User:Jack Linden/Office Hour/2009-01-15

[11:11] Jack Linden: hi folks

[11:11] Qie Niangao: greetings, Jack

[11:11] PulseBurst Flow: hi

[11:11] Indigo Mertel: Hi Jack

[11:11] Talarus Luan: Hi Jack

[11:11] Magistus Faulkes: Hi Jack

[11:11] Amara Faulkes: Hiyas Jack

[11:11] Jack Linden: so sorry i'm late. today is back to back meetings. :)

[11:11] Bushido Contepomi: Hello Jack Linden, lovely day is it not?

[11:11] Ciaran Laval: Turn left for seating

[11:11] Talarus Luan: Is OK.. we're used to it by now. :)

[11:11] Jack Linden: it is cold and windy, so yes, lovely. :)

[11:12] Jack Linden: haha Tal. So let's get that out of the way to start with.. the Land Cutting blog post is booked for the 21st.

[11:13] Jack Linden: I don't think anything in there is a suprise, and we'll be asking for feedback before a final decision a week after the blog post.

[11:13] Jack Linden: :)

[11:13] Talarus Luan: OK

[11:13] Jack Linden: so who has something they'd like to talk about?

[11:13] Bushido Contepomi: Thank-you Jack

[11:14] PulseBurst Flow: I have an objection to Linden land

[11:14] PulseBurst Flow: being turned over to private groups

[11:14] PulseBurst Flow: protected..becoming private

[11:14] Jack Linden: Pulse: is this about the sailing project?

[11:14] PulseBurst Flow: with no consulation with neighbors

[11:14] Khamon Fate: Somebody IM me what the land cutting post is about please.

[11:14] PulseBurst Flow: no, it is about cancelled infohubs

[11:14] Talarus Luan: So, we get the blog post on Tuesday you open a post for feedback in the forums at the same time, then the following Tuesday the final blog post is made, incorporating any (hah) feedback, and then landcutting comes to a grinding halt?

[11:14] Indigo Mertel: me too on land cutting, please

[11:15] PulseBurst Flow: and the blight it is causing

[11:15] Jack Linden: wednesday i think Tal, but yes

[11:15] PulseBurst Flow: and the aggrevation that surrounding neighbors are suffering

[11:15] Qie Niangao: landcutting post: yeah, no matter what it is, it will be a surprise to me, good or bad

[11:15] Talarus Luan: You're right, Wedneday

[11:16] Elanthius Flagstaff: Some infohubs were cancelled?

[11:16] Khamon Fate: PulseBurst do you mean that LL are auctioning former infohub land?

[11:16] Elanthius Flagstaff: Is this about Lias again?

[11:16] PulseBurst Flow: Not auctioning, feting them, it seems

[11:16] Jack Linden: land cutting is basically about the practice of slicing a parcel into many small pieces and selling them all off, basically because it can be more lucrative but also to annoy the neighbours. :)

[11:16] Jack Linden: we have some people currently who are cutting land in large quantities

[11:16] Indigo Mertel: oh, wow! this sounds very interesting

[11:17] Elanthius Flagstaff: We do? Are you sure Jack?!

[11:17] PulseBurst Flow: and these infohubs...8 months in progress..

[11:17] Jack Linden: which is making those areas pretty grim for the residents

[11:17] PulseBurst Flow: totally buillt by LDPW Moles

[11:17] Indigo Mertel: I know, we have fought that a lot in our area

[11:17] PulseBurst Flow: now cancelled..

[11:17] PulseBurst Flow: and seemingly given to a private group

[11:17] Talarus Luan: Khamon and Indigo: No more of this, basically: http://etakeh-oh.net/adless/gallery/index.php

[11:17] PulseBurst Flow: that is not a non-profit

[11:17] Indigo Mertel: thanks Talarus

[11:17] PulseBurst Flow: or education

[11:17] Elanthius Flagstaff: Pulse: Which group?

[11:17] Elanthius Flagstaff: Why be so coy, just spit it out

[11:17] Khamon Fate: They can query number and size of parcels per resident very easily Elanthius.

[11:17] Qie Niangao: which infoHub? the one for Bay City?

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: I am talking about Hyannisport.

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: and Helfell..

