The Question of Land Cutting

You really are very clueless and don't know what the hell you're talking about!

- Firstly i did not advocate any regulations such as price ceilings on small parcels nor the size of plots that cannot be sold. In all my posts I have stated that Jack should could go after the top dozen culprits that abusing the system and make them either conform or make an example of them. The only extra bit of regulation if you could call it that is to include an additional paragraph in the TOS to "broad brush" define what "extortion" might be....including current activities and ones we might not have seen as yet!

- Yes there already has been a person who takes great delight on making money of us low minded folk


- The regulations already exist, or haven't you not read LL's TOS as yet?. Most people can work with that and still have their "freedom of expression" that you like to trot out......or is part of your "expression" the ability to harass/grief and extort from your immediate neighbours too?

- Why should I dance in a joy for a small 4096 sqm plot which would probably snapped up by the Landbots anyway on Mainland? You can buy practically any size of Estate land for 1 L and with resell rights. Yes, some EstateOwners are that desperate to shift their lands inorder to acquire Tier contributions. I have even seen whole Homesteads sims being sold for 1 L. I would have absolutely have zero neighbours at all on a Homestead sim that cost me 1 L. For the record, i don't deal in small land plots, I only deal in whole SIMs.......and yes i also have a whole SIM on Mainland too.

- you can't say "Hello" to the SIM owner on Mainland as the SIM owner is really LL.....if a person has bought a whole SIM (like me), it simply means he or she has zero neighbours living on that sim. If however there is just 1 other resident owning land on that same sim....he or she is just the main land holder on that SIM...and the SIM owner is still LL

Within a sim:

- generally, waterfront is more valuable than inland
- non-border is more valuable than border (because of sim handoff)
- simple geometric shapes are more valuable than irregular shapes
- thick rectangles are more valuable than thin rectangles
- flat is more valuable than hill to storeowners
- hill is more valuable than flat to residential homeowners
- high cliff is more valuable than low waterfront to goths, vikings and vampires
- steep waterfront is more valuable than flat waterfront to flying enthusiasts

Look at Shubelik, Knieff, Chaska or Sonogno. In these and many sims, the terrain varies considerably. Even within a sim, land prices can be heterogeneous depending on supply, aspect, configuration, altitude, position etc. Moreover, the demand for different types of lots varies across individuals and groups. The average of {1, 2, 27, 70, 100, 400} is 100, but that is of little use when capping a diverse range of parcels for a diverse range of people.

I used to long for the freedom to go about the Grid with a brush and pan, cleaning up stray mess, knocking down annoying micro-ads, moving trees out of someone's tiny little space, generally making it a nicer place to be. I'd have done it for nothing. Most people living in SL own small plots. It's good to see any initiative that shows you care about them.

And if it only effects parcels 64sm or smaller?

I will leave the debate on how best to do this to others but I will say I am very happy with the improvements Linden Lab has made with mainland so far and excited about more improvements.

Fan of mainland!

Everyone learn how to use autoreturn! Land with autoreturn set to zero (off) sends a shiver of ecstasy through the loins of griefers, who promptly unload a trashcan of scripted objects onto the lot. Yes, using autoreturn with group-owned land requires some knowledge, but I would suggest that many mainland problems would be solved if people would only set autoreturn to 1.

I once paid L100k for a 64m2 square. It was worth every penny.

secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php


Month - Avg L$ Paid Per Square Meter
December 2008 - 1.9741
January 2009 - MTD - 1.9928

Allow and size down to 16m2 to be created. Minimum sale size is the old standard of 512m2.

A grace period to sell 16m plots to adjacent land owners at any price.

After the grace period seizure of all 16m plots that are obviously not owned by the major land owner on the sim or are not part of a larger land plot.

There are many good uses for 16m plots but on the mainland script testing is not one of them as the tester can not read the script times with out estate permissions.

Those 16m plots that have a price tag of over 10L per meter are obvious extortion.

When a land owner sells a larger plot it is little trouble to join the 16's to the main plot.

As in life people will use any method to try and extort funds from others and those here that do this deserve the consequences.

There are many uses of 16m plots that have nothing to do with the microplot abuse that we are trying to address here.

So what happens to the person's investment below? who are we to make such determinations? Why should he lose 100k?



This is exactly why i don't want to see any hard code enforcement of both land size and pricing

If you buy an apple for $100,000, can you complain if it is only worth $1?

If you read it properly....the buyer said it "was worth every penny"
It could have been land right next to a LL welcome area and he placed some vendors there.....and over time made back that investment. Small parcel prices near LL Welcome areas and Info Hubs are astromonically high for that reason.

I did, and "and over time made back that investment" then no investment is lost.

Then again it might not be monetary gain, but some other reason why he values its so much. Your fixed land size policy would allow that plot to be taken away from him if there are no further parcels available on that sim for him to purchase, inorder to reach your "safe haven" size of 512 sqm


This is nothing to do with land sizes, its to do with certain people's behaviour.....maybe a dozen or so extortionists.....why punish every other legitimate small parcel holder?

