Feedback on Ad Farm post

no ban lines
phantom prims only
no light
no glow
all adland to be smppthed to avoid rapid bizarre moon scapes

I am so tired of people who extort money from the rest of us - whether they do it by cutting land, setting ridiculously high prices on strategically placed small parcels, erecting banlines on those parcels, or putting up obnoxious ads- calling themselves legitimate businesspeople.
Legitimate businesspeople benefit the community of which they are a part, they don’t parasitize it as you do. And you and we know who you are. What benefit have you provided to the SL community? Opportunities for banline bouncing? The privilege of squaring off one’s property or preventing the appearance of an ad tower by buying one of your ridiculously priced extortion plots? Businesspeople? Your activities are more fittingly described as those of ethically bankrupt, two-bit hacks. If you want to do real business, then do what forward thinking RL and SL businesspeople are doing by realizing that profit isn’t everything. Its called the triple bottom line and the idea is that business practices need to not only produce profit, they need to benefit their environment and take care of people as well – people, place, profit, look it up. Anyway, your days are numbered, so why not set your plots at market rates and let people rejoin the land into decent parcels that can be useful. Either that or just keep waiting it out for another couple weeks before the LL hammer falls. Your choice.

Jack Wrote:

"Please let us know what you think, we’d like your opinions on what licensed advertisers should and should not be allowed to do on the Mainland."

I think adverts should be for in world services only. Your club, your rental properties, your in world store, etc. As I said before its a liabilty to have RL companies advertize in SL. I see no reason why a RL company cannot sue LL for damages done to their company name and reputation because LL fails to monitor such activites.

A sign should not be so high as to spam an entire sim or nearby sims.

Signs shouldn't shout anything

These signs that have multiple adverts on the same prim, by switching textures are useless, because the majority of times the textures move so fast they never load. Why these people who make signs like that actually think this works is beyond my comprehension. It also hogs my client resources up.

I would like to see ONE sign ONE texture. Multiple sign towers to me are a form of spam. Add 4 cubes with separate sign adverts flipping for each cube, you're hogging resources.

Built into the server code should be a mechanism to check parcel size in relationship to ban lines. Under a certain m2 parcel...public access ON period.

Resale of micro parcels should be permitted since people will need to sell them. What deems parcel extortion is a hard call. Most people don't want small parcels that will push there tier into the next level anyway. This can be solved by people being able to purchase micro parcels in a sim that allows some sort of bonus. Don't know if that is possible.
Thank you for your time.

Blaccard Burks

I can't wait for the extortion plots to be gone.

Originally I owned a nice 2560 m2 plot on the mainland. No, not a huge plot, but nice for a house. So nice though that I had a constant problem of people walking into it thinking it was a park!

Some ad farms were around me which I did my best to either block from my parcel or occasionally buy out. Some ad farms appeared over time on >256 m2 parcels. One abortive attempt even used 2048 for an ad tower.

Even so I stayed. One morning ad ad parcel appeared right next to me on a 256. You can probably guess who since the profile for the person included native american stuff. Soon after it changed to an ad tower with the following impacts:
- xxx ads next to a house with a young child
- pretty much destroyed the tranquil environment people liked there
- particles shooting up to 3000 meters
- lag so an average 30 FPS suddenly plumented to 10 FPS

I immediately cut my losses, dumped that large plot and focused my energies on continuing to clean up the smaller ad plots in that area, living on a sky platform over them to be free of the sudden lag and visual polution.

I do hope the Lindens were happy. They got rid of a build people liked in trade for a bad ad, got less tier payments out of the deal, dropped land prices in the area, and have a lag problem now to deal with.

I don't think LL has to operate the advertising service, but they absolutely should own the land on which the ads appear, and preferably the prims and scripts on that land.

The network advertising license should be to sell advertising and serve those advertising customers, not to futz around with scripts, phony statistics, and land-terror schemes. If they focus, they might even develop some of the sophistication and value of RL advertising media companies.

This will demand a very great deal more work for the licensees than they've ever thought of investing before, and a vast increase in the creativity needed to succeed, and to retain their license. From all evidence it appears unlikely that any of the presumed "incumbents" are up to the challenge.

The people blocking you ads and encroaching on your ad parcels _are_ showing you the same manners that you have shown them.

