Solution to "Impeach Bush", et al

http://secondtense.blogspot.com/2005/12/omgzor-ads-on-teh-internets.html

Let's improve our tools and come up with a real solution.

So you ignore a person's stuff - does that work gridwise?

They pay someone to take a copy of their offensive item and rez it superimposed on the original - now we have a new answer to the question "how can I make money?" so often asked by new residents Assistant Land Extortionist, has a nice ring to it.

That's the idea, yes.


So basically, pay people to wind up on ban / ignore lists?

The ban ignore lists in effect now are not very long. You are proposing that the display procedure search a possibly very long list banned list for every item displayed before it can be rendered.

Object rendering is slow enough as it is.

Why not a mute parcel list, only the terrain shows for parcels youi choose to mute?

Muting specfic textures, muting by owner, muting by creator, and muting by parcel aren't new ideas, nor is the idea that SL differs from the internet by virtue of locality.

Although I would LOVE to have a way to filter out certain people's objects, SL renders by clip, so we're talking about a BIG code change here, if it's even possible.

What we need is for LL to treat the impeach griefer like a griefer. But then they've protected griefers in the past that are still inworld today. So, never mind.

I like the possibility of offense. I like the possibility of the unknown or even ugliness. I don't want a sterile world where only those things that we agree with or like actually appear. Personalities, character and even art itself is created by stimulating our senses and our minds and imaginations.

Let's have a world where if you buy the land, you can build what you want. Offend me. I'm ok with that.

Mind you I'm not talking about griefing, such as coming to my land and disrupting an event, or hassling me, or even making racist or hate speech statements. I'm just talking about you expressing what you want to express on your land, and I'll do the same on mine, and we will let some pixelated god sort it all out.

I'm not opposed to the idea of filtering by owner, but I suspect the overhead would be excessive, plus able to overcome.

The internet actually does have "locality", it has perfect locality, every website has a distinct URL, and you only see the URL you have chosen to see. You only see the Porno site adjacent to your Sunday School site it you have multiple windows displayed on the screen at one time by choice. In other words, contiguity by choice.

Contiguity by choice in SL would mean being able to move your land. Instead of one grid, subgrids formed by people who chose to have their land adjacent to each other.

In the context of present SL, surely it would be simpler for people with Impeach George Bush signs and such next to their land to be able to block view of parcels.

Although as soon as you make it where you can't see what someone is saying or displaying, they will change their sign to target you with something derisive to you that you won't be able to see.

This is what happens when you mute asomeone so you can't see their chat - when you arrive at a public site where they are present, they call you every name and make every false allegation about about you possible, and you don't know, and wonder why no one else speaks to you.

That might be a decent intermediate idea, but I think we need to look at a way to mute a person entirely. It may need to be something done on the client end, perhaps.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the source code, so I can't tell you exactly how I would do implement it. Remember, though, that I did say that LL has mentioned this as a goal; I would imagine that they are thinking of a solution for it.


Yeah, I totally realize that. The amount of code to be changed should not dissuade us from having Linden Lab implement something good / correct.


My blog is a technology blog. While this may be a reasonable approach today, it's unscalable. We need scalable, technological solutions to griefing.

So building what you want on your land, within the ToS, is griefing nowadays? Sheesh. I'm gonna go buy some diapers for a whole bunch of folks.

There have always been builds folks didn't like next to thier land, and as time passes things change.

So is wearing plaid with floral patterns griefing now too?

No it's not, David. That's not what I'm saying; people should have a right to ignore other people. Period.

Well...you can hang out at a different area and ignore them all you want. Do you get to ignore folks in real life when they paint thier house some pea green color? Do you get to ignore them when they wear thier pants with the waist band around thier knees? Do you get to ignore much of anything?

If you are paying for land within SL on any mainland sim (not a private island) then you had best expect that something wonderful, something mundane, something hideous or nothing at all might sprout up next to you. Come on guys..at least some of you are older than me and should know this stuff.

Should you be able to get them busted if they insult you, actually actively grief you, threaten you, shoot you, harass you or come on your land and make an ass of themselves? Sure you should! Should you be able to sterilize half of SL cause it doesn't fit into your "vision" of the perfect pixelated world? Hell no! Take the good with the bad. Chew on it all. Really. Sit on your porch and point at those signs and chuckle and visit and relax. Buy a Seburo and take a few shots at them for fun. Build a wall of greenery, or giant Karl Rove pictures.

When it's taking sims 10 minutes to rez for me (and I have a smoking PC and and Video card) and clothes can sometimes never rez completely for me, why would, or should, LL spend more than 2 seconds on some guys signs on his own land? Most of us have weathered far worse.

