Guidelines for a moderation authority for ethical sales - the Better Business Bureau

don't think i agree with you here, seth. What correlating fields? I would be more comfortable with people with some sort of community (there's that word again ) reputation. I think all you need is integrity, real business experience, and common sense. A sense of honor to withstand social pressures, and business experience and common sense so you can judge wisely.

Seth's idea is interesting -- trying to pull in people completely outside the hothouse of SL, maybe even actual professionals who are experts dealing with Internet communities.
You wish LL would routinely hire such people on their staff anyway -- and make sure they don't come from the ranks of old players who leveled up to become Lindens -- this is a MMORPG culture that has some decided biases at times and really should be rethought.

But to have "buy-in" in an immersive world, i.e. acceptance and credibility, such a board or panel needs to involve recognized leaders. That's why I propoosed the 4 person panel of the random newbie, the oldbie with mentor status the recognized younger player without mentor status, and the Linden. It seemed easier to work with those categories than different business sectors like "scripter" or "skin maker" because that perpetuates the whole guildism in the game.

I'm well aware that a strategy of those seeking to really take hold of this effort one way or another is to let people just blather on the forums, and target one or two in particular as trolls and disrupters and wreckers and splitters. An old tale.

Meanwhile, I think given the lack of credibility some are going to face in mounting this effort, it probably would be good if several resident-based efforts began, without Linden blessing. A Linden on a panel is only put in ex officio anyway as a weight to make people behave better.

Looks like RATE needs more volunteer resources to progress toward fulfilling its mandate. This could apply to any resident-run dispute resolution organization set up as a result of a Thinkers meeting or a specific problem or a passing enthusiasm. I like Gwyn's idea of many organizations with differences in goals and functions, but realistically we need to work with the small pool of volunteer resources available. If we try for the desirable multiplicity right away, all the nascent organizations might wither on the vine. (Sometimes interesting groups and projects in SL seem to suffer this fate, and I think, 'Why didn't they merge to share resources, and at least they'd have one viable project.')

In my personal opinion the idea of a whitelist and the idea of the RATE seal are close enough to be merged. Note that the whitelist idea received favorable Linden mention at that meeting. Why does this matter? See Chip's post:


I'm suggesting that this idea can move forward as a grass roots movement, with participants figuring out what dispute resolution tools are needed from LL. Ferren mentioned the need for a more permanent archive than these forums. It might be useful to record written contracts, and file them. On the other hand, a website was set up for RATE. That might also be a records archive. I wouldn't mind moving the discussion to the group forums since they are player-moderated. Dispute resolution could go off the rails if it turns into a drama fest. A player moderated forum could prevent that.

It's becoming clear for me that definitely there is need for different "groups" in SL to appear - and I must say, I didn't expect that to happen.

First, a "consumer's advocates" group. This is viewed by some as the more important of all, but it's the one more hard to organize properly. Also, consumer's associations usually do more "blacklisting" (because recommendations could be viewed as favouring some merchants over others, independently on how ethical they are). It's also a bit more work, since a good consumer's association needs constantly to evaluate (independently) different businesses, and how transactions are done, to be able to comment on them. If they are only a team of persons involved in "putting pressure" upon a merchant, he/she may simply ignore them and discard their opinions as biased, and thus defend his/her reputation by claiming he/she is "just a victim of a pressure group that envies his/her success in business". Unless the "consumer's advocates" group has some power of enforcement, it won't really work, except as an "advisory" group - telling other people, in an organized way (say, a web site), how their experience with certain merchants on the "blacklist" was.

Secondly, trade assocations. Ferren Xia pointed correctly out that trade associations usually join merchants from a similar trade; ie. we could have the Real Estate Trade Association, the Clothiers Trade Association, the Scripters Union, and so forth. The point behind this reasoning seems to be that some types of business behaviour do not make any sense on different trades. For example, if someone finds out that a piece of clothing has misaligned textures for big avatars, a nice clothier will try to fit them properly, or at least return the money; but a real estate agent may not always be able to "fit a parcel" to suit the customers' needs. So, eventually, different merchants/service providers have evolved different practices, and some behaviours may be acceptable under some associations, that are not under others.

Models like the "Advertising Pledge Program" from the US's BBB try to work around different ethical procedures; in a certain way, the ISO Quality policies have a similar reasoning. The point is, you don't have a "common ethical background" for all trades. Instead, what you have is a pledge to publish your own ethical guidelines publicly, and make sure your customer knows where you can read those. And have a group (the "trade association" where you can complain to if the merchant is not abiding by his/her own rules.

Consider the following example. Clothier A says: "We'll fit your clothes free of charge", but Clothier B will announce: "We'll refund you if clothes don't fit you". Both guidelines are very simple, but different. If you have a choice of buying either from A or B, it's up to the customer. They know that both belong to the trade association, so both will be subject to analysis by the trade associations' Committe on Ethics if they don't abide by their own guidelines. Thus, a customer cannot complain to B that B is not refitting the clothes, although A does it, and A and B both belong to the same group. Furthermore, even the association also has scripters, a customer cannot complain that the scripter is not changing his code free of charge, although clothier A does changes to clothes free of charge.

