Stop Thief!

It is all well and good blaming the the mistake on the seller HOWEVER.
With so manympeople doing this, it is showing that thereis an unbuilt flaw in the system that users fall foul to so easily.
If it is just a 3D game then why does it cost "Real" money when someone makes a small mistake? If it is just a 3D game why are people making "REAL" money on it's flaws?

LL have had this issue for a long time, but are not doing anything about it,
Even the road people will at least put up a warning of a dangerous road junction and if it is so bad they will rebuild the junction to make it safer.

Too many people have been caught by landbots/cons, and the users of SL are campaigning to have something done, just as you would do in RL, whay are their voices not heard, why is nothing being done or even looked into regarding this?

If you don't think what he is doing is wrong, then you condone stealing as long as it can be done without breaking any "laws".

I didn't make the mistake. I was hoping to warn others. I have never seen a post from you that wasn't total poop.

what do you expect from the poopmaster ;0

At least you poop with a good sense of humor.

LL should make it so that you cannot set land to sell to everyone for less than 5L$ per square meter and allow you to adjust that minimum rate in edit - preferences.

I write financial software, and have far greater safety checks than this.
Users are human and they will make mistakes.

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Actually the most common mistake is selling for 1L$ when they are attempting to transfer land. They type in 1 L$ as they think it will be safer than 0L$ since it uses the "money system" so it must be safe right.
If up to 10 L$ was blocked in the same way 0L$ was it would prevent most mistakes.

The usual argument against this is if you make it 10 there will always be someone who types in 11. That may be the case, but since the most common mistake is 1 L$, eliminating that will prevent most of these problems.

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Does the arbor project ban people who exploit peoples mistakes like this?

To me these magicians are scripted stalkers and having been 'relieved' of 30kL to "make him go away" is extortion.

SL fervently opposes stalking and griefing but in this case.. meh...

All SL has to do is put a time buffer of 10 minutes from the time you place your land for sale till the time it becomes available for sale.

Then the burden is on you to double-check your post.

With you all the way on that LS!
"it's not illegal so it must be ok" is the same mindset that excuses terrain-editing and building on non-sandbox land set to allow it.


Only the suicidal would hold their breath waiting for LL to get involved in adjudicating on disputes like this.
I doubt that inserting some extra logic into the selling process will come even close in priority to thing like 'fixing inventory'.

If this is a widespread problem causing a bad experience for Residents, it would be reasonable to expect LL in the first instance to insert some warning text into the Set for Sale window. Deliver education directly at the point and moment of need. No code changes, just add some text!

Somewhere in the longer term LL could add reasonability checks in the Set for Sale window.
a) Force the price to be set before allowing the setting of 'who to'.
b) If (explicitly) set to Anybody, ask for confirmation of a price *significantly* below average(ish) market.


It's difficult (OK! Impossible) to legislate/TOS against stupidity and greed. It is less difficult to design systems that take the permanent reality of stupidity and greed into account.



SO:
Ask LL to warn the unwary at the start of the Set for Sale process.

You do the Jira your Lordship? You've got the fire

LL should simply add another window in the lines of "Are you sure? Really? Totally, completely and utterly sure? Did you check everything at least thrice? [Yes] [No] [Not really] [Kinda] [Uhm..] [Help!]". Perhaps summing up the selected options. Don't dumb the system down too much, and don't blame someone for buying what is for sale.

See. Aleister thinks it's a great idea!

LL are not going to take back land from the likes of 'Landrobber Murauding' (not it's real name)
A campaign to abstain from buying land from the perp isn't going to reach the vast majority of Residents who might buy. (- unless you maybe put a few rotating 16m billboards in every sim. Doh!)

The simple addition of a warning text to the current window would be a smartening up as opposed to a dumbing down of the system. It is obvious that such a warning is warranted, since enough people get it wrong for it to be a noticeable problem and suffer financially as a result.


The OP mentions a bot that specifically targets mistakes by the seller. So DO blame that buyer.

Thanks for the suggestions but extra warnings won't do it. People intentionally set to anyone and for low amounts because they don't know about the sheer speed of the landbot or its existence and they are selling land to the person standing on the plot with them. So it also does not help to raise the base amount to L$5 etc.

I like the idea of adding extra steps to setting to anyone that makes it as inconvienent as searching for a specific avatar. Only then will the unaware people choose to do that.*

What I really would like to see is a permanent ban of the one bot runner that does not offer folks a chance to get their land back after an error. At least the others communicate if the sellers IM and sometimes do the right thing and give back the mistake.

*waits for the "If they are that lazy, they deserve to have thier land stolen" replies.

