Calling for an end to banning without warning or reason

Its an interesting thought -
Course it could also be they are simply too lazy to tell people why they banned them.

The not wanting responsibility angle makes as much sense as any though.

I'd like to create a JIRA on this issue but I'm not sure what to classify it as. Any ideas?

How about -

"Can we get some damn rights around here?"

Amendment 6

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

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I know in SL they are not bound to uphold any constitutional rights, but that doesn't mean the ideals behind them lack merit.

If people were arrested or fined without any explanations given there would be all sorts of uproar, even if the penalties were relatively minor.

Hey Eric...

I'm really sorry to hear this is happening to you guys. I am friends with a bunch of your members, and Ivan of course, and I hope you can all get this sorted out.

This really burns me up , because I happen to have a former member that I banned from my land for good reason, and she has been griefing me with harassment, assault, and defamation of character for the last 3 weeks or so, and despite my many many many abuse reports sent in to LL, she is still at it (along with all of her known alts). She even spam attacked me and my fighters during an event, which was a big enough event that Teagen Linden was kind enough to come in to work security for us, and STILL she continues to be a pain to me. She won't let me keep my group as open enrollment. She immediately joins and starts to harass my members and myself. She even brags openly about how every time I open up the group, her and her alts will come in and make my life hell. THIS goes unpunished, but your members are being banned with no reason.

This is not acceptable.

A few mundane suggestions:

LL will generally tell residents why they have been banned/suspended if they submit a support ticket. If you cannot do so on the account in question, create a new Basic account and submit a (politely worded!) Special Question for an "Account Issue" ticket briefly asking why the original account has been disabled, and presenting your case.

Also, disabled accounts should be careful to check their spam folders for notifications from LL, which frequently appear to be unsolicited spam.

A pro wrestling group is going to attract folks whose online persona enjoys both drama and action. So these bannings could indeed be caused by disgruntled members filing massive numbers of ARs, in which case the only long-term fix is to put in place some way for members to arbitrate disagreements. Short-term, you might try to go to the governance Office Hour and see if you can work out some way that LL can run ARs concerning your group past some responsible individual.
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Hello all,

I am co-owner of the SLCW. I was fowarded this thread by some of our group members, as I was looking for a place to chat about the recent disabling of an account of a friend of mine.

I too, was very caught of guard when this individual's account was disabled. Whether it was pending and investigation, or as a judgment and punishment against him, there has been nothing that even remotely resembles due process.

Here is my chief concern on this issue. If there is absolutely no due process allowed for people being banned or having their accounts disbled, then Abuse Reports become little more than a weapon to be used by the real bad actors or griefers.

Our group has dealt with, as I assume most have, bad behavior and bad actors who find enjoyment through various forms of harrassment throughout Second Life (tm).

I have had to AR a few people in the past for everything from blatant sexual harrassment, to actual harrassment and stalking. Often these actors have "had it coming," in that their behavior prompted the very report that gets them banned.

My concern is that there is nothing stopping these people from coming back as an alt and filing their own AR, so as to basically "get back at" the organizations or groups they feel slighted by.

Abuse Reports, in and of themselves, can be abused. No doubt about it. That's why I am concerned that there is absolutely no due process, no notification, no forum for appeals or even a helpful response from LL as to what prompted the problem.

I understand this is a complex issue. For every way LL might attempt to regulate this, they will make somebody unhappy.

The friend and groupmember that had his account disabled, which prompted my response, spent nearly all his time working within our group. Could there be a reason he is banned? Possibly. I can't rule that out but I can say, from investigation within the SLCW, that not a single person could think of a reason for this person to have his account disabled.

I personally believe this is some kind of attack by another individual on SL either against this individual or against the SLCW or both. I think this is a case where Abuse Reports are being used by the real "bad actors" as a weapon to further harrass and frustrate the enjoyment of SL by upstanding residents who don't resort to those tactics to enjoy their experience on here.

That, in my opinion, is the real problem LL needs to assess and for which a solution needs to be found. There must be enough due process to prevent the actual "bad actors" from using ARs as part of their arsenal of harrassment.

I thank all of you for taking the time to read this in its entirety. I also appreciate all your comments on the issue.

AC

It seems pretty clear that something is indeed broken in how ARs lead to account suspensions, and that's all but admitted in the "fruit rind joke" blog post cited above (well, I thought it was cited here, but sure can't find it now... anyway, it's at http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/16/knowledge-base-article-of-the-week-33-fruit-rind-joke-goes-here/). But it also points to the appeals process, which I have no reason to suspect is other than fair and effective. What I sense is broken is the quality of investigation of ARs leading to bans, and the explanations (not) offered to holders of suspended accounts.

From other threads, it seems like some suspensions get those explanations and others don't (and there's another bunch who get sent the explanation but it gets caught in spam filters at their mail service provider). I think it would be useful if somebody could make it to the next G-Team office hours (evidently with Socrates noon tomorrow in Kremer, per http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_Hours/GTeam), to ask for more information about when explanations are and aren't sent.

