Oh, except it's just Apotheus with his new Linden hat -- he's Calyle Linden, "technical lead for the new e-commerce initiative" i.e. the XStreet buyout. I guess he's found time to wade into the forums -- in fact, at my behest, because I abuse-reported the two people heckling me there, a long-time trouble-maker Ewan Mureaux and a new alt and Herald water-bearer Kitty Ushimawa. I put it to the Lindens (Apotheus) very simply: moderate your forums, or lose them. I explained that the problem in the official forums wasn't that they had to ban me -- that was a symptom of their incompetence, not a proper move. No, their failure was in refusing to moderate early, often, and equally. Had they done that, I wouldn't have had to wage my famous struggle on those official forums simply because Jeska, Pathfinder, and other Lindens who had first been residents couldn't see their way clear to moderating their friends when they became abusive in response to my legitimate, TOS-compliant critical posts. These jackals went so far as to post my RL information and make false claims about me based on a mistaken identity gained from Internet-sleuthing, and the Lindens sat on their hands -- and permabanned me for continuing to expose this hypocrisy after only one 3-day ban and another 7-day ban, leaving scores of their little friends with multiple 7- and 14-day bans and no further action.
I'm all for unmoderated forums. Of course, they usually lead to the chaos and destruction of Second Citizen, and on my own blog, I see fit to have the simple rule that you can be abusive, but only if you sign your SL name, and only if you don't cross into actual damage of me inworld or in SL. Then you're gone. But if we're going to play moderated forums, which we were already playing on Slexchange.com long before there were any Lindens, let's play them equally, shall we?
To give the back story -- stop me if I've told you this one! -- in Slosser, this ugly boxy store appeared, with a fairly old player named Moon Cole putting up a sign that said WEIRD SHIT as the store's title. The ugly boxy store, built SMACK on the property line as all such ugly boxy stores are always built, plus the stupid big sign, ruined the view for 3 sims -- it had just been starting to get back to normal. I would have simply ignored this blight, not the first nor the last to appear in the region, if it had not been for the obnoxiousness of Ewan Mureaux.
How did this fight start? It was started by Moon Cole's friend and group member, one Ewan Mureaux, abuse reporting me to the Lindens for a tree waving into the boxy store build SMACK on the property line. I always marvel at assholes that do that -- they blight the view and pressure everyone else around them, and then wilt at a tree waving lol. Of course, he could have simply IM'd me to move the trees a few inches, but instead, he got the Lindens ginned up to remove them. I was annoyed, because they removed original Governor Linden trees that I had left exactly as they were originally on the property. In fact, I got the Lindens to put them back eventually -- but honestly, what a dick. I then noticed the build and the stupid sign, so I IM'd him, and then I put up my own sign: EVEN WEIRDER SHIT.
So, picture this typically ugly stupid SL store with a sign WEIRD SHIT, on the one hand, and next door, and my holding up a mirror to this phenomenon over our lovely Slosser gardens built by Kei Mars, a sign saying EVEN WEIRDER SHIT. Sorry I don't have the screenshots!
Once again, Moon and Ewan trigger their Lindens, and my sign is simply deleted. Not returned to inventory, but deleted. And twice deleted (I put it up again, because I couldn't believe my eyes). So, picture the scene -- one sign is allowed, the other isn't, even though they are identical in type. Ewan is allowed to bully me with the old tree-waving gambit and a stupid ugly sign and boxy store, but if I put up a sign in response, I'm to blame, and I'm a "cyber bully". Ah, the game of Second Life.
I was planning on publicizing the whole story as a deterrent factor -- that can help sometimes -- but then it wasn't long after that I returned to this lovely area on Slosser pond and found Ewan and Moon had sold out cheap and enabled the land to be cut up by ad extortionists. Thanks! Guess that store wasn't so almighty important after all.
Of course, now we hear self-righteous tangled and complex tales about how they didn't cut up the land, or sell it to anyone who cut it up, but it was then cut up later -- but what of it? Everyone can see what they did. They bought cheap land, put up shit, ruined the view, the dumped it to land cutters. Typical SL story, typical selfish fuck-you hedonism. They couldnt' IM any of their neighbours who were settled there and ask them if they'd like to take the land at dumped prices -- instead, nothing would do but an instant sell to a bot.
