An Open Letter To Linden Lab

This new solution sounds very much like Weedy's suggestion to "let everyone use scanners" - basically, everyone has the opportunity to use a technological way to get at the free land.

Weedy, why aren't you happy about this?

That'd almost be funny if you hadn't just bought a 1024m parcel that went public across from me and slapped down a cookie cutter casino and camping chairs on it. You never did respond to my IM about that, either.

Why must one be lying? Didn't it occur to you that one may merely be wrong? Miscommunication happens to the best of us. Sounds like Andrew coded it, and also said right up front that he probably knows more about it than anyone else, presumably for that reason.

This sort of comment doesn't make your complaint seem more credible.

Insofar as the change goes, I've been expecting something like it to happen ever since I heard about what happens to abandoned land. I think LL may even have said something like this is coming quite awhile back ... my instinct says back in November when 1.7.4 changed "release land" to "abandon land". But the search function here doesn't seem to be working (I had to google to get that much)

Everyone can use the find list...agreed.

What you don't know, is the list is camped by people, with alot less ethical purpose than me.

What happens when mistakes are made.....there are buyers that say...tough shit, you set it wrong...piss off.

Is it good practice to reward these people with cheap land too?

How would this add credibity to LL's postion?

I am angry, and for good reason. LL gets to say and do whatever the hell they want and people are supporting them for misleading statements.

Someone is wrong, someone spoke untruths, as they directly conflict with each other.

So, then it sounds like you'd prefer it to be auctioned ... which is what you seemed to originally think when you started this thread.

So ... you are pissed either way. I guess it's a classic example of wanting your cake and eating it too?

I'm not sure which one is correct, or more efficent use of manpower. They both have flaws.

Auctioning is requires more work, selling at 1/sq from the list rewards the hand full of land buyers camping the list.

I slipped throught the cracks, am being told one thing, only to be told another.

It's quite apparent, LL wants to cover its ass, despite who it fucks over.

Sell it from the list. I will just join the rest of them and swoop. I don't see where I have much choice in the matter. It's going to be a clusterfuck though.

OWNED

I'm not supporting them for anything. I'm simply saying that you can't expect your average person, who doesn't know you and is encountering your case for the first time (which is most of us), to give your arguments much weight when by your own admission are saying things like that out of anger.

Presumably you posted in order to make a point, not merely to vent. The two are often incompatible, unless your point is "I'm annoyed". In which case, nobody neutral really cares, because the forums are already rife with vitriol. It's lost in the noise.



Speaking an untruth deliberately, knowing it is untrue, is lying. It's a malicious act.

Speaking an untruth because you believed it correct is merely "mistaken". It is not a malicious act.

Frankly, there's far too much attributing things to maliciousness that goes on around here, and far too little attempt to be rational and see things from others' (LL's in particular) point of view.

It's like crying wolf; it just makes it harder to notice when something actually IS malicious.

Perhaps scanning for any new parcel (in existing sims, not brand new ones obviously) with the key matching Gov Linden, which did cross my a bit earlier. But keep that under..your..hat.. oooops...

It's bad enough that this was done initially, but then to have a Linden come in and say something completely different, is a double whammy.

Your point is well taken though. Comments like that do little to bolster my case.

Sadly it appears I am fighting a lost cause.

Well, if it does come up on "Find Land," that will be a lot better than if it went to auction. You could then still do some swooping of your own, Weedy, and the people who bought from you would still be able to receive the same good service they always have from you!

coco

Sorry, the hooks that were added are "set_for_auction", "set_for_first_land", and "set_for_sale" (for L$1/sq m) . So it is possible to put everything up for auction, however it isn't clear yet what will go up for auction yet. The old policy is that >512 went up for auction, 512 went to First Land, and <512 went public. It would now be possible to change the thresholds rather easily. I had figured the thresholds wouldn't change for a little while, which is why I had said those would be going up for sale rather than auction.

