.

Unless a Bot needs to travel the land? does it? You wouldn't think it would be for a Bot, Weedy always hated Land Bots.

His prim covers 100% of our land.

We use a prim ourselves at llGround() -1 so it's not possible to use shift-ctl-alt-9 to access it. Also, when overhanging prims are on our land, we often get orbitted for landing in them and end up in the "falling" animation as we rise up and away from our object. This requires teleport home or relog to escape and are usually forced to access the land horizontally from another location. It's time consuming, and interrupts our processes.

It's our land, we are rightfully entitled to access it without working around grievous or irresponsible builds.

K id call that covering or prim overhang.

"blocking" I guess always implied to me the old way people would deny access to a parcel that wasn't covered.

I understand now, If true thats definitely not allowed.

But a Linden should be able to return the offending prim(s)?

I do agree, his prims should be removed from your land. But if you are demanding a passage across his land to get to yours. Well, you should have thought of that before you bought a plot in the middle of a sim.

I do agree, his prims should be removed from your land. But if you are demanding a passage across his land to get to yours. Well, you should have thought of that before you bought a plot in the middle of a sim.

We owned the land 8 months longer than Dragger. When prims create an issue for P2P ( and they do), we have no other alternative but to access our land from a horizontal direction. If ban lines are present, we go up and over. We never expect to be granted access across anyone's land and respect their right to privacy.

My dealings with Weedy have been great. I've traded plots twice, both times the response was immediate and courteous. She even agreed to let me overlap the plot with prims. I don't know what went wrong in the cases sited here, but in my experience, start off with respect, and they will be very helpful.


Now if we could only get the same kind of cooperation from Mr. Potatohead....

.
Alternatively, Weedy was having a bad hair day when I sent her my polite respectful request.