The Unmarking of the Beast: Civilizing Second Life

Second Life is turning into a vengeful  and even murderous armed camp. I don't like this...

Second Life is uncivilized. It has no viable civil society yet to make it civilized, and making it civilized will be hard work. There aren't easy solutions. I oppose Travis Lamberts' BanLink for a number of reasons, chief of which is that it is a deceptively too-easy and ultimately ineffective solution to the problem of griefing which has grown rampant since the ill-fated move to stop verifying accounts with credit cards on the counter-intuitive 6/6/06. That was the day the Lindens began the great "unmarking of the beast," and the subsitute of marking of the beast with the placement of "account status" visible on a profile, making anyone prone to discrimination and even banning with land tools set up for this purpose. It was also the day in which the Lindens began to take hash marks of computers and take IPs more rigorously -- a more subtle, and invisible mark that only they can see.

Among my other objections about BanList is Travis' failure to first open up this discussion to the community, THEN make changes. Instead, he quietly persued making it with a colleague, then unveiled it to a smaller group at SLCC in a panel chaired by Robin Linden who essentially tacitly endorsed it (the Lindens are looking for every single way they can now to dump the load of world-management responsibility on residents). There's many policy moves the Lindens should be taking to deal with griefing, like defaulting all land to NO PUSH instead of catering to the minority of shooters and scripters in the world and forcing the majority of householders to scramble to remember to get NO PUSH checked off on the parcels, or simply banning the sale or distribution of the cage weapon and c4.

But they don't have the political stomach for it, I guess, so they are relieved when people come up with solutions, especially scripty solutions.

I have three major objections to BanLink:

a) It feigns not to be a master list, but indeed *is* a master, global banning device which will indeed be used as such
b) It does not get at the underlying problems of griefing, which include the Lindens' failure to adjust their promotion of SL as a game to appeal to war gamers and shooters, and their failure to incorporate various civilizing strategies into their orientation and programming.
c) It removes the burden of the Lindens to provide what a RL government or major mass media outlet provides: police blotter or crime reporting with full description of incidents, and in the case of cases coming to trial, the name of prosecutor, accused criminal, and victim pressing charges. It places this burden unfairly on residents who have no adequate resources to make known these incidents.

It's good that Travis is publishing his master ban list, making all those using his system publish to him and placing them on his website in drop-down menus. Previously, he had everything in one giant list, easily cuttable and pastable to some other scripted website and devices that would easily scan all avatars against the list and mass ban those not on it.

He merely fig-leafed his mass ban device by now scrapping the big long list and putting drop down menus, so you see this list comes from Archan Sex Community, that list comes from New Citizens, Inc. etc. That is indeed a mere minor obstacle to again, Kyrah Abbatoir or whoever wishes to vindictively create master hate-filled ban lists to have huge amounts of fodder -- they just do a little MORE cutting and pasting.

Travis goes through this elaborate song and dance that his script is based on a mutual trust society. I trust that the NCI people would ban for cause, i.e. shooting. So I trade lists with them. We only use those lists of those we trust. But that's silly. There's going to be a dozen major venues in SL. They will all basically have the same list of asswipes griefing them every night. They will trade names and draw as if from a master pool, whatever fig-leafs they put up of having only individual, customized, checked, and appealable lists.

Lost Newcomb, one of those vindictive little fucks posing behind an alt in the waning days of the discredited SL official forums, claims that the list started by Jenna Fairplay S.L.A.M. "keeps people away from Prok's stuff and Jenna's stuff." Well, I have a face full of maliciously-scripted URL changer cubes for him then, put in "share with group" containing the awful tub-girl photo in it as a particle to spew, if he thinks "keeping people away from Prok's stuff" is some kind of haughty land baron activity for the rich and famous. Keeping people away from Prok's stuff means ensuring that tenants, most of them new and most of them not wealthy enough to go on private islands, should be protected from that filth.

And S.LA.M. to me is more like a police radio just warning of squalls of griefers flying around than a device to enable mass banning. There isn't enough space or time or ability for me to fly around mass banning. It's only a tip sheet that enables me to spot trouble and head it off, at best. It's also misused, when people tend to put on it persons they believe are scamming or selling stolen content, when they have no proof or due process.

Looking on Travis' master list when it was presented in full, I didn't see a single one of my chronic griefers who are frequest flyers, nor a single one of those that had done atrocious things to my tenants in a few incidents, including even a rape. Not a single one. So I find there is little value in any of these lists, and they grow out of date, and get replaced by new and more virulent alts, anyway.

Lists made by clubs or newbie orientation attract mainly newbies, not midbies and oldbies who are chronic, organized griefers. To get at them, we need to turn attention to groups, which tend to stay static even as the alts come and go with their bannings. So I do. A new griefer faction from W-HAT has a name Voter 5 or something like that but it's hidden. They have other groups like the aptly named Total Jerks, and are also members of Gay 4 Philip, which even has Lindens in it. Total Jerks has just 3 people, and is the venue for a parade of alts, and these mains, who are vicious, chronic offenders whom the Lindens have not yet disciplined to my knowledge. They include:

Scudmunkey Impfondo, who has invaded homes of complete strangers to him and verbally harassed my tenants; verbally harassed and event-griefed and stalked
NiceAaron  Thetan (the reborn banned Operating Thetan?), who has also invaded homes, verbally harassed, and event-griefed and stalked
Isometric -- who choses various last names, and is now missing from the list again.
They're all in another group, Rhetoric's Cock Fan Club, with the following "endorsements":

What are people saying about Rhetoric's Cock?
"It makes me feel like a man."
                               ~Pandastrong Fairplay                           
"I'll cherish it always."
                                 ~ Coyote Momiji                                 
"Get this fucking thing off my plot."
                                 ~ Ciemaar Fintoff

