When is ARing really Vigilantism

I was there that night at the hangout and there WAS some pretty serious lag.

Lil mentioned to me when she decided to go out and AR the club. Most of the hangout went along.

If they got the same "invitation" as me, I can't see calling it an AR party--even tho the cartel hangout did pretty much clear out. I was simply informed that she was going--along with a few other folks.

But there was a clear and obvious abuse of resources, and the AR's happened promptly when a bunch of people who were directly affected identified the problem. Not a group out to grief someone, or promote mob justice.

It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. At this point, I'm curious to see how the G Team responds.

Oh, and fwiw, I didn't go along. Any of you who've actually taken notice of me on those rare occasions when I spend time at the club house should realize the significance of that and understand how it adds perspective to the concept of the event being an "AR party."

OK, call it a lynch mob if you prefer. Personally, that's got even more distasteful overtones to me, even if the basic concept is the same.

I'm paying to use Second Life. When people are preventing me from using it, they sure are stealing from me.

No fraud? Really? Like people not delivering products they promise, putting up fake rental boxes on land? People selling copybotted items? There are cases of fraud, harassment theft and abuse brought up in these forums all the time.

There are people in SL who refuse to live and let live. They're why we have the AR system.

In light of this and your earlier post that LL should be ashamed of themselves for even allowing the AR system to exist in the first place, something for you to think about, which directly relates to the situation reported by the OP when asking about vigilanteism in the first place:

Linden Lab operates servers in the United States. It is a very well established, documented fact that it is against the law to operate servers in the United States which host gambling devices. Even if you're not gambling with real money, if you are using "chips" or "tokens" or anything else to keep "score" which can be purchased with real money (including a supposedly fake fictional currency commonly referred to as L$), running such a server is breaking the law.

So, the existence of this particular club with gambling machines, forces Linden Lab themselves into the role of being criminals for operating servers in the United States which are being used for gambling. This is an issue which has a direct negative impact on every single account signed up with the grid, because the actual consequences of Linden Lab's actions in running gambling operations on their servers will force Second Life to go away permanently.

In the name of "live and let live" therefore, there is only one way to practice that particular attitude: AR the hell out of the people who dare to run gambling operations in Second Life. This is a very clear example of a cut and dried situation where zero-tolerance is the only appropriate policy, in order to actually make things fair for all, INCLUDING the person who chose to run gambling operations in-world in the first place.

Edit to add: Don't use the argument that Linden Lab can and should move their servers offshore, either. That still won't fix the problem. It is also against the law for companies such as PayPal to process payments to outfits that are running gambling operations online, even if they're not in the United States. Should Linden Lab's servers be moved offshore then gambling become an officially sanctioned activity, it will still impact the entire grid quite negatively as people suddenly learn that it is impossible to ever sink another penny into anything in-world. No buying or owning land. No owning private sims. No buying L$ to go buy that great outfit at Bare Rose that you just love. No selling your L$ for real currency again unless you're fortunate enough not to live in the United States and have access to a non-US means of engaging in such transactions. Epic fail.

No, you are not. You are a snitch, in every possible pejorative definition of the word. You claim to be on some noble cause, but in reality, you are no better than the common thug going around looking for things to AR and bullying anyone who speaks up about it - and you derive great enjoyment in doing so.

Do NOT sully the 'whistleblower" title by attempting to wear it.

The problem is, by your own words, the results AREN'T predictable. What part of "unreliable as the G-Team" escapes you?

Why do I have to be directly impacted to report a crime? Should I just idly stand by and let someone else's store be robbed or vandalized, saying "Oh, that sucks, but it's not my problem; I don't wanna get involved"? People whom I see breaking the rules get reported. It doesn't matter who is impacted; wrong is wrong. If *I* am wrong for reporting them, then nothing should happen at the minimum, and *I* should be informed as to why or even reprimanded for making a false report, if the situation warrants it. Since LL opts for the minimum, I think it works well enough.

