Feedback on Ad Farm post

Immediately?

Jack blogged about the "Mainland and the Ad Farm Problem" back in February. A month ago, he told us that ad farms were in his sights. Now he's saying people have another month before he starts pulling the trigger.

This is hardly immediate and I have *zero* sympathy for anybody who hasn't gotten out of this scam yet. Starting pull the trigger now if you'd like, Jack.

I have not been on mainland in months because of adfarms, I say way to go LL®, when I first joined sl I used to spend alot of my time in grey using the space elevator and soon spread out exploring the rest of the mainland, ugh was my first word when I kept coming upon all this ad on these small parcel. So I made my mind up at that time to keep off of mainland and have done so thus far. Now onto this robo marx person. Trust me if you like ar'd every 30 seconds it would be wise to not even attempt this.


Moe

If anything, I hope this puts a END to obtrusive ads and neighboring micro parcel land exstorsions, and I hope. I mean really hope that this does not become a abuse report type LL auto response to unresearched claims of adfarming type complaints, Causing a Disciplinary Action to supposed Offenders, for simply having something near another parcel owners land that they don't like or want to get rid of. There should be a clear defined rules of engaigment , and a process instituted, that works both ways for the accuser and offender, this will also give new powers to the Residents of SL and should be delegated properly by LL, not left to the wolfs like per usual as LL has shown with the latest attempt at helping with the adfarm problem...

I consider banlines as great a visual scourge on Mainland as the adfarms - particularly for property owners. But they are a different matter, and their solution would be handled differently - via added viewer prefs and not enforcement. They would not require a forum to resolve IMHO.

My thoughts - apologies if these are duplicates!

1) We need a better term than "network advertising" - already I can see some people on this thread asking if this could refer to any advertising that's provided by a networked script. I'm fairly sure that's not what Jack meant, but some more explicit clarification would not go amiss.

2) I don't like the idea that the number of advertising licenses is going to be limited. I would much prefer that the rules were written so that there's no need to do this. The problem with a limited number of licenses is that it'll essentially create a cartel; probably they'll be auctioned and I expect the average user of these forums could already write down the names of the people who will get them, in that case.

3) "Land extortion" is not necessarily the same issue as "ad farming" - the argument raised earlier, that people could still put big ugly cubes on their land and not be affected by this rule because they are not "ads", is a concern. (In fact, not so long ago, the biggest land griefers did so by making a "political statement" and wouldn't have been affected by this rule!)

4) I hope there will be some penal aspect for those with existing adfarms. The situation I would not like to see is that licensing is enabled, and then the existing adfarm owners can sell the land to the newly licensed advertisers at inflated costs, thus legitimately giving them what they wanted.

Nope I do understand that it's only the first 512m2 that is teir free. My point was that you can own land up to the 1024 and still pay the same as you do now. All that will happen is that those who ONLY own 512m2 and a lot of the land based greifers are in that catagory would no longer get their free ride.

Actually, in order to not pay any tier on that 512 they would need to pay more than they do for the next 512 (for the premium membership), so not a free ride. Ad farms could only hold a maximum of 32 plots grid-wide before they needed to start paying tier (well, 35 if grouped), and most ad farmers have more plots than that.

Combined which is the reason why 512 m2 plots are sometimes called "newbie plots". Even beyond that, the 512 is often calculated in when people are figuring their land budgets so you would suddenly see a lot of 512s for sale ..... and angry legitimate land-owners who would now need to tier-down in order not to be penalized.

I agree with Linda ...

I use small kiosks on 16sm plots, usually adjacent to land I own (Zodiac Properties). They don't spin and only respond if you click them. I think that is legit business advertising and as inoffensive as possible (about 2m high and 1m cubes on them). And, my lots are not for sale at high prices nor do they have ban lines. So I hope that form of advertising continues to be allowed.

OTOH, I spent a lot of time and money cleaning up Withernook and other ad-blighted sims. It doesn't take a very sophisticated analysis to see what is legit advertising and what is land extortion. Matters of taste are more difficult to adjudicate.

But I applaud efforts in this direction and hope the community supports you.