Starting to get the idea? Known forums jackals and alts of FIC, the same foul-mouthed bunch who rule the Second Citizen forums now -- it's a good idea also to pre-ban them off the lot for any serious event or discussion because they come only to heckle, taunt, disrupt, harass.  I endured pandastrong for awhile the night I had a discussion about freebies, but true to forum, he disrupted and finally started parading around in his large, prim-flexible floppy cock, to the disgust of all attenting.  Lecktor Hannibal is another in this bunch -- a newbie who has frequented the Ross Infohub who came to the meeting was appalled at Prok's "censorship" by ejecting the unbelievably foul and mean-spirited Hannibal for his heckling, thinking it constituted some kind of "legitimate debate". I don't "legitimately debate" people who post an image in the forums made of my *real-life* photo they've grabbed off the Herald, and placed in the asshole position of some bent-over wrinkly old man. Hey, I'm for free speech! I'm for *enabling a group to keep it free when they have events, free to talk to each other, without this kind of nasty, juvenile, vindictive behaviour, which CLOSES society and does not OPEN it to thought, discussion, ideas, friendships.                     

Another chronic offender who has boasted of his exploits in griefing without ever being banned, until finally a Mentor banned him apprently only briefly, is Silly Enzyme -- like his cousins with names like Sperm Rush and Viral Field and Sperm Enzyne -- all young males with um...issues. Silly Enzyme, with a May 8th birthdate and STILL in the list, bragged on the forums that he shot and harassed people and nobody caught him despite numerous griefing incidents.

He then intruded on my tenants and attempted to rape one by clicking on her scripted X-cites She was new and didn't think to fly off or log off -- something I tell all tenants is the absolute best weapon to break the attention fix these lame assholes crave. I view this as a serious crime, attempting to sexually molest people. These tenants are pissed at me and ranting on the forums that I "don't want to do anything about griefing" because I warned them that they should not shoot back, and they got someone to come and orbit Silly Enzyme out of the sim.

But that's ridiculous. I spend my life fighting griefers on behalf of my tenants. I've simply learned a few basic realities about griefing: 1) they thrive on attention so don't give it to them, log off; 2) they come back bigger and badder, often with another posse loaded for bear, when you shoot at them.

Oh, you think *reporting on them* on police blotters and on this blog is giving them attention? That's always the problem with terrorists and the media, eh? But I think in SL, it's important to name names, shame, and shame GROUPS and have an open discussion, with anyone able to bring adversarial defenses forward if they wish. It's the only way. The alternative, making mechanical ban lists, doesn't deter, and only captures some innocent along the way.

I continue to believe that trying to use the existing system of abuse-reporting to chronicle and report the offenses, even though Lindens do nothing in 90 percent of the cases, even gross and systematic abuses. I believe in continuing to try to work with their system, and also create alternative community police blotters that attempt to report on crime, document cases, follow them, and address the issues of GROUPS which the Lindens cannot or will not address. For this I created the SL Community Police Blotter.

And I continue to make GROUPS feel responsible for their members. I write to them. I tell them about their members. I try to get them to take some ownership for their members. For example, I'd like those in Gay 4 Philip like Bub Linden, Donovan Linden, Kona Linden and other Lindens who just joined this silly group on a lark to feel that they can discuss among themselves and appeal to their leadership to expel those like Scudmunkey who invade other people's homes, abuse them, and stalk them as a form of deliberate, planned, vindictive sport. Lindens and known griefers should not be in groups together like that.

I also think it's important to keep making the point over and over again that the "W-HAT faction" isn't such a "faction," that it has the tacit support of the leadership, and that its members who don't get abuse-reports on them are in fact the substrate who make it possible for others like the Scudmonkeys to keep coming back and engaging in abuse. And these include W-HAT apologists Huns Valen and Gala Phoenix, who whine that "there's only a few bad eggs" and "it's so unfair to judge them all that way" and continue to justify the Something Awful awfuls in Second Life. They need to take their whining to these repeat offenders and apply whatever social pressure they have on them to get them to stop being asswipes. We will go on showing THEM as enablers as long as this low-life griefing from W-HAT continues in SL. We always see Huns Valens et. al. rush to defend the "non-griefing" W-HAT every time this issue comes up; we never, ever, EVER see him step up, and condemn by name and act, those people IN this group who grief. To do so would mean to break ranks. And that's the problem. GROUPS.

And New Citizens, Inc., if they want to go on keeping Scudmunkey in their midst, despite clear, repeat testimony from my tenants and me that he is a frequent-flyer griefer, can do that, of course, but then we can also go on pointing out that for all their talk about griefer control, they are a substrate, too. That's what happens if you want to keep open groups in an open society, but you need to then accompany that openness with a willing to keep the space open from griefing that closes it, too, and name names, and shame people and get those around them in groups to *take ownership*.

I was embarrassed to even have to ask Frogg Marlowe, in the middle of a concert, to use his land controls on a venue to eject Scudmunkey and Isometric somebody, now gone from the list, yet another alt of either Plastic Duck or a supporter, who used god-mode to stalk me to a concert. I didn't care that they say RIGHT NEXT to me and heckled me. I went AFK but didn't want to lose my place on the crowded sim to hear Frogg. When they began heckling and talking tripe to others and making a nuisance of themselves and being general asswipes, I asked to have them removed -- others also began to protest and to be made uncomfortable. For this they should be ashamed, and if they have no shame, the groups that form their substrate and support them tacitly need to feel a great deal more shame than they've been feeling in Second Life.

And to continue, I'll cross post what I put on http://forums.slhomepage.com, my new forums of choice:

They have just changed the latest patch to have estate tools go up to 300 bans.

I oppose the centralized ban list too, and I view Travis' BanLink as a thinly-veiled mass list. He claims it is based on mutual trust and picking and choosing but the harsher types in SL like Burke Perfect and Kyrah Abbatoir will just scoop up all the data from all of them and put them in their own master list.