[11:18] Jack Linden: Pulse: the hubs are dealt with in a different area than mine, but I can pass on your views. do you want to drop me a notecard that i can send on?

[11:18] Elanthius Flagstaff: </sarcasm>

[11:18] Melodie Darwin: What is going on with the land auctions? There has been 1 USD auction in the past week, and the $L ones have really low starting prices.

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: and group is Livelyzens

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: and..well..Jack..there are quite a number of people concerned about it..

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: have discussed with..

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: if you are not the right Linden.;

[11:18] PulseBurst Flow: then who is?

[11:19] PulseBurst Flow: it is a land issue

[11:19] PulseBurst Flow: Blue is unresponsive

[11:19] Khamon Fate: /thank you

[11:19] Kentucky Friedkin: Jack: I have a parcel on the eastern edge of Eurodium. To the east of Eurodium is Toyger, which is a maintenance (empty) coastal region. I noticed that Route 7 is planned to go through Toyger, and is already surveyed by the DPW. While I don't mind the route itself, I do want to know if Toyger will be commercially developed after Route 7 is finished.

[11:19] Jack Linden: Okay, let me see if i can get hold of Blue to find out more.

[11:19] Kentucky Friedkin: (I like my view) :P

[11:20] Elanthius Flagstaff: Surely Jack or the moles even don't get to decide what the residents built

[11:20] Qie Niangao: (Livelyzens??? That's just insane.)

[11:20] Joan Monstre: my friends and i, we own Noether... until some days ago, all was nice

[11:20] PulseBurst Flow: The Livelyzens...only have about 5 or 10 active members..

[11:20] PulseBurst Flow: but claim more

[11:21] PulseBurst Flow: use place as sandbox.

[11:21] Elanthius Flagstaff: OK, I have a real question. What would be the trigger for you to start selling mainland sims again? Prices are moving up slowly, although not a lot. Makes me worry you might start printing land again

[11:21] Joan Monstre: but now, Hyannisport is the ugliest sim in SL for sure

[11:21] PulseBurst Flow: there are numerous sims vacant that could that been given to them..

[11:21] PulseBurst Flow: if that is what you wanted to do.

[11:21] Joan Monstre: we liked Noether and we payed a lot of money for our lands

[11:21] Joan Monstre: a lot

[11:21] Jack Linden: Kentucky, that depends. if it's a full region that is simply waiting to be auctioned, then it may be sold off one day.. if it's genuine protected land then it's unlikely anything will change

[11:21] Joan Monstre: and now we can't understand why LL alows so garbage in Hyannisport

[11:22] Joan Monstre: that sim is not the best place for noobs without control

[11:22] Joan Monstre: Hyannisport

[11:22] Joan Monstre: was a nice place

[11:22] PulseBurst Flow: here are some pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34404624@N04/

[11:22] Joan Monstre: and we think Hyannisport must to be protected land

[11:22] Joan Monstre: like a park

[11:22] PulseBurst Flow: yes, Joan and his friend own entire sim bordering it..

[11:23] PulseBurst Flow: now they are so fed up..they are moving out

[11:23] Jack Linden: Elanthius, yes land prices have definitely ticked up a little but not enough. we *might* put a few select regions up simply because they have been prepped for a long while and we're getting requests to sell them, but i'm only talking about a handful

[11:23] Jack Linden: it's not high enough that we can just start auctioning volume again

[11:23] Elanthius Flagstaff: OK, thanks.

[11:24] Ciaran Laval: How's the camping.bot policy coming along?

[11:24] PulseBurst Flow: Joan...funny you say Hyannisport must be protected...if you look at the land name..it already says "Protected" they didn't know enough to change it after they got it from Lindens

[11:25] Jack Linden: i'm looking into the infohub thing now.

[11:26] PulseBurst Flow: They have no signifigant build there..just layed out some freebie junk, disco floors.. would not be hard to move them, they have only been there few weeks

[11:26] PulseBurst Flow: it's been done before, I understand..at Olive sim.

[11:26] Jack Linden: we're looking at the camping issue. especially the deliberate driving up of traffic

[11:26] Khamon Fate: I don't remember such a thing happening in Olive

[11:27] PulseBurst Flow: maybe before your time..

