From and To Daniel Linden

This was posted by Daniel Linden on the Announcements Forum



Daniel and Lindens,
This is exactly one of the problems I have feared with the new rating costs... It is really hard to identify alt and possible fraudelent accounts now... a player can be a month old with no ratings or very few... there are not many people left that are willing to pay $25 a rate... it is sad but true...
Perhaps LL needs to come up with a better way to identify regular users... maybe a display of hours logged in? (I would be embarrassed if people knew sometimes I am on 12 hours a day lol) I don't exactly have a solution for this, but I think something needs to be done to easier identify regular players, especially when there is no limit to the amount of accounts one person, IP, email can have...
Hopefully some other people can make some suggestions that will help?

I love you, Sensual, but you've lost me. I'm not sure how one relates to the other. The problem, as I see it, are that people are creating new accounts in BOTH worlds (ebay and SL), then purchasing your hard(ly, in my case) earned lindens, selling them to IGE or GOM, and then reversing charges on the initial purchase. How would I tell a SL newbie (or alt) who wanted to have money in SL from a jerkoff? Why, I'd make sure he wasn't an ebay newbie too, as Daniel suggested.

This is randomly generated, just like nearly everything else in my life:

How about, don't use ebay.

This isn't Linden Lab's problem anymore than it being Mercedes Benz' problem when you pay $10,000 for a used SLK-500 you saw in the local newspaper with only 1,000 miles... and got a Hot Wheel instead of the real thing.

Daniel suugests that you look at thier rate counts... I dont know what you are confused about.

oh haha! we read that totally differently...I thought he meant his rating in Ebay My point is I'm not certain if a -8 SL rate count would keep me from selling to somebody, where a "this guy totally stole my money" rating in in Ebay would carry a lot of weight for me.

Everybody wang chung tonoght.

She's got a good point, I'm over a year old and have very few ratings now because most of mine were more than 6 months old....will this make people not trust me if I were to engage in transactions with them? You can't count on ratings to judge a persons trustworthiness anymore because of the recent change...I'm sure after another 6 months goes by it should stabilize and everyone will have very few ratings (too darn expensive)

you mean you were trusting people based on their SL ratings? I really need to get 'out there' more often. This Linden is trying to give a heads up about fraud, and you're (plural) faulting the system for creating crime.

No... I dont think it matters if they have 50 neg ratings, or Zero... but I believe that if they have a few ratings on thier profile, it is a good indication it isn't an account used just to abuse, manipulate and cheat people... and this goes for SL and Ebay.

Check people's ebay ratings. Really, that'll be the best measure.

Or stop using eBay altogether for these types of things - why on earth would some use ebay over GOM/IGE? I am scared enough to buy anything off of eBay - I can't imagine buying currency or an account or some game item.

Just say "NO" to ebay

Isn't it interesting that LL warns against the use of ebay because of fraud concerns, a.k.a. lack of security, yet LL endorses ebay by using it for selling the new "featured spot" listings.

Isn't this a mixed message? Is Ebay secure or not....

I think the difference is the Lindens arent gonna defraud you and reverse the charges when you win one of their pointless ad slots.

Hmmm, unmasking the strife from within...interesting..

I believe that Daniel was not referring to SL ratings at all, but was asking that they look
at the buyers Ebay profile and thier Ebay ratings, which can indicate how often theyve done business on Ebay in the past, and what other people may think of them there.
Yes, I love run-on sentences.

I read this just as you did, Sensual. I have been against ratings decay from the start due to this very concept. Not eBay, persay.. but that eventually the ratings we have accumulated over time will dwindle down to nothing. I tend to look at ratings to see just how "active" someone is in the community. This helps when helping someone.. to kind of spot if they have some knowledge and had been around or if they are fairly new.

When looking at just a few lines from Daniel's post, I am convinced it was meant to refer to SL and NOT eBay..

Take a close look at the profile of the buyers account before completing the transaction; are they only a day or two old, do they lack any ratings? These are signs of a potentially fraudulent transaction.

If this was referring to eBay, the term would have been "User Feedback"... not ratings or profile, which are SL terms.

What I have felt needed to be done from the start of this mess..

- Rating Cost: Positive 10L, Negative 100L
- Detach Ratings from Stipend Bonuses
- Leave Positive Ratings Intact
- Decay Negative Ratings Over Time (to allow for behavior changes.. clean slate to get past the initial childish behavior, etc.. without affecting our good reputations)
- Create New Stipend Bonus Opportunity To Replace Ratings Bonus

My suggestion for the new bonus would be for it to be tied to active time inworld. The more time we spend inworld, the larger our bonus. Yes, there would be the select few that would attempt to game it with scripts to keep their avie active. But, people game everything. I feel the positive would outway the negative.. I can't tell ya how many times I have logged in with the intention of just quickly checking on something.. 5 minutes tops.. but then end up remaining for several HOURS and shopping and... UGH! lol This would also GET people inworld that perhaps wouldn't log in on a given day. They would think something like "ok, I need to go in and get my 15 minutes in for the day".. and more than likely end up sticking around and doing something (like shopping).. just a time-filler..

OK... Sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry... hushing... LOL

Back To Original Topic: Ratings Decay = Newbie Appearance = Negative Results = BAD