After that, the area took a good long while to get back to normal, as opportunists and extortionists seized it -- it wasn't until the Lindens' new policy against ads that it settled down, although of course, with that ugly other big sex box put in the air and blighting the view as well from that awful Gnu Sodwind. Bleh. There's always one on every sim, eh?
So over on Xstreetsl.com, this Kitty comes on stumping for the PNs and pretending they are "gone" and not significant (typical propaganda exercise) and and starts inciting a riot against me. I never bother with XStreet. The forums there aren't interesting. They are filled with generally silly fashion gossip and stupid mundane RL conversations of the half-baked Internet sort, i.e. about Al Gore. Occasionally, someone will point me to a thread there to read, but most of the time it has no news, and the views are uninteresting. If it has more readership and more intelligent participation now with the Linden takeover (an oxymoron, I realize) perhaps I would post there, but I generally don't see the need. It's especially the case now that the Lindens have made another deadly connection: mouth off in ways they or their fanboyz don't like, and be locked out from the main commerce menu and unable to sell your stuff. I don't care about selling my dollar ashtrays that sell better inworld, but it just seems like an unnecessary sacrifice. Once the Lindens utterly take over the inworld search and commerce with this venture, and tie forums behaviour to merchant sales, they will have completed the deadly circle of utter nationalization and socialization of the space, oblivious to the importance of free speech to free enterpries.
If the XStreet forums *do* have some value, it's in their ability to occasionally cry "fraud" or "unfair" to some of the unscrupulous business practices in SL like island resale scams. That's the sort of thing that you get "forbidden" to do within the LL forums confines, where even a truthful report naming names can earn you a ban hammer for "defaming an individual or group". Of course, they old lazy laisser-faire FICing Lindens didn't used to pursue this, and were even highly selective about pursuing this, letting any number of fucktards defame my business and me, or Anshe Chung's business and her, including even with racist and sexist remarks; now they go through at least the motions of stopping any discussion about individuals' business practices -- which is, of course, wrong, because you need to be able to have free discussions of such practices, including the all-important right to make allegations even if subsequently proved false, because otherwise, you cannot deter commercial criminality. Few people seem to grasp these values these days, and the pressure is enormous from various commercial entities to shut up the free press in the name of their "business reputation," which is supposed to trump the truth about their actual bad behavior.
So "Kitty's starts threads such as "Why do we bother reading Second Thoughts anyway" bitching about alleged constant links from Slex to my blog -- which is fake, because they don't exist and are a rare occurrence. She -- or he, as he's very much likely to be a typical mangina type -- goes on to rant about me belonging in a rubber room because...why? Because I reported accurately on the PN attacks and the supine nature of the Herald regarding the PNs. So "Kitty" was one of the Herald operatives on a mission, clearly.
Her post fetched out a passle of wannabee harassers (Ann Otoole has aptly dubbed some of the people on this forum "as Level 20s on a level 80 shard") -- and here comes the nasty Ewan to rant about his WEIRD SHIT. But in telling his story, he so self-discredits that it's a marvel. He reveals that in fact he held an abuse-report party and got 30 people to AR me simultaneously because my alt Random Unsung had put up the EVEN WEIRDER SHIT sign. The Lindens, who are always made terribly uncomfortable and unable to say "no" when they think "the community" is acting, came running like a fire brigade to remove my sign, although, of course, when there is a giant sign of my RL picture in the fucking Linden-owned infohub itself for 3 long days with a script overriding Governor Linden autoreturn, they are too busy filing their nails and can't be bothered to remove it.
It then emerges that in fact Moon has changed her store name now to WEIRDICULOUS. Why? Because "some people" found the name WEIRD SHIT offensive. Mind you, for me, the name isn't the issue at all, and the title of the store is just the typical insolent tekkie stupid name -- who could care? For me, the issue was putting it on TOP of a square, boxy ugly building pushed SMACK up to the property edges. Had it been a sign hanging at the store's front, it would have been more tolerable. When it comes into my face and my view in the air, I hold a mirror up to it *shrugs*.
IT also emerges that apparently the Lindens -- go know! -- have deemed the store name "offensive" although that needs confirmation. I can't believe Moon would change her entire store name over me abuse reporting Ewan's insolent and aggressive defense of it in the air. Whatever!
