Another ad farm rant....

Sorry, I know these threads have been done to death but just wanted to get this off my chest...

The past few months I've been putting a lot of work, and invested a lot of real money, into a large castle complex. This morning I woke up to find that someone who owned a small parcel right next to it had split up the land into 11 16m2 parcels and put them for sale for $L500 each.

I had no choice really but to buy them all up before God knows what happened to them. The annoying thing is that if the owner had come to me and ASKED if I wanted to buy the land I would probably have quite happily paid 5000 Lindens for a buffer zone.. what's that... a few dollars for peace of mind. But they didn't, they just thought that they'd try and make some quick bucks and screw anyone else next to the parcel.

Dread to think what would have happened if I hadn't quickly logged in before going to work.... probably a handful of really ugly sex site adverts and the rest with huge rotating sale signs set at L$3000 for ever and hours of my work down the drain.

Just makes me so angry how some people can be so ******* inconsiderate.

Rant over, thanks for listening.

Fully understand ...

Maybe there should be an extra land use fee for each parcels smaller than 256 m². If an ad farm owner would have to pay US$1 per month for every eyesore he is owning, these things would disappear fast.

Yes, those are pains. There are some on my region. That's why when I buy land to live, I find a nice new open area. Buy what I can afford, then each payday, buy even more. So, now I have 14,000+ sq m of land on a corner area next to (2) unused sims that has been unused for months. The most people that had access to them was 3. But now only 1 person has access to the sims. Since my home is touching the unused sim, not much traffic comes near my home as its a banned parcel. Outside of my home area, I have a consultant and a tattoo artist as neighbors. Both are nice people and I've used both of their services.

Because of these ad farms, I never buy anything smaller than 4096 sq m and try to have all land on same region (for combined prims) and to be able to put my house out of reach of those eyesores. I even bought a 720 sq m lot circling the eyesores just to block them out.

That is interesting. What amount of extra tier would be enough to make the ad farms unprofitable, while not being so much that it blocks legitimate users of small lots?

I have a 16 sq m by a roadside I use for a landmark giver. I'd quite happily pay an extra dollar a month for it if I thought that at the same time I was discouraging the ad farm that is drifting toward my mainland house.

Another possibility is to impose a stiff fee anytime someone cuts up a piece of land into many tiny lots. This could be done in an automated way - if you start with one lot and you break it up into many 16's and then put them up for sale, you get a big warning you're about to incur a big fee!

Under the old voting tool I proposed that simple system which would almost elimitate billboards, add signs and land extortionists without inconveniencing other people.

Hopefully someone who knows how to use the JIRA will enter a similar proposal.

Sure understand ur feeling, i fully support ban AD farms..

It's amazing how some people think they have the right to do what they want on the land they own. what are these people thinking!


now how do we get those pesky bill boards off the side of the road in real life?

LOL yes thats a great idea. lets make all ad plots 128m2 each. great improvement

well we could plant giant trees or place billboard protest walls around them like the arbor project does on SL> yes im sure that would be as effective as they are on here

Introducing a penalty fee for cutting up a parcel into 16m ad farms is just another proposed 'stick' and LL has an aversion for 'sticks'. So how about a 'carrot'.... a bonus for coalescing multiple ad blocks into larger viable parcels? OK, that alone could be gamed but if it was combined with a penalty for 16m or 32m adfarm blocks it might work. Or else we'll just see larger ad farm blocks

I really, really detest ad farms but I don't see what can be done about them.

It is interesting to note that a lot of the independent islands have a covenant precluding items like this type of thing because they realise the lack of renters if they allow this type of development. Well a lot of them do.

But as usual the Linden Labs Ostriches have their head in the sand, no covenant, not even on PG land, so unfortunately, it is do as you wish with any parcel you own. Until they get their head out of the sands (presumably why we have the sandboxes all over the place), and decide to make this a better place for all to live in peace and harmony (oh wouldn't that be great), we will just have to put up with these morons invading.

