What a wonderful thing to wake up to!

Well, you are correct Chip, however until the changes are made to the feature, I see the public edit land option granting the required permission. Until LL fixes it, or puts it in the newby greeting note, and adds it blatently to the community standards... I just can not agree with punishing anyone over the matter.

Right now, there are NO rules for a new player to follow on editing land. Even in the instructor notcard for land editing it says something along the lines of Public editable land is land anyone can edit, anyone could make anything from a mountain to a river, so becareful with this feature.

This is no slip-up. This is a feature that has to be turned on by the owner, thus granting permission for anyone (public = anyone) to make changes. This is the way it is right now, and until it is fixed I can not agree with anyone being punished unless intent is proven.

By slip-up, I mean that the creator/owner made a mistake, not that it's a bug. I have had players give me rights to modify their objects (maybe by mistake or they forgot to remove the permission once I was done doing whatever they wanted me to do). This does not mean that I will go and take apart their builds, take all their objects on their land, raise their land sky-high or any other sort of behavior that I know would be wrong. So in my opinion, the person that did this either had bad intentions or had the common sense of a rock.

How is it wrong if you are granted permission. Permission tells me I can do it, because I was told by the person who owns it that I could.



This is an unfair comment. As I have stated before, it is possible they were messing around, learning, and they lost connection to SL. Is that not a possibility? I do not see how a person's common sense or lack of could possibly be tied to this.

This is the problem, checking the box gives blatent permission to anyone who wants to edit to do so. This needs to be fixed.

Glad to hear the griefer will be caught and the land can be rolled back.

I agree with the other requests for better land-editing permissions. In the world of new feature requests, there are "nice to haves" (we all have our favorites) and "what were they thinking?" which I think this definitely qualifies as, since it's a security issue. Wanting to let other people work on your land is a pretty normal situation. Having to let *everybody* modify your land to let *anybody* do it creates a pretty big security hole.

Just my 2 jiao,

Neko

Sio, I feel really badly for what happened to you, but I tend to agree with Vade on this, and I felt much the same way when the Great Quake of '04 happened.

It's a permissions system, and what happened is the Worst Case Scenario if you leave your permissions opened. Until there is a better permissions management system in place, responsiility lies with the landowner to lock down their assets. Someone did the worst thing that they could with the permissions that you gave them.

If I were LL, I would handle this by sending a form letter to the person who did it, asking them to respect the builds of others; possibly by providing their name to the property owner so that the avatar could be banned; Roll back the server for the private island owner, and possibly charge them a fee for the extra work required. The rollback fee would be to sort of let the landowner know that "Hey, we want to help you out, yes this sucks, but it's what happens when you leave your permissions open. HR manhours are expensive, and you're not paying quite what we would charge to work for you on an hourly basis, but next time be more careful with what's yours; if we weren't willing to rollback you'd have to rebuild from scratch." Maybe $50 or $100 for a rollback fee, which is the same I believe ($100), as is charged to transfer an island sim to a new owner.

However, this is just my opinion, and since private island owners pay $1000 to set up an island, and $200 per month thereafter; and since neither I nor the terraforming "griefers" pay nearly so much to LL; and since I'm not Philip Linden;

I don't expect that my opinions on this matter will be too highly regarded by the powers-that-be. Heh.

You know, I have been thinking. There is nothing in the CS that this even violates. Allow me to explain:

Harassment
Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.

This does not fit into harassment. Read it, I do not see this as harassing.

Global Attacks
Community Standards violations which broadly interfere with or disrupt the Second Life community, the Second Life servers or other systems related to Second Life cannot be tolerated in any form. Such actions will result in a minimum two-week suspension and a review of your account for probable removal from Second Life.

This is the closest thing in the CS, and it does not even fully violate this. This did not broadly disrupt anything, 1/3 of 1 server, that is pretty minimal.

Now, I also thought of something else (my girlfriend mentioned it and I forgot to make note of this, thanks baby ). There is a new player building center in Mauve. The learning center. Is it not possible a new player rezzed a land edit script at a high enough location above your land in Mocha (for reasons undeterminable) and the land was in turn edited by this script? The land edit script can be obtained by anyone in YadNi's junkyard, and I am sure more advanced versions are out there, free for use. Could this have been a script that patrols the land and raises it? Can it be done? The answer to both of these questions is yes. Only land that has public edit on would be affected by this script.

