Feedback on Ad Farm Post - Part 2

I ask a sensible plain question... ie what is going to happen when one resident takes it upon themselves to harass an advertiser (an allowed legitimate form of business). All i got was people replying clearly indicating they would continue doing such if 'they' didn't like it. I know of an instance where a person has surrounded land with a 32 metre high advertisement of their own...rendering the land inside useless - nothing is done. I know of several instances of people placing linden trees overlapping ad plots - nothing was done. I know of at least two incidents where 40 metre high blockers were deliberately placed to block ads on all sides - again with nothing done. All AR'ed - all nothing done. And in all these cases individuals took it on themselves to decide what would and wouldn't be visible. They didn't poll neighbours, they didn't communicate...they simply acted to harass an allowed activity. Now that this new policy expressly allows (again) advertisements but then limits them to the ground...i ask again - is anything action going to be taken against residents who take it upon themselves to deliberately harass advertisers (like the group of people you belong to Esther - who admit to huge markups, advertising on ad plots, harassment via ban lines, encouraging harassment via overbuilding - all the things that your group (and others) complains about, your group members admit to doing!).
I do not have a problem with a resident who blocks a side view of an ad from his 'home'...i do have a problem with those who block ads on 3-4 sides despite not being a resident on the sim...or who buy surrounding land with an ad in place and then act to bully that ad out... or those who place ads on their land, then block others from view simply cause they unilaterally decide they don't like them.
Will Lindens with their new found vigour for cleaning up ads also act to clean up the obvious harassment of others who (despite buying uncovenanted mainland) are against ads?
Will the Lindens take action against organised networks of the anti-ad brigade who take it upon themselves to harass even when they have no particular interest in a sim.
Will the Lindens take action against those who deliberately buy land on all 4 sides of existing ads with the express intention of bullying the previous owner out?

And for those of you who replied - please define where exactly on an uncovenanted sim - is an unsuitable spot? There are no residential areas - anyone else can build anything else they want - unless YOU don't want it? And you want the right to bully anything you don't want? Even builds that adhere to all guidelines?

An ad should not be placed on a parcel that has other parcels that can surround it on all four sides. That is bad placement for a legitimate advertiser, thus they would not pick a site such as that. If the owner of the adjoining parcels choose not to look at what is in their neighbor's parcel, they have a right not to. If an advertiser wants someone to see the ad they will choose a parcel that does not afford residents the ability to block them (ie, they will choose a roadside parcel).

k this sounds reasonable

YAY!!! now this is a better idea by far and I am sure every one will soon see benefits...

oh except the ones that have been driving down the value of the mainland for many months with their manipulation.

No offence Starfire but i see three things wrong with your statement.
1/ Those who buy land surrounding an ad are clearly aware the ad is there already - then they block it...i consider that harassment of an existing land owner. If i surrounded your land and then blocked it in to 40 metre heights you would consider it harassment too.
2/ Unless you are an advertiser - you cannot say what they would pick. Any area with high traffic is a legitimate area for an ad. I want as many people as possible to see ads.
3/ If an owner of an adjoining parcel buys the land AFTER the advertiser - he has already chosen to live with the ad. AND he doesn't have the right to decide what everyone else who passes by sees.

Ads get clicks and proveable results - therefore some people do appreciate them. No one person (or group of conspirators) should have the right to decide a valid, endorsed business practice should be hidden from others.

Where this happens - i wish to know if anything will be done by the Lindens

YAY Ad farmers DIE!!!!

I'm confused--what set of four ads in Ambat? NCI doesn't rent anything in Ambat from you; we own our land in Ambat. Do you mean Iris?



I can't think of any reason that any of the proposed rules from Linden Lab would affect NCI's InfoNodes in the slightest. We don't run any paid ads at them.

I think I must be misunderstanding what you are talking about. I will try to run you down in world to clarify.

Sentences like that seem weak to me, as they leave a lot of ambiguity. While the new rules clarify things from Jack's last post, they also allow a lot more people to use land to extort. I am not as happy as everyone else seems to be. Perhaps I would be happy only if ad farming on mainland were banned.

You betcha. You don't think you get to decide what I have to look at from my home or business, do you? Choose places where you aren't being an eyesore to your neighbors and the neighborhood, where you aren't reducing the price of land of those in eyesight of your ads. No problems then, I bet. 1 prim Linden trees are big and bushy, and plenty tall...look pretty nice, too.

A1. If own land you expect to have a wall put up beside you whether its a house or shop or advert parcel it is a fact of life people put up privacy walls.
Sometimes your neighbor is a pr**k so you put up a wall and forget about him, it happens in real life, when neighbor is an advertiser without the brains to pick a sensible plot for his advert, he can expect a wall to be put up, not a 40m wall but a nice little 8m high wall.


