The Fatal Flaw in the Lindens' Shiny New Land Portal

[Prokofy Neva]

So I'll tell you in advance:

1) If you are a landlord or tenant on the Mainland, or you run some kind of venue on the Mainland, you'll understand the problem I'm about to describe here immediately.

2) But if you aren't on the Mainland and somewhere else, or nowhere else but maybe in a sandbox, you'll Fisk and whine that this discovery is irrelevant or misconstrued or will whine that the Lindens did a good thing and aren't ever appreciated, and people need to get over themselves when they put public information on their land discoverable by...anything, human or machine.

I can't use my own business of an example to vividly illustrate this fatal flaw, because then I could be accused of advertising in the wrong forum. I can't use somebody else's business to illustrate this vividly because they I risk being accused of disparaging a business by name, which isn't allowed.

So I can only tell you to go to the new Land Portal, and look up what you need to look up, and if you are in Category 1, you will instantly get it.

This situation came about because such projects are discussed, if at all, in Linden office hours with their peers in the computer programming experts' community, not with landlords. MonCierge is an office hour where news is delivered after the fact, not opinion sought to help shape the product about which news is later delivered. Had the Lindens consulted landlords and venue owners, this wouldn't have happened. 

We can't know the algorithms used here because they keep them secret, obviously, so they won't be gamed.

Search/Places, a Ready-Made Indicator is Not Being Used for Land Portal

At first I thought the problem with the shiny new Land Portal was that the Lindens were NOT using the search/places function because they were using the category flags which you pull down on the land menu itself, as distinct from putting a key word in a land description and checking off the search/places box.

It occurred to me that the reason search/places has stopped billing $30L a week *months ago* is not a bug, but a feature; it had to be disabled because it was no longer used for the shiniest new product -- whether it will go back to being billed and serve a different kind of function is not known at this time.

Of course, the sensible thing to have done was to use search/places -- the 30L ads are an opt-in from people who WANT their land in search either to get it rented, or as a venue to be visited with some kind of activity. In fact, it's hard to understand how Land Portal's shiny new Rentals option will harmonize with search/places and obviously no one thought about that.

Company Name or Owner is Being Used

So...If in searching the Land Portal for rentals, you use the name of a company or land owner or group land owner, or the name of the venue, or a word in the land description,  that's going to turn up volumes of unwanted and irrelevant data.

So at first, when I saw the search results and saw the issue, I had a helper wearily going around and taking off all the glaringly obvious problem results -- already rented land where tenants obviously expected privacy, not a visit from search results -- and reflagging it as "residential" in the categories pull-down menu. We try to do that as we go along; tenants themselves often toggle it themselves if they are savvy, but it gets left undone. This is taking more than a day.

Unamed Are Showing Up

Needless to say, all the UNAMED parcels ending up in search, apparently on the strength of the group land owners' name for me and others, were useless search results, so we could then expect either to rename them and describe them so they made sense or unflag them as "rental" and put them as "park" or "other" but chances are Land Portal users wouldn't TP to a parcel called UNAMED, like a horse in the desert. So that will take more than a day, but can be done over time.

Parcel Categories Toggled Do Not Appear to Matter

Then we began to discover that parcels already toggle on the category list to SHOPPING or PARK or ART by tenants or us or by other companies in fact were still showing as RENTALS in the shiny new Land Portal. Because: the term "rentals" in the business name, group land owner name, word in description, or whatever.

I was hoping this was just a problem of the system not updating, the way the map doesn't update. But it seems no, and also evidence that land category toggles are not determining search results, or at least, not all of them, who knows.

Clearly the "search/places" 30L ad is not determining search results, and it seems only the word itself is determining them.

Since there are thousands of units and hundreds of pages, this is a monumental task that leads to despair. And it likely won't make any difference, but at least *maybe* the search results on later pages might be influenced? 

Use Block Teleport?

Then I thought, well, we'll put "block teleport" to keep a search result and land NO ONE WANTED IN SEARCH from forcing visitors into existing tenants' laps unexpectedly. It will still show up! But you can't go there now so easily, it will land you "nearby". Of course, that means their landmarks handed out now can't be used; they have to TP in every friend, etc. No, I don't think that's rational no practical to do on thousands of units.

Rename Parcel?