I checked a few people on it anecdotally and saw that one person was banned because they were carrying a weapon and refused to put it away. That person happened to come and rent from me, make a house, make some items to sell, make friends, and spend his time peacefully with no shooting once I told him it wasn't allowed. I don't see why he should be mass-banned and forced to leave SL and not have a chance just because some neuralgic volunteer at the Shelter looked cross-eyed at him.

This is what bothers me about the whole Shelter thing. These people are volunteers, with all the grim zealotry that can accompany people who volunteer and often have utopian viewpoints about helping people to go with their huge clusters of disposable time and effort.

There's something about being in business, however, that makes you less zealous, and more tethered to the real world. You are more pragmatic. You cannot afford to be idealistic and vindictive -- a luxury the Shelter has because they always have more newbies where those came from that they expel, they only wish to serve those who play nice.

I wish to cover costs at the very least, so I don't wish to eliminate my whole client base. Is this craven profit motive like the Lindens, causing me to turn a blind eye to griefing? Don't be silly. It's pragmatism that says a furry kid who has a gun on day one deserves more of a chance on day 7 if he settles down, and shouldn't be on a master shit list forever. He may not have the resources to figure out how to appeal or plead his case.

I am savaged by griefers even more than the Shelter, given that I simply have more customers, more square meters of land, on a more permanent basis than they do. That is, they might get 20,000 traffic, who knows. But it's a different kind of traffic, coming to one venue in one square of land.

I have griefers that cause havoc, misery to tenants, and property damage -- yes, property damage in a virtual world by stealing or disassembling group-shared objects or terror-forming something put on edit accidently and forcing houses to delink when returned, etc.

So I look for long-term, effective, more holistic solutions to end griefing.

Naming names, and more important exposing GROUPS and CONFRONTING groups is way more important to me. It's a slower, more painstaking and manual effort.

People look for quick fixes on these things and automatic scripted thingies. I don't.

Another example I found is the kind of event griefer that I have like Schwartz Guillame, a chronic foul-mouthed asswipe who consistently comes and hectors the chair of a meeting, ridicules speakers, etc. in a way that is more sophisticated than just blasting particles. I've learned to pre-ban him from every event venue -- if I forget and he arrives, he starts in with the diaper talk and I don't care if some impressionable young woman just starting as my tenant is horrified that I proclaim to be for free speech, but eject Schwartz Guillame. He's a public nuisance and I'm not *required* to endure his heckling, harassment, foul-mouthed talk, and interruptions when trying to have a meeting. That's not suppressing free speech; it's making it possible for a group to *have* free speech in the first place.

People become so hobbled by their liberal sensibilities they won't ban or eject; they also become hobbled by their darwinistic fascist sensibilities and want to ban and orbit the hell out of everyone they think is expendable.

I look to try to find some more balanced way to deal with this really vexing problem.

Example: yesterday I tp to a land to try to figure out why a tenant is missing --he is paid, but missing from the list, and I see he hasn't built anything, and I try to figure out -- what to do about him?

I'm struggling with this, and a friend wants to TP to take a picture for his blog. I also have someone IMing me who may be interested to rent the spot -- but first I have to figure out -- what is up with this missing guy?

So I'm struggling with all the usual onslaught of SL busyness and I see some dippy girl in slave clothing and high heels (I think she's got her genres mixed up lol) land on my lot and just stand there. She's not a prospective tenant.

She asks what I'm doing. I say, Um, I'm standing on my land, busy with something. She doesn't take the hint. The world is her canvas. She just stands there. Maybe in IMs, maybe just zooming around.

She fails to take the hint. Why does she feel she can just arrive on someone else's land? And stand there for 15 minutes?

So I ask her what her thinking is on this.

Answer: but you didn't put up red ban lines.

Um...I hate red ban lines. I don't wish to have them. But...I'm SUPPOSED to have them to get rid of clueless idiots like YOU???

That sense of entitlement is so rampant in this current wave of new people. and i have only three little letters to explain this: AOL. And I have only one source for AOL to explain this: Aimee Weber - her AOL-sponsored blog has brought in DROVES of these people who have given themselves their same numbered names as AOL.

I ask again if she could not bother me and my friend. She stands there, beligerent. So I eject her.

I never used to be a person who ejected people. How can you be, when you are in the business of making land available to people to use in the land preserve or rent in the rentals?

But like everyone else, I've been forced to become more reactive to this wave of uncivilization.

Comments

[Schwartz G]

"Another example I found is the kind of event griefer that I have like Schwartz Guillame, a chronic foul-mouthed asswipe who consistently comes and hectors the chair of a meeting, ridicules speakers, etc. in a way that is more sophisticated than just blasting particles. I've learned to pre-ban him from every event venue -- if I forget and he arrives, he starts in with the diaper talk and I don't care if some impressionable young woman just starting as my tenant is horrified that I proclaim to be for free speech, but eject Schwartz Guillame. He's a public nuisance and I'm not *required* to endure his heckling, harassment, foul-mouthed talk, and interruptions when trying to have a meeting. That's not suppressing free speech; it's making it possible for a group to *have* free speech in the first place."

This is the happiest day of my life

[Rhetoric P]

My group is what the name says it is. I was over at burning life, and Panda was asking for a penis. So I gave him one. I then deciced to just give it to everyone in the area. People wore it for a bit, thought it was funny, and said a few things about it. I made a group for shits and giggles, put a few quotes from people in it, and that was it.

Way to know what you're talking about. Credibility is sooo out of style.

[Prokofy Neva]

Good, now for shits and giggles, tell the asswipe in your group to stop harassing my tenants, dimwit. Own it.

[Schwartz G]

If officers were held responsible for the actions of the members, then you'd be in a whoooole lotta poop for every random Tom13, Dick262 and XxHarryxX who rented one of your doublewides.