This also means that you can have different trades (and even different business practices among the same trade) be part of the same group. Also, this allows for much more flexibility for the members - they are not forced to "obey" some guidelines established before they became members. What they have to do is to set up their own guidelines - and the trade association can provide them with templates - and stick to them, and inform his/her customers appropriately before the business is transacted. Furthermore, even if the merchant "forgets" about giving these guidelines to the customer, a copy will be stored at a central repository held by the trade association (as a sidenote, and I hope you forgive me for the shameless plug, this notion of an "electronic notary" is used for storing the land deeds in communities like Neualtenburg; everybody has free access to the signed deeds, and share owners are required to put a special device on their land that allows anyone to consult the signed deed).

This also allows more than one trade association to appear, with more or less strict guidelines. Since the goal is a common one - conducting ethical business, which can be verified by a group, which also can be used to appeal and moderate disputes - some traders will eventually join several different trade associations, and give the customers multiple choices of appeal. This is particularly useful if you mistrust one organization and prefer to deal with others. A similar approach is used by several merchants when picking up the off-world Web site business to offer your products - SL Exchange, SL Boutique, or SecondServer/Gigas. A merchant which has absolutely no problem with either of these will offer products on all three, knowing that customers prefer to deal either with A, B or C, according to the trust level they have with each of these groups.

Things like "exclusivity" of dealing with a certain group usually also mean narrow-mindedness on part of a certain merchant, so, a knowing customer, will prefer to deal with a certain merchant when he sees that this particular merchant is open to several different guidelines regulating his work.

Lastly, the notion of a Supreme Arbitration Council (in my country this is called the High Authority for Business Transactions, which is a governmental-level institution, although its members are not elected for office). I'm still not sure how this should be set up. I've seen some ad hoc "mediators" trying to offer their time to act as arbitrators. I like the simple suggestion of each side picking a mediator, and those two mediators jointly picking a third one. However, this will only work on a simple level - their offer of help will never be binding, just advisory. Stubborn people will never allow an ad hoc group to settle a dispute.

This is one of the reasons why I don't dislike the idea of a Linden-participated "Arbitration Council". In my eyes, only the Lindens - and not even all the Lindens! - are viewed as being not only "mostly impartial", but, more important than that, they are able to enforce decisions upon residents, which is not possible with any other form of ad hoc groups, or resident-only groups. How exactly this should be set up, is hard to say, although I still prefer Prokofy's idea of the 3 + 1 board (sorry about that Prokofy, I didn't understood the composition of the board the first time I read it - thanks for clarifying) - one Linden, one "old" resident, one "new" resident, and one picked randomly to attend used only as tie-breaker. The Linden will be able to enforce the decisions taken by the board. It's also possible to create this Arbitration Council on a short notice, and disband it quickly - but the best thing is certainly the ability to rotate its members with ease.

In that case, it doesn't make sense to have several "arbitration authorities". A Linden-participated authority will always overrule any other resident-based group. Thus, in my opinion, residents should congregate around trade associations which stipulate their "business practices" and regulate the way ethical business is transacted, and are the ones to appeal first if a merchant violates the group's rules; but, if an appeal to the group does not provide with fair rulings, a Linden-participated Arbitration Council could always be called to mediate. And, of course, nothing prevents merchants to conduct business without being affiliated to any group, so you'll always need a Linden-participated Arbitration Council. However, as time passes, most customers will prefer to do business with merchants that are affiliated with some sort of group, which have earned the respect of the community, and which will provide some level of "trust".

I forgot about one thing - I don't really think that we need "better arbitration tools" in SL. The only one needed, for a Linden-participated Arbitration Council, would be something similar to Live Help or Abuse Report - a menu option to apply for a "dispute resolution" involving the Arbitration Council. This, of course, could also be a web page.

People tend to ask for tools like a "try before you buy" system, or something like an "automated money refund" on items that they don't really want. As iRL, I don't think that additional functionality has to be "demanded" from LL. "Try before you buy" can be easily done with scripts that self-destruct (and delete the objects) after X tries, or an amount of time has elapsed. Clothes, of course, cannot self-destruct - but there is no reason why clothiers, like some skin artists, cannot put a texture with "SAMPLE" all over the place. Or even the clothiers' name in bold letters (if people still don't but the "real thing" and don't mind using a dress with "Chip Midnight" all over it, at least Chip gets some free advertising ). You may argue that this gives merchants more work - but that is, after all, the mark of "good" business practice: better items/service usually take longer to set up, and that's why they also cost more. On the other hand, this would give merchants wiloing to do the extra work an edge based upon ethical business practices and a good customer relationship over others that don't bother with a "try before you buy" feature.

On the issue of land transactions, things could be simplified - and here, I think, is where LL really should concentrate their efforts in developing better tools. I think that almost everybody agrees that there should be at least some improvement on the land sale tools and its relationship with groups and the permissions system. We also know from LL that all this is being rethought and re-implemented, so we can expect better land management tools in a not-so-distant future. It's just a question of priorities for LL (which we definitely should "demand" using the feature voting list).

