Land bots need to be stopped.

I don't know if this is the right place for this post. If not PLEASE move it rather than deleting it mods. This is a very important issue. I thought it was bad enough that there were "land bots" that were running up the price of land for citizens anyway. It made me unhappy that first land was being taken away and I figured this was why.
What I didn't know is how "effective" these things are. Earlier I was pricing down some land for sale and I had a couple of parcels. one 1024 and 1 2048 very close to one another. Now keep in mind. I was/am doped up on prescription painkillers for a tooth problem right now. I probably shouldn't have been messing with my land at all, but this... this is ridiculous.
So you've probably guessed I priced my 2048 at the 1024 price by mistake. Yeah. that happens. My fault. BUT! I realized this in approximately 1/2 second and while i was reclicking on the land to cancel the sale it was bought right out from under me before I could hit the cancel land sale button. I lost approximately $11k linden in this deal. I hope to hear from the person that bought it and see if i can buy it back from them at a tiny profit for them. I seriously doubt the type of person that would use these things would agree to that.
I know I made a mistake, but couldn't there be preventative measures for this? Like making the person actually be on the land and buy it from the dialog? Or making it take 5 minutes to register land for sale? 1 minute? Its nasty losing that much linden that easily and something needs to be done about it.
Thanks for anybody that bothered to read or listen,
Karmalene

I feel for ya, Hulking stole 15k from me (no I don’t give a damn if I name him now no one at LL reads these dead forums anyway) that way before the current changes to selling land. I was combining some lots and it combined them and left the land at the single lot price. He popped in when less than 10 seconds went buy and bought it out from under me. I tried to explain to him what happened but he just laughed at me repriced the land and tp'd out. It is unlikely someone running this type of operation will have any sympathy for you at all and I am very sorry for that. I understand your angst all to well.

i know it doesnt help but if you buying land on a private sim and this happends to you then the estate owner can take the land back aslong as it was a genuine error

I know I won't be dealing with anything but rental land anymore after the last bit of this sells up. I'm not paying tier so that I can have my land snatched out from under me by some buttheaded script when I have a lapse of concentration for 1/4 a second. At least living on an island owned by someone I trust I won't have to live next to pedophiles and sex-based establishments that weren't there when I moved in. Even if I did at least they'd be gotten rid of if they caused me trouble. I'm pretty well angry still. So pardon me for going off here, but Lindens, can't you make this junk not happen to someone else?

Landbots are legal.

Landbots are normal and natural evolutions of a market.

There are tools in place for defeating landbots if you want to transfer land to certain persons.

Linden Labs is not responsible for mistakes YOU make.

MANY landbot owners are VERY reasonable and return accidentally sold land.

For the record:
I do not own landbots
I do not make landbots
I do not buy and sell land on speculation (I'm morally against speculating on land in both SL and RL as the only benefit is screwing your neighbor who needs the land in order to squeeze out a profit for yourself from land you don't need)

HOWEVER

Landbots are nothing that need to be "taken care of".

Land owners should have to pay L$30 to list their land on the global "Land for sale" tab, just like not-for-sale parcels in the "find places" tab.

And it should be off at first, and reset to off anytime the owner changes the price or borders of the parcel. So they have to pay to re-post the parcel as available for immediate sale, big deal. But it'd certainly cut the legs out from under people that use bots to swoop land parcels.

Unfortunately it might give rise to script based land scanners again, which, imho, is FAR worse as they add to general sim lag.

I'm pro-bot, but bot owners should have to work harder to enjoy their advantage.

This would be funny, rip off the landbot by continually reselling the block and taking it back

I've no doubt that Land bot owners are too smart to fall for buying estate land.

But what you suggest seems to have happened due to a bug in secondlife actually.

Rather made me laugh. I can't find the thread now, but a handful of people
reported paying for a parcel... several times (like every 30 seconds), without
successfully taking ownership of the plot of land.

L$10,000 once, twice, ... 10 times, 11 times... 20 times...

Linden lab stepped in and, I believe, re-imbursed both the normal attempts to
purchase, and likely the bot attempts considering they were likely at fault for
the sales transaction not completing, and payment for group owned land only
gets run once a day.

You all are better off buying land in private Island estate sims. Such as ones like Odessa sims

Then you get to live in class 5 sim and not lag like at mainland. As atic stated you also have no worry of bots stealing your land and if someone did as you accdently prices way low the estate owner could get your land back for you, if the person who stole it wouldn't return it to you.

right now Odessa Graceful and Odessa Luxurious have availabe land.

If your tired of the mainland lag and bots stealing your land come to one of the Odessa estates

There are class 5 sims on the mainland too, I'm in one. The issue with a private sim is that if the private sim owner goes bust, or just decides to sell-up without bothering about their customers; your land is gone with everything on it. While if LL goes bust the whole grid is screwed anyway, and it's less likely to happen.

So there's arguments either way, if you want real security you need your own island

Well with islands like mine they are not connected so that makes them less lag. As for buying land in private estates.You just need to not buy form some perosn who has one island and a news avatar date.

People like me who do this as our busniess are not going to go bust. As like for example me I run 8 private island estate sims. Your safe buying form people like me as we won't be selling out sims outfrom under you, and we are here for you. We want you all in our sims.

