The Question of Land Cutting

The G team is overworked. I doubt Linden Labs (or even a company like IBM or Microsoft) could afford to employ enough people to handle all the possible extortion and griefing scenarios that happen in SL, if they have to handle all the microparcel griefing incidents on a case-by-case basis.

That's why I think LL needs to change the rules about the way small parcels are sold, to cut off the head of this serpent... the bits of the body that survive will be small enough they CAN deal with them. So I'm trying to visualize the kinds of rules it would take to make this work.

That's how I arrived at "Parcels less than X square meters can only be set for sale for L$0 to a specific person."

Linden Labs doesn't have to decide what the price cap will be. If both parties agree that L$50 per square meter IS a fair price for that parcel, then the buyer hands the seller L$800, and the seller sets the parcel for sale to the buyer for L$0. This process can be automated, using bots, and existing land brokers can take part in it. Or they can do it manually.

It seems to me to be the least damaging solution.

Read the whole thin, preferably ...



And then he clarified enough to make it clear that the main focus was micro-parcel selling.

Note: Applies to the sale of land ONLY!

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

YES

* Are there any legitimate reasons for land cutting (excluding profit) that we should consider when setting policy?

NO

* 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?

YES


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.

YES, but apply this to sale of ALL parcels regardless of size. Make the minimum parcel size 512sq.m.

For example:

Recently a resident purchased land close to my parcel, but in a adjacent region. He purchased two of the three available 512sq.m contiguous parcels. This left a single solitary isolated 512 parcel.

This single, isolated 512 sq.m parcel is currently being sold for a totally unrealistic price set by the land jock and substantially more than what the resident payed for the parcel he currently owns.

Of course you can quickly run out of prims on a 1024 parcel - you can build a small house, but he has discovered that he needs more prims for his furniture. However he won't be purchasing the land because of the price.

And so, the 512sq.m. parcel will probably never be occupied at the price the land jock has set. This is so wasteful and an eyesore, complete with the land advertisement.

While we are talking about eyesores. There seem to be a number of residents who think its cool to build an ugly house in the sky at 100 metres. This is no better (or no worse) than the ugly, whirling ad signs. Advertising or no advertising; makes no difference. Its the beautiful view, scenery or the ocean views that are obstructed by these ugly, poorly designed structures.

This is a good time to refer people again to a proposal I initiated on the JIRA some time ago. It is to put in code as a solution to inflation of small parcel prices by setting an upper limit that scales with the parcel size. This was originally proposed to deal with ad land extortion, but obviously still works to curb the practice of land cutting.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-894

In short, the formula is very simple... max price = (parcel size*parcel size)/16

1 segment - 16m - max L$1/m = max price L$16
2 segments - 32m - max L$2/m = max price L$64
3 segments - 48m - max L$3/m = max price L$144
4 segments - 64m - max L$4/m = max price L$256
...
32 segments - 512m - max L$32/m = max price L$16384
64 segments - 1024m - max L$64/m = max price L$65536

This proposal requires no manual policing by the Lindens, and doesnt affect the market rates of the more common parcel sizes, encourages people to combine parcels, and is simplistic to code.

Please see the JIRA page for more comments, and to add your vote for this proposal.

Sure it will. It may take six months or a year, but it's just too expensive to keep paying tier on many large parcels at prices that won't sell. That's the difference between microparcels and regular ones.

We had a guy sitting on a 512 in Noonkkot for 2 years, and finally set it for L$30000. 6 months later he just abandoned it and we got it on auction for L$2200.

Joe has a 240m2 in Barcola, value L100k-L200k depending on location. Joe wishes to advertise it for sale on the map. Your proposed solution prevents that. Joe finds a buyer another way. Jane says she would be happy to pay L200k for Joe's lot. Problem: who goes first? Joe sets it for sale to Jane at L0. Jane buys it and tells Joe to take a hike. Alternatively, Jane pays Joe L200k. Joe smiles and vanishes. Back to square one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponsonby Low
Actually the issue at hand isn't 'parcels that are up for sale'. It's 'land cutting'----a term that doesn't contain any requirement that the land being cut is going to be put up for sale.

