Regarding two plots of land

Since this is an open letter, and I happen to know more about it than anybody else I'll address it.

The elimination of public land wasn't driven by Philip or any of the VP's. It was a feature request from the Customer Service group. The reason they entered that item on the Big List Of Things To Do (BLOTTD) is because they were spending a significant amount of time responding to complaints of people accidentally realeasing their land having it promptly grabbed by public land recyclers. Often by the time LL was able to respond the recyclers had already turned the land around for profit, which made recovery of the land difficult or impossible.

The feature request went onto the pile along with a number of other items relating to public land. During my stint on the maintenance team I was browsing the BLOTTD, sorting by priority and votes, and I found a bunch of high ranking items relating to public land and auctions. "Hrm. These three items are related and probably not that hard to do. They have lots of votes, and they are mildly interesting (I'd get to do some more python scripting) -- I;ll take 'em" I thought. I assigned those tasks to myself and got to work. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to remove the Public Land information on the World Map legend to free some space for some UI widgets that were starved for screen realestate (yet another BLOTTD item).

The main reason we left public land in place after the intial automatic transfer to Governor Linden of the big plots is that we didn't want to have to manually sort a large pile of very small parcels into For Sale and Auctions, so we just let them go public. However, since then we've added functionality to the servers to accept network packets from external scripts that trigger events within the simulators, which opened up some possibilities for pulling simulator functionality and logic out of the simulator and into python scripts driven by cron jobs. So I added a few hooks for parcel transfers and added a field to the database so we could easily find the many small parcels later.

The way it works now is this: parcels smaller than 512 meters (which used to go public) will now go to Governor. LL will sit on those parcels for about one week -- anyone who has accidentally released a parcel can contact Customer Support during this time to get it back. After a week each parcel will be put up for sale for L$1/sq meter, which means they will be available for the same price as claiming public land. The L$1/sq meter sale price is hard coded in the simulator code at the moment. Eventually I expect we'll make the price an argument for the hooks. When that happens there will be a policy decision to be made about whether or not to change how we give up abandoned land.

(Incidentally, it might be possible to provide some standard API and authentication so that the simulator hooks can be triggered from external Resident run scripts. That is, a land owner might be able to operate on their land without having to log in and manually push UI buttons.)

This is a typical case study on how some (not all) things get done at LL. Anyone can add an entry in the BLOTTD and anyone is free to accept things off the list. Everybody is free to vote on, edit, change priority, accept the items, or close as "Won't finish". This means that quite a bit gets done without the VP's ever being involved. Also, the workplace is realatively flatter and more dynamic when it comes to responsibility.

For the larger projects we usually form small groups with a Project Lead and Technical Lead. Sometimes the Project Lead and Technical Lead are the same person. It may be that the roles of two individuals in a project may reverse for some project in the future, such that the Project Lead in the first project is now a supporting team member, and a previous support member is the new Project Lead.

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.

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.

Argent, I like your idea. I was thinking along a similar line: immediately put the land up for sale back to the resident/group that released it, and then later open it up to neighbors. The system could send someone a notice that land had just been made available to them for a limited time.

I was also thinking that perhaps released land could automatically pay the releasee a sum based on something like 1/2 of the world wide average L$/sq.m price then go back up for sale at the same rate= + L$1/sq.m.