A2. Then you have nothing to worry about you have the brains to pick a good spot where people will not build walls, which begs the question why ask such a silly set of questions in the first place.



A3. If someone buys land next to an advertiser they probably want to put a shop there as personally I just wouldn't choose the area if i wanted to place a house there.
Hypothetically speaking so don't take offense here. If however I did buy land and you popped up with an advert one day, stating you had the land for ages long before I arrived then my nice 8m wall would go up will I awaited the Lindens to come and rag your skanky ass out of town for harassment.



I also would like to know what the lindens will do in the instances Jub Jub mentions because it will show clearly whether the Lindens want to rebuild the mainland or allow the rule of a few Pr*cks.

Dear Lindens
I propose that anyone who threatens another with death, or abuses another with names like Pr**ks, or accusations of criminality ... be banned from commenting on this forum.
It is obvious they are incapable of making intelligent input or discussion.

i think ll is making this far more convoluted than it needs to be.
jack said elsewhere something to the effect of 'we will now treat mainland as the linden estate'. estate owners dont bother with a detailed policy that attempts to address each and every possible circumstance.
just ban 'adfarming' and 'land extortion/griefing' and be done with it.
if somebody elects to ignore the adfarming/extortion ban, unapologetically remove them from the estate like any other estate owner would do, then let them try the same tactics on caledon or dreamland

as far as 'what is an adfarm?' 'what is land extortion?' well, jack knows what an adfarm is. he can picture one in his mind. we all know what an adfarm is. we are all well aware of what land extortion entails. it seems a waste of time and energy to fret so thoroughly over an all-inclusive definition of something any avi over a month old can spot immediately.

I've seen LL's cave-in with this 50-ads per account sop to the ad farmers and land extortionists and had a few thoughts on the matter as regards tightening up controls...

1) One way of cutting down on the alt-abuse of that provision would be to restrict advertising to Premium accounts backed by a genuine bank account ONLY. This would be verifiable by requiring a written letter of confirmation from the bank manager. 'Disposable' top-up credit cards, debit cards, wire transfer and/or unverified PayPal accounts, etc., are not acceptable.

2) Require a cash deposit of US$ 1000 from any account wishing to enter the advertising business. This sounds like alot but for a genuine business this is peanuts. This deposit is refundable upon the account holder retiring from the advertising business and would be subject to forfeiture if the account holder broke any of the conditions regulating advertising and/or was subject to too many AR's regarding their business practices. This deposit would have to be paid directly from the account holder's verified bank account. Payment from Credit Card, Debit Card, PayPal, wire transfer, L$, the account holder's US$ balance, etc., should not be accepted.

3) Require a non-refundable cash deposit on a per-sim basis to apply to each sim within which an account wishes to place advertisements. I would suggest a deposit amount of 10% of the tier rate for a sim so that the deposit for an advertiser to place an advert on a mainland sim would be US$ 19.50, an island sim would be US$ 29.50 and on an openspace sim US$ 7.50. Once again this deposit would have to be paid directly from account holder's verified bank account. Payment from Credit Card, Debit Card, PayPal, wire transfer, L$, the account holder's US$ balance, etc., should not be accepted.

In order to make such a requirement stick I would insist on all existing advertisers to either comply with the proposed regulations or else forfeit their land holdings to Governor Linden. Another possibility would be to wipe the slate clean by erasing all existing adverts as well as reclaiming all existing microparcels from the grid and starting with a fresh slate.

"This would be verifiable by requiring a written letter of confirmation from the bank manager. "

That will never happen. If it did...I would be outta here. Some of us like our privacy, tyvm.

Geez. How about just ban all ads and be done with it.

I second this

@ Martin Magpie: Your information would only be reviewed by LL financial department who realistically should be bound by working code-of-practice rules as regards customer confidentiality. If that's too much for you then, yes, step back from the plate. Yes, it's harsh but sometimes the medicine has to be tough.

Actually I am in favour of banning all ads but I am a realist and accept that advertising is one of those necessary evils in life.

Thank you very much Lindens. This will tremendously improve the quality of life. And finally we will be able to get rid of the boards we put in place because the neighbor spoiled our view with rotating signs!

Thanks!

If it would be this simple, Linden could actually do so, but, enforcing a private estate covenant is done with great delicacy and communication. This to avoid customers running away from the private estate real fast. And this is exactly why I think LL will not succeed in getting mainland ok. LL simply does not have the time and communication skills to enforce rules in a delicate way. The reason why good managed private Estates work, is right because they talk with the person first who is doing something against the covenant. I am the head of Customer service in the third largest Estate in SL and actually the LL company culture, on how residents are treated and communications are done, helps us to be successful. I think Private estates see other estates as real competition but Mainland......

