SLUniverse Forums

Sarah Nerd

Blogged this HERE but figured I'd post here as well because this one was kind of heartbreaking. I think she paid 24234 to get it back.

Land popped up on list for 3.9l a meter for a 6144 so I went to look at it, and it was nice so I was about to buy it but then I hear this girl pleading with Sayuri Yuitza who bought her land with a bot for 1l when she was trying to group it. Why she's begging for her land back Sayuri Yuitza ejects and bans her and then tp's away. It's just sad.
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[20:34] Teleport completed from http://slurl.com/secondlife/NineInchNerds/128/128/14
[20:34] Connecting to in-world Voice Chat...
[20:34] Indii Tolsen: I know you understand me
[20:34] Connected
[20:34] Indii Tolsen: Sarah
[20:34] You: Hi
[20:34] Indii Tolsen: this was a mistake
[20:35] Indii Tolsen: It wasnt ment to sell
[20:35] You: What happened?
[20:35] Indii Tolsen: I was changing the group
[20:35] You: =(
[20:35] Indii Tolsen: and I set it for 1L but before I had a chance to buy it it was boufght
[20:35] Indii Tolsen: please I need it back
[20:36] Indii Tolsen: I worked hard for it
[20:36] Indii Tolsen: it was total mistake
[20:36] Indii Tolsen: its our home here
[20:36] You: Are you giving it back to her?
[20:37] Indii Tolsen: she wont answer me
[20:37] Indii Tolsen: now my house has gone
[20:37] Sayuri Yuitza: ...............
[20:37] Indii Tolsen: and all the stuff in it
[20:37] Indii Tolsen: thats all I get
[20:38] Teleport completed from http://slurl.com/secondlife/Felipo/114/34/51

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[20:36] Sarah Nerd: Not sure who she is but I get the impression it's the alt of a shitty landbot who used to be called Celene that used to steal peoples land like that
[20:37] Indii Tolsen: oh my god
[20:37] Sarah Nerd: She just fucking ejected you didn't she
[20:37] Indii Tolsen: she ejected me
[20:38] Indii Tolsen: yes
[20:38] Indii Tolsen: Im in tears here
[20:38] Indii Tolsen: I paid so much for that
[20:38] Sarah Nerd: LL doesn't get involved generally but if I were you I would call
[20:39] Indii Tolsen: how can some one be so heartless
[20:39] Sarah Nerd: Greed
[20:39] Indii Tolsen: it was our home here
[20:42] Sarah Nerd: I'm gonna drop this on Jack Linden. He generally wont get involved but it doesnt hurt to try
[20:45] Indii Tolsen: I cant think
[20:45] Indii Tolsen: my house and furniture its all gone
[20:45] Indii Tolsen: I have to face Tumeke when he comes on
[20:47] Indii Tolsen: what a mess
[20:47] Sarah Nerd: I'd call LL as soon as possible.
[20:48] Indii Tolsen: I can rebuy it
[20:48] Indii Tolsen: its for sale already
[20:50] Sarah Nerd: Would you mind if I shared this on my blog?
[20:50] Indii Tolsen: no I dont mind ppl need to know about it
[20:50] Indii Tolsen: if it helps some one else then its a good thing
[20:51] Sarah Nerd: I don't think people who don't deal with land a lot realize how fast those bots move until it's to late
[20:51] Indii Tolsen: I didnt know there was such athing
[20:52] Indii Tolsen: Ive had rthis land for months
[20:52] Indii Tolsen: its devasting
[20:52] Indii Tolsen: but to take the furniture and house thatts really low

[20:54] Indii Tolsen: thanks for trying to help btw
[20:55] Sarah Nerd: Sorry it happened to you =(

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reeneebob Birmingham

That's why I was so newbish when I sold you my 512 - I have always been paranoid of the landbots.

Thankfully you were patient.

That sucks, and the swooper is scum.

Gigs

Did she think the two huge popup warnings that said "ANYONE CAN BUY THIS LAND RIGHT AWAY IF YOU DO THIS" were kidding?

You have to click in three places, and confirm the transaction twice, once with a big orange warning.

Warnings aren't the greatest UI feature, but there's almost a ludicrous number of clicks required to set land for sale to anybody these days.

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Briana Dawson

this is so sad.

Beezle Warburton

I'm so glad when I was n00b I just asked the immediate neighbor if they wanted to buy the plot.

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detrius

Is landbot usage a violation of the ToS or the community standards?

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Aodhan McDunnough

Unfortunately, neither.

Why so? It's because, atrocious as the behavior of a swoop-landbot user is, it absolutely can't victimize you if you only care to set your land sale options properly. That is, the only way it can victimize you is if you allowed it in.

ToS and Community Standards are there to serve as rules for things you can't guard against.

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We can't get rid of Landbots but we can stop the damage.
VOTE this proposal on the Jira. Current votes: 67
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2905

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Daman

It should be.

That story makes me want to reach through the screen and jam my dagger in someone's throat.

__________________

Aodhan McDunnough

As you see in my sig, there is no way to stop landbots. Even if you made it against the ToS and CS I am 100% sure they will find a way to circumvent the rules.

The only protection against them is awareness.

For as long as it is possible to search and purchase land, it is impossible to technolgically stop landbots from swooping on a parcel with lax sales settings. If you tried to trap them programmatically it's a trivial matter for the bot user to reprogram the bot to have more human-like behavior. That may slow them down but you will still see victims such as the above story.

