interesting abandoned land changes in the works

[Cerise1488303085]

You can read the detailed conversation in the most recent Simulator User Group transcript.

Here is a short summary. The changes would make the abandoned land process more automatic and take away some ongoing trouble with it. It comes with some potential problems.

In the new system, abandoned land would be set for L$0 sale back to the original owner, for a short grace period. Tentatively that will be 3 days to change your mind. After the grace period, autoreturn would automatically be enabled, and the land set to public sale at L$1/sqm.

There are at least two known issues. The initial autoreturn to the old owner could make a coalesced set that is too complicated to rez, so LL might need to tweak that system. The other trouble is that neighbors do not get any preference to buy the abandoned land, so the biggest beneficiaries of this system could be speculators.

[Wildcat Furse]

 

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Cerise wrote:

You can read the detailed conversation in the most recent

Simulator User Group transcript

.

Here is a short summary. The changes would make the abandoned land process more automatic and take away some ongoing trouble with it. It comes with some potential problems.

In the new system, abandoned land would be set for L$0 sale back to the original owner, for a short grace period. Tentatively that will be 3 days to change your mind. After the grace period, autoreturn would automatically be enabled, and the land set to public sale at L$1/sqm.

There are at least two known issues. The initial autoreturn to the old owner could make a coalesced set that is too complicated to rez, so LL might need to tweak that system. The other trouble is that neighbors do not get any preference to buy the abandoned land, so the biggest beneficiaries of this system could be speculators.

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they should offer the neighbours the first option to buy it, using these preferences;

 

1. if your land connects to the abandoned land on 3 sides
2. if your land connects to the abandoned land on 2 sides
3. if your land connects to the abandoned land on 1 side

like u said, it will end up by landbots buying these plots.....*meows*

[Peewee Musytari]

Hmm...First problem I see there is that most landbots would be set for a price higher than 1L so these will all be grabbed instantly as soon as they get put for sale for 1L per sqm.

It will be a bot race

[Tiffy Vella]

As someone who's gone through the process of submitting tickets about neighbouring abandoned land, to have them cleaned up and prepared for auction (and then fought to buy them), I really do welcome any improvement to how this is done.

Abandoned land can sit there for years, with remnant prims hanging in the air, banlines still in place and landscaping that makes it impossible to navigate anyway. We've had Lindens come to clean up land like this and frankly whoever turned up did a Friday Afternoon Job (removing linked external wallks only) and left. It's ugly, and is a waste of sim resources.

I like what Wildcat has suggested, where priority is given to neighbours as we do need to have a mechanism in place that supports the growth of small communities, and encourages these to grow. (Should priority be ranked according to 'sides-touching' or 'length-of-perimeter-touching'? Which is most fair?)

Anyway, anything that keeps living breathing people owning land and using it well rather than bots is a plus.

 

[Marianne McCann]

What Tiffy said. This sounds like a move in the right direction. We've all seen parcels sit for ages, abandoned, 0 auto return, only to become home to all manner of junk. Would be great to see this change.

 

[Knowl Paine]

3 day grace for the previous owner

Then a 3 day sale for Residents who own land in that Region.

Followed by 3 days sale open to any non-bot Resident.

On the 10th day and there after any Resident could purchase the land.

[Randall Ahren]

 

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Knowl Paine wrote:

3 day grace for the previous owner

Then a 3 day sale for Residents who own land in that Region.

Followed by 3 days sale open to any non-bot Resident.

On the 10th day and there after any Resident could purchase the land.

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I like your idea, but maybe it could be simpler. Instead of setting the parcel for sale for 1L$/sqm, set it for sale initially at 10L$/sqm and then drop the price each day until it is sold. That's similar to how some of the land flippers handle buying and selling land. If it works for them, it should work for LL.

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I second Knowl.

Thinking of "sides or perimeter" I thought parcels can be odd shapes so you can connect on more than 4 'sides'.  Perimeter is hard to calculate (comparatively) for an automated system.  The simplest is just to make it 'residents who own land in that region', as Knowl said.

I don't know if there's a way to limit sales to a  'non-bot Resident' though.  Especially as I doubt most of the land-bot owners have declared them as such.

[Prokofy Neva]

Here's what I wrote on that wiki:

 

Question: Is the reason the option of not having neighbours be the ones allowed to have first crack at abandoned land on a sim a problem of scripting or resources or impossibility to do or...what?

It seems to me doable to be able to have a series of events that ensue when land reaches the end of the grace period, that only those agents who are already shown as owners of land on that sim are in the possible list to buy it. Currently, land can be manually set to be sold only to one person, so would it be hard to have code that sets up automatically a list of all owners on that sim, and the option for any one of them to be the one who could buy the land. Or a moving through that list one at a time, with each one coming up for 3 days, then moving to the next.

