Ad Farmers & Extortionists

There was a lot of initial confusion in thread concerning the meaning of "obstruction"/"blocking"

The IMs quoted for a particular bonfire reportedly went :
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[2008/02/03 11:52] W***y H****st: (Saved Sun Feb 03 14:51:23 200 Please unblock access to out group land at Aragonese: <237.90620, 114.51128, 77.59470>
[2008/02/03 11:52] W**y H***st: (Saved Sun Feb 03 14:51:40 200 our*
[2008/02/03 11:52] Dragger Allen: excuse me
[2008/02/03 11:53] W** H****st: your objects are blocking our land plot
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It has become clear what you mean by 'blocking', but only after a tedious and heated series of postings.
Perhaps if your communications were more clear, you would encounter less drama in your business processes.


The "simple one line IM, as we did in this case...."
- does not explain the issue in a constructive manner
- was definitely "more of a demand than a request" if we go by Weedy's description to you of my "Will you swap position of a 16m plot in the Hengill sim, please?" communication to her.


In your posts, you bang on about how busy and misunderstood you both are.
I suggest to you that most of your grief is self-inflicted. You've turned yourselves into a pair of drama queens.

By presiding over an empire of 16m plots you immediately invite suspicion.
Your charter is not sufficient to the task of
- explaining what you are about
- explaining why a landowner might receive a communication from you about "unblocking access"
- explaining why you might not be prepared to swap lots in certain circumstances.


I suggest to you that you should prepare a number of standard notecards. Use some of the text from your postings in this thread. Pass appropriate cards to people that you communicate with. Put them in a notecard giver if you have a base. Put the location of the base and notecard-giver in your group charter and profiles.
Put the content in a website and put the URL in your group charter.

You are obviously too busy to repeatedly impart this information in IM sessions. You therefore come across as rude and aggressive. You initiate communications in a manner that risks inflaming a situation. You create more drama to feed on your business.




I will interpret your silence following my previous post as an implicit apology for grossly misdescribing the communications that I had with yourselves.

Okay. That explains a lot--I'd assumed that was already in place. Once you get the seed prim set with llSetRemoteScriptAccessPin, and its contents populated with a similar prim, a bot anywhere on the sim can update any script functionality and prim construction (well, shy of Glow ). And, of course, you still have to find a place for a bot to TP into the sim--like somewhere on that parcel. (Although, come to think of it, it's kinda unlikely that anybody would blacklist ban a bot that visited only long enough to run an update, so I'm not sure it's important to actually use the parcel--anywhere >50m above llGround should be safe for the few seconds it might take.)

We could speculate on what the script does, but it's hardly required that anybody share info that gives them a competitive advantage. There are things we can rule out. Because this is Mainland only, the script can't be working around sim-only limitations in the scripting language that prevent some very neat automated content delivery (scripts and object-to-object inventory can't be given across sims), nor would it be very effective at sensing or tracking avatars or objects, since it's Mainland only. Assuming it has some commercial purpose, one is drawn to the main attribute of Mainland: parcels for sale. But a script can't actually determine on its own if a parcel is for sale at all, let alone its price. It can, however, map the parcel layout of a sim with reasonable (not perfect) accuracy, along with parcel name, description, owner, etc, so that might be useful information to customers who run landbots. But that's all just speculation.

Dave.

Thank you for your lengthy reply but, in spite of its length, you didn't answer my question. Could you access your things on that 16m plot with the paving prim in place? A yes or no will suffice.

Another question. I don't understand how you were getting thrown into the sky after TPing to your 16m. Would you explain that please? Also, wouldn't setting a new landing point have solved it?

I just had an idea for a soap opera: As the Spinning Ad Turns.

He said he couldn't get on his plot because he got the levitation syndrome soon as he teleported there because of the prims.

Yes, I'm curious about that. What caused it? I don't know how a perfectly ordinary prim over the land can cause an av to shoot skyward when TPing to the land.

