Do ALTS make player governments impossible?

Fascinating town hall. Couple of questions went unanswered, but I'll assume they were just overlooked as I'm feeling friendly

However, a point was brought up:



Now, in a democratic society .. how do you deal with ALTs that can vote twice?

Will players be willing to give up their identities to participate in a player government?

How do you deal with dispute resolution when someome may be using ALTs to manipulate the outcome?

Other possibilities: do ALTs have to go? Or do we have to accept that player governments are impossible?

Alts are easily tracked. LL knows who we are and what characters we control. Just like first land ...you can't buy it with your main and then go and buy it with an alt because the system knows that the alt is under your account.

If a voting system were in place it would recognize who you are by your account making sure you can only vote once.

This does possibly leave open someone buying in under a different credit card # and or name...but I seriously doubt enough people would do that to infuence the outcome of a particular vote.

This is a very interesting topic, lets take it straight to the extremes and see what we get..

First off we have a declaired user base of approx 17,000 and an alt limitation of 5 per credit card. So at one extreem we get a public vote on some burning issue and said user votes 5 times with his alts. It really isn't going to make that much difference, 5 votes in 17,000. But what if everyobody did that? Well the more people that vote with alts, the less effect is gained by doing it. Again the extreem, everyone has 5 alts, and so 5 votes.. that is the same as everyone having just one vote, but takes 5 times longer to count..


At the other end we have a small comunity situation. Imagine it's 3 years from now, LL maintain the server hardware but everything else is controlled by users within SL. A legal system is in place and Joe473 is in trouble for griefing.. He needs a laywer, so he hires his alt.. A jury is chosen at random from the comunity residents, but of the 30 sent IMs, only 15 reply, 3 don't show on the day due to login problems and 7 of the remainder are alts of Joe473. (though of course no one knows this...) You think Joe473 is gonna get a fair trial? Well what about the Judge? Yes, he an atl of Joe as well... Looks like Joe can get away with murder... but hold on, who is that in the prosecution chair? No surely not.... another alt of Joe473... So not only is Joe the defendent and defence, Judge and jury, but also the prosecution....

A little far fetched you may say. But this of course comes about because Joe473 himself is an alt.... an alt of the land owner who uses them to gain extra dwell and stipends to pay for his land tier....

So would alts make self governing impossible? I think they'd make it 'interesting'

Maybe the solution is having a new type of group, similar to the regular type, but only 1 unique person allowed in the group at a time.

Good idea. Now go post it in feature request while I patent it.

LL most definately knows who the alts are. A *certain jessian* was banned, and had something like... seven alt accounts. Couldn't get on any of em.

One problem I see with self governance is that not every account in Second Life is one stake holder of the same level.

In real-life we all live our lifes in our country. So everybody who is involved ultimately has his/her life at stake.

However, in Second Life there are some people with huge emotional investment, financial investment or time investment, people with reputation at stake whom one can call true stakeholders with a lot to loose and much at stake. While at same time you have, on the other extreme, alt accounts and people on free acounts who maybe just log in once per month.

This situation leads to the valid question of how fair would it be to have some one-vote-per-account democracy in Second Life?

I could easily construct one example of how this could go badly wrong.

Mmmm, is anybody familiar with the big raid guilds? Well, let me explain you. There is some player organisations who enjoy raiding games. They choose one game, pick one server and invade this server with very massive force, several hundred people at once. Their goal is to take over the economy or whatever can be taken over there, then grief everybody, ruin everything and then move on to next game. And they are smart. They are nice and friendly at first, then become the horror once they established themselves on one server.

Could you imagine what they could do to a self-governed democratic SL community?

Lets imagine we have one raid guild called H.A.T.E. They have 200 members and decide to take over Neualtenburg or even all of Second Life. Each member makes 5 accounts, so that is 1000 votes. But since they are real powergamers and well organized they decide that each member asks 4 relatives/friends to setup more accounts. So we have 5000 accounts, for which each member paid about 100$ if you substract the referal bonus. That is how much raiders usually invest for game and startup items on a server they invade.

