"Levels of Trust" feature for your av, your land, and your stuff

Ok, what things do we "have" in second life? Really, 3 things:

-Your avatar; meaning, your agent in Second Life (whatever your current appearance), and all associated inventory, ratings, recorded preferences, etc.

-Your land; meaning, um, your land; access to its virtual space, ability to build, rezz objects, run scripts, terraform, etc.

-Your stuff; all the things that you have rezzed out in the world. Your personal inventory could also be thought of as your "stuff", though I think for purposes of this Feature Suggestion your inventory should be included as part of your avatar.


Ok, now, there are several categories of SL residents who may want to interact with you, your land, and your stuff. Who are they?

-General public; could be thought of also as "unknown individuals"

-Individuals

-Group Members

-Group Officers

-Partners


These various categories of Others will want to interact with your Land/Avatar/Stuff in a number of ways:

-Avatar: Be able to see on the map; know when you are online/offline (Yes, these two functions are already handled by calling cards); rearrange, delete, copy your inventory (Again, only if the inventory objects in question have the permissions set openly; if I gave "Penultimate Trust" on my avatar to my partner, and allowed them to muck around in my inventory, they still wouldn't be able to copy inventory which is set to "no-copy", and if they drag out/rezz a vehicle of mine into the world, they still wouldn't be able to ride it if the creator scripted it to only be ridden by the owner. They would, however, be able to delete most of my inventory, if they chose)

-Land: enter the parcel; build/create objects; have objects persistant, or returned after a set time; run scripts; terraform; possibly, enforce land restrictions on others in any of the above categories; modify/copy/delete/transfer landowner's created objects within a particular parcel of land; modify/copy/delete/transfer objects in a particular parcel which are owned by the landowner (IF the landowner also has copy/mod/delete/transfer permissions on those objects)

-"Stuff": Modify/copy/delete/transfer objects that an avatar owns and has rezzed out in the world, regardless of which parcel it's in(Again, only IF the owner himself/herself has those permissions on their owned objects)



My suggestion is a "Levels of Trust" feature by which you can allow Individuals, Group Members, Group Officers and Partners to access your land, your avatar, and your stuff to varying degrees.

The "Levels of Trust" feature should have several main attributes to it:

-There should be readily defined, sensible "default" settings for "Levels of Trust", that individuals can pick to assign to (Group Members, Group Officers, Individuals, Partners), in any of the three categories (Avatar, land, stuff)

-It should be possible to easily create and name new categories of a "Level of Trust", if one of the defaults does not meet the criteria. This would be created and saved, probably in a person's inventory, in the same way as Gestures, or Calling Cards, or Body Parts are saved. Creating a new Level of Trust category would be done through checkboxes.

-It should be possible for residents to set different object and/or land permissions for others in different parcels; I might have permission to move/modify objects in my friend's parcel #1, but in parcel #2 I'm also allowed to terraform, even though the general population isn't allowed even to build in either parcel at all.
Alternately, I might have different permissions, in the same parcel, depending on whether I have a Group Title activated or not. As a plain individual, I might have my objects returned from a parcel after a certain amount of time; However, if I activate my Group Officer title, I might not only have permission to make persistant builds in that parcel, but to return other's objects to them.


Probably there are some categories of interaction that I overlooked.


One caution: Doing something like this is HARD-CODING social/creative interaction into the system, in some measure. I would STRONGLY recommend that if LL implements such a Feature, they do not respond or investigate any abuses of Trust Levels by others. Giving the residents a system like this will create as many problems as it solves, mostly because people may to nasty things to each other if they have a disagreement. If they do the worst-case-scenario to a former friend or ex-girlfriend that is allowed by their Level of Trust, they are not doing MORE than what the other person permitted them to. An account holder who has all of their land terraformed into a pizza box by a Trusted other may feel abused, but they should not have "Linden-recourse" to pursue grievances against the other. There are two main reasons for this:

-If we are moving towards a metaverse, then we must realize that we will not always have a Kindergarten teacher to pick us up, dust us off, and apply bandaids to our scraped knees. We should, to the extent we are able, give freedom and ownership of the virtual world to the greatest extent it is possible to, and live with the consequences of our actions.

-If the world of Second Life is going to continue to grow, WITHOUT continually growing the staff resources of LL, we need to find ways to manage social/creative interaction while taking up as little time as possible. Example: LL's staff is undoubtedly larger now than 2 years ago, but I don't think it is proportionally as large as it was then. (There are 500+ Sims now; how many were there 2 years ago?) Hard-Coding these interactions seems to me, the most convenient and best way to go about it.

A Level of Trust would be exactly what it says. If you do not trust another to mismanage your land, then you'd not want to grant them this ability.