[11:27] PulseBurst Flow: used to be a sandbox..

[11:27] Khamon Fate: I doubt that

[11:27] PulseBurst Flow: I understand.

[11:27] Elanthius Flagstaff: What's wrong with this build in Hyannisport? Looks OK to me

[11:27] Kentucky Friedkin: Jack, I understand. But as a general guideline, are the Routes being planned to include open spaces where possible? I've flown the proposed route around Gaeta, and it includes a lot of untouched coastal regions (as well as passing into some populated areas), and it does look good as it is

[11:27] Elanthius Flagstaff: Oh, haha, apart from the 10,000 giant physics cubes that just turned up

[11:28] Kentucky Friedkin: this is still Route 7, BTW

[11:28] Joan Monstre: The buildings made by moles in Hyannisport are very nice

[11:28] Qie Niangao: Can't remember how the land was handled for the old infoHubs... whether Prok's group owned the Memory Bazaar land during development, or how that worked.

[11:28] Joan Monstre: the problem is thenoobs garbage now

[11:28] Jack Linden: Kentucky, i think we're trying hard to fit with the area, and we certainly can and do grab abandoned parcels along the routes and use them for parks etc. Best thing to do is to talk to Michael if you have concerns

[11:29] Kentucky Friedkin: Will do. I planned to meet with Michael, but his "office" according to the wiki is gone. I'll PM him

[11:30] Jack Linden: well, i will dig up what info i can today. i'm not aware of us giving land to a group so i need to find out

[11:30] Qie Niangao: so, Jack, any hints on the direction for the traffic gaming policy? any hope it will remove traffic from search completely?

[11:31] Jack Linden: Qie, that is definitely one of the options. I think it would help but not totally remove the issue ((green dots attract more dots)

[11:32] PulseBurst Flow: Also...after all these years...Lindens, and LDPW...does not set auto-return on Linden land when finishing a project.

[11:32] PulseBurst Flow: at Helfell..

[11:32] Jack Linden: I'm also more broadly concerned with how we deal with one resident using all the resources continually, when they only own a small amount of the region

[11:32] Indigo Mertel: nods

[11:32] Joan Monstre: Jack, my English is not good (i'm from Spain), and in this moment what i can say to my neighbors in Hyannisport about our problem ???

[11:33] Qie Niangao: ah, of course part of that might be related to scripts, as well as avatars

[11:33] PulseBurst Flow: I think Joan..he is saying...he is looking into it.

[11:33] Jack Linden: Pulse, it should get set though it doesn't always immediately as we have to come along and force own the content to make it 'sticky'

[11:33] PulseBurst Flow: and is not right person to ask..

[11:33] PulseBurst Flow: immediately?

[11:33] PulseBurst Flow: it has been months

[11:33] PulseBurst Flow: junk piles up...and Squatter Group now found it

[11:33] Bushido Contepomi: Jack: Will Unpaying Avatar's that own land under the guise of a group be aloud to continue the practice of ALT unpaid account's trading land? Will this be addressed in the blog?

[11:34] PulseBurst Flow: yesterday woman set up sex business there

[11:34] PulseBurst Flow: in LDPW Infohub

[11:34] Khamon Fate: Addressing your broad concern Jack, how is the script limitation project progressing? Will that only apply to Homestead regions as a whole; or are y'all thinking to apply it to parcels within a sim as well?

[11:34] Jack Linden: Joan, I am tryingt o find out for you. It's not something I was a part of so I need to look into it

[11:34] Joan Monstre: ok, thanks, Jack

[11:35] Joan Monstre: i'm sure you will do something about that problem

[11:35] Jack Linden: Bushido.. do you mean Basic accounts buying/selling land via groups?

[11:35] PulseBurst Flow: Jack, another problem with asking Blue...is that the damage done, was his decision...so of course he thought it was a good idea..

[11:36] PulseBurst Flow: so to him..might be a "done deal"

[11:36] Elanthius Flagstaff: It's hard to believe they just gave the land to some specific group. Are you sure it didn't gop up for auction?

[11:36] PulseBurst Flow: no redress for neighboring land owners

[11:36] Magistus Faulkes: also pertaining to script limits, is there any idea yet as to how limited they will be?

