Public Abuse Report Page

What would happen if they just made abuse report information and process totally transparent?

Including the following information on the page:

List who reported the thread
Their report comments
How many times the thread was reported
Status of the report.

I am reffering to in world reports and forums AR's.

A monthly statistical report on this information could be rolled up and available to view.

Teleported to Feature suggestion forum. <3

I said that I would post a diatribe on this exact subject at some point, but have only the time for a mini-diatribe at the moment.

The judicial principles of SL were laid down in a time where there were hundreds of players and virtually everyone knew everyone else. This is similar to tribal communities where personal reputation serves as a huge "civilizing" influence upon individual action. In short, people do not wrong their tribemates because that wrong will become common knowledge to the detriment of the wrong-doer.

Second Life has reached a population level which pushes it well beyond the tribal threshhold and more into an urbanization or nation-state. Social justice of a tribal form falls apart where personal recognition becomes the exception rather than the norm. In short, one can do as one pleases without fear of social sanction, even if that sanction is merely a diminished trust by one's peers. The story of Kitty Genovese is an extreme example of what happens when a community becomes effectively disconnected, none of the thiry-eight witnesses had any motivation for there would be no repurcussions to their inaction, nor had they any affirmative reason to care. All the actors in that tragedy had effectively no relation to each other.

Many of the SL principles of justice presume a tribal model which no longer applies due to lack of reputation ratings, a population of strangers, and the ability to use alts to effectively escape any past malfeasance. Furthermore, Linden Lab had a great fear of retributive justice where the accused would exact reprisals upon the accusuer. This is a model that can work when all adjuication is yielded to the government, but as has been amply demonstrated, Linden Lab does not want to be a judiciary.

If a personage in Second Life scams, stalks, harrasses, or injures another in some manner, would not the community benefit from this knowledge? Yes, there is the court of public opinion, there are cliques, and agglomerations of power that could in principle make open justice an invitation to gangland abuses. Contrariwise, the US Bill of Rights to a speedy and open trial, to face one's accusers, to appeals and due process were created by people who thought long and hard about transparent justice and were willing to attempt it in order to make a society that was better for all. In a very broad sense, the American Grand Experiment was successful in large part because of these "rights". I daresay that the authors of the US constitution were far wiser than Linden Lab collectively and had a real interest in making a working real society.

Is it time to rethink Linden Lab's tribal justice? I think it is beyond high time to do so.

This is a note mostly to the ResMods. The original post was put in General and I began my response. Whilst I was composing my response, one of the ResMods properly (i.e. for a reason I don't disagree with) moved it to Feature Requests. By the time I had pressed submit, the thread had moved although I thought my post quite "General". As such, I reposted my above thoughts to a new thread in General.

The reason I am writing this is that it is not an attempt to circumvent the ResMod decision, but rather an unintended side effect of timing. I do hope that my intentions are made more clear by this explanation as I know reposting after moderation has been frowned upon in the past.