Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

I know, Thanks anyway



My Lord, I rest my case



Ideas are not Jokes, all the contrary; ideas are the fuel of actions. You and your companions, Sir, are the Joke

A very good argument, Sir.

Always glad to help those who need it most.



I am glad we agree.



Well, joke or not, our Ideas seem to be gaining traction and bringing forth positive results on the mainland. As a result, I would say "the Joke's on you".

A Christian Dragon, interesting



Of course we do; you recognized to be a Communist wannabe



Sorry NO Joke at all, about Ad Farms I said nothing I even agree with your views, what I said was about that Lady stupid idea about "price regulations" and on that subject, up to my knowledge the Lindens have not pronounced themselves.

BTW it would be very curious to see SL became a Communist Virtual World inside America, it would be a real Joke worth of prime time in televisions all over the world. LOL

One other thing, who is Luke? I was accused of being his ALT and would like to know my clone. Or am I the clone? This is confusing


a'kei nieo

Fortunately, Christians have no monopoly on helping others.



Yup, qualified as opposed to a criminal wannabe, sure thing.



Even the the Great Mecca of Capitalism, the US, has price controls all over the place. Ever heard of tariffs? How about anti-price gouging statutes? Seen a lot of that recently with the gas shortage in the South.

Like it or not, price regulations are no more "communist" than any other form of responsible regulation of the "free market". Just like "naked short selling" is likely to go the way of the dodo soon as well. Don't worry, it will be back in some form some day for more anarcho-capitalists to abuse to their sole benefit and drive the country into an economic recession.



SL is a dictatorship. Always has been, always will be. Whatever Linden Lab says, goes. Those who don't like it can leave or be shown the door. That includes me, you, and everyone else here.



Search is your friend.

nieo aci, aoretao

I am writing out of concern and sheer frustration with the current state of Second Life as it pertains to small business owners and the dreaded "ad farms". I own a business in SL, I run a nice clean club with a mature theme. I encourage harmonious comoradity between my staff of nearly 80 employees and we often talk about ourselves in terms of "the family" and "the sisterhood". My business has changed hands several times and I am not the original ownwer but have been involved in the club since my first days in SL. I can tell you that since I have been the sole owner of the business some 6 months ago, we have generated well over a million lindens that has gone back into the SL economy. I do not profit from this business, yes there have been some weeks that I come out ahead but more often than not I end up at break even or with a small loss. My year to date P&L has me at negative nearly $100,000L's after all my costs have been calculated. I run this business not for personal monetary gain but because I love it and my family...I love my sisters and the bond we have forged.

