The SL Abuse Reporting System

In another thread, when discussing ARs, somebody said



This appears to be (I could be wrong, it's not a special occasion or anything) a suggestion that, if you do nothing wrong, a number of people with mercenary motives could still cause trouble for you simply by all ARing you in concert with a fake complaint that obviously isn't supported by images or chat logs, but still draws the attention of LL. Or, a suggestion that a true offender will only be acted against by LL if a large number of people AR him, in which case if you're all alone and somebody's griefing you, your AR will be ineffective.

How true are these generalizations vis-a-vis the AR system in SL? Are these serious problems that need looking into? Or are they merely things we have to put up with occasionally when using this sort of AR system?

If it is a problem, how do you propose the AR system be reformed?

From what I understand is the AR system is automated and depending on keywords and such it takes action and only if you would call them will they actually check in the system to do an investigation


ps. what Ive heard.

There was even a thread where someone was publicaly organizing a group to AR ad farmers en masse for better results.

When a griefer griefs a club you will often see in the group chat "everyone AR such and such - to make sure the Lindens will respond"

Often groups of friends will all AR something they see rather than just one of them.

It seems to be public knowledge that LL will respond more harshly if theres many ARs than just one.

This whole perception needs to change. While things like this have gone on for years, it seems the complaints of "banned without cause" are on the uprise.

I personally find people who AR those who do nothing directly to them to be irresponsible ultimately, Since it would be like people calling the 911 every time they *heard* there was an emergency out there.

But...Dan Linden told us to do it.......

There is no Daniel Linden anymore.

But his legacy lives on.....

yeah very much so

DOB is SOP

DOB is SOP?

Date Of Birth is Standard Operating Procedure?

I would like to think that the vast majority of the time when there's a massive set of ARs against an individual, then that individual really was griefing. I'm not sure how to reform the system. I suggest, though, that if a bunch of people AR somebody for something, and it turns out there's no evidence whatsoever, then perhaps the people who sent the ARs get at least a warning. And if there's proof the ARs were send maliciously, then the AR senders should get the ban.

--Hugsy

lol, was making a bit of a joke

the infamous dan Linden report your neighbor blog post has been refered to by many since as "DOB your neighbor"

so

DOB is SOP ..

You might like to think that - but there is no real reason it should be true.

As for keeping track of suspected malicious ARs .. if they have trouble keeping up with the current volume to the extent that a group of ARs sways their decision, I don't see them having the time to keep track of such.

I think the reason it should be true is that most people aren't jerks.



It's true that my suggestion would require more effort on LL's part. I believe there has to be human intervention though. A purely automated system won't work. It will be gamed. If they don't have enough staff to deal with what they got, they need to fix that.

--Hugsy

I dunno. Individually most people aren't.

Collectively however I think many people are jerks. Especially when it comes to enforcing a sort of conformity.

A gang mentality.

(I know we all know that here in Resident Answers, "Dan" is always short for "Daniel" but it just so sucks for the real "Dan Linden" who happens to be a really great guy. Not a crusade to change the usage here, just noting that if anybody should ever meet or get a chance to work with the real Dan, it will be a pleasure.)

To the topic: We are seeing a lot of reports about this, but everything is anecdotal--which doesn't mean it's not valid, but without concrete measures of what part of the process goes wrong, it's pretty difficult to know what to fix.

Also, It seems only practical that they have some kind of automated filter for ARs. I'm thinking a spam filter could be tweaked to include attributes and histories of the AR, the reporter, and the AR'd resident as predictors of the AR's likely validity. Basically, automated AR "profiling" to decide which ones get attention. Of course, for all I know, they already do something like that. I would be very surprised, however, if any real disciplinary measures are taken without some live human from G-Team getting involved.

I think I would rather they reduce the number of ban worthy and suspension worthy infractions to an absolute minimum and expect people to otherwise police their own land.

If you cut down on all the reasons people have for filing ARs it would be a lot easier to keep up with them.

