Verifiable "free" accounts.

Letting people play for free is a great way to get people into the game, BUT the way LL is doing it makes it too easy to engage in malicious behaviour (griefing) without consequences.

I propose replacing "free" accounts with "sponsored" accounts.

Any premium member would be able to give people an "invitation" to SL. You can already do this, through the web page, so they don't need to do a lot of new coding for this part.

Without an invitation, you would need to pay for the account, either as a premium or as a basic. To avert criticism here, they could probably make the basic cheaper (I mean, really, there's no reason not to join as a premium and then downgrade to a basic after the first month if they're both going to cost the same), but that's really a side issue. The point is that you'd be spending actual money that would show up on someone's bill somewhere to get an account.

With an invitation, you wouldn't have to pay money for a Basic account. BUT... until you spent some money through LL (through LindeX, upgrading, whatever) your sponsor would be responsible for you. If you got banned or suspended, he'd get sanctioned.

How the sanction works isn't that critical, but it has to be meaningful. Making it in two or three stages would be fair. For example:

1. First time it happens, his right to sponsor accounts (and the accounts he'd already sponsored) would be suspended for a week.

2. Second time, he'd be suspended for a week, as well.

3. Third time, he'd permanently lose the right to sponsor accounts.

The sponsor could *voluntarily* abandon the right of sponsorship at any time, which would force his sponsored accounts to upgrade or be denied access (and also remove the suspension if he was at stage 2), so that you wouldn't have someone victimised by having a griefer using his sponsored accounts to get him suspended.

The details can be hashed out ad nauseum, but the basic idea... legitimate "free" accounts are easy to create and there's a real cost to griefing through them... shouldn't get sidetracked.

Pretty good idea. Two things though. I have a free account or two I'd like to retroactively have my main sponser... how would that be handled, or would it? Also, I don't think this should replace free accounts. This should just be added to account types as something like "sponsored" and a sponser can only be someone who has payment info on file and used. I'd like to have a way to make a free account, or get someone I know well and trust, a free account, that isn't going to be banned as a possible griefing alt out of hand.

How to deal with existing free accounts does have to be dealt with. If they still haven't been verified or upgraded, then there should probably be some mechanism to get them sponsored by an existing account within some grace period.
One of the reasons I want this is because I strongly dislike this recent business of making second class second-lifers out of people by publishing their funding status. I have no interest in banning *anyone* from my land. I've only done it once, when someone I didn't know showed up wearing an apparent griefing av and acting out in it during an upsurge in that kind of activity... and it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, he was a friend of another member of the group.

I do want it to be as easy as possible for people to get into SL, without making mockery of any kind of access controls, and without creating a caste society in SL.

heh, not to be cold, but it sounds like to avoid having people treated like second class citizens, you want to eliminate them entirely.

Why not simply remove all griefing tools for basic avatars? If that means scripts then so be it. ie:

Basic (Free) - Scripts in objects owned by a basic account do not run. When they place or attach a scripted object they are warned of this and told that standard allows them to use these items.
Standard ($10 one-off or really low monthly) - May have scripted objects, upgrading to this from basic sends out an 'echo' to simulators so that they can start running this person's scripts. IMO should also be able to buy land if they want.
Premium (monthly) - what we have now, L$500 stipend and 512 sq m of land. Not L$400 stipend because I still have a glimmer of hope that LL will stop kicking their economy and game as a whole while it's down and bloody well start thinking about it instead.

I know there's the issue that they might buy an object not knowing it's scripted or neglecting to read the restriction on it and being annoyed. But it forces more people to pay if that's what they want. Basic avatars can still camp, build, sell (by placing objects for sale in vendor space) and buy things like clothes, new avatars etc. Still fun for those who are here for fun, they'd get all the gesture spam hanging out with friends that the rest of us do!

Forgot to post about the original idea heh. While I do like it, I'm not sure it's the answer, it would however be a good way for perhaps giving people a pseudo standard status. e.g, they still cannot own land until they pay, but can have scripted objects.

Because basic accounts aren't the problem. Free accounts are the problem. Basic and Free are not the same thing.

But even setting that aside, if you restrict free accounts to non-scripted objects you'd eliminate pretty much all content other than clothes and prim hair. You might as well go all the way and make them like non-cits in There and eliminate their ability to wear, carry, or otherwise use anything that isn't in the "Linden Approved" Library. You'd have to, really, there's too many nasty things you can do with physics even if you couldn't run scripts, if you can still build and load builds into your inventory.

