Land Bot Misuse. Disability loses this time around.

naah. They just don't want to police anyone* and have not come up with a good solution themselves in the five minutes they put against seeking one. Plus anything that makes the buying process quicker makes them happy. They want as many folks as possible to be stuck with as much tier as possible.

This is a good time to point out that most land bot runners are ethical and will return mistakes. There are only a few who will prey on your mistake or laziness.

Bottom line: NEVER EVER SET YOUR LAND TO ANYONE UNLESS YOU WANT ANYONE TO BE ABLE TO BUY IT. The landbot you can't see, CAN hurt you.


*they police adult content and casinos only because they were forced into it.

True, but generally when I mention a forum thread in world no one knows what I'm talking about because a huge portion of our community *gasp* never reads the forums. They just "play" the game in world. Most people don't learn about landbots until it they make an error. Then if they do come here to talk about it they get insult added to injury and are called stupid repeatedly. It would be nice if some type of delay was in place. Mistakes would still be made, but hopfully something to that effect could minimize them. Who knows.

Yea some landbot owners are responsible. I still don't think this makes them fair, or believe this type of tool thats proven how easily it can be misused should be allowed, or at the least it should have some rules laid out, or a delay in place.

To me the part that seems really wrong here is that LL continues to allow people to use bots to do things like this. It gives them such an unfair advanatage over normal players, it is in my mind an exploit and should not be tolerated. ... aside from being incredibly unethical.

I am sorry, but there is no reason that the seller couldn't have taken 20 seconds to put in his friend's name. I feel bad for him, but we cannot coddle this naïveté - if you want a land sale to go through to someone in particular, SET IT TO THAT PERSON. Period! Change the facts - let's say someone puts some waterfront land out there for sale at a reasonable price. Someone else comes along in the interim and buys it. The sale wasn't intended for them, but shit - the thing was on the market for sale to ANYONE. Anyone means ANYONE. People have got to stop expecting that no one will come along looking at land for purchase, at any price.

I do like the suggestion that a name be required below a certain price per meter. But guess what will happen? People will still screw it up because they don't want to take 20 seconds to find the person and put their name in. Where does it end?

SOLUTION:
Let the default for land sale require entering the name of the person to whom you wish to sell that land.....and if you want it to be available for sale to everyone, you physically type "Sell to Anyone" in that field. Implement this and the unethical exploitation of a faulty user-interface goes away. Why does LL not solve this problem after all this time and hundreds or thousands of such incidents? Are they that callous? that indifferent? that lazy?

Took me fifteen seconds to solve the huge problems created by this clunky, confusing, and exploitable interface LL continues to allow to exist. I would not at all be surprised if LL themselves ran landbots.

people will still screw it up because it's faster to type that than to have to take the two extra steps of having the database search for the name and then selecting the name.

The problem will always be here, and it's not necessarily LL's fault. They cannot move our eyeballs or fingers for us.

Sarah,

You own several ventures in SL correct? A newbie store, land sales, etc.

Why not place a notecard giver that hands out a notecard informing the newbs who come to your store about landbots?

As a an ex flipper (yea boo hiss ) i could regularly beat bots to cheap land (I of course Always gave any mistakenly sold land straight back to the seller) and then LL altered the land search to include the freeze if you search too fast, this stopped me and any other human flipper instantly and gifted ALL cheap land to the bots as they could just run multiple bots with a time delay when searching.
As soon as they put the freeze in search I knew what would happen and I've zero doubt that LL knew what would happen.

Why was the search freeze introduced? to stop the server being hammered?
Oh yep right cos 100 bots hammering it every 5 seconds is better than 4 every second?


Maybe I'm paranoid but it's not rocket science is it?

I truly believe they thought it would hamper the bots, then they were embarrassed to see it actually helped them and the just shrugged and said "screw it, the land is selling, let's just let them have it."

