This Has Got To Stop Linden Labs!!

Dearly Darlings,

We had an odd problem one weekend when the system was being wonky. We were joining land, etc for an In-world charity. When it was clear that something was amiss before we clicked another click we called down Live Help. We had JayJay Talamesca and Amber Linden pop over to make sure it was done properly. It turned out there was a bug or something and it took close to three weeks to get straighten out...but with a Linden and Live Help there at that time no evil land swoopers took advantage of the situation.

I've found that it is rather easy to make an appointment with a Linden to come and help. The key is to make an appointment that fits into a Linden's work schedule. Just make sure you can keep the appointment. Live Help can usually sort things out alone...BUT...they don't have that Linden leverage unless their last name is Linden so just keep that in mind.

By the bye, If you ban people from your land...can they still get close enough to purchase it? I wonder...

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog TIger

Well, let me make myself more clear. I wasn't talking about, "Is it possible to click the wrong thing by not paying attention."

I think we can all agree that it is, and that we have done it.

I was talking about a real-life situation where you click the wrong thing (or, as is sounding like in this thread, a glitch happens), and all of a sudden you are out hundreds of dollars, or forty dollars, or whatever, and there is no recourse - all because you clicked the wrong thing.

(Or because you clicked in the wrong order. Or, in some of these cases, because you didn't realize that connecting land would automatically drag it all down to the lowest price.)

The real world seems to have a lot more fail-safes built into it, along with appeals, etc.

So to repeat - is there something you can think of in the real world where you automatically lose hundreds of dollars because of a one-minute mistake? Because I can't think of any.

(I would add also I have found nothing in the entire online world of the Internet that is quite as confusing as the process of buying land, selling it, group land considerations, and tier combine to be.)

coco

Is there a database or someplace we can all see who these peeps are for the purpose of banning them from our own land as well?

I know others may not want them around either. Perhaps when they can't fly from parcel to parcel without bouncing off of red ban lines they'll get the message!

I think we'll just have to disagree about it. The basic point is, many people don't read the messages provided with dialog boxes. Consequently, providing them crucial information in such manner when you *know* they won't read it *is* imo bad design, just as much as it can be considered operator error. If the users are not accustomed to reading the dialogs, then it's the software developer who should, i think, know better than go into pissing contest of "they should read the dialogs i show them or else screw them". Because in the end this sort of attitude benefits no one, save maybe for land swoopers.

There is supposed to be a change in this with the update coming out wensday. So the swoopers out to enjoy their unethically aquired profits now, since they won't be about to get them like that for long.

It may take a few days, but I'll see if I or a friend can sent you a copy of the list in game.

Its not LL's fault people act stupid. They provide the information, people discard it without paying attention. No bad design, just moronic behavior.

Key words in your post: 'my opinion' and 'I think.'

I am so sorry to see this happened to you.
Though LL is adding that tool to the mix to help with this it comes too late for you.

I can back up Linden Labs not caring though.
I recently found a property I wanted to get. It was a nice waterfront prop and I had been looking for a piece of land like that. At the time I bought it I was on the eve of my next land tier, about 7 or 8 pm actually the night before. I was working with a few things at once and when I clicked to buy I accidently bought for myself instead of for the group all my land tier is donated to. I did the wrong thing and just clicked on through.. MY BAD totally.

When I realized this it was too late of course. This land purchase took my tier from the 40 dollarish level up to the 70 dollarish level. Now I immeadiately took the land and gave it to the group. I wrote to support explaining this. I told them the land was in my own possesion less then 10 mins and since it was just hours away from tier billing could they please see it for the mistake it was and not charge me the extra tier. Guess what, the support email I got back had a couple links to the tier proceedures (no kidding, I knew the procedure that is why I was asking them to help me in my wrong.) and they did not help.

Now I understand the hands can be tied by LL when it comes to swoopers, but this was TOTALLY within thier power to fix. I emailed back again explaining that I understood but could they at least just credit me the difference (it had been charged by then) and I would get some lindens or something that goes right back to them. I have yet to get a reply to that email. They ignored it and showed me that like land swoopers say "Thanks for the extra money". They didnt HAVE to credit me, but they at least could have written me back.

Linden Labs sometimes drops the ball. It sucks, but it happens.

I'm going to agree with Jonas in this one. You cannnot make people read if they don't want to. The whole point of the dialog box is to catch something they may have overlooked in the previous screen. Adding more infor to the previous screen is useless since it was overlooked in the first place.

There is a point where people *MUST* take responsibility for their own actions.

If you see red lights turn on in front of you when you are driving, you stop. There aren't flashing signs saying "You Must Stop Now" or people standing on the side of the road to tell you want to do. This simple signal works because people know that if they ignore it, they will be held responsible for their (in)actions.

When it comes to computers, people suddenly push all the blame off of themselves and onto the computer, or the company who made their software, etc. They'll just mindlessly ignore clear and instructive warnings and then blame someone else when their computer stops working.

I completely support clean and intuitive software design. I support making things as clear and easy to understand as possible. However, there is a point where you can't do any more and it's up to the user to actually take responsibility, act like an adult, read what is in front of them, and use their heads to come to the proper decision.

If I say "Don't stick your finger in your eye." and someone goes ahead and does it any way, it's their fault, not mine.