The problem is that once again we will be faced with the problem of the old days when you had this, which was that bots and speculators will grab the cheap land and try to extort high prices for it from the people who are already living on that sim.

I'd also like to know why this issue is being talked about in this group which is basically Andrew Linden's office hour with the same set of scripters concerned with narrow scripting issues, and not a group of land dealers or rentals agents or those who actually have to cope with this constant problem of abandoned land and how to prevent it from becoming an eyesoar or being purchased by flippers. While the general population of SL is concerned with this issue in the abstract, and the subset of those interested in coding issues might also include the occasional person interested in purchase of abandoned land, the real constituency for this issue -- land dealers and sim owners with residences and businesses including rental businesses -- are not being consulted. Why isn't there a Linden blog post about this?

Finally, I'd like to hear the definition and scope of what "Simulator User" actually means. Because it sounds like Andrew's office hours are now turning into Jack's old office hours if they are going to discuss the land market.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

I like the idea that the Lindens are finally doing something. But why isn't it being discussed openly in office hour/group meetings but being announced as a fait accompli in what is essentially a scripters' group, not a landlords' group such as Jack Linden's office hour used to be?

I'm glad they are finally accepting that they must dump off all the prims after a short grace period -- that has always been are biggest problem, the ugly builds, the spinning and glowing stuff, the garbage and the Torley Friendly Greetings griefer noisemakers, etc. that literally sit there for months on end -- I recently dealt with a parcel like that where the group had stopped paying a year ago and I had to have that garbage and noise preventing the use of my land and the rental of my land for a solid year, despite numerous abuse reports, concierge tickets -- and finally I just asked a Linden live if they would just get it done because I couldn't stand losing the income anymore from the parcel. And it finally got done.

So I'm totally for action; I'm totally for grace periods and dumping of prims (although they have a coalesce problem).

But now we are reverting to the old days of the Weedy Herbst and Nolan Nash land grabbing businesses (they are both now long gone). On the one hand, this made a nice business for people with time to spend scouring the grid manually and with bots, tidying up land, making it look nice, and reselling it. I'm all for having such a business appear on the grid again.

On the other hand, this became a racket for some to extort from those desperate for prims who were already owners and residents in sims, and enabled outsiders to capitalize on their misery -- and these outsiders often put up ugly builds to help you "buy back the view".

[Pauline Darkfury]

I think the reason that it came up at Andrew's OH/UG is that it's a server change, and most notable server changes get discussed there.  There has been some input from landowners / landlords, myself included, although I wouldn't want to claim that those present were a broad representation of mainland owners.  Overall, I see this as a positive change, just needs a bit more work to be a great change.  Anything which reduces the cases of abandonments slowly filling with junk is a good thing.

The tech Lindens seem to have taken on board concerns raised by myself and others that some human oversight of the process is needed for things like the badly cut 16s, 32s, and 96s; that preference should be given first to neighbours and existing landowners in the region, before it goes to open sale; and that larger parcels should probably continue to go to auction to make it fair for everyone.  Andrew certainly seemed to get and support the idea that existing landowners in the region should be given some preference/consideration, and I'm hopeful that they will enhance this process in due course.  So, not perfect, but not necessarily the last we'll hear on it, more a first step towards improving things.

As for it not being discussed properly with landowners, I share the concern that there's currently no in-world OH/UG for land issues, and in particular for general mainland issues.  We need some sort of in-world meeting(s) which cover mainland, LDPW, and estate issues.

[Sidnella Riler]

It is a good thing, but after seeing how much abandoned land is there in nautilus and baycity, just to list some, imagine the run for the land, is gonna be in those area, people waiting to catch L1 sqm land in areas like that

[Poenald Palen]

Wow, I can imagine people will sit on land waiting as it counts down for the 1L per sq. m. But with all the land for sale, this must be upsetting to those trying to sell thiers or hoping it would be a way to help keep afloat a bit if they down sized. If you sell some desirable land for a few L's a sq m. and by slightly less desirable land, and less of it, then you can use the money to stay out of the red or even pay for uploads is you are getting that low on money lol. Now...wow, not much one can do.

The funny thing is, will we see flocks of bots to block out people who camp out on the land for the last day and end up with 20+ bots shutting sims closed as they wait to compete to click and buy first? :smileyindifferent:

Maybe 5 mins before the land is up a flock of 40+ bots logs in and jams the sim shut in an attempt to buy the land and block any purchasers that might get thier order through faster?

Hey, forget bots....just groups of freinds might do it! lol. They all just camp out and IM and swap out with other freinds from thier group? I assume they can put up ban lines...but then there is always your store, the road outside your store of the empy looking lot beside you store. Wow, I am really going ahead with the idea of putting most of any future stores up in the air if we see flocks of people camping out waiting lol.