No, you can't hang out somewhere else when it's land you own. There are plenty of cases where people own land for a long time... and then "the neighbor" moves in.

In real life, there are more consequences to your actions if you do something stupid with your land. There are also zoning laws, community boards, and painting a house a certain color certainly does not compare with the gamut of possibilities SL provides. The analogy with RL land just does not work.

The better analogy is the Internet. On the Internet, if you don't want to deal with someone, you can ignore them.


But why? Why should people have an unknown experience. The idea that someone has to pay $1250 down and $200 a month just to have a more controlled environment is absurd. In the real world, you can get web space in a controlled environment for less than $10 a month. Why should SL roll back the clocks?

Also, consider you may want to ignore someone's build for many reasons:
- taking pictures
- ugly build
- the build is laggy
- you want it to have a lonely, isolated feeling as part of the ambiance of the build.

These are all technical reasons that have nothing to do with griefing, but which benefit from my proposal.

Of course, the rules against that predate SL by centuries at least.

Allowing people to mute stuff they don't like to see doesn't deprive you of your ability to see what you don't like to see.

What, we all see stuff just because you want us to?

Funny, most courts can distinguish between greek art and porn.

Can we not distinguish between personal expression and extortion?



This is a pitch-black shade of grey.


BAN someone willing to grief all of SL with lurid political signs. Now.

Yes! You are forced to see everything...the good, the bad and the ugly! If I could I'd tape every person's eyelids open! Land on a cluttered ugly little plot of SL land and roam around it. breathe it in. This is SL. It's not Utopia, it's not Nirvana, it's not OZ...it's SL..where everyone gets a chance to throw something up. Damn...Giant toilets ring a bell? Vampre castles? Floating porno anime art galleries? Square, ugly litte malls? Newbie cabins? Funny, non-PC correct builds, signs and sculptures?

You guys are getting so...umm..I dunno...maybe elitist or snobbish? Come down in the muck with me and let's get all bleeding textures, neon and spinney!

Please note where I say that this is a completely unscalable solution to the problem.

I'm discussing a longer-term, technical solution, not some short-term fix. You can go lynch the "Impeach Bush" guy in another thread, TYVM.

And I say BAN everyone that builds something I don't like. I don't like pink. Ban all builds that use pink. I don't like black walls, so let's ban all black walls. I think the person selling outfits next to my land, with that BIG advertisement above the shop is extorting me, so let's ban them. In fact, I think more than one dance club or popular spot has caused me lag...so it's extortion, so let's ban them all!!!

Ah, but shutting off offensive objects is unscaleable.

What to do when everyone can say 'if you don't like it just shut it off'?


Now you've got hundreds of spamming alts for each player to deactivate. SL looks like a blizzard of trash to new users, and they flee.


On the other hand, 'lay the smack down' on a few key perpetrators, and you'd be surprised how fast news of that would travel. Beautifully scaleable!


Core issue: Using code to enforce ethics can and always will be gamed.

Well, no. I disagree. If someone's spamming, that's a TOS violation and, in theory, backed up by anti-spammer laws. Also, Linden Lab aims to restrict alts to about 5 per person.

I think the case of someone creating hundreds of alts is definitely an outlier - and will have to be dealt with. But allowing people to ignore or turn off objects on a parcel basis has many common uses that would not spawn alts.

For example, again - if my neighbor has a party going on, perhaps I may turn off viewing his land so that I don't have to deal with the lag. My neighbor certainly wouldn't need hundreds of alts in that case.


Well, again, the 100s of alts guy is one of those "smack down" people. But again ... as SL expands, the criteria for whom to lay the smackage will have to get more and more specific.


Incorrect.

Using rules to enforce ethics will be gamed by those who "walk the line". Again, realize the whole "Impeach Bush" thing is a borderline issue - we're not dealing with clear cut cases.

*passes you a torch*

Ok, let's get started!


The point is, while no limits may be just fine for you - it is new users that decide if this world is beautiful and compelling, or a dungheap.

Ultimately, anything discouraging new business so effectively as the signs *will* be excised.

I'm just wondering what reason they will use when they finally do it.

I don't really mind the feature you are proposing, but quite frankly, I and a lot of others see the current sign situation as anything but borderline.

But it doesn't matter what I think. New user retention is what is going to matter, and that will set the borderline.

However liberal or authoritarian it may end up being, we shall soon see.

By borderline, I mean borderline along the rules that LL has established.

It's definitely not a borderline case in the *spirit* of the rules.


Agreed

eagerly awaits the ll sign action analysis thread.

I think the sign builder is a fairly new user.