In the past, it had been my practice to rent ad space from someone who had a large group of 16 mtr ad parcels on a network (I guess a stereotypical ad farmer) and we would negotiate a 3 month price for the prim space and she would place my ads. As soon as we started running this sort of advertising we saw an immediate increase in traffic in the club. We are a 24/7 operation and I have a duty to my employees to keep a steady stream of traffic flowing through our doors. This arrangement was fine with me until the person from whom I rented ad space decided to take my rental fee and not run my advertising. I paid her $40,000L's and she left SL for several months. After that theft and humiliation, I decided that I didnt want to be slave to other non eithical business owner's whims, so I bit the bullet and ivested my own rl dollars into the game and began buying 16mtr ad parcels so I could control my own destiny. My goal was to just use up my remaining land credits with 16 mtr parcels which I have alwasy used for the sole purpose of advertising my own business...I never rented out ad space or set my ad parcels for sale. I have had to rely on my own ingenutiy to drive traffic to my business and use my rather rudimentary building skills to create signs. There have been times my naivete' has probably caused others some annoyance...I had placed some spinning signs at one point and then heard from residents that they were both infringing on land boarders and violating TOS....both were never my intention and I have done my best to rectify any situations where I have broken any rules of ethics as well as rules of SL. It has never been my intention to cause problems for other residents or to detract from others SL experience. My goal has alwasy been peaceful coexistance and mutual respect. Anyone who has ever IMd me with complaints or concerns about my signage has been met with genuine concern and willingness to work towards resolution. I have shrunk, raised, lowered, changed scripts, changed textures and otherwise customized my advertisements and done whatever possible to accomodate residents with issues regarding my advertising. I have always treated others with respect and have taken their complaints seriously and worked diligently to find acceptable solutions we could both live with. I can name many people with whom I have developed a good relationship that began with an IM from them alerting me to a problem with one of my signs. I have swapped land and sold land not for profit, but at the same purchase price that I paid (as a general rule I refuse to pay more than $1000L for a 16mtr parcel and have sold mine for the same price I paid). Unfortunately, I must tell you that I have not been treated with much respect in return. One particular resident yelled at me and called me a whore monger and porno peddler and other names and told me I was the lowest form of scum and an extortionist because I bought a parcel in Huckelberry and when he complained about my sign I told him I would be happy to just take down my sign and he could buy the parcel for the same price I paid...which was $160 L's. He not only attacked me for offering a solution I guess he felt was somehow unfair, but he then purchased the parcels around mine which were priced similarly, and to this day he has 30 or 40 mtr tall walls around my little 3 prim ad. My simple promotion for my business is harassment and extortion and his giant towers show common sense and unity and are not an eyesore or a nuisance? Are the lunatics running the asylum? I thought I was doing the "right" thing but have since learned that if you offer to sell your parcel as a solution you will be called an extortionist pig. I recently had another run in with a resident in Epilias...a parcel I have owned for well over 6 months now and never had any complaints...he must be a new renter there and has IM'd me repeatedly and called me a bank robber and told me I am selfish and ruining Sl because of my sign. I had a long talk with him about my position, about my business, about my goal to only support my business and not to interfere with others Sl experiences. I even found that he and I are both in the Heron Sanctuary group for disabled players, and I told him that I was one of the first fundraisers for HS and my club has held events for the HS as well as for Relay For Life and Autism Speaks, Autism All Around Us and Angel Aid. I've also been a guest speaker at Non-Profit Commons and asked to discuss about my charity work in SL. He still insisted that I have purely selfish motives in SL. I then attempted to find some acceptable solution for the sign. I offered to move it, raise it, put a transparent prim on the side that faced him, shrink it...anything that could possibly compromise and allow us to live in peace but he was adament that I have no rights to that property and that my goals are just to make money for myself and that I am destroyingt SL...I respectfully disagree.

In my opinion, the poor behavior of a few unethical business owners has resulted in a situation now where residents and even LL is painting all advertisers with the same brush. I don't run ads for any other businesses, I don't rent out ad space, I don't have my signs on a "network" and I certainly did not purchase this property with the intention to sell it for profit, in fact I know that odds are that I will lose money and never be able to recoup my investment in the land itself...but that was a loss I was willing to take and considered it just the cost of doing business and an investment in my club since this is the most effective tool I have found to drive traffic. I have tried classified, I have spent $10,000L's a week on classified ads but it didnt help. It's my feeling that the vast majority of Sl residents dont mind most responsible advertising, in fact why would it be such an effective tool to drive traffic if residents were not interested in patronizing businesses they saw advertised on Mainland. I know that when I first started SL that clicking on signs I passed in my travels was an easy way to find things to do and places to visit and stores to shop in. I personally found it useful. The amount of IMs I get per day would suggest the same, I get a vast number of messages alerting me that residents have clicked on my signs each day so many in fact that my email is rarely less than a 1000 new messages when I check it every other day or so. I also have a visitor log in my club so I can see the direct correlation between residents passing by my advertisements, they click the signs, they teleport to my business, they become clients and some become friends. I am sure we can both agree that large real world companies would never endeavor to spend money in a virtual environment unless they could substantiate proven results from those advertising dollars...I have seen real world corportate ads in "ad farms", you cannot argue the advertising's effectiveness...it clearly works. I am only one small business owner and my client group has grown from a little over 100 members to nearly 750 members in the past 6 months due to the mainland advertising. Thats a large group of residents that have shown that they have used the ads to find places of interest and chosen to then go and spend lindens there and contribute to the SL economy. Its my impression that LL does not appreciate my efforts to contribute to the economy or that of my employees...when I employ residents they tend to stick around in Sl longer and they make money, upgrade to paid memberships, buy land, buy merchandise and stay as active members of the SL community...it feels as if LL is telling me thanks but no thanks...we just don't want you or your business or your employees or clients in our community...the only people who mater to us and whose interests we want to protect are those who own land near for other use. Where is my protection? Where are my rights?

