Proposal to make released land go to Linden rather than public

I like the proposal!

Patrick Playfair

land goes back to LL. they have to hit the button twice, I think that is enough warning for adults. If they hit it twice, well they wont do that again in the future, lesson learned.

it wouldn't be very hard to kill the scanners even below 512m, without lindens having to manually sort all the little random plots. Simply alter the behavior of that get land owner function in such a way that land that 'is' public, isn't reported as such. Simply report it as governor linden, or report people who scan for it repeatedly over an over for abusing the terms of service and/or community standards.

theres no *good* reason to be allowing the lagging of entire sims so a couple of people can endlessly loop looking for 'public' land. Or better yet simply don't allow that function to work at all then on plots under 512m so there would be no way to tell, via scanner, when one changed hands or went public

If we can still sell our land to other players then I like the idea.

GET RID of this land release button or make it absolutely hard to make mistakes, ESPECIALLY with complication sof group land transfer)


What Snakekiss said.

Released land should go back to Lindens, Lindens should reverse mistakes, Lindens should take "release" button completely off the profile of land, and make it a pull-down menu in game only.

When subdividing a lot of land, it is all too easy to hit "release" instead of "join" or "subdivide" and even hit a confirmation screen "yes" even if you are an "adult" or a non-newbie. Get rid of the button entirely.

I think that if a person wants to realise his land he once has bought, he should have the right to do so.

It should be made hard to release it by mistake, but if someone is so stupid he press some warning button twice, he should desreve to loose his land.

I am against landscanners, and I belive those could be eliminated by chaning something in how SL handles scripts( as it was pointed out).

I fly around some 5-7 h per day looking for public land, some days I find 16sqm some 2000sqm. buy the land for 1l/sqm sell it often for about twice that price, summing up i still have the cheapest land for sale in the sim.

I make some money with this, but no fortunes.
Someone spends 2 hours in Photoshop or Poser makes an item and can sell it as many times as he wants. I can only sell my once.

I tell you people, it is really not anything to be jelous at.

Yes ban the scanners, but people want to release their land do so.

I do not se why Linden should sell land either that they get for free.
They get it free so all they get from it is profit ( because some auctions are in US dollars)

They do not 'get it free'. That statement baffles me beyond words.

Yes they do.

The land has been sold once by them, when realised back to them, they can auction it again.

If this is not selling same land again, what is it?

Lets say someone buys a lot in auction for 80 Us dollars, the land goes back to them and they can sell it again.

In theory they own all land of course, I just think it is bad to charge twice for same product. Once it is bought from them, it should remain with players unless the player having it specifcly wants to give it back to Linden.

Any idea how long "eventually" is? One good thing about public land is that it usually gets back into the hands of local land owners quickly. Development of a sim could be hampered if land stays in the hands of Governor Linden very long. As an example, there's a plot of land in Atis that was reclaimed by the Gov over 2 weeks ago and it still doesn't even have an auction ID.

I'm starting to think that I'd prefer a system in which people who have land in a sim have first dibs at buying this type of land using the $1/m2 model. This would allow development of a sim to continue smoothly while also curbing land scanner use.

Finn, currently any player who leaves SL or account expires while holding land, gets their land resold on auction already, so LL has been and will always resell their own land.

I agree that is free as you describe it, but I think he is saying it’s not free as in their expenses on the servers, personnel, etc.

Either way it breaks down to someone owning the land and reselling it for a profit. What we need is to reduce the amount of freak occurrences by moving the button to a more appropriate location as mentioned in uncountable threads.

Well we cannot start thinking of server costs within the game. Soon we we would need to calculate prices on clouds, posting an event and even moving an avatar from one sim to another.

Linden has created a world, they clame to be user generated. They provade us a space to play in, if they interefere by chaning rules in the middle, it might affect in a very negative way for many players.