Finally, there has been demand on an "enforceable contract system" in SL, that bind people "technologically" to some kind of agreement, submitting them to all sorts of fines/penalties and other types of consequences if they break a contract. I've been reading those suggestions and demands since I joined SL -- they're not new. Sincerely, my opinion is that I don't understand the issue - in RL, contracts are always "breakable" (human language is always ambiguous, and that's why you have lawyers and a judicial system to "interpret" a contract). The difference is that you have a legal system which evaluates those contracts and is able to interpret them according to an established body of law - which you don't have in SL.

So, I'm clueless on how you can implement a thing like a dialog box popping up and saying: "You have now breached a contract with Clueless Newbie - you have been suspended for 3 days. Have a nice day." Instead, what happens is that the LL could sponsor an "electronic notary" where people would be able to deposit notecards with two copies of the contract, both being no-mod but copiable (one for each signatary). This is more than enough for non-repudiation (since the creator of a notecard never changes). In case of conflict, the Linden Arbitration Council would open up the "electronic notary" and read the contract, and, based on the evidence presented by both parties, make a decision.

I'd like to ask you what kind of "tools" for "technological enforcement of binding contracts" are really necessary, and how they should be used.

I'm curious how you can have dispute resolution and arbitration with no ability to fact check. We can't check chat logs and know that they're not doctored. We can't see transaction or inventory histories. It would always be he said/she said and come down to who the arbitrators "think" is more believable. I can't see that as being the basis for a fair system that won't create more drama than it solves. Could someone like Prokofy receive a fair trial? methinks not.

I find some really serious and troublesome consequences of this proposal in terms of fairness and justice, in terms of impartiality and transparency -- there's an immediate call to sequester a select group that wants to put itself on the whitelist away from discussion by any critics.

o One group of players that *already* consists of the self-selected top business people and leaders of sectors and old players with reputations -- RATE -- will join together with a few newer apprentices and "thinkers" -- to ensure that this group stays on top, since they believe themselves to *already be on* the white list, and view themselves as *the keepers of the whitelist* and will set up the criteria *to keep the white list white, i.e. filled with their friends, partners, apprentices, etc." We can't even be sure that all the original participants of RATE are even paying attention to these developments!

o A player pumping the "whitelist" list has tried to play the Linden card by noting that "a Linden" (unnamed) "already gave favorable mention" to this idea -- an idea that wasn't discussed publicly in the community, but was first put out at a small Thinkers meeting. It's common for players to jockey for Linden endorsement. We can't even be sure that the Lindens know what this proposal's ramifications are, and that indeed they endorsed anything but a mere discussion of this to encourage players to do things themselves.

o Expecting to get some dissent againt this idea, the proposal is now "to move to player-moderated forums". If this means "third-party websites," that's code word for "forums where undesirables can be blocked using their IP or e-mail addresses" etc. It means forums where the TOS is not binding, and anything goes. It means third-party sites, so that the proposal is essentially to house this sensitive and important operation *outside the game on another site*. That means a group of players running that website, no matter how "popular" it is, get to run an operation that is going to sit in judgement on their fellow businesses -- businesses which may be in competition with them in that sector, sectors they may wish to remain the supreme and undisputed leader. It means they can use their website scripts and tools outside the TOS to gather information and publish information outside the game about their fellow citizens of SL, without any appeals mechanism outside of themselves.

The white list gang can pick and chose among cases, ignore those they don't like or find too compliated or controversial, and make sure the "white list" functions as a kind of Lindenized endorsement of off-campus third-party site maneuvering outside of the game, disqualifying the TOS to gain an upperhand in the game.

o If any players object to this heavily rigged, heavily favoritist chaebolist approach, they will be blasted as "drama-makers" and "trolls". If what is meant that "player-moderated forums" means group forums moderated by group leaders (I'm not sure how that works), they can ensure people whom they don't want to hear from just never get invited into the closed and exclusive group -- the group tools enable that. If they want to make sure that another rival group never rises to the status of having a forum of their own -- which requires Linden clearance -- they'll just put a word into the ear of their favourite Linden -- "their" Linden who came and endorsed their idea at their meeting from the get-go -- and make sure that "other" group never gets past first base.

o By implying that dispute resolution can't be handled in a public forum with everyone's participation welcome, by implying that democracy just "gets too messy" and has to be handled by the usual socialist-type control committee working behind closed doors, the chaebolists can ensure that they remain on top. Overworked Lindens will be only too glad that some forum controversy is removed "to a player-moderated forum" and "taken care of by those competent, better sorts instead of those ugly trolls."

Pretty handy work!

I urge the Lindens not to be so free and easy with their endorsements of such controversial and problematic ideas. They ought not to be in the business in any way, shape or form of endorsing any player-sponsored effort to rate some businesses over others, which will be inevitably gamed or biased. Given there is unlikely to be good will from the start to form a dispute committee with recognition and buy-in from everyone, and just the usual jockeying, they must indicate they'd like to see a variety of groups come into being that will provide the necessary correctives and competitions and oversight that naturally comes about in such processes. They really need to stop "sitting in" on meetings of this nature where players can then vaunt their mere AFK presence as a triumph.

