Do you hate ad-farms?

I have made a suggestion in the JIRA that would help to slow the spread of ad-farms carving the grid into 16 sq. meter parcels. If you would like to see this have chance of being implemented please go to the JIRA and vote for MISC-129.

I proposed that parcel division be limited to a minimum size of 512 sq. meters. There is no practical reason for dividing land below that. Anyone that has tried to build on a 512 can tell you that you don't have enough prims on do much, no less trying to build on half that or one a 16 sq, with only 3 prims available.

The purpose of these parcels has been as much to extort money from neighbors as it has been for 'advertising'.

Go to https://jira.secondlife.com, and search for MISC-129. Then vote for it if you would like to see fewer ad farms.

Yes... with a passion.

Good luck with your propsal, but don't hold your breath. LL seem to have embraced laissez-faire in extremis.

to answer your question, yes I hate them. I recently spent over 25,000L of my own money to clear one up in a sim I frequent, and gave the land to a member of the Clocktower project.

While I agree with the spirit of your proposal, I think on the practical side it will never happen. When dividing up a sim, there are too many instances where you need the ability to create small and odd shaped parcels. If the smallest one could make was 512, it would severely hamper the flexibility to divide parcels up into the odd and wacky shapes you sometimes need for differing projects. it would be like having a car that couldn't go under 30 miles an hour. Imagine trying to move up through the drive thru or creep up to a stoplight. (ya that analogy is poor, but I have to go back to work now )

LL needs to do something about the people, not the software.

With every fiber of my virtual being.

I abhor them.

But - as one who has bought a larger parcel and then sub-divided it using the Land Tools - sometimes you need to make a 16 or 32 temporarily so that you can add it later to one of the bigger parcels - e.g. beside a Linden road where you don't have straight parcel edges. (Unless there's another way to do this that I haven't found out?)

I can't think of a way around this - can anyone else?

It wouldn't work even to just stop the *sale* of parcels smaller than a certain size - as Ad Farmers would just buy a 512 and carve it up...

What I dont understand about the obnoxious 16sqm ad spaces is....if everyone hates them, and honestly who is in love with them, how are they affective? Who is going around checking out those ads and buying or TPing to the locations within them? IS anyone, or are they simply put out to make people that have nearby parcels put out a lot of money for a tiny piece of land that is otherwise an eyesore?

In either case the solution could lay within our own hands. Be sure that no resident touches the signs (they have scripts to give them the number of 'clicks' they get counting them each as 'visits') and never ever buy the small parcels. If no one is buying them and no one is generating sales or traffic to other areas because of them, I cant imagine why the people owning them would even keep them (and I am guessing that most people that have 1 16sqm spot have many)!

I have to just shake my head at a lot of the things people do in this game because I cant for the life of me figure out how they are making enough money to support their forms of advertising.

the solution is simple, if you dont the fact that people have the choice to do what they want on the mainland, then get off the mainland.

why to people bXXch about other people using the same freedom's they are entitled to....

very hippo-critical

This seems to be what they are doing. They purchase lands that are along the roads, take off the 16sqm plots that are against the road and then resell the land behind it. Most people dont even notice that those plots are there until after the sale of the land when (a day or so later even) the ads suddenly show up. Roadside land isnt always as it appears.

Maybe because we prefer to own our own land rather than rent and resent attempts to herd us into the shark-infested waters of profit-centre private islands.

They're not effective advertising, which is why the land squares are nearly always for sale. It's a form of grief/extortion.

@ Darkclaw: I bought a new sim a couple weeks ago and sold off enough of it to keep my tier manageable, but parceled off the rest for renting. When dividing my 'for sale' lots I made sure that none of them were 512m or below, exactly because of the ad farm problem. Some of the lots are irregular due to a big swath of protected land in the sim, and some guy bought a 656m triangle near the border of my sim. The next day I logged on to find it broken up into 16m and 64m squares, all but 2 with either ads or a for sale sign. I rebought every one I could (at a loss, of course), but 3 had already been taken. One by someone with 3 small texture-cycling ads, one by a known land reseller who planted an invisible prim for data collection purposes (which I don't mind), and one with no prims, listed for 1.8 BILLION LINDEN, no prims on it, just the parcel name has been changed to the URL of a web site advertising some book. (???)

The 512 rule wouldn't have helped me here, and in fact it would have made it literally impossible for me to divide my land. In order to parcel out irregular plots alongside Linden land you MUST make little strips of 4-8m width and join them together.

One other thing, that simply sucks about mainland sim ownership: Even though I intentionally divided my sim up into 2048 and 4096m plots for reselling my excess, some of those lots were purchased by other resellers, who divided them up into 512 lots. The only good thing about this is they relisted them for retardedly high prices- well beyond the ad farmer's profit margin.

