Project Open Letter hits SL

Good post, Jonquille.

*bump*

Very well said. I understand why people may not choose to sign the letter, and I fully respect that. Hindsight is always clearer, and given more time, the passages about unverifieds would have been removed. There are complex issues behind free vs paying customers and what that even means in the current landscape of SL where people can pay tier to private island owners and buy L$ from other exchanges.

The many challenges we are facing were impossible to fully communicate in one letter, so some difficult choices were made that obviously cannot please everyone. You have to sign with your own conscience, and either choice is a valid one. We are fighting for everyone here, not just those who have signed in support.

What is this supposed to mean?

Cristiano I'm prolly the 8 thousandth person who has said this, but, many thanks to you. The open letter is a valiant effort and I applaud you for it.

I understand that people on here are going to argue whether the letter was a good idea or not and they will disagree on its wording, for I am reminded of what Thomas Jefferson said...
"An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry. "

However, you have my vote and support, FWIW.

Agrees with Viola!!!

ditto. thank you cristiano.

What does *bump* mean?

I find this interesting since they keep removing the channels that were in place without much forewarning.

Anyone who thinks the free accounts are not a huge problem is either selling something or was not in Second Life before they were in place.

The free accounts (And subsequent removal of credit card check requirement to access Second Life) has opened the door to a surge of individuals looking for something for nothing first of all.
Secondly, a comment I have heard from many residents is that a large percentage of those "Freebies" are either campers and really doing nothing more than eating bandwidth. Or griefers who are really not in the community to contribute anything but problems.
At least, it seems to be a growing perception that this is an increasing trend.

Before the credit card check for a new account was removed there was a much smaller amount of residents in second life. And the grid was also a much stabler place. Can anyone really argue that?

To suggest being frustrated or aggravated by this trend toward "making numbers" is an error is utterly absurd when what is increasingly sacrificed is grid stability and the sense of community.

If a group of individuals from the same ethnic background lets say, continued to pour into your neighborhood where you lived and trash the place, steal your belongings, harass and abuse you and your neighbors, would you be so light hearted about dealing with them in the future? I sincerely doubt it.

LL has put the mechanisms in place for this kind of profiling and judgmental perception by SL residents themselves. So do not blame those of us who have been here since before this trend became an every day reality for being fed up with it. Blame those who created this environment in the first place by their inability to read the writing on the wall.

In my world and in my imagination I did not envision having to deal with the problems we all now face every time we make it past the login screen.

I did sign, though I have been pondering the deep-seated resentment many have towards non-paying residents.

The arguments trotted out are that they suck bandwidth without giving anything back and many of them are griefers who make things worse.

I propose that there may be another factor at play that people aren't acknowledging.

Envy.

Consider--why would it really matter to you whether somebody has put actual cash money into the system? In game, all Linden Dollars are pretty much created equal, whether obtained in a camping chair, from a stipend or via PayPal.

But when the system crashes, or the inventory borks, it's a different story.

A non-paying member loses only time.

A paying member loses time and money.

Perhaps the resentment stems from the thought that while you're tearing your hair out--because your business is losing income or the things you bought with Lindens that you acquired with actual cash have vanished into the ether--the non-payer simply walks away unscathed. Easy come, easy go. If they can't login, it's easier for them to shrug and log back in later. If you have RL money at stake, it's not as easy for you to do that.

Because of this, I fully applaud this open letter. If they're going to trumpet all the money you can potentially make from this, then it needs to be stable enough that the money you put in is actually worth it.

But blaming the non-payers for this situation? No. Blame Linden Labs for not having a sufficiently stable platform to sustain all of them, but don't blame the residents themselves.

I started my Second Life as a non-paying resident. I ultimately upgraded, but I see no reason why I should have been pissed upon for wanting to try it out before I spent cash on it, or why I should have been locked out to make room for the Club Members.

Having started as a non paying resident as well, I find this idea laughable. Even when I was not a premium account holder, paying for the right to own land in SL? I still had to have a credit card on file to create my account and access the system.

Since they removed that (which they did by the way without any warning or feedback from the community) the grid has seen a large rise in population. It stands to reason as those numbers rise, so too do the odds of abusive residents being in the system.