So there you have the ingredients for a typical forums drama which you can go read -- with Ewan digging himself in deeper and deeper in his tangled land-cutting story -- amazing. It turns out he's a land-flipper, and just out to make a buck and free up his trading tier, on top of everything else. What a loser.
And curiously PR-y sounding repartees from the Linden closing the threads -- who is Apotheus, who never used to sound like that.
Why did I sic "the Lindens" on XStreet? Don't I value free speech? Because I could see how this would shape up -- if we don't insist on the Lindens moderating this already-seized forums fairly and squarely at the get-go, it will be endlessly gamed by the XStreet FIC. When I played the forums game back in 2005, I never pressed the "abuse report" button -- it never occurred to me back then to take part in a dishonourable police-state exercise even against an enemy. I never got 30 of my friends to hold an AR party.
I'm not that stupid now. People fuck with me on a forums like that where I didn't even participate, I slam back hard. If I am in a setting where I'm not allowed to freely keep fighting to protect my reputation and keep posting the truth, I definitely sic the mods on the asstards harassing me -- it's the way you have to play the game of Second Life.
I'm frankly the perfect test for a good moderation policy on any forums. *I* am not the one needing moderating. I don't even "skirt the TOS" but instinctively follow some broad guidelines because I write sincerely and truthfully, even if critically. Meanwhile, the people dinged by this criticism behave like asstards and violate the TOS often with impugnity. Uri once said about the Lindens' permabanning me was that it was like I was taken into protective custody, because I was being lynch-mobbed. Absolutely the case. The Lindens banned me -- by their own admission at the time -- not for TOS violation, but for "business reasons". What were the "business reasons"? Why, their favourite customers who were simply more valuable to them than me were bothered by my critical expose of their antics inworld and on the forums.
Perhaps the Lindens have grown up in the last four years, since the days when they let Jeska go easy on her friends. Today, they have a PR professional moderating the official Linden forums, someone who apparently has no inworld history as an SL resident at all (to our knowledge) -- a very *good* thing. Today, the Lindens aren't as insecure as their Lindesidents they used to have hold down the forums -- perhaps they don't have to stop criticism even of their pets with a hysterical fear of harming their reputation. Perhaps they could get it right -- finally -- and enable a decent forums to emerge. Of course, one doesn't hold one's breath, even if one is willing to have a blue skin in SL.
What will happen to the XStreet forums? Obviously Caylyle Linden can't keep moderating them, and they will stick someone else on that unpleasant job. Ultimately, when they merge the entire thing into the viewer, their temptation will be to kill it off, and put up a heading called "Shopping" or something on the existing forums -- or nothing at all. Who the hell knows. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Seeing Calyle Linden's post in the announcments was interesting.
Stopping USD sales. Disney TM infringed materials and similar can be sold by Linden Lab for non existant linden money with little or no qualms.
USD sales...EEEK! Wise move on the Linden's behalf but i'd have rather seen the items removed completely.
Posted by: Porky | February 01, 2009 at 01:58 AM
First of all, I just want to thank you for your post and say that I agree with you 100%.
As for Xstreet SL, even though it is or was a great service and still is as far as I am concerned, the Xstreet SL forums were not moderated equally, without and bias. That was a big problem. Lots were perma banned who maybe should not have been, whilst others who should have been were not banned at all. I hate that kind of hypocrisy.
Posted by: Vryl Valkyrie | February 01, 2009 at 01:51 PM
tl:dr, will post pics and chat logs if you want to show you are talking even more bullshit than normal and this time it can be proven.
Your eternal friend,
Ewan Mureaux
Posted by: Ewan Mureaux | February 02, 2009 at 09:55 AM
Here you go screwball, check the pics of your "identical" sign.
http://metaanswers.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=78
Posted by: Ewan Mureaux | February 02, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Kinda strange the link to all the facts about this including pics seems to have just vanished. Must be a typepad error or something. Here is the link again so people can read the unedited facts and make up their own minds.
http://metaanswers.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=78
Or they can just click my name and go right there.
Posted by: Ewan Mureaux | February 02, 2009 at 11:21 AM