Landbot gets a $1L 4096

There is no warning to read. That's the point.

It's far from useless to complain about landbots on the forums, they are the only place where people can be warned and save at least a few from falling foul to them. Every time someone makes a thread it's worth it if even only one new person learns of the existance and saves themselves losing a lot of money.

I agree that land bots can be a pain, especially for those who do not understand how things work here, but given that land bots exist, no more software complexity in the land sales process will solve this issue to the satisfaction of all concerned.

On the other point you make about BBs in general Sarah, sad to relate they are not always the place to resolve issues. Some folks who post here are quite genuine but others can take delight in winding people up and/or scoring points. On the other hand some BB's can be a very good teaching tool even if they seem a harsh Darwinian environment. For example I also play World of Warcraft and the site http://wow.allakhazam.com/ is very useful in explaining how to solve quests. But don't look for compassion, BB's survive because they get lots of hits and to do that you need emotion that is not necessarily human warmth

Finally I personally learned how real life stock markets work (from a trading viewpoint, rather than investing) from reading and taking part in BB debates. The debates we had on the market and Dot.com crash in 2002 and Gulf War 2 were cruel but ultimately useful

Good luck in your SL business

Don't you just hate the smartarses on here with their "smarter than thou" attitude

You're forgetting this is supposed to be a worldwide platform or advertised as such....not everyone has the mastery of the English language, so reading LL FAQ and other sources might be a non-starter to begin with it. I doubt there is a Slovak or Polish LL translation for land FAQ's.

Maybe those same smartarses should log into HipiHi (when a economy is developed)
and tell us how easy it was to purchase and sell land overthere


By the way, I'm agreement with Sarah Nerd's initial quote and happy that she is championing the cause of banning land bots. It's morally incorrect to screw people over......how many more ways should SL residents lose significant amounts of money?

If I did venture into HipiHi, I would educate myself in someway before spending money. If it means asking someone else, reading the directions, or just being smart enough to figure out 3 boxes and a yes/no click option. Maybe buy a freakin English/Mandarin dictionary. But the responsibility to educate myself in the safe and correct way to do business is my own. Personal responsibility is scary to many people.

Well it's one thing to be ripped off by a resident, another to be ripped off by one of his 100 's of automated minions

Congrats to you and Michelle on getting the parcel back! Great job!

With respect to making information more available to people about landbuying, I honestly don't think people would read it.

There have been some suggestions about interactive warnings and dialogs that might help. I doubt landbots will be eliminated by LL anytime soon; I don't see any practical way for them to do it and still retain basic bot functionality, which will be valuable to them in the long run.

I don't see that it's lucky for us that you don't post. I miss your voice.

But, about the nasty feel here ... I just don't see it. Sure there are unpleasant posts, but that's everywhere and generally decried. There are a few entrenched conflicts between individuals, but every BB grows those over time. Re: SLU -- indeed the welcome you've received there may be more of a personal thing - you do have stature! I posted there, got no traction. The noobs are here, and there is some fun, so it works for me

If you can point to somewhere easily accessible that people are ignoring that explains the full implications of the "sell to anyone" box, you've got a point. Otherwise, how do you expect people to educate themselves? I couldn't find anywhere except here, and the majority of users never make it this far or if they do they're scared off pretty quickly.

Sell - a verb relating to sales.

To -preposition used to indicate direction. Can refer to people, places or things.

Anyone - –pronoun any person at all; anybody


Pretty easy to figure out. We covered verbs, prepositions, and pronouns in the 3rd grade. Words mean things, if you mark something "sell to anyone" you are saying "This plot is for sell to anyone."

No

One

Near

So

it

Must

be

ok

to

set

to

anyone.

Oh crap.

You're ignoring the fact that it doesn't explain the implications that anyone, anywhere on the grid will be able to buy it immediately, and that someone probably will if you set if for $1. That might seem obvious to you, but I just don't think it's as intuitive as you think it is. For example, if you're Joe Avatar and you're looking for land, you search, you look at some different plots etc. How likely are you to buy a piece of land without even looking at it? That there are people and bots out there that just buy any land without even coming to look at it just doesn't occur to people. It would occur to people who know the system, but not those who don't, who are the people we should be trying to educate.

How many pictures do you want to paint them. It cannot be any clearer or in anymore plain English. "Anyone" does not have any qualifiers to it.

You have to paint a picture of a landbot.

Chris, there is no debating what you say. Anyone = Anyone.

But Anyone to the uninformed will be the people standing on the sim with them at the moment of sale. They may not even know the land is instantly listed in search.

Sadly most folks don't know about the existence of landbots until one has purchased their land.

You are right in the end. The sellers make the error. It's just sad that some people script bots just to take advantage of it and don't return mistakes. If they were not allowed to keep the mistakes, I would never post about landbots again.

Well, except that "Anyone" doesn't imply to most people "including automated programs that don't even need a human being to operate them and can buy land in seconds." Maybe it does to YOU, but I didn't even know about the concept of landbots until I came here. I assumed that every transaction needed a real person at a keyboard. Shows what I knew.

Many otherwise savvy and intelligent people have a mental block when it comes to computers. It is not that they are dumb, but the meaning of the words just do not register, either momentarily or because they just don't read these things.

"You are about to sell a 4096 plot of land to anyone. Are you sure?"

is the equivalent of

WORDS
Ok Cancel

to some people.