Talk about creating "second class citizens". The current situation where there's "verified" and "unverified" accounts is bad enough. Let's back away from the caste system, instead of building it up.

And have an exclusive "invite only" system for free users? That seems counter to what you just said, since people who don't know anyone in-world are excluded and forced to pay to get in?

There is still a LOT of non-scripted content out there, and you don't need scripts to enjoy your time in second life; part of the fun is exploring, which doesn't require a script. Part of the fun is creating an avatar, which doesn't require scripting. Part of the fun is meeting people, which doesn't require scripting. Attending events, joining groups, roleplaying, how many of these REQUIRE scripting?
Even buying things, you can get clothes, avatars, accessories (with effects, since particles are prim properties, not scripts), furniture, a home (on rented land). You can gamble, play Tringo, pay to enter clubs, go on rides and such. The trade-off is that you can't get animation over-riders, scanners or multi-tools. So? Do you need those things to have fun? If so, then consider upgrading to standard.

They're still as entitled to explore and interact with the world as any other avatar, with the same unrestricted access to the world as other avatars, they can't however do anything malicious. Physical objects can be annoying but they're hardly an issue to be frank.

And really the cost of supplying either a low one-off or a small monthly fee (which IMO makes more sense for LL, something low like $0.50 would be easy and in the long run generate more revenue, plus keep payment info up-to-date) in order to verify your account and get access to the bigger things seems perfectly fair, since there is very little reason NOT to if you enjoy a web-based game which has to cover costs somehow.

There's always people who can't get in-world in the first place... people who can't afford the fairly substantial hardware you need for a good experience, and more of them with every release. My own PC went below the line with 1.10 and I ended up spending more upgrading it piecemeal (thanks to changes in interfaces over the last three years) than just buying new would have cost.

That's a MUCH bigger barrier than finding a way to avoid paying for an account, and the latter barrier is itself lower than you're making out if the experience of other systems like gmail and orkut are anything to go by... what happened with those was that people advertised that they were willing to provide orkut or gmail invites. The same thing would work with sponsorships, especially since there's a real monetary benefit from having someone accept your invitation and then upgrade to Premium. And if not, the price of a Basic account can be made almost arbitrarily low... it just has to be high enough to show up on someone's bill.

And in any case that's got nothing to do with the kind of ghetto I'm talking about. Once you get in-world nobody can tell whether you're on a Mac mini or an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with two nVidia 9750s for quad-SLI firepower. They can't tell if you're a captain of industry in RL, or a homeless person plugging their laptop in wherever there's a restaurant with open Wifi. I could stand a Basic account with no land, my Premium with all of 1024 tier, and someone with a dozen sims all next to each other... and never know. Everyone's equal once they're in world.

Or they were until recently.

Running scripts? Well, let's see... any Tiny avatars do, animation overriders do (and unless you're playing a toon or you're exactly SL's ideal proportions, you're going to need one of those), roleplaying in Darklife or anywhere else that uses scripted support. Scripts are everywhere. You can't fly a plane, open a self-unpacking box you just bought, eat ice-cream, drink a coke, wear any scripted attachments or products, including a hell of a lot of the add-ons that people commonly use on their avatars.

Yes, you *can* make do without them, but I don't know anyone who does.

And just as part of the fun is scripting, part of the fun is not being labeled a "non-citizen" like in There. In being whoever you want to be, and you can't do that if you're labelled in-world no matter WHAT the "good reasons" behind that labelling are.
And yet paying exactly that kind of token amount to get in at all, if you can't find a sponsor, bothers you? Why is that?

You're arguing something that isn't even an issue? Where I do I say that the free basics should be labelled or spat upon or beaten down? All I am talking about is providing them with enough to enjoy the world without ruining it for others.

I'm talking here about being able to seamlessly preview some of the SL world, without being able to perform malicious actions, or have this free trial exploited by griefers. You can't do that if you need to go out and find a sponsor to see what the game's like, at the least that's an extra step, as standard it could be a delay until the sponsor decides to accept, at worst it's a complete block from getting in at all to actually see what in the hell you're going to be paying for. In all cases it's discouraging people from trying the game, which is exactly why we have free accounts, so you can try before you buy sort of thing.