Everybody will be happy about 5000 new subscribers! They will be welcome with open arms. Of course nobody know they all are members and alts from H.A.T.E. Then comes whatever election and H.A.T.E. will make sure that each and every of their 5000 accounts votes for exactly the issue/candidate they want. Mmmm, yes. Until all of the great self-government is H.A.T.E.rs and finally the H.A.T.E. flag is officially raised above the ruins of Neualtenburg.

Sound like fun, hmmm? I am sure for a raid guild it is! They don't even have to level up a character. They just subscribe before whatever election, log in for election and take over Oh, and all the whining and screaming of people will give them that really special rush

P.S.: Even if we have some group that enforces only one member per credit card, in this example H.A.T.E. would still show up with one force of 1000 accounts while not having to invest more than a few hours of talking to relatives and going through sign-ups.

Linden Lab does not know who alts are. They know who owns the credit card on which player accounts are based -- that is all. There are a number of instances in Second Life where more than one player uses a single credit card -- for all sorts of reasons, legitimate or perhaps not.

The only way to get around this is to tie player "rights" to ownership of a credit card, and limit rights to one account by both name and credit card -- in other words, I get one account with rights by my real life name, on one of my credit cards only. Other accounts I might create on the card, or on my other cards, or that might be used by others with my permission -- would have no rights. Which is an interesting redefinition -- In RL such rights used to be based on ownership of land, then on "natural law" and birthplace, and now, in a virtual world, perhaps, on personal credit. And two classes of accounts would be created, based on personal credit -- those with rights, and those without.

And that goes to show that government in Second Life will -- by definition -- have to be very different from real life. And it also goes to show that before you can begin to think about process or form of government, you have to understand such concepts as "accounts", "rights", "responsibities", etc.

Not to bang the same drum again....

I think players make player governments impossible - but this may be a minority view.

This is a very good point.
Neil and I have our main accounts, one alt apiece for when we want to be IW and have some privacy, and then there is a fifth account- this one belongs to a longtime friend who I absolutely adore, and started picking up the sl tab for over 6 months ago.
This person doesnt even live in the same nation as me, much less the same city, niehgborhood, house, or corporal entity.
I suppose we could put each individual account (and its alt, in the case of neil and myself) on its own card, if we had three cards laying around. But we dont.

If any changes in regards to alternate accounts go into place, I sincerely hope that they consider the legit uses of alts and dont punish people who have done nothing WRONG with thier alts because a few others use them to game as hard as they can.
I also hope that they can find a solution that allows users with multiple people's accounts on one card to still function as the individual players that they are.
Any solution that doesnt accomodate those two factors is punishing the wrong people.

Can we swap some tongue and grok each other if ever we should meet, Donovan?

- Ace

awww, how sweet. i hope you both grok fully

Not quite true, they know something, surely.

For example, I once started an alt, and left him/her on the orientation island and joked with newcomers that I had been stranded there, banned from the rest of SL.

Immature maybe, but it was fun.

Then while talking to someone there, I noticed a Linden appear behind me, I quickly logged off.

Later I logged in as Damien Fate to receive an IM immediately from the linden that saw my avatar requesting I removed my alt from orientation island ^_^

Anshe Chung

However, in Second Life there are some people with huge emotional investment, financial investment or time investment, people with reputation at stake whom one can call true stakeholders with a lot to loose and much at stake. While at same time you have, on the other extreme, alt accounts and people on free acounts who maybe just log in once per month.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Surely one person one vote (OPOV) is the standard for all democratic countries. I am totally against what you are suggesting.

I am neither a big business person on SL, nor am I an alt and I have a premium account. I am against resident government anyway, but this would tip me over the edge.

Latonia

I assure you buying gift certificates for lifetime accounts can get you more than 5 alts per credit card.

an alt for every 9.95 you want to spend.

And in this way I dont believe they can be traced back to the card holder.

I wasn't actually referring to a vote type of situation. I was thinking more about the need for a dispute resolution system, and how impossible that would be without all the players involved in a dispute (not just the Lindens) knowing who everyone is.

OK.. let's say we have a dispute arbitration board with players serving on it. And let's say that this board has the power to make binding decisions (supported by the Lindens) on matters brought before it.