These are the people that will get caught in this trap. It's happened to me, happened to many others. There is nothing you can code for to prevent that. No UI in the world can stop that. If you are so focused on ... whatever else, that the meaning of the words before you does not register, things like this happen.

Now, LL can do something to improve the words, but if they still end up being

WORDS
Ok Cancel

Well, personal responsibility should kick in.

That is the singular expression that I have been advocating removing from the process. I've said this in many words I'll say it in few: you won't stop people from making mistakes anywhere, anyhow. What you can do is allow for those mistakes to be correctable.

I'm so smart.....and so i expect everyone else to be!
I have an IQ of 120.....so i expect everyone else to be my level of intelligence!
I'm ok Jack..........don't know about you?

I'm afraid it doesn't work like that!
I own several sims, most of which are Private Islands....and i can tell you I have
gone through this process of transferring land for 1 Linden with residents for one reason or another...(luckily Land Bots there are a non-starter because of Land Reclaim.)
and people do find it difficult to do the simple things. In some instances its taken me over 10-15 mins to walk through the process especially with people whose 1st language isn't English. We don't live in a perfect world and people become very cautious when dealing with significant amounts of money.....i've even encountered the same problems with English speaking residents.


There are a lot of people out there. especially first time land buyers.....that are not aware of the existance of Land Bots. The information on those are not displayed anywhere in or out of SL except on these forums.....and not everyone has a Landbaron as a friend!
I think it's that aspect people need to be educated on....even if a side note in the Covenant section or somewhere else on the Interface.

On a side note, i had a previous mainland landholder (an American) which I eventually bought land from...set her land for sale to ANYONE but made a typo error.....instead of setting it for 66,500 L, she accidently typed in 6650 L. I don't have to tell you what happened Pure human error!

Anyway with some Linden mentor help, we were able to induce the Landbaron to sell it back to her, but not after taking his 10000 L inconvenience fee first. I guess losing 10k was a result compared to a potential 60k loss. I later managed to buy that plot from her successfully.

Agreed!

...or .like someone mentioned earlier.....a time delay before it hits Land Sale searches.

Not everything in life is correctable. Some mistakes have permanent consequences. No, I am not simply talking about making a bad choice whilst driving on the highway and ending up as meat paste, but even in sales doctrine there is a concept of a "final sale" (usually embodied in a sign that says "All Sales Final". There's no refunds, exchanges, or "undoing" the sale. You paid the money, the vendor took it, and gave you the item. If you made a mistake and bought the wrong item, tough for you. If the vendor made a mistake and priced the item wrong, tough for him.

Many contracts are the same way. Mortgages, for one. Once you sign on the dotted line, the house/land is YOURS. There's no "undoing" the sale contract simply because you changed your mind, or made a mistake. You can talk with everyone involved and see if there is something you can do to "make it better", but NO one is obligated to do so.

The way you deal with those situations is you take your lumps and try not to make another mistake. In that case, neither of the mistakes are fatal ones, so you CAN "live and learn".

In SL, land sales are "ALL SALES FINAL" sales, by default. I don't think they even need to say it for it to be painfully obvious that they are. Everyone needs to be painfully aware of that fact, and they need to take their lumps when they make mistakes.

I am not supportive of subterfuge in the design of land sales, but it simply isn't there; there is nothing hidden or unknown about the process at this point. The exploits are closed; the problems in the interface removed. Information and support is available for anyone who seeks it out. Yes, it can stand a little spit and polish to reduce the probability that someone will get burned from 0.02% to 0.015%, but the overall reaction that "the system sucks, and the victim is blameless" is silly and unfounded.

Given the volume of land sales and transfers which occur daily, and the fact that we have these threads so infrequently now, I think the system is working about as optimally as it can.

Bad example though. When you close on a house you have to sign on at least 20 dotted lines.

It's not a matter of being smart, it's a matter of common sense. This stuff may be a little confusing, but it's not rocket science. Going into something blindly is ill-advised, especially if it involves parting with your money. I applaud the people who come here to ask first, even if they didn't read the knowledge base. They, at least, are TRYING. They might not get it quickly, but they try. And that is the difference between them and most others.


I agree that people would be well-served to have a warning somewhere. But considering that some people expect you to move their eyeballs for them and fire their synapses, the warning will just be more

WORDS
OK Cancel

lol- common sense.....you assume everyone has that??? Of course it's ill advised...but people still do it!

The other day, i had a young lady approach me regarding living on one of my PI SIM's. Her account was 4 months old, so not exactly a Noob! (also English was her native language)

The rental fee was $29 USD per month. I proceeded to explain the difference between rental land and buying land (leasing) as i give any would-be resident either option....that in itself was a chore and took me over half an hour to explain those differences ...and she still remained confused!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I advised her to rent land first and learn about owning (leasing) land before committing to that type of expenditure.....she took my advice and decided to rent and proceeded to pay me 29 LINDENS!!!!

Rofl

Put the warning at the point of danger, clear and visible, and then there really is no question it is the responsibility of the person who ignored it. Put the warning in a place where many, perhaps most people, will not find it, or put no warning at all, and it is the responsibility of the management.

Of course, it will disappoint landswoopers and petty sadists who glory in feeling superior to teh NOOBS. Pity.

Landbots suck.
The people who use landbots...suck.
There is no earthly reason why the ability to purchase land should be given to a bot.
And given the number of recurring threads where people have encountered grief after being zapped by one - they should be discouraged, and users banned.
Let a bot FIND a good piece of low-priced land for you...but force the transaction to take place with a real human behind the keyboard.

Agreed!