[11:36] Jack Linden: Khamon, the script limit functionality will be available in all regions but we're still discussing how we'll implement it and how widely. the key thing is that we're gathering the data and obviously don't want to make many people rework content

[11:36] PulseBurst Flow: It never went to auction

[11:36] Jack Linden: So we have to make the limits sensibly high

[11:37] Khamon Fate: I have no problem with us having to rework content if it solves the problem.

[11:37] PulseBurst Flow: The head of the group is KosmiK Guru. She has a video about the Livelyzens here if anyone is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS3_1GD2iMw&eurl=http://livelyhotpicks.blogspot.com/

[11:37] Jack Linden: Pulse, I'm not sure of the details but I will talk to Blue and we'll have a look at the situation

[11:37] PulseBurst Flow: They are mostly nice people..so no issue with that...

[11:37] Khamon Fate: But then, I have no problem with y'all migrating us to a more stable grid and starting all over ha ha ha

[11:38] Bushido Contepomi: *allowed to be listed as owners of the group (hence the land owner)

[11:38] Joan Monstre: Kosmik ?

[11:38] PulseBurst Flow: they are just caught in middle..when Blue, it seems, decided to give or sell land to them

[11:38] Joan Monstre: i thought it was Terminator

[11:38] PulseBurst Flow: no, Kosmik

[11:38] Joan Monstre: it's a joke :)

[11:38] PulseBurst Flow: lol

[11:38] Ciaran Laval: What's your concern there Bushido? Someone is paying the tier for the land, are they abusing the land?

[11:39] Khamon Fate: Bushido do you want basic alts in a group to not be able to buy and sell land for the group?

[11:39] Elanthius Flagstaff: Yeah, what are you talking about Bushido?

[11:40] Elanthius Flagstaff: BTW Pulse, I noticed the ugliest build in the sim, the giant green and yellow robot was yours

[11:40] Jack Linden: Bushido, if you can give me some examples to look into i'd be happy to

[11:40] Khamon Fate: Oh thanks for the answer Jack. It's good to know that scripting limits will be applied fairly across all of the simulators. One concern though will be double/triple primmed sims that have large areas of mostly empty land. Perhaps the feature should be optional so estate owners can turn it on or off only not on homesteads because I'm talking too much again aren't I/

[11:40] PulseBurst Flow: Oh, people tell me it is cute Elanthius

[11:41] PulseBurst Flow: and that is not in their sim

[11:41] PulseBurst Flow: it is in mine

[11:41] Bushido Contepomi: My concern is that these unpaid alts will be used to avoid any penalties after the blog is posted, and the cutters will suffer no loss, and continue the practice

[11:41] Elanthius Flagstaff: What is an unpaid alt? You mean non premium avatars? You want to block them from buying land?

[11:42] Khamon Fate: Maybe LL will raise the minimum size of selectable land to 512sm

[11:42] Elanthius Flagstaff: No it'll be some social limit involving ARs and the G Team and whatever else

[11:42] Khamon Fate: or even more intelligently, raise it and the premium tier to 1024sm

[11:42] Jack Linden: :) khamon, i think that my hope is to share the data with you all as best we can, so that you can see what we're basing decisions on and give your views

[11:42] Talarus Luan: I think the issue is that a lot of the landcutters are using throwaway alts to "hide" their activities by using groups.

[11:42] Khamon Fate: That doesn't work Elanthius, never has, never will

[11:43] Talarus Luan: I would tend to think that any further landcutting would not only sanction the group, but the group members supplying the tier for the land.

[11:43] Khamon Fate: Oh I'm just throwing ideas in the mix to give y'all some laughs around the table.

[11:43] Elanthius Flagstaff: Hmm, I suppose that could be tricky Talarus if they donated tier, bought the parcel, remnoved the tier and then cut it up leaving group negative

[11:43] Talarus Luan: the "bad" kind of landcutting that is

[11:43] Indigo Mertel: Jack, about a month ago I sent a card to you following your blog post on the relocation of the USS to Mainland. You came over to Helvellyn and you offered your help to improve sailing in pour area. We are putting together some info, we have some issues that we wish to bring to your attention. What I'd like to know is what would be the best way for you to proceed about our case. We would be interested in having a meeting, if possible.