Recall that the first Linden question was

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

And if you read through the thread, you'll see quite a few posts that say (in so many words) 'I don't see any reason for small parcels to be cut or even to exist'.

So....the person to whom you replied was NOT posting irrelevant remarks.









I don't disagree with what you've posted--I would just add the reminder that 'the main focus' can change.

The main focus of the Network Advertising policy was....network advertising. In other words, the business of selling ads (ads that appear on ugly tall towers or spinning cubes or the like).

Yet the focus shifted to things that were NOT network advertising. (Specifically, to For Sale signs, which are not ads someone has bought, but instead are like signs on shops--signs that inform the viewer that the owner is selling their own property.)

Because of the likelihood of one policy morphing into something it was never intended to be, it's important to point out that what the Lindens have said (about parcel-selling being part of the phenomenon being looked at) does NOT guarantee that any policy wouldn't morph into 'no cutting of parcels under 512m'.

We've seen many calls for exactly that, in this thread.

So it's not a moot point.

The only logical option is just to ban the selling of microparcels and set the minimum to the regular at a 512 sq.m minimum.

That should be real easy to code.

One reason to cut land could be that, as in my case, have a small plot where you in some part of it would like people to be able to rezz there bought products. In my case ( have 512 m parcel ) this was bad idea because it made that i not could put notices up in eventcalendar i think that is much more serious matter because i was only cutting it in pieces for helping customers.
sincerely
johnny Douhet

(Was there a second problem?) I think for any pair of buyer and seller, there'd be a mutually trusted third party who could act as escrow agent. Some names come to mind: Sarah, Desmond, Cristalle... or outside the land business, Fleep, or... well, there are lots of people with reputations for scrupulous honesty. They're far too busy to do this on a regular basis, but on transactions of that size, it could be made worth their while, and frankly there just aren't that many 240s in Barcola.

That's not an option. There are too many legitimate reasons to sell microparcels, for example to transfer them BACK to your account when you no longer want them deeded to a group. The Lindens have repeatedly said that this is OFF the table.

I do wish people would quit yammering on about making the minimum size to sell 512 sq.m. They are being impractical. I've seen (and built) homes and stores on as little as 128 sq.m. And what are these people proposing, that we punish those who own parcels of 496 sq.m. just because they're 16 sq.m. short?

I guess Joe has to advertise it another way.

Hey, I have a bunch of products I sell that I can't make show up for sale on the map! I'm being discriminated against.
Yep, just like when you click "pay" on a vendor to buy a new skin, or a new super-eroto-sex-bed: you have to trust the seller to actually deliver the product they're advertising. Which is the whole point, because when someone's harassing you to force you to sell, or buy, there's no trust involved.

There are perfectly valid reasons for owning and selling tiny parcels. It is not logical to punish the majority for the actions of the minority. Should be ban scripting altogether because some people use scripts to harass others? No.

What do I suggest?

Set a cap on how high you can price land based on the average market value of land in that region, for example (percentage used is just an example):

Avg. Price Per Meter + 50% = Price Cap Per Meter

By setting the cap on the regional level, land prices will be allowed to fluctuate more naturally than if the cap was "global." Regions with well designed builds and quality terraforming would not be effected by regions with horrible builds and undesirable landscape.

While smaller parcels could still be marked higher than they are truly worth, the cap would remove the possibility of an unscrupulous individual charging L$100,000 for 16 square meters of land.

I think most people are in agreement that something needs to be done to correct the situation, however, it is important that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Traveling the mainland in vehicles has become very difficult with the excessive land restriction options available these days. I would hate to see things further progress in that direction.

[edit] - And by "that direction" I mean excessive reaction to a problem which could be better solved in other ways without negatively effecting innocent people.

