The Question of Land Cutting

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ponsonby Low
You didn't look at that site, did you?

I accept that you don't care to know what "strawman" actually refers to, and you're going to go on misusing it.

*sigh*




Oh, so you don't know what "Strawman" means, either?

I hadn't realized that until now, because you hadn't been the one misusing it.

But apparently, you have misused it in the past?

How is that a good analogy? A person can see a sex bed in someone's home, click on it to learn the creator, pull up that person's profile, and (in most cases) find a Pick with a teleport to a store where the item can be bought. Or failing that, use Search.

But--and here's where the analogy breaks down--when the bed-seeker finds the bed up for sale, the bed is UP FOR SALE. The seeker can click on it and see the Buy choice in the pie-menu. (Or possibly a Pay choice.)

How could a land parcel be set up in this way, if, as you require, it NOT be part of the LL land-purchase system?



If a person can't click on it and buy it....

I love this.

What you're failing to understand here is that to have committed Strawman, the Committer would have to have attributed claim X to his or her opponent---when, in fact, the opponent never made claim X.

This is nothing to do with whether the opponent is an individual or an organization of individuals.

If I say that I believe that some people in this thread lie awake at night fretting about the existence of property lines, I am not attributing a claim. I am stating a belief about what some people do, NOT attributing to them a claim. I am not saying 'these people claimed ________'.

I don't know how much clearer this can be, and I hope that you understand, now.

By the way, your posts are providing wonderful material for a libel action, particularly #911.

It's got nothing to do with rights.

It's got to do with Linden Labs income from mainland tier (including premium accounts) being in jeopardy because people are abandoning land because microparcel extortion makes it valueless. Why else do you think Linden Labs is even in the loop? This is about their bottom line.

And I don't believe you honestly can't see a difference between the two cases. You're just trolling.

That only works because the creator put their store in their picks, there's a store in the first place where the item can be bought, and a scripted vendor in the store to sell the item. If those didn't exist, there would be no way to buy the bed other than contacting the creator and saying "hey, can you sell me your cool bed".

People *created* these things, people *put* their store information in their picks, *wrote* vendors to sell products.

They can do the same thing for microparcel sales.

I don't want to diss Resident creativity, and I'm certainly not posing as an expert on coding, but...

I just can't see how a parcel of land can be re-coded to act like an object (and it would have to, wouldn't it?)

How about a more subtle approach?

First, deny the owners of 64sq.m. or less parcels the ability to put up ban lines or parcel border walls. Not with code, simply make it an A/Rable offense.

Secondly, allow landowners of greater than 64sq.m parcels who share a border with a 64-or-less parcel to erect a *solid* (non-phantom, and non-transparent) border wall up to 200m in height along said border. This should include other things than border walls, like simply building a house around the microparcel. Yes, this means that if the microparcel is a "donut hole" in the middle of your property, you can totally block it from walk-up traffic by building around it with impunity. The owner of the microparcel can still access it via teleport or by precision flying above 200m and then descending. When the owner of L$9999 16sq.m. starts whining about how their "view" has been ruined, they the response is what it *should be*....derisive laughter.

None of this calls for any code changes. It causes the value of a microparcel in the middle of someone's plot to fall to approximately zero, without actually forcing a price control on the microparcel. It allows the landowner who is doughnutted to IM the microparcel owner with something like "I offer you L$16 for your 16 that is in the middle of my property. Take my offer if you wish, or feel free to hold on to it until I decide to leave SL, because nobody else is likely going to want it at any price, and there's no way I'm going to pay more".

Vacating microparcels will suddenly turn into a business decision. And the idea of doughnutting or cornering a property will likewise vanish as a poor business decision.

And as for the people who paid a lot of money already for the microparcels that are in the middle of someone else's property......well, they knew *exactly* what they were doing and why that parcel might have been worth an extortionate amount. They took on a high risk in the hopes of a high return. The key word, as with all investments, is *risk*. So sorry that the little scheme didn't work out.

I like your idea. I would add only that LL should stop selling, at Auction, parcels with donut holes.

(They sold at least one such, today.)

In the bed example, the bed wasn't the vendor. The bed was two indirections from the vendor:

1. Look up creator.
2. Look at creator's picks.
3. Go to vendor.

In the case of land, you *can* cut the number of indirections by zero by putting a scripted object on the parcel, or to one by putting the link to the scripted object in the parcel description, so it's actually simpler than the sex-bed example.

I don't think I'd add that stipulation. I'd actually enjoy the challenge of building around doughnut holes, trying to arrange things so that the hole is there, right in the middle of the house, but it's not something one would notice by walking around inside the house. This causes the perceived value of the parcel to be higher for me than someone else who either doesn't like such a challenge or doesn't possess the skill to rise to it. And differences in perceived values of things are what make auctions themselves more fun.