Sad way to run a company. But with limited resources, I guess they just do the little bandaids that they can. I do wish they would fix the main issues before adding more complications like voice and Windlight though.

Aww cmon Raymond, it took me less than 5 minutes to figure out what would happen when they did it, and I ain't no einstein fella.

As bewildering as I find some of LLs decisions i found the timing of that particular action (during the feverish whining about landbots in the forums) a clear sign from LL, "we don't care and if you whine we'll just F*** you up"

I second this - I've read all sorts of stuff given out for newbies, but I didn't see anything about landbots or what they could do.

I understand that people in this forum are sick of hearing about them, but there must be a huge amount of repitition in all that goes on here with new people coming along all the time and coming up against the same problems everyone else has had at some time. Maybe when I've been around a bit longer I'll feel differently.....

an aside to Sarah: I love your newbie store

I really didn't, either. That doesn't mean I don't have sympathy, it just means that when I read the account, I didn't see how it came into play. The person who set the land price didn't have dyslexia, right?

Hi Sarah,

I wanted you to know that there is a friend I have who lost an island to a bot. He was setting his land for sale and accidentally set it for $1 by mistake . He realiized it immediately but due to bad lag his computer crashed and he couldnt fix it . When he got back onto sl a bot had got his land. They bot owner refused to give it back and sl did nothing.

Is there some script somebody can write to prevent a bot from buying land? And a landowner can place it on the land to avoid any risk while doing these things?

Elinah

No, there's not. You have to not set it for L$1 to "anyone". Once land is up for sale, it's up for grabs. No way to stop a bot from taking it.

Dekka can you explain more about your free land policy to me please? You can im me privately if you wish. Thanks.

Elinah

I like the idea about writing the bot situation up for newbies. I have a note card floating around and that I hand out at my freebie place, and in my plot for sale signs that explains the differences between mainland and estate land. I think it needs a good updating anyways so I'll get it updated and ad a section about setting land and explain the quickness of bots. I try to not take sides on my informative cards for newbs, so I'll do my best to to explain getting land set properly and what could happen if you make an error.

You could use this sticky post as a starting point:
/327/3d/174599/1.html

first, bots are not evil. they are not an easy way to make money either. bot runners run the risk of ending up with pretty craptacuar plots of land.
i think an issue is that many people are not aware that bots exist, and have no reason to suspect one will appear on their land and buy it out from under them. the current incarnation of the sell land menus is a big improvement, but it should probably mention the risk of falling prey to automated land buying bots to people.

Does anyone have sources for a landbot they're willing to share? I snarfed the latest libSecondLife test client and it's nice and all, but I'd rather not have to reinvent a dead-horse-wheel if possible.

As a public service, I'll try running one whose purpose is to save people who accidentally do the $1 sale thing. If it works, someone else can do it, too. Everyone can do it. It'll be the Colt Special of land speculation, the digital equalizer.

no, you will not find a bot to download that i am aware of.

At one point, a scripter was offering it for L$500,000. The person he offered it to passed on it.

Check out this post on our blog site. http://www.your2ndplace.com/node/562 He will be selling them for 38K, and I hope everyone and there mother buys one. The more the merrier right? Right now when I land on a plot I see 3-5 bots on top of each other. Lets ad LOTS more so that they are rendered useless. I'll never own my own bot, and I have had the chance. I can not script to save my life, but trust me I have been offered the service a few times, and I have the means. But anyways Bob here is selling them or will be selling them for 38K, and I hope he sells sells sells. Just be sure to tp me to the first 20 bot pile up so I can get a good blog picture.

at 38K... really what is needed is someone with the knowhow to code one and release it for free. too many for ll to selectively ban and too many for ll to ignore.

Oh, I have opensource bots galore, just not one that buys land, hence the whiny request for a freebie.

obviously in the context of this thread bot=landbot.
i dont think you will find one for free, and if you did its likely outdated. even the one being sold for 38K is a bit dodgy as he makes no offer to keep it updated.