What should the new policy be? Would it better to have <512 land go up for sale to whoever can find it? Or would there be value add in having smaller pieces browsable via online auctions? Perhaps scripts should be able to scan land prices?

Hrm. I just realized that it might be technically possible to put parcels up for sale for specific buyers. That is, if a parcel went back to Governor right next to someone's plot, and if that someone had registered interest in expanding their land holdings, then the system could match them up and give them preferential option to buy the land. Just an idea, it would require some way for residents to register interest, and would probably have to be first-registered first served.

BTW, there are two ways that land goes to Governor. It can be "released" or it can be reclaimed. Sometimes people stop paying for their teir, but neglect to do anything with their land. In such cases their land is eventually reclaimed.

You just made 1432 Land Barons lurch out of their computer desk chair!

A great idea, but wow, that would generate a whole new breed of poorly coded scanners.

Question - Is the hook set_for_sale time based? Are the states of these hooks detectable and is the coded data reportable? Or is this an API application?

Woops, I forgot about "Find Land". Yes, any parcel that was simply up for sale would show up on Find Land so there would be no need for adding parcel scanning of land prices. That also means that there might be very little value add to have it go to auctions -- all of the land that LL would sell below market prices would primarily go to those willing to constantly renew the Find Land list. I guess those would be the "land swoopers" coined earlier.

Maybe 'release land' should automatically pay the former land owner at some non-zero L$/sq meter, and then go up for sale or auction by Governor at some reasonable markup. That would reduce the margin for land swoopers but still quickly recycle the land back into the general pool.

This is my take on how this should be:

<512 set_for_sale
=512 set_for_first_land
>512 set_for_sale_released
>512 set_for_auction_reclaimed

I say this with all due respect, but are you out of your freaking mind? The land scanner problem would just multiply exponentially. This would be a very very bad idea, and again, would make people actually using Find Land to, you know, FIND LAND have to compete with people using bots to do the work for them.

Abandoned land is just that...people want to be done with it for the most part.

Abandoned means abandoned. There are no rewards for abandonment. Sink the buck.

I'm all for 512s going as First Land.

The only time land should be auctioned, is when residents renege or abscond on tier payments, otherwise the Governor really has no business in land deals. Consider it like a bailiff. Realtors would be against an unfair advantage if bailiffs were allowed to keep what they reposess. The same principles should apply in SL too. Afterall, it's not LL policy to compete with it's residents...is it?

I'm strongly against this.

Example:

Some poor sap forgets to add a zero on their L$20k piece of land. The land price scanner senses that the land is way below value let say below L$3.0/sqm. It thens sends an IM or even better a communication to an attactment to directly tp them insantly. Within a few seconds that poor sap lost L$18k before they realized they priced it wrong.

I agree, it makes no sense to close a can of worms only to open another, not to mention the huge influx of scanners. Every "For Sale" sign would have one.

The logic that triggers the "set_for_sale" hasn't actually been written yet, but it would be a script that combs the database for abandoned parcels that are older than some period of time. By "hook" I mean a method by which can be triggered from an external event, like a network packet. If there were a set of documented hooks then we could call it an API. The infant API is not public, and can only be used from within SL's internal network at the moment.

Andrew - from a dev standpoint that seems like a good idea.. that being said, I would have to advise:

FUCK NO!

See the loophole that let you see public land made a handful of people (many using the same really piss poor terrible script) set up laggy crap all over second life, at times on land they didn't own... eating other peoples resources for the chance to glean a single peice of data....

Let them get a whole grip of data and you'll have every wanna be donald trump from arsehole to breakfast time flying scanners up the mast on plots all over the place.

Thats my prediction anyways, lagapalooza 2006

Replacing a relatively small problem with a huge different problem aint the answer.

Maybe opening up the land forsale information with a api or a xml site would be more helpfull.

No worries Siggy. The land price scanner was merely a bad idea I presented as part of the brainstorm to prompt discussion on the thread. I don't actually expect it to have a lot of support.