A call for ALL new land release to be URGENTLY SUSPENDED

WHAT ?
Some sort of TOTAL breakdown in communication here.........

Oh Siggy, Siggy...
I was talking about MY EGO, not yours. That final sentence is about me, and a wry look at what I had just posted. A sort of faintly humorous salute to the paradoxical nature of human thought processes. As the whole post was meant to be a wry look at the human defects of which none of us are ever entirely free, and of which those of us who get banned are merely the topmost peak.

Gee, that was a another communication which went wildly off target, wasn't it ?
Teaches me a lesson. Stick to the ordinary style of play, Ellie.

None of it was meant as an insult to anyone, or even as sarcasm. If you can be bothered to look again, it has an entirely alternate meaning. Anybody who took offence - it was unintended - I am sorry.

*now attempts to reintroduce topic*
I really would like to know who here likes the idea of the cycle of boom and bust which we are taught by RL experience (and economic theory) will result if there is no effective stabilizing feedback.

How can boom and bust be good ? For whom ?
I really dont see how it can be, except for game-playing thrills. I'd love someone to explain.

Do I really need to explain that I started posting as an alt as a result of being at the wrong end of the most aggressive and offensive trolling I have ever seen in my life ? Happily now (almost) over. And that the culprit, while banned from here, is still in game? If anything, I need a NEW alt. Though my posting style is so distinctiveI suppose anyone who wishes to do so can probably by now spot me with ease and virtual certainty. As I can others.

I thought the forum was about opinions, mainly on issues, but partly on actions. Surely an opinion is an opinion, and can be discussed equally well whether it comes from a diamond or a piece of dried crust. Who cares ? And why should it possibly matter ?

Personally I think a lot of trouble could be avoided if forum allowed posting under the name "anonymous". eg "anon 573". Only LL would know who you are. The problem of course would be that people would converse with themselves and set up phantom support groups. I've even seen it here already.

So why don't we just stop this, and address the topic. Surely it's more interesting ?

Doesn't matter to me... Using an alt to avoid assosiating your ideas with your name is pretty low on my list of "respectable things to do".




As someone who has been in forums that allowed annonymous logins, this is the most god-awful idea I've heard proposed for these forums. Ever.

This is probably where we are differing - I don't see it as boom and bust. I see it as a fluctuation in land price..

Now if we were talking about it shooting from say 2 bucks a meter to 10 bucks a meter and back over the case of a month, and doing so constantly , I'd probably say 'Yes there is something strange going on here'.

What I see is a swing in the free market (the same free market that sellers of land wished for) that offers the buyer the advantage (after a year of it being the opposite).

So when I say 'shit happens' - I mean 'Yes, sometimes things don't always go the way of the seller', and when I say 'I see no problem' - I don't see a boom bust environment happening - I don't see Land Reselllers going belly up left right and center, but I see them talkin a loss the same way that ANYONE selling ANYTHING in Second Life has (and will continue) at sometime taken a loss.

Personally I wouldn't shed a tear if some of the Land Sellers went belly up, but thats neither here nor there.

Siggy.

I think so. I have been here for 16 months and seen the market go all over the place. I buy land to have a place to have a peace of mind. I have lost a ton of money on land that I have bought in the past I didn’t buy it to make money when I went to sale but I didn’t think I would lose more than half of what I paid, oh well that’s hind sight. I do hope the market will go back to being more stable soon.

I agree that it doesn't look like boom or bust to me. Since I have been here, since February, the fluctuations look pretty normal to me.

What I don't understand is why people have contempt for those who deal in land? Surely real estate agenting, reselling land, renting land, and all that - should be allowed to make a profit (when it can) as much as any other profession, such as selling scripts. I don't like that the auctions have been changed to effectively exclude the smaller land dealers, but I don't get what is supposedly so lowly about being a land dealer.

And where would entertainers fit in on this chart? Such a chart would be interesting. Maybe it would go like this:

Script sellers - most prestigious
Content makers - second most prestigious
Entertainers - ok, but, yuck, you know, "show people"
People who don't do anything but hang out
Cyber prostitutes and the like
Real estate sellers - bottom of heap?

As for the land release being urgently suspended, um, no.

(Please note that I speak ONLY for myself, and always in my own words. This is my RIGHT.)

coco

I'll take a stab at this, from my perspective at least. I think some of the animosity you see toward land dealing comes from the fact that for a very long time, land development didn't actually involve any development. It involved buying a resource that we all use, and turning around and selling it for more money, without actually doing anything to it except perhaps clicking a few buttons to subdivide it and then jack up the price.

If prims were dealt the same way land is, I think prim dealers would be reviled too. It has always seemed a needless middle person is there just to pay prices for something would could get directly from LL without the privilege of paying someone who got there first. That is another reason why it is a shame that they switched to sim only auctions - it gives no chance whatsoever now to get land without a middleman involved.

It is not viewed as honorably as content creation, because again, it was just reselling something they didn't create. Now that development has become more of a part of some land sales (like what Anshe is doing with her private sims, and other themed areas), it does make it more interesting. However, the stigma remains because in the end, there has been some pretty bad behavior in the market overall. Some of it is legendary.