Oh, unless...they *did* want to make a chaebol-type economy themselves, where only a few families run everything, the companies are all intertwined with each other, and they are all loyalists to the government even interchanging their own employees with government officials in various regimes.

I'm thinking that faced with this very unfair stacked deck, the only reasonable thing to do is to have a few "evangelists" to emerge at least to make a Consumer Advocates group that will serve as a counterbalance againt the clearly biased BBB that will protect itself and its members in a "whitelist" first and foremost. If nothing else, "Whitelist Watch" has to be come an avid forum-posters sport for a time.

What correlating fields? Um.... Well, mediators, ethicists, legal professionals, non-profit consumer advocates, human resource specialists of relevant flavors, professional counselors, business and social sciences academics, etc., etc. You know, SL isn't just a ghetto for computer-, network-, and/or graphics-related specialists, although it does appear that way from time-to-time. I know a fair number of people inworld who come from exactly the professional areas I've mentioned above. There's a lot of talent inworld that is wasted, merely because of the attitude that (1) there's a technical solution to everything, (2) if it's not technical, it's not an issue, and (3) if it's not technical, what the hell is it, anyway, and why should I be concerned???

It is, as you say, a community. And in modern communities, professionalism and experience is everything. Integrity, common sense, honor, and other concepts are either standardized and delivered by the profession, or they belong to the bygone, pre-industrial era of the village.

Either that, or SL is only a fun game. I'm OK with this last idea, btw. But if people want it to be something more, then the issues we discuss or implement must have a sense of the professional.


By relying on professionals, as mentioned above. Professionalism isn't a panacea, and professionals make lots of mistakes. But it's the best solution that exists, and presumably better than trying to game a society or a business environment by proposing fuzzy and amateurish criteria like "popularity" or "honor".



As I said suggested before, you don't necessarily have to bring in people from outside, although that's not a bad idea, either. Still, there are people inworld who IRL have the experience and the professional training - and they seem largely unrecognized in the valuation of talent in SL. Too bad.

Ah, thanks, Chip - yes, I guess I understand what you mean

Although I don't see why it should be different from what happened throughout human history, except for the 20th and 21st centuries, where you have technological devices to capture and record sound, images and video to "prove" what people have said/done. Up until the late 19th century, you based all your decisions on what people claimed to be the truth - supported, of course, by "evidence" such as signed contracts deposited at notaries, for instance.

Even today some countries do not "automatically approve" technological capturing of conversations - the judge must accept evidence as such. A computer log, a voice recording, a picture taken, or a video captured - all of which can be easily forged - can often be ignored by judges as not being sufficient "evidence". Of course, this varies between judicial systems, but I don't think that they are less "fair" because they don't automatically allow for technologically-gathered evidence.

So, yes, I understand that a technologically advanced society (and SL is certainly one) can be more "fair" if you can accept evidence gathered with technological means. But this doesn't mean that you cannot deal justice in a fair way without technological means, it's just much harder. You also need to rely much more on witnesses' evidences and much less on "physical" evidences. Again, this does not automatically mean that a non-technologically-based system is "less fair" - it's just much harder to judge fairly.

Also, even if we could "demand" log & inventory tracking tools in SL, I believe that LL would not be able to offer their platform on some countries (or even states in the US), due to the restrictions on privacy. The current platform - with LL repeatedly claiming that no logs are tracked - is fairly developed towards safeguarding privacy, although finantial transactions and avatar positions (for traffic) are logged. So, does this mean that LL should reveal these finantial transactions and avatar positions when "judging" cases?

I definitely think arbitration could be "fair" in the context of the intent of the arbitrators but I would worry about their ability to be accurate given that their only sources of evidence are going to be heavily biased. Factors like personality, ability to be articulate, and charisma of the people involved in the dispute would likely hold far more sway than they should. I'm really curious to see what LL comes up with for dispute resolution tools. I'm guessing that it will have to entail some Linden involvement. Perhaps with the participants consent the arbitrators will be able to ask certain pertinent questions to LL and get some answers. Without that it seems like it would be very difficult to have anything resembling objective arbitration that's resistent to manipulation. I'm all for coming up with something. I'm just a bit stymied about how it can be done effectively.

The very reason why this is being discussed in this thread is because many feel that a public forum is the best way to deal with sensitive issues. At least to gather opinions.

IMHO, of course, I tend to disagree: the forums are just read by about 5% of the SL population. And this thread has been read and discussed by, what, 20 residents? So, this means that a bit less than 0.1% of the SL population is interested in discussing these things. Although this is certainly an off-topic comment, in my opinion, too much value is given to the forums, and less to what is being done and discussed in-world.

The second phase of any discussion is working with smaller groups, dealing with one issue at the time, and bring it back to the wider audience to further the discussion (this is what the Event Planners are currently doing). I still mantain that's impossible to get any sensible work done with a "forum" with 30,000 people. Even a group of 300 is often too cumbersome to discuss things from the ground up - see what happens on most parliamentary bodies. They break up into committees to do their work, and later present it to the whole body for discussion. Even large companies work in precisely the same way.

