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Steve Steed added a comment - 30/May/07 10:12 AM
I like to see 512sqm not 256sqm.
I hate to oppose this idea because I totally hate and fear the ad farms. I can see them coming toward my mainland houses and I feel pretty helpless. But if we're opposed to ad farms, let's make it a cause of being directly opposed to ad farms. Making restrictions on how people can use land will damage many legitimate and important uses for smaller lots. The ad farmers would probably just switch to rentals and carry on.
Nobody likes censorship, but spam is spam. How about a mechanism such that, if an ad farm is found, it could be AR'd. This would be followed by a vote of all landowners with 512 or more in that sim and the closest adjacent sims. The process could be initiated automatically, with human involvement only needed if the vote passes. If the vote is to take it down, and it is found by LL that there is indeed an ad farm, they'd better take it down, or see their land joined and put on the market at market rates. An ad which is part of an actual store should not be included in what can be voted against by this mechanism. When spam reduces property values and quality of life, this is harm and needs to be included when considering this issue, rather than just the freedom of speech of the person doing the advertising. I consider really extreme ad farms to be a form of griefing and I think the consensus in SL is running strongly in that direction. Thanks for hearing me out. I understand why you would worry that people might lose out on legitimate uses for owning tiny pieces of land but there really arent any legitimate uses that cant be accomplished by renting 1 or 2 prims from a neighbour and in most cases im sure you could get a prim on a sim for free if you talk to the right people.
I know that adfarmers will switch to rentals eventually but I see this as a good thing. Rentals means the owner has to make an effort to sell adspace and to make it look good so advertisers think its worth paying for. realy sorry but this is a silly idea. firstly i could not think of a more complicated process, just reading it confuses me, so how would a noob, who has just began playing the game and wants to buy a few small bits of land be able to interprit that?
LL would get inundated with support calls asking why they cannot buy a piece of land when they have teir and money to do so and many would leave before they have even began to enjoy the game. Bare in mind that many new users begin there SL lives buying and selling small plots before being able to afford some of the bigger prime plots they have set their sites on, and this is one of the great capitalist attractions of SL. Start small to get big! Secondly. ad plots are a realy popular part of the game, and if you dont like them that much you can always live on a private island where you can aviod them totaly. so therefore there is already an alternative available, and getting rid of 16 plots altogether would only have a negative effect on LL's policy on freedoms and rights and go against keeping the game as open as possible. I can never see LL agreeing to this in a million years imo Rather than an arbitrary low end limit, I'd like a system where the low end limit could be adjusted per sim by unanimous consent of the land owners. The limit would persist even if parcels are sold to new owners and even if a land owner changes his mind - only unanimous consent could lower or raise the limit.
With this approach, new sims might be brought online with a default limit of 256 or 512m set, land owners on existing sims wouldn't have the rules changed out from under them, and uses like cutting tiny parcels for selective media streaming would still be possible. Voting wouldn't need a complex UI. In the parcel information, owners would have a place to see the current minimal parcel size, and a place to set their parcel vote size. At any time that the max of all the votes is below the current limit, the limit is lowered. At any time that the min of all the votes is above the current limit, the limit is raised. The selling mechanism would ensure that any sale doesn't leave a property owner with a non-zero amount of land less than the limit. The amount sold would need to be the min of the limit, or the user's complete holdings on the sim unless selling to another existing land owner on the sim, in which case only the first restriction on the amount remaining applies. Youwch. You guys should think about actually trying to code and datastore some of these proposals!
Wouldn't the simplest solution would be to extend the "MUTE" facility to actually render objects created by "Spinning AddBob" (or whoever) as phantom & invisible. The other side of this is that people seem to buy these parcels to annoy and make profit, to provoke land owners to buy the parcel just to get rid of the ads. So simply removing the "set price" option would help on 32msq parcels or smaller. Then they are either not for sale or for sale at a reasonable Linden set value based on average land values across SL. At the moment about $15L per msq would be reasonable? But... try selling that idea to everyone who already owns a 16msq parcel. I don't think so. I vote for extended "MUTE" for ad-filtering. i agree with fluf. the best solution would probably be to extend the mute facility.
then everyones happy I find the idea of "visual muting" most ingenious. I created a new feature request for that ... VWR-1017 ... vote for it if you like it. Visual Muting is great if you can mute all advert parcels at the same time. Having to go around muting them individually would be too inconvenient so they need to be tagged as adverts. Although this wont stop people using them to hold land hostage and wont stop people trying to resell at extortionate prices to get rid of them.