[veiner]

This article should be encassed in carbonite to show future generations why blogging is not real journalism.

[veiner]

"Good, now for shits and giggles, tell the asswipe in your group to stop harassing my tenants, dimwit. Own it."

I don't think it's his responsibility to tell people what to do and what not to do.

[Leif]

tl;dr

P.S. INTERNET: SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS

[Rhetoric P]

As I just said, my group has no meaning. Being in my group has no purpose. And nor is it my own my responsibility to monitor the actions of people that happen to be in my group with no point, much less tell them how to act and be held responsible for them.

Try to understand and comprehend what's going on around you.

[pandastrong]

"I endured pandastrong for awhile the night I had a discussion about freebies, but true to forum, he disrupted and finally started parading around in his large, prim-flexible floppy cock, to the disgust of all attenting."

Actually, we were all laughing at you in IM and sending pics to snapzilla. The best part is how long it took you to realize I was sitting behind you.

http://www.sluniverse.com/snapshots/91974.jpg

We had a blast, Prok!

[Carl Metropolitan]

Clearly I disgree with you on Banlink (since NCI is using it).

I'd write a reasoned lengthy response to your points, except that I made the mistake of arguing with someone on the forums who could not understand the difference between copyright and a software license and I'm all reasoned out now.

However, one point--who is this Scudmunkey guy? I honestly don't remember him from NCI. (That doesn't necessarily mean much; my memory isn't what it used to be.) I'd rather _not_ have frequent flyer griefers hanging out there. It's only a matter of time before they turn on you :)

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, when you're feeling better, Carl, I'm happy to hear the reasoned response, and yes, I do hear the difference between copyright and software license.

Scudmunkey is in NCI, go look. He's not on any of the master ban griefer lists. Guess he's just our personal griefer. He's a WHAT asshat. You may not ban on that principle. Who knows. The entire thing is discretionary, arbitrary, and open to abuse. There's ample testimony on Scudmunkey however.

[Cocoanut]

Since I have joined SL, I've expanded my definition of griefers.

I really don't mind the occasional anonymous in-world griefer that much; there's usually not much they can really do to me, and not much bothers me.

Of course, I'm not running a place like the Shelter, so I'm not likely to be as disrupted, either. I just kind of keep doing my own thing, unless they keep bombing away or something, and I have to ban them.

Sometimes in-world self-proclaimed griefers end up being friends with me. If they - as you say - eventually turn on me, then yes, they would get classified as griefers again.

But if they don't ever do anything but be friendly to me (and I never see them doing anything to anyone else), I start doubting how much they really ARE griefers.

Anyway, since I have been in SL, particularly recently, I now think of griefers in a much broader way.

A griefer doesn't have to be someone who shoots a gun or throws a cage, but a true griefer will always turn on you. That is the one most defining hallmark.

There's a type of social griefer who counts on you for their entertainment. Profering friendship, but, you learn, never really meaning it.

Saying one thing, then turning around and ruining that trust by doing the other.

And - it's all they want! This constant entertainment, of playing people.

When you run out of patience and have had enough of being friendly with them, they follow you around to other environments and try to make your life hell there, trying almost desperately to get your attention.

And all this is almost purely verbal - not a gun in sight.

They may not bomb people or cage them, but they are indeed griefers. And indeed, attention is the one thing you must not give them.

This I have learned during my time on SL.

coco

[Carl Metropolitan]

BanLink is like democracy; it's the worst possible system except for all the others.

I can assure you that Travis and Mera would rather not have gotten into the business of programming and maintaining a ban system. However, Linden Lab policies have left them little choice.

As you have pointed out, LL has adopted a policy of expecting residents to come up with and implement the various elements of a civil sociey--with only any recent support from the software, and only minimal support from the "government". At the same time, they've made registration completely open, while not having the manpower to deal with the inevitable increase in griefing. The griefing they have dealt with is handled in secret--eliminating most of any deterrent effect of the punishments they hand out.

Linden Labs may have good reasons for what they are doing. I don't know their financials; I don't know their burn rate; and I don't know their committements to their VC funders. But the fact remains, that it's left up to SL residents to cope with the fallout.

BanLink is superior to most other shared ban lists for a number of reasons:

* BanLink now requires that you state a reason for the ban--a reason which is visble to anyone looking at the ban list.

* BanLink is about as transparent as a shared ban system can be.

* BanLink does not require you to trust any organization you choose not to. NCI--for example--just accepts bans from two of the places using BanLink.

* BanLink will be implementing a "ban sunset" feature, so a ban is not eternal.

* BanLink does not offer membership to any organization; organizations must apply and be approved individually.

* Travis and Mera have been very open to suggestions and critiques--and have implemented a number of changes in response to them.

I can understand a problem with the whole concept of a shared ban list. But we are not really left with many alternatives at this point.

Your suggestion of going after griefer groups would be a good one--if it could be practially implemented. Griefers usually grief for an audience. Eliminating some of their audience would cut down on the "fun" of griefing.

However, to the best of my knowledge, there's no way for LSL to tell what groups a person belongs to. And the only way to implement an "attack the groups" solution is with bans; Linden Labs is not likely go after griefer groups. And any bans by groups would have to be done by hand. Which is a sysiphean task for an administrator faced with ever-changing griefer group memberships (due to the proliferation of throwaway alts), and the stream of new griefer groups that constantly pop up.

One last comment: I think it is very likely that the greifers we get at NCI (and the Shelter) are a different subset of the SL griefer population. Our griefers seem to want to make big spectacular shows (whether it be rezzing hundreds of huge objects, setting off bombs, shooting up a class, trying to crash the sim, etc.). The griefers you describe seem to be more prone to focusing on one or two people to harass and intimadate up close and personal.

Both sets of griefers are scumbags--but I think the difference in targets goes a long way towards explaining why your griefer list looks so different from BanLink's.