In RL I'm sure that it would be very easy to get a billboard with offensive material on it removed overnight. Hell, if it happened in America you could also probably sue the person who put it up for compensation due to distress!

There was a huge outcry in the UK over some Benneton ads recently and they were removed nationwide very quickly...

I've bought parcels smaller than that before now for extra prims. I also carved a 16m2 square off of a 528m2 parcel last summer for a newbie premium account holder who didn't want to up his tier level just for that extra tiny square of land. I gave the 16m2 to a responsible resident in the same sim. This proposal would sure have affected me in the past.

that is SO WRONG you should have NO RIGHT to do what YOU WANT on land YOU OWN

im glad you agree with me Astarte

now if only we can get LL to agree to take away landowners rights of doing what they want!




































[disclaimer: this post and my other one up above on this same thread are 100% sarcastic and does not refelct the views or opinions of PoopMaster Oh : : : for those who can't figure that kinda stuff out]

IRL, you can't just put adverts *anywhere* anyway - even if they are on your own land. My Dad needed planning permission to put a fold-up advertising board outside his business premises a few years ago. Last week, an estate agent put up several To Let signs up behind my house (actually advertising properties a couple of miles away down a country lane) which kinda demolished our beautiful rural views. So I called the council and within 24 hours those signs were gone.

If the mainland was similarly zoned, it would probably have taken six months.

That's the point Stylee, people with some talent & creativity can actually do something with 128m plots, besides making them into an ad farm.

First of all, the main land land was around long before covenants where even thought up. Second, what should the covenant read? Who is the enforcer of it? It is applied to people that bought the land before the covenant was in place? Do the people in the sim get to vote on if they want it or not?

There are rules for land, it is the CS.

Perhaps land could be converted to residential and commercial according to the majority of the sim owners? That would prevent someone extorting money from creative people who have spent time and effort to make something that will show SL at its best. Sim owners could meet and decide. Maybe not commercial or residential because many of us sell near or at out homes...hmmm. Advertising guidelines then?

Would it also help to complain to the people who advertise on these signs? Tell them that most people are so turned off by the signs that they are less likely to ever shop at their place?

Or is it as I expect that the 16m2 are mainly to extort money from the neighbors...

I may not have been around that long, but currently Lindens have been selling large swathes of land on the new mainlands. Still no covenant. And the CS. you try to get sensible action taken using that. As I say the sandboxes are only there cos the Linden Ostriches need somewhere to bury there heads and say..nothing to do with us. Strange for the Landowner who created the CS to say that !!!

Short term, it would probably be better to nudge LL to either implement "prim muting", or agree to take a patch from the open source developers with the ability to hide all prims belonging to a certain resident.

Slightly more involved but more effective would be that when a resident is banned from a parcel, none of their prims anywhere on the sim will render for anyone on that parcel. Ban all ad plot owners on the sim from your parcel, and noone on your land would see any of the eyesores.

That way the ad owners can litter up as much as they want, but they'd be the only one who sees any of it.

Kitty, the ban -> invisible prim suggestion is terrific in so many ways! I can only wish...

I think LL can creat an Island, call it Inventory Island. For people who want a 16 piece for their inventory storage. On this Island you would not be able to combine more than 4 parcels or have one piece larger than 64. Then they could ban anything smaller than 512 on the Mainlands! There would be no more eysores! Or at least not as many!!

Yes I know great idea, Daniel L was talking about that in his Video of something he'd like to see for all his muted non-friends, but admitted at the same time that that was probably not on the cards......Shame !!!

I only buy land on the mainland just because there are no covenants. I have had enough of controlling morons in RL trying to tell me what I can or cannot do with land I bought and paid for with my sweat and blood. We do not need zoning or land restrictions on the mainland in SL. And no, I do not ad farm.

Extortion or not, if you restrict how they can operate on land they pay for, then you are stealing.

The second suggestion, letting the market handle this problem is the only moral solution.