I suggest a blatant "Vandalism" entry is made to the Community Standards concerning this issue. Until that is done, I can not agree with anyone being punished without intent being proven.

There are some obvious oversights in communication.

One of them being: even without intent proven, the person or persons who did this would likely would have noticed what happened to the land. (Unless they are as adept at missing the obvious as I am. ) They should have then contacted Sio ASAP, even sent an IM, to communicate and apologize -- if the intent was in fact NOT malicious. A simple "I screwed up your land I'm really sorry, now I want to help you fix the problems!" would have gone a long way.

It's like the time I recently crashed a sim. I waited around to see if it would reboot, but when it didn't, I waited for a Linden to come along -- I believe it was Uncle. I contacted him right away to let him know what happened. I also sent in an email to LL apologizing and letting them about the situation, and that I had in fact not gone GREEFER KIN.

The server logs shall hopefully show the way.

Good communication... ESSENTIAL.

Amen to that Torley! The lack of any apology whatsoever tells me all I need to know about the person's intent. And I personally don't care if it was an accident or not. That excuse is a bunch of liberal horseshit.

If you have an auto accident, intended or not, innocent or not, you answer for it. Same thing applies here as far as I'm concerned. And whether I leave edit on or not is irrelevant. It's like leaving my house unlocked. Might be stupid, might be risky, but it still gives you no right to come in and destroy my property. Same principle. You know whether you own the land or not, and if you don't it's blatantly obvious when your mouse stops over it. If it ain't yours, leave it the f$%k alone.

I hope the Lindens find them and hang them by their toenails.

I am sorry Torely, I could not agree with you. Why would something think they screwed up another person's land if they had permission to edit it? Think, I am a new player... I am walking around and I see this land is letting me edit it. I remeber from the Land class 101 that public editable land means I can edit it how I want to. I pull out the notecard, and expirament with some of the tools, and I think "Wow, this is great. This person sure is nice to let players like me play with his/her land." Next day I am banned for something, and I have no idea what I did wrong. I can not agree with this at all.

Torley, even if there was malicious intent, they were doing only the worst possible thing that they were given permission to do. The land owners do have the ability to prevent this by using the included system tools, and I believe that these tools, clumsy and imprecise though they are, are set to "closed" permissions by default, at least in regards to terraforming. If a landowner opens them up, and fails to close them again, they are saying "Anyone has permission to terraform this land, and oh-by-the-way, it's a private sim, so it's VASTLY terraformable".

Yah, it sucks that this happened.

Yah, the person was an asshat, probably worse than that, considering the collective amount of work/effort that they were reversing.

Yah, they had permission to do so, given by the only resident who could: the owner.


Right now, the Lindens have time to put extra work in and fix things when they go badly like this. That's because SL is still an early, unproven and yet-to-be widely adopted interface. That's because we aren't yet running Pocket Universes on our own computers, being servers from our own homes/offices or on rented 3rd party servers. If SL has a Metaverse as its eventual goal, it's going to have to be self-managing, as much as possible.

Eventually that's going to mean a change in the TOS. It's going to mean that not everything that Lessens Your Enjoyment of the interface is, necessarily, abuse or a violation.

A big part of being new here is to learn from more experienced veterans of the gridverse, and not to boldly flail fowards and thrash around. Common courtesy applies, and this is coming from me -- who has a history of being socially impaired. Even I realize this, and have learned many lessons here. One would be wise to sit down and learn.

It's NOT a matter of thinking whether you have permission or not that gives one a right to go ahead and perform actions such as landmods.


When in doubt, ASK.


Good communication.

And by the way... even if someone was new to Second Life and enjoyed playing with Sio's land, they could have left a thank-you note.

Ah, this... in the timeline... will set a precedent for further development. I've mentioned that on the upside, there is a plus to this happening -- it brings people together in the community, and as we're discussing stuff like this, hopefully will set an example for what is to come. That's the way progress goes.

But my main issue is, of course, not with "abuse or a violation".

I'll say it again:

GOOD COMMUNICATION.

You are right, it is not a matter of thinking about permissions, when the box is checked, permissions are inherited by anyone who comes across the land. This is why I disagree with you. There is no doubt about what whether or not permissions are granted when everybody has permissions to edit.

