Fighting against the Adfarms

I just thought for people who have a bit of land and dont mind tiering an extra 512 plot, why don't we all buy 512's worth of 16x16 plots and just plant a tree or something.

if allot of the not so poor to richer generation of SL residents did that SL would be allot nicer of a place

Paying off the ad farmers will just encourage them to extort again in the future.

I'd make a well!

But they'd probably take that as a cue to raise prices more as well :b

Chaos my friend

We already have that in SL. Search under groups for "The Arbor Project".

Yeah, that one is a dumb idea too.

Well-intended, perhaps, but failing to think it through.

You buy his ad farms at, say, L$200 each = just over L$12/m. He then buys twice as much land at L$6m and splits it up into twice as many ad-farm plots, which he then sells at L$200 each. You just doubled his money. What part of He's Obviously Going To Do It Again do you fail to understand? Also, Congratulations: You have just doubled the number of ad farm plots in SL.

Now will everyone please stop buying the damn things?

sounds like someone got sand in there coffe this morning, chill. was merly a sudgestion

what if everyone buys them all, so there are no 16x16 plots left (sarcasm)

Agree... the worst thing to do is to buy any land from ad cutters. You are paying extortion and feeding the process. Yes, they are gone from your area, but they can take that money and buy land somewhere else... or even right across the street.

We need a change in the land sales code, to reduce the maximum price of small lots.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-894

[Sigh.] Somebody else please find a way to explain it to him. I've got to dig all this sand out of my coffee.

If you could move all the adfarms to Jessie then a war in Jessie might be upon us.

*just hands Har a new cup, and one for Chaos too*

adfarms make us all irritable. Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out.

The ideal of buying the 16m adplots to beautify teh grid (or at least make it not look ugly) is a commendable one.

People have tried this tactic and met failure though. If you can buy them for a resonalbe price, and want then land, then sure, by all means, grab them.

Until LL pulls their head out of their collective butts, however, we are never going to have a solution. Well, not unless every completely abandons the Mainland for private islands, and leaves it a stinking cesspool of nothing but adfarms, Linden roads, and the Linden Village.

Now, lets all drink coffee (or beverage of yoru choice), and play nice. Maybe we can get together and build walls around adfarms fro fun ^.^

~Jessy

Phillip Linden said in an interview today that they want a solution -in the code- that fixes ad farms.

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/01/25/interview-with-philip-rosedale/

Explain that comment to me, please. All I see is them doing good in SL and the only reason why there aren't double the number of spinning ads in our midst.

hmm if your going to buy all 16sqm`s at a high price, that even makes me wonder if not to start doing it to make a buck if they`re going to be bought nway

The only reason we don't see more is because land got so cheap that more end users actually bought mainland in the last crash, IMO. If you starve them out long enough, they will abandon the plot instead of reproducing somewhere else. I had a perfectly good 512 that a certain CF had purchased in one of my sims, that he sold for cheap. It got cut up into an ad farm, with an unusual diagonal plot holding a HUGE sign, and several other small plots. I blocked this ad, but then someone rezzed a huge megaprim around it (lol). I guesstimate that LL got an AR and removed the megaprim, and now I'm back to blocking the lot on my land, which surrounds this plot on 3 sides. Well, as I was rezzing the new ad blocker, I noticed that one of the 16m lots was abandoned. I had to cheer a little inside. That's one f***er that probably won't be back. Good riddance.

Don't buy, BLOCK!!

I noticed one such adfarmer is a member of the Arbor project. *lauphs*

Bluntly put:
By buying out the adfarms at prices they set, the Arbor Project is funding the adfarms.

~Jessy

Except it doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. I think I understand the intent of the Arbor Project, and have donated some purchased ad plots to them in the past because I thought it was a noble effort. But I don't think, practically, it has any effect at all.

Take, for example, my donated ad plots. The cheapest land on the grid are little adplots--the ones not right on the edge of the squalor. So, at one point, I thought "why not? at least we'll recover this bit." But that was really, really dumb. All I was doing by buying the cheap stuff was to reduce the cost of carrying that tier, so the adfarmers could use it for more of the "prime squalor" plots. I'll never do it again.

At this point, there's really only two options for dealing with adfarms: legislate them out of existence by LL enforcing CS6 and confiscating their property (which I support wholeheartedly--if they take my land because they don't like my builds, fine), or code them out (which I also support wholeheartedly). Whatever it takes.

But I really think the Arbor Project is making a noble mistake; I only wish such "nice" measures were effective against these land terror-mongers.

Duh, smart people don't buy them at the extortion prices, they buy them when the ad farmers give up on asking an exhorbitant sum because they've been sitting on them for months and sell them at market price or lower. I will only buy them at the price *I* decide is reasonable - which is not a rate they will make a huge profit from.

That's the problem, Qie: Jessica and Har hit the nail on the head. Any attempt to buy out ad farmers only encourages them to continue as it makes their land extortion scam profitable. Unless LL confiscates ad farm land the only option I can see is to block their plots until the ad farmers choke on their tier.

Well I agree that we should not give in to extortion. I have seen a lot of 16s go to the Arbor Group via non landfarm residents just passing the odd parcel on to them. Any donations I have made to Arbor came from other residents, not ad farmers. But I hear everyone's point.

I understand the thought behind buying their plots cheap. But even that relieves them of that much tier. If you think they are selling at a loss from original purchase price, maybe - they might feel that pain. But otherwise - if their goods don't move at any price, they're screwed. Which is the idea.

Now that makes sense - a scrap of land that did NOT come from an ad-farmer turned over to The Arbor Project does not enrich the bastards, and does take something out of circulation they might have exploited. Helps starve the ad-farmers then.

Two criteria to buy land ANYwhere in SL.

1) It meets your budget and your outlook on how much that land is worth.

2) It is what you need/want.

Buying a 16m plot, off an adfarmer, for 200L$, because you want it, does give that adfarmer the money and takes off their tier, yes. However, if it is land you want, it is a reasonable sale. In this case, while it IS continuing to the adfarmer, it is also showing them that "honest" sales work too.

Buying a 16m plot, off an adfarmer, for 9000L$, to get rid of the spinning ugly signs, shows the adfarmer that "extortion" works. Even if that land is given to the Arbor Project after.

I can not say that what the Arbor Project, and other groups like it, does is "wrong". They work to make SL a better place. Even if it never shows an impact, the fact that those people are trying is something I admire.

Personally, I'm thinking about getting people together to buy land all around Linden Village sims. Then cut the land into 16m pltos and set them to sell for 1L$ a piece and watch the landbots and adbots fight it out *smirks* If the Linden's are surrounded by the stupid spinning things, maybe they'd get the point.....hmm....nah!

~Jessy

Indeed. If Lindens actually frequented Linden Village it might have more impact. One approach is to attend all Linden office hours wearing a spinning fullbright ad-tower as headgear--one famed arborist did that last week. But it's a bit like preaching to the choir: those Lindens who actually bestir themselves to host office hours are fairly likely to know what a hell-hole many Mainland sims have become. On the plus side, at least some of them seem to understand that this is hurting the bottom line.