In general i wonder why people complain so much about land prices and landbarons.
These days land starts at around 2L/sqm. Seldom i hear anyone complain about how evil people who sell a skin for 5000L are. That is like a 2000sqm plot. And who knows the skin might be even made with warez *g*

What i find amazing though is, that when a sim is extremely lagged down and useless. One get advice from Linden and helpers to try to find out why it lags and tell people to remove the lag causing things. I was also told that I can move to another sim.
For the 8 millions they got they should hire a few lag polices.
Bad programming in my opionion if it is about impossible to fin the lag causers.

With this example I just wanted to show that it seems to be ok to be user created if someone makes living a hell for others, but not ok if someone would make a few Lindens on land (seems to be the worst crime in SL)

Sorry, went a bit off topic

I think anyone who has put a $980 downpayment on a private island, or the people who have paid thousands to keep their community projects together (and then got totally stuffed on server resources) might disagree with you. Especially in light of the recent proposal from LL on allocating servers to sims. You DO get exactly what you pay for... if you go buy a piece of land in an old sim for the exact same cost as someone buys the same plot in a new sim, you get a lesser server.

So yes, we actually do need to start thinking of server costs. In fact I believe that land prices will start reflecting this soon, too.

Kris,

Yes we need to think at cost as the persons who pay for the game, as the persons we are in RL, but I do not think our RPG avatars should be concerned about that.

I also think they should update the old servers instead of adding all this new wasteland.
There is about 1800 unsold lots, Hello Linden! That means there is more land than users need already.

could also mean people are buyin too much land at auction an not sellin it for a low enough price, quite a number plots are being sold for rather large, almost silly sums (such as little 16 sqm plots people leave for sale for $5000 linden

The attitude seems to be, if you have land for sale, you can ask any price. There's very little competition in land. As has always been (and likely will be), a handful of people control it. They set artificially high prices, and set a "market price" that has absolutely nothing to do with the beloved, dare I say, "free market".

I know I'll get chided for that. Someone coming in talking about what -hard work- they do brokering land, and all those tired, old arguments. Whatever. The hype driven market is finally beginning to wear out.

Finally it's beginning to show as plots sit unpurchased. Hopefully, more will.

The land shortage may be over, but now, people are looking at quality of the land.

As for ignoring the servers when in game, Finn, that 'our avatars' should not be concerned about costs and what we get for it, that's silly. When you have five people in your sim and it takes you ten seconds to move, you can dreamy-imagine away the fact that the land you bought isn't working all you want.

Maybe you just don't understand the implications of the technical aspects of this.

I've loved some of the comments I've gotten lately when bringing up the issue and possibility of Luskwood being 'stapled' to a slow piece of hardware. "Well, there are plenty of plots for auction! Go buy one of those and move there!"

.. right.

First step, please just move the Release Land button. That seems like it would have
been an easy, low-effort UI change as opposed to a major procedural change in
how released land is handled.

Do that and I think there would be a lot less noise over changes in what then
happens to released land. Doesn't particularly matter to me so long as accidental
release has been addressed.

Michi,

I never said that we should not worry about servers when playing the game. On the contrary we should by not placing crappy scripts or such.
I am just saying we should not wonder about how much US dollar a server cost to run, since US dollars are not a direct part of the game.

Since there is a lot bitching about landlords and land prices. I would like to adress a question to those who grief most about it.

How much land do you own?
How much tier do you pay?
If land was free would you tier up a lot?

People do not seem to realize that it is not the land that get expensive, but the tier.
Buying a lot is a one time fee, lets say 70US dollar, and that is money you will get back , maybe more maybe less than what you paid.
Lets say you pay 125 US dollar tier on that land per month.
That is money you will never get back.
Now tell me what cost money in getting/having land?

Some people have choosen the land as their business, as some has choosen clothes, furnitures , skins or or something else.

When Linden by pushing out more land than needed cause damage to those having choosen to be eveil landlords, it is not fair play.

So i would like to ask people who make skins how would you feel if Linden started to sell kick ass skins for 100L ?
Or animators, if Linden started to sell sex balls for 10L each?