I know there are problems, I know some people have been disrespected and feel frustrated by "ad farmers"...in fact I sympathized with them since I feel that I have had the same treatment by some anti-ad farm people who have terrorized me with nasty IMs and personal attacks and who have refused to listen to my side whatsoever and have lumped me into this "ad farm" catagory. I have been called "bitch", "whore" and "slut" more times than I can count by those that claim to want to make Sl better...just how is that sort of vitriol working toward a resolution? My business has been harmed by some such fanatics, in fact one woman came in to my club and spammed all clients and employees she could find with anit-adfarm notecards and terrorized all of us by yelling about boycotting my club because I am ruining SL. I never met her before this, she never took the time to find out about me or ask me any questions or discuss any of my signs or voice any complaints to me personally. She merely decided to try and use extortion and harassment to compel me to use my private land in a way in which she approves. In what world is that behavior sympathetic?

Now it seems that LL has decided that the rights of private property owners no longer pertain to those who choose to advertise on thir property. I have read the new rules, I will of course comply as I have no option or right to apeal and am afraid that my private property will be seized by the SL government while I am not online. It is my opinion that this is not a viable solution and only portrays LL as a big brother bully who selectively changes the rules mid game (after I purchased the land with no advertising restrictions) and chooses who to opress at its whim. I know there have been complaints and that you are trying to address them...but have you even considered the other side? Have you even thought about the vast number of residents that have NOT complained? Those who have NOT had a problem with signs? Those who don't care what others do on their private property? Those who benefit from having clear and convientient advertising for businesses and services in SL? Or is this a situation of the squeaky wheel getting the oil, those with the loudest voice or the ones who complain most often and use the the most hyperbolic rhetoric get a response where those of us who are contributing members of this society and understand that others have rights to use their property as they see fit and just learn to deal with changes to our "view" and who do not seek to inpart our views and who don't expect others to change to accomodate our own personal likes and dislikes get completely brushed aside? Believe me I have seen things I find annoying in SL, floating prims with pictures of toilet bowls, political statements that I disagree with, particle emitters that lag sims beyond belief...there are many annoyances that exist but have nothing to do with advertising. Isn't one of the goals of LL to allow people to freely express themselves through building and creating content? Isn't there a bigger free speech issue to be considered here as well as the rights of private property owners? Why is my right to support my business and my employees less important and offered less protection than someone's right to put up a giant prim with a picture of Sporty Spice? I think this is a slippery slope and sets a dangerous precedent, it was always my understanding that you have to be careful with purchasing covenant land in SL because you cannot trust that the estate owners won't suddenly change the rules and force you to change what you want to build on your property...and you really never own it yourself...now it seems that LL is pulling the ultimate bait and switch...put real money into SL, convert it to $lindens to buy Mainland and support SL and own your own private property, you strive to be a real land owner in every sense of the word in this world...and then LL decides to disregard land ownership for some while cow towing to others and take away rights to build and express what you choose to on your own land. Make no mistake, this is dangerous territory. There is a famous quote, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property” that statement was made by Karl Marx.