I still think stopping these people buying the 16m2 parcels in the first place is the solution. Stylee Streeter, it is as simple as this "You cant buy any small land without meeting the minimum requirement". I knew you would show up here eventually because you are one of the very few people that buys 16m2 parcels cheap and sells high to unfortunate enighbours who want to see the adfarm leave. There isnt any other newbies doing this it is not an ethical way to make money out of other peoples misery. Soft Noel. I like your idea for a more flexible minimum requirement per sim. I think that would be something worth considering should LL want to make changes like this. As in RL, ethics seem relegated to the indignant, and those who care about money will do whatever is necessary to make more of it.
Size limits won't help - they'll buy the smallest size allowed and break it down to smaller. Limiting the smallest size a piece can be broken into will not help because then they'll just charge as if it were smaller, and allow multiple ads on a single space. And as mentioned, there's always renting. In RL, the only way anyone's ever been able to deal with billboards and porn shops/strip clubs/bars is with zoning. Residential zones vs commercial zones. Imposing zoning on existing states is always a nightmare involving grandfathering and enforcement. Enforcement costs money, and if we push for it, we'll have to pay for it. It might be possible - set a deadline for existing ad farm owners to sell their property and move on. We can buy up land, but my guess is it would be cheaper to leave the continents to the ad farms and start buying up islands. Maybe going forward, LL can designate new continents as ad farm free, but I imagine it would have to be convenant land. The question may also hinge on what's an ad farm - does the giant red "For Sale" sign above land count? What about setting an object height limit on parcels of land smaller than 512k? no objects between 4 feet and some upper limit? You'd have to be flying high to see something, and it would have to be high enough that it would be above the site limit from the ground. I know, the ground levels are all different, but I think this is workable. Oh, and for anything at the top limit or above, no textures on the bottom face of the object I don't think minimum prim requirements will help - might even be worse, if the owner decides to fill the plot with junk, especially flying junk.
sorry, one more - I have noticed in some neighborhoods, when small parcels are for sale, the neighbors put up signs that say if the buyer builds an ad farm, all the neighbors will box them in so the ads can't be seen. Sort of an ad/porn farm neighborhood watch.
I strongly agree with the proposals for height limits and zoning.
The problem isn't microplots or advertising per se, it's advertising positioned to spoil the view from nearby parcels (and sometimes intended to harass the owners of those parcels or extort money from them). On the other hand, I'd hate to interfere with legitimate uses for microplots or the ability of SL businesses to advertise merchandise, particularly on store premises. I'd recommend a height band from which advertising is excluded. The bottom edge would be a bit higher than a typical building height (say 25m or so) to allow businesses to put up reasonable signage and sell advertising space. The top edge would be such that advertising would be beyond the draw distance for a person on the top floor of a typical building. These heights would be relative to ground level. While the dimensions of a "typical building" are open to debate, and ads would still be visible from skyboxes and other high-altitude structures, keeping this zone free from clutter would solve most of the problem. Exceptions could be made for advertising directly related to businesses on the property. I'd also like to see better seperation of commercial and residential properties. Besides being more aesthetically pleasing than the current hodgepodge on the mainland, it would have benefits for both businesses and residence owners. Residents would be seperated from unsightly and traffic-generating businesses, gaining a more attractive environment and greater privacy. Businesses would gain foot traffic from nearby businesses. Advertising would be banned from residential sims but be unrestricted on commercial sims. Some exceptions could be permitted, such as neighborhood clubs and gathering places in residential sims, and business owners living on store property in commercial sims. There could even be an intermediate mixed-used designation, although this system could be defeated if mixed-used becomse the norm. Enforcing such a system would be a ToS matter rather than a technical matter, much as the "PG" and "mature" ratings are now. I like the 512 minimum as a way to go, and the zoning by linden labs
I feel that this is an important issue to many of us, and I see firsthand every day how badly ads have gotten out of control. A large percentage of the sims on the newest land continents are infested with 16m plots, and more recently this plague has spread to the old continent. The once beautiful snow sims are becoming an eyesore to visit. I'd like to see the mainland restored to a place of unrivaled beauty more befitting of the community that lives there. However, I'm not convinced that this proposal is the way to go about it. Whatever restrictions are put on land the ad dealers will find ways to adapt to. That said, 16m2 is a controversial amount of land to own in many cases, but it does allow a large degree of flexibility when negotiating borders with neighbors. I'm not sure that muting parcels would be the best solution to ads either, since the land would still technically be in use even if the prims aren't visible, and could be terraformed obscenely or used to cause disruption in other ways, i.e. restricted access. We should be looking for a solution that fixes the problem without having to use tricks and workarounds. My suggestion for the time being would be to ban out-of-context public ads and require people to use the classifieds system.