Would you happily agree, yes it was on time that Linden did someting about those horrid prices the people dare to ask for their products, or would you be upset that Linden F*** up your business?

Okay, some observations...

1: Yay, they made a readout on the land page. This doesn't cut it, because even though it -IS- instant, it tells you the sim only. this is 16k m² of land to hunt through for the parcel you seek. The scanners still provide a service by potentially giving precise coordinates, and invariably because they don't require a web interface.
2: As long as "finding something that can be exploited" can be automated, there will be abuse. I deal with this CONSTANTLY on the chat network I work on.

Soooooo... There are a few ways to deal with this. Consider this a buffet (Not Jimmy) and take your pick of one or more.

A: On this table, we have the "Make it impossible for land scanners to find public land." dish. If there is absotively posolutely no way whatsoever for the scanners to actually provide a[n unfair] advantage, then much of the issue is solved. What can they scan for? Apparently owner, potentially price (if applicable), size, and location (Maybe? Quite honestly, the Wiki is not very easy to navigate.). So... Take out the ability to scan price entirely, otherwise there is still a reason to scan for uber-cheap land. As for land that has gone "Public", have the scan results continue to return results as the prior owner, and not-for-sale. Thus, there is no way to scan for public land.

B: Make it impossible for anything to "scan" for public land, either LSL or visually. Make it so you can only find out that land is "Public" by actually clicking the about land. Have the prior owner still set as the owner in the hover text, and no indication of the fact that it is public (This should not count against the prior owner's land tier). Also do not show public land on the map.

C: Put a -RANDOM- hold on released land, during which time it shows as "Public", but can only be re-purchased by the owner. Something in a short range, such as 30-300 minutes. Should count against owner's tier. Finding out if the hold is still on or not can only be accomplished by attempting to purchase the land.

D: (To be used in conjunction with others) Put more confirmation on the releasing of land. make it -IMPOSSIBLE- to "accidently" release it. For example, have a randomly-generated confirmation code to enable releasing it, so you don't think that you have just hit "Subdivide" and are just confirming the warning it also gives on Subdivide.

If the unfair advantage can't exist, then it will not be a problem.

I have an idea on how to handle this. how about instead of having the land go public have The release function act like sell and set the land for sale by owner For a price That is determined by The lindens. the price would be adjusted by LL to a price they determin would be a fair market Value. now This wouldn't be a case by case Thing. it would be a price that is set as a default price for all released land That is maybe updated once a week by LL. The person Who released the land would relieve the money from The Sale of the land. They would also have the option to take back the land they released before it sells. now this wouldn't work for people Wh leave se and in that case the land would revert to linden control to be put up for auction.

if my post looks weird Without proper capitalization it is because i wrote it on my pocket pc with handwriting recognition while sitting in my econ class at BSU.

I run a scanner (Excel 2003 with VBA scripting, still in alpha-test, unused for actual purchases) and even *I* agree with this!




Just trying to be helpful, perhaps that sort of thing should be scripted, so as to not consume Lindens' scarce time. If there is no event indicating such release, one might be defined so as to make this scriptable.
That would benefit the SL community, in that Lindens' time is too valuable to the community, to be squandered on that sort of thing.

Having said that, benefitting from scanners, rewards those with the talent, dedication and level of engagement with SL, to create and respond to event-triggers.

I'd really just rather make it a teeny bit harder to release land--like maybe having the owner go confirm the release at www.secondlife.com, for example--rather than adding a time delay or adding an extra manual step for the Lindens.

lol

I think it should be released to LL...keep it in a holding bin for 24 hours....and if it was done accidently or if owner changes thier mind, they are able to receive it back...auction the land if still in bin after that time...but maybe put some up for sale, that would have some land available for right then purchases plus keep scanning down lolll
just the for sale land dont advertise it, let it be discovered it will still be shown on the map but they would have to go to the land to see or buy it loll

Sounds great Haney!! Do it!