If we try really really hard to see why such explanations might not be offered, in addition to the "avoid liability" or "just don't give a damn" hypotheses (which are not to be dismissed!), it may be that often better results obtain when everybody just cools down for a day or three while the suspension runs its course. That wouldn't be true for cases where the suspension is in error, but if that happens often enough to matter, then *that* needs fixing more urgently than the lack of explanation (IMHO).

I'm always nervous about analogies between SL's operational policies and RL government. There's no reason LL has to operate a business with the kind of protections and resources required of the US judiciary. But they are in business to make a profit, so they shouldn't be about suspending customers inappropriately, nor making it unnecessarily difficult to get information about why it happened, nor to reverse errors of this sort.

After speaking with another member that I know has been banned, this is what I've come to find.

-Linden Labs claims they are sending out emails yet noone seems to be getting them.
-This case, in particular, was the person being banned for someone claiming they were underage. Instead of Linden Labs contacting him and asking him to verify he was of age, or showing proof as to why they believed he wasn't, the went the "guilty until proven innocent" route.
-His account was "disabled" with no given information as to how long it was for, be it temporary or permanent.
-He has to actually call Linden Labs themselves to get his account unbanned and prove his age.

How the hell is it going to be as easy as a bastard sending in a fake AR to get someone banned without notice, but so difficult to even find out WHY you were banned, much less to get unbanned? If you have no proof someone has done something against the ToS, how the hell are you going to even ban them for anything? Also, how are you going to sit and claim you sent info when all these people are saying they never got a damn thing?

Yup... file an AR accusing someone of being underage, and that person will be suspended until they scan and upload some sensitive documents. If they are unwilling to do that, they can never come back, not even to get their stuff or their L$. It is the most powerful of griefing tools, and it is free. It is most powerful when launched on a Friday at 5pm PT. My only hope is that the filers of false reports eventually face sanctions, but it would take a very risky experiment in order to find out for sure.
http://www.massively.com/2008/03/11/how-many-times-do-you-have-to-prove-it/
For I long time, I had a line in my profile that said i would report underage users, but I removed it. With the current system, I cannot in good conscience ever report someone for underage even if they admit it in open chat.

At least you have your reason now.

The reason wasnt the purpose of this. The purpose of this was LL's lack of informing anyone WHY it happened, or what happened, or how to appeal.

The Governance and Response Team (those that do the warning, suspensions and bans) have an open Office Hours each Wednesday at 10AM SLT and Saturday at 12 (Noon) SLT at the sim Kremer. While they will not respond to questions about specific or ongoing Abuse Reports, they will answer questions about the whys and hows of the process.

A couple of notes:

Abuse Reports are merely an accusation of Abuse
Abuse Reports are investigated via sim and individual logs to determine validity
Abuse Reports are only actionable by the GTeam
Bogus Abuse Reports are discarded
Warnings, suspensions and bans may be appealed and can be overturned
Letters concerning actions taken against an account are sent to the listed account Email.

If you want more information, I suggests rather than wondering or posting possible misinformation, you attend the GTeam Office Hours at Kremer during the hours listed above.

Did you read what I said? The whole purpose to this? LL is disabling accounts without giving any information. At all. This isn't an argument over the reasons for the bannings or how the AR system is broken (it is). This is over the fact that Linden Labs doesn't even have the coutesy to send an email letting a person know their account has been disabled and give more information, like who they should contact, when, and potentially why it's happened. That way people have SOMETHING to go off of. This is like going into work, being stopped at the front, told you're fired by the receptionist, and escorted out. You can't clean out your office, you can't even figure out why or what caused it, you get absolutely nothing from them. THAT is the complaint here. The LEAST they could do is say "hey, your account is suspended, here's what is being done and here's what you can do".

For some reason, I'm not overwhelmed with confidence.

and here I thought they had all friended Jumpy...

Jumpy's not a bad person. He's just misunderstood.

They don't know why they were banned. That's what the thread is about.

there are of course no safeguards protecting someone from wrongful accusations of this type.

"Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead" (I once wrote a paper on that theatre of the absurd play for one of my English college classes.) Love that play!

Don't I know it. I think he is funny.

I eagerly await the comparisons of LL's account suspensions to the TSA watch list.

Just saying.

If you believe the forums, LL have disabled an account on the basis of an underage AR despite

a) the account being age verified
b) this being the second time they had disabled the account on suspicion of being underage, so the person had already faxed LL proof of age.

Matthew

OK, some of LL's processes for suspending an account may need adjusting, but the key issues I think are

a) lack of notification (officially there should be an e-mail, but lots of reports this doesn't happen)
b) slow response to tickets requesting information

So I've opened a jira - for what it is worth - on these two issues:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1422

Not only the forums.

Also people I have known in world.

Basically from what people have explained to me here and in world -

Age-Verification apparently is NO protection against a "underage" AR

"underage" ARs result in automatic account suspension pending proof.

The proof is good only for that one offense - it has to be resubmitted each time.

An account being "age verified" doesn't mean crap.

As been pointed out here in the past.