How about re-naming the parcel every time? This makes more work when that tenant is finished and you have to put the land back in search, but if it ameliorated the search results, well, we'll bite the bullet and do it. But seeing how many tenants already renamed their parcel on the description box, yet are still in search, I'd have to conclude that search is going by the land owner name or group land owner name.

Maybe the worst problem is that some people teleport into a green commons area or UNAMED and then ask where the rental box is? It's not for rent, it's a commons. I do have people doing that sometimes; not sure if that happened because of THIS.

Unwanted Privacy Buster

The bottom line: once again, people who did not want their parcels in search, who did not put them in search, who toggled the label them on the description as "residential" to indicate "private homes" or renamed their description from the landlord's description, and had an expectation of privacy, are now in search. And some of the more eye-popping results clearly are from people who have no idea they are in search now - they didn't check the search/places box and pay 30L. Hey, one way to drive people to Bellisseria, eh?

Workarounds?

Maybe there is a way to fix this without coding the entire thing around some other concept; maybe they can make some cludge where if you toggle a flag it will go away; maybe people will simply have to accept the burden of switching to "block teleport". Naturally, to re-rent a parcel when a tenant is done, you'll have to go around ensuring "block teleport" is changed to an exact landing. Fun times.

Or here's an idea: pour all group-owned land in groups that have the word "rentals" into them into ANOTHER group that does not have that word in its name. Then you won't show up in the shiny new Land Portal at all, right?

It's just one more thing.

It's just one more thing.

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Teresa Firelight]

your article made me curious. I am a ranger at Mt Campion National Forest which (among other things) rents some campsites and cabins to pay the tier for this multi-region "public" park.

I went to the link you provided and typed in Campion .. and found two entries for Mt Campion.. neither of which had anything to do with our rentals. The first was billed as "Mount Campion National Forest" a 1024 parcel.  When I TPed there, it put in in the side of a mountain prim on the very edge of the park ... next to a bunch of 1024 sqM privately owned home parcels.. which does not look anything like the park and is not for rent and has absolutely nothing to do with one of our rental areas.

Then I tried the other entry, which was listed as "Mount Campion Caves National Forest" a 34672 sqM area. It's TP did bring me into the park, on one of our main trails, not far from our "Park Information" cave.  If they noticed the cave and went inside, that cave does have a small billboard about park rentals. But someone looking for a rental would be hard pressed to know to go in the cave to look for that. The part of the park that it TPed me to is intended as "public" park land for all SL-residents to visit/enjoy.

I think the reason that parcel got selected was because of the description section in about land.. which talked about park features and also had the phrase "farm and cabin rentals" in that description.

I think the idea of a rental finder is a great idea, but I think that the product still needs more refinement. And it would be a good idea to publish something to the land owners explaining how their AI rental finder works and what keywords to either use or avoid in land name and description - depending on whether they want to be listed or avoid being listed.

Edited February 2, 2023 by Teresa Firelight

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

I've always wanted something that would allow you to see what's for sale when you're not in world. But you still can't see what you're buying offline. Sellers are going to have to get better about putting pics of the parcels in the listing. 

[Love Zhaoying]

I'm very confused - @Prokofy Neva.

If results are showing up that are:

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

- already rented land where tenants obviously expected privacy, not a visit from search results -- and reflagging it as "residential" in the categories pull-down menu.

Doesn't this mean that the search is missing the basic search attribute "Land Is For Sale"?  I do not see that in your description of the issues.

What category is the land in, prior to 

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

reflagging it as "residential" in the categories pull-down menu.

?

Edited February 2, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Prokofy Neva]

41 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm very confused - @Prokofy Neva.

If results are showing up that are:

Doesn't this mean that the search is missing the basic search attributed "Land Is For Sale"?  I do not see that in your description of the issues.

What category is the land in, prior to 

?

I don't know why you are confused. We are talking about Rentals in the new Land Portal on the web. Not "Land for Sale". Not the inworld search with options to pick "land for sale".

I gave the link to the general Land Portal page on the web, above. I gave the link to the opening page so that people can see the whole new feature.

This is external to the world, on the web page. It is not the inworld search.

You click it.

Once there, you pick Rentals. Now you are at this link.

Then you click "Search Rentals Now. Now you are this link.

Check off the box "Mainland" only in my case, because that's most of my rentals. And "General, Mature, Adult." Now you are at this link.

Type a company name into the "Key Word" search box.

You could also pick "private island" or "homesteads".

You then see the problem I have outlined in my extensive post.

