Bill proposal: Clarification of NL 9-2 and CDSL 13-03

[Rosie Gray]

•Publicly listing which parcels are in arrears, and for how many day?

Where do we see publically which parcels are in arrears and for how many days?

You used to be able to see this on the Hippos themselves, but Bags requested that this information be hidden from view. We could ask Rudeen to change the Hippos back so that the information is available.

[Trebor Warcliffe]

If it is the Chancellors decision to have the settings change on the Hippo tier boxes to show ownership and payment status than as a tier paying citizen of the CDS I'd like to request that our current Chancellor please submit a request to have this done. Also as a former Hippo Administrator I would be happy to volunteer my time to become a Hippo Administrator once again. I'd also like to echo Sudane's sentiments about the mechanical facts. When implementing any type of system it isn't as simple as flipping a switch and "poof" it's done. There's the initial set-up along with the weekly, if not daily, maintenance. I know Sudane easily put in over 100 hours of her personal time setting up the Hippo system and I put in well over 40 hours myself assisting her in the set-up.

[Shep]

My tier is paid on three different dates... it has'nt happened to me yet but it would be easy to overlook one ... and the prospect of losing all my holdings if one was delinquent is appalling ... I'm so glad that is off the table ... one thing I'm missing here is community ... that's where the chancellors discretion comes in ... I read Cleo's oh he could do it for votes etc .. if the person in arrears is'nt ingame they won't be voting will they ... and could it be different for different people .. yes .. if someone has been with us for years and suddenly is'nt around ... we should try to make sure they're ok .. not grab their land at the first opportunity! whereas someone who has paid tier once and vanishes .. we can assume they meant to go ... I know I'm generalizing ....

[Sudane Erato]

As for the 'issues' with Hippo, since I have no experience with its backoffice, I cannot tell what they are. If Hippo allows the following:
** Publicly listing on a webpage which parcels belong to which citizen, and which are vacant

It does not allow this. Hippo has no knowledge of who owns any parcel. Nor does it have a system for listing on a webpage (other than on the back-end management page) who is paying which tier box.

** Publicly listing which parcels are in arrears, and for how many days

Again, it does not allow this, other than on the back-end for management purposes.

** Automatically informing citizens when they are in arrears (as well as the Executive)

It does inform the citizen when they are in arrears, but there is no way to inform anyone else of this fact.

** Dealing with land sales and ownership changes (keeping a record that can be publicly seen)

The Hippo system has no connection with the land ownership. Only the entirely unrelated system, the “Land Scanner”, a custom system created for us by Timo Gufler, enables this function.

** Locking citizens from their parcels (optionally) if they are in arrears beyond the time set forth in CDSL 13-03

No system I have ever heard of, including our Hippo system, does this.

** Maintaining a public waiting list for parcels

The Hippo system cannot do this.

then I most certainly have absolutely no issue with Hippo! The only 'issue' is that, right now, I personally don't know where all those lists are and how the public can consult them.

So… sadly… you DO have a major issue with Hippo, because it is capable of almost none of the items you specify.

Sudane, thanks for the clarification. I understand then that we shall have to replace Hippo, if it doesn't do what we wish. You know me, Sudane, you know that writing such a system would not take a long time, the only problem being long-time maintenance, and that is always the big issue — and one of the reasons why we outsourced that to the company that does Hippo.

Ahhh. we outsourced nothing to Hippo. Our Hippo system is “off the shelf”. And, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ regarding the work involved in writing such a system. A custom-built system which would include the capabilities of Hippo PLUS all the extra requirements indicated in your list above would consume many times the entire fortune of the CDS.

Still, may I ask you if the lacking functionality is a limitation of the current version of Hippo, or a design flaw of the whole system and we should instead look for something else that actually works, instead of using technical excuses as a pretext for not collecting tier?

I have looked at other systems. Let me remind everyone again that SL estates are going the way of rentals. Despite years of searching, there is NO off-the-shelf estate management software intended for a “yellow map” land ownership system like ours. The objections that Bromo raises in another post are no longer relevant… residents can control the prims on their parcels, and they can easily set the media and music streams.

The ONLY way that we can achieve the automation needed to run our land ownership system according to the current AND the proposed laws, without considerable manual intervention of volunteer residents, is to hire custom software. This is NOT achievable by “3 lines of code” as you say in another post. This is a huge software project.