I also understand that LL has a duty to regulate some activities in Sl. I agree with some regulation, I just have much higher hopes that LL is creative enough and forward thinking enough to come up with a more equitable solution that shows respect for all residents and maintains the invaluable rights of residents to own private property and protects the right of free speech and free enterprise. Why not rezone land? Or create new sims that are zoned for no ads, perhaps that would actually encourage more land purchases instead of causing some residents to basically abandon land and send land values to plumet further. What about granfathering in the current 16 and 32 mtr plots and changing the land tools so that land cannot be carved into ad parcels in the future...again this would make current 16 and 32 mtr parcels extremely valuable and could help increase land values in SL. I have complete faith (albeit, it has been tested recently) in LL's creative capabilities and I am certain that the extrodinary minds at LL could probably even write new code that would allow residents to make a selection in the rendering menu where they wouldnt have to view prims that were offensive to them or that interfered with their "virtual view". One side note about the "ads adversly impact my view" argument, to me this is the most bizarre and irrational argument of all since there is nowhere in rl or sl where the purchase of property includes the ownership or contol over your "view". If there was a way to control that I would like to get in line to have the houses built to my right and left in the real world to be demolished since they are unsightly and interupt my view of a lovely blue spruce on one side and an old growth maple on the other. Unfortunatley the families and the children who live there would probably be pretty annoyed by my assertion that my right to view something past their home trumps their right to build on their private property. In fact Sl gives you the unique optortunity to have some control, I have my settings at a point so I can't see many of my neighbors on the beach where I live in SL. I am always shocked at who is actually around my house when I change settings and really check out the neighborhood. By the way, I can still se the sunsets and the glimmer off the water with my settings this way, just not the neighboring land and buildings...I find it no problem at all. At the very least, I would suggest a LL created standard issue 16 mtr and 32 mtr billboard with some limited customization ability for the owner. I would recommend that a standard 16mtr billboard be a minimum of 12 mtrs high since that would allow the land owner to use 3 4x4 textured cubes...anything less doesn't afford the land owner the opportunity to utilize the land fully and, if we are completely honest here, 12 meters is very low profile and does not interfere with trees or sunsets or any other "virtual views" that other land owners believe they are entitled to and were guaranteed at the time of purchase no matter who else's right are trampled on in the process. If all signs are created equal, then there would be no need to limit the number of 16 mtr parcels and ad signs a resident can own. I tell you this, I would bet my last $linden that if you created a low profile standard issue sign for all advertisers to use, the next thing the same out spoken protesters would begin campaigning against would be builds they viewed as obnoxious even if they were art forms or just venues for free expression.

In closing I will leave you with one more quote to illustrate my point that I think deserves thoughtful consideration, "In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." - Martin Niemoeller. Right now I am the bad guy, I'm just a small business owner trying to keep my head above the virtual water...they are coming after me...are artists next? Builders? Protesters? Who is next Linden Labs?

I must say Uma that your post looks balanced and your points of view backed up with valid arguments, pitty you ruined it in the end by pulling a godwin.

At any rate, I don't think you have much to worry about, you can still have 50 adplaces outside just limited to 8 meter high and at ground level, if that leaves your ads obscured then perhaps you should think about relocating your ads to road side parcels.

it does look like advertisement companies (not calling them bad or good) are leaving SL, in the past it would take a day or so to sell L$ and about 3 to 4 days to buy L$ on Lindex using limit sell/buy, right now it is the other way around indicating a masive amount of L$ leaving SL, so people like Uma advertising for them selfs or advertisers still running adnetworks in a slimmed down way folowing the new rules are having less compitition.

So the only ones losing out are the ones that advertice at the expence of others.

It was mentioned somewhere that a slide of one of the moles projects was shown at SLCC and that the towers of rotating ads near this project were an issue. Its not a matter of who Linden Labs is coming for next. Its a matter of who makes a point of griefing until LL finally has to do something.

There is more that can be done with the space of a 16m square than simply to stick 3 boxes on top of each other. 8m is REALLY big, especially if nothing else around it is. I cannot imagine having a 12m high ad instead in the places where I already have 8m towering over me.

It is a few extremely bad apples which have brought things to this point, along with hands off by LL for a REALLY long time. I don't know that there is much else to do except evolve to meet the new rules.

Hopefully it will be done right on the part of LL as well.

If this thread was a horse it would have been shot a LONG time ago...

