Just what is it? A bug? A feature? A nerf? A constructive eviction?

Our group, Blue Button Holding Co. is the singlemost largest number of plots owner in Second Life.

Five months ago, with a server rollout patch, we were unable to populate a list of our land holdings.

At first, Guy Linden escalated the issue, because we were co-operatively working to clean up the mainland, by exchanging "doughnuts". TJ Linden joined our group, to replicate the issue on Linden Lab machines. The development team, took control of Weedy's avatar to replicate the issue. On each of these occasions, it was proven, our list was not available.

We did not add any new land, hence there was no reasonable explanation for the list not populating, other than something which was done by the developers prior to the rollout.

The issue then went from "escalated" into "bug" status. Okay, fine. It's a bug. Then the next obvious question being, when will this bug be investigated and fixed?

Guy Linden assured me, this issue was listed on an "internal jira" and as such would be addressed through those channels. Filing a public jira is just a waste of time and is meaningless, when it's already a known issue. A support ticket was opened.

Well, weeks and months go by. Every time, speaking to the concierge, the issue gets spun into something completely different.

The ticket was closed as "resolved" when it wasn't. I opened a new ticket. The ticket was closed, stating the viewer does not support that many plots of land. This is a deliberate departure from the truth, because the viewer DID support that many plots of land. I reopened the ticket. Sometime later, the ticket was closed as resolved because Linden Lab claimed it was beyond the support team's abilities. This time, they locked it. I opened a new ticket, because the issue is unresolved, no less explained.

Well, weeks and months continue to go by. Today, Linden Lab closed the ticket as resolved, stating I should "suggest a new feature" for future versions.

Let me get this right. After five months, Linden Lab wants me to suggest a new feature for an old feature they removed? Nobody at Linden Lab can explain what happened, why it happened or what the problem even really is. I have no idea, neither do they.

This is a constructive eviction. Linden Lab has the appearance of (whether intentionally or inadvertently) nerfing our list while refusing to fix it, in order to cause us to abandon our group.

Our group has never had a warning stand on any issue. Never has our group been ordered to modify or remove our scripts or depart from any policy. Our group has gone to great lengths to be good neighbors and efficient users of server resources. In five years of operation, we endeavored to return every request for land trades with thousands of residents.

We pay tier like every other land owner and as such, deserve to access the same features available to anyone else.

Can any of you imagine, what it would be like to manage your land, without a list, for months on end, with absolutely no idea what the problem is or when to expect resolution?

The land list is available on the website, but LL can't even sort it alphabetically, so finding a single plot in a list of thousands, is cumbersome at best. SLURLs and llMapDestination() often teleport the avatar to the wrong location. Even if we wanted to, we are unable to use bots to manage our land, because they cannot retrieve the vector.

No good suggestion about how to push the viewer fix.

I'm just wondering, though, as a stop-gap, whether it wouldn't be workable to copy the text from the web list, push it through some shell script that parses it into more palatable format, and feed that to the bots? I suppose the bots would need a little rescripting to be able to take that input instead of whatever they're used to getting from the viewer data itself, but... it doesn't seem insurmountable to an outsider.

(I'm assuming the listing is vastly too large for a notecard. Well, yeah, it must be.)

Even with bare minimum data (ie) simname:vector, it's more than one notecard

Did they tell you what the "New limit" is? How many parcels an individual or group can own now, maximum?

Could you split the land to be owned by two groups, half in each group?

You'll have to forgive me, I'm completely ignorant about Blue Button, profile and group descriptions aren't helping ... do you rent mainland, or pick up lots of small plots to consolidate and resell, or ??? I can't figure out why LL would want to do any sort of "eviction" of a large lawabiding landowner, unless there's something intrinsically funky about your business.

I would file a PJira for a server bug, solicit votes from here and all of your groups, and attend bug triage.

Has this been discussed in the blogosphere at all? The absurdity of LL not supporting a landowner because they have TOO MANY plots seems pressworthy. It seems to me like the absurdity of this issue may help you to make it really visible.

Has anyone been able to figure out how large a land list the server/viewer DOES support? Knowing that would help. Could you do this on the beta grid by amassing a huge number of plots there? Not sure about land management support for aditi. But LL SHOULD be able to simply tell you this, and I would request that in the jira.

Of course, at this point you won't get any response out of LL until mid-January, because of the holidays, but you could queue up the Jira, get it all voted up, and figure out what blogger(s) may be able to help you.

Right, I expected as much.

Re-reading what I wrote, I may not have been clear: I was suggesting that the parcel location data (massaged from the web listing) be accessed by the bots from the host where they're running, not from in-world.

But now, re-reading what you wrote, I'm struck by "SLURLs and llMapDestination() often teleport the avatar to the wrong location." I'm not sure what that means; other than landing points, failed TPs, and neighbors with very bad security devices, I don't think I've encountered that problem, and kind of wonder why the problem is different when TPing to the destination from the land list.

And then there's "Even if we wanted to, we are unable to use bots to manage our land, because they cannot retrieve the vector." That suggests I was barking up the wrong tree anyway, trying to figure out how to feed a bot. Now I'm not quite sure what would be the most convenient alternate presentation of the data in that list because I'm not sure just how it's being used.

If it's a viewer bug, considering asking the folks who do the Emerald viewer if they could fix it for you.

If a bot can't fetch the data, I doubt any third party viewer can.

This is a server issue, not a client issue. It was broken in a server rollout.

LL knows this, yet refuse to acknowledge it. This is denial of service.

Either the management and development team knows what happened, or they don't. After five months, they have neither indicated whether it was deliberate or inadvertant. Yet we are expected to be happy about this, while they do nothing and say something different every time?

I don't think so.

