Claiming Avatars Are Alts Is OK, says Robin Linden

I don't agree with your interpretation at all.

lies!

That's not what your other avatars have been saying.

OMFG LOL THATS SO FUNNY BECAUSE NOW YOU'RE ACCUSING HIM OF BEING AN ALT LOLOLOLOL





...

I think if people are harassing me on their "main" and the alt, then I am going to out them and report them both, and I have


Are adults really supposed to play dumb to some idiot with an alt who isn't even smart enough to change their writing style and idiotic enough to sign their original fake main name to the alt account and except no one to catch on and also for everyone to call them by the alts name when they know damn well they arent that alt. I mean we know a few people have done it because their main is banned, but that sounds like a personal problem and the rest of us aren't required to give a damn.

I suspect there are a fair number of people here who enjoy having multiple avatars so that they can enjoy pretending to be different characters with very different traits. They don't' get to make statements to this effect,of course, because that would be giving away the secret they enjoy having. Their enjoyment of the accounts they paid for, assuming they started their accounts back when they were judged to be worth paying for, would be eliminated if it becomes known that NumberCrunching Businessman is the same person as Airhead Jones.

It seems that the owners of the company have decided that using different accounts for playing different roles is not how they want their product to be used, and that those who invested in the creation of distinct roles are just out of luck if someone has figured them out.

This decision means it is ok to make accusations about althood you know are false and harmful out of malice. You can accuse your business competitors of being alts of known troublemakers. You can accuse you ex lovers of being alts of someone they would not want to be associated with. The claims don't have have to have merit; as Robin says, you might be wrong.

You used all caps and some acronyms. You must be some kind of comedic genius. I am rolling in the aisles at how funny you are.

It's bad, really; it's the aisles at the grocery store, people are looking at me funny.

I just wanted to bring this fantastic post back up. Good funny.

When LL figures out whether it should be the husband or wife who is worthy of posting, someone let me know.

In your case the answer is clear. The wife.

Where is Jake Reitveld when I need him?

There is a flip side to this, part of which Sherianne summarized well when she wrote:

"This decision means it is ok to make accusations about althood you know are false and harmful out of malice. You can accuse your business competitors of being alts of known troublemakers. You can accuse you ex lovers of being alts of someone they would not want to be associated with. The claims don't have have to have merit; as Robin says, you might be wrong."

That's one part of it. Open season on anybody and everybody you don't like. That makes for a nice free-for-all, doesn't it? With truth sucking the hind teat, such that newcomers know not what to believe, and finally just decide to pick a side and believe it. Great.

The other part of it is people sincerely believing that avatar A and avatar B are alts, and maintaining such repeatedly and despite the protests of avatars A and B that it isn't true.

At some point that stops being quite so sincere, but let's stick with the sincere angle. In other words, people aren't insisting that person A is person B (or C, or D) out of hostility when they know perfectly well it's not true. They are insisting person A is person B because they are CERTAIN it's true.

But . . . it isn't true!

Do you have any idea the sort of grief and misery that causes person A? And maybe person B?

That is the flip side of it.

Now I need Jake Reitveld to explain it with some analogy I can't think of that would make it legally and morally clear to you why these sorts of accusations are wrong. Something about you need to set the bar high enough so the innocent are rarely condemned, even if that means letting a few of the guilty off scot-free.

Or, in this case, even if it means people have to grit their teeth and not mention that they are positive someone is actually someone else. That minor annoyance is by far preferable to the ongoing and unremitting persecution of individuals that occurs when people are actually MISTAKEN about a supposedly "obvious" alt.

Or maybe he would say something about people being able to make false statements willy-nilly that their subjects can't possibly prove false without revealing real life info about both themselves and another player.

Then I need Robin to see the same thing.

coco

Despite all of the "humerous quips" in this thread there are some good points being made. Despite what anyones opinion is, though, it is still illegal to reveal any first life information about anyone. If you out an alt you are only asking for trouble and I still haven't seen a valid reason for anyone doing so besides personal satisfaction or perhaps a demonstration of their cleverness.

I'm the alt of








MYSELF



yes. shocking but true. I feel better now that I shared that.

omfg u figured us out gurl! we so busteeed omzgzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ROFL ^.^ *CRIES*

It'd be an interesting natural language problem to detect if too people are the same writers.

You would be surprised at how many people can do this mentally

Perhaps, but still, a web page where we could take two posts and then have it spit out some score.

I think that'd be interesting.

Anyways, is this the beginning of the end for alts? Is SL becoming alt unfriendly?


Can we start outing Linden alts in the forums?

Actually, this is great, I can take my huge IP address database and start outing everyone.

<manical laughter>

Too many "o"'s in "too" above?

Did you meant the number two, or more than two, as in "too many."

My vote is on the wife too.

That's a tough desicion there, I would miss seeing Jonquille post awesome new clothes but Siggy makes me snort soda occasionally.

It may also be surprising to some how so many people can be so WRONG about deciding that two posters are the same person based on their language style.

But it happens.

coco

Oh, don't worry, coco, when you're a tekkie there are far more objective ways to gather information about people
See blaze's post for one.

Easy to say. But at one point I was begging Pathfinder to take that techie route and CHECK the damn IP's and let people know for once and for all that I was a separate individual. Maybe he didn't see my plea. I was unaware at the time that the message boards weren't always read.

It took Ingrid finally vouching for me to make any difference.

You know, I was once totally convinced of something, along with everybody else around me. I'm thinking of a specific case regarding one my kids and her friend that I can't go into and have to talk about obliquely. EVERY sign pointed to it. EVERYONE agreed. It was the only sensible thing to think. It was the OBVIOUS thing. EVERYONE agreed.

After a week, we were able to get the answer from the kid herself: No, it wasn't true. Immediately I believed her. No problem with believing her. And so did everyone else. Educated, professional people working professionally on our behalf. All believed her, and believed her friend.

It just hadn't been the case. It just wasn't! She said so. Even though we had no proof at that point, we believed her. And as time went on, and more information was able to become available, it was proven clearly NOT the case and had never been. Now, we weren't all stupid to have thought it was the case - anybody with any sense would have thought so - yet we were all WRONG.

Moral of the story: Lacking proof, you must take the person's word for it. If the person is in your opinion a morally bankrupt one, then you can just tell yourself he's lying and go on believing what you like. But lacking proof, you must SHUT UP about it.

If, on the other hand, you don't know that person is a morally bankrupt one, you would do better to take that person's word for it. Most of the time, you will be proven right to have done so.

In any case, it makes no sense to keep flogging someone - whether you know them well or not - that something they say they KNOW isn't true, IS true. Just because you are sure it is, and so are all the intelligent people around you. Because you could be wrong. The entire court system is set up that way.

And a message board system shouldn't allow that sort of thing to go on, much less for months, because there is no way the person can prove he's telling the truth. PLUS there is no way the other posters can check the IP's to determine the truth for themselves. Without a clear policy against this, 46 people can keep telling everyone else not to believe that individual indefinitely, and that individual has no way to protect himself and prove he's telling the truth.

If, in addition, if it is also the case that the only people who could put an end to the speculation - people running the boards themselves - refuse to check the IP's and thereby uphold the person's actual humanity and basic right to exist (or perhaps the IP's themselves wouldn't be total proof), then it is clear this new "ruling" by Robin is grossly unfair. It offers posters no possible defense against libel, while allowing libel free run.

coco

This post makes no sense whatsoever. The last long winded one didn't either.

I didn't even read it, but it looks like someone forgot to take her meds
Jesus, how can people even find the *time* to write these things.