So your safe

Even if you own 50 sims, there's no guarantee you wont have a mental breakdown one day and do a runner with the money

Mainland comes with certain benefits that PIs can't compete with unless a big name gets in on the game. PIs have certain benefits mainland can't compete with unless LL starts changing a lot of rules.

let me say that if you have been abused by a bot, I do feel badly for you, and I do understand your frustration, BUT...they don't do anything except 1)increase the probability of someone (with lower senses of ethics and morality than yours) capitalizing from your mistakes, and 2)increase the probability you will get burned for making the mistake.

Bottom Line: Know what you are doing before attempting to transfer land...if the bot owner is standing on your plot when you put it up for sale to Anyone for 1$L, guess what, it's gone! If I am standing on your plot and you put it up for 1$L, it's gone, too...you'll get it back, but if you are so foolish with your Lindens as to forget they are real money, I WILL empower you to reevaluate your thinking about knowledge, experience and judgement (which is to say, I will sweat you a bit, help you figure out how you should have done it, then give you back your land...sorry, yes, in that order).

Heh, do I sound hard, uncaring, insensitive? Yes. Will you pay closer attention to what you are doing before playing around with controls that affect your hundreds of dollars next time? Yes. Are you better off? Yes.

I was reading earlier on today of an anti-landbot-bot, which changes the price of a parcel so quickly that the landbot TPs in, starts the buy procedure for L$0, then pays L$XXX,XXX,XXX at the end of the process.

What is the betting that the landbot owners who've been saying "suck it up, it's the free market" when residents are ripped off will start calling that illegal fraud and demanding that it be banned if it becomes more common?

Anyone have more info?

I know its pretty hopeless and that it was my own mistake. I asked the person that bought it for my land back and even offered to pay a tad more for it and they never replied. I just want something put into place to make this a harder mistake to make. I don't see the land bots going anywhere really. I talked with a couple more friends this has happened to.

Yeah, it's true. The guy managed to steal L$400,000 from me in exchange for two 16sqm parcels the first night he came up with the idea. Who knows how many people he ripped off that one night but we're probably talking over a million L$. Since then he's been doing it pretty much non stop. And sharing the bot with all his buddies.

I'm not sure how many people he's caught out since then, plenty of regular people are getting caught out as well. I know at least 3 people who lost sums ranging from 50k to 100k each.

Since then I've probably bought something like 50 or 60 parcels from him and his buddies and haven't been caught out since. God knows how many more he's given away to the various other land traders who caught him out when his price was low instead of high but I'm pretty sure it won't amount to as much as he made in that first night.

at current market prices, private islands can totally compete. example:

1. If I were to rent 8192 sqm of land from Anshe Chung for six months, it would cost $336USD.
   
2. If I were to buy 8192 sqm of mainland and pay tier on it for six months, it breaks down like this:
   1. cheapest 8192 mainland parcel* right now =
      $299.93USD (L$80,000*) +
      
   2. $240.00USD tier ($40 x 6) +
      
   3. $45 USD for premium account (2 x quarterly payments which is cheaper than monthly)
      
   
   

Concluding, that is $336 USD vs $584.93 (mainland) for the exact same amount of land for six months.

"Aha!" you say, "but I can sell my mainland parcel, so the initial outlay for the land doesn't count." Oh really? Before October last year, the going rate for an 8192sqm parcel was L$40,000. Members older than I recall catastrophic drops in the value of land. Who is to say that won't happen again? Who is to say your 8192 sqm parcel of land will be worth even a fraction what you paid for it in six months, if LL ends up open sourcing the server software around that time. "That won't happen until next year?" Well maybe not, but plenty of other LL decisions could cause you to lose that investment of almost $300USD altogether. If my estate owning landlord/landlady has a nervous breakdown, I stand to lose $56USD at most, and only that full amount if he/she chooses to have the brainfart on the day my tier is due.

I'm not endorsing Anshe Chung in this post btw (although i've had good experience buying and renting from her in the past); her website was the obvious place to look for competitive private estate tier pricing right now.

*Cited parcel is Camlann Tarl 174, 205, 88 (Mature)

Well I've seen class 5 island sims that lag worse than my class 3 mainland sim too due to content.

Ahh so the bot is a community education bot then people are better off losing $40k of money actually earned through labour rater than a ripoff autobot?
Perhaps if that were the case they could program the autobot to give the victims a notecard then return the land after making them sweat a bit.

Face it, if landbot owners weren't doing it to rip off people they would program them not to take land at $1 a meter.

Funny, I did do that but then noticed that more uncaring bot runners were winning all the really cheap parcels and it was just encouraging them to keep going. So I started buying those L$1/sqm parcels and setting them for sale back to the owner automatically. Then Seargent came along and started selling me land for L$200,000/sqm and then BUYING IT BACK OFF ME for the freebie price I had set it for sale to him for.

So now I just keep it and warn people to contact me if they made a mistake.

Funny, I did do that but then noticed that more uncaring bot runners were winning all the really cheap parcels and it was just encouraging them to keep going. So I started buying those L$1/sqm parcels and setting them for sale back to the owner automatically. Then Seargent came along and started selling me land for L$200,000/sqm and then BUYING IT BACK OFF ME for the freebie price I had set it for sale to him for.

So now I just keep it and warn people to contact me if they made a mistake.

As long as Landbot owners realise it's their fault for not reading signs warning of caging or killing trespassers on a block of land full of warbots that just happens to have a 16m parcel in the centre at $1

I merely chose to point out that there is a traumatic element to ME personally acting like a landbot to get my point across, should I actually jump in and grab land that way...in no way do I consider anything those A**-hats are doing useful or constructive to the community!