Welcome to the Forums. As a first-time poster, it's likely you're not aware that the Niemöller poem has a special place in online forums as a proxy for invoking Godwin's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law). To be fair to the rest of the serious post, I'll take it as an expression of strong sentiment about a perceived "slippery slope" of eroding property rights in SL.

But it's important to note that even this is not a narrow enough qualification of the change brought on by the new policy, especially because the change only affects Mainland. So, anyone is free to buy an island and put up any advertising they wish there, or to make arrangements with Estate owners to display their ads on private Estates. If it is difficult to reach such agreements with those owners, that may be a clue why the Mainland estate now also has rules against it.

As it happens, two of your ad towers were very near one of my parcels, and within about 100m of each other, so I have some familiarity with them. I honestly believe that it was not intentional, but indeed they were among the most difficult ad installations in the landscape: both sites were by far the tallest (taller even than the infamous "green monsters", used llTargetOmega(), and did encroach on neighboring parcels as they rotated. In fact, ad networks went to considerable lengths to distance their installations from these because they were so visually distracting. That was, of course, the whole purpose of their design, and in that, they were effective. But that was exactly why they contributed some to the overwhelming sentiment that the ravages wrought by Mainland display advertising needed to be curtailed.

Again, I do not believe that you intended to contribute to the deterioration of the Mainland, nor to antagonize neighboring landowners. But however innocently intended, those ads nonetheless helped fuel the public outrage at the damages caused by ads, and ultimately led to the policy that renders them obsolete.

So anyway, what are your options now? You can still have up to 50 of your own ads, compliant with the new policy. That offers quite a bit of design flexibility, and because they'll no longer have to compete for visual attention with other absurdly tall ad towers, the constraints shouldn't materially reduce their effectiveness. And because your ads reported clickthrus with follow-on business, you have a good handle on which locations actually had any value to you. (There is a complication here: you had *so* many ads that, as mentioned, some of them were within draw distance of each other, so they diluted each other's effectiveness. So, while location X with two ads may have been better than location Y with one ad, you'll have to take that geography into account because X's numbers are spread between those two ads.)

Offering less design flexibility is the option of finding third-party networks to run your ads. This has other problems, as you've experienced before, and now those networks will be limited to 50 ad locations each, so to blanket the Mainland, you'd have to make arrangements with more networks than are likely to even exist. (This is where I think LL should have better managed advertising on the Mainland estate: had they simply ruled it completely out of existence except in Linden-owned installations, and licensed advertising networks to supply content to those installations, in-world advertising would have been better served. But unfortunately, too many "advertisers"--and LL itself--were really more interested in "real estate," so that option never got the consideration it deserved.)

But really, if the goal is to promote business, in-world display advertising is at best the icing on the cake. It may appeal to a particular demographic (as mentioned in your post, primarily newer residents, and further narrowed to that sampling on the 20% of SL that is Mainland), and some businesses are uniquely dependent on that subset of the population. (There was an infamous private Estate, for example, that ran a "pump and dump" scam that could only appeal to newbies; in that case, use of particularly appalling ad towers was exquisitely diabolical in that it differentially attracted the clueless and simultaneously defiled the Mainland, increasing the appeal of private islands.) But unless a business really depends on the Mainland newbie demographic, there are many other, much more effective means of advertising, especially now that the new Search is ubiquitous on viewers and even the newest residents are relying on it to find places of interest. At best, Mainland display ads were a waning marketing tool, so this change may well be an opportunity in disguise for advertisers willing to leverage the change.

I think the parasites just plain greedy and will push to get the most for each micro plot they can.
Without real thought as to what prices are the most profitable overall.
Real business would seek to price at levels that ensure high turnover and profit, I am guessing micro parcel turnover is now very low as the prices are so ludicrous.
As price comes down turnover will increase to compensate.
Limiting the price will not make the scheme unprofitable, as turnover of the micro plots would just increase.

More cutting would take place, as a constant supply of fresh parcels were sought, which could potentially have drastic effects for a short while.

However, this would be quickly remedied as constant repair of the mainland takes place with these parcels being bought rather than just left languishing for months, if not years, as they are now.