Inworld, on the "about land" menu, you have the option to pick the category of the land -- "

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't know why you are confused. We are talking about Rentals in the new Land Portal on the web. Not "Land for Sale". Not the inworld search with options to pick "land for sale".

I gave the link to the general Land Portal page on the web, above. I gave the link to the opening page so that people can see the whole new feature.

This is external to the world, on the web page. It is not the inworld search.

You click it.

Once there, you pick Rentals. Now you are at this link.

Then you click "Search Rentals Now. Now you are this link.

Check off the box "Mainland" only in my case, because that's most of my rentals. And "General, Mature, Adult." Now you are at this link.

Type a company name into the "Key Word" search box.

You could also pick "private island" or "homesteads".

You then see the problem I have outlined in my extensive post.

 

Thanks, when you said:

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So I can only tell you to go to the new Land Portal, and look up what you need to look up, and if you are in Category 1, you will instantly get it.

It was not clear you only meant "search land for Rent" ("pick Rentals", "search Rentals", etc.).  I thought you were inviting people to try the Land Portal for any / all uses - which includes both "Sale" and "Rental". 

That clears things up a lot.

I guess that your post is really about Renting, not Sales.  Not sure if any of the issues you detail apply to Sales also.

[Prokofy Neva]

15 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Thanks, when you said:

It was not clear you only meant "search land for Rent" ("pick Rentals", "search Rentals", etc.).  I thought you were inviting people to try the Land Portal for any / all uses - which includes both "Sale" and "Rental". 

That clears things up a lot.

I guess that your post is really about Renting, not Sales.  Not sure if any of the issues you detail apply to Sales also.

This is what I wrote:

If you are a landlord or tenant on the Mainland. 

That implies rentals.

Because I am in the rentals business.

I didn't write anything about "Land for Sale"

BTW actual "Land for Sale" I have for sale shows up in "Rentals" as well.

People often put land for sale inworld so it will show up on the map. I rarely do this but I might have a few like that.

If you search "land for sale" with my company name you get 705 results. But that's because the search is so bad, and they won't fix it to be useful or put it back the way iit was -- the way it is on Firestorm. That's a separate problem.

PS what the shiny new Land Portal enables you to do now is to handily find the unscrupulous types that put land for sale as a technique to get it to show up on the map when they only mean to rent it.

If your attitude is, "but if you can do it, it's ok," I beg to differ. And maybe after some of their land sells unintentionally, and their rental tenants who just paid rent and didn't buy that land get expelled from that land and complain, we may see an end to this practice.

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Teresa Firelight said:

your article made me curious. I am a ranger at Mt Campion National Forest which (among other things) rents some campsites and cabins to pay the tier for this multi-region "public" park.

I went to the link you provided and typed in Campion .. and found two entries for Mt Campion.. neither of which had anything to do with our rentals. The first was billed as "Mount Campion National Forest" a 1024 parcel.  When I TPed there, it put in in the side of a mountain prim on the very edge of the park ... next to a bunch of 1024 sqM privately owned home parcels.. which does not look anything like the park and is not for rent and has absolutely nothing to do with one of our rental areas.

Then I tried the other entry, which was listed as "Mount Campion Caves National Forest" a 34672 sqM area. It's TP did bring me into the park, on one of our main trails, not far from our "Park Information" cave.  If they noticed the cave and went inside, that cave does have a small billboard about park rentals. But someone looking for a rental would be hard pressed to know to go in the cave to look for that. The part of the park that it TPed me to is intended as "public" park land for all SL-residents to visit/enjoy.

I think the reason that parcel got selected was because of the description section in about land.. which talked about park features and also had the phrase "farm and cabin rentals" in that description.

I think the idea of a rental finder is a great idea, but I think that the product still needs more refinement. And it would be a good idea to publish something to the land owners explaining how their AI rental finder works and what keywords to either use or avoid in land name and description - depending on whether they want to be listed or avoid being listed.

It's not that the product "needs refinement."

It's that it was built without any thought or concern about actual rentals inworld whatsoever. Landlords were not consulted or they could have set them straight.

If your answer is, "Oh, but the Lindens are not required to build products from the perspective of some inworld resident company and their interests; they need to build products from the perspective of the consumer."

Let me suggest if they did *that*, their search/places would work.
But let's credit them with building the portal with the interest of the average user, looking for a rental -- a consumer -- in mind.