[Baba]

Hi Prokofy ;0

I'm the owner of Gay 4 Philip. I want to make it clear that Gay 4 Philip is not afiliated with any group of griefers. The group is set to open enrollment and allows anyone to invite a new member to the group. We do not qualify new members in any way.

This is our grou charter:

The group for those who would be gay for Philip Linden.

Gay 4 Philip does not discriminate based on gender, race, species or background. It is our belief that Philip transcends all these things. He is a point of shining light on the horizon of our dreams.

Anyone can be gay for Philip.

[Prokofy Neva]

Baba, I realize your group is on open. That means it can be joined by groupers. I'm here to tell you that it WAS indeed joined by griefers who are total asswipes, intruding upon strangers they don't even know, my tenants, in some lame-assed effort to swipe at me, because I expose W-HAT as being the griefer group that it is, aiding, enabling, spawning, and covering up for, griefers.

Intruding on people's homes, refusing to leave, abusing them, flying around being an asshole -- this is bad behaviour that I'd like to work at stopping.

One way to do that is to ask people who have open groups that provided a haven for such asswipes to tell them that they are not welcome if they continue such behaviour, and expel them if they do. Of course, they may join again. They do that to my group, which is open. But I keep expelling them and banning them and pretty soon they find something else to do.

I'd encourage you to do the same. Just hiding behind the fact your group is open and fun and groovy is stupid, since it contains members who are making life not fun and open and groovy for other people.

[Schwartz G]

Can you even name 10 current members of W-Hat?

[Baba]

It is groovy... thanks ;0

[Prokofy Neva]

Carl, I'll answer you in detail:

>BanLink is like democracy; it's the worst possible system except for all the others.

Well, just because democracy is "worse except all others" doesn't mean I don't get to criticize democracy mercilessly so that it does a little better than be merely "least worst" : )

>I can assure you that Travis and Mera would rather not have gotten into the business of programming and maintaining a ban system.

There's other things they could have done. Closing the Shelter and protesting against the Lindens' foolhardy policies -- unaccountable accounts without anymeans to do some civilizing missions, better filtering, and better police blotter work and 0 tolerance for coming back on alts to do the same thing.

Why should the Shelter do the Lindens' helpdesk and new citizen absorption work for them? Honestly, people think it's just so wonderful that everybody is supposed to turn out and Help Teh NOobz, but I look at it with a very weather eye and say: why are we supposed to facilitate this for the Lindens? What do WE get in exchange for humping like this? The Lindens are crowd-serfing -- exploiting everybody's good will and volunteer spirit and good nature. Maybe they need some static. Maybe they need to stop taking this absorption buffer activity so much for granted.

Maybe one Linden armed with the ability to read IPs off some sort of control panel and immediately and unceremoniously removing griefers at the Shelter who come back on alts for 7 days might send a good signal. I dunno, I just think everybody needs to pause here and ask: why do we do this? for what?

And when they get bored or banned from the Shelter -- then what? They go to my property? Thanks! Or somebody else's? See, it's just not a solution. You get to keep feeling good that you helped newbies and filtered out bad eggs with your ban-o-matic. But the thousands of people lying in the path of the griefers, with no ability to effectively get this information, put it into scripted devices, etc. then become their new targets.

>However, Linden Lab policies have left them little choice.

I'm not for letting Linden Lab policies reduce me to a puddle of jello. A little stiffer backlash from those very adversely affected is needed to send a very sharp and very stern message to LL: you want to grow your game under pressure from your VCs? You don't do it by stepping on and destroying the quality of life for your existing customers who have more invested in time, talent, and treasure than these new asswipes. So get on it. Find ways to have more visible and more effective police work to go with your opening the flood gates.

>As you have pointed out, LL has adopted a policy of expecting residents to come up with and implement the various elements of a civil sociey--with only any recent support from the software, and only minimal support from the "government".

Well, you don't let them do that, Carl. If all of you went on strike for even 24 hours, and demanded some basic things like:

o more liaisons to eliminate griefer packs more quickly deployed at strategic areas
o less bagging of people over non-quality-of-life offenses like selling in sandboxes or trademark theft, or more attention to harassment, shooting, etc.
o default all land to non-push instead of making us all scramble to de-pushify it
o and dozens of other things you could come up with -- why play their game?

>At the same time, they've made registration completely open, while not having the manpower to deal with the inevitable increase in griefing.

Well, bullshit. They hired lots of new people. Look at the police blotter. It's ridiculous. It's as if they deliberately want to IGNORE the thousands of pushes, shootings, verbal harassment, particles, prim dropping. I never, ever EVER see a blotter about prim dropping, a huge offense and a growing one. Well? Where is it? I'm supposed to read this ridiculous shit showing 12 entries on one lame-ass "obscene group" sullying the eyes of flighty Mentresses in the WA? And accept THAT as police work? Hell no. Stop this bullshit and do a real job of policing AND blottering.

>The griefing they have dealt with is handled in secret--eliminating most of any deterrent effect of the punishments they hand out.

And that's what we need to push for -- transparency -- AND we need to do the work of creating a counter blotter through the community. It's time-consuming, but even if we only report 20 percent of what's going on, we have accomplished not only a deterrent effect, but an educational effect and an expose of LL as being unwilling to back up their openness and cravenness to having new accounts with an equal determination not to lose their existing customers who pay more.

>Linden Labs may have good reasons for what they are doing. I don't know their financials; I don't know their burn rate; and I don't know their committements to their VC funders.

Why so passive, Carl? We PAY their bills. ALL of us. If not in treasure, in time and talent. And we DESERVE BETTER.

I was APPALLED to see this notion revealed recently that they deliberately kept the unaccountable accounts 6/6/06 stuff deeply hidden, then sprang it on us in the deliberate notion that they could then "sort through priorities of response" by what we howled about the most.