History has shown that the best way to discuss things is first by having a group proposing a suggestion, work with it, and then get a consensus from a larger body, and then show it to the whole population for an overall approval. Even so, as all of you know, most "public" information in the world is never voted upon by all members of a society. The best you can hope for is that some people are willing to agree (or disagree) publicly with some ideas, and thus the idea that after some work has been done, people are able to contest it publicly -- and not the other way round.

Under this suggestion, a mixed approach can be useful - group discussions with public transcripts of the proceedings. This is similar to what LL does with the Town Hall meetings, attended by a fraction of the population, but the transcripts are publicly posted for all to see (and comment in the public forums). Group forums even allow something else, which is a sense of "immediate transcripts" - you don't need to wait until a transcript is released, the group forums are an "immediate record" of what has been said and decided upon. My personal experience on "forum workgroups" that have used this approach is that it takes much longer in terms of decision making, but at least everybody is happy to be able to see what is being discussed (and you can have a slowly-paced discussion, and allow for things like different time zonesm, inability to attend to meetings, etc.).

Notice that I mean all this in respect to the constitution of trade associations or arbitration/mediation authorities. Not as to the proceedings of mediation. I certainly don't agree with "public mediation" as a rightful and fair measure! Mediation can be done publicly if and only if there is no participation of the audience. I've never encountered a regulation committee which allowed a participation of the public in the proceedings, except as audience. (Again, group forums are great for this, although I definitely would encourage such meetings to be done in-world, with people allowed to get invited to attend but not to participate, and having the transcripts posted publicly)

Still, I also think that this is the sort of discussion that should start after the trade associations are actually formed - and not before.

Back on topic - I tend to agree with Seth. Let Linden Lab bring in some specialists to discuss the issues with them (they already have lawyers and economists on their advisory board). Let them meet off-world at LL's HQ, get some suggestions from this thread and the many in-world discussions, present it to the experts, and decide upon the composition of the Linden Arbitration Council. This can then be presented to the population for comments and new ideas to be considered. If in-world professionals are available to help LL out, and they're prepared to send their credentials to LL, I'd certainly be very happy to see SL residents participating (their in-world experience will most likely benefit the process).

In the mean time, by claiming the right of free association in SL (it's certainly not disallowed under ToS!), what stops us to form several different (and even competing!) trade associations? They'll surely be not only subject to ToS, but to a Linden Arbitration Council, isn't that right? So why shouldn't we do that?

I don't see absolutely nothing against preventing merchants to get together and establish their own rules for ethical business in SL (this has nothing to do with a Linden Arbitration Council, but simply merchants self-regulating their business practices). Again, it will be the customer's choice to decide to make business with members of those trade associations or not. I think that the same happened with the three off-world e-commerce sites (SL Exchange, SL Boutique, SecondServer/Gigas) - some people are happy to work with some of those, some with none, some with all of them. Or IGE vs. GOM vs. Anshe vs. Hank Ramos. And finally you have the choice of making business with vendors in Mall A or Mall B, depending on who is running the mall. The point is, you, a a consumer, have multiple choices, and you are entitled to do business with the merchants you like or trust. I haven't read any public discussion about that - just basically people defending their position of why they would prefer to work with some of those merchants and not with others. Of course, when the issue of unethical business practices arose, people certainly made their voice heard, sometimes pleading a resident's boycott. That is, in my view, the best way of doing business in SL Play it fair, and you get happy customers; trespass, and people will boycott you, and announce that boycott publicly.

I think that "urging" Linden Lab to limit the residents' rights of having the freedom of association is going a bit too far. In the same token, I certainly also wish the consumers to retain their right of boycotting Trade Association A or B based upon their own perceived reputation of them, being free to discuss their views publicly, and even use their freedom of association to create their own consumer's rights groups, using all tools at their disposal (forums, boycotts, in-world events) to voice their opinion freely.

I'm building up a picture of this really working. I see three arbitrators trying to settle a dispute. The first two arbitrators are the two residents having the dispute or they can substitute another SL resident to represent them. And those two pick one more arbitrator who is a resident.

The three arbitrators ask LL for factual information available only to LL, so it can't be tampered with. That stage is where privacy has to be safeguarded. LL can do that. And finally the three arbitrators and the contact person from LL make a decision, and LL enforces it.

Could we try this?

I need to add a context. I don't think having professionalism in the mix is the same as urging LL to restrict residents' freedom of association. Just let the residents in the dispute represent themselves or freely pick another resident to represent them. And let the designated arbitrators freely pick the third. Of course there would be residents who specialize in arbitration services, and they'd be building up a reputation as fair and professional. That's good for all of us.

So could we try it? I think it would be really good against content-copying cheaters to have some cases on record. A copier might hesitate if content creators have already shown they're willing to go through an arbitration process in order to protect their work.

Gwyneth, the "Land Title" process you mention is an excellent innovation. Having spent time researching land titles and looking up transaction records at Tax Assessment offices, this kind of open record of transactions helps put more information into the hands of players, which produces a more efficient marketplace.