Hey I said before - I have legit parcels less than 512m. I lend them to friends to play with until they are ready to buy their own. Want to ban me doing that Shock? (see above) I work on a $40 tier limit so I buy (and sell) odd sized lots. Calling me an ad farmer too? Get real - you work with what you can afford. We are not all sim owning rich barons

I've actually read every posting to this thread, I will assume Jack has done the same. There is one inescapable conclusion, extortion is the real issue. Extortion is a Hydra. Jack's initial comments offer a solution that simply tries to cut off one head of beast. Two more grow to replace it. It’s also obvious that the proposed Ad Farm solution mechanism can be defeated; the other heads are still functioning. I would like to suggest that the license plan should be abandoned now in favor a more properly defined plan to define and eliminate extortion, grid wide. The purpose of the original posting was to solicit comments; those have been offered in sufficient detail and thought provoking quality to recognize the short comings of the current plan. Now is the time to address extortion, a category on the AR, land owner voting majorities to remove objectionable object and sources and so on. Remember when the Group controls were reworked from the original to deal with the problems that were not anticipated when the "Group" function was defined? Apply that level of rework to the grid so that extortion attempts carry a high cost. The revised group functions work fine because they give the residents the power to deal with issues. Give us the tools to identify and deal with extortion, the weapons to deal with the Hydra and a plan for deploying them.
1). A region based voting system that uses sqm of land to define vote weight.
2). A land sale test that prevents anyone from buying a parcel smaller than X unless they already own Y sqm in the region. (Residents with legitimate uses for such parcels can rent them from the region's land owners for small fee.)
3). Any land based extortion scheme identified by the majority of the land owners in a region vote will be forced to remove the extortion element by LL governance.
4)....
5)....

Then step back and let it happen.
Let the snake killers go after this thing and end it. It stops when the profit is removed, if you don’t feed the Hydra all the heads die.

The 64 m parcel with the ugly ad tower I was speaking about has already vanished....and now it is set to sale for 15,000. I dimly remember there was something a while ago where you could AR extortion like that? I wonder whether I should try that.

Rock on!

Thanks for starting to truly engage with your customers!

I have RL friends who are Native American and wouldn't agree with you.

Hey Everybody,


I've been scanning all 23-pages for something, however, no one so far appears to have made reference to it...

If we look at the overall success of advertising on the INTERNET as a model, the IAB or 'Internet Advertising Bureau' (Website: http://www.iab.net), provides a set of basic AD Guidelines or key 'Standards' for Web Developers and Website Owners to follow.

...and the result is: 'they do'.

In consideration of the 'Bigger Picture' here: considering where SL is going, and considering outside competition that is emerging in the form of other diverse Virtual Worlds, I believe a real opportunity exists right here, right now for Linden Lab and our Community to take a leadership position, and get the 'Ad Model' right!

I mean, to simplify, essentially what we are all talking about here is community approved standards concerning:

a) the "SIZE"

And b) the "PLACEMENT" of Ads.

But this isn't websites in this time around - we need to adapt it for a Virtual Model.

To Sum Up,

NOTION: LL, if we are to have new Advertising Guidelines in SL, the Guidelines ought to
be 'Fair' & they ought to be 'Simple' - communicated in a way that everybody can follow.

There certainly is a lot of talk and feeling around this!

This is just a suggestion, but perhaps SL could look to the IAB as a starting place for inspiration and as a reference model for being able to 'Structure' and establish our own Advertising Guidelines.

An important opportunity exists 'now' to get the model right, not just for SL, but all
for all other grids in future ultimately connected to it.


www.iab.net


Respectfully Always,


DMC Zsigmond

I'd offer that these two are highly interdependent: You'll need to take the bull by the horns and address both at the same time. As a simple example, there will clearly need to be a significant difference in policy for residential and commercially zoned land. Same thing for areas of special amenity. Time to break out the town planning manuals!

You are so full of unbelievable brown stuff. I would encourage everyone to do a Google search right now on this person to see what she is all about. It takes all of 3 seconds to see that she is the Imperial Grand Duchess of Ad-Farming. I can't believe you have the unmitigated gall to even name your own name in this forum.

And your treacly "peace be with you" BS is equally unbelievable, transparent, and just really hard to stomach.