Huh? What??? This is a normal, sane, appropriate, decent thing to be doing to customers? Abusing them by flinging shit at them and seeing where it sticks on them the most, and seeing where they cry out the most, "hey, I have shit all over me?" What kind of fucked up policy is THAT? Why do they get to do THAT?

This is revolutionary justice Bolshevik thinking. Ends justifies means. Their need to rapidly grow and develop and "priorities" supercedes their need to do it with due process and consideration of other human beings. That rots, big time. They need to be called on it. I never HEARD of such an insane "development" policy in my life.

"Let's harsh our customers and see how loud they scream, then we'll know what to focus on." Imagine if a RL company did that in the Real World. "Let's make a car where the wheels might fall off and see how many of our customers die, and make the seat belts snap closed too fast and see, will they complain about the seat belts snapping closed or complain more about their relatives being killed when the feels fall off?"

It's disasterous as a concept.

>But the fact remains, that it's left up to SL residents to cope with the fallout.

Well, I think you need to show a little less willingness to be a guinea pig; a little less rolling with the punches, and if you see, as I do, that they have a DISASTER here, that you fight back. Why make it easier for them?

You are doing unpaid, volunteer work so you are voluntarily accepting that it's fine to overrun you with idiots.

I pay tier, have customers who pay money, and I'm not utopian and flexible like you are about these things. I say, No, you don't get to destroy our lives like this, back off.

>BanLink is superior to most other shared ban lists for a number of reasons:

* BanLink now requires that you state a reason for the ban--a reason which is visble to anyone looking at the ban list.

I don't find this very robust, and some of it doesn't make sense to me. Merely wearing guns when guns are so touted as accessories and knowingly pushed by LL itself in their vidoes and such can't be a serious offense.

And ending the manufacture and sale of guns might be a better place to start.

I was interested to see that Marmela Domela recently instituted a policy I hadn't seen on her rentals before, after the group tools came in. She refuses to rent to those who make or sell push weapons and security orbs. Good for her! I don't think I could institute such a policy because it would involve too much inspection of content and administration but I think it's interesting she's doing that.

>* BanLink is about as transparent as a shared ban system can be.

Yes, and that's actually why it will all be used by vindictive malevolent types like Kyrah and Burke who just want to blow up people themselves. I agree that it has to be transparent, but that's also it's undoing as a supposedly wise system. You don't explain the appeals process, and Travis' idea that "everyone can appeal to me if they are mature about doing so" really struck me as very inadequate. I have to check, but it seems they need to have a template in which people can appeal automatically without having to prove "maturity". They may have developed that, not sure.

>* BanLink does not require you to trust any organization you choose not to. NCI--for example--just accepts bans from two of the places using BanLink.

This idea of "trusting the other venues" is where this plan breaks down the most. I'm not getting it. Archan is a sex community so it lets people fly around with their attachments hanging out presumably. You don't. But that means they ban people for shooting or particling. The venue itself and its people to me seem immaterial, whether you like them or not. If you have such a system, it seems it can only stand on the accuracy of the reports filed and the template, like any massive RL country's police reporting system. What are the elements of each report? How is it aggregated?

Getting the function right seems to me to be way more than trusting this or that discretionary force. Either there is shooting, or there isn't. Either there is stopping after a warning, or there isn't. That's why the idea that 'I trust Tommy's report on shooting because I like and trust Tommy' or "I don't trust Janey's report on particling because she's a bitch" to me seems just inane. Either we can all agree on what constitutes bad behaviour and report on it accurately, or we can't.

You have 6 or 8 entities feeding into this, and it seems to me that rather than focusing on this idiotic and subjective notion of "trust" which is tribal bullshit that social software fascists poke at you, you should focus on functionality and accurate reporting. If you can't trust Venue A or Venue B to file an accurate report even, then they shouldn't even be on the web page. There has to be that basic quality control.

>* BanLink will be implementing a "ban sunset" feature, so a ban is not eternal.

Well, that's fine, but they will mainly revolve, probably 70 percent or more, 10 percent will have been deleted and removed from the game by Lindens, and 20 percent might go on to lead a normal life.

>* BanLink does not offer membership to any organization; organizations must apply and be approved individually.

This sentence doesn't make sense. Sounds like you take organizations as members after a pro forma application. What really matters is a thorough going quality control of reporting and a constant checking and balancing by following up on how people do on that -- but that's if you run a unified police system in a federal government or a county, and you all are such silly liberals you want to run a deterrent system with a mechanical ban rather than either force the Lindens to make a government, or make one yourself and thrash through the political difficulties of doing that.

If you 6 entities tried to covenant to make a minimal government responsible only for one thing: national defense and justice, i.e. elimination of basic griefing and protection of the fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that might be a laudable effort. I bet that would be too hard to do. Yet...there's a reason that people have been doing this for thousands of years LOL.

>* Travis and Mera have been very open to suggestions and critiques--and have implemented a number of changes in response to them.

Yes, and that's why I will keep criticizing it. I think it's a master well that the vicious like Kyrah will use, and that others just browsing on their lunch hour will peruse just to "check up on" people and start to black ball them.

I never hear ANY of you talk about the knock-on effect of how everybody else uses these lists. They use them to check up on boyfriends, dates, partners, business partners. It's like a massive FBI background checking system suddenly thrown open to the public. What kind of effect is that having on people? Who's getting ejected or not even sold to or removed summarily everywhere ELSE because they fell on one of these lists?

And like I said -- don't notice Cristiano or Aimee or Mr. P or whomever deciding to stop selling to these people. *I* don't decide to stop selling to them, for that matter. That's why it's idiotic. The world can't stop it's economy over this, and maybe it should? That needs discussion. Sales continue. Sales of weapons, cages, c4, and particles especially! Could we look at that, please?

Would it kill FlipperPA Peregrine to take all the cages, c4, and atom bombs off slboutique.com and give the citizens of SL a rest from this shit? Would it dent into his profits and the profits of those who make these pernicious devices from hell?