In terms of the arbitration council concept, having a Linden as the third member makes a lot of sense, provided the time and resources would be available. The importance of having the other arbitrators as representatives of the parties involved, rather than people otherwise selected from SL with no interest, is that this will ensure a measure of negotiation and advocacy that will help bring the real issues forward and drive a solution. Disinterested parties can't negotiate on behalf of the principals. It also deals with the question of openness versus privacy. The parties are represented, so there is no need for some public meeting where the issues and negotiations are on view for all. The decision of the arbitrators should probably be made public, unless all parties agree otherwise. In commercial law cases, you will frequently see decisions where the parties do not make the terms public.

Another important point is to deal only with business disputes between the original parties. This shouldn't and can't become some kind of censorship tribunal that deals with statements from third parties not directly involved. Trying to resolve issues of claimed libel will be hopeless. If A and B make a transaction, and C comments on it, this council should not get involved in a dispute between B and C as to the true nature of the transaction between A and B.

Rules of evidence will be driven by what documents are key to the transaction. SL equivalents of "contracts" and "bills of sale" would be the main items. Again, the emphasis should be on resolving business disputes, not bringing peace and harmony to the universe.

I have to say that I find the concept of competition between trade associations to be counter to the very reasons you'd want to set one up to begin with. "our ethics are better than yours"? That strikes me as slightly bizarre. Perhaps I'm missing something. Is the idea to promote a certain group of businesses or is it to encourage ethical practices?

Gwyn, a parliamentary committee is not a good example to use for "deliberations behind closed doors" because parliamentarians are *elected*. They represent something!

But the people you and your friends are suggesting go behind closed doors are *not* elected because some of your friends even oppose player government in the name of removing "oppressive tyrants" in advance (and making sure they get to intellectually advise behind the scenes of things that are just player governments in disguise!)

So please, don't retreat to your little committees, just yet, it really isn't necessary to sift out 10-12 people and keep a few critics at bay if you only have 20 people reading this on the forums anyway.

I think the forums are an adequate place for discussion because they leave an instant public record that you can encourage even those usually uninvolved to come and look at, especially busy people, and Lindens.

You've not commented at all on the "player moderated" forums where you hope to retreat away from people like me who will keep questioning the elitism of this enterprise.

The Linden Arbitration Council idea might be of interest to Lindens but they're going to want to limit their liability -- remember we're in litiginous America here. They're not going to want to set up any device that makes them somehow recognize that they have financial responsibilities under U.S. law, like having to make good on somebody's claim that they lost $600 US in a botched land transaction. They might get their lawyers and social workers or whatever working on this some day -- but is that really a priority for them? Do they want to create a federal government or an ersatz society-running device or are they hoping players will do it?

I know they surely didn't think through the ramifications of blessing so much socialism in their own systems and in their winning projects, and they are rethinking that in some cases. What is the social system that will form the substrate for these systems? Valuation of property and investment and the rights of the individual in a liberal capitalist setting? Valuation of social justice and the "community"? These systems weren't chosen in an election, with parties, and a parliament. They were just tried out as experiments here and there.

I think that various groups simply must get started. And you can't defeat that, Chip, by saying that "the real job is to promote ethics" so that if anyone doesn't like *your* way of promoting ethics *for you and your chosen business community* is then "unethical" by extention. Promoting ethics happens when there is oversight, accountability, transparency. Such benefits come from diversity and democracy, and different groups providing checks and balances not only on government, but on other groups in society.

The idea that we can't have accurate, reliable chat logs from Lindens is false because the very AR system itself has a click-off box that says "attach chat logs" so that they already have a system in place to capture at least some chat logs for a short time. And they no doubt keep random back-ups to protect themselves or for purely technical reasons figuring out load requirements, etc.

The notecarded convo is the centerpiece of SL gotcha culture. They are routinely made and published on third-party sites. They're passed around. They're conversational pieces at parties. So they can be reviewed. Everyone knows they can be tampered with. But in fact they are often accepted. So try them, but of course recognize they aren't "admissable in court".

I think a face-to-face meeting, a hearing of the facts, in some cases will be all that is needed to end a dispute -- sunlight is the best disinfectant.

If more is needed, then eventually it gets to the Arbitration Council. Obviously such an entity can't have 12,000 complaints coming in, so it's good if a robust interlocking system evolves of trade groups promoting best practices for businesses, consumer advocates challenging business, and a "federal government" arbitration body.

And experience shows that when new complaints mechanisms are set up in systems with long pent-up frustration, they will be deluged with huge numbers. The ombudsmen of Poland or Kyrgyzstan can tell you what it is like to wade in a sea of mailsacks from outraged citizens struggling to get their cows back from people or officials who stole them, etc. Often the hardest thing in any complaints system is to be able to write your own complain coherently such as to enable an official to tackle it.

There's a reason why an adversarial defense system emerged in America with very few instances of "ombudsman" like offices (i.e. they are limited to things like the "ombudsman of education in Minesota" and not ombudsman of the entire country). It's because adversarial processes -- an independent bar -- are needed to find the facts in a system where it isn't powerful officials, families, corporations that get to rule evrerything to quite the extent they do in other countries.