It really isn't my policy. I mean to address the fact that people buy over priced land, knowing it is over priced and think they can get money back on the "Investment". If the purchase was for a reason other than the investment, then they paid for what they got. But they should not expect to get more than it's worth.

I have nothing against smaller plots, if they are not a scam of some kind and are REALLY being used.

OVERVIEW:
* 16x16 can be useful when someone is being nice.
* Extra prim space is a weak argument unless the parcel is closer to 128m2.
* Ad farms are bad for the avatar experience and large areas of 16x16s are wasting land.
* NO to violation of TOS for subdivisions, ONLY for selling.

ANSWERS TO ASKED QUESTIONS:
* Do you agree in principle that land cutting needs to be a violation?
> I think that it should only be a violation if the parcels are being sold to Anyone.

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

* 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?
> If the TOS changes in such a way that it makes all tiny parcels a violation, then yes. If there is a possibility that any tiny parcels would not be a violation, then no.


EXPLANATION:

I greatly dislike seeing 16x16 parcels for sale. It's an insult and a waste of usable land. For your consideration, there ARE some scenarios where selling a 16x16 is useful and beneficial.

Here is a perfect example of why I feel that LL should only put some restrictions or limitations on selling such small parcels:

A neighbor of mine owned half of a sim. When he decided to get a private island, he sold off his land. However, he was nice enough to sell me a small 16x16 plot for $0L which was directly next to (and actually intrusive on) what land I had already owned.

Extra prim space is another argument, though not much of one. A 16x16 parcel has very few prims. 64m2, maybe. 128m2, more likely.

I agree that ad farms are bad for the avatar experience. I also agree that attempting to sell larger sections divided into tiny parcels solely for profit or ad-farming is not a good practice.

And yet, another reason selling a 16x16 might be useful is when you are selling group-owned land to a group member. In this scenario, you might be selling a section that exactly fits their build. You must subdivide and join the parcels and -- oops, there's still a few prims outside of the cut. So you sell them that additional 16x16 so all of their prims are now on their own property. Again, this would not be for profit of the seller, but for the benefit of the buyer (I know I wouldn't charge for such an arrangement).

Lastly, I must *MUST* say that for owners of large parcels, finding a lost prim can be a burden. I, myself, have needed to split up large sections of my lot into 16x16 subdivisions to narrow the search (an object scanner can only do so much). I can't see how subdivisions of any shape or size could possibly be against the TOS in the future. There are many, many reasons why you might want 16x16 subdivisions -- building, scripting, and a unique experience for specific locations within your land. I gather that this isn't what the blog is referring to, but just in case...

CONCLUSION:
I think that 16x16 parcels should be allowed to be sold as long as it is to a specific person.
I think that the price of 16x16 could be capped, OR possibly a violation of TOS if it has not been transferred within a given amount of time.
I do not think it would be right to make *all* 16x16 sells against the TOS. Maybe restrict the number of 16x16 plots any owner can have up for sale at any one time or a given period? IDK.

BTW, I merged the square into a larger lot.

It's all about establishing a safety buffer around micro-holdings. If someone MUST have less than 512sqm total in a region owned by a group... then make sure you own the land between it and your neighbors. The algorithm shouldn't have to check group memberships and do the fuzzy math to determine if the total owned is greater than 512 or not.




Doesn't matter. Either way it still ends up as blank linden land. [thanks for clarifying Sling =)]

Yes, an eminent domain process has the potential to be labor intensive. The verification and seizure/wipe process can also be automated to some degree. But, I think it's important that LL establish some sort of process and procedure for this. Especially in areas like the old mainland where parcels lie blighted and heavily cratered by parcel prim overload damage. Their owners having long since died in RL or otherwise left.

This.

LL should just bulldoze microparcels to the side if people are just being obstructive, wilful or making unreasonable demands.

LL might have to do a little extra work to make the discovery of which of those is being used in the proper manner. Most I have seen on the mainland were add farm plots and now just over priced plots of empty land breaking the landscape. Like other issues in game it does take moderation.

As was mentioned earlier, one of the worst 'extortionists' (I use the term as shorthand only) dealt exclusively in 512m2 and 1024m2 lots.

I didn't mean to come across as not supporting the idea, I support the idea of a variable cap wholeheartedly and I think that's a good starting point even though as you said they'd have to adjust it to fit the internal numbers they have and over time as needed. I'm holding hope that this will be at least one part of a bigger solution that involves a technical cap as well as policy changes and a clarification that defines extortion so that people who may not be hitting this cap (through private person to person sales, combined sales of multiple smaller parcels with the intent to rejoin, etc...) can still be dealt with.

Not only "no" but "hell no".

LL already has a process for reclaiming abandoned land.

But it wasn't that extortionist that produced the mess on the mainland that is the problem being addressed here.

Pete Linden's post makes it clear that Linden Labs' concern is not solving general inter-user conflicts on the mainland, it is solving one particular problem.