OK. my main Surreal ends up serving on the board and a matter is brought before it concerning a couple of players with a significant stake of time and money riding on it. Everyone knows what a fair and honest avatar Surreal is () The disputants are fine with the arbiters sitting on the board and agree to go forward, but what they don't know is I have an alt, MegaBitch, who I keep handy to do anything hateful or annoying... and one of the disputants is on MegaBitch's shit list. So Surreal, driven by MegaBitch's agenda manipulates the other arbiters to twist the board' decision to reflect my personal agenda.

And that doesn't even cover just plain old bias. Do you really suppose it would be possible for Anshe to get a fair "trial" in a player based arbitration system?

Oh, and it is simply not very hard to get a credit card in an alternate name.

Surreal

Neph: Thank you.

Damien: I don't see the point. LL has no way of knowing whether I allow a good RL friend of mine to use my credit card to establish and pay for an account -- or whether it's me and my alt. They may suspect, but that's not enough to distinguish for the purposes of a policy about alts.

Ace: You get enough tongue exercise on the forums. And I made the mistake of reading Starship Troopers -before- I read Stranger in a Strange Land, so I only grok with my laser pulse rifle and combat armor. Perhaps you'd be interested in sharing my pain and glory, Citizen?

Credit cards arn't the only way.
IP's can be checked- Neph, in the case of your friend in another country, the IP will be completely different.

Even if you have a dynamic IP, they'll always be in the same IP range.
So, basically, the only issue would be two people in the same household.

He took the words right out of my mouth.

Ip ranges can be quite huge. There are several thousand households on my ISP.

I don't think it's so much alts that make it impossible - but how you may define an alt - and with human nature.

Every scenario I can think of would impact someone negatively.

If alts are valid - them someone with 4 other alts has 5 times more voting power than someone that doesn't. And thats only assuming someone used a single credit card to create them... someone with multiple cards.......

You see where it leads -- he with the most RL financial clout gets to sway the vote.

One account per CC --- is my vote more important than my wifes? or vice versa?

Land owners only (one that was suggested a while back) ... what was that figure? 15%? Talk about disenfranchisement!

Some on this thread suggest that maybe their vote is worth more than others because of financial and emotional investment..... by what metric do we judge that? Your investment is a very personal thing.. and if it's possible to measure and quantify that - it's possible to game.

And gaming the system is exactly what will happen - no matter what happens - because it's human nature to want your own way - to look out for number 1.. The extent people will do that when it comes to the internet and games in general is amazing.

People will want to look out for their own interests - no matter what.

Siggy.

I would consider it strange if one person were roleplaying under the guise of several different ALTS, each of which had a different outlook on their Second Life -- and different political/religious/other beliefs. This hypothetical person would then have their ALTS vote against each other.

Strange, I know.

You know I wouldn't consider the situation strange -- but I can make a very very sure bet that when it came time to vote for something, strangely they'd all vote the same way

On a MUD I used to code for I was asked to make a feature for level advancement. Someone could only advance if they reached a requisite number of player votes.. agreeing they had played the game 'in character'

Luckily I also put in a logging feature with this..

No gold star award to guess what happened here -- someone would level and instantly (within 2 minutes) the requisite number of players would vote positively -- all from the same IP address! There were honest people out there as well - but they were the minority - the exception to the rule.

Usually the desire to gain what you want overrides the fun of roleplaying different characters.

Siggy.

Hahaha... Siggy, that's such a funny story.

And, that's a superb and concise way to put it.

Sure breaks "being in character", eh?

I totally agree with you Anshe, and it is in fact a huge dilemma.

Is the opinion/vote on the future or current isues on SL from a person who is say, on a $40,$75,$125 tier, with $1000 DLS+ 'invested' in the game, and who spend 20+ hours a week have the same weight as a person with a $9.95 lifetime account that logs in once a week for an hour?

In a perfect world, it shouldn't matter how much you own or how much you produce or participate, we are all equal. But in reality, does it?

Maybe someone can come up with an ultra-secret algorithm that takes into account all contributions to the game, not simply monetary, and base the weight of his/her/it's vote based on that.

This would take care of the ALT vote issue. If you have an ALT but it does not contribute to SL society, then its vote or voice would be worth very little.

- T -