I think a significant obstacle to getting any justice or legal or complaints system going in SL is these very differing notions of justice and complaints embedded in the very cultures of various countries and social systems.

I'm for getting started, and gathering data in beta mode.

Silence. Ok, we all done having our fake public discussion now? Yoo-hoo??? did you all go back to your secret groups not listed in FIND GROUPS, your backrooms, your private island sims, your clubs, your third-party site forums, your SL player-moderated forums! Are you creating an elaborate structure that will endorse some businesses and not others? Are you having fun yet?



Ferren, I think that's a *spendid* idea. For example, to follow your scenario, just to pick a really hypothetical example right out of the sky over...let's say, Calletta. Let's say that soon after the sim is born, a rentals agent goes out to the sim because a few newbies asked him where would be a good place to buy and sell land to then later rent from the rentals agent. And let's say (A) the rentals agent finds some land and proposes that the newbie (B) buys it, and then he leaves to talk to another customer who also buys a first land, then later sells it on the open market, and rents from (A).

Then (C) who is a builder of a giant tower nearby, horrified that his Nemesis on the Premises (A) from a previous life happens to be within 16m of him, writes an IM to (B) while he is offline, telling him never to to business with (A), that (A) scams newbies and is to avoided at all costs. Let's add that he talks to (D) and gets (D) thinking along the same line. A side story develops where (D) tries to pressure (B) into selling his land, but let's leave that for now.

(C) then tells (B) even in person that he shouldn't do business ever with (A) and is being scammed. (B) replies that in fact he may just live on his lot, or sell it later at a price (A) offered, or whatever, but he really feels (D) is pressuring him. No matter, (C) persists with B and D and E,F,G to claim wrongfully that (A) scams newbies even though he hasn't bought any land from any newbies yet LOL and when he does buy in the area buys from Newbie Chung and Newbie Oldbie Alt for at or above the considerably high market prices of the area LOL. There's an interesting sidebar to this story, but to shorten it let's cut to the chase...

Perplexed, (B) tells (A) he's being slammed, and (A) now sees in fact (C) has been slandering him. The Lindens say "Go Fish" because "C has a right to express his opinion".
Whereupon A negs C and then some and C goes on a jihad about his negs.

(C) then goes off to XYZ and LMNOP and gets them all to form a Better Business Bureau to make themselves all go on the whitelist, and demonstrably leave (A) off the white list, ignore him in the forums, in fact informally blackball him, telling Lindens he is "unstable" or "needs" help and quietly continuing to sabotage his customers and also now and then appear on the forums to say he's mentally ill or a troll or worse.

Oh, yeah, I agree that in such cases "trying to resolve claimed libel will be hopeless" because um...hmm...well...there isn't a victim of (A). There is only hearsay and beliefs. That's why it's libel LOL. In such a case, though, one could hope that any randomly selected, or even pre-packaged White Hat White List White Group could hear the story, interview the parties, look at the notecards (whatever the claims of their being faked and say), "C, get off it. Get a life. Go away." Except, by then, (C) will have helped advise the creation of a structure that whitelisted everybody but (A) and probably mounted an investigation into (A) on some other specious charge.

I think that might be beneficial for SL if people like C could get a little peer pressure now and then to serve as a reality check on their ambitions to railroad people off the game. No? I think there should be mechanisms to address libel as a dispute like any other.

But then, trying to do that would leave C and the rest of the alphabet to make an entire BBB structure around one incident and one person LOL making sure to never deal with any claims (A) might emerge with against (C) and making sure that (C) remains on whatever whitelist needs to be made. Would that be reasonable, do you think?

[Shouts] Yooo-hoooo! Haloooooooo!!!!????

[crickets]

[whooshing of tall grass]

Speaking of silence:

RUN DMC

"You Talk Too Much"

Shut up!!!

You talk too much...
You talk too much...
You talk too much...
You talk too much...

Hey! You over there, I know about your kind
You're like the Independent Network News on Channel 9
Everywhere that you go, no matter where you at
I said you talk about this, and you talk about that
When the cat took your tongue, I say you took it right back
Your mouth is so big, one bite would kill a Big Mac

You talk too much You never shut up
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never shut up

You talk about people, you don't even know
And you talk about places, you NEVER go
You talk about your girl, from head to toe
I said your mouth's moving fast, and your brain's moving slow

You talk too much You never shut up!!
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never shut up

You're the instigator, the orator of the town
You're the worst when you converse, just a big mouth clown
You talk when you're awake, I heard you talk when you sleep
Has anyone ever told you, that talk is cheap

You talk too much You never shut, up!!
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!

Talking is the one thing, that you can do best
You told the cavity creeps, to watch out for Crest
You never have the story, right and exact
And then you always try to bore me, with your yakkity yak

You talk too much And then you never shut up
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!

Everyday you are out fighting someone in the street
And you're always fighting someone you know ya can't beat
Then you wonder how, you got in this mess
Just think of what you said, then take a guess

You talk too much You never shut up!
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!