What the consumer finds are not rentals. They find all kinds of things which may or may not be for rent. Having the word "rent" in them does not mean they are for rent, because that could be the name of a rentals company; the name of land that was for rent yesterday but is now taken, or something else.

So you can look at it from the coder perspective -- which I don't find at all useful or relevant here -- and say "Well, make everyone re-name their groups and land description titles so only land for rent is showing."

So your company name cannot contain the word "rentals" in it because then your group-owned land with that name will appear as if every single bit of it is for rent, even when it is not.

Leave aside the problem of the ENORMOUS inconvenience this is, and that it cannot be automated, and it will entail enormous upheavals.

You can't name the parcel in the description box "for rent" because you still have the problem that if you named a parcel "For Rent," then you have to keep renaming it and unnaming it and renaming it each time it rents and vacates.

I'm not aware of any Casper type script that renames parcels for you, but sure, go and invent one.

If you just used search/places with the term "Rent" and that worked right, we wouldn't have this conversation.

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[Love Zhaoying]

10 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

1) If you are a landlord or tenant on the Mainland, or you run some kind of venue on the Mainland, you'll understand the problem I'm about to describe here immediately.

2) But if you aren't on the Mainland and somewhere else, or nowhere else but maybe in a sandbox, you'll Fisk and whine that this discovery is irrelevant or misconstrued or will whine that the Lindens did a good thing and aren't ever appreciated, and people need to get over themselves when they put public information on their land discoverable by...anything, human or machine.

Got it. From the above, I did not see any option like, "if you are not a landlord or tenant" so, I assumed that Mainland non-tenants non-landlords (Mainland land owners) fell under 2).

[Prokofy Neva]

22 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Got it. From the above, I did not see any option like, "if you are not a landlord or tenant" so, I assumed that Mainland non-tenants non-landlords (Mainland land owners) fell under 2).

No, Love.

No.

No. 1 clearly indicates tenants -- rentals -- land for rent. Not land for sale.

You interpolated "land for sale" into no. 2, with good will or not, I don't know, but I will assume without bad will.

No. 2 was indicated to say in advance that there are always people who view any post I make cynically and complain, so they should find another post; there are always those who aren't in the land business in any form and simply hate land barons and think their interests don't matter. No. 2 was designed to get those people to go away because if you are in Category 1, you see what a five-alarm fire this is for you, instantly.

Let's stay focused here on the problem.

The new Land Portal does not serve businesses or consumers and exposes privacy in yet another way in SL, and yet again under the guise that "you put the information on the land in public, so it's your problem," some people will not see it as a problem, the Lindens, who never saw anything wrong with it before they launched it, will likely to do nothing about it. In fact, we can expect anger or indifference but not understanding here.

That's fine. It's their world. And their imagination.

After 19 years in SL, I don't "change the things I can and accept the things I cannot" or even pray for "the wisdom to know the difference". I look for ways to mitigate everything because that's all that is left, really, although I think we can get some little changes here and there sometimes.

What I am trying to do in my little corner of SL is mitigate this possible disaster which may not be a big deal for the simple reason that people won't hear about it or use it because they never read the Lindens' blogs, or go to their meetings, or read the forums.

The shiny new Land Portal is conceived for the web first, because it's simply less laggy to use on the web than inworld, everyone knows that. And you get a bigger screen to view. So you see more results at a time and can play with it more easily.

Also, the perspective is intended a new customer, coming to SL for the first time, and seeing what they could get in it. That's only to be welcomed and the Lindens should have featured land for rent or sale right on the website, as an integrated, desirable, and needed feature of their product even 19 years ago or even 10 years ago, that would have been fine, but they weren't over their allergy to land yet, and preferred sandboxes, playing to their nerd core who would proclaim "You don't need land to have fun" and in some cases, grief others on their land without ever having a home of their own.

Now, pay intention, and don't get confused.

The new inworld Land Portal search, being part of the whole gospel of search according to the Lindens, is even worse than the web page in that it gives you only 4 or 5 search returns and more irrelevant returns.

A few days ago when I saw this, I thought, oh, that's terrible, but at least they got rid of the User Interface they had before this, which was a wonky menu with tiny toggles that you could toggle to a price, but which then had to be *re-toggled* each time you changed an element of your search key words like "beach" or "mountain". That was such a pain, no one ever used it that I could tell.