This is not an ideal solution as it still allows the practice to exist and its exponents to continue making profit from other users.

The best option would be to ban the known parasites outright and rejoin the micro parcels to existing plots, LL seem very reluctant to do this for some reason though, possibly as they see the issue is of their own making and wish to keep all parties happy.
Perhaps a price limit would do this.

d'na sitauaiet elg aiaten danne e nandat, kemenne aoretao

Talarus, this is the real Joke, a Wolf, dressed as a Sheep, crying Wolf. LOL

Then may I suggest you do follow the rules? For starters "Adverts must be clearly PG in nature" maybe? (BTW, the PG in that refers to the rating, not to an acronym for the business.)

I think 12m in height is to high, 8m is a good fair size and should be pleasing to all parties, yes a 16sqm parcel allows for the use of 3prims but these don't have to be stacked on top of each other to be usefull.
Your adverts represent your business, well designed adverts, show care and detail, they leave a good impression



I agree with you certain people will not be happy, while any form of advertising exists, certain types of building etc.
Personally I am not anti advertising at all, I am anti the microplot extortion schemes, unfortunately advertising has been wrongly lumped into this.
As some fake advertising towers were used to upset peopel and force high payments for these small plots.

Personally I feel if a micro parcel is being used for advertising or any legitimate purpose, then it has a value a purpose within second life.
When that same parcel has been created for the express purpose of lining some tw*ts pockets then there is something wrong.
Some of these parcels probably will become art appreciation sites in the future with 30m high art designs sat on them.
Common sense must be used to identify the tw*ts from the geniune users of micro parcels.

Jack

So far you have managed to upset any of the few genuine advertisers while not satisfying the requirements of the anti spam brigade.
Do absolutely nothing to combat the actual problem of adfarming(even if it should never have been called afarming) leaving a mainland riddled with 16sqm holes owned by the same tw*ts that caused all of the unrest in the first place.
Now we just wait and see what they do next, before the next campaign takes off.

Example.

I am a doctor who fan my favorite part of doctor who is the tardis the way it can just appear in a place for a while before traveling through time and space to appear in another location apparently simultaneously.
I may invest in making Sim wide grids of 16sqm similar to the type Talarus mentioned this would give me plenty of prims to build a really nice tardis to travel in with flashing lamp cool sound effects and I could script it to move around between my plots in Sim visiting my neighbors regularly Its nice to keep on friendly terms with them.
This would be great fun, and if any of my neighbors take a dislike to my visits I can sell them my landing plot for a small fee.

Advertising is not the problem, it is micro plot farming.

let me, again, return to a similar advertising tactic in the real world that we are all familiar with.

There are plenty of people who can attest that email spamming also works, it can drive business to you, that it can be enormously profitable. Regardless of whether it works, however, email spamming can not be treated as an acceptable advertising technique because it does not scale, and there is no way it can be made to scale. I believe that adfarming should be seen as similar to email spamming, and the current situation on the mainland can only reinforce this belief.

Possibly, but market forces do work. If the strategy we're considering, buying up plots and selling them for only exorbitant rather than outrageous values, was profitable... then the cutters that used it would have out-competed the ones that are demanding outrageous values, and we would have already seen this spreading across the map.

My conclusion is that the rate of turnover even for modestly overpriced microplots is so low that it's not a practical strategy.

That's the elephant in the room: What might LL actually be willing to do? And that's difficult to divine.

A lot of folks predicted very vocally for a very long time that microparcel ad builds would never, ever be regulated. And earlier, that no controls could ever apply to building and scripting any griefing thing one wanted on a microparcel in order to coerce a sale. Eventually, for whatever reasons, LL decided to reign-in those abuses. Now they're at a decision point about what to do next, and they're clearly not entirely satisfied with the alternatives.

They've said that existing Mainland presents insurmountable obstacles to full zoning (whatever "zoning" actually means). At the same time, they've made it pretty clear that new Mainland will be zoned, and at least any we're likely to see anytime soon won't permit parcel joins and subdivides (a la Bay City). And Jack said that anti-landcutting rules are next-up for improving existing Mainland.