[Marianne McCann]

 

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SID Riler wrote:

It is a good thing, but after seeing how much abandoned land is there in nautilus and baycity, just to list some, imagine the run for the land, is gonna be in those area, people waiting to catch L1 sqm land in areas like that

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I don't know about Nautilus, but you will be hard-pressed to find actual abandoned land in Bay City. Most gets put in the auction queue very quickly.

Now for sale land... that's another story.

[Marianne McCann]

Does this mean, however, that the days of auctioned land are over?

[Persephone Emerald]

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Knowl Paine wrote:

3 day grace for the previous owner

Then a 3 day sale for Residents who own land in that Region.

Followed by 3 days sale open to any non-bot Resident.

On the 10th day and there after any Resident could purchase the land.

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Randall Ahren wrote:

I like your idea, but maybe it could be simpler. Instead of setting the parcel for sale for 1L$/sqm, set it for sale initially at 10L$/sqm and then drop the price each day until it is sold. That's similar to how some of the land flippers handle buying and selling land. If it works for them, it should work for LL.

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My idea:

I'd like to see a 3 day grace period for the original owner to buy back the land at for $L 0, then 28 day grace period for any resident in the same region to buy the land at $L 1/ m, then the parcel goes on sale for $L 10 / m with the price falling by 1 linden each day. This way the owner & neighbors have plenty of time to buy the land before speculators with land bots try to grab it. If someone really wants the parcel, they might even buy another parcel in the same region to get the region neighbor rate. This tactic would probably result in more land sales of lots that are already slow to sell. It's nicer for everyone when a neighbor bordering the land buys it, but I think that would be harder to automate. Some people also want to buy small lots within their region to increase their prim usage, but don't really care if that lot borders the rest of their land or not.

 

[Knowl Paine]

Tiffy Vella wrote:
Abandoned land can sit there for years, with remnant prims hanging in the air, banlines still in place and landscaping that makes it impossible to navigate anyway. We've had Lindens come to clean up land like this and frankly whoever turned up did a Friday Afternoon Job (removing linked external wallks only) and left. It's ugly, and is a waste of sim resources.

To add to your comment, the policy of setting the Land's terrain to default often makes the land look worse and creates jagged edges on the adjacent plots. The Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW) should be the only internal department allowed to Edit the Terrain. Recovered land should be smoothed, not set to default. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 

PeterCanessa Oh wrote:
I don't know if there's a way to limit sales to a  'non-bot Resident' though.  Especially as I doubt most of the land-bot owners have declared them as such.

The land Bot topic is usually a lengthy one and may sidetrack making these changes a reality. Your comment reminded me of an idea for Task specific Viewer's. Long story short, selecting a land seller viewer would register that Resident's status or declared intent. With help from the LL :smileyindifferent: each task viewer could have features exclusive to that viewer.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

 

Prokofy Neva wrote:
It seems to me doable to be able to have a series of events that ensue when land reaches the end of the grace period, that only those agents who are already shown as owners of land on that sim are in the possible list to buy it. Currently, land can be manually set to be sold only to one person, so would it be hard to have code that sets up automatically a list of all owners on that sim, and the option for any one of them to be the one who could buy the land. Or a moving through that list one at a time, with each one coming up for 3 days, then moving to the next.
 I'd also like to know why this issue is being talked about in this group which is basically Andrew Linden's office hour with the same set of scripters concerned with narrow scripting issues

I was thinking, request to buy land, then all the current checks, if all pass, check time since abandoned, check for matching parcel, if yes send you can buy this land message, if no send you can buy this land in X amount of days.

I can think of several reasons why this issue is not being talked about. Creating a workable system involves almost every aspect of SL. I think it's up to us, the Resident's, we know the system best.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

Persephone Emerald wrote:
My idea:

I'd like to see a 3 day grace period for the original owner to buy back the land at for $L 0, then 28 day grace period for any resident in the same region to buy the land at $L 1/ m, then the parcel goes on sale for $L 10 / m with the price falling by 1 linden each day. This way the owner & neighbors have plenty of time to buy the land before speculators with land bots try to grab it. If someone really wants the parcel, they might even buy another parcel in the same region to get the region neighbor rate. This tactic would probably result in more land sales of lots that are already slow to sell. It's nicer for everyone when a neighbor bordering the land buys it, but I think that would be harder to automate. Some people also want to buy small lots within their region to increase their prim usage, but don't really care if that lot borders the rest of their land or not.

From start to finish I think a 30 day turn around should be the goal. The grace period, sale offer to current region owner, public sale, should all fit within 30 days.

The matter of setting a price is most troublesome. The market should be free to discover it's own value. The hard deck is the cost of membership, tier and time and labor. I think 10L$ per meter is well above the deck.  