>I can understand a problem with the whole concept of a shared ban list. But we are not really left with many alternatives at this point.

No, I just gave one: consumer protest against the makers of cages and c4 and slboutique for selling them.

>Your suggestion of going after griefer groups would be a good one--if it could be practially implemented. Griefers usually grief for an audience. Eliminating some of their audience would cut down on the "fun" of griefing.

I do implement it very easily. I publish the names of the groups and the bad actions of their members and my efforts to bring this to the attention of leaders. I've seen in some cases it's worked -- the griefers are removed. They are ostracized -- a few rounds, and they stop. I'm thinking this might work well. I'm only one person doing this, however.

>However, to the best of my knowledge, there's no way for LSL to tell what groups a person belongs to.

You don't need LSL. You need human eyes to read the profile. It's work. However, I find that clusters of griefers attack in waves in some areas from the same group, and following groups makes a lot of sense.

>And the only way to implement an "attack the groups" solution is with bans; Linden Labs is not likely go after griefer groups.

I think if there were more public confrontation of group leaders, like I'm making to Baba right on these pages, and asked them to help end all this shit, we'd have lots less of it : )

>And any bans by groups would have to be done by hand. Which is a sysiphean task for an administrator faced with ever-changing griefer group memberships (due to the proliferation of throwaway alts), and the stream of new griefer groups that constantly pop up.

Well, actually, yes and no. Sure, they make new groups. But they tend to be kids not always wanting to spend $100. I see some of the SAME groups persisting even for a year. I think just because there's the problem of always another group and always another alt that you just become passive and do nothing.

You start with what you have. If you have a group named Total Jerks that has been around for a year, you work exposing and document and pushing back on that. Maybe you only address 12 such groups, as there's not enough people. One of the problems is that people never hear "no". They need to hear it.

I guess what I'm saying is this: scripted automatic impersonal devices cannot solve social problems except temporarily. Only people can solve social problems.

How? By human solidarity and determination. Philip commented about the forums that people were horribly nasty to each other on them, but in world he'd see them be more civil "face to face". So the anonymity and the impunity can be removed from these griefers more readily if people take ownership of the problem as a society. If Baba doesn't keep bleating that he has an open group Gay 4 Philip and says it's fine to let W-HATs stay in it, along with Lindens (!) and discredit it.

Isolate and shame - name and shame. Make people feel that if they want to do fun things like be in a fun group Gay 4 Philip, they can't be event griefers.

If you could start to get these public discussions like Digital Cultures, someone like Tom Bukowski to grapple with this, and stop admitting in these event griefers who often completely disrupt and paralyze the debate, that would be worthwhile. I see it happen over and over again. It's very hard to eliminate people on speech grounds. But once you have griefing behaviour tied to them, you can more easily take action. If you have a group of people that also shoot, particle bomb, invade homes AND also try to modernist word-salad and make frivolous every meeting and sit bobbing their avatar heads like fucking idiots, well you get somewhere when you all band together and say, no, they don't get to be in the discussion because their behaviour, across the community, is bad.

There's never any sense of punishment for bad behaviour; never any identification of what it is.

The orientation process never says "It's wrong to invade homes, shoot people, and harass". It's not part of the menu.

Along with your banning and ejection, I think it behooves you to have a civilizing mission in which you put up posters that literally say 'DON'T BE AN ASSWIPE AND INVADE HOMES AND SHOOT PEOPLE; YOU WILL GET ABUSE REPORTED AND BE LOATHED BY EVERYONE WHO MEETS YOU*

lol

>One last comment: I think it is very likely that the greifers we get at NCI (and the Shelter) are a different subset of the SL griefer population. Our griefers seem to want to make big spectacular shows (whether it be rezzing hundreds of huge objects, setting off bombs, shooting up a class, trying to crash the sim, etc.). The griefers you describe seem to be more prone to focusing on one or two people to harass and intimadate up close and personal.

Both sets of griefers are scumbags--but I think the difference in targets goes a long way towards explaining why your griefer list looks so different from BanLink's.

No, not at all. I get loads of griefers who particle bomb in droves. They drop or fire huge numbers of prim cubes. They rez out gigantic robots. They do all the same things. I find more and more these are the name/number kids and I can't even abuse reprot them all there is so many.

What you're not realizing, Carl, is that some people automatically view something like the Shelter or NCI as something "gay" and "for pussies". They skip it. And they go and do the stuff they do to grief you over someplace else, like my malls or public spaces.

[Royal]

"That sense of entitlement is so rampant"

I wonder why you are "entitled" to give people crap for doing what SL was designed to do. Maybe you shouldn't have started a real estate business inside a videogame if you didn't want people to treat it like a videogame. But I guess it's easier to be a self-righteous dick about it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, no, it's 'easier' to *serve my tenants* who wish to have quiet peaceful and productive lives free of dickheads shooting at them. And I'm more than happy to be self-righteous on their behalf -- they deserve it not only because they pay me, but because they are entitled to peaceful, creative life on this platform under the TOS. Shooting is not entitled. If someone wants to shoot other people, they need to go back to their video games or go to one of the limited areas of SL that have shooting.

[Royal]

"quiet peaceful and productive lives"

INSIDE A VIDEOGAME!?

There's nothing "productive" about sitting in front of a computer designing sex poseballs. Fun? Certainly. But please don't insult our intelligence by inflating the importance of it.

"Shooting is not entitled"

You're adjusting the conversation and making it look like I was critiquing "shooting." Of course shooting, push, and other sabotage are legitimate complaints. But "just standing there, looking"? Give me a break.

If you don't like the big red ban lines, then petition the lindens to make an invisible version. Otherwise don't complain about people who are just exploring the grid and looking around and treating it like it is what it is.