Added:

-If you designate a specific level of trust for a particular person, it will override any other privileges they might be entitled to, based on the default permissions of your parcel. So, you can choose to give a particular avatar a particular trust level that is either more, or less then they would otherwise enjoy; and you can choose to do that for a particular parcel, or in any of your parcels.
Hmm, how to explain this? Say you're a club owner, and have an undesirable in your establishment. You can choose them, and set them to a specific Level of Trust designed for just such a person. You can choose to make them No Build, No Edit, No Running Scripts, JUST for that particular parcel, or you could designate that the setting is for ANY of your properties. They don't have to be ejected, but you can significantly curtail their ability to cause trouble. How you apply this is up to you; for example, you could combine the setting with an IM that says "Hey, some people are complaining. If you agree to calm down, I'll take it off in 10 minutes; either way, you're welcome to stay, but if you find other ways to create a disturbance I'll have to get harsher."
If you have an architect or a builder coming to your land, and want to give them permission to do things that even regular group members would not have, you can designate a higher level of trust for them; including the ability to build, edit, run scripts, edit land, etc. You can choose to make this Level of Trust apply only to that parcel, again keeping your other lands locked down as much as possible.

-The feature would function like a part of inventory, with a new heading, and the following structure:

\Levels of Trust
\Land

\Parcels(you can draw a landmark into "Parcels" to create a new folder; you may
have as many subfolders as you own parcels for; if you drag a landmark into this
folder, it must be from a parcel that you currently own; if you sell a parcel containing
a landmarked Land subfolder, all settings for this become inactive)

\Avatars(within a parcel. This is how you could designate a specific avatar to have
specific permissions within a particular parcel)
\(Specific avatar's name; say, John Avatar. Each avatar that you have
designated a specific set of parcel-permissions for will be listed, almost like a
list of calling cards. Right-click and "View Trust" to see the specifics, and change
them if wanted.)

\Groups
\(Group Name)
\Members
\Officers

\General(The permissions for a specific parcel which are given to the general public,
without a recognized Group Title active. These permissions can also by changed by
choosing the land and editing Permissions. Changes made in either way reflect in
the other's appearance.)

\Objects
\Avatars
\(Specific name. So, "John Avatar" can be set to have permissions on your objects,
to "move, modify, copy, etc". If you wanted to limit permissions on objects to a
particular parcel, you'd have to go through "Land" and set the permissions this way.
This would pretty much replace the "Calling card permissions", but be much more
flexible and robust.)


\Avatars
\(Specific name. Here you can set "John Avatar" to have universal permissions on your objects and land. ANY level of trust set on a specific avatar, from this folder, will apply to ALL objects, and land parcels, and override ANY other group/parcel settings.)


-There would be a new item type in these folders too, representing a specific Level of Trust, and including default, common-sense settings. New ones could be created and named, and also stored as these items. So you could create a Level of Trust for "Misbehaving Club Patron", or "Trusted Architect".
Here's the neato part. Since Levels of Trust can be stored as inventory, they can be dragged out onto an avatar, and that's their level of trust. If the Level of Trust is dragged out from the Land subfolder onto an avatar, it affects their permissions whenever they are on a parcel you own. If from a parcel subfolder onto them, it only affects their permissions for that specific parcel. If from the Avatar folder, it's a universal setting.

Any thoughts on this?

*tu*

Wow, a lot of good thoughts, with no complaints/whining, oblique insults to various "classes", nothing disparaging in any way -- no wonder you haven't had any replies!

I think you've given LL some great things to consider, and I'll chip in that I consider your scheme to be very "natural" (ie. something I understand intuitively and manage in RL), which makes it, IMO, a great extension to SL. With some newbie-friendly defaults, system could be ignored by those who aren't interested in the details, while at the same being a great advantage to co-operative projects, and "contractors" (those who build for others), not to mention some types of abuse management.

One thing I wonder though: will griefers pull social engineering bullshit to the point where the system itself is untrusted? In other words, suppose a griefer "gets to know me", and builds my trust, then I allow him to build an extension on my house or something. I log off, and he then deletes/re-arranges/ruins everything, leaving a prim textured with "sucker!" on it, and books it out of there; I return to find non-undoable damage. And the guy ditches his account, or lays low for a while. I would be hard-pressed to trust people in general again for a while, which makes the SL experience less fun. Is this a likely scenario? (Do griefers commonly open many accounts, either at their own expense (unlikely), or using bootlegged credit info? -- Has LL ever done analysis of IP address vs account usage vs credit card # or something to see if some users have craploads of alts, etc?)

This is why, for someone who you trust enough to allow on your land, but not so much that they're like "Penultimately trusted Partner", you could set permissions of "Build, but no land edit" on all your parcels

Or if you dragged out that "Level of Trust" onto them specifically from your home parcel's inventory folder, you'd only be assigning them that level of trust for that parcel, and no other.