Thanks for clarifying Vade...

These are a few of my tangential thoughts, that will spread out into further discussion . . .

There have been times, offline, when people have been robbed because they left their doors open. Ah, yes, again comes the RRL -- the Really Redundant Loop: they should have locked their doors. But just because a door is open doesn't mean it's an open house for anyone to come into and rearrange the furniture and take stuff.

Or consider the case of a a public park with beautiful flowers. Just because they're there doesn't mean everyone is entitled to take them, or even pull out clumps of grass because they are able to. I know this one all too well because I have done this, to embarassing results! Now, when I want to pick flowers, I know better... I ask.

Another matter which has recently been discussed in these very forums is the cloud around "stolen intellectual property" and someone saying "they didn't know better". If they didn't know, they didn't they take it upon themselves to be educated, and to... ask?

Or... perhaps it's reminiscent of those hairdryers with labels for the benefit of the consumer affixed to them saying:



I'm all for good instructions, and oh, when I am confused and need clarification, I do ask. And if the person I want to ask is not around, I do try to be graceful and patient. Life moves too quickly nowadays.

In SL, it is usually indicated when land is public or for public tinkering by the header at the top of the menu bar, not to mention the land description. For example: "Public terraforming sandbox." It doesn't take a lot of digging to find this out, pardon the pun.

I really don't ever remember Stonehenge looking, or even desiring to look like this:






Again, it comes down to... good communication. From one avatar... to another.

I am hopeful for further refinements to the Perms system, so that there are less logical assumptions in some cases -- and greater control over one's own land. I've discussed this with Sio. I have read some other news on the matter which I cannot discuss because I am lacking a certain amount of information, but as always, I look forward to see what happens in the future.

I do wish the best for all of us as a community. ^_^

Until then... I'll be continuing to ask questions, hoping to learn.

Vade, what do you think should be added to the Perms system specifically? What would you like to see, personally? What would make you really HAPPY?

Granted permission or capability? If I leave my keys in my car, by accident or not, I'm not explicitly granting permission to any passer-by to go for a spin, although I am allowing that capability to anyone inclined to be a car thief.

When I first read your arguments, I thought to myself how unfortunate it is that the check boxes in About Land are called "Permissions". Then I remembered; they're not. They are Options. "Permissions" is a colloquial phrase we use when discussing these things. I'm not convinced use of land options should be interpreted as licence to use someone's land as a non-Linden sandbox.

That said, I understand your reasoning. I find some ambiguity built into how a person might view another's land in this context. Given that it is ambiguous, I would hope most in SL would err towards caution.

Torley and Vestalia,

Your confusion with RL and SL amazes me. If you leave your keys in your car, and someone steals it, that is grand theft auto. If someone leaves thier house unlocked and someone enters and takes everything, that is theft. If someone goes about picking flowers from a city park, that would be vandalism. These are all very poor examples of the situation. In RL we have very clear laws, we know what we can and can not do. There is NO clear rule for this particular case. There is nothing that says it is vandalism, theft, or anything of the sort. So until there is an extremely clear "This is the rule, and this is what you CAN NOT do to publicly editable land" then I can not agree with punishing anyone.

Ah, Vade -- you didn't answer my question to you, as I am interested in hearing your thoughts + feelings about that.

These are my personal views, and I -- and I believe Vestalia also -- do not feel confused at all. This is how we view the world as unique individuals, and you would be wise to consider those views in addition to your own, because this is what I am doing for you. We, as I reiterate so often, are here to learn from each other. Consider this.

Furthermore: NO, offline, we do not have very clear laws at times. Hence, the need for legal lingo en masse, featuring courts and appeals and an entire system of processing. (Twinkie Defense?) And you didn't even ask me about more specifics about me taking flowers from the city park. I was let off with a stern but well-meaning warning from an elderly groundskeeper, going to teach me a good lesson in humanity. I was allowed to keep the flowers.

By the way, I wish to clarify that you should not feel amazed at all by the way I think: I am autistic, eccentric, and friendly -- like my signature says.

And if you should have questions about my thoughtlines, please feel free to... ask.

As we can see here, this must clearly break a Community Standards rule. Ok, lets move on.