[Persephone Emerald]

 @ Knowl Paine 

$L 10/ meter is too high, but the previous poster had suggested that amount & it would give people plenty of time to view the land before deciding to buy it. Maybe starting at $L 5/ m is more reasonable. So we could have 4 days at $L 0 for the previous owner, then 21 days at $L 1/ m for region residents, then the land goes to $L 5/ m to the general public, with the price falling $L 1/ m each day. That would add up to 30 days for the whole process, at which time the land would stay at $L 1/ m until someone (probably a land bot) buys it.

[Qie Niangao]

 

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

I like the idea that the Lindens are finally doing something. But why isn't it being discussed openly in office hour/group meetings but being announced as a fait accompli in what is essentially a scripters' group, not a landlords' group such as Jack Linden's office hour used to be? [...]

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At the surface level, it was Kelly who did most of the development for this automated abandonment-to-sales process, probably consulting with Andrew and others, and Kelly often attends Andrew's meetings.

Deeper, however, there's another question: Who is giving the go-ahead for projects like this?  And whoever that is, why aren't they hosting that Land user group that is so conspicuously missing?

I suppose they can't just let the entire Land product rot away while trying to hire/restructure somebody presentable for the role, so it's good that decisions are getting made.  I hope the decision makers have some knowledge of the product, as seen and valued by the customers.  One might think, however, that it could be useful to hear from those customers.

[Sling Trebuchet]

I get the impression from that chat log that the automatic setting for sale at L$1/m to anybody is a done deal.

=====================================================================================

[12:05] Andrew Linden: However one thing that was not done was to give preference to neighbors once the land does go up for sale.
………
[12:31] Pauline Darkfury: I can see scammers jumping on 16s for sale for L$16, setting them for sale again at L$1000
............
[12:31] Kelly Linden: If it becomes a problem then it may need to be revisited.

======================================================================================

Who the hell thought that one up?

It's absolutely moronic. The bots will snap up such land in seconds. Sim neighbours will be faced with whatever markup the dealers reckon they can gouge.

What the hell are LL playing at? Is this some sort of sick experiment to see just how angry they can make tier-paying resisents?

It's often commented that Lindens don't have the slightest clue about in-world. 

This has got to be one of the most perverse moves by LL in recent history.

 

I'll save the Moderators some work and pre-moderate the following.

  *edited for gross vulgarity* LL !

 

 

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Sling Trebuchet]

"No more employee hours devoted to auctions" ??

What's to devote? Just automatically put abandoned land in the Auction queue after the previous-owner grace period.

That way the neighbours have a chance. It feels like the approach that would reguire the least coding. - That would be 'least' other than just handing it `to the bots of price-gouging dealers at L$1/m.

Bots will be programmed to target sims in which available land is in short supply.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

 

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Sling Trebuchet wrote:

...It's absolutely moronic. The bots will snap up such land in seconds. Sim neighbours will be faced with whatever markup the dealers reckon they can gouge...

Sling, you forget one thing: in theory land barons can set the land at sky-high prices if they want but Adam Smith's Invisible Hand in the form of tier bills will eventually force their hands to lower their prices to prices that residents are prepared to pay.  At least I hope that's how it will play out unless there are some strange people out there who simply want to hold masses of unsellable land for some unknown reason.

 

[Ann Otoole]

Most likely LL doesn't really care what land operations think. This is to turn mainland into nothing but a giant breedable pet farm. So you can be lagged out on mainland because LL won't implement fair resource limits because the pets would die or you go to  a well managed estate operation. Or buy your own island. No matter which way you go, as long as you keep paying tier, LL wins.

Basically mainland is going to become an even worse lag ghetto. But hey since, by the end of the year, we won't need stores anymore, the need for land by content creators will become minimal. So we can keep 95% of sales and be happy. LL focuses on facebook folks that like 3D pet farms. Everyone makes money except the facebook imports that are 100% consumers. All is good right?

[Sling Trebuchet]

 

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Alazarin Mondrian wrote:

 

...

Sling, you forget one thing: in theory land barons can set the land at sky-high prices if they want but Adam Smith's Invisible Hand in the form of tier bills will eventually force their hands to lower their prices to prices that residents are prepared to pay.  At least I hope that's how it will play out unless there are some strange people out there who simply want to hold masses of unsellable land for some unknown reason.

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According to gridsurvey.com, about 7% of Mainland is abandoned.

I make that about 400 sims.

It's not abandoned because of the price of land. That's just a once-off.
It's abandoned because of the cost of tier. That's each and every month.

Even at L$1/m, that area is not going to shrink significantly.

So ......the main effect of a shortsighted decision to try and dump a warehouse of non-earning land might well be to           infuriate people who are paying tier and would pay a bit more tier if they could get more land in their current mainland sim.