Why were landbots banned?

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Yes sure we know , it was unfair for people wanting to buy cheep land, because land bots scooped the cheep parcels fast, but banning them was unfair to people trying to get at least something for land they were getting rid of to lower tier. 

You have a couple of weeks to sell, so you try setting land baron prices, nothing, you drop it to $2L per square meter, nothing, then $1.5L, nothing. Time is running short, so you set it to $1L, still nothing. Now there is 24 hours left before tier is due, so you set it to landbot trigger price, about $0.3 per sq m for interior, and $0.5 for roadftont… and bam, a land bot buys it.

Sure, it was roadftont you paid $4L per square meter, but you will get something back, its better than nothing.

Changing rules to make it “fairer” for one group often had the effect of making it more unfair for someone else.

But oh well, thats just Second Life for ya.

😂

[Qie Niangao]

The forums had complaints on a near weekly basis about bots buying land the poster set for sale at L$1 for the whole parcel, expecting a friend to buy it before a bot. Why L$1? Because they used to set it for L$0 (and lose it just the same) so the Lab made L$0 sales only possible if a buyer was specified, but Mainland owners were so determined to screw themselves that rather than specifying a buyer, they set the price to L$1 because they heard somewhere "in RL, a nominal sale price is always a dollar".🙄

Maybe landbots could have been restricted to operate only at some higher minimum than L$1 somehow, but why even bother? There's nothing preventing web bot scraping the market listings to clue a human buyer to swoop in and buy nearly as fast and with fewer errors. And to the extent it's actually worth anybody's time, they do.

[Love Zhaoying]

Landbots were banned? TIL

[BilliJo Aldrin]

28 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The forums had complaints on a near weekly basis about bots buying land the poster set for sale at L$1 for the whole parcel, expecting a friend to buy it before a bot. Why L$1? Because they used to set it for L$0 (and lose it just the same) so the Lab made L$0 sales only possible if a buyer was specified, but Mainland owners were so determined to screw themselves that rather than specifying a buyer, they set the price to L$1 because they heard somewhere "in RL, a nominal sale price is always a dollar".🙄

Maybe landbots could have been restricted to operate only at some higher minimum than L$1 somehow, but why even bother? There's nothing preventing web bot scraping the market listings to clue a human buyer to swoop in and buy nearly as fast and with fewer errors. And to the extent it's actually worth anybody's time, they do.

well thats their own fault for not setting sale to a particular person before they set the price.One time  I had set a parcel I cut off for sale at $1 L for the whole parcel. I had a land baron im me within seconds wanting to make sure I had set the right price. I said yep, its $1L or i just abandon it. 

😁

 

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

On 11/7/2023 at 3:43 AM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

You have a couple of weeks to sell, so you try setting land baron prices, nothing, you drop it to $2L per square meter, nothing, then $1.5L, nothing. Time is running short, so you set it to $1L, still nothing. Now there is 24 hours left before tier is due, so you set it to landbot trigger price, about $0.3 per sq m for interior, and $0.5 for roadftont… and bam, a land bot buys it.

This trick still works.

No idea if it's a bot that shows up or an account sitting in front of a pile of monitoring scripts spamming a refresh button - but it still works.

 

[Extrude Ragu]

To be honest sniping land intended for someone else I see being best described as a form of theft.

People tend to hide behind the argument that since the system allows them to do something, they can do it. But this does not hold water to me. The system allows you to grief people and say all kinds of nasty things in voice chat, nothing stops you, but does that make it OK? No.

If I was lending my bicycle to a friend and left it unlocked for a minute for my friend to take, and a thief came along and took the bike, that would not be OK. I did not consent to that transaction. It is theft. Sure, I could have protected my bike better, but it is still theft and it is not OK.

In much the same way, using a bot to instantly find out vulnerable land faster than any human could, and take it from a non consenting user who intended to give it to someone else is theft. Plain and simple. It was not intended for you. It was not yours to take. You simply took advantage of a vulnerable situation and the users lack of technical knowledge.

[Rowan Amore]

3 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

To be honest sniping land intended for someone else I see being best described as a form of theft.