I am amazed that this is blame the victim....and support the crook! I didnt post for any other reason than just get the situation out there. If this was RL, which it is very evident it is NOT, I would have legal recourse. So since this is SL and everyone wants to say that I made the error, I have no way to go back and present the facts to a judge, just to a Liberal Company that appears to not have problem with this continuing, even tho their own live help advises that this is a from of FRAUD!

They are onyl a victim of their own inattentiveness and lack of commonsense. DAMN RIGHT blame them.

I'm sorry, but not once did I support the actions of the land swoopers. I stated that people need to take responsiblity for their actions, or inaction. If I ignore something important and stub my toe, I say "My bad." I do not, however say "This whole curb has to be remade because I didn't read the sign saying 'Step up.' and stubbed my toe; it's the store owner's fault."

Do you know that story of boy who cried wolf? Eventually, people stopped paying attention to his warnings. It had bad consequences for all involved, but would you say it was entirely the fault of "stupid people who didn't listen", or did the boy who desensitized his audience to what was supposed to be important warnings, by misusing them... also have his hand in the final failure?

The crying boy are the pop ups, the town folks are your computer users. Yes, they no longer pay attention. And no, making some of these heaps of warnings they're routinely bombarded with actually hurt them won't make them go back to carefully scrutinizing every single one of them ever again.

It's not exactly "just" stupidity, it's also adaptation. While some people can be anally retentive to the point of double-checking every tiny piece of text they're supplied with, no matter how trivial it is, a large amount of them are not -- they actually *learn* that most of 'warnings' they receive are worth shit, and act accordingly. And ironically enough, adaptation is actually considered to be part of intelligence rather than lack thereof.

And well. You can choose to cater to the anal few, or you can try to make your software smarter than that. Of course, the latter means more work so you're going to have ton of people happily chalking it all up to 'user stupidity that is not our concern' ... until competition that actually does take such extra steps comes and takes their market share from under them.


Duh? I really hope no one in this thread is under belief anything they say is anything more than personal opinion. You included.

Again and again in this thread people miss the the point. There is a bug in the UI. When you join land, if they are set for sale, the joined land will also be set for sale at the price that was set for the primary parcle. I know way too many people that have gotten hit with this bug, including myself. When you join the land, there is no warning that the joined land will keep the price of the primary plot. IMO joined land should defualt to no sale, or if both plots are already for sale, the new price should be the combined price of the joined plots.

I don't own land, nor do I intend to in the near future.
However, I have been learning about land sales, and after reading this thread it's become glaringly apparent, W.H. thinks 3L/m is fair only because of his position of consistantly "buying" (swooping as others would say) land set at the low end of the spectrum. Who knows if he would know market value if it hit him in the head? Playing kindly is rare, playing fair is almost unknown in SL.

Please send me an IM in world and tell me who this person is so I can ban him. And when I ban, Its for Life

Please send me a copy also. Thanks

I totally disagree with you

Thank you for the list

How is this fraud? The land was set to sell at a specific price. The person paid that price.

Where is the fraud?

People need to take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming everyone else for their own mistakes.

The Fraud is that a person sat there watching and then swooped in and stole the land while the person was trying to sell it.

My Ban list is growing it seems.

Someone was taken advantage of for their mistake. That is wrong and its likely they didn't know that this could happen to them. I feel really bad for this person that was taken advantage of. These people that buy the land like this and say its ok because it was set for sale at that price are just as bad as some lawyers. Just because its written somewhere doesn't mean its morally ok.

Anytime something of value is on the line, I stop, read consider... when uncertain I ask.

If there's a glitch that prevented the safety confirmation from popping up... that's definitely a bug, but still not entirely sufficient to demand compensation from LL for what happened.

What LL should do is NOT refresh the "land for sale" list in real time.

But that would encourage people to deploy land scanners again.

In other MMO's (like eve online) some possibly destructive transactions have a 'cool off period' which must expire, (sometimes as long as hours) where you must declare your intent... wait... and then proceed with commiting the action after the cool-down period.

Just in case you change your mind.

Anyway... there's bunches of ways this could be made better. I'm sorry you got got your land unkindly Jake'd in a moment of vulnerability. (no not naming names here, merely an RL term for theft).


--
Do not BACK UP!! Severe tire damage!

Huh what? *Reverse* *BABLAAAM*
But... but I thought it said BACK UP!

Absolutely it's unethical. But it's not fraud and it's not Linden Lab's fault.

It was a stupid mistake. Nothing more, nothing less.

Good points! I have always tried to be kind as well as fair in any business dealings I've done in RL as well as SL. That is why I made that rather lengthy post about seeing the land before all this happened. I was asked to give advice. I did and never made the buy. At this point I'm a bit sorry I didn't have the funds to buy that land now.

It's a lot late now to worry over that part though. I just hope all this will get right in the end. I know I haven't made this mistake. I can't say I never will. I can say I hope though I never do. I would be in a very bad way would someone (swoop) my land in my mistake.

It's just that a mistake. The buyer could had said well I'll just play it safe and sell it back at the price I just paid. They undoubtedly would had made a LOT of friends for sure. I'd be at the top of that list to say WOW that was a great thing they did. That though doesn't look like it will happen. As I have been to the mentioned land tonight.

Now yet another group has bought all the land and has not yet set it for sale. I don't know how LL can now fix it so easily. I guess though anything is possable. I just hate to see things like this happen to good people who just want to do good things. Time though as I have stated will tell.

Isaac