Very good point, there.

As the owner of a newbie village I can't thank you enough. I even built wall so we woouldn't have to look at wall to wall ads .. which only meant people built them higher. Besides being unslightly .. there was a time the Sim got so laggy, it was no fun to be there. I know the task you are going to undertake is a huge one. I for one really appreciate it, and if there is anything i can do to help, don't hesitate to ask.

And for those that want to advertise, believe me, we do try to teach the newbies that pass thru, how to search for something, so even though your ads aren't staring us in the face, people will know how to find you, if you are offering a service they are interested in.

My new hero .. Jack

I SEE A PROBLEM.

I hate ad farms and have spent thousands of L$ purchasing them around my land.

BUT

I also OWN about 40 small lots throughout SL.

I do NOT advertise on these lots but I do have VENDING MACHINES that sell my products.

Will the proposed restrictions force my machines out of business?

Will there be a distinction between advertisements that direct you to a location (either in-world or out), and small sites that actually are an entity unto themselves where you can conduct business ON-SITE?

You don't get to use us as an excuse to FUD implementation of this policy. If having to shut down NCI's venue-based ads is the price of getting rid of adfarmer parasites, I'll happily do it (and of course issue pro-rated refunds for any remaining time to our clients). Yeah, it's a third of our income, but we've had to replace a third of our income before and probably will have to do it again. We are a non-profit community service organization. That means our goal is helping people; not screwing over our neighbors.

Gads, I hope you didn't pay those extortionate prices for them, else you contributed to the problem by giving them the funds to spread to everyone else's regions.

Buying them out is precisely the WRONG thing to do, unless the prices were close to market rate, because they just take that money and turn it over, buying lots in other sims and chopping them up. It's probably how they originally got into your sim. Someone paid them off, and they showed up in yours.



That's a tough call. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing things like the SLustler vendors swept up with the rest of the adfarm refuse, but I realize that they may end up being exempt.

I am not so sure I would rely on vendors on microplots going forward, though it depends on how you do it. For example, if a neighbor asks you to move/remove your vendor next to their land, do you give it fair consideration, or do you ignore or spite the request? If the former, I think you would stand a good chance of being left alone. If the latter, well, what goes around, comes around, I think.

Will there be a page on the SL website with a list of all licensed advertisers? Even if it is just a list of names.

Perhaps this would make it slightly easier/quicker for people to know what is a legitimate advert and which are adverts are rogue by unlicensed people.

There will be lists drawn up by other residents anyway. But it would nice to have an up to date official list.

It's probably not going to make them any money in the short run, if you take into account the extra load on the Abuse Team (they are probably going to need more resources there to implement this policy).

That's not the point of the question.

I would also like to start an affiliate network-type advertising system, and I would like clarification on what types of networks will need licensing versus which ones won't.

I certainly want this policy to go forward, but it is a tad sketchy on critically important details at the moment. Details which, I think, will hamper implementation and adherence to the overall policy if left unanswered for any significant length of time.

Would you not agree?

Advertising should not appear on the side of prims that face a privately (non LL) owned parcel. The image should only face public protected property. This should apply to glow, full bright colours, and particles (particles banned because you can't hide them from a specific side). If any side faces private property (including any slight rotation that makes any part of it visible from the private property) it should be textured in the totallyclear texture.

I see the problem of micro plots with advertising. When there is a stretch of land with nothing but 16/32m plots all in a row for sale then I know what's going to end up on that land. If ad farms are banned, I bet micro plots will start disappearing soon after.

I have two ghastly adfarms next to and across from my property, and along with all the micro plots for sale cluttered around my land Sounds like those will soon be gone. I think the micro plots clogging up two sides of my property will soon after die off of starvation. Way to go Lindens!

Actually, in contrast, I'm coming around to quite liking the notion of first removing all the existing ads--sweeping completely clean and keeping it that way for a few months, before learning what in-world advertising will mean going forward.

In the meantime, if some edge cases get swept up too, frankly, I wouldn't be too upset about that. Vending from a bunch of tiny parcels, really, can't be all that profitable unless something else is going on. Legitimate businesses currently using that approach would almost certainly benefit from rethinking the practice anyway.

Now I think the next step will be to address the extortion and harrassment issues.