I'm sure that he could still get access to his things though, and I'm asking him if that's true or not.

Dave seems to have a nack of sidestepping straight questions in this thread. Mine was just one of them, but I'd still like him to answer it because, although I realise that Dragger was no angel when dealing with the situation, my impression is that neither was Dave.

Well, you can certainly get stuck in the middle of a prim. In fact, if it's a non-phantom megaprim, you can crash a Havoc 1 sim if you hit it just right (well, with a warpPos or llSitPos teleporter--not sure about system TPs). So, maybe, if the moon is full, the agent could end up floating upward; these days TPs aren't exactly the most precise or repeatable of experiences.One *would* kinda think so, thanks to Tools/Select Only My Objects in a sim that holds exactly one prim with that owner. For some of the questions (like "what's this thing do?", he really doesn't owe anybody an answer. It may allay suspicion if he provided it, or it may give a secret to his competitors, or it may piss everybody off--and frankly, it's not really any of our business. But to the point of mutually other-than-angelic responses: This is what we get in the hostile environment cultivated by the true adfarmers, with landowners paranoid about any 16sq.m. parcel, making any legitimate user of it respond to hostility with hostility, or exercise a level of patience and restraint beyond saintly.

We can only hope the same culture doesn't arise in this Forum.

Actually, I didn't care about what the script/object itself does.. I'm just curious if there's a particular reason to have a 16m in as many sims as possible. It's rather inconvenient to those who wish to own a sim, find one they like and be unable to fully own it because of this 16m. If it's just to collect parcels in every sim, it seems rather pointless to me. Sure, I understand the reasoning behind an adfarmer or extortionist's reasoning. It's to tick the person off enough to buy it from them no matter the price. But this.. I find puzzling.

I can think of quite a few good reasons for it, beyond, "because I want to collect them like stamps." One could be to track the up and down times of mainland sims, to provide that data to sources looking into Linden Lab's system of management, programming, and technology. A main prim on a private island contacts each child prim in the sims and when the child prim doesn't respond, it starts counting how long it takes for the child prim to get in contact again. ETC...

Of course, I'm not asking for that level of detail, and if I was told, "Sorry, I can't provide that information," *shrugs* I can accept that too. I'm blunt and I don't mind honest answers.

I was thinking of just camming down to it

From that last answer, it sounds like they are in politics... a large bunch of nothing.

LOL. Those were my thought exactly.

Understand that you can't tell us what you do, Dave. That's your right. However, you'd find you'd make people a lot more suspicious if you just came right out and said that with out all the doublespeak.

I take you at your word when you say you aren't doing yourself anything nefarious. I have no reason to think otherwise, but I think you'd benefit by hiring yourself a good PR person. You'd find you'd be spending a lot less of your time dealing with some of the issues your having.

Which is our point, exactly.

It's not right that we should "bare our chest" simply because of the actions of ad cutters and extortionists.

Likewise, we don't want to give them any ideas either.

Do you mean he'd have made people a lot LESS suspicious if he had come out and said it without all the hostile doublespeak?

I know he would have made me a lot less suspicious with just a, "I'm sorry, I can't discuss this in any detail because of a non-disclosure agreement with my company." Goodness knows I've heard this line a lot and have said it myself a few times!

I can respect a non-disclosure agreement and I can respect a person who keeps the agreement. Hostility and double speak not required, thank you.

That's exactly what I'm saying. It's simple, straight forward, less suspicious and would have saved us a lot of reading and him a lot of key strokes.

Alright. It's none of your business.

I doubt that dispells anything. People will still assume what they presume, irregardless of what we do or don't say.

Happy now?

There has been many excellent observations by some posters so ending my rant just want to make these points as clear as possible.

