Landbot gets a $1L 4096

Well I think they can assume most people wont read past the first line or two of the directions. Thus any warning will have to come right away.

I don't know that they need any steps added to the process, really.

What bothers me is all the people who don't even know there are landbots getting swooped.

They could delay the land listing by 5 minutes,

Or they could tell people about Landbots.

I know I never have gotten so much as a login message warning me about landbots, land swooping or any of it.

I have to agree with this -- I really don't think the land sales process is that tricky or complicated. Last week I wanted to sell my little 512m mainland plot, but I had deeded it to group. It is very straightforward to go through the three steps, and when you are done, you get a confirmation that states clearly what you are selling, to whom, and for how much. And the default action is not to accept, it is to cancel -- i.e. if you just hit return, it cancels the sale. You have to intentionally click the other button to set the property for sale.

While I do sort of like the idea of having a confirmation of sale, i.e. 'so and so has offered to buy your parce for ---- click Ok to agree', that wouldn't work if the land were group owned (who gets the dialog box?) and what if you were offline and unavailable to approve the sale?

Maybe it would be handy to have a big red question mark / help button on the land-sale floater, which would link to a KB article about how to safely transfer land. Or even, link it to the sticky in this thread, about land sales. Still, the people who make these mistakes now, are going to make them no matter how many failsafes are put up, because they won't read them. I'm not defending landbots or swoopers or whatever, just saying, that if they are already willing to click 'ok' to a warning that they are going to set xxxx meters of land for sale to Anyone for a price of L$1, then odds are they'll click 'ok' or 'accept' to any other warnings and messages and caveats that they are given.

-Atashi

I am a programmer and I estimate it would take less than 10 minutes to put in some validation to make it much safer and less prone to human error.

If you do it right, you won't get swooped. Let's take lanbots out of the equation. Would there be this outcry if someone mistakenly set the land to anybody for $1, and a real person bought it ? Or is this about a certain agenda about landbots.? These are 2 seperate issues. Could there be better education on land dealings, landbots etc? perhaps. but I don't think, personally,there is anything wrong with the land sale interface in and of itself.

What I think people do though is transfer land.

They both go to the land and look around don't see any green dots.

They think everyone who buys land has to do it the same way they do.

They decide since no one is around they can hurry up and make the transfer.

Kinda like needing to go when you are hiking or something.

They have done this since the beginning of SL, and people have been getting swooped since then.

Yeah its stupid. But its what people do.

Sure they should set it for sale to a specific person, but they figure they are safe.

You kind of have to dumb things down to the level of the audience sometimes.

---------------------------

A Delay would probably fix the instances of this without hurting anyone, since the delay would affect all land speculators equally.

It wouldn't have to be much, 5 minutes would be plenty.

At the very top of the Resident Answers form is a nice thread titled "Step by Step: How to Transfer Land"

Of course, you might not look on a forum for that information first. Especially if your land sale is emotion based (I was just selling it to my bf/gf/friend/group etc, I didn't think I had to worry)

The problem with Broc's suggestion of an additional confirmation is that the land sale could happen while you were unable to log in, thus the person buying your land would need to wait until your confirmation to purchase it, and may likely wander off to another plot where the resident is actually online to complete the sale. This would sincerely suck for the person trying to sell off their land because they no longer log into SL very much.

And honestly, how many additional confirmations are necessary to stop individual error? The current system seems to ask all the right questions, and then requires you to confirm your choices. How many more "ARE YOU REALLLLLLLLY SURE???" 's do we need?

Like ANY system that would be implimented, the current system requires you to THINK about what you're doing. Maybe 6 or 8 more pop-up warnings would shake someone into realizing what they are actually doing, but I have no doubt that regardless of how many safeguards were put in place, there would still be some illiterate whining that they wuz wobbed by evil bots or vicious landbarons.

Personally, Col, and you know I love you, but I am NOT for any more "dumbing down" of SL for the stupidity of people.

I helped someone do the exact same thing this weekend ("undeeding" land) and it took close to an hour of explaining what she needed to do and why before she felt comfortable enough to finally do it. It was anything but straightforward to her.

If you keep SL a niche then you can reasonably expect that everyone should know what they're doing or else "tough luck", but LL decided to make SL accessible to just everyone which inevitably brings the need to hand-hold people and making sure there's plenty of safety nets around for when they slip up.

I also estimate that 6 months after you make your simple changes, another programmer will come along that also has some quick changes to make it even more safer than you did.

Is everyone forgetting what the land-sales interface looked like *before* Linden made the changes the community asked for the first time?

Guys - the answer isn't changing the interface. The real problem, is that landbotters are exploiting an opportunity. Make that opportunity less attractive, and you solve the landbot problem.

One way is to level the playing field. Another way is to put in more restrictions on selling land. No matter what you do, there will always be users that will make mistakes, and there will always be people to prey on them. The only way to stop it is to make it so there's little value in doing so.