Many US residents are familiar with Anti Price Gouging laws that pertain to fuel stations and how they price for gasoline.

There should be a cap on how above the mean average one can set their land for sale.
Yes, when selling land, one would like to make a profit - sell it for more than it was bought for ~ however when you see a 512 plot set for sale at 25,000L (for example) you just have to wonder why.

If someone is legitimately selling a plot no matter what the size, it should be within basic ranges of what land is currently going for. As in RL real estate, sometimes it is a waiting game ~ for prices to go up or down ~ for selling/buying at your best advantage. I so no reason why it has to be different for Second Life.

And using land to harrass and abuse like many have mentioned in this thread ~ esp the pictures posted by Carl Metropolitan ~ well there is simply no excuse for that.

You asked for licensing policy suggestions, but at this point after so long I am simply exhausted, but I do hope you take the good suggestions of other posters to heart.
And yes, there are legitimate uses for plot sizes under 128. it has been the abusers of smaller plot sizes that have ruined things for the rest of us.

Do not punish us further by making plot size a central issue.
Thank you,
~AB

I believe it would be better to have commercially zoned areas and residential zoned areas.

However ads placed on residential areas would have the limits on spinning cubes, notegivers and free access to that ad area. Who wants to walk into impenetrable barb wire anyways?

Excellent step in the right direction. Hope you intend to follow through!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sn7cKVFXUkw


I hope that the little cliques of people who crop up together will be disbanded and that those who apply for a license will be banned from extorting non-advert space micro parcels.

Instead of making every corner an ad area for adverts... how about having ALL ad parcels leased by adverts from a semi-independent Governor Linden representative Group? That way... there could be some customization and flexibility where adverts are located and quick ability to keep track of parcels, and rental spaces- I would suggest Apez and Hippo as two that are excellent....I guess this would be a form of "licsensing" as you have called it..

The land would be owned by a Governor Linden group which would include in its members the Liscensed members with various degrees of power within roles. Each parcel then be controlled by the group owner(s), officer(s) and members. A person known to be anti-advert would probably make a good officer - as long they were not too much anti. For instance Arbor Project group all ready has done a lot of volunteer work in this kind of area.

Then these parcels could be leased to adverts after an investigation for a price creating an operating income for the group members designated to receive dividends. Perhaps, Governor Linden could even contract out this function for folks as a small job for LL members as dividends.

However, as a general rule I think the corners of every sim could be used for ads without much of a problem....perhaps 64 m2 default. (16m2 each sim). Of course, some will object to ANY adverts... I am only trying to suggest a possible compromise. Other areas could be designated after an investigation.

If any other land/zoning problems come up - they also could be handled with similar groups while paying LL members small dividends to help. thus, keeping the LL experience "animated".

I think that if the restrictions are too strict they will only become more intolerable then the ad farms or the problems they may intend to solve.

~PB

Just make it so nobody may own less than 512m^2 on any sim - a minimum ownership setup. Anyone making a 16m section in their store to rez boxes can still do so. But people blanketing SL with ads or selling parcels of land with a 16m hole in it (to extort money from the new buyer) will not be able to continue to do business as usual. Any sale that would leave a user with between 1 and 511m^2 of land doesn't get carried out.

Simple.

So they let it run rampant for years and then, do it immediately or else.

While I do hate those ads, people have paid for these pieces and with the Lindens approval. Now, King Linden decrees that this not be so.. Just so, so, typical.

You have no rights here whether you think so or not. Land ownership is a figment of their and your imagination. Nothing more.

Just keep paying and paying and paying. Soon enough, it gets old and you find yourself not logging on anymore. I sold all my land (data storage) and no longer participate, except when I get IM email. Lots more fun than logging into frustration and annoyance.

Thank you for listening to our needs finally!

I do not own a business in SL, just use it for more residential activities(buying land and building a home). I do believe that zoning a sim as residential or business will help tremendously. And if that is done ever, I think that any rules concerning ads will really differ depending on what type of sim it is.

I'm just glad that something will be done about ad farming and advertising. Its so frustrating to find a nice quiet sim, buy some land, work hour upon hour landscaping and building a home piece by piece....and come back one day and find huge ugly spinning ad signs all around your home.

I dont know the answer to the ad farm problem. But I do appreciate the Lindens finally taking this problem seriously.