No Naming Names?

Maybe the fact that the rules are bigger than the moderators? The rules should give us the freedom to operate within them. If the rules state that my post calling "person X" a scammer "will not be deleted", then I don't expect a moderator to delete that post.

The forums are subject to the community standards as well so I'd think it's a combination of the harassment (or whichever one defamation falls under) and disclosure (for logs) clause.

You can't put "so and so is a nasty this and that" in your profile/picks in-world so why should you be able to come to the official forums to slander someone?

LL make the rules. The Res Mods work for LL - they may not be getting paid, but they still work for them. The Res Mods are invested with the power to take these decisions and the rules are not there to give you freedom - they're there to protect LL's interests. As such it is right and proper that LL and their agents reserve the right to change or reinterpret the rules at any time.

Hear no evil

Speak no evil

See no evil

Never trust a monkey

Not saying you shouldn't. But then it should be a rule--which it is not.

BTW: Slander means the statement is made with the knowlege that it is not true.

No its included under the SECOND half of the statement

Even if it weren't arule, I think it's just common civility. Would you want someone trashing you on a site, saying things that may or may not be true, without you having your side of the story told?

What is your point? There is no ethics committee that has oversight over the moderation decision on this board.

The community standards *are* rules.

Desmond Shang.

Ordinal Malaprop.

Torley Linden.

Strife Onizuka.

Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh.

Yahweh.

*waits for lightning bolt*

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Hey, it's not that you named a name. It's that you've been abusive or mean or whatnot.

Saying something *nice* in a proper way, as opposed to in a promotional or 'damned with faint praise' sort of way, never goes out of style.

So relax, help the people with questions here, and otherwise just go about your business.

It would be ridiculous for us to have to pantomime Torley's name if we referred someone to a tutorial, for instance. OrleyTay IndenLay? Or twenty questions?

C'mon folks this ain't hard.

The point is I don't think we should be afraid to write about a person, say a griefer who is attacking people, or a theif who has figured out a way to steal from people. There is a lot of finger shaking when people do that, and I don't think there needs to be. There is no such rule against it and I hope that the moderators will read this and either point to it or create it before they continue deleting those posts.

Brenda: That rule is still not the same thing that we are talking about. It is describing threads like:
Attention All Forum Cartel Members: Please vote on whether Teejay Dojoji should shut up!

It's not about posts that say: There is a guy named "X" who is handing out notecards that allow him to clear out your Linden account when you accept it.

That's absolutely ridiculous. And if "X" wants to respond--then I'd be more than happy to hear his side of it and his explaination for why such a thing would happen.

What if X never reads the forums and can't defend himself? Defamation is nasty.

Then I'm sure you will notify him, Oryx. LOL

So don't be afraid. Fear or not fear as is your wont. Your fear has little or nothing to do with the likelihood of a thread being locked.

Trying to make an argument based on the idea that what rules there are aren't being properly followed is doomed, because there is no enforcement of those rules. If you want to challenge the system you must use other means - personal persuasion, departing to another board, outright revolution. It doesn't matter how many times one argues that tradition X is incompatible with rule Y, because no matter how many people with no power (posters) agree, those with power (moderators) don't, and nobody with more power will force them to.

Trouble with that is twofold.

First, it's far too easy to completely trash someone's reputation on the grid, and there's no way to 'prove' or 'disprove' what really happened.

We are a land of anonymous alts, so even if two dozen people turned up and spoke against you, well, it could (and often is) just a vendetta.


Second, and I'll say this as gently as possible in a purely theoretical sense: there's no way to cure 'stupid.'

If someone is likely to be taken in by an SL 'banker' or 'charity' tip jar or whatnot, well, a few forum posts naming specific people won't cure a thing. A general warning might be appropriate, but anything really nasty about an individual needs to get reported to the Company or to law enforcement.

Well Strife is out there, doing the lockmeister dance. Hpefully he will weigh in here and answer your question.

Well said, Desmond!

It's okay for a Res Mod to lock threads, so long as they have an in their copy-and-paste stock response final post. Those are the rules.

I think we have also established that, due to the Community Standards, there really is an actual rule about naming names.

Hahaha
And I can imagine he will say, "You know what? You're right!. I have been wrong and I am sorry."

More likely he/she will say "This forum isn't for general discussion; there are many Resident Sites where this discussion is appropriate - Resident Answers is for Resident-to-Resident help. I'll close this thread..."

Yes, and that part, defamation, definitely is part of the TOS.

Here is where we see the split between Authority and Conscience.

There are rules - and laws, in RL - that were written by fallible human beings who could not possibly know the specifics of the circumstance you are dealing with now. They may be well-meaning, or not. They may be intelligent and/or competent, or not. They could be civil libertarians or closet Nazis or anything in between. As Charles Dickens famously pointed out, and has never been seriously refuted, "The law is a ass." But rules - and laws - that people can refer to are needed ot maintain civilized discourse, so we have and honor them.

Then there is conscience. That still, small voice tells you what is right and wrong in your context, and how you should act on it. Most of the time, in the civlized world, it accords reasonably well with the rules and the laws. Sometimes, it does not. If you were on a civil rights march in Birmingham, AL in the 1950s, you were right. And if you gave shelter to Anne Frank and her family in the early 1940s, you were also right. In both cases, you were breaking the laws. Was what you did right, or wrong?

Taking exception to the laws and rules and acting on conscience can certainly be abused, and is, no argument. But so is mindlessly observing the letters of laws and rules that are inevitably arbitrary and may be wrong-headed. So, there is no safe answer here.

What is safe to say is, if you throw away your conscience and sense of morality and embrace whatever has been imposed by Authority, you have turned away from your better self and given your sooul over to - what? In the best case, politicians and bureaucrats. In the worst case - well, I have Godwinized enough already.

I say, follow your conscience. Do what is right, and deal with whatever happens thereafter. If some sociopath comes along and uses the same prerogative to do evil, that is his problem. It does not invalidate you own considered, moral judgment. There are similarly vicious people who acquire social power and can use the Rules and the Laws to commit far worse evils. Turn your moral judgment over to them, and you are the neighbor who turned in Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis, the doghandler who let the vicious German shepherds loose on the civil rights marchers, the nurses who injected mind-altering drugs into dissenters sent to mental institutions by the Soviet authorities in the 1970s, the central African villagers who bashed the brains out of wide-eyed innocent children in Ruanda in the 1990s.

Still feel so comfy and "moral" because you're following the rules? Well, you're a "good German."

THINK.

Okay, /rant off. In this context, decide for yourself whether the social benefit of unmasking what amounts to an SL criminal offsets the problems created by "naming names." go with God.

Well said, Har

Beautifully said Har