"Build" doesn't mean "May delete all of my objects". You COULD set the level to include that ability if you wanted to, but I'd recommend against it. Heck, you could do what you describe right now, by making them a group member, and putting your land into group, and editing their calling card to give them permission to modify your objects. Again, my recommendation to the powers-that-be is that if you give another person specific trust over your resources (land, objects, avatar) and they mis-used that trust, they were at least not doing more than you specifically permitted them to, and thererfore ought not to be officially disciplined.

I think it's inevitable that people will do mean things with the Levels of Trust that they are granted by others. Hopefully this will be few and far between, but if such a system were implemented, I predict that it will occur regularly but not often, and that it will mostly involve players who foolishly grant a high level of trust to others who they don't know very well. If given the tools to enforce control over our resources, we should not ask for linden backup when things go badly within the confines that we have set.

Just like needing commonsense tutorials like we have on land buying/managing, or permissions systems, our residents will also need some guides on how to effectively implement "Levels of Trust" with others. If someone creates a Level of Trust that is different from the defaults also, there should be a way of sharing that "Level" with others, so that they too can make use of it with regards to their "stuff".

Also, gene, two things to consider:

It's been my experience that most griefers don't have the time or sustained energy/creativity to use social engineering in order to get themselves into a delightfully Trusted and Abusable relationship with another. I'm sure a few do, here and there; but most griefers are more likely to seek immediate gratification in the sandboxes with their shiny new Ahern pistol.

Also, your question goes to the very heart of hard-coded social engineering. Hard-coding the social matrix in SL will never be completely possible; but it will be well-nigh unmanageable if people are given a great deal of lattitude on how to set the permissions for others to access their things, and protected/insured against the consequences of their poor decisions. IS it griefing to use your granted privileges to do something nasty? Hmmm.


Edited: Thanks for the comments though, Gene. I'm curious what people think of an idea like this; I think it has some merit, but I've got a bias of course; I'd rather see the idea get picked apart than disregarded.

Yes indeed, the sensible idea that "it's not break-and-enter if you gave them your housekeys" could go a long way toward saving LL the bother of investigating/dealing with supposed abuse. I, for one, would probably be reasonably inclined toward using the LoT system and taking my chances that I'm a good enough judge of character to manage the LoT settings myself.

Once again, great thoughts, Unh.

I should included this: one of the objections I can see to the idea is that it will have a high cost-to-benefit ratio if few users actually take advantage of the system (as opposed to just using the default settings). So come on, people, give your feedback! Post yay/nay, or any other thoughts.

I think it's well thought-out, and would work. I have projects in mind for which I'm going to need to open up some privs to a group, and no really easy way to do it without exposing myself to additional risk.

I also think this general idea has been suggested and debated a fair amount already, which may be why you're not getting a lot of comments in this thread.

neko

Excellent idea....

Took me a while to read it all, but i get exactly what you are saying, and i totally agree with it.

The idea of giving your partner the rights to do what they want while still having it where any other person can't make changes at all.

Example:

Unchecked land settings to build objects or have scripts or even fly.... but for "partner" i want him to have all those abilities.

Besides partners though, this would be very helpful for mall owners or club owners, the actual owner can't be there 24/7 so they can pass on the "powers" (per say) to a person they trust on their judgment so they can police the sim or club or mall or whatever.

Also, not just with building, it would be a good thing for being able to choose the trust level of a person to say.... make yourself invisible... so they can't even tell if you are online... you may want to retaiin their card, but you may be tired of seeing their name fly up over and over (online.. offline... online... offline...) it gets cumbersome.... and also for people that flock to you when you sign in... this may give you a chance to sort your affairs where you want them... then turn them on to see you so that you can visit or what not....

Very well thought out... i hope to see something like that in the future in SL.

I forgot to mention that this would also be helpful for people that rent at malls vs. mall owners. The mall owner can set the trust level of that person so they can set up their vendor and manage it without having to give an invite to a group. I know it would benefit me tremendously. Nothing against anybody i rent from but my groups are overloaded with groups that i would not normally be in, but have to be in so that i can build and keep objects on the owner's land.

I like this idea. I was wanting something similar myself, aimed specifically at animations by others. My friends are huggers, and it would be nice to let them hug me without having to give them permission everytime. A spontaneous hug can do wonders for your day

Obviously the abuses possible with letting anyone animate your AV requires some protections, but a list of trusted friends would be nice...besides, I am the type of person that sometimes likes to be made to crawl, by the right person :giggles:

I hope they will implement something along these lines.

That's such a beautiful way to put it! I am a hugger myself and to bypass those permissions as to go *GLOMP* would be awesomeness.