Daman

I don't believe in technical solutions - I think I've made that clear enough in topics regarding DRM. I don't care if it's technically impossible to outlaw landbots (or any kind of bots)

The day a social solution is made - ie outlawing of landbots (and while we're at it - camping bots, spam bots, or how about ALL bots) - I will definitely party though. It might not stop bots from popping up, but at least it gives a signal.

detrius

Hmm... too bad you can't trick landbots into buying land in privately owned sims.

Markubis

There could be a timer added to the sale which would allow any new person unfamiliar with land sale settings to ensure that the land has been set properly. As it is now, landbots swoop in at the first sniff of blood even if the person was in the middle of "trying to get the land set properly".

A 10 -30 minute timer would allow plenty of time to set the land correctly. After the timer expires, the sale price would be visible to the public.

Sarah Nerd

The girl didn't know that there was such a thing as a landbot. You could give her 70 warnings that it will go on open market and she still wouldn't realize that something was out there that could buy faster than she could ungroup and buy herself.

Cindy Claveau

The last time I sold a sizable plot, I had the land priced at market value and it took 3 days for it to sell. So these land bots aren't looking for just any old sellable land, they're looking to buy on the cheap - including someone else's unintentional screwup at $1L.

An ETHICAL land buyer would have sold the land back to the girl instead of ejecting and banning. That was just shitty behavior.

Sayuri Yuitza is now on Cindy's Shit List.

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Aodhan McDunnough

I have a problem with social solutions in something the size of SL. Social solutions need enforcement by humans and we know well that it's not scalable. Any attempt at a social solution will eventually fall by the wayside the way so many LL policies did. Same thing would happen even if we have a volunteer group doing it, sooner or later they get tired.

Arbitration solutions will not work because the burden of proof is on the accuser, who in this case will have no proof whatsoever.

In systems the size of MMOs, as I told my friend who works in the biggest MMO company in my country, that the true solutions to in-game problems are:

1. Make it impossible to commit the infraction.
2. Remove the reason the infractions get committed. That is, make it not worth the "criminal's" time to do the deed.

LL's move in countering push abuse was to make the abuse impossible. Land owners can simply turn off alien pushes on their land.

Actually LL already supplied the best technical solution I can think of for preventing landbot steals: the sales interface. If you set all the stuff properly a landbot CAN'T steal the land.

Unfortunately that power is in the hands of the seller and some sellers despite all warnings do not listen, do not take heed, and go about with an unsecure transaction. Knowing about the existence of landbots is NOT a prerequisite to being careful. Being careful is a decision you can make in the absence of that knowledge. Let's put it this way, even if I did not know that there were landbots, I wouldn't lose land to them. If I wanted to sell the land ultra cheap to a friend, I WOULD have used the "sell to" option.

I do not see how we can use approach #2.

I am very much for educating newbies to these things, however we all know that the huge majority of newbies would rather skip tutorials and such. THEY become the next victims.

Sansarya

I don't know if LL will ever try to stop landbots. A land sale often means LL collects tier on the same piece of land twice in the same month from two different people. (i.e.: If Person A's tier was due the 10th and Person B's was due the 11th, and Person A sold their land to Person B between the 10th of the previous month and the 10th of the current month, both Person A and Person B would be charged for that land's tier that month.) I doubt LL thinks like that, they have a lot of land to manage besides everything else they do, but it can't be hurting the profit margin to keep it that way.

Cocoanut Koala

I disagree. This would make sense if it were something just everyone did, or even that a lot of people did, and were determined to do. (Like drink alcohol during prohibition.)

These sorts of landbots are not what most residents do.

And even where a larger group of people does something - like, say, camper bots - making them illegal would automatically mean a large proportion of those people would no longer do it.

Which would, again, result in far fewer people you'd need to enforce the rule with.

We're not talking about something that everyone does and would continue to do even if it were made illegal.

These are good solutions, too, in addition to making the action illegal. But where they are not possible, making something illegal will cut back on its occurrence. Making examples of a few offenders by banning them will cut back on it even more.

This notion that you couldn't police it is, I think, wrong. The number of people who use landbots is small, and the number of landbotters who refuse to return mistakes even smaller.

Same thing with ad farms. Most of us can NAME the worst offenders. It would take like ten minutes to stop them.

I think the problem with landbots is more complex, as far as LL is concerned, than not being able to set a rule and enforce it. I think they are more concerned that they will be too draconian about something being automated, where other things being automated are not illegal. Sort of a slippery-slope deal.

Yes, and I like that. I would like the delayed timer like someone suggested, too.

Yup.

coco

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Amelia

I am sorry, I just don't feel all that sympathetic. When someone decides to spend a lot of money, on a land for example, he should try to get to know the way things should be handled properly. One should take the time to read, and resources on this matter are so abundant in the Net (unlike resources on how to install an SL client patch to disable facelamps )

Daman

Enforcement is very scalable. Police can do their work just as well in the States than in Flanders from what I see. And the States are hundreds times bigger.

For a virtual example, look at World of Warcraft. Lots of people get banned or suspended from that place. Ok, the exact breach of the rules is DETECTED by technical means. But the ban actions are taken as social means, by the humans running Blizzard.

All that's needed for enforcement to scale is for someone with balls to run the place instead of a bleeding heart liberal. The most succesful online communities I've encountered in my online years, were the communities who were "liberal" with one thing only - that is the amount of times the ban button is pressed.

Cindy Claveau

"We want to get out of the business of enforcement" - Philip Linden, 2006 after opening the grid to free accounts.