Warning - Land Swooping on the Rise

This is also a common problem and it's very often done by the land barons themselves, afterall, they sell land, join land, sub land etc. Alot of the respect between land barons stems from remedies of the occurences. I did it once. I had a 16 m plot in the snow set for sale at 100L and joined a 4096 parcel to it, which when joined retained the 100L price. Luckily a land baron and good friend Nolan Nash saw it, bought it before anyone else could and promptly returned it to me.

I'll never do that again, but I have seen and heard numerous horror stories about this issue.

I wasn't blaming the end user, I just wasn't letting the end user fully off the hook. It is a combination, and I was asking how it could be improved further. Your suggestion is a great improvement - selling to everyone should be something you have to select actively. Again, at that point, if they still choose not to read it carefully, it can no longer be blamed on the UI. I am sure some professional land sellers might squawk at the extra confirmation steps involved - but informed buyers and sellers are always a good thing. Also, make no mistake, the people preying on those who make this mistake currently are bottomfeeding assholes - I was just wondering how many confirmation prompts are enough before you can't blame the process but the user.

Very much so. It's one of the key principles of UI design that no matter how good you think your UI is, if your users don't get it, you've failed. There's no point whining about them being dumb or careless etc - your job as UI designer is to make sure everyone gets it.

I really like this idea. However, I would improve upon it by adding what would amount to A) a L$ sink, and B) an incentive to price for sell vs. price for profit.

I think there should be a checkbox to allow public listing of the land sale (including the prevention of script function to detect the sale.) Also, a percentage of the sell price should go back to LL as a transaction fee of sorts. If 5% of the total land transaction L$'s were taken out of circulation.. how much would that be?

May Land Transactions involved L$ 114,859,254.
So, my method would relieve L$ 5,742,963 from the economy.

I think that the point (looking at the title of the thread) is to make people aware.

Certainly, it's the seller's fault if they get swooped, for the most part.

I had to do sort of a double-take, because ironically enough, a friend of mine got swooped on a 2048 she messed up on, this morning, and she has been in SL since late '03. I asked her if she told the buyer that she made a mistake, and she said "no, it was my own damned fault." That's one end of the spectrum, a relatively old player screwing up, though I do think she should have mentioned it was a mistake - when I was dabbling in land last year, I knew of many land traders, including myself and Weedy, who would gladly sell it back at the same price, so it's worth a try.

The other end of the spectrum is new players. Obviously this is an issue, because we hear about it fairly frequently. Yes, they had prompts and it is ultimately their fault, but it doesn't make the greedy bastages and less of greedy bastages, who sit and click that list waiting for some newbie to price their land at 1$, and then have no qualms about keeping it. The vast majority of the time, that is what happens - a newbie is trying to sell their 1st land to another person, it gets snagged for a really low price, and they are out at least 2k right then and there. They generally DO NOT realize that it is listed immediately in the land find list, nor do they realize that people sit there, 24 hours a day, clicking the search button in the land finder. So if I was to offer an improvement, it would be to add to the final prompt that "this land will be immediately listed for sale to the public on a public list, you may wish to use the "sell to" option if you do not intend this parcel to go to public sale.", or some such. And Steves's idea is a good one, by the way.

Yah this guy Douglas swooped me while I was trying to fuse properties. My fault. No he didnt give a damn when I told him it was a mistake. His perogative. Yah, he sold it for cheap to a real estate enthusiast for 3439 pure profit. Good deal for him. Yes, the real estate enthusiast sold it back to me for what he paid for it. Appreciated. Joined the properties I was intending to in the first place and sold it on the cheap side to get out of it before my tier needed to double, ( tier pricing is sooo half assed, do I really need to go from 8k to 16k for an additial 1000 meters?). Lindens cant force you to be ethical in business practises. Oh well. Swoopers should be shunned simply because they SUCK!

I saw a shirt with a warning label that stated "DO NOT IRON WHILE WEARING SHIRT".

There are plenty of warnings. What do you wnat LL to do Weedy? Bash residents over the head with a frying pan before they do anything with their land?

for some reason i think these two threads are connected

land swoopers

The first thing I always do when I buy land is go in and set the sell price to like $999,999. That way I am safe if I accidentally set it for sale somehow. If someone wants to pay me that much for it, they can have it! lol

The OP is/was a land scanner who would hop down on new sales too. 'Give them back' or not..thats swooping and why I nomrally disregard the OPs complaints on the subject.

Something that might be relevant to those making the argument that it's "up to the user" to figure this out and too bad if she doesn't, is the idea of the "attractive nuisance."