May I remind you again that this is a law with almost three years in existence! I wonder why we're discussing it now! Wouldn't it have been more obvious for the Chancellor elected during the 13th term (I don't remember who that was) to make sure Hippo complies with the law, instead of 'ignoring' the issues and pretend that the law didn't exist?

I certainly didn't expect the reaction of 'Oh no! Citizens are supposed to pay tier in time or lose that status! How dreadful! Let's stop that!'. Even though I'm fine in dropping the amendment, may I remind you all that CDSL 13-03 is still in effect? Citizens still have 14 days to pay their tier or get their land confiscated and all prims returned to them. If Hippo doesn't allow that to be monitored automatically, and never did, why on Earth do we insist that we use it?

That’s very unfair. The Hippo system was first proposed by Jamie, YEARS ago, and then later promoted by Trebor, who convinced the community finally to adopt it. It was well known what it could do, what it could not do, and what its limitations were. The primary reason for adopting it was that it was better … for our community… than the system which had preceded it… a custom-built system created by Eloise Pasteur according to my specifications. But the Hippo system has all the limitations described here.

I'm actually glad that the CDS is so filthy rich that we can even safely ignore tier collecting laws, but my personal satisfaction is curbed by the understanding that we cannot collect tier as the law demands...

Imagine that Jon told us that his voting system would only allow certain citizens to vote, but not all, so he would be very sorry but our elections wouldn't be able to comply with the laws regulating elections (which evidently require all citizens to be able to vote). Would we still use Jon's system, even though it's unable to comply with existing laws? Of course not!

We should not change laws to comply with the limitations of technical systems; that's a perversion of democracy! Instead, it's the technical system that has to change and be adapted to the laws — not the other way round.

Sure. As you say… we are filthy rich. Our vast fortune would not pay a tenth of the cost of building the system you describe. Every law on the matter has assumed that we will use the tools at hand, and what the tools don’t provide, human intervention will fill in. Please let’s be realistic. Timo has written for us some incredible tools, the Land Scanner tracking ownership changes and a different Land Scanner which lists parcel owners, without which we could not administer the CDS. But the full automation scenario which you imply is beyond our means.

I should note that Timo and I have started a new conversation regarding the land tools we have available. The discussion is launched more from the POV of the census mechanism than from the tier collection mechanism, but the two are closely related. I will be pleased to report should we manage to come up with any new tools for either of these systems. Until we do, I urgently propose that discussions of tier collection be tempered with the reality of the time and effort that tier collection really takes.

Sudane...................

[Bromo Ivory]

I should note that Timo and I have started a new conversation regarding the land tools we have available. The discussion is launched more from the POV of the census mechanism than from the tier collection mechanism, but the two are closely related. I will be pleased to report should we manage to come up with any new tools for either of these systems. Until we do, I urgently propose that discussions of tier collection be tempered with the reality of the time and effort that tier collection really takes.

The hardest part in my experience in running a Sim was handling the Tier collection and land repossession in the case of arrears. If I had to report the monthly finances and slate of who owns what for parcels without the Hippo system ... I'd likely have gone nuts.

[cleopatraxigalia]

Sudane.

.......-surely you did not write and report to Gwyn above that the hippo system cannot publically say who is in arrears and how many days. Of course it can. You can at least do it on the parcels ... and I for one would like that back on before the elections take place. I rather demand it if it's not already done ....and if PAT says no. I want him before the RA before elections start to explain why. I do expect the treasurer at our meeting tomorrow. ))

[Rosie Gray]

Sudane.

.......-surely you did not write and report to Gwyn above that the hippo system cannot publically say who is in arrears and how many days. Of course it can. You can at least do it on the parcels ... and I for one would like that back on before the elections take place. I rather demand it if it's not already done ....and if PAT says no. I want him before the RA before elections start to explain why. I do expect the treasurer at our meeting tomorrow. ))

Cleo, turning off the display of names was nothing to do with Pat, it was Bags who requested that done in her 1/2 term as Chancellor.

[Sudane Erato]

Sudane.

.......-surely you did not write and report to Gwyn above that the hippo system cannot publically say who is in arrears and how many days. Of course it can. You can at least do it on the parcels ... and I for one would like that back on before the elections take place. I rather demand it if it's not already done ....and if PAT says no. I want him before the RA before elections start to explain why. I do expect the treasurer at our meeting tomorrow. ))

Cleo, turning off the display of names was nothing to do with Pat, it was Bags who requested that done in her 1/2 term as Chancellor.