Have you gotten in contact with Guy since then? They may have had to abandon it to roll out these "new improvements" to our "standard of SL living."

My understanding is that the vast majority of those plots are 16s.
At this stage, with many of the ad farmers gone and the remaining ones with reduced inventories, you may well own a very exceptional number of plots. This might be leaving LL with a demand to fix the server code in order to facilitate a single user.
Even if the issue gets fixed, it seems to me that the land list served up to the client is not a particularly wonderful management tool for someone with huge numbers of plots.

Why not transfer the non-16s to a different group, where they may be managed in the normal SL way?

For the thousands of 16s, do a once-off parsing of the web-based list and extract to a database. I'm assuming that the inventory of 16s is fairly static. Extend the database fields to cover the history and status of each plot. Your bots probably visit the plots to check on the prims there. Schedule and record the maintenance visits vie the database. Have memo fields recording interactions with neighbours, or whatever.
Have the database web-based so that the bots can interrogate it via an in-world object. Alternatively have the bot program access the database on the machine that controls them.

This is probably a very unique situation with the number of plots owned. In your place I'd be inclined to do the pragmatic thing and roll my own land management. It's actually more than pragmatism as it would enable a more powerful management system than the one you had from LL.

This is definitely a unique situation. You are going to either have to write your bots and management system from scratch yourself. Or hire a programmer.

The system itself would not be to difficult, the post above this one pretty much sums it up.

Think of it this way. You are a large company, you should be designing your own systems and not depending on LL to fix theirs.

The thing is Sling, what is there to fix? We have not added any land to our inventory. One day it worked, the next day it didn't.



Without using bots, it was useful. Bot cannot do alot of things. Bots cannot terraform land properly to match the neighboring plots. llGround() is not possible to get sometimes, because of ban lines etc. It's difficult to know whether land is adjacent to protected land, or in the middle of someone else's plot.



Without attending each plot individually, it's impossible to change the deed to another group. Without an inworld list, this process is greatly hindered. Even at best, it takes several hours to attend each letter of the alphabet. This kind of workaround is extremely labor intensive and not practical.



Static for the mostpart, but still dynamic sometimes nonetheless. The Lindens arbitrarily reclaim doughnuts and provide alternatives, based on an agreement to minimize "surroundability", so we don't have to repeat the process over and over in the future. These plots still must be claimed manually.

Our operation is not that high-level. Much of what we do is by manual discretion, mainly because of terraforming and unreasonale requests from people who don't own the adjacent land, who are merely trying to scam us for a roadside plot in exchange for something surroundable or otherwise. Alot of our plots are blocked. We do not deal with resident who block us, until the obstructions are cleared, or negelcted to obtain permission

Particularily when it comes to parcel swaps. There are a number of things our group checks before approving trades. For example, next door ownership, unsurroundability, protected land and blockage to name a few.



It is unique, but it's no excuse to throw us to the dogs, simply because LL does not want to address the issue. For Linden Lab to expect us to live with it, is wrong at every level.

I read every release patch notes. NOWHERE in any of those notes, does LL suggest they implimented a cap on land ownership. Nor do they state how many plots are acceptable and how many are not. It is clearly another case of them taking resources from one user and giving them to someone else, without notice, description or compensation.

I stand by my accusation. Linden Lab is misrepresenting this issue, by spinning it into something that it's not AND denying a service.

We have contact with Guy, almost daily. He reclaims donuts from the middle of abandoned land, so he can clean them up for auction. He is just a land guru though and has no development team status, nor sets any policies. He did his very best to escalate the issue to LL, which fell on deaf ears. I'm sure he's frustrated too.

The land system is not designed for people owning ridiculous amounts of land. It's designed for people to come in and put up homes or stores, maybe manage a few sims worth for renting out.

You got lucky there system worked for you as long as it did.

But now, because you are using in a way it is not intended, you are expected to design your own systems for managing it. If you want to be a large company then act like it. Go out and get a programmer that will design a system for you that works.

All the other land businesses have bots and management systems that were custom designed for them, that's how you get by.

We abide by the rules.

You have no right whatsoever to tell us how SL is to be used and not used. We use the system as it was intended and did nothing to warrant us being removed from equal access.

It's just how the business works.

I'm not telling you you can not do what you do. Just how to do it successfully like the others in your field.

You need to move from LL's in client systems, to automated ones of your own design.

Also, my comments were not an attack of any sort. my apologies for that.

So LL can co-opt that innovation too for their own profitability?

It won't be the first time.

Pretty funny coming from a man who spies upon a large portion of the grid for his own profit.

They should have banned all 16m plots and been done with it.

You have no idea what we do or what our profitability is.

Using your logic, LL should ban all intolerant trolls and be done with it.

Who cares what you do with your massive empire of micro parcels. Too bad the system doesn't work for you so well anymore. Lot's of folks have had problems with each server "upgrade." Better get used to it, it's only the beginning.

People who own land next to them?

There are going to be script limits per parcel based on area, so I read. I wonder what the limits will be like for 16 square meter parcels?

If you haven't filed an issue in the public bug tracking system I'd do so even though there is already supposedly an issue on the subject in the internal tracking system. Hopefully if there is an internal issue a Linden will identify it, then maybe you can find out something about it.

On the idea of transferring some parcels to another group, possibly the limit on the maximum numbers of parcels the system can return is not too much lower than the number you own. If so you would only need to transfer the excess amount, which might not be too bad a job to carry out.

Very good point Milla!

I would do that, if LL could actually tell me what the cap is, but they cannot. In fact, despite the number of tickets, calls, concierge chats, IMs and outrageous suggestions, all they to is spin the issue into something it's no.

One might think it would be easier to just fix it.

What threat do we impose on our neighbors?