[11:44] Talarus Luan: Well, I would *hope* that LL tracks those kinds of transactions

[11:44] Elanthius Flagstaff: OK that reminds me

[11:45] Elanthius Flagstaff: This is serious.

[11:45] Elanthius Flagstaff: If I buy land and put it in a group. I can remove all the donated tier and leave it that way for months

[11:45] Elanthius Flagstaff: Essentially owning land and not paying tier

[11:45] Jack Linden: Bushido, i think that's a very valid concern, however, we can see land activity regardless of who is doing it.. and we can detect land cutting equally easily

[11:45] Elanthius Flagstaff: When are you gonna fix that shit?

[11:45] Khamon Fate: months? SRSLY?

[11:45] Ciaran Laval: Months?

[11:45] Jack Linden: So i don't believe that it will go unnoticed for long

[11:45] Elanthius Flagstaff: Well, I never tested literally months, but definitely a long time.

[11:46] Talarus Luan: There was speculation for a while that a few of the extortionists were using throwaway alts, pay premium for a month, buy a 512sqm plot's worth of 16sqm holes, price them at L$777 or L$999 or whatever, cancel the premium, and do that over like 10 alts, since reclamation used to take months.

[11:46] Khamon Fate: MONTHS1?

[11:46] Elanthius Flagstaff: Betcha, I'll test it

[11:46] Ciaran Laval: I thought it was a couple of days

[11:46] Elanthius Flagstaff: I seriously doubt LL are monitoring negative tier groups at all

[11:46] Khamon Fate: I've never risked it more than a few minutes.

[11:46] Jack Linden: one suggestion has been that we clamp the for sale price of any parcels 64m and under, to the market rate per meter.

[11:46] Jack Linden: as a way to discourage cutting

[11:47] Khamon Fate: D'ya know when we paid taxes, they didn't monitor negative account balances at all.

[11:47] Khamon Fate wishes I'd known that then

[11:47] Talarus Luan: Yeah, that's been suggested, but you all have panned it out-of-hand because of your "don't meddle in the market" stance.

[11:47] Talarus Luan: Is that potentially changing?

[11:48] Khamon Fate: Who doesn't meddle in the market?

[11:48] Elanthius Flagstaff: How will you determine the market rate? Everyone in this room thinks your market rate numbers are total nonsense

[11:48] Khamon Fate: Have you LOOKED at the Lindex lately?

[11:48] Khamon Fate: doesn't meddle ha ha ha ha ha

[11:48] Talarus Luan: Khamon: Note I used quotes "" :)

[11:48] Ciaran Laval: Why 64M?

[11:48] PulseBurst Flow: I see good land under $4L/m sq

[11:49] Bushido Contepomi: I do not believe LL's land market rate is nonsense Elanthius.

[11:49] Khamon Fate: It's true Jack, you should just say some set rate we determine.

[11:49] Elanthius Flagstaff: Bushido, not sure what Jack thinks it is right now, probably 7/sqm?

[11:49] Jack Linden: Elanthius.. agreed that we have to make that number transparent and explain it.

[11:49] Elanthius Flagstaff: No, no, not fixed rate that'll ruin the market

[11:49] Talarus Luan: I wouldn't be opposed to the idea, myself, but 64sqm is a pretty low limit

[11:49] Khamon Fate: They can adjust it weekly or so

[11:50] Khamon Fate: 64sm is too low a limit

[11:50] Bushido Contepomi: Elanthius: for micro plot's?

[11:50] Talarus Luan: Prince regularly makes 80-128sqm "linked" plots

[11:50] Elanthius Flagstaff: Only if they can reliably determine the market rate. They can't even count how many sims are in the grid

[11:50] Talarus Luan: IE, 4 corners + a donut hole

[11:50] Jack Linden: what would you consider a valid market rate calc for mainland? we use the average of completed transactions, per meter and we exclude various outlyers such as auction land and zero fee transactions

[11:50] Khamon Fate: The market rate for micoplots is 7582L/sm

[11:51] Talarus Luan: With the ability to link any parcels in the sim, they can easily get above 64sqm and still be extorting 16sqms

[11:51] Jack Linden: we look at mean average and median, and we splitt he data into all, individuals and groups, and mainland vs estates

[11:51] Ciaran Laval: Surely it needs to be a sim by sim rte to make sense

[11:51] Elanthius Flagstaff: The way I see it, all the land that hasn't sold yet is too expensive. So the market rate is L$0.01 below that

[11:51] Jack Linden: surely the market rate is what is being actually bought and sold?