Hey the only infinite thing in the metaverse is stupidity.


I think the interface is probably enough now.

I don't think the forums are a practical solution, since most people don't read them.

So basically that leaves telling people about landbots somehow or delaying how fast land goes on search, just for a bit, just long enough to take a tinkle before the ranger comes.

I think that as soon as you hit the sell land button, the first thing you should get is a bold WARNING giving information about the existance of landbots and land swooping.

There are plenty on this thread, and all other landbot threads, who think everyone should know about them already and should study the ins and outs of buying and selling land, but of course people on the forums know the pitfalls as they are about the only places that do inform the minority. If you aren't a forum reader, you wont find the info on the land info pages or anywhere else within SL as far as I know.

How much less error prone can it be? You follow the three steps, it asks you to confirm it it. What_else_do_you)need_? I'm truly not trying to be difficult or hard headed, I just don't see the problem. You want to put in a 5 minute delay, that's fine. But I just don't see where the difficulty lies in the actual mechanics of the process.

I don't own land yet, but I think this is exactly what happens. I don't necessarily agree that it's stupid to think this. I'm a programmer in RL, but that doesn't mean that I automatically know that the instant you put the land up for sale it appears in search. Is there a box for "make this land appear in the search facility"? because if not, there could be. Or a "once you list your land for sale, it is available in search for anyone to see".

It's not that stupid to think that you have to be on the land to buy it either. Those are two things that should be made more obvious in my opinion.

If you've never sold land before you might also think that the seller would have to confirm any sale before it goes through - is this not the case? And if not, why not? A wee box could easily come up and say "so-and-so wants to buy this land for $x-amount, please confirm".

I think part of the problem is that people aren't aware how important the "sell to anyone" bit is. If they think that no-one apart from their friend or whoever could possibly know about it, then they won't think it matters what goes in here.

Why ths can`t work is its too easy! LLABS always wants to make things harder then what they should be.

But really i like this idea and should be applied! Havy you put it on the idea listings for llabs to look at?

Usagi

I think Matthew's advice was reasonable and as polite as possible.

This would hurt those who are selling a lot of land.

The only way it could work is if it were a toggle type deal.

Where the normal person has to confirm it, but a Land Baron or employee of a land baron would be able to set it up so they never have to confirm a sale.

And if you aren't online, how do you allow or disallow the sale? I like the concept, but it would cause delays in sales. Do people want that? Landbots capitalize on mistakes. You neutralize them by not making those mistakes. how far can we go to mitigate human error. Warnings, education, tutorials are fine. But if you enter the wrong data in the field, and click OK, you're gonna get burned.

If this person had 60 seconds instead of 3 seconds, do you think she would have realized her mistake? Because without land bots, land barons (human land bots) would have done the same thing, just slightly slower.

On the JIRA that suggests that LL employ a CAPTCHA in the land sale process (go vote for it! http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2348) someone made the very salient point that it takes NINE STEPS to complete the land sale process. NINE. Honestly, there are no amount of steps that will prevent this kind of mistake from happening - if not to a landbot, then to an actual player who will see the land for sale and buy it when the seller is in waking sleep.

If you institute a minimum amount higher than 1L, guess what? People will put in the minimum amount and then cry that they got screwed when someone else comes by and buys it. People are searching for land all the time. While the above-referenced jira will go a long way toward stopping bots, it will not stop people who happen to be shopping for land and who will buy the land for the price set to anyone. People MUST grasp exactly what it means to set land to sale to ANYONE. As long as they stay in a mental fog, there is no process that is going to save these people from themselves.

What they really need to do is make the Land FAQ easier to find, for those who care to read it. They also need to add information about land bots to the faq, along with some other helpful hints

Maybe it's just as simple as that? People want to *transfer* land so their mindset is stuck on that, they're not thinking that they're really putting their land up for sale, they're just wanting to give it to someone else.

A simple "Transfer Land" button would solve that. Under the hood it could simply set the land for sale at L$0 to the indicated person, making it a viewer only change that should be rather trivial to implement.

Now that is a brilliant idea. Make a jira, Kitty, I'd vote for it.

see, do you think people know that you can buy or sell when you're offline? I know this is probably obvious to most people on here, but what about the people who never get this far? I didn't know, for example (I'm really showing my ignorance this afternoon ) I am actually genuinely surprised that you don't have to confirm or not confirm the sale of land, is this made clear when you set up land for sale?

Maybe :

"The selected 4096 m2 land is being set for sale.
Your selling price will be L$1 and will be authorized for sale to anyone.
Be warn that automated programms can buy your properties within seconds."

and another thing, putting the default setting to "specific resident" and not "anyone" could help so if you really want to sell to anyone you *have* to select it.

You do confirm, when you set it up for sale. I set my parcel to sell for 50k to anybody. I click the OK. I've confirmed it. I log off , go to sleep. Joe Avatar comes by,
sees the land is for sale. and buys it. Do we want him to have to wait until I log on again to get the land?