Sorry, but this new policy has your name all over it. Transition my ass. You with an advertising license would be like a fox with a henhouse license. You should thank yourself for being one of the primary reasons for this new policy. Gross violators like you forced the Lindens' hands, and basically ruined any semblance of legitimate advertising for everybody.

Everybody sing: nah nah, nah nah NAH NAH,

Hey Hey Hey

GOOOOD BYE

repeat

You would sit on your parcel, right-click on the parcel you want to mute, and select "parcel mute" from the pie menu. At that point no content in that parcel would be visible from anyone in your parcel.
What do you mean by that?
Ah.

I've had all kinds of holes in my parcels, from 16m on up, and I've had to surround them with all kinds of stuff to hide them. Once they're hidden, they're annoying, but I wouldn't call it "heartbreaking". I would LOVE to be able to just mute them instead of surrounding them with trees or invisiprims.

Restricting sale of small parcels, on the other hand, opens up all kinds of problems... starting with making it impossible to transfer little chunks of land to clean up borders between odd-shaped parcels.

And, yes, it would mess things up for stalls, because those little parcels may be owned by different groups, they don't all have the same owner even if they're all contiguous.

Restricting it so you could only sell small parcels for L$0 to a specific person would be a different matter.

If you think that there is enough reason to justify who and what you are, and you are salivating at the idea of a license to further justify yourselves then there are some things you should do to prove that.

-Take down your ads now. Responding immediately rather than waiting until September 30th looks much more professional.

-Begin a dialog with your neighbors. Start talking to them about what they are willing to see around them. Make amends if you have been awful in the past.

-If your sign was located somewhere which truly does not make sense (The backwoods of somebody's yard etc) offer the parcel to your neighbors at fair market value and move on. You might even find neighbors are willing to trade if you take the first step toward good will.

If you have used anything glowing, spewing spamming or spying(using the people stuck living around you to justify your statistics,) never ever even think about using such things again.

Yes, there are some things which need to be clarified, as to exactly what land and where future advertising will actually be located. (Please clarify this Jack). Focusing on financial benefit or cost to yourselves or whether or not you can punish your neighbors in the future does not build the goodwill or support you will need to make up for your past.

The days of anything goes for advertising are going fast. Holding on with bloody nails to something that only creates ill will does not benefit you.

My panels and cages are down. Are your signs? Acting now will be in your favor much more than whether or not you get a license that you covet so much.

Waiting until the last minute only proves that your past behavior will continue in the future. Don't pray for your angry neighbors in your forum posts, put your actions where your signs are now and start becoming part of the community.

Can you elaborate on what "legitimate advertising people" you're referring to?

This doesn't apply to ads in stores and clubs, it only applies to ad farm operators... those individual ads on 16m parcels all over the grid. What would a "legitimate ad farm" be?
I am unable to conceive of anyone who might be mistaken by linden labs as an "ad farmer" that wouldn't qualify as "abusive".

Post a picture.

I suspect Linden Labs would probably allow this, it wouldn't be worse than (for example) Outy's particle stores all over creation. But I wouldn't cry if they were eliminated either.
I do't know, I don't care, I wouldn't want one in my backyard either.
Huh? Every one I know started up with individual vendors in malls, not prefab stores dotted all over the grid. That's an expensive way to sell stuff!

Er.. What? Me?

I have no ads.. No signs.. No big spinny things. I actually don't even have an ad farm problem where I live on the mainland, except for some empty parcels at silly prices..

I just don't like extortion.

How, pray tell?

I'd like to sell you a beautiful 2048 in a great location at a great price. I'll tell you later about the hole in the middle of it. Once you've setup your shop, that's where the giant glowing penis will be located.

There's a problem here. I--and I suspect others--have picked up some of these smaller parcels just to frustrate ad farming . . . and to pick up some extra prims.

With your "solutions", I'll get slapped in the face for doing this. Unfair, I think.

There's got to be a better alternative.

--- Rema

Simply by strategic cutting; being in the right hole at the right time, which is what they are shooting for.

Outside of that, verbal harassment from a continuously-created army of alts, and reverse-harassment attacks on people who try to integrate the holes into their builds.