The Question of Land Cutting

Point 1 yes
Point 2. Although there are some valid reasons to cut blocks into smaller parts, I think in general the majority know your target audience.
Point 3 Yep

Oh and I fully agree with the post above . Couldn't have put it sweeter.

What an excellent idea. My brother has a parcel that is 8,000 sq m and there are two 16 sqm parcels where one is listed at L$777 and the other is not for sale. He has exhausted all efforts to contact the owners, one who has the parcel for sale to see if he can negotiate a purchase and the person refuses to answer him. That is just plain rude, regardless of the price set on the parcel. There's such a thing as fair market value and then there's price gouging. Having a parcel this size in the middle of someone's land and putting a price that is over and above the fair market is nothing but price gouging. We don't like in RL, yet some people think it's okay in SL. As for the other parcel, the person knows it's there or hasn't logged on in so long that they don't get the IMs or they just like knowing that they have the power to keep a hole in someone's yard. As long as they pay the tier, it's there right to keep the property, but there's nothing that can be done with 3 prims other than make someone else miserable. Well, rocks and boulders cover up a multitude of sins, so who's the winner here?

There are times when a parcel needs to sectioned, especially for shop owners who want to allow buyers to rezz items, but if a parcel owner wants to sell the land, they should be required to rejoin these small parcels to the main piece. There's no value to the land bigger piece of land when someone else owns a small piece right in the middle of it. This makes resale of the land near impossible.

I say regulate - it's only right and it's fair. If an owner of a 16 sq m parcel wants to price high, a cap should be placed on the amount charged. It is utterly ridiculous that anyone would think that placing the value on something this small at $L10K is right, but this is being done in SL. Even at a high price, L$100 is overcharging.

I think. Well said sir !

Couldn't have said it better.

It would remove the incentive of doing so. However, technically limiting the price would not be effective, because a perp could (i) not set a parcel for sale and (ii) still extort money from his neighbour by asking him to pay him a high sum before setting it for sale at a low sum.

I think you will not solve this through a surgical policy. You need a sweeping statement along the lines of: "You are not allowed to use any features of your land to harass your neighbours. This includes, specifically, asking for excessive compensation for small parcels in return for changing any features or setting them for sale."

Talarus' suggestion is spot on.

My background on the issue has been from a landowner that has taken the time to purchase up many lots and combine them into 1 group for rental purposes.
Saying that, I would state that as long as all the plots are owned by 1 person or group..what difference does it make how i subdivide them? I usually cut land into 512 or bigger parcels to facilitate land management of prims and and powers alloted to my tennants. I would welcome you to come see how i have it set up as I have also spent time thinking on this and have a decent looking place. If I was required to combine all my land into one parcel I wouldnt be able to provide the services at the level that I do and as I am used to doing. Also the fact that i bought a lot of my land 1 lot at a time (mostly 512's) ..why wouldnt I have the right to sell it if i wanted to the same way? This is suposed to be supporting free enterprise and while I understand and agree with the fact that there is a problem with plots of 16M2 interspersed throught SL an outright ban on cutting of land and selling it would be opposed by me. If there was a way to sell of plots of a minimum size I may go for that.....say 128 or 256 as a minimum. If that is not an option I would oppose the limits on "cutting Land"
Travis Jeffries
Lucky Irish Rentals

I own a 32 sq. m. plot of land, it supports only 7 prims and all I use it for as a backup place for hippovend servers and an SL magic box. I do this so I have three servers spread over the grid to reduce the chances of a sim being down negatively impacting the small store I run.

I admit I'd like to have purchased a bigger plot of land but the only other plot for sale on the sim is 464 sq. m. and they are asking L$47,000 for that - the sim is Tan and I desired a plot there simply because of the name.

In my own case I am not in any way impacting upon those around me - my use of the land is discreet and does not infringe upon the landscape as the servers are hidden up in the sky out of view.

