Should bots be allowed?

That Xeno is the fate of a man who stands on principles.

They have, as well, before landbots even became realized people have whined about things like that. This really isn't an issue about landbots at all, it's an issue about carelessness. Pay more attention to what you are doing if it is that important.

It's just too easy to shift an user error on bots. And peoples seems to love to take this leap.

Even if bots disappeared one day, remember back in the days when peoples where doing it manually?
The activity of lighting fast buying of dirt cheap land isn't going to disappear anytime soon.

And with the now cumbersome sell land window, making an error isn't excusable anymore to me.
And yes it happened to me to get a bit of land grabbed by a bot. But it is my error, my fault, my loss.

As I've said, theres a difference between letting an error fester and getting slapped for it, and being slapped before you even have a chance to rectify your error.

Besides, as I've said elsewhere to you, Kyrah, I don't believe landbots count as "transparent" in terms of the sales interface and the risks you face using it... If you don't know they exist, and nobody is around, theres absolutely no reason to think you couldn't transfer land fairly risk-free without using "sell to". Such used to be the case, in fact, until the existence of bots. Yeah, you had some problems, but it wasn't nearly as bad, because it was a lot harder for a land baron to be all places at once back then.

Oh well. Like I said, I am not entirely unsympathetic. It's a hard, and often times expensive lesson to learn. But hopefully people do learn from it, and don't make the same mistake again.

Landbots are still not stealing. Landbots are still not breaking any rules. You can keep saying over and over again how people are being cheated, but the truth is people are being cheated by themselves. Cheated by themselves because they did not take that extra moment, and that's really all it takes - one moment to count how many digits are in the amount box - to make sure everything was as it should be. Human error is what it is, and mistakes will be made, but people will live with them, learn from them, and never make them again.

That's outside the issue though. Landbots are not breaking the law, just your sensibilities.

I was talking to a tenant of mine earlier in the week, she got out of real estate because of bots. She sold all her land and changed to a basic account because of bots.

Land bots are ruining the user experience and for that reason alone they should be outlawed.

No, not "cheated by themselves". Did they screw up? Certainly. But theres someone else to blame here.

We get it. You're a fan of "school of hard knocks". But even setting aside the fact that not everyone is, stop to consider for a minute what this will do to LL in the long run. It's not, by and large, old-timers like me who make this mistake, people who have vested interests in SL and aren't likely to quit just because we lost fifty bucks because we screwed up. No, most of the people making these errors are newer players, who are far, far more likely to just pack up and leave if they get burned that badly, and I can't honestly blame them for doing so. And each one that does is going to badmouth SL to the end of their days, costing LL even more customers. Heck, even if they don't leave they probably aren't going to have glowing things to say about LL or risking real life money in SL after that.

And while you repeatedly state that landbots are not illegal, that's never mattered. Almost everything that's banned in SL is "legal", possibly ageplay excepting, it's just prohibited... and a heck of a lot of things that are de-facto "allowed" are actually illegal, such as trademark and copyright infringement. Theres absolutely no reason we can't try to get LL to consider prohibiting landbots, either.

learn, adapt and live or keep doing the same mistakes .. and die.

It's a game, Kyrah. Not the marines.

I guess I count as one of the unsympathetic bi***es, because I do feel people should take responsibility for the mistakes they make. There is plenty of information about landbots available to those who make a small effort to educate themselves, and the existing land sale tools provide the ability to sell land with no danger of it being stolen. And considering the unstable and experimental nature of the platform, it is irresponsible for a person to invest money here they can't afford to lose. So if you are foolish enough to gamble large amounts of money on a system you don't understand, you will make mistakes and sometimes lose big time. The same could be said for people in RL activities like stock market day-trading. I appreciate you feel upset about your loss, but if you don't take personal responsibility for your actions, you will probably continue to make these kind of mistakes. (And I speak from experience. Stupid mistakes have cost me nearly $3,000 real money in 2007 alone. It hurts, but I live with it and learn from the experience.)

That said, I still think landbots are unacceptable and should be banned for one reason: it is not a level playing field. If some are allowed to run landbots, we all should be able to. The problem is that landbot operators use a disproportionate amount of resources, having a large number of avs logged in at all times, constantly pounding the search database and teleporting. The system simply can't handle EVERYONE doing this.

So perhaps this is the answer to the problem: make landbot programs publicly available, so that tens or hundreds of thousands of people can be running them on SL at all times. Grid crashes immediately and LL finally declares it to be the AR-able "abuse of resources" it truly is. Am I just a dreamer to think this would work?

Ava, that might be the only thing that will make LL sit up and take notice. So............ who's gonna be the first to release a publicly available freebie landbot? Bot Wars here we come!

wow the post just vanished hey.
no doubt because it was true?

Yes.

The Lindens themselves have acknowledged that SL has a steep learning curve. New players (yes let's try to remember this is a game and not the military) shouldn't have to worry about losing hundreds of dollars in a nano second to a land bot because they don't know about them and aren't exactly sure how the land system works. When I started my friends and I screwed up land sales more than once, and we're not eejits. Happily for us landbots weren't around at the time.

Why would a new player who has not mastered the learning curve invest hundreds of dollars? That is stupidity.

Because no one tells us newbs there's a steep learning curve. That is the stupidity.

And who here has mastered all things SL? And how long should it take? A week? A month? Maybe Chris can administer a test for people to see if they've "mastered the learning curve" before they are allowed to purchase land. Or at least write a book so us stupidity-prone folks can master that learning curve.

Because that's what it costs to buy a decent size plot of virtual land in SL. There's nothing stupid about wanting a quiet place to build or set up shop. LL encourages basic members to go premium and buy land. That's how they generate revenue.

I've been here since beta and I haven't mastered the learning curve yet. But yeah, lets blame the victims, shall we?

hello you old fart!

Old? Moi? (/me farts dust)

Hi Ingrid

Land sales is a basic point and click operation, if you can use Windows, you can master land sales. These people were not cheated, nor were they victims of anything but their own carelessness.

Maybe instead of buying a good sized piece of land, you start with one plot. Learn about prims, how to build, tier, and all the other things that go with land ownership. After you have mastered that, then sink hundreds of dollars into this "game". I don't know, seems logical to me. But then logic doesn't allow one to be hysterical about being a victim, when it is your own fault that you lost the money.

Even the most careful people make mistakes now and then. Anyone who intentionally seeks to take advantage of those mistakes is a predator lacking in anything resembling simple human decency. People who care more about maximizing profit than being helpful and looking out for their fellow residents are soulless, and SL would be far better off without them.

/me hugs Chip. Coughs from the dust.

People who can't take responsibility for their own errors and seek to blame others are spineless, SL would be better off without them as well. If the land is marked for sale to anyone, then no one is being preyed upon.

Theres a Dilbert strip, where Dilbert presses the wrong button when he's using the ATM and donates his life savings to the United Way.

Why does that not happen in real life?

Because, A, it's usually quite hard to screw yourself over that bad, and B, any reputable organization is willing to deal with mistakes on a case by case basis.

Unless you know about Landbots - and there is not adequate warning about them, not by a long shot - then there is no reason to believe that the mistake being made, in the middle of an empty sim, is going to cost the person a lot of money.

If you are putting "a lot" of money into SL and you choose not to educate yourself about the dangers and pitfalls what does that make you? I have already stated my opinion.