And this seems to be increasing time and time again.
A griefer, for example, who enters a sim or place of business who attacks, harasses or abuses customers and other residents has little to fear from repercussions of administrative staff when they can simply log out and make a new account for nothing, with little or no accountability, only to return and engage in the same activity again.

Being an admin in a sim I have personally seen this bahavior many many times. I do not "envy" these individuals one bit nor should anyone else for that matter.

I envy the time when these situations were few and far between and miss the days when we could log into Second Life and actually believe we might enjoy it, free of the bugs and grid instability that has increased substantially since the account verification by Credit card was removed.

I would welcome anyone with the ability, Linden Labs or otherwise, to track the rise of Abuse reports, sim crashes, bug reports and other events and situations that have negatively impacted the residents and Second Life as a whole since they snuck in and took out that account verification process.

I believe, if this was tracked, one would find that ultimately. Linden Labs has invariably made more work for themselves in the long run, which is a shame. Because the increased time spent investigating, trackng and resolving issues that likely would not have occured in such numbers could have been better spent improving Second Life and it's system/s.

So your problem is not with free accounts as such, but with griefers who take advantage of them. If so, that's a slightly different complaint, and one I can definitely get behind. But what about NPIOFs who are otherwise law-abiding citizens?

It's not just that though. The flood of freebies into the grid means every single object they own, carry, use and manipulate creates subtantially more database load and, I feel, is a large contributer to the increase in inventory losses residents have experienced in the past 8 months.

Prior to last summer, I recall only a handful of incidents I was personally familiar with where a resident experienced that "Unable to create object: Object missing from database" issue. But just within the past 3 months I can account for at least 10 residents I have direct contact with who have had this problem and some of them more than once..

And there's many more who have had the same issue. So much so in fact that LL created an entire guide to mitigate this issue and try to provide a resident with this problem some possible fixes to this issue. To my knowledge, not one of them has worked to recover lost datal. I have personally had this happen to me and lost items once in that time frame. I'm not bitter about it, but it had never happened to me before in my 2 years in SL.

So it seems to me, with the huge increase of residents, most of them non paying, the massive increase upon the database has shown it's ugly face many times in recent memory and it shows no signs of improving.

The open letter speaks directly to this issue. But I for one feel the leaps and bounds with which the registered accounts has grown is a definite factor to this issue and quite possibly a few others.

There is a danger here of misconception. To be a free account holder does not automatically mean you are a 'freeloader or greifer'. When I joinned SL over 3 years ago, I signed up for a 'Lifetime membership' and paid the fee required, I didn't sign up for a premuim account on the basis that I did not wish to purchase land direct from LL, which is still the only difference between the various accounts even now. I/We all have verified accounts supported by Email and CC.

Since joining, we now have 4 companies in SL and contribute to the economy to the tune of over 1 million L$. We as a group within those companies, have never taken money out of the game, and have purchased 1,000's of L$'s to invest in our business's. We support and contribute 1,000's of L$'s to non-profit organisations and employ the many talents of the skilled artisans within SL. We purchase goods for our companies activities, which supports the growth and continued flow of money throughout SL. Furthermore we have paid 1,000's of USD in real life investments to support our SL activities. We own and pay teir for, land in SL that support our companies and their activities. Every 'penny' we have earnt has gone back into the SL economy. Our group members help newcomers (I myself being a SLGreeter) and even new business to start in SL, with advice and equipment.

The reason I would not sign the letter to LL, is simply because, due to the changes imposed upon the people of SL, I/We are now considered 'Free Accounts' and would come under the heading of being limited within SL, should the suggestion of 'Free Accounts' become adpoted. What has not been considered, is all those people and companies that do contribute to the SL economy and community, that are in the same category, being denied the ability to continue without limitations, as implied in the Letter to LL. I do not consider having to change the status of my account to a Premium account, as I already have/had a Lifetime Membership status, although no longer available, on the basis of having the sole ability, of purchasing land from LL.

I do support the SL community for the current ongoing technical issues being experienced and would have whole heartidly supported the moves now being taken to gain some action from LL. I remain active on the forums, trying to assist people in resolving the many difficulties and technical issues thay have, but cannot support a reaction, that will result in being labeled a 'Free Account' attributed to being a greifer/freeloader and whatever else label is applied.