The owner made a mistake yes. The buyer exploited that mistake yes. The owner asked for some consideration and was refused. Unethical, most likely, but not a crime unfortunately.If it's legal by TOS and any rules, it can't be stealing. The original seller was taken advantage of but that's the extent of it. Unless we can get an SL People's Court there isn't much else to be done. The identity of the buyer is now pretty well known , so I'm sure a lot of people will take care not to do business with him.

They can simply move the land to an alt prior to flipping it. There's no way of knowing who the previous owner of a parcel was. Just the current owner.

The parcel goes up for sale as Bob has made an error. The landbot detects and acquires the land (as it is below some price threshold set by the bot's operator) and can reset the parcel for sale (flip the land) [or even move it to an alt prior to flipping].

Our problem is helping to prevent Bob from making the error. Some sort of interface change (keeping in mind Bob is Bob [human error]) that makes it more difficult for Bob to set land for sale to "Anyone" (as this is what creates the opportunity for the landbot).

This won't make the landbots go away as they seek land priced below certain thresholds. They face a competitive problem as more landbots get added to the system (fewer acquisitions per bot over time). But land still goes on the market and a portion of it will be priced below what someone else might consider below market rates. There's little we can do about limiting what the price can be set to.

Holy crap, Elex. I agree with everything you just wrote.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I would have been better off posting a thread that said "Dangers of posting your land to Anyone". Boycotting Merlin is pointless. He can use an alt to sell his land. The only thing I had going for me there is that he promotes at least some of his sales under his own name.

That's the best thing to do. Do as much as we can to educate each other on all the pitfall, and traps in the financial aspect of SL. Let the buyer and seller beware, depending on the situation.

As there's a never ending stream of "warning threads" (eg: Oh noes don't hopz on teh pink n blue ballz) you'd be better off defining a JIRAcizable solution: What step to add to the land sales interface, how that step works, and how it prevents Bob from being Bob. This problem creates a certain amount of customer service activity and if adding a step makes this customer service activity go away or happen far less frequently then the Lindens would certainly ponder it.

Perhaps a "SL Consumers Guide " could be mae up, on a 3rd party Site, on the Wiki, or even in some sort of In World method, note cards or publication.

Help in all sorts of forms is littered all over the place. Notecards (including ones tucked away in the Library of everyone's Inventory). Classes. Mentors. Knowledge Base articles. Forum threads. Stickies. There's even a book people can order. How good each individual resource is and its depth varies, but the help is out there.

Are we missing a top-level form of help? For example, I feel the forum threads would be more useful if Search was more apparent, an actual box instead of a link. What if all the forum stickies were removed and replaced with a tag cloud? What if the front of the Knowledge Base was a tag cloud? What if the Knowledge Base was integrated as a tab in Search? Are there any simple things that bring the knowledge "up" to a level where it might pass within Bob's gaze?

Have to agree with this. It can be damn hard to find the answer to even a simple question about SL. Needed: An on-line (hence instantly updatable) Dummy's Guide to Second Life.

And it needs to be translated into German, Spanish, Korean etc....

Instant Permanent Ban on anyone who have bot buying land for 0L or 1L(better yet anyone who as a land buying bot period). It is the only way to get ride of those CLEARLY CRIMINAL individuals. SL is full of Low Lifes most of then hard to track but openly criminal land lord who exploit user mistake need to have all the possession taken away anf the criminal RL personne under the accound ban for life (and get RL theft charge agains it).

But since this is the only solution that will work. LL will never use it. It is much more important to implement ID scam then to take action now agains SL criminal avatar.


On the other hand, a good second class solution will be that the seller need to comfirm after the sale is made. This will get ride of a lot of problems and remove automated theft.

Buying land for L$0 is sort of impossible unless it's set to you personally. Lots of people sell land for L$1 deliberately. There's the apocryphal tale of the time JR Unknown bought an entire sim for L$1 because the owner just was fed up and wanted out of SL.

Id be interested in knowing how often this really happens. I have never heard anyone who gave their land away for 1 Linden to anyone who wandered buy.

One point of clarification, In my opinion:

People who are swooped but dont make a fuss, do not count as "lots of people sell their land for 1L deliberatly"


My instinct is the number of people who actually sell their land delibrately for 1L would be lost in the rounding errors comparing it to the number who have been swooped for 1L.

It's probably 1 in 20. You're perhaps forgetting that 16sqm parcels aren't really worth much in the first place.

If you want out of SL or are looking to unload a plot fast and you set your land for L$1 instead of simply pricing it at $L.05 less than whatever the base price is on the land list at the time then you must enjoy throwing money away.

I know that's a long sentence, but it makes sense if you read it slowly.