So they're trapped in arriving at a consistent policy. They want no microparcels at all on new Mainland, and (somehow) no new ones should be created on existing Mainland. So they understand that the ones that are out there are a serious problem. They just don't seem to want to take any measures to deal with it.

That's a kind of backsliding from their expressed intent to act as true estate managers of the Mainland. No other estate manager would put up with this situation for even a day--if they ever managed to find themselves in this mess in the first place. Let's be real about it: they'd just confiscate the parcels and make them available to augment adjacent parcels, and they'd do it without delay or apology: it's their business, after all.

Unfortunately, however, LL still has some difficulty really seeing Mainland as a business; they're still a little in the thrall of playing "government." (An unfortunate result is that residents cling to an imaginary Magna Carta, and assert property rights on their pixel "land." There's another whole related problem with folks seeing in-world trade as a true "market" and trying to apply full-bore RL economic philosophies to the wholly contrived artifacts of the SL build and land tools. But that's another discussion.)

... Anyway, ...

It's just my hunch that any nontrivial price caps on microparcels would not be effective at reducing the existing problem, and if wrongly formulated could make it worse by increasing both sale and creation of new microparcels, unless the landcutting ban is first established (however that is to work). But I may be wrong. Argent may be correct that the whole model falls apart without really absurd prices. This would be true, for example, if the vast majority of microparcel sales were, in fact, mistakes. (After all, people are still making the sell-to-Anybody-for-L$1 and oops-I-bought-a-doughnut-hole mistakes, somehow.) If that were the case, then the optimal price would be the highest-likelihood L$ balance of incautious land buyers.

They have regulated advertising within the mainland, declared an intent to act as estate managers but what have they actually done to regulate the use of these parcels?



When have they stated anything about future anti-cutting plans, I have missed any mention of that, it would be a great start though but then if future cutting were outlawed why allow 16-256sqm at all, most agreed genuine uses for small parcels require the ability to cut fresh ones?
Where did Jack mention this ?



Yes they certainly seem reluctant to take any action.



Exactly this shows no intent to act as estate managers or a simple misunderstanding perhaps they got blinded by talk of adverts.



Yes LoL, we are all renters, paying for a service and it would be nice to get some response from the providers.
I guess by the nature of the game it hard not to think of it as my land.



I don't care what they do, the curtesy of response acknowledging there is a problem and taking some action to remedy it would be pleasant.

This was at Jack's Office Hour last week--for which I didn't get a transcript. There were no specifics at all, and no clarifying responses as folks at the meeting discussed how it might or might not work, so... I guess it will be another little surprise.

I don't think there would be anything like the amount and variety of content or the kind of Second Life that we have if they hadn't decided on a mostly hands-off approach.

I think that unlikely, and I don't think that necessary.

My reasoning is this:

If microparcels sold at any reasonable rate to anyone except scammers, then we would already see most microparcels for sale at levels only a small multiple of market, because that would be the most profitable way to operate, because it would minimize the amount of time you would have to hold the parcel (and pay tier) before selling it.

Therefore, if the scammers didn't see the potential of selling the parcel for large multiples of market, then even if the original cutters sold for small multiples of market they wouldn't buy the parcels... because they would almost certainly be left holding the parcels for long periods waiting for some nearby landholder to expand into their trap... and the profit wouldn't pay for that tier.

WHOIS.COM !!!!!!!

Today is the day I take RL actions against the pest of SL did a little research on whois.com and yes you can find any and all information on any website owned by any person! I am calling the IRS and reporting this pest and see what they feel about his online gambling that is taking place right now and has been for a few months. With a little research i have even found city,state,street address even rl phone numbers so I pretty much have all the info they will need to take any further actions against online theft of this magnitude !!!I encourage anyone else facing similar problems to take these full actions along with me,Obviously SL punishment is not enough its time to bring RL reprecussions on this worthless avatar! And yes he has broke RL laws with his little practices so please come join the fun today and lets swamp this person local IRS office !!!

You just broke the first rule of fight club...