Petition To Linden Lab Regarding Losses Incurred Related to Landbots
Recently, Jezebel Bailey was affected by a landbot which swooped in before she had a chance to react. She came to realize that many residents have fallen victim to such circumstances, with the largest reported case almost costing Lucreza Ah $2,000 USD. That was an almost because the community stepped in where Linden Lab failed to.
Astounded, as many of us were the first time we heard of it, she corresponded with Linden Lab after making her problem public. She got the standard responses many of us heard before, and she spoke with me a bit - when I was researching my ebook, I was accused of accusing (!) and unceremoniously dumped to Lewis PR which then... referred me to the Second Life website, effectively avoiding the hard questions. Jezebel spoke with others.
Jezebel decided to go a step further. She decided to start a petition about the issue (hint: Click that link to see the petition).
She's written up a petition - another open letter, if you will - and you can find it here. It calls on Linden Lab to address the situation which they have avoided addressing for so long - instead adding sculpties and Voice to Second Life when many people simply want a working environment where they cannot be so easily victimized.
At a town hall meeting (May 3rd, 2007), Chaos Mohr was responded to thus:
[12:28] Jeska Linden shouts: Chaos Mohr: What is being done to address land database issues which result in things such as parcels being paid for and not transferring, parcels being sold to multiple people etc? This seems to be a major technical issue which keeps cropping up and hasn’t been fixed yet.
[12:28] Cory Linden shouts: These are likely symtpoms of the broader stresses on the central db and transactions..
[12:29] Cory Linden shouts: as I mentioned int he blog post, we are attacking these problems in two ways, to first identity weak spots in the current system and to build a better transaction system as well.
These flaws mentioned indicate possible problems elsewhere, problems which may well be called 'User Error'. Some of us have seen land show the wrong information when right clicked and selecting 'About'; instead it sometimes shows the information for an adjacent parcel. All manner of problems could exist, but the first step is getting Linden Lab to acknowledge that there is a problem with:
(1) The interface.
(2) The transaction system.
(3) The search system, which allows bots to search for land parcels so fast that you can't afford to make a mistake.
One of the things which I have pressed for is a lag time before land parcels appear in search - myself and others have suggested that for almost a year. But even if that solution is not viable, another solution must be found - especially if Linden Lab wants credibility from the community when it comes to Bragg vs. Linden Lab and the perceived value of land to Linden Lab.
Help support the community by letting Linden Lab know in no uncertain terms that these problems are no longer acceptable:
Or get an island and forget that and the ad farms which Linden Lab permits.
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57 signatures so far.
Spread the word this weekend. ;-)
Second Life Consultant
You can't fix stupid
To list a parcel of land for sale for the public (including lanbots) to see in the public search directory takes a minimum of 8 mouse clicks and for you to type in an actual number (price) to sell your land for. Throughout this process the screen is very concise about the process. The defaults are set in such a way that you have to specifically input information to sell a parcel of land at an incorrect price. In addition to the words (which in most cases) are translated to the native language of the person, there are visual cues, calculations which show the price/per sq.m of land, and lastly, the final 'prompt' has all of this information together giving you one last chance to cancel the sale before it is listed. The land sales interface borders on cumbersome for anyone selling more than a few parcels. So to make a mistake you really have to be acting quite careless with your assets and I am not sure how Linden Labs could have made it more difficult to make a mistake.
In regards to those (like myself) that operate landbots (the kind that use a modified client to search and purchase land, not the kind that scan the grid for objects set for sale). AFAIK there are 5 people operating bots, The Super Babenco Brothers (mine), Ninjaland (Elanthius Flagstaff), Voomland (Kerry Crabe), Smart Landbarons (Chikaa Masala), and of course Celene Ballinger. All of us with the single exception of Celene Ballinger return mistakes. We even go as far as contacting sellers if we believe it was probably a mistake as often times they are confused or just apathetic towards the situation. 9 times out of 10 the reason for these mistakes is not the interface, its not lag, its simply "We didn't see anyone around so we thought it was safe to transfer to our group". As for better documentation, the thing that amuses me is the BEST documentation for transfering land safely was written by Skye Whitcroft who happens to be the wife of NinjaLand's own Elanthius Flagstaff. (I would add a link to Linden Labs forums that contain the post as a sticky, but it appears the Secondlife website is currently experiencing issues).
During the listing process (setting land for sale) NO Information is sent to servers, it all remains on the client until that final confirmation box is read and "OK" is clicked, at which time a single packet is sent to the server and the parcel is then available for purchase by Anyone. If anything on the parcel changes during this time the packet is simply dropped. So for example it is not possible for 2 people to purchase the same parcel or to sell the parcel twice.
I've heard many things mentioned as possible causes for these mistakes to be made, but in my own personal experience it's simply the person selling the land making an honest mistake. For that I personally don't believe they should be punished. As I previously mentioned lag and latency have no bearing on a parcel being listed for sale incorrectly as the numbers are entered client side there is no communication with the grid until OK is clicked.
Landbots definitely have a competitive advantage -- but really we compete against each other for a very small percentage of overall land purchased and sold. Much of what we pick up is crap land next to ad farms at a price thats below market but not generally even worth whats paid for it. On occasion we do pick up a gem which makes dealing with the mistakes and the garbage worthwhile.
When a parcel comes across at 1L its almost certainly a mistake -- someone was trying to transfer land into a group by selling it to themselves so they can purchase it for group (NOTE: You do NOT need to sell your land to anyone to put it in a group!) I show up to return a mistake THEY made (not me) and I get called a thief. I generally drop them a notecard explaining how to transfer their land, mark the parcel back for sale to them, and wait for them to call me a thief again before I point out that the parcel has already been marked back for sale to them for the exact price I purchased it. I have heard stories of old fashioned land dealers not returning mistakes (Christopher Kidd comes to mind). So in essence - its not the bots, its not the technology - its the people. Both us as landbot operators and those that through 7 clicks of prompting can't take the time to read the screen.