Everyone is saying vandalism... exactly how is this vandalism? I remember those options used to say "Others can:" "Create/Edit Objects" "Edit Land" etc. Now it is just a bunch of check boxes. However, I still firmly believe if you knowingly check the edit land box and log off for the night, you are setting yourself up for a mess. No where do I see vandalism in the Community Standards. No where do I see editing publicly editable land is in any sense wrong. No where do I see this is a punishable offence.

I want there to be an entry in the Community Standards on Vandalism. I want it to include what vandalism is, and an example of how it could be done. I want punishments to be listed in order of severity (example, 1st offence 1 day ban and so on). I want the Edit Land checkmark removed. I want a new checkbox that says "Public Edit Land." I want edit land to be involved with group options, and estate options. Currently you can ban and limit access, why not limit editing?

Until those things are done, I just can not agree with punishing anyone. The ONLY difference I see in the private sim thing, and the ONLY reason I agreed with the punishment was the island sims were given with edit checked and no one knew of this. However, This was not an island sim, and the owner of the land knowingly checked the box, forgot and logged off. How is that my wrong doing if it were I who edited the land? I can not agree with any punishment beyond a warning until some form or rule, or control is taken, or it is made extremely clear which part of the Community Standards this violates.

Futhermore lets take a look at the terms of service:

1.2 Changes to these Terms. Linden reserves the right to change the address of its Website at any time for any or no reason. Linden may amend this Agreement (including without limitation the pricing terms set forth herein) and/or modify the Community Standards at any time in its sole discretion by posting the amended Agreement or modified Community Standards at http://www.lindenlab.com, http://www.secondlife.com, another current website designated by Linden or by communicating these changes through the primary contact methods you have established with us. Amendments to the Agreement will be effective after the amended Agreement is posted. Modifications to the Community Standards will be effective immediately upon posting. Your use of the Service after the effective date of any amendments to this Agreement constitutes your agreement to the amendments. You agree to check this Agreement and the Community Standards periodically so you will be familiar with their content as amended or modified from time to time.

Keep in mind, this says they can make changes, however these changes do NOT go into effect until they are posted. Some of the things that people have been banned for, or even suspended for, in the past sickens me. Some of the quoted CS rules did not have anything to do with what they were being punished for. I see this as both unfair and unprofessional. If a new amendment to the CS has to be made to cover a new rule, fine, amend away. DO NOT make shit up and ban someone, I can not agree with that happening at all.

I am very sorry this has happened to you Sio, however (and do not take this wrong) I do not feel the punishment will ever fit the crime until the CS is made clear. The Community Standards SHOULD HAVE BEEN amended the first time this happened with the Island sims. The fact that it wasn't shows me a complete disregard for decency against SL players.

Thanks for the ideas, Vade!

You are most welcome.

-The land was all maxed out in height. Learning? Doubtful.
-Objects were buried, and some went off-world. Was the person learning how to bury things that were obviously not meant to be buried? Apparently.
-Did the person contact Siobhan to say "I messed up your land, sorry about that"? No.

Based upon the above, I think that its fair to conclude that the editing done was niether an accident nor a learning experience.

-Do we know that any, or all off the punishment types listed by Andrew were in fact invoked? No.

Excusing behavior that is outlawed in RL on the premise that it isn't neatly defined for you in SL's CS or ToS as wrong is just that, excuses. The old "I can so I will" logic superceding common courtesy.

No, it is not fair to assume anything. How would you feel if you were banned or suspended on an assumption, especially one that turned out to be wrong? I think your views would change if this were to happen to you.

It is not excusing behavior, it is pointing out flaws in the Community Standards. Also, this is not RL so I do not know what you are trying to get at, no where did I excuse any RL happenings. It is not I can so I will in all cases, and this is why the CS needs to be amended to make what is wrong very clear and the punishments equally clear. Until these things are done, I will not, and can not, accept any punishment beyond a warning. I do not think it is fair or equal.

Can't the Linden's just put a timer on Land Editing Tools?

One-hour max?

That way, it would max out, if the owner forgets -- his/her ass is covered.

Land tools have sucked for a long, long time. They need to be modified heavily. It's not even worth a talented scripter to create a set of "land ownership tools" to even sell to the population.

But something that would set a timer on land editing would work.

Good idea Lynn