For instance in RL, you cannot put up a giant killing machine on your front lawn and get away with it merely by putting up a sign that says "don't touch this thing or it will kill you." If someone comes onto your property even illegally and ignores your well-placed sign, and ends up getting killed, you are still responsible and legally liable.

Now that's an extreme example, but the principle is the same. It doesn't really matter how many signs or notices the user sees and has to click on, that doesn't negate the responsibility of LL to set up a system that has a reasonable amount of protection in it and that protection has to be functional, not just nominal.

It goes to what Ordinal said about the duty of the UI designer. If large amounts of people are being fooled by the way it is now, it doesn't matter what LL thinks about it, its still a design that functionally leads to disaster, and LL knows about it, therefore they are responsible.

Also, if by designing the system (the instant listing of the property), they create a situation where it's so irresistible for an asshole to come in and swoop someone's land, then again, the wording of the prompts simply doesn't matter.

They are knowingly creating an attractive nuisance and ignoring the results of same. Not that anyone could ever really take it to court, but LL is clearly in the wrong here IMO.

They give enough warnings that someone who ACTUALLY PAID ATTENTION AND READ wouldn't be victimized.

I don't think thats too much to ask.

Wouldn't the only way to witness a 'swoop' be to visit at the same time? This means while you're searching, you're also trying to jump in on a great deal.

The word "swooper" is to "land", what the word "killer" is to "gun". There are millions of responsible gun owners, while only a small fraction of them are killers.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions, but since P2P came along, this has been a regular occurance. Alot of first time sellers have absolutely no idea how fast they can lose their land by neglecting steps. The changes made a while ago benefited buyers, not sellers in the confirmation dialogs. Alot of people, simply do not under the proper method of selling their land. Do they deserve to lose their land of this ignorance, I suggest to all of you, no, they do not. Language barriers, vision problems, physical and learning disabilities are just some of the reasons a person might not acknowledge the dialog confirmations.

It's human nature to glance over things when it comes to computing, I mean honestly, how many of you read - "word for word", the terms of service when signing up for things?.....I bet almost none. We expect the company we are signing up with to provide a reasonable amount of certainty, that they considered the best interest of the customer and you proceed with a reasonable amount of safety in the process.

Land tools default sales to anyone and instantly post the particulars of the sale to the FIND Land Sales list. LL cannot fix something, unless they are made aware of the situation, and this is what I am attempting to impress here. There is simply too large a loophole in the current system as it stands, the land swoopers know it and are blatantly taking advantage of it. This muddies the water for both new residents and to land dealers who operate with principle.

This thread is not an attempt to attack one resident, nor is it open season to attack me. It is an attempt to educate residents about the perils of selling land with the current tools, and a plea to Linden Lab to find a solution to a very real problem.

As it currently stands, the system rewards scoundrels and penalizes residents who intended to sell their land in good faith. I have seen alot of people seriously affected by this and it saddens me, yet moreover, it distresses me because LL has turned a blind eye.

LL please reinstate land scanners! weedy can't handle competition

That's just stupid. Got anything constructive to add?

Maybe you should make a constructie thread first? People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

What are you accusing me of?

using the forums as a marketing tool for your business by demonizing your competitors.

your points are focused on some very absurd appeals:

people are stupid
people are illiterate
people must be protected from themselves

if people are really so hopeless, we shouldn't even let them near the computer lest they electrocute themselves.

with all the checks in place this issue is now completely irrelevant. i question whether you are not motivated by simply raising your profile as a land trader.

Amen

Your post is nothing more than a personal attack. Land swooping is something you seem to loathe, yet you uphold the rights of others to scam residents, while denegrating those who are attempting to invoke changes to the land tools.

True colors.

do you just strap random words together when you're exposed?

i wonder how it is that you continue to be such a wealth of knowledge on such a tiring and bottom feeding practice? is it because you have a long history of scanning chasing and flipping cheap land?

i don't loathe land scanners at all. whether they use devices or do it manually, they are the same bottom feeders any open market needs to keep its fabric consistent.

I'm careful, but I did what you did too, just in case. It's L$2,000,000 for a 512sq.m. plot. If that doesn't yell out "I'm not selling!" .... heh heh.

Back on serious note: Placing ridiculously-high prices on land pieces before joining should be a good solution to the swoop-while-joining problem.

There is a difference between buying land from those who intend to sell to anyone, and those who did not.

Are you saying it is perfectly acceptable to buy land not intended for you and resell it at a profit, while leaving someone holding the bag?

To be fair I had no clue about finding land deals until Weedy provided me with an excellant tuturial. Thanks Weedy!

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