[11:51] Jack Linden: the for sale prices are a different measure

[11:52] Talarus Luan: sim to sim is hard, because not all sims have comparative plots for sale.

[11:52] Khamon Fate: Yes to do this effectively, sims will need to be assigned a desirability code, based on various factors, that can be used as a multiplier for a lowest common rate

[11:52] Elanthius Flagstaff: The difficulty of course is that land is not fungible so some shitty 300sqm plot is worth way less per sqm than some awesome waterfront thing

[11:52] Talarus Luan: ..and to be frank, the "value" of a 16sqm microparcel is what you would pay LL for it: L$1/sqm

[11:52] Kentucky Friedkin: Jack, thanks for the info. I talked briefly to Michael, and now I have to get going. Later.

[11:52] Elanthius Flagstaff: So just looking at averages and minimums and maximums is inneffective anyway

[11:53] Talarus Luan: It's like the coupon cash value

[11:53] Khamon Fate: Well it is over the entire Mainland as a whole, but some sense can be coded into it

[11:53] Khamon Fate: I have to go on tour, thanks for hosting Jack

[11:53] Khamon Fate: see y'all

[11:53] Talarus Luan: Ciao Khamon

[11:53] Ciaran Laval: Cheers Khamon

[11:54] PulseBurst Flow: bye kahmon

[11:54] Bushido Contepomi: Only to those who are bent on making money off of new land owner's by destroying the mainland Elanthius

[11:54] Jack Linden: yeah, getting local context in there is tough, however, one of the design goals we have for looking at letting residents buy and sell land through a web front end, is to give you the average historic rate for that region too

[11:54] Jack Linden: so that you can get a feel for how that compares to the overall average

[11:54] Elanthius Flagstaff: Oh yeah? That would be really awesome

[11:55] Ciaran Laval: That has potential

[11:55] Jack Linden: we could even, i guess.. pull an average for the 8 regions around that one too. it depends on how local we think local is

[11:55] Elanthius Flagstaff: The trouble Talarus, Khamon is that 16s are worth more per sqm than 512s. That's why land cutting works in the first place. And by "worth" I mean the minimum price that no-one will buy it for <G>

[11:55] Joan Monstre: well, i must to go, nice to meet all you, bye :)

[11:56] PulseBurst Flow: bye Joan.

[11:56] Talarus Luan: If you all wanted to go that route, I am good with it; just need to up it to deal with pepper-linking

[11:56] Talarus Luan: Either "smaller than 256sqm" or something around that size.

[11:56] Elanthius Flagstaff: That's a really interesting idea actually. I'd love to see thaht information anyway

[11:56] Talarus Luan: 64sqm would catch very little of them

[11:56] Elanthius Flagstaff: Part of the reason land dealers make so much money is because the market is so incredibly non-transparent.

[11:57] Jack Linden: Yeah, it would be fascinating data though i'd probably find that my land is sucky. :)

[11:57] Bushido Contepomi: Take care everyone, and I hope you have a great one, ciao for now all:)

[11:58] Talarus Luan: OK, so next Wednesday.. I suspect next week's office hours should be lively

[11:58] Talarus Luan: I expect a return performance of our "friends" :)

[11:58] Jack Linden: maybe! :) i have to run along sadly. sorry for the slightly short meeting.

[11:58] Elanthius Flagstaff: All those ad farmers will be back in force

[11:58] Jack Linden: take care guys, thanks for coming along.

[11:58] Ciaran Laval: Nah I think they know the game is up, they're just having a last hurrah

[11:58] Qie Niangao: thanks, Jack

[11:58] Talarus Luan: Maybe Austin will come back and reprise his past performance "There is no extortion!!!"

[11:59] Elisha Paklena: thank you jack :)

[11:59] bigjr Slade: so iebd ?

[11:59] bigjr Slade: end ?

[12:00] Talarus Luan: Yup. That's it