And she did it for a very good reason... because some were haunting the boxes to see what their status was, and buying them the instant they became available... i.e. gaming the system, and manipulating our land ownership. Bags, despite my disagreements with her, had the wisdom to see this, and turned off the tool by which the gaming was accomplished. We can all chant now about Bags' notorious act (my act, actually, at her instruction)... but she did it for a very valid reason, and I urge the community to consider both sides of this issue.

Sudane.........................

[Patroklus Murakami]

Sudane.

.......-surely you did not write and report to Gwyn above that the hippo system cannot publically say who is in arrears and how many days. Of course it can. You can at least do it on the parcels ... and I for one would like that back on before the elections take place. I rather demand it if it's not already done ....and if PAT says no. I want him before the RA before elections start to explain why. I do expect the treasurer at our meeting tomorrow. ))

Cleo, turning off the display of names was nothing to do with Pat, it was Bags who requested that done in her 1/2 term as Chancellor.

And she did it for a very good reason... because some were haunting the boxes to see what their status was, and buying them the instant they became available... i.e. gaming the system, and manipulating our land ownership. Bags, despite my disagreements with her, had the wisdom to see this, and turned off the tool by which the gaming was accomplished. We can all chant now about Bags' notorious act (my act, actually, at her instruction)... but she did it for a very valid reason, and I urge the community to consider both sides of this issue.

Sudane.........................

If we were to make such a change I would want to get some citizen input first and would prefer not to do so in the middle of a febrile (occasionally hysterical) election campaign. Privacy is one issue that has been raised. There are clearly a range of views on making this kind of information public and we should listen to everyone before making a change which some will find upsetting.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Well, Sudane, thanks a lot of your clarification! I really appreciate that.

As you so well put it: "it is capable of almost none of the items you specify", and the competitors to hippoRENT do even less. End of discussion, as far as I'm concerned.

With that in mind, I have no option but to retract my proposed bill until I can demonstrate a prototype system that does "almost all" the items specified, which shall take me some weekends to do, as I'm not a professional programmer and thus very slow in programming such a prototype — although I know exactly what to do. I was just hoping to start from an existing system and extend it from there. Clearly that's impossible.

So, until then, I promise to remain silent on this issue.

[Timo Gufler]

Some random thoughts about the Tier systems. From resident's point of view Hippo is a fairly nice system, but for estate owners it's different. Hippo offers application programming interfaces to write plugins for HippoRENT boxes, but that seem not to have public documentation.

I think, that writing a Payment Box script would be a fairly easy job, but as it's a highly business-critical part of the CDS, testing should be done really carefully. Just imagine a bug in an optional refund logic, that would allow emptying estate owner's wallet...

To ensure robustness, the Payment Box should be highly independent script, which would not depend on any external website or in-world object. Of course it would be nice to have a centralized way to deliver notifications and change the receivers of the notifications of all the boxes in the estate, and that can be implemented without compromising script's independency. The notifications could be anything from new tenants to arrears.

And about the yellow parcels map. Years ago the LSL scripts were able to see, if the land was for sale or not (llGetParcelFlags : PF_FOR_SALE). However, this feature was abused by hostile scripts called landbots, that caused problems in mainland. LL solved the problem by disallowing all scripts from seeing the "yellow map" status of the parcels. So, it's not possible to get automatic notification about parcels, that are set for sale.

[Sudane Erato]

And about the yellow parcels map. Years ago the LSL scripts were able to see, if the land was for sale or not (llGetParcelFlags : PF_FOR_SALE). However, this feature was abused by hostile scripts called landbots, that caused problems in mainland. LL solved the problem by disallowing all scripts from seeing the "yellow map" status of the parcels. So, it's not possible to get automatic notification about parcels, that are set for sale.

Oh my! I was aware when this Parcel Flag was added to the LSL system, and honestly I thought this might be a new day for estate management software. But then nothing happened... no new products came on the market... and I had no idea that LL turned it off! This is really terrible news, because it means that it would now be impossible to do exactly what Gwyn describes as an essential parameter of a transparent land management system: provide an up-to-date list of available parcels.

This is truly bad news

Sudane................................

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

When LSL fails, libopenmetaverse comes to the rescue

[Timo Gufler]

When LSL fails, libopenmetaverse comes to the rescue

Oh yes, Gwyn. It's probably the only solution to the problem, although then you have to rely on an external dependency...