You're always spreading rumors, whether bad or good
You're the damn Walter Cronkite of the neighborhood
The Barbara Walters, and the Howard Cosell
You always come around, with a story to tell

You talk too much And then you never shut up
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!

Said it's everybody's business that you love to mind
And talkin to you, is like dropping a dime
You're spreading the word, like it is your job
You should be a stool pigeon, who works for the mob

You talk too much And you never shut up
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never shut up!

A big blabbermouth, that's what you are
If you were a talk show host, you'd be a star
I said your mouth is big, size extra large
And when you open it, it's like my garage

You talk too much And then you never shut up
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never shut up

You always like to gossip, just like a girl
You talk so damn much, it's outta this world
When you're reincarnated, in your second life
You won't be a man, you'll be a nagging wife

You talk too much Then you never shut up
He said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!

SHUT UP!!!
SHUT UP!!!

Twenty-five hours, eight days a week
Thirteen months outta year, is when you speak
I'm tired of listening to the garbage you talk
Why don't you find a short pier, and take a long walk

You talk too much Then you never shut up!
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!
You talk too much You could be, out of breath
You talk too much Man you naggin me to death
You talk too much Tired of hearing you speak
You talk too much Eight days a week
You talk too much Then you never shut up
I said you talk too much Why don't you ever SHUT UP!!!
You talk too much Then you never shut up!
I said you talk too much Homeboy you never SHUT UP!!!

I cannot believe u knew all those words. Thanks for the smile at work!

OK, Here we go...



First of all, I am sick and tired of people just hanging out in the forums complaining about things, and suggesting things be done. OK Gwyn, so you want a BBB? Start one! Stop complaining and get off your plump behind and start one. So it has failed in the past, you seem to have the ideas to make it work. Start a group, and come up with a plan to get it working. otherwise this thread is about as useless as a one legged cat trying to burry a turd on a frozen pond.

Oh yes, and if you don't start the SL BBB and someone else does, are you going to take credit for "suggesting" it?

There are talkers and there are do'ers. Who do you want to be today?

jeez. I think you should had more coffee before you posted this morning, Games.

Most of these problems happen to new members of SL. And I dont see them slogging through pages of text to learn who is good and who is bad. Its going to happen if there is a BBB or if there isnt a BBB. And what of people who are good people and simply do not want to take part in yet another layer of laws? Not workable.

stepping around the core issue of whether this whole thing is viable at all, i just thought i'd respond to this bit:

Mediation professionals would be a good addition to any board, but you would absolutely need diversity.

The reason to have people from in-world goes beyond reputation and towards the ability to judge wisely. Business is messy. IP issues are messy. People with real business experience in both SL and RL would have more insight into a conflict. The real world rarely matches up to academic theory, and if I had to choose between being judged by a harvard professor and a fellow entrepreneur, I'd choose the person who had also been in the trenches.

I agree Forseti. I'd rather have someone who actually lives in this world, who lives and works in the game. It's one of the things I find a bit frustrating about the Future Salon, the people pontificating in it don't necessarily work and live here and grapple with the immersive world issues.

I wouldn't mind if Linden Labs hired community relations professionals outside the gameworld with practical experience guiding either Internet communities or meat-world communities or whatever you call the RL world. That's all to the good. I suppose such a paid Linden staff person could also draw on volunteer people here who in their RL capacity have these credentials. I'm actually like to see them get out of that game culture of wizards and mentors and leveling and points and quests and just get competent people with RL and Internet experience who aren't necessarily merely a product of an existing game clique or power base, which is inevitably what happens.

I'm made leery by the notion that to garner protections in a game, one has to fork over one's RL credentials and expertise, however, in terms of becoming an acceptable volunteer either to Lindens or to players.

Isn't the beauty of SL the idea that you can create an ideal race that doesn't have the judgements that come with terms like "Harvard professor" or "WASP"?

The question is really whether the Lindens are willing to put one whole staff person on the job of dispute resolution. THey become a kind of glorified customer service department complaints bureau then. Their job isn't to resolve complaints against the company, more often than not. That is, the standard complaints like "your game ate my sex balls, where are they" can be handled by the regular customer service complaints.

But this new complaints chief has to handle the harder -- and more troublesome and more long-lasting -- disputes between players. He has to find facts between two warring sides. We'd like that to be a Linden in terms of only Lindens can access chat logs reliably and financial transactions reliably for all parties.

We all need to think long and hard as to why there such things as inter-player disputes that don't already fall under the TOS and don't already then qualify for handling by the regular customer service.

I feel there are a host of things that don't fall under the TOS but still constitute valid disputes. A player sells another player a $50,000 poker table, but puts it in a $15,000 labeled box. A player slanders another players reputation with false information. A designer sees their design is stolen. A business lags a sim down to 37 and impacts residences. See where this is going?

What will be the code that the Lindens use to work this against? The Ten Commandments? Thou shalt not steal? Thou shalt not lag the sim down to 37? (Thou shalt not covet they neighbour's property LOL).

But if they could make a manual or code for solving bad behaviour problems like that...then....why don't they put it in the TOS? This is what I ponder.

And the answer is likely that then the TOS would become too restrictve and cumbersome to manage and police and would suppress freedom.