People tend to hide behind the argument that since the system allows them to do something, they can do it. But this does not hold water to me. The system allows you to grief people and say all kinds of nasty things in voice chat, nothing stops you, but does that make it OK? No.

If I was lending my bicycle to a friend and left it unlocked for a minute for my friend to take, and a thief came along and took the bike, that would not be OK. I did not consent to that transaction. It is theft. Sure, I could have protected my bike better, but it is still theft and it is not OK.

In much the same way, using a bot to instantly find out vulnerable land faster than any human could, and take it from a non consenting user who intended to give it to someone else is theft. Plain and simple. It was not intended for you. It was not yours to take. You simply took advantage of a vulnerable situation and the users lack of technical knowledge.

Perfect analogy.  Not everyone selling land knows all the technical ins and outs and taking advantage of that is wrong.

[Nukasa22]

On 11/13/2023 at 1:02 AM, Extrude Ragu said:

People tend to hide behind the argument that since the system allows them to do something, they can do it

I've witnessed a few instances where land was given back to the seller after a fast/accidental purchase. I haven't witnessed a situation where someone said "sorry but I'm keeping the land." If this were a bigger issue I'd expect to see more complaints on the forums. I don't think I've seen even one. I may be wrong but I just don't see the data that would support that this is what people tend to do.

 

On 11/13/2023 at 1:02 AM, Extrude Ragu said:

You simply took advantage of a vulnerable situation and the users lack of technical knowledge.

To be fair, this has little to do with technical knowledge. When you sell land, you can very conveniently designate a specific person who can buy your land. It's really this, very convenient and there is no technical knowledge required. The problem is also laziness and lacking awareness. People don't realize that the land that they sell immediately shows up in search. And that, if they set it for sale for 1L$, it will appear right at the top, very prominently. It's mostly common sense. What would help is an addition to the land sale UI that makes the user aware of the visibility of his sale.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Nukasa22 said:

I've witnessed a few instances where land was given back to the seller after a fast/accidental purchase. I haven't witnessed a situation where someone said "sorry but I'm keeping the land." If this were a bigger issue I'd expect to see more complaints on the forums. I don't think I've seen even one. I may be wrong but I just don't see the data that would support that this is what people tend to do.

 

To be fair, this has little to do with technical knowledge. When you sell land, you can very conveniently designate a specific person who can buy your land. It's really this, very convenient and there is no technical knowledge required. The problem is also laziness and lacking awareness. People don't realize that the land that they sell immediately shows up in search. And that, if they set it for sale for 1L$, it will appear right at the top, very prominently. It's mostly common sense. What would help is an addition to the land sale UI that makes the user aware of the visibility of his sale.

before you set the land for sale, you get a warning, you are selling this land for $1 L to anyone in SL. All sales are final, do you wish to proceed?

And then they proceed, and someone scoops it up and they end up whining about unfair it all is.

But you know what? They wont make that mistake again 😂

[Qie Niangao]

31 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

before you set the land for sale, you get a warning, you are selling this land for $1 L to anyone in SL. All sales are final, do you wish to proceed?

And then they proceed, and someone scoops it up and they end up whining about unfair it all is.

But you know what? They wont make that mistake again 😂

True, but one origin of the landbot ban is that it didn't always work that way, and in fact originally you could set land for sale at L$0 to anybody; the L$1 minimum came about because so many Mainland owners back then didn't know landbots existed. And eventually landbots were officially banned, too.

Sure, they could learn from that mistake, but the best business interests of Linden Research is not merely to line the wallets of land traders—much as some may see it that way—but rather to maximize overall customer enjoyment. And whatever rush the landflipper gets from snatching some land at an under market price is vastly outweighed by the misery of the landowner who just lost their entire SL investment to a stupid, one-time mistake.

(As I've said before, though, the landbot ban is a bit silly now because humans can still scrape the for sale listings; the fact they don't swoop in to buy isn't that they don't know about the land, it's that the stuff usually just isn't worth the trouble anymore—hard though that may be for some in the peripheries of the Mainland market to accept—although I suppose the threshold of "worth the trouble" is pretty negotiable for a L$-denominated pastime.)