However, I do agree that the cutting up of land with the sole intention of forcing someone to purchase those small plots at a price above the market norm for the sim is not correct. Whilst someone may have a reason for a single 16 sq. m. plot (a couple of prims for a server for example) there is no reason for someone to take a 512 sq. m. plot and chop it up into loads of 16 sq. m. plots.

Like others here I agree that you have provided much information about this and people have given you very valid arguments for action to be taken swiftly on this matter.

In general there is no need for 16m² plots, but in general there is nothing against them. However to discourage cutting up, why not invent a way that forces plot owners of such small pieces to sell for a minimum price. Say, as soon as a plot goes under 512 m, automatically the average SL-price of that moment per square meter applies.
Such a measure would eliminate speculation and/or excessive prices for small plots.
I admit I say this too for my own reasons. I am trying to buy land in Tchailosky where the cutting up has happened, but where some 16 m plots are priced beyond belief. When "reasonable" I might be willing to pay the price, but excessive prices? Never!

such as land owned by alts that have been banned from SL. I cannot buy the land owned by a mafia group that griefs my land because the owner is banned. Linden Labs solution? Move.

I don't own any mainland now so this isn't an immediate problem for me however I have owned fairly large chunks which I have used for different things.

I would certainly want to be able to split the land into various size parcels so to lose that ability would be a problem. When I've rented land I've joined it all into one parcel and re-split it into the new parcel sizes I wanted - often with odd shaped pieces in between. This allows tenants to have media streams and also keeps common areas for all users.

As far as I can see the real problem is with selling these small plots (and I've also been on the receiving end of this where I have had bits out of my land belonging to someone else and the only way i can get them is to pay extortionate fees). If LL prevent land sales under a certain size then I think that would solve the problem. I don't think that they need to stop people cutting their land just as long as they don't sell it on in that state.

I think it is good this is taken up by Linden Lab, as sayed on the officiel blog
its have destroyed many good sims, and been exspensive to clean up.
Deliberaly use of smaller plots as 16 to 128 sqm cuts for higher profit should not be legal, as I see some sale land where they fx take a roadside and cut it so front is way exspensive and the rest behind to low price, Its usless land exept if someone want live in a skybox and that leave the part looks deserted.

Its also a problem theres no rules for where to cut land, I have a 4080 Sqm parcel wiht adds in the middle. Hard to use and hard to sell, and the rule about not must block access to others land make it even harder, That rule should not go for the small cuts.

I think there should be a max price for selling small cuts. But it shall be lowets day price, there is around 3.1 Linden Sqm I think. But also a solution build in for situations where land owners there do an effort for a better mainland can solve like I write about. The small cuts in my parcel is not used of there "owners" if they even exsits or have right to add after the new rules and are set to prices up to 9999Linden, in my opinion it should be taken out and offered to me on the normal rules for buying land of Linden Lab, and I dont mind Linden goes from 1 Linden sqm, to lowest day price around 3.1 Linden Sqm.

Last I think Linden Lab could consider add farming in planning new sims, wiht layout for add spots. Same way as Linden make protectet land now, simple state a part as Add area and only allow add in a sim to be there, When I consider buying land in that sim I know where I can exspect adds to be. Now i never know where they could turn up.

Bertram Merlin

* Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?
* Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?
* With land that is already cut up, but still mostly owned by the resident that cut it, should we ask that the land be joined back together?

1. I agree

2. for shop-owners - to create a box-rezzing area for customers if needed

3. Yes

"Similar in many ways to the ad farm situation" .... Love it! Is anyone surprised?
That small number of people will have something to lose, and would be expected to resist as far as possible - whether by trying to game the rules or making cartooney threats. Whack them straight away and refer to the whacking when dealing with the small-fry opportunists.


Price Gouging is a term that would fit.
I can understand that LL would hesitate to use the term Extortion in formal communications.



Any automated or black/white controls would punish the innocent.
My group has a number of small parcels with boundaries an Linden water sims or roads. They are set for public vehicle rezzing. If we ever decide to sell any, it would be unfair to be forced to give them away for a song.