First problem is being unable to advertise on the map. This is related to a third problem:

Joe lives in Paris and comes online for a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon (GMT+1). He wants the lot on the market, available for purchase automatically 24/7. His English is not great and he has never heard of Desmond (Shang) or Sarah (Nerd). For him, a 'bot' is an invisible monster that steals things from people.

Jane lives in Tokyo. She comes online Tuesday and Thursday evenings (GMT+9) after work (when her husband goes out with his friends). Her English is good enough to work the automatic land purchase system, but she generally uses the Babbler translator to talk to foreigners.

Since Joe can't advertise his lot in search or on the map, he must put out a sign on the lot (conforming to the TOS). He must hope someone flies past and sees the sign. By chance, Jane happens upon the sign. She can't buy the lot automatically, so she must IM Joe. Joe gets the IM (maybe) sometime during the week (presuming he has set IM to forward to email). He tries to set up an appointment with Jane. Need I continue?

And there is also already a minimum parcel size - 16m2. So nothing new there either. Imagine the outcry if we could now cut to 1x1 and someone suggested 4x4 minimum ... everyones servers, ads, bot pads, whatever would have to cost 16 times as much .... outrageous!

Not completely accurate. The policy did not prohibit network advertising. It explicitly permitted it within (admittedly rather drastic) limitations. It was very clearly stated that the motivation of the policy was reduction of visual pollution, not interference with advertising. Extension to excessive land sale advertisements was thus quite rational and predictable. That this affected even discrete signs was probably regrettable. The parallel with the current initiative is pretty clear. Collateral damage to the vested interests of some residents is considered an acceptable, if regrettable, price for achieving the cosmetic aim.

I want to buy a super-sex-eroto-bed but I've never heard of scripted vendors or stores so I try to set up an appointment with Sexpot Avatar, who makes the super-sex-eroto bed... need I say more?

I don't consider it an acceptable price, because it wasn't necessary.

Surely not, caps should be a last ditch resort, the issue with microparcels is that tier costs aren't prohibitive to the practice of selling for high prices, on larger parcels that becomes an issue and therefore it's not in the sellers interest to sell parcels at absurd prices.

While it's a truism that 'everything's relative', it's also the case that a disruption in a current state of affairs (such as the present policies and limits of SL) creates costs.

Predicting what those costs will be is no exact science, certainly. Yet it would be foolish to assume there would be no costs at all, just because we can't predict them exactly.

Yeah, that's gone real well for ya so far.

The 'cosmetic aim' differs very markedly, though.

In the case of restricting (and yes, I should have typed that word in preference to 'prohibiting') Network Advertising, the result of the intended part of the policy was the elimination of thousands of gigantic towers and spinning cubes, all of which contained words and/or images.

In the case of restricting 'land-cutting', all that will be eliminated is a pattern of lines on the ground that's completely invisible to those who don't keep Property Lines turned on.

It takes a very control-needy person to be offended by lines on the ground (as opposed to giant image-laden towers and megacubes, which would be considered a problem by a far larger proportion of any random cross-section of Residents---and yes, that's an opinion. But it's one that would be supported by ANY reputable polling method, I will venture to wager.)

As someone who keeps property lines turned on I have to agree with this part. The landscape has improved dramatically since the ad farm policy was introduced and without my property lines on all I'd see generally would be unoccupied land, it's certainly not an eyesore to see the lines, but it does put me off buying an adjoining parcel becasue I wonder what the person will do with the parcel once I move in.

Of course these parcels have appeared next to my land after I've purchased and the vast majority are empty and have banlines off, the legitimate ads I see on 16M parcels are more of an issue for me as I still don't see why someone wants to advertise their business in the middle of nowhere.

Most of the proposals in this blog introduce costs. I find it interesting that many who rail against the bullying tactics of the 'land cutters' are quite willing to propose their own bullying tactics as a solution.