Urm... that sounds like a great idea, but, the limit should be 512 sqm as that is the traditional smallest size of plot you can own and not pay tier. There are a LOT of small landowners - myself included - who have parcels of this size. Why are you suggesting a proposal that seems to go against us? The ad farmers use 16sqm plots! People who own 512sqm parcels have to be able to sell their land or there is no point in owning it.
This rather strange insistence on 256sqm has just cost you my vote on this otherwise rather good proposal Headdesks
I think I suffered a major brain-fart and I apologise for it... Yes, 512 is bigger than 256, now why didn't that register with me?! Really wishing you could DELETE comments now. Urm, everyone just pretend I didn't write that comment above this, okay? Mumbles gratefully and sneaks off to vote for excellent issue The proposal of 256 I feel is about right for minimum land owned in a sim. This would be the most practical since the fist tier starts at 512 someone could have a home and store in different sims.
I am not for the idea of not letting land be cut in to small blocks some members do use that feature for things like ATMs and other uses but as long as a person owned over 256 they could cut it any way they wanted. Blocking in the ad farms is a great way to deal with them. In my sim I have bought up a few ad farms only paying for the lower cost ones. The first one was all ground stuff so trees did a nice job. In time they moved.... Second was a taste fully don't billboard that I ended up blocking on 3 sides. In time they came to me asking me to buy at a normal rate. The last ad farm took a bit more time but slowly I got enough land on all 4 sides of them. Built tubes and blocked them. (I don't want to interfere with there land and they are free to show the adds to anyone that is standing just on there 16m and looking up LOL). The one ad abandoned there plot so I got that from the lindens for $16L (best price I ever paid for land LOL) There are still 2 ads and they each tried things like going higher and one even tried going larger and expanding over my land. Thicker and a few more prims put a stop to that LOL. I hope these 2 ads never sell out. Each month they have to pay the fees on the land and they are not making anything back for it. Also I use things like the arbor groups Clock tower ban last to limit the movement of the cutters (if enough people use the ban list just getting around SL starts to become a problem for them. The last thing I do is when I see an ad that is not owned by the person that has the land I contact the store or other business and tell them what a waste of there ad dollars the ad is. I see another possibility to make ad-farms less profitable. It's changing how land is credited. My idea is, to credit at least 512 sq.m. for any region you own a parcel at. So a single 16 sq.m. parcel placed into a sim will cost a full 512 sq.m. plot. That's 32 times as much as before.
So per region you'll be accounted either 512 sq.m. or the sum of the sizes of your plots, which ever is higher. Only on main land regions. Another thing I'd like to see is taxing parcels that are for sale, with a to be determined formular that accounts L$/sq.m. and makes it very expensive to sell a 16 sq.m. for thousands of L$. The taxing should only apply to main land of course. See SVC-400 for another possible solution.
This proposal will not work, many of the 16m2 plots are bought by adsters at inflated prices with the culprits being the land-seller. I know because I sought to buy out an ad-farm and had at least one response to 1500L$ for 16m2 "thats less than I paid for it." So on that basis if 4 adster firms get together for the same price they could share a 512m2 plot. This is more likely than rental unless the rental is long-term there is a business risk of adsters losing their plot and having to refund clients.
A much simpler solution is to implement policies on advertising. Requiring a minimum size of land per sim is not going to stop Ad farms...
While I dont think billboards should be banned, ads containing mature content on any mainland should automatically be a TOS violation even if the parcel is rated as mature.nce. Ads that emit sound or particles should be viewed as spam. Parcel encroachment is already a reportable violation. JZZ Ok ,first off ,The Linden Employee I spoke to this about this Morning,(I won't name this person because I beleive will do what they can to adress this)I've known for more then 2 years ,has requested my ideas to help curb this ongoing problem.