What is a "small" parcel? A strip or random collection of 16s can be linked into something that is just large enough to evade that. Roadsides are particularly open to this. I'm sure that the main perps will swap parcels between each other to facilitate whatever is required to game the rules while maintaining the maximum leverage over sim landowners.




I think that Talarus Luan put it quite forcefully.

By all means give a few examples and *emphasise* that these are simply examples. If it looks like a definitive list, you're immediately in trouble from people who do something not on the list.

Here's one for you:
Say I've got a bunch of microparcels that all of a sudden I can't sell for huge prices because of some new policy.
No problem.
I put a very discreet or non-offensive object in each one and offer land plus contents for a huge price. The object might be on a little hill, on the flat or in a little crater. It might be up in the sky if LL threatened to zap it near the ground.
NB: It's not an advertising object.
The object is a container for a BIAB (business in a box). I'm not selling the land for the price. I'm selling land including contents as a whole business package.
The buyers get a place to rezz their Xsteet or other server. The micro-parcel is an integral part of the deal.
The buyers can put a discreet vendor there (included in the fabulous BIAB package).
Hey! Great deal, and probably worth twice the asking price. I'm just offering at this excellent price to encourage and enable new residents to set up in business. Dammit - I'm actually *improving* SL.

That's just off the top of my head. Given time and motivation, I'm sure that I and others could come up with other inventive ways of offering small parcels for huge prices.

What would your Governance team make of that? Would it depend on the particular Linden making their own value judgement as to whether this business was bogus or real? In the absence of a formula, would they have the clue about living in the real SL world to understand what was going on?

Perhaps it should be a mandatory procedure for front-line AR staff to run any AR that isn't blatant but hints of price-gouging past a specialist.

If your written policy and your briefing of the Governance team is too rigidly defined and does not encompass that and other sorts of unforeseen moves, you've lost, and anyone with a clue is going to be really pissed at you.





Then you really have to whack the major perps and do it visibly after setting a deadline. Otherwise the AR volume will swamp you.

While I agree with the majority of your post, the wording in some sections needs to be more implicate.

1) Don't cut land into checkerboards with the intent to sell any of them.
3) Don't cut donut holes or corners out of rectangular plots and sell them.

What if this was 512 parcels to sell or rent? So maybe

1) Don't cut land into *mircoparcel* checkerboards with the intent to sell any of them.
3) Don't cut *mircoparcel* donut holes or corners out of rectangular plots and sell them.

Then a mircoparcel size would have to be defined, just 16m, or 64m or more?

What if people offered 16s for rental at extortionate rent?

The hold over the neighbours is still the same. If they pay the extortionate rent, they get control over the land via a group. They would be honour bound not to interfere with other parcels belonging to the rental group or exceed the parcel prim count. This applies with many normal rental situations.

It's not a wonderful deal, since the landlord could chuck them out without notice, even the instant after accepting a month's rent. This happens in PI's and probably around some mainland rentals -- and LL say it purely an inter-resident dispute.

However, the renter does get rid of a difficulty, even if it's not as final as actually buying the land.

This would be essentially the same extortion process, but not contrary to TOS.

I really don't think the AR volume has to be that bad, if the sequence goes something like this:

1. Announce two-week warning period for microparcel sellers to get their prices down to L$1/m2 (or, at most, some "average market price".

2. End of two weeks: run a query on parcels under 256m2 priced above the ceiling, sort by owner UUID, and IP ban everybody with more than a few.

3. Have bots go around and reclaim all the overpriced parcels for the Governor, setting parcel options appropriately, and setting them for sale to the "most likely" neighbor* for L$1/m2.

4. Announce that the new "Land Fraud: Dicing and Gouging" abuse category is open for reports.

5. If "most likely" neighbors don't buy the reclaimed parcels in some reasonable time, have bots put the land to auction with a minimum bid just over than the maximum selling price for the parcel.

________
*This is just for expediency in getting the Mainland sewn back together. "Most likely" neighbor is usually pretty easy to figure out: whoever shares the most adjacent sides of the parcel, other than the Governor herself. That's not always going to be unambiguous, but I'll bet it gets 80% of the parcels. Of course not all the "most likely" neighbors are going to want the land, or be in a position to take it, but it will work in half the cases, maybe, which is better than making Concierge hop to every single one individually in response to neighbors' support tickets.