There is no privacy in SL and its not designed to be private. I can watch people "have sex" with their attachable fake-genitals in the "privacy" of their own "homes" by just using the default camera.

If you want to have a whole host of apartments and buildings etc. on land where people can have quite, creative, productive lives, than start investing in REAL ESTATE that doesn't only exist in some basement's server.

[Coyote Momiji]

Wow! I'm a "forum jackal or known alt of the FIC"?

I'm moving UP in the world, yo!

I wish you had sarcasm detectors, Prok. It makes me sad that you don't. :(

[Puck Goodliffe]

I demand that you add my name to your post. I don't worship any cocks but my own, but I am a troll and goddamned proud to be one.

ps: you're a whining bitch. you're just jealous that other people are having fun and you're incapable of taking (second) life less seriously.

I would say more, but Royal already said it perfectly.

-Puck

[Prokofy Neva]

>ps: you're a whining bitch. you're just jealous that other people are having fun and you're incapable of taking (second) life less seriously.

Hardly. I'm glad I take Second Life seriously. It's actually quite engaging and fun taking it seriously.

So...let me understand this correctly. You *endorse* the idea that assmunches walk into your home, abuse you, refuse to leave, become abusive, and scatter stupid prims. That's fine? Because that's what this is about. It's about getting people in silly groups like Gay 4 Philip that also attract known asswipes who do that to other people in their homes -- strangers -- to take some responsibility and eject them and ask them not to do that. It's about asking Lindens and other big makkers in the FIC to take some ownership of this awful griefing problem we're all suffering from and help create some pushback on it.

To become part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.

And if you answer is to snidely say, buy an expensive private island home like I have in Caledon where you have almost perfect ownership emulation and can control the asswips, I can only say, fuck you. The mainland hasn't had those tools -- and still doesn't. Not everyone can afford a private island; not everyone wants a stifling gated community experience. They live in the mainland precisely to have a little more freedom and spontaneity. That doesn't mean they should be pinned to the wall by sheer unadulterated assholes raping them in their homes.

So...finding anyone ELSE to worship your cock these days, Puck?

Getting any?

Royal, it's precisely your attitude that makes the world uncivilized, it's the substrate of the whole "fuck you hedonism" approach to life.

>You're adjusting the conversation and making it look like I was critiquing "shooting." Of course shooting, push, and other sabotage are legitimate complaints. But "just standing there, looking"? Give me a break.

Um, a fucktard like Scudmonkey just stands around looking? But that's fucked. He's an abusive fuck, like you. Standing in a stranger's home, uninvited, and refusing to leave, and then being abuse and then scattering prims is invasive and stupid. What, the fucktard doesn't have HIS OWN LIFE or HIS OWN LAND or even A SANDBOX where he can go look? What the fuck?

>If you don't like the big red ban lines, then petition the lindens to make an invisible version. Otherwise don't complain about people who are just exploring the grid and looking around and treating it like it is what it is.

Hardly. Scudmonkey isn't exploring the grid, nor is the other asshole contingent of W-HAT. They are making deliberaet, targeted, maliciously gleeful attacks, and they are being called on them.

I don't permit putting up no-access lines precisely because I want the areas to be free of ugly lines - unlike some island dealers who do enable people to put them up. If someone is truly just out exploring, they don'to experience lines. But it is expected that if they hang around like idiots and are asked to leave, they should leave.

Why am *I* expected to TIER and PAY FOR your exploratory gaming experience? Go on Linden roads, go in Pathfinder's lovely nature preserve and harass people there. You are not wanted on private property. Private property is the bedrock of civilization. All the socialist and anarchist cries for openness to exploration are covers for destruction of civilization. You could have both, and leave areas open -- I have a huge preserve myself. But it's not by closing off the experience of privacy that people wish to have and are entitled to -- and enabling asswipes to invade it. They are expected to restraint their endless fuck-you hedonism just a bit.

>There is no privacy in SL and its not designed to be private. I can watch people "have sex" with their attachable fake-genitals in the "privacy" of their own "homes" by just using the default camera.

So? At the customers' request, this is being removed eventually. And most people wish to have privacy on land they paid for. If you can only get enjoyment by looking at other people having sex, geez, go elsewhere on the Internet where at least they have live human beings and not pixel dolls.

>If you want to have a whole host of apartments and buildings etc. on land where people can have quite, creative, productive lives, than start investing in REAL ESTATE that doesn't only exist in some basement's server.

Why? Who says I have to do that? I wish to participate in creatively making a world that others can and already do enjoy. That will require a little bit of restraint from asswipes like you who think the world is a giant FPS game rolled out for their benefit.

Um...Royal WHAT isyour name in the game please? This is a blog only for those with Second Life names to post in. So provide the name or be deleted.

[Royal]

">You're adjusting the conversation and making it look like I was critiquing "shooting." Of course shooting, push, and other sabotage are legitimate complaints. But "just standing there, looking"? Give me a break.

Um, a fucktard like Scudmonkey just stands around looking?"

Uh, who was it that wrote this?:

"She asks what I'm doing. I say, Um, I'm standing on my land, busy with something. She doesn't take the hint. The world is her canvas. She just stands there. Maybe in IMs, maybe just zooming around.She fails to take the hint. Why does she feel she can just arrive on someone else's land? And stand there for 15 minutes? So I ask her what her thinking is on this. Answer: but you didn't put up red ban lines. Um...I hate red ban lines. I don't wish to have them. But...I'm SUPPOSED to have them to get rid of clueless idiots like YOU???"

And then you have the nerve to say that your clients don't want a "gated community experience?" Hahaha, oh man.

And, again, notice how you're changing it from "just standing around, looking" to:

"RAPE IN MY HOME! MY VIRTUAL HOME! HATECRIME!!!!!"

My family did not immigrate from EVE Online, searching for a better life, to be persecuted by muckraking dimwits who take videogame real estate too seriously.