If you want a tiny avatar, then presumably you're intending to stay. Any significant remodelling of an avatar is going to suggest that, so then why not upgrade to a standard account? If you want to stay then surely it must be worth even the small fee to you, the world you're enjoying has to stay alive SOMEHOW.
Call them trial accounts instead if you want, but I'm not ignoring that these can be perfectly acceptable accounts for many people to stay free with. If all they want to do is go to clubs and hang with/meet new friends in a human, furry or whatever avatar, then it's all fine.


And those people who do have the hardware should be denied because they want to try SL before they pay for it, and don't know anyone in the game already? Or can't be bothered waiting for their friend to get back to them or whatever?
I'm sorry, while the system could have merit for something else, I think that it works counter to what we need. It stands more of a chance of discouraging the users we want in from joining. Just to keep the ones we want out from coming back. Not to be harsh, but it seems almost a few steps away from just closing registrations to everyone so that the population we have can be happier in its elitism safe in the knowledge that a griefer can never, ever come back.

/stamp.

I also vote for eliminating people entirely.

HAhahaha! HooRAAAY, KRIS!

Reverting back to the old creditcard or cellphone system will solve a lot of the new problems.

Although this probably can't be done anymore, the Invite system seams like a good idea. Although I don't like the fact that if I invite a friend and somehow we have a quarrel and they flip out and go beserk before I can revoke my sponsorship its a mark against me. Its a big mess, Linden wants more people to join but its a double edge blade. I have friends who are under the "Free" accounts but I encounterd far more griefers now more than ever. It's a touchy topic. One thing for sure, we need some way to verify the information of the resident. The standard grid is for 18 and over and I fear with the current system that has broken down.

I like the idea of sponsorship being an option, but not required.
If they were an option, they'd be a good way to map social networks and stop newbies who are visiting SL due to a recommendation by a friend from being assumed to be griefers.
I don't like the idea of sponsorship or payment info being required in order to sign up to SL, because I think that will end up just like the gmail invite system - ruined by lots of people who sell invites/sponsorships.

OK, the invite and sponser thing sounds like a great idea, but not for what you are meaning it as, I got a free basic account, by way of SMS, because I can only afford one, monthly billed online game, that would be World of Warcraft. I had heard alot about second life bacause of (yay, something else to hate me for! ^_^) the furry community, I saw some in-game screens, and thought, "Hey, that's kinda cool, I can literally live a second life!" so I signed up for a free basic account.

But I digress, I believe the sponsorship system would basically act like the current "verified/unverified" system, if they could get a premium member to "approve" them, or a "minimum number" of premium members to "approve" them, then it would show them as verified. Not everyone who gets a free account is going to grief, some of us are just flat out BROKE. I do like the idea, but it could be applied in a different manner. Basic users get enough restrictions already, I'm just lucky I joined before the whole thing with no starting money/no stipend for those who are un-verified started.

A secondary idea is a three tier system, simply renaming basic and free, free would simply be email, basic would be a one time fee with the original basic starting L$ and stipend, and premium would be the monthly fees.

Me too.
Me too.
The purpose of unverified free accounts isn't to "let people try before they buy". You could do that even before they had free accounts because you got a 7 day trial, and you could do that before they had unverified free accounts. I'm not talking about making it any harder to "try before you buy" than it was in January or last August.

What I'm talking about is giving Linden Labs a mechanism to pump up their account numbers (which is what unverified free accounts are about) without opening the world up to infinite unverified alts.
Why? A Tiny avatar doesn't even cost you any money in the long run, because it's no-mod/transfer.
Even the free furry avatars are scripted.
No. Where did I say that? You can still have a 7 day trial with LL returning the charge to you after 7 days if they back out. You can (as I already pointed out) make the charge as low as you like, to the point that even someone who's having to live on beans and ramen can afford it.

That's what I'm proposing. If you don't want to spend a token amount, or put up a few bucks for a week to try it out, or sign up, you have that option as well.

What I don't like is the option of signing up without any verification at all.

If you want to have "trial accounts", have a "trial grid". Have "Trial Island" and you can't get off it until you pay or you get sponsored, and once yu're off... you can't go back. But once people are in world, they should all just be people. Not "real people" and "unverified people".

The gmail invite system wasn't ruined, though. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. And it still does. It doesn't matter if someone sells invites, as long as someone else gives them away... the market will eliminate the guy who's trying to charge and competing against the guy who's free.