It's my view if Linden labs is going to help there has to be an easy fix for them and has to be something in it for them (MONEY). 1. Zone new land as Residential or Commercial 2.Not allowing any parcell being cut smaller then 512 period. 3.Not allowing any advertisement on a 16m plot to exceed 10metres in hieght. 4.Any land for sale can be advertised with a sign but must be no higher then 3 metres. 5.Any land land thats is smaller then 512 be removed form land search functions. I will be working with the Linden(unnamed) until I get some satisfactory response or reason why the problem cannot be controlled. If you have any Ideas that are a compromise feel free to IM Myself in game ( I don't follow blogs much). CP:
Not really a compromise but you contradict yourself by saying no parcels smaller than 512 and asking for any land under 512 to be removed from land search? Also removing the parcel size would be crippling to businesses with legitimate advertisement uses such as search listings on a malls property for their store there. I do not see this as a workable solution. Smaller plot-sizes have their uses, for example being able to sub-divide a parcel into individual vendor spaces that you are renting out.
You may be interested in SVC-603 which is aimed toward placing a distinction between ad-farming in residential simulators and commercial ones. Even if that is not a workable solution; the point I'm trying to make is that ad-farming is NOT a technical issue, but an issue of terms of service, and what should/should not be permitted in regards to such extortion through harassment schemes. The best solution to ad farming is peer-to-peer ad muting, a distributed killfile scheme as was created on Usenet to fight spam.
(1) Add the ability to mute objects by owner, parcel, or key. Muted objects would be invisible and only show up as smoke-textured boxes when you got within a couple meters of them. (2) You would have this list per parcel and per agent, so a landowner could mute nearby adfarms for everyone on his parcel, and so you could mute ones around you. Then, to complete the solution: (3) Add a script call to add objects to these lists. eg: llAddAgentMuteList([MUTE_OWNER,key,MUTE_PARCEL,key,...]); Then you could distribute a killfile, in a notecard that a script could read or in an open source script, and add objects and parcels to it. After a while there wouldn't be any ads left that any killfile-users could see. I resolutely oppose handing out the discretionary muting of other people and their objects in the world as a solution to ad farming. We live in a shared world and the solution is not to turn other people into unpersons like Stalin did, white-washing photographs. Fleeing to the islands isn't a solution, either.
There is existing language about spam in the TOS – use it, and enforce it. For example, some of the ad extortionists buy 515s and chop them up and put signs on them that lead to websites that merely...advertise their sign business...which has no ads on them...which are merely set to sale to extort you to "buy back the view" (umnik is one of those, with the happy face). The cap on land ownership can't work against an unscrupulous ad farmer like that because he does buy 512s...but then cuts them up into 16 ms. In fact, he pays a good price for land – I myself unwittingly sold to him even with a good price on my parcel. The Lindens are not likely to cap land purchases because it would weaken the premium account's privileges and would cap their own revenue from tier – that is no incentive for them. I've proposed another simpler solution, which is making it so that no land under 512 can SELL for anything but $0. That takes the extortion motive away. I think you will see the overwhelming majority of ads dry up if they can't extort to buy back the view. Yes, some will remain, and then you can campaign on ways to get rid of their blight, by insisting on TOS enforcement against spam. Height limits will not get rid of the blight that harms your land value. And the Lindens will cry that they can't enforce so many rampant violations (although they have no time arriving like a five-alarm fire truck to respond to an ad farmers abuse report on YOU that you are waving a tree branch on to his ugly sign). I am all for this Proposal, however I also have come up with the idea that may empower land owner to keep ad-farmers out of their neighborhoods.
I have recently proposed a Ban List that would enable Land owners the ability to choose who they do NOT want to do business with. One may program their Ban List with the data base compiled by Arbor Project (with their Permission) of all known ad farmers, and they cannot buy land from you. If you care to vote on this visit https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2290  What about people who want to buy a 16m parcel for a SLX magic box or some backup delivery server? Why should they have to buy more land when they only need one prim?
Another related problem is when you want to deed a 16m plot to a group so it can be used to set HOME position of group members, but you dont want to put all your land into the group because auto return will tear down your buildings, and putting the building into a group may not be possible due to permissions. Or what about when you want to buy up an existing add farm and turn it into one large parcel? Normaly you would buy each 16m parcel one at a time. However you cant buy them because you dont own land in the region yet. This proposal will cause a lot of trouble for a lot of innocent people using their land correctly. The best solution for add farms is to Abuse Report them as a recent linden Blog post suggest. NOT VOTED Darling |
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Sims are being ruined by 16m2 Ad-Farms. There needs to be a lower limit of land people can own per sim.
Edit it and you'll get my vote, and probably that of several of my friends whose land is also inconvenienced by ad farms.