1. I support any persons right to do what they want with their land with exceptiion to that which causes disruption to their neighbors. (that is a tad shaky ,who says whats a disturbance)
2. I oppose any regulation or rules to the size or use of the property other than the community standards already in place. (seems a slippery slope there)
3. I oppose any attempt to cap land prices.
4. I think LL could minimize impact of the sort we've discussed by proactively alerting land owners giving opportunity first to large parcel owners of impending auctions of any parcel less than 125m's in or bordering their lands (allowing re-absorbtion only as lands become availabe, not forced)
5. If an ad farmer (like the newest to assault my grounds ) has spinning signs, which while spinning cross the borders of another or are simply there to extort should be handled as a special circumstance and fined (maybe all the fines could go into an account which to help pay for the proactive service mentioned above) , banned if not corrected, or lose the property if un-willing to behave.


Possibly some kind of panel may need to be created to inspect these small parcels and owners to determine if they abide by the communiity standards or are creating a nuisance though that seems a rather sticky as well.

It is a difficult situation in that most of the mainland at least all I bought and ever would has no covenants so I can't ask now we have some even if the alternatetive is for me to enclose my area so my customers never have to see what lays outside my walls unless of course they wanted too.

end of rant.

p.s. been trying but not found a way so if someone could just create that eraser for me why I'd

Dave, I've been thinking you've been getting a bum rap throughout this entire thread but at this point I can only shake my head and surmise that you just don't get it and never will. Keep enjoying the problems you keep encountering. Apparently they are well deserved.

QUOTE=. In fact, if he was to request a trade, we would be happy to oblige him..[/QUOTE]
Then Lets Trade i am sure i can find you a 16 meter plot that is not in the middle of my sidewalk

the 16 meters is set to sell to you Dave

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aragonese/121/235/89

SL is a mishmash of just about every personality under the sun.

We accept that some have a narrowminded view of our operation and that's fine.

Fortunately, those type of people are in the minority and the greater portion are reasonable and easy to deal with. Weedy is more of a socialite than I am, but I can say for sure that she really enjoys many of the friends she has made along the way. She is constantly questioned for advice and recommendations and is always happy to oblige. She sometimes has a short fuse, so it's best to not stand too close when lighting it. Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn, trust me. By the same token she has abundant patience when she knows other's mean well.

Collectively, we continue to strive to be good residents and reliable business people, despite the ways we have been treated in the past. All we can do is lead by example. We are not perfect in every way, but our motives are genuine.

I think his point is that some have a narrowminded view because of the way you operate, when such drama and angst could be avoided with just a minor change in the way you operate and treat other people.

That is ultimately the difference between real professionals, and those who aspire to be.



That's always a good policy. Hopefully, you will be able to learn something valuable to your business from some of the feedback posted here.

One other thing I noted...

How many people are going to do this "I want a tiny bit of land in every sim" thing? After a while, there will be "botfarms" or whatever-it-is-you-do-farms. How are those any better? I note that within spitting distance of my property on the mainland there are already two of you. One plot owned by Blue Button Holding (you guys), and another owned by Universal Network (Elanthius Flagstaff's group). It is unlikely that you two will be the only ones with this goal, for a variety of reasons.

I figure one of the main reasons why you all are doing this is to guarantee your bots have a "safe harbor" to be able to TP into the sim, should everyone else in the sim ban you. Of course, I don't see why that would be needed in sims with permanent protected land in them (like Linden road Right of Ways). Outside of that, the only other reasons I can think of are advertising or some kind of data mining.

Anyway. Just another thing to chew on when pondering these issues.

it only takes 4 walls, or 6to 12 trees, to OWN 1024m² of ad farm land.
just do it.

That was pretty much my point, Dave. Some folks have taken their own time to give you some good advice on how they think you might be able to handle these situations better in the future. Each time it seems that you returned with the same circular speach. Maybe you've become too use to being defensive since you are frequently accused of being an adfarmer.

Take a breath and read through the thread again later. I think you'll find you've been offered some good advice that will make your life easier.