It doesn't. I don't have a problem with free accounts. I have a problem with non-verified accounts. The two are often lumped together when they shouldn't be.

The reason I have a problem with non-verified accounts is not that I think all non-verifieds are griefers. Most are not. But the system, by allowing non-verifieds, creates the opportunity for those who wish ill to abuse it without repercussion. We all know those people exist.

What also bothers me is that this system makes it easy for minors to get on the Main Grid, which makes it that much harder to argue for SL freedom from a "we are all consenting adults" point of view. For instance, when a bunch of consenting adults want to engage in ageplay, I personally see no reason for them not to, as long as they don't bother others. That is freedom of fantasy, and as far as I'm concerned that has as little to do with paedophilia as Britney Spears in a hot schoolgirl outfit (and tons of guys drooling over her) does. No harm done, it's not my thing, but it's also not reality. It is much harder though to argue for that kind of freedom when you know it is very possible for your internet-savvy thirteen year old niece to find her way onto the Main Grid and decides to make some lindens as an escort (no matter if she uses an adult or a teen avie!).

Becoming a nanny state (the first signs are already there) would kill SL. But if minors can keep finding their way onto the Main Grid this easy, public outrage will sooner or later kill SL too if it doesn't become a nanny state. To prevent that we need to get rid of unverified accounts, each of which could well belong to that thirteen year old. Sure, a minor could always use their parents' credit card, but at least than the parent is responsible for letting their kids into SL, instead of it being SL's responsibility.

It means that someone is posting to push a thread back up to the top of the list so people continue to see it, since they are sorted in order of last response.

Heretic,

One major way Linden Lab could reopen the channels of communication is by allowing SL issues to be more openly discussed in these forums. Resident Answers is locked down pretty much. Cutting off the discussion forums (and all the reasons given for it) also closed down a major two way communication route that was not replaced with the blog. The official blog does not allow critical commentary at all, and is not a two way form of communication - more 1 1/2 way, since you can't raise issues, only respond to them.

A few part time moderators (not overzealous volunteer resmods) and some very clear posting rules could surely allow for open discussion forums to work here again. It does not need to be a free for all - personal attacks, language, etc.. do not need to be tolerated - but discussion of issues even critical feedback, definitely needs to be heard and tolerated, or you end up where we are now. The need to express our concerns about what is happening did not go away just because you closed off the forums, and would not have been so pent up if LL had not done so.

Please see my statement on the front of http://www.projectopenletter.com regarding this.

It is an attempt to invalidate what you are saying by claiming you are an alt. Don't bite.

To Viola and others who have expressed support - thank you, it is very much appreciated.

Thought so. Although, with the word "whatever" I thought maybe he was calling me a bot, first of the forumBots

I appreciate the clarification. Thank you.

Thank you for that. However, to get completely clear, I would like to see the distinction between free accounts and unverified accounts. A free account can be verified: the resident files payment information, which is checked, thereby proving his identity. Someone with a free, verified account has payment information on file, but possibly never uses it to purchase lindens. An unverified account is always free, and has no payment info on file. However, it is possible for unverifieds to put money into the game, for instance by buying lindens on ebay.

So verified and unverified accounts both may or may not put money into the game. The reason I'm stressing the difference is the fact that certain problems (griefing, scamming, minors on the Main Grid) have more room to exist in SL because of the possibility of unverified (and thereby anonymous and unlimited) accounts.

I posted this elsewhere and I think it bears repeating here:

I was operating under the assumption that people could start with one free basic and then have to pay the one-time $9.95 fee to create additional basic accounts. However, if people can skirt that by not providing any payment information to begin with, that's a loophole that really needs to be closed. I'm not sure what it would take--IP tracing or SOMETHING, but people should not be creating multiple accounts for free if only because it's unfair to those who play nicely and pay money for the same thing.

So maybe not limit free accounts, or even unverified ones, but put some kind of stopper on people creating unverified accounts without limits.

Yer so very welcome

We're all in this together, to use an overworked cliche.