I bought 2 dozen "ad farm plots" and combined them in 1024m2 of land but split along the LL road land.
Still there are some 16m2 plots I would love to join but people won't sell or they are extremely over priced.

So my conclusion... it can be done without LL stepping in. But it would be so much easier if they did!

What I find a more imported issue for LL to address is the way the terrain on the small plots along e.g. the SL-road are shaped. As soon as LL does something to force those areas along edges of plots to be smoothed the land would look SO MUCH BETTER.

* Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?
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Yes


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* Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?
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I can't but on "my" (lol) SIM which I have been cleaning up for the past 18 months I have 4 people who said the had to have a 16m block for "UUID tracking (?? I dont know what this is or why they needed) ... but they all agreed to swapping their 16m blocks to the borders of the SIM


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* With land that is already cut up, but still mostly owned by the resident that cut it, should we ask that the land be joined back together?
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No

I use the partitioning of my land to make my pool entertainment area an open access zone but have my house off-limits except for house guests


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Finally, it has also been suggested that parcels of 64m or smaller have their sale value clamped to be no higher than the current average price per meter. This would obviously involve development work so wouldn’t be something we could deliver quickly, but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.
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Yes, but why not 512m ?



~Oli~

Bad idea.

If this one has been mentioned already, I apologize, too many threads to weed through atm.

Good reason to have a smaller then a 512x512 parcel size scenerio:

You own a large parcel that is being used as a market place, you want to allow your merchants to be able to create a landmark to the front of their shops, but allow a landing point somewhere important in your market to have others tp to when they found the market through search/classified/etc. Cutting a small piece in the area of importance you want to set a landing point to, and still allow your merchants to make direct lms to their shops is and has been a good idea for us. We did cut a smaller then 512 x 512 parcel to set as a landing point for main entry way of the market, that included various atms, and a way to have merchants be able to post their own events.


Things I have seen that aren't as beautifying as the owner would have you believe:

Group going around buying land, cutting a 16 X in the center, selling the rest. Their group claims they do it for mainland beautification campaign, and will not sell that small piece. People who end up buying these parcels end up having a square in the center of their home that they cant use for house or landscaping. I do not myself understand how that backs up their claim of beautifying the mainland.

I know some would say they should be more aware of what they are buying, but face it a new person excited about buying their first land after finding the perfect place doesn't either consider or realize, that the view property lines exists in the view menu. I know many ppl who have been on SL for a while who still do not know what everything in the menus do or that they even exist.

Shouldn't this be a poll, so a newcomer to the thread (like myself) could see what the majority of the people think about the issue?

I agree +1

Maybe I am just still asleep, but wouldn't the wording of that exception still allow the 'notecard me for the price' deals?

I can think of one legit reason for someone to have many micro parcels -- if they are using them as a video or music display area, with a different stream in each one. I've seen that done occasionally... but it would need to be clear that that's the purpose for artistic or commercial reasons, not just as an excuse for the chopping.

Hope this helps.

Yes it would.
I think that very few people would buy a micro-parcel at extortionate price unless they already had land in the sim and either wanted prims or to be rid of the micro-parcel in the particular location causing a difficulty.
There is no real need to set the land for sale. Local landowners know it's there anyway. Some 16s are owned by network operators and will not be an option for buying. Most 16 are candidates for an inquiry even if not explicitly set for sale already.

If someone contacts a micro-plot owner and is given an extortionate price, that response should be grounds for a successful AR.
But then, some sellers might insist on using Voice only.


A scan of the database on a once-off basis in order to give notice to the perps would probably move things along. It might move them into a more difficult situation, but it would move them.

Only LL know the real numbers.
A few database queries is all that's required.

How many 16's not for sale?
Many of those would be legit, but the numbers might throw light on the dangers of setting inflexible rules on 'small' parcels.