I don't like unscrupulous people, landbots, land sellers, ad farmers or otherwise and I was the third person to sign this particular petition because I don't see it as being directed at all landbots, but really at one individual that is simply not an honorable human being and hides behind a computer screen.
With Regards.
8 mouseclicks from disaster
In my viewer at least, there is a critical problem that occurs, in that the popup window asking for my final approval of a land sale happens to completely obscure the dollar amount entry box (and thus the most important piece of information on the screen: the price per m2 that is calculated next to the prospective sale price).
Yes, I can drag that window out of the way to double check that I am not setting the land for sale at some ridiculously low rate. But I have to do that each and every time, a process open to mistakes and at least a small possibility that, in passing the mouse over the box, my finger might slip and accidentally approve the sale I was trying to triple-check the rate on. This is just one of many example of poor UI design that I feel sure leads to at least a handful of errors every day. This is especially a problem when one in the process of setting more than one lot for sale.
By their nature, such errors are likely to be costly ones. In my one brush with landbots, luckily with those operated by Elanthius, who allowed me to repurchase the mislabelled lot from him at the same price that I had erroneously set, within an hour or two of my nearly fatal error -- what happened was that I had been setting the same or similar prices for a large number of 512 m2 parcels in a newly auctioned region. Stupidly I had not set the sun to noon, as I was rushing to get this done and get myself to bed. Exhaustion and associated braincell death led me to select a *very* large lot and set it for sale at a price translating to less than 1 Linoleum/ m2.
Had the landbot operator been one of many others, I expect the land would have been sold off almost immediately and I would have lost hundreds of dollars with that one mistaken mouseclick.
The fact that it takes 8 mouseclicks per parcel of land actually has the opposite effect, particularly when one is dealing with land in any volume -- it puts the first time auction purchaser of a sim in a position of needing to go through a lot of repetitive and tedious clicking that encourages one's attention to wander. User interface safeguards that *might* protect the owner of a single 512 m2 plot (assuming that owner knows about 'bots, and has been warned to never offer land at sub-market price levels EXCEPT through exclusive sale to the avatar the plot is intended for) has the opposite impact, at least the first few times one tries to streamline the process of preparing land for individual resale.
Heh
Yes, yes, we understand some landbot owners like yourself (Elanthius? Seems like) give back mistakes, but the system could be made better so that you don't have to do that. There is a BIG HOLE in the land system, and you know it as well as I do.
I don't capitalize on it, though. And you don't either. But some others are capitalizing on the combination of lack of documentation, network latency issues and transaction system problems (people should really buy my ebook, but then... that would be me capitalizing, huh?).
So as verbose as your response is - it doesn't fix the problem. That so many people HAVE the problem is a definite indicator that the interface is not working right. Any defense to the contrary sort of falls dead every time you have to return a piece of land, doesn't it? We can say 'users are stoopid' up to a point, and after that point we have to say 'this should be fixed'.
We passed that point some time ago, nameless one.
With regards,
Nobody Fugazi <-- Thats how you sign. :O
Second Life Consultant
Hmmmmm
I hate to say it but this is why the have the SPECIFIC PERSON selection when you put up a for sale. I feel your pain, but it was issues like that that keep me from mainland.....Sorry for her and good luck with that...
Lindsay
The 'specific person' isn't quite THAT obvious, and there have been other problems other than this particular incident.
Further, they don't document the interface very well - and they certainly don't tell anyone about the repercussions. I did, but I suppose they don't endorse things that are painfully true. ;-)
Now, if you want mainland and everything else to remain as it is - don't sign the petition... :-)
Second Life Consultant
oh no...i will sign just on
oh no...i will sign just on principal alone. i just havent been to mainland in so long. got tired of watching spinning body parts over my nice garden.
Hehe.
Never had spinning body parts. Plenty of Robo Marx and Crischun Fassbinder spam though. :-)
Second Life Consultant
Ban Grid Shepherd
This subject came up at the Life 2.0 conference last week, in a panel on bots. There was a general reaction in the audience of, "What, there are people who *don't* know to ban Grid Shepherd from all their properties??"
Somehow, though, I missed that Linden blog entry.... :P
--Soph
banning bots doesn't work.
Not on mainland, anyway. You don't have to be standing on a piece of land to buy it. Think about it.
Further, the bot you're talking about is related to the Sheep's search - not purchasing land.
Problem with most people at those conferences: They aren't regular users, and they tend only to talk amongst themselves. That leads to a lot of mistakes when measured against reality. But its Life 2.0, so they should know that. ;-)
Second Life Consultant
wow, they really said that?
wow, they really said that? i didnt know that either.
Mixed up
Grid Shepherd is not a landbot.
Second Life Consultant
Yeah they suck
NF
You would be happy to hear they got me once or twice. Sometimes they give the land back.
Make sure you configure all your land first before selling!
Now you see the difference between theft and being market savy!!!
PS
How come I cant join your group?LOL
RM
Robo...
If you like THIS petition, just wait til you see one that involves YOUR business practices.
Second Life Consultant
I got one better for his kind..
how about the fact that almost every large landholder in SecondLife is about to offer Robo, Umnik and the gang a free trip home as a reward for the thousands of unsightly ads we all have to endure lowering the value of the places we call home.
I'd want in.
At some points in time, I had about a sim and a half of tier which I paid, and the second part of the tier was dealing with the twittery of Robo and his ilk.
Second Life Consultant