A thought on eliminating ad cutters and similar slimeballs...

Here is a thought:

Right now, when you sell land, you have two options.

1: Sell to Anyone: Any person with the required L$ balance can buy. If it's mainland and they are not Premium, they have to become Premium as part of the sale. If it's a private island, anyone can buy.

2: Sell only to 'buyer name': Allows transfer only to a specific named individual.

We need a third option:

3: *** Sell to anyone, Seller approval required *** : With this option, anyone can opt to buy the parcel. But the sale does not become final until the seller is notified who the buyer is, and approves the sale. So a seller looks at the name, checks the peospectiver buyer's profile, and sees he is a known Griefer or ad cutter. "Sorry. No sale. I will not sell to you." Bye bye ad cutters and other slime.

We could, technically, do this now, if we could advertize land for sale without the parcel itself being set as for sale to anyone. For example, set the parcel as "For Sale", but only to one of your own alts. Have a sign at the parcel that says "To purchase this parcel, please contact the parcel owner". Meet with the buyer, set the land to sale for them only, and make the sale.

Of course, the third option or excercising the last described tactic would require that all land sellers agree never to sell to whoever walks by with the cash, so it will probably never happen. But a girl can dream...

They will never do this...because it makes too much sense. Great idea.

I think it would be great for a seller to have to manually approve a land sale. Wouldn't this also help with bots stealing parcels that accidentally get listed for prices that are too low?

You mean... like real life? Like a real contract? What a novel idea! Too bad it will take LL 6 years or more to implement it.

by the time they can implement something usefull like this we`ll have holodecks and fly rl spaceships

Isn't this basically an escrow type thingy? Where's Trout when you need him?

he`s prolly being abused on slIRC

I think ad cutters would use a one-month premium alt to buy as much land as possible before cutting it, and continue to buy even after cutting until the alt began to experience difficulty in buying.

It would be nice if mainland could be sold with a permanent covenant that prevented use for advertising. Some thought would have to go into the wording of a standard covenant that could not be circumvented by an ad farmer.

JIRA this, please. I'd love to place my vote

Mari

Problems I can see:

- What happens if two people offer to buy the land before the seller logs back in? If only one person can buy, then a griefer can attempt to buy the land to lock out other buyers, knowing that they won't have to pay for it because the seller will refuse.

- What happens if a seller puts up a parcel, waits for someone to buy it, refuses them and then raises the price on the parcel, and keeps going in order to "fish" for the highest possible price?

- It gives land barons a big advantage. Small land buyers will have to request to buy a plot of land, and then just wait in the hope that they'll get the land eventually. They can't look at other land in the meantime because if they do, both sellers might accept, and they'll end up spending more money than they have available.

- What happens if a seller puts up a parcel for sale at a bargain rate then refuses all buyers, just to make them waste time (because they have to wait, as above)?

I still think land should only be sold in 512 increments. An owner should be able to subdivide for their own needs, but not be able to sell unless it is 512 sqm.

Is this a JIRA proposal? I can't find it, but I like the idea!

[Edit: Just created this as a JIRA proposal. I lowered the cut-off size to 128, as 512 would make for an awfully boring mainland, if everyone had to sell at 512. Plus, 128 allows for odd corners n stuff. Here's the link:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-693]

Another fabulous post by our wise fox. Great idea Ceera.

Well, all that does is give you 128 sqm ad farms. 512 is really what it has to be. Tier scales in increments of 512 - who buys less than tier increments unless they are forced to by the way some asshat has chopped up the sim? Fly across Federal sometime with property lines showing and it becomes apparent why anything less than 512 just gets abused by douche bags and griefers. There are lots of reasons why a land owner would want to have smaller parcels, but no good reason for selling smaller parcels unless it is to grief.

Just because I have never cut up land into 16m plots in the past doesn't mean I won't do it in the future!

Hold on, define 'known griefer or ad cutter'. Is there a list? Or do griefers and ad cutters now put this in their profile?

Excellent post by Ceera!
Also, alas, valid points from Yumi!
Annnd ... A grid of 512 or 128 I very much doubt is the answer. I've seen 512s that are just a massive ad farm. I've no suggestions. Sorry for being negative. Jeez bilbo it's FRIDAY .. snap out of it halfling!!!!

I don't think there is one answer to this problem. Not allowing land sales of very small plots (less than 128 sq m) will solve things in some instances. Having a land sale system where the seller has to approve the purchase will help in other instances. Designating sims as "commercial", "residential" could be a better approach in other cases. What we need is a variety of (optional) approaches to suit varying situations.

Very true Diera.
What I'd like to see is more conversation between seller and buyer. I'm sure there probably already is a lot of neighbourly chat and discussions in this area. For instance, that's how I managed to turn my two separate 512s into a cosy 1024 by meeting and talking. /me waves to Egon.

*moves*

Thinking about the problems that I noticed, they could be solved by adding some rules to the system but they might be a bit counterintuitive.

- Multiple buyers can have open offers on a parcel at once, and a buyer can cancel their offer on a given parcel whenever they want.

- A seller cannot "refuse" an offer. They can decide to wait for more offers to come in, or to sell to someone else, but they can't remove any potential buyer from the offer list - only the buyer themselves can do that.

- As long as a plot of land has any open offers on it, it cannot be removed from sale and the price can't be adjusted.

- If an offer remains open on a land plot for more than a given amount of time (14 days, perhaps?), that offer is automatically accepted.

This means that the seller can choose who to sell to, but they still have to make a commitment that they will indeed sell the land at the price they offer it at. Yes, if an "ad cutter" manages to be the only offer on a parcel for 14 days, then maybe they'll get the parcel by stealth, but that doesn't seem very likely to happen.

My idea in JIRA a few months ago was similar to this, it was OFFERING money for a land and the owner could refuse or take it, even if the land wasnt for sale.

But this idea... I see complications galore.

Currently I lease hundreds of spaces all over SL. If I was to have to manage each space individually answering IM's and having to approve or disapprove various purchases, it would really be cumbersome and would likely push me out of selling land period. Any large, medium, or even a small scale real estate guru would do nothing but field more problems.

Limiting how one can use their land is also not right considering they are paying the tier for it.

Thank You Ceera for coming up with a potential solution. Although, I think we need to stick to the MUTE feature and put our efforts behind that.

I've bought land less than 512 because that land connected three separate parcels. I built a paved path along the 128 chunks of land that ran from one plot of land to another.

I agree that escrow would basically solve everyone's problem.

1. Seller puts land for sale in escrow
2. Buyer comes along, sees land, makes offer by putting money in escrow
3. Seller looks to see if buyer is a nice guy
4. Escrow (either a third party or some sort of computerized system) completes transaction upon approval of both parties.

That's what I see is being proposed here, am I right?