If we do not allow landowners to identify, and block, those who have not provided payment info to LL, then we open the door to minors being able to access adult areas without any hope of stopping them.

Having sponsorships would help combat griefing because you could, in theory, require sponsorship OR payment info on file to access an area. That would be a great way to keep out griefers yet still allow people who are broke or don't have access to a CC to use your area.

Having sponsorships would NOT help against minors accessing the MG, however, simply because a minor could get sponsored as easily as an adult could. The gmail example I gave was intended to show that 'invites' to a restricted service tend to spread quite quickly. Even if you suspend people who issue sponsorships to minors/griefers... well, those minors/griefers can always ask on some forum like 4chan or whatever for another gulliable person to sponsor them, and they'll be back in the game very quickly.

I agree sponsorships would be a good *option*, but I'd suggest that we have rules of :
1) Sponsored accounts have 'sponsored by _____' displayed in their profile. Yes, this would name their sponsor.
2) In the 'access' tab of about land, one should be able to filter on payment info, sponsorship status, group membership, or membership of the avatar list, or any combination of these. E.g. group only land would be group membership, some clubs would be group only membership OR guest list, adult areas could be payment info on file required... and areas that want to keep out griefers only could be payment info on file OR sponsored. Some areas could be sponsored only, or sponsored OR group member only, etc.
3) If a sponsored account is suspended from SL, their sponsorship ends, and their sponsor cannot then sponsor anyone else.
4) If a sponsor is suspended from SL, all the accounts they have sponsored become unsponsored and they cannot then sponsor anyone else.
5) Only those with payment info used may sponsor sponsor anyone.
6) Sponsorship information is considered across alts. That is, if someone's main is sponsored by X, so is their alt, and if someone loses their ability to sponsor others, their alts also lose the ability to sponsor others.

Restricting some types of people to a 'newbie island' is bad simply because it would turn into a hellhole where newbies got a bad impresion of SL, both in terms of violence, griefing, and also in terms of lack of content.

We need to be able to tell the difference between verifieds and unverifieds on the grid, to keep "minors with friends" out of mature-rated areas. Sponsorships could be very useful though in keeping griefers out of popular places without turning away the poor or those unable to get CCs, if land could be set up to require payment info on file, OR sponsorship, for all avatars entering it.

I'm a free account.

I was going to upgrade, but I changed my mind because of the way SOME people treated me for being "free" and no way I'm going to kowtow and join the same "club" as them. If I can't go on someone's land because I'm "free", I'll just go somewhere else. If I need money, I'll buy it off another player. If you make sponsored accounts, I'm not going to join that club either unless they completely replace "free" accounts.

I think the best idea is the trial zone. I'm not sure I'd like staying on "Welcome Island" or "Help Island" or whatever it gets called until I gave them a credit card, but that'd be better than what we got now. It's not a bad place and there's always someone there to keep people in line.

That's a good point, I hadn't thought about minors. I'm not going to come back with a half-baked answer for that, I'm going to think it through and get back to you. Is that OK?

I do have a few comments on the rest of your message, so I'll answer them and post another response maybe this evening after I've let that mull over in my thick noggin.
I don't like the idea. The reason I brought sponsorship up was to give Linden Labs a tool they could use to pump up their popularity numbers without creating in-world-visible "types" of accounts. So to answer this and your point 2, I strongly believe that all the ability of scripts and landowners and anyone else to see account status should only remain as long as there remain unverified accounts... and that unverified accounts should be given a grace period to upgrade to one of the verification mechanisms.
These are very close to my original proposal, and certainly reasonable variations. I was thinking that there would be a "three strikes" approach, with the third strike leading to a permanent suspension of sponsorship for all accounts sharing the same payment information (which also addresses your point 6, I think).
I was thinking that this might perhaps even be a benefit for premium account holders only.
Well, I was thinking that it'd be an extension of "Welcome Island" and "Help Island", which already have volunteer staff on hand at all times.

And, again, I'll get back to you on the "minors" issue.

Later.

well I have payment info used, but I'm not premium, and never have been, and don't want to be. You need to define your goals clearly rather than just your solutions. Stop thinking for LL. What do you want from the implementation of a sponsorship option? If all you want is to prevent griefing, then all you really need is accountability, and for that, all you need is payment info on file.