This is of course contrary to the whole "AR it and we will investigate" culture that has arisen with gambling, age play, ad farms, sexual content or whatever is being enforced this week.

I didn't know there was another. I will effort to reference the right person.

I see where you're sitting. But while it would constitute an unintended use of the system, is it really a bad one? Sure, the griefer may have only been DIRECTLY pushing/attacking/whatevering one or two people, and not all 15 people who reported him. But he WAS griefing.

Same thing with the ad farm. Say a dozen people AR a 16m L$300000 plot with the Grandfather of All Annoying Spinning Ad Towers on it. Only one of the AR's was sent by someone who owns adjacent land - the rest might've been "friends" he recruited to send more ARs. But the plot IS an obvious extortion ad farm. So is LL's response unwarranted? No matter how many or how few people AR a TOS offense, it's still a TOS offense.

On the other hand, is it true that you would still get teh banzored if a dozen people AR'd you and you did not in fact violate any TOS? I'm asking because the only way I would really find a problem with mass-recruiting-AR-drives is if this situation were indeed true.

If the only thing the mass-ARing does is get LL to take notice quicker, I'm not sure I have a problem with that if the actual punitive action LL takes is still based on provable things like images or chat logs, and not "well, a lot of people complained, so you're suspended. Guilty!"

I DO recognize and understand your line of reasoning, though.

I recently had some of my designs stolen and when I went to AR the person, I was surprised to notice that there is no category at all for content theft. The only thing even remotely close was a category entitled Harassment. Under what category are we supposed to file reports of content theft? It does seem like this should be one of the categories.

Rallying others to come over and file an AR for something they weren't part of/witness to is abuse in and by itself (or at least it - rightly - is for mentors so it may not apply to the general population).

Linden Lab's recommended course of action in the case of content theft is for the original creator to file a DMCA:

http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

You may also want to read this blog post:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/06/17/responding-to-questions-about-the-dmca-process/

Well again, in my opinion the context is important. If a club owner with a big following was to send out a group notice, say, explaining that "so-and-so was just in here a minute ago griefing and we had to eject him. Quick, everyone AR him so LL will do something", I would have a problem with that. All the people who were not in the club witnessing the incident really have nothing to AR. That's well and truly cheating.

But an ad farm is an example of an ongoing or perpetual TOS violation. When the summoned friend arrives, the ad farm IS at the moment still up, still violating the TOS at the time of the visit. Which in my opinion makes it fair game for ANYONE who sees it. If you see someone break into a steal a car, you can still tell the police about it even if it's not your car. Same thing.

Resolving ARs is probably one of the most incredibly difficult things that LL staff ever do. Some ARs are certainly going to be straight-forward, but yes people will use the AR system maliciously or frivolously. It often comes down to perception - the perception of the "abuser" in his/her behaviour, the perception of the "reporter" and the perception of the "investigator" when making a call on it.

These clashes in perceptions can cause havoc, and often lead to totally hypocritical ARs i.e. a slight inconvenience for the reporter and he/she wants to have maximum sanctions applied, but of course, if the reporter carried out the exact same (or much worse) behaviour they would be genuinely shocked to have any sanction applied to them, because they are allowed (they believe in their own mind) to behave exactly as they like.

If you then add supporting malicious and/or frivolous ARs to the mix.... the work of the investigator gets really quite tough. But thankfully LL have logs for everything, and they can spot this quite easily.

I've yet to see any evidence of this other than offhand remarks by Residents. If they truly logged everything, there would never be a "he said/she said" dispute. I don't know that they even have the capacity to log every single line of chat that takes place across the grid. That would be astronomical record-keeping.

I have only ever used the AR system once, on a couple of particle spammers on a rp sim a month ago, a Linden arrived in minutes to remove it. I was the only one there who even knew about ARing so the only one who had done it. Does seem they are watching as they come in and try to deal with them in urgency order.

I must be difficult for them as there are many who will use the system for the most stupid reasons.

I am not sure there is any evidence of this other than hearsay

Course if its frequently the case that LL doesn't provide documentation with its bannings .. than thats all you'd be left with.