Something important, with no punchline or genital humor

I believe the punishment was a three-day suspension, for putting the thread regarding J-Wu, which was a joke between J-Wu and Ulrika, as I understand it, and as I read it.

I agree the protest process Ulrika went through here was iffy in its execution. The problem is, once you put it all in context, what you have is the stronger punishment happening primarily because of protest to the first, unfair suspension. So, more important here, I think, is the fact that LL actions can be seen as classically repressive.

Also, I can't see inviting people to talk on the forums, then punishing them when they do by taking away their game privileges as well.

coco

P.S. What Margaret said!

Are we customers, or criminals?

"I am a well paid, well-educated professional, with a fantastic job working with briiliant people."


So?

hang out at work and enjoy the power then.

OK, was it a suspension inworld or a forum suspension? The other thing to consider when you're talking about the severity is that if you didn't know what the history of the joke was, you didn't know they were friends, and you came on that thread cold, it looked really offensive and mean. Yeah, it was a joke in the end, but the forums aren't meant to be a personal playground either...I think. You could have everyone posting rude stuff about other people and claiming it off as a joke, but that's just annoying and it would be a nightmare to moderate.



Again, the protest she decided to undertake was not only highly questionable in its execution (to the point of being a violation of forum rules in and of itself), but also violated the no-reposting of locked threads rule. There's no benefit to posting a new thread complaining about your old one being locked except to add more fuel to the fire. There isn't a single mod that would look at that and go, "you know, you're right, and despite you doing what we clearly ask you not to in order to keep some semblance of order, we're going to change our minds, our bad". There are plenty of ways to protest something like that. Their effectiveness may not be what she wanted, but none of them would have resulted in added time to her suspension. The only thing her protest was ever going to result in was more problems for her, and it was made pretty clear right from the outset that that would occur.



You're vastly oversimplifying the situation at hand. Try adding in "after repeated violations of the rules they ask you to follow in order to participate". However, I agree that forum ban should not necessarily equate to an inworld ban.

Even a simple forum ban can cause you major problems in-world.

Lewis

So the rules are, if one is simply doing parody (as a means of protest), everything is allowed?

Hmm...

Yes, so do I.

Don't know about "rules" but how about some recommendations?

If in doubt, ask. I've seen it stated to pm a resmod directly with questions regarding their actions. I recommend that. In the same vein, a resmod is allowed to communicate any questions he may have, no?

Another idea is that if an interpretation is found to be incorrect, as in a missed joke or parody, then try this

"Never mind "
I recommend admitting a misstep.

This is certainly absurd.

Panda, I so expected a big "PSYCH" as soon as I opened this thread. On the matter of rl vs sl disparity: Doesn't seem strange. In fact everyone I can think of is in some way very much the opposite of themselves between the two worlds.

edit: oooh ooh! this leads to an interesting idea... KEEP ADULTS OFF THE MAIN GRID, the damn griefers, the kids are fine, they act more grown up in sl than the adults do .

Didn't you invent the Internet too?

So how are the kangaroo trials coming along in Neufreistadt since you suspended the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there? I hear you did it to prevent being charged with denying someone due process.

Justice and accountability are very hard to come by in SL. All the antigovernment rants in the forum from two years ago are proving to be quite prophetic. Individuals recognized then, that users in positions of power without accountability, whether it's in a role-playing governmental sim or in the forums, will lead to the criminalization of fellow customers. We are seeing moderation tools being used to shrink the forums to include only a corporate-normal population.

I seldom agree with Ulrika. But what she has a point here. This "feeling like a child" is typical for any society with some almighty non-democratic government. It is all good, big brother daddy dictator king will take care of you, just behave nicely, we are all stupid little children who would just hurt each other but good government is here to protect us from ourselves and so on.

Ulrika probably has huge frustration in SL, being used to live in democratic country. I have lived long enough in the People's Republic of China, so for me here it is just the business as usual

Seriously, why don't people get together and develop some practical suggestions that would allow Lindens to promote us to "adult" status in this virtual world? We all know that "one alt one vote" will not work in virtual worlds. I believe "one sqm one vote" would though. The question is "Whose world? - whose imagination?". IMHO the answer is simple: it should be those who pay for it every month.

the only solution is for LL to release the servers. doubtful this will happen

though, who knows, this gambling thing may force their hand....

I just hope the island owners don't get ****ed in the process of that happening.

well shit, its getting cold in hell cuz anshe is making perfect sense to me

nice post anshe

We agree on two things. I support the one m^2 one vote principle as well.

Actually, the Steve Martin dentist character working on the masochistic Bill Murray patient is from the movie version of the musical "Little Shop of Horrors," one of my all-time faves.

Don't mind my compulsive correctivity, and do please carry on with the thread; it's rather entertaining, in that forum-drama-ful way we've all come to know and, er, love. ("Feed me, Seymour! Feed me ALL NIGHT LOOONNNNNGGGG!!" )

This is the second seperate "Steve Martin as the evil dentist" reference I've had today - someone sent me this video link and the guy looks JUST like him.

Awaiting evil dentist trifecta so I can hide under the bed tonight.

Does one sq.m. one vote mean two sq.m. two votes, and so on?

Such a fantastic idea! I'm sure that the fact that it would benefit you, personally, immensely is sheer coincidence, right?

It benefits all of us immensively.

If you have shares in some company, you also wouldn't want to give up the idea of shareholder votes just because somebody else owns more shares than you?

*Shudders* at the thought that our votes for anything would be tied to our landholdings per square meter.....nice try Anshe

*giggles till she pees*

But wait....'votes' mean a democracy.....

This is not a democracy ladies and gents.

If we are not happy we have the option to leave at any time.

I enjoy the varied personalities on the forums but it astounds me that so many intelligent folks here think that they can REALLY dictate how things will go down....it's an illusion.

Granted.........an illusion perpetrated by LL, ONLY because they are, or were, attempting to be user friendly and felt beholden to many.

But I suspect they are now seeing that the permissive attitude is only causing angst and strife and a sense of entitlement.

Too many people think they get to put their finger in the pie and stir.

Permissive attitude?

We are what, bad children?

You may be right in that - as I would put it - they perhaps began without a clear dea of how to run forums, were too unclear about their rules, and thought it more "human" to apply them or not apply them depending on how they felt about the individuals.

I can see that starting off with a not very good idea of what you are doing, or firm rules, is a good way to then end up with problems.

BUT. This is a company; we ARE the customers. The forums is supposed to exist for us.

We are not the enemy; we are not criminals, or children. We are customers. Unfair treatment of customers is going to lead to unhappy customers.

Fair and evenhanded, unbiased moderation, based on clear rules, and moderated over by someone other than other residents like ourselves given far too much influence would seem to me reasonable requirements. Other forums manage it, so I don't think it is too much to ask.

If they dropped the part about forum punishments extending automatically to in-game punishments, I wouldn't mind having volunteer resmods. As it is, the stakes are way too high, and I resent other customers having this power over us.

coco

I in turn do not often agree with Anshe, but she is absolutely dead on here. Very well said, Anshe. If they can let children into SL without giving a fuck no matter how loud the protests, then they can certainly be equally hands off with us. The first thing that needs to go is the resmod program. There is way too much power tripping going on there, when these CUSTOMERS should never be in any kind of a position of power over the rest of us and when they allow several people to remain in the resmod program that have business being there. Argh, I could say a lot more. I am too tired at the moment to articulate my thoughts further, but I will post more later. Free Ulrika! Free Anshe too, in case she gets in trouble for speaking out.