So just keep it simple. One rule change which is easily worded to leave no gray areas in what is/is_not allowed. Landowner right infringements are kept to a minimum....they can still price the parcels however they wish, everybody retains the right to cut microparcels based on whatever use they can dream of, and no artificial price controls need be introduced. The only thing that changes is the wisdom of a business decision to hold on to a L$777 microparcel in the middle of someone's property in the hopes that someday the landowner will be so annoyed they'll buy it. This plan simply reduces the amount that microparcel winds up annoying the owner of the larger parcel....to the point where they'll likely not pay anything over a rational price for it.

Let the old main land heal itself and the new ML be like Bay city and nautilus. You people fighting for more rules are the same ones crying when the rules hit you. How about OS banks gaming Etc. Even the ads had a place. You nit wits crying about them could of just put an ad up touting the great ML or private sim you owned and had for rent. As in RL there are good areas and bad areas. Location Location as they say. If you bought a donut whole or a plot next to a chopped up block(your an Idiot) oops sorry for being honest. Anyway the rules here in SL are choking the LIFE out of it. I can say at this point I have very little invested here since selling BDVR. So I have little interest either way in how the plot falls. But as the current politicians(Dems and GOP) are destroying our country by sticking there hands in everything, LL is doing the same. Let LL work on software development and attracting new members(how about advertising a bit LL) I think as residents we should take care of the rest.

Again, you miss the fact that it doesn't require EXPLICIT attribution. Look at the examples again. Do you see explicit attribution? I don't. In most of them, it is INFERRED by the assertions themselves.



Then you are attributing to them a state to which you can more easily belittle their viewpoints (if not belittle them personally; stick that in your 'libel' pipe and smoke it), rather than addressing their viewpoints directly. Obviously, if they "lie awake at night fretting about the existence of property lines", their arguments can't be taken seriously.

No better example of a STRAW MAN ARGUMENT can be found.



Back at ya.



Great! I am still waiting for the paperwork. Please do hurry, you're getting my lawyer all hot and bothered, and I would hate to have to let him down.

Only in the small little microcosm called "Ponsonby's World".

I think everyone else knows exactly what a straw man is, and can call it when they see it.

But, do carry on; at the minimum, the circus act is entertaining, if repetitive.

Phew, I'm now fully caught up and have read every single post in this thread. Looks as if we lost our way a little over the last few pages so it's probably time to summarize where we are and then close the thread.

First some important clarifications, because I'm still seeing a number of posts by people who are worried about small parcels they have bought or that have found legitimate uses for small parcels and have therefore cut their land.

The aim here is not to stop you using your land in different and creative ways. We are also not looking to take action against people who have bought small parcels in an attempt to add prims or consolidate the land they own in that region.

We are specifically talking about the small number of residents who are cutting land into many tiny pieces for profit, and often doing so across hundreds or in some cases thousands of micro parcels.

Most people are broadly in favour of this kind of land behaviour being outlawed. I think it's also clear that most people understand the damaging effects of widespread micro parcels. But many of you also want us to put something in place that is very simple and easily understood and I think that makes a lot of sense. A complex policy leads to loopholes and difficulties in definition.

To talk about the ad farming issue again for a moment; there was a situation where we coupled a fairly straightforward policy with consistent judgement on the part of those enforcing it. This allowed us to act in all the situations where we clearly needed to, and to make judgement calls in places where it was less clear cut. I think this was very successful.

So in this case your feedback appears to be that you want a simple ruling, enforced fairly and consistently, but that doesn't stop landowners from using their land creatively. We will now draw up such a policy, and publish it to the Blog and in the Knowledge Base.

This then leaves the issue of land that is already cut up and land dealers who own very large quantities of micro parcels at high prices. It seemed to me as I read through the thread that quite a few people were open to the idea of a technical limitation on how small parcels are sold or priced. This wouldn't even need to be permanent, it could be something we apply for a period of time to allow the Mainland to repair itself. Some people on the other hand were concerned that we would interfere with a free land market and that this would be a bad precedent.

I think we do need to look at this further, and gather data that would help us to understand what would be the simplest and least disruptive way to tackle the problem of very small parcels set for very high prices. I also think that we will begin to talk to these land dealers about managing that land back into larger parcels. Where an area is especially bad, we may need to proactively step in if we don't feel that it can recover otherwise.

As the Estate Manager for the Mainland, where we see behaviour that significantly impacts these regions in negative ways, we are increasingly going to take steps to rectify that. We have a commitment to those of you that live there, to make it the best experience we can.

If you have further thoughts or concerns, please do feel free to let me know.

In the meantime I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to contribute, and for your passion and energy as we go through the process of cleaning up the Mainland. We've made a good start but we've a long road to travel still.


And for those still reading, right down here at the bottom of the thread where monsters lurk and the lighting is poor.. a small piece of good news. In an upcoming viewer we're adding the ability to toggle ban line visibility on and of, rather like you can with parcel lines. We're not sure exactly when that will ship, but fairly soon we hope.

All the best,


Jack