New news on the possible fate of landbots

Since I know alot of people don't dig so deep into LL meetings/SLDev meetings and such, thought I would post a link that gives a little inside look into what might be instore for the landbots in the future

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Open_Source_Meeting/2007-10-04

"There's no technical solution."

You could have just summarized instead of making people read all of that . Not really sure why it needs a new thread either?

pfffft......"where there is a will, not to, there is a way, not to."


I know I got dummer reading that wiki.

Just remember that the term 'developers' is a very far-reaching one.

On one side, you have the 'open source fans' classed as developers, but on the other side you have the content providers, builders, scripters, landscapers etc who, although now rebranded as 'solution providers', still come under the same "SLDEV" umbrella.

Broccoli

Well, they said as much that it's not really an open source issue per se. It came up as part of a wider discussion of bots and automata, and it looks like it's going to be discussed in terms of policy internally.

Also, I happen to know other Lindens are looking into them with a view to stopping landbots - I once had a Linden looking round my land asking why it's set to 1L$, as part of trying to find ways to stop bots, I don't think he realised it was on an estate with resale prohibited (therefore not being much use to bots)

The sad thing is there ARE simple technical solutions as myself and many other people have posted to make landbots not a significant threat.

But for some reason they cannot think of them.

Examples:
1) a minimum sale price per sqm when selling to everyone that defaults to 5 L$ /sqm and you can alter in edit - preferences.
That change is incredibly simple for a programmer to implement.

2) A delay of at least an hour from setting your land for sale to when it is put in the search database. This change is harder but still easily do-able.

You'd just end up with thousands of landbots swarming over the grid looking for land, instead of hammering the For Sale list.

Yeah, CAPTCHA is the letters and numbers you type when registering on many websites. Of course there are workarounds. One of the solutions found is make porn sites and give access to users who decode the CAPTCHA picture for you

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7067962.stm

But some are entirely algorithmic.

Buidling/scripting can't beat open source because of the limitations (prims, scripts memory and functions available).

Good Point!

But that problem is easily countered

Make it not go up for sale to "everyone" for at least an hour after they put land up for sale.
Not just in the land search but direct purchases from the land by inspecting the land etc.
We could even have a setting in edit preferences for the delay and have it default to 1 hour.

For the landbot particular issue you could have an optional confirmation message to the seller "Do you with to sell your land to aaaa bbbb?". If you are offline or say No then the sale is cancelled. That would prevent selling lands by mistake to a landbot, which is the biggest issue I think.

So nobody at all could buy it for an hour? In that case, you'll still have regular landbots, but they'll be fighting over land that was set for sale an hour ago.

I like that idea, as long as it's optional.

But at least that will stop the 'swoopers' that gain from someone's mistake that they might notice immediately and try to correct within 15 seconds - but lose out because the bot found it first. I know several people that lost a plot because of an accidental mistype of price that a bot found before they had an opportunity to correct it.

Broccoli

Thats okay. The seller has had usefull time to correct mistakes.

You picked up on the delay idea which is the worse of my 2 ideas, but what about my 1st idea of a minumum sale price per sqm when set for sale to everyone? (which you can alter in edit prefences, the default being 5L$ /sqm)
Its much simpler to implement, as it can be done entirely in the client, and would give a huge amount of protection.

Yep which is what happens now, I get a couple of bots an hour TPing into my sim and out again and there's no land for sale.

People who make mistakes rarely notice their mistake until it is pointed out to them by an outside source.

One hour delays, 2000 more confirmation boxes, or making it so that they'd have to be at their computer and able to log in to complete a land sale ain't gonna change that very basic fact of human nature.

Want to stop landbots/ land barons/ and other evils of the universe?

Try educating yourself and your friends on the correct way to use the existing system so that stupid mistakes aren't made in the first place and stop laying the responsibility of catching your stupid mistakes on someone else.

Because no matter how many defaults/confirmations/delays you put into place, someone somewhere is still going to do something stupid, and then whine about how unfair it is that they misunderstood the process.

Ok, yes - it'll give the seller a cooling off period before a sale can happen, when they could realise mistakes. It won't do anything about landbots being first to every (intentional or otherwise) cheap plot, which is another concern of many people.

The minimum sale price? Only real problem I can see with that is that a sensible minimum might change over time. For example, 10 months ago land was around 15L/sqm, anything at 5 would have been snapped up instantly.

I like your first idea, however also taking into account Stephens point, I would set it to something really really high, like 20L/M. Since its only there as a default to be changed, if anyone actually did it, theyd see it really high at the end and think oh im silly and change it down. That or just not sell it till they notice.



My own idea is to have a confirmation box that you have to OK a land sale within the first 15 minutes (or so) of making it forsale. At least that way if a lowball mistake is made and someone swoops, youd get a dialog asking 'do you want to sell x land for L$xxx to avatar x' and be able to back out and correct it.

(or if you really are trying to sell the land low, you can choose the correct person to lowball it to via the dialogs).

What about a compromise and collation of a few of these ideas put together...

Stage 1: Set the land for sale. If set to anyone, the system checks the current land base price (for mainland) per sq/m. If the Land is set to > CurrentBasePrice+L$1 per sq/m then all sales are automatic as now. If not, then stage 2 kicks in...

Stage 2: If the land has been set for sale to anyone and it's price is < CurrentBasePrice+L$1 per sq/m and someone purchases it within 15 minutes, the seller gets a popup asking to allow or deny the sale. If the seller AV logs out or does not choose, the sale continues as normal.

Most landbots grab land within seconds, so these measures will allow most land sales to proceed as normal without intervention, but will stop a lot of mistakes. I also allows for land price fluctuations to be taken into account automatically.

Gomez

Why couldn't they add a "verification Letters" box to the Buy land function. Require the person buying land to enter a string of letters or numbers to complete the transaction. This isn't more hand holding of the seller, the current selling operation is quite clear. But this would cut down on the ability of bots to buy land.

i think most ppl looking for landbot solutions arent really looking to kill landbots dead, or eliminate them from the landmarket absolute. what they're really wanting to stop is the situation where somebody sets land for sale for $1 to sell to a friend that is standing right there on the parcel with them and gets the land bought out from under them a nano second later. or someone trying to 'undeed' their own land. even a 5 minute delay would make that scenario history.
yes i realise ppl should learn about land dealing etc etc, but the truth is that most people dont even know that landbots exist, so its unrealistic to expect them to take precautions against them..

Thankfully most landbot runners give back mistakes when contacted. It's just a few greedy bastards preying on the uninitiated that make this an issue.

Well, more and more the use of bots is turning me off. From the landbots to whatever the hell ESC is gonna come up with next to the bots this English group is using to perform experiments on residents with, they are leaving a bad taste in my mouth. So yeah I am in favor of doing what we can to either get rid of them or limit them severely.

Agreed. Bad enough I have to guess if I'm talking to someone's alt, I am now getting bot paranoid....

You only have to worry if they don't talk back.