Said this, I applause of course the effort of LL to get mainland better for the people as I wish everybody a perfect second life in this great great virtual world.

Did I ask any extortionist to be antisocial to me and every other user in Secondlife by their actions?

No

Some of the users are being Pr*ck's like it or not, The fact is I have had a belly full of all the extortion cr*p, it is criminal, it is antisocial and any user who engages in it should loose all rights to be treated fairly in my view.

Oh btw I am not even anti advertising I may even take up the chance to put a few of them out myself after the deadline, but you can be damn sure I will not be placing them in someones garden, will not be making them stupid colours to p*ss off every poor b*st*rd that has to look at one and if asked to move any of them I will do without fuss.

Why would I do that?

Oh its just called being smart and keeping up good relations with potential customers.

If people don't like being referred to in a derogatory way then they shouldn't act like right choppers.

Simple as.

Also if you read carefully I didn't refer to any particular person as a Pr*ck.

However the fact you took offense to the way I speak does indicate to me that you possibly feel an affiliation to the group of people I mention.

Lindens is my tone offensive if so I will attempt to be less scathing from now on I await a response.

Yes the common sense approach, Lindens just doing what needs to be done.

The convoluted approach the lindens are taking is only for our benefit, so we know what to report or not report, as I see it.
They have their idea of the way this is going to go, I think the statement Jack Linden made says this is the way they are going to play it.
But they wish to make it as clear to everyone as they can, the sorts of things they will treat as acceptable on their estate from now on.

Well I hope I am right here anyway.

This discussion is allowing us the users to offer any other ideas, that they might choose to follow as they manage their estate.

Confirmation please Lindens would be good.

My friend just bought a 380ish parcel next to my property and he is surrounded on two adjoining sides by ban lines. Those ban lines are almost always visible because of the small size of his property. It's time to list ban lines as harassment and put them in the same category as adfarms.

If I see ad land next to a parcel I don't buy it. Can you explain why someone would put an ad next to my residential plots? It sure as hell isn't for the traffic.



So you want to put them somewhere that they will be seen, which means working with a parcel owner, not against them. You're cashing in on someone else's traffic, why don't you ask the person running the high traffic location whether you can advertisie within their parcel, sell your advertising that way.



It's the same as any other parcel, access shouldn't be fully blocked. However why put yourself in that position, give your advert space for it not to happen.

Who has made death threats against you Jub Jub?

Has anyone made such a threat? Or are ad farm extortionists now resorting to DNC/GOP style histrionics to gain pity from the Lab. If you have not been threatened with death then your comment and attempt to stir something up like this should result in you being removed from Secondlife permanently.

We said this back in April when we started camping his and other Lindens' Office Hours.

We were told that, more or less, they had to have a concrete and well-defined policy framework from which to operate, and that was what was taking so long.

Any estate manager worth his salt would have taken about ONE DAY to formulate a solution that would have solved the problem RIGHT THEN. Give em a week grace, and lower the boom. Would have avoided MASSIVE wastes of time and resources, and would have been EXTREMELY effective.

However, here we are, almost 6 months later, and LL is still guessing what to do.

The proof will have to be in the pudding, because the words are done.

I'm wondering if the new policy on adfarms is a starter policy that you intend to revise in the future if the 50 adverts turns out to be too many? A few months down the road, can the policy be expanded on or revised or is it intended to stay the same for a year or more?

I've read through all the responses so far, and at first I was mad that the policy wasn't strict enough, but smaller ads and the new restrictions will improve the mainland, where I own property, but it needs to be left open to modification in the near future. I like low-key advertising, or at least a little sign or marker that lets me know that an interesting place is OK to explore or not, or where things are located. I have a flag advertising my store flying over my property and signs throughout my yard directing shoppers and visitors to teleport or find things.

My main objection is to the obnoxious mainland-wide handful of known adfarmers who exist in SL only to abuse and extort residents every chance they get, and are looking for any loophole they can find to continue their harassment practices. And from reading some of the responses from those adfarmers on this thread, I know that's exactly what they are trying to do.

That has been shown for several of the websites linked from one particular adrunner's network prims. Under the old rules, absolutely nothing was done about it, despite being repeatedly abuse reported -- presumably because adfarmers were being handled with extreme deference to some non-public enforcement guidelines (as with their special treatment regarding "blocked access".

On the plus side, that treatment gave them plenty of rope to hang themselves. I rather doubt there will be much patience for those whose histories include such abuse.

The larger point is quite accurate: LL has had provision in ToS/CS to remove any or all objectionable ads at any time they wanted, all along. This new policy seems merely a statement of intent to actually do so.