I ask people HOW they find rentals. They tell me. I also put out public polls. People say "Search" meaning "search everything" because people don't use refinements, they are too confusing.  Older residents might say "Search/Places" or "Classifieds". or "Word of Mouth". But they didn't use the wonky interface we had before toggling little arrows on widgets and seeing them disappear -- and my guess is we won't see mass adaption of this new land portal inworld, where people are focused on the task at hand (although lunchtime browsing is always welcome).

Will they use the new wonky interface that is better, with even more confusing results? (Because I think the old interface used land categories, and this is where I would complain and say, hey, Lindens, the inworld land menu has the category "rentals" on it, YET your wonky inworld interface thingy for "land for sale or rent" doesn't....include rentals as a category to pull down. I always thought that exhibited a very clear prejudice lol.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 2, 2023 by Prokofy Neva

[animats]

The web site part of the land site looks great. Nice graphics. Good layout. Then you get to the search page. The search function is terrible.

The in-world map is far more useful. You can turn on the Land Sale overlay and the parcels for sale light up. Mouse over the price tag and you get the sale data.If LL took the existing world map on the web and added the overlays the in-world map offers, that would be far more useful than that terrible search engine.

At least offer larger, better pictures.

(The SL map on the web is rather sluggish. That's a problem with the web page side, not the server. I used to offer a fast slippy map of Second Life, but because of BUG-226530, I stopped doing that. With some effort from the web side of LL, LL could do that and add the FOR SALE overlay.)

[Love Zhaoying]

15 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Now, pay intention

15 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

and don't get confused.

You really expect a lot!

Did you want us to help out by filing JIRA's about the issues with the new Land Portal?  Without direct feedback (excluding these Forums), I'm not sure how LL will know about the issues.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You really expect a lot!

Did you want us to help out by filing JIRA's about the issues with the new Land Portal?  Without direct feedback (excluding these Forums), I'm not sure how LL will know about the issues.

 

Not sure if the new Linden called Sntax was put on this (seems like something they'd stick the new guy with) and I could send him a link but you know? I don't look for trouble. The news will find them.

No. I was banned from the JIRA, oh, 15 years ago maybe? Because I said that the ability to return a prim put on share, from group land where the role did not permit return of group-set prims, was a bug, not a feature, and one that was fixable. Certain Lindens who like group building, which is a rare use case in SL, and returning other people's prims on a whim, didn't see it the way landlords did. When I appealed, the same Lindens who banned me reviewed the appeal. I am IP or MAC banned so that neither I nor my alts can even look at the JIRA. I don't use anonymizers to go where I'm not wanted. So I don't even know what's been filed on this NOR do I care as I don't believe the undemocratic JIRA is the way to combat this.

What is required is for someone in the code cave who goes to the office hours to sit up and notice that their own rentals, or venues, or some private place they care about, is now in the view. So those people have to be identified, and shown the truth of the situation. This will take awhile.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I was banned from the JIRA, oh, 15 years ago maybe?

Yes, I know. That's why I asked if you wanted us to file a JIRA, knowing that you cannot yourself. I was trying to be tactful, very painful to do.

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

 

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yes, I know. That's why I asked if you wanted us to file a JIRA, knowing that you cannot yourself. I was trying to be tactful, very painful to do.

 

No, I don't need anyone to do anything with the Lindens "on my behalf," if you or anyone else is so motivated by this issue, you will file your own JIRAs. But as I already know from either attending one office hour last year, and watching others, the Lindens don't want to move on search. They don't get what is wrong, and don't want to change.

If I have something very specific, and a request precisely to direct to them (like: "come inworld and change the sionchicken food, which is running out soon entirely, to "copy" so we can keep feeding our chickens), then I file a Support Ticket. This is too complex for Support obviously. 

Some terrible Epiphany is needed where they realize that in 2012, when Oz went to 2.0 and scrapped the search of that era AND THE TPVS KEPT IT, THAT is what saved our world and our economy.

Nothing short of Firestorm breaking away from LL and saying they refuse to cooperate and are going to Open Sim now will shake this loose -- it would have to be that order of magnitude.

Will THIS be the thing that moves the needle? Only if they hear from lots of people. But people are docile in SL and it is what it is.

I've flagged and explained exhaustively what the problems are here and the Lindens will have to decide. The fact that search/places *billing* got disabled months ago was a red flag and we should have realized something was "up".

[Eirynne Sieyes]

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233323?filter=-2

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Is it just me or does the "find a rental" part of this not work at all?