It is also a market dominated so completely by one person that the entire thing is often associated with them - and individual feelings toward that person are reflected in that opinion. There is no one person you have to get animations from, or clothing, or scripts, or anything else. However, there is a huge chance that when buying land, you will end up buying it from Anshe. That is not to say there are not others in the market - but the perception is that it's Anshe's market, everyone else is just allowed to play with the scraps.

I don't have contempt for land dealers.. in general.. I have contempt for some who were getting $1 public land and jacking it up to $10 a meter.. in same way I have contempt for people who take my free hottub, slap a texture over it and sell it for $500..

Basically I have contempt for people who rip people off.

But thats not the entire profession, nor have I stated that.


Siggy.

They bitch the most. The absolute most. End of story.

Intresting, care to elaborate?

Is there some history here that I (about 6 months old) don't know about, Siggy ?
I would be grateful for a PM pointing me in the right direction if elaborating here would be inappropriate ?

I see, Cristiano. Well, I am sure there are some shoddy land dealers, as well as those who do a good job of it and provide a service.

Providing a service - whether or not it involves creating physical content - is valuable, though.

coco

I believe what he was saying is that ratio of the effort expended in providing the service to the financial return is unusually small relative to effort-income ratios of services not involving land.

I'd also like to say that a service in and of itself is not intrinsically of value. The thought that economic service (profit, growth, etc.) always has value is capitalist group think. I think everyone could think of a few services provided that were in fact detrimental to individuals or society as a whole.

~Ulrika~

Is providing a dis-service valuable?

Regardless, they dont make a unit of currancy small enough to represent the value of it in game, so...

No it is pretty self explanatory. No need to draw a map.

Eboni is complaining about other people bitching.

Driving up the cost of land auctions and then forcing people to buy that same land from you at an even more inflated price is quite a service.

How much value would you put on someone who bought up all the milk in your town, then sold it for 3 times what they paid for it?

Maybe the auctions themselves are a bad idea?

coco

Looks like it won't be an issue any more. Now only high-stakes landbarons will be able to participate at all.

Oh well.

I was wondering what would happen in the new-style mainland sim auctions where there would "always be such a selection of sims available" that in effect they would be unrationed like private sims.

Well, if you look at http://secondlife.com/auctions/closed.php you will see what looks like the first two such auctions, now completed.

There were lots of bids.
Kurohyu Song bought Picus for US$1402, outbidding Buster Peel.
Philo Hatfield bought Lida for US$1800, outbidding Anshe Chung.

I do not understand the second of these, where it seems Philo had to bid $1800 to beat Anshes highest bid of $1603. How can that be ? **see edit below**

Anyway, the new unrestricted availability (which if real would surely have brought the price down close to the $1000 start) doesn't seem to have materialised yet. Only two sims are currently being auctioned, and I dont see even one waiting with no bids, ready for the auction to be kicked into life. Let alone a whole bunch.

Maybe the new system isnt working yet. But if so we currently have a bizarre halfway situation, because all the little plots seem to have gone, but the new increased availability is yet to kick in, so the prices are going high.

Why would anyone pay these prices with the promised availabilty increase imminent ?

Please don't bother with the "you are being inconsistent Ellie" thing. I am simply looking to see if they are doing what they said they would, without any personal axe to grind. As yet, they ain't.

And whats that jump from 1603 to 1800 about ? Is the auction software broke ? **see edit below**
_________________________

**Edit**
With regard to my difficulty understanding the bid history gaps - I'm an idiot.
I see how it works - only bids which actually become winning bid (even temporarly) are shown. It was the rounded winning figures, and the gaps below them, which threw me. Never ocurred to me that Anshe would be have bid just below the thousand, ie 1799. Then along comes Philo and bids maybe 1900. That's what makes the winning (auto) bid 1800. The system bids Philo up as high as he needs to win, which is $1 more than Anshes max bid which had been hidden until this point.
Silly me. Sorry.

Perhaps Anshe was the high bidder at 1603, but then Philo came along and bid 1800 - which was above her max bid, so it would not have triggered another bid from her.

But then shouldn't he have got it for only the minimum bid increment above her last ? Isn't that how it works ? And in addition - surely the system should'nt tell everybody how far the winner would have gone, if he didn't have to ?

And in the summary info, the selling price is definitely given as 1800, as though that is indeed what he paid. Am I misunderstanding something ?

No, he would have gotten it for the minimum bid increment above what her highest willing amount was, not her last bid. If she had 1799 as her highest amount, he would have won it for 1800.

So the system doesn't autobid for you, up to your max amount as necessary, a bid increment at a time, as ebay does ?
I thought I'd seen it doing that before, when I was participating myself.
There is nothing shown from Anshe, after the 1603. You had a look? This looks normal to you, this huge gap ?

If so, then obviously the autobidding is occurring, but not recorded for us to see.

But hold on, Anshe's last 5 bids all have the same time. They are autobids. Thay show.
Ok, I'll go check a few more till I understand exactly what bids are revealed. Thought I understood it, obviously I don't quite. Looks like there is a subtle difference from what ebay reveals as the bidding history.