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Reclamation of Jon's plots showed how hard it is to notify people who are in arrears. I had promised not to review this until Timo & Sudane had time to start to show a proposed new land management system, but, in the mean time, here goes my revised proposal:

Clarification of the Land Sales Reclamation Act (NL 9-2 and CDSL 13-03) (Version 2.0)

Preamble

CDSL 13-03, which amends NL 9-2, establishes the procedures by which citizens, defaulting their payments, become delinquent, partially lose their citizenship, and finally cease to be citizens.

CDSL 13-03 worked under the assumption that (a) either citizens just have a single parcel or (b) there is a mechanism allowing to pay for all parcels simultaneously at the same date. The current system allows different parcels to be held by the same citizen, and each parcel's tier can be due at different dates. Fortunately, the writing of CDSL 13-03 is almost able to deal with the current system, and this bill just makes the following changes, for the sake of clarification:

Amend point 1 to read:

Citizens of CDS are expected to pay tier rentals to the CDS Treasurer in a timely fashion. Payment is to be done automatically, either via specific in-world devices design to collect citizen's payments, or similar mechanisms employing a web-based application. All money collected from tier is to be sent directly to the Treasurer (or a special tier-receiving account just created for the purpose of collecting tier). The due dates for tier are automatically processed by whatever mechanism is implemented and also automatically announced to the landowners by Instant Message, email, or another similar mechanism. In the case of a device failure, it is the responsibility of the Treasurer to make the required announcements manually.

On point 2, where it says:

... when they have failed to pay tier rental...

amend to read:

... when they have failed to pay tier rental for any of the parcels currently held under their name...

On point 3, where it says:

...who has failed timely to pay rental tier...

amend to read:

...who has failed timely to pay rental tier for all of the parcels currently held under their name...

Amend point 5 to read:

Fourteen days after the due date on any of the parcels held by the landowner, if the landowner has continued to fail to pay the full amount then overdue to CDS for those parcels, then the Chancellor shall reclaim all parcels in arrears owned by the landowner. The reclaimed parcels are to be set for re-sale within 72 hours and, immediately before the sale, objects on those parcels will be returned to the previous landowner.

Delete point 6, which is subsumed by previous points.

Add two new points between 7 and 8:

7A. In case the citizen in arrears had their land partially or totally reclaimed for lack of payment, but is able to notify either the Chancellor or the Scientific Council of their intention to continue payments before the re-sale of the parcels, then they are allowed to buy them back for the listed price (which is considered a fee for having payment in arrears).

7B. In case of conflicts regarding improper payments, payments sent but not received or accounted for, and doubts about payment dates related to device failure, or to the failure of the Executive to properly notify citizens in accordance with this Act, the citizen can apply for recourse to the Scientific Council, by notifying the Dean of the Scientific Council via notecard, email, or any similar method deemed adequate. Once the recourse is accepted by the Scientific Council for further review, the eviction mechanism is temporarily suspended until the Scientific Council announces its decision. Abusing the recourse mechanism may be subjected to fees, at the discretion of the Scientific Council.

Comment

CDSL 13-03 imposes very strict rules for dealing with tier payments, and explains very precisely what happens if a citizen defaults payments. Since at that time all payments were due at the same date, it was easier to know, at a glance, who was delinquent or not. Under the current system, payments can happen at any time. This bill proposes, to keep within the spirit of strictness of CDSL 13-03, and taking into account that the current devices allow pre-payment of tier, that failure to pay for all parcels in due time immediately revokes the citizens' right to vote or hold an office in the CDS.

It further clarifies that the Treasurer is responsible to make sure that citizens are properly notified, and that the claiming of parcels from a delinquent landowner is the role of the Chancellor. Furthermore, for consistency with other laws, this bill limits the time that a parcel can be held vacant without being offered for re-sale (to 72 hours).

On the other hand, technical difficulties are frequent in Second Life, and even the best mechanisms fail. To avoid unlawfully punishing any citizen who made a serious attempt to pay tier without being able to do so due to technical (or procedural) failure, the right to appeal to the Scientific Council was explicitly added, as well as a 'last chance' opportunity to buy back the land that was claimed before it goes on public sale.

Changes from version 1.0:

• Clarify that citizenship is only made 'temporary' if all parcels are in arrears. Keeping at least one parcel current on payments is sufficient for full citizenship.

• Clarify that only land in arrears will be claimed.

• Added the 'last chance' opportunity to buy back the land if it hasn't been sold yet (i.e., within the 72-hour-period for the re-sale). In this case, the fee for having overdue payments is the cost of buying the land back.

• Because of that, objects are only to be returned at the moment of the re-sale, and not earlier, to give the delinquent citizen a 'last chance' to keep the land as it was.