You Said
Maybe because we prefer to own our own land rather than rent and resent attempts to herd us into the shark-infested waters of profit-centre private islands.





i didnt say anything about 'why' you would want mainland vs private land


i said IF it bothers you your SIMPLE solution is stay off mainland.

its your right to do what you want on your land just like it's the farmers right also to do what THEY wish with the land THEY own

if you want to TAKE AWAY people rights, goto a private sim where they regulate it

Why are you bringing the poor hippopotamuses into it?

I hate them as much of for sale signs but what is Jira and how can they fix it? Why should I sign up there in first place when there is voting system and propsal system here?

Sorry bud, I was around before Ad Farms. Following your amoral assertion of rights to its logical conclusion leads to the mainland being carved for ad farms and other worthless 'profit centres'. You sound like the type of person who finances their private island through ad farms.

I may have found a useful tool to fight back on this issue. A few days ago I bought a large parcel in Melungtse, bordered in 2 sides by beautiful sidewalks. These sidewalks were land set aside by the sim owner, obviously to attrack buyers. 2 days later, when all the land had been purchased, the sim owner removed the sidewalks (bait and switch) and put up one of the sidewalks for sale and the other one was reclaimed by Governor Linden. The one for sale was quickly bought by the newly established SL Investment Bank who replaced the sidewalks but adding HUGE add billboards on top. I was horrified that this once beautiful sim was taking an ugly turn, so I raised high hedges on my land border to block the billboards. The next day the billboards were gone and the sidewalks put up for sale. Same situation in my land in Klein. There a huge billboard is still displaying escort services, too bad my land is not bordering that one so I can't cover it. I say, anyone who doesn't want this type of abusive neighborly conduct, let's fight back and cover these add farms up wherever we can. If you can't see the adds, you can't click on them.

I had a conversation yesterday with an Ad Farm advertiser's Manager who assured me (when I raised the point above about ineffective marketing) that their ads get clicks.

I suspect that most of these clicks are in error, but they advertisers seem to be under the impression (unfortunately) that the ads are having a benefit to their businesses.

I click on them just for information. The information is utilized so that I NEVER EVER patronize ANY of the businesses who use ad farms to advertise. Its a good way to identify who some of the SL jerks are.

As I do.And they are right, the ads are having an effect. Just not always the effect they would like.

I own a gathering place on a 96-sq.m parcel of land. The traffic score from yesterday is 13,369.

The jist of your proposal is people are doing things with their _own_ land without your guidance and supervision and this bothers you. I know, this is awful, and we should really consult you first when tinkering with our parcels, but sadly, there's no way to overcome fourth-dimensional space (time) to go back to January 20th, 2005, to tell me that my bar would never work on such a small parcel.

Oddly, the Lindens picture the bar on their Explore page. And it's been mentioned all over the place, including the Travel section of the New York Times.

I also have a two-year old movie theater on a 96-sq.m parcel. A bank on a 96-sq.m parcel. Three shops on 96-sq.m parcels. Another shop on a 192-sq.m parcel. I've built a fully-functional movie theater on a 32-sq.m parcel and a public "universal" radio bench on a 16-sq.m parcel.

When someone tells me they can't do something with a small parcel they're basically telling me they don't know how to build.

The small plots near my place are a nuisance but the 32m ones which I own elsewhere to sell my goods from are useful! So I see both sides of the argument.

The 16m plot is as much part of Second Life as the word 'woot'! I see no reason to get rid of either.

What I do want to see is the ability to return other peoples' rotating objects or trees that overlap your land.

Oooo profit,capitalism and freedom, the banes of would be statists everywhere. Property rights may be amoral, but telling a property owner what they can or cannot do with their property is immoral.

In RL, this problem is handled with zoning rules -- when you buy a house in a housing neighborhood, you agree to a zoning rule. This restricts what you can build, but you also know that a 20 story apartment building won't be built next door to your house (thus ruining your view and home value).

Is this sort of thing possible with estate covenants? That is, can one create an area that can only have residential housing, for instance?

The JIRA is the only place that LL seems to actualy pay attention to. That is the place where all bugs and issues with SL are handled now.

-- From the JIRA help page ---
What is JIRA?
The Second Life open source initiative uses Atlassian's JIRA project management tool for issue tracking. Located at jira.secondlife.com, this issue tracker offers a searchable database of issues submitted by the Second Life community. You, too, can submit issues you find when using the open source or standard versions of Second Life. Please familiarize yourself with the information in this page before proceeding to JIRA.

No argument. So excercise your freedom and don't patronize the businesses that use these ads.

It would only be 'hippo-critical' if I asked to have the ability when no one else did. The same rules would apply to me as well. The exact limits are only a suggestion and intended to get people to look at the problem.