Sure, the G-Team makes mistakes, but the VAST MAJORITY of those mistakes are in the category of FAILURE TO ACT, not IMPROPER ACTION. Yeah, there are a few of the latter, but I would NEVER say they are the fault of the reporter. That's tantamount to saying "if in doubt, don't", and continue leaving people suffering in silence. At least reporting something that you feel is negatively affecting your or another's SL experience, gives a chance that the G-Team will do something right, rather than leaving what is possibly a valid breach of the rules to continue offending.

The results of playing one hand of Blackjack aren't predictable, but play enough hands and the house edge will have its way.

If you mass AR enough people, the odds of any particular AR sticking are small, but the cumulative odds of someone getting slapped with an inappropriate punishment will eventually approach unity. THAT is what's predictable.

Red Herring. I'm not talking about standing by when someone else gets griefed, I'm talking about actively roaming the grid looking for griefers (or whatever you're targeting) specifically so you can report them. You keep trying to insinuate completely different kinds of situations into the argument.

If the reporter is engaged in the activity I'm referring to, it is.

ARing isn't playing blackjack. Analogy fail.



I suppose if you could get an infinite number of people, each filing an infinite number of ARs, that would be true. Given that it isn't remotely related to reality, I have no worries of it being true.



..and I have said that it doesn't matter, either way. If I roam the grid to find griefers griefing, it is no different in cause or effect than if they were griefing me or a neighbor. If people are griefing it DOESN'T MATTER if my experience was due to active or passive effort to observe. Griefing is still griefing; it is still wrong, and should be ARed.



Well, then we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.

Both are equally subject to statistical analysis.

Exaggeration for rhetorical effect. Fail.

Sure it makes a difference. It increases the probability that you're going to falsely categorise something as griefing, and that the G-Team will agree with you. Neither you nor the G Team are perfect. Let's say between you you've got a tenth of a percent false positive rate (you're 98% perfect, and they're 95% perfect), then if you AR 1000 people you've got a 63 percent chance of screwing over someone who's innocent.

Yeah, but one is based on total randomness. The other is not. That's why it is fail.



It's not an exaggeration. You said "eventually approach unity". That can only happen in when you approach infinity. Didn't you ever study limits in calculus?



It doesn't make a significant enough difference to worry about, and I would MUCH rather have people AR someone they believe to be breaking the rules no matter how they encounter said rule-breaking than be afraid to do it at all because of a marginal statistical anomaly.

So you're basically denying that statistical analysis of human behavior is possible?

After 1000 trials of a test with a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, the possibility of a false positive is 63%. After 2000 trials, it's 86%. After 3000, 95%.

If someone submits 10 ARs a day for a year, and that's only one person, not a mob, then they've got a 97.4% chance of screwing someone over.

Get three people doing it, then the odds go up to 99.998%.

Even better, I understood them.


No anomaly involved. It really doesn't take a lot of trials to make it a statistical certainty.

Stop putting words in my mouth. No, I am not saying that at all. I am saying human behavior is not random, and comparing it to total randomness is an incorrect application of an analogy, rendering it invalid.



Of course, the part you whitewash in all this is the 999, 1999, 2999 situation which resulted in a proper result (assuming the G-Team does anything at all, which is a different "statistic" altogether).

If I am going to be afraid of ONE person who gets incorrectly ganked by the G-Team, then I wouldn't even bother to AR people whom I am DIRECTLY impacted by. After all, the G-Team COULD go overboard and ban not only the person I ARed, but also his friend who just happened to be nearby, but was doing nothing wrong. There's a statistical probability of that happening, too. As a result, by YOUR logic, we should never AR anyone, because there's a CHANCE that the G-Team will screw it up and gank someone innocent.



..and in the meantime, the other 3650-odd ARs probably resulted in a LOT of good.



..and the good results get trebled as well.



Apparently not.



As I said, I am happy to take the "trials", because it results in a much better grid for everyone, rather than do nothing and let the problems continue unabated. Thanks.

The fact remains that if you perform a trial using people instead of cards, you can make meaningful statistical predictions about how people behave. This actually works. What you're referring to as "the whitewash" is the part that actually matters.

ARing one person, with one chance in a thousand of a bad result ... acceptable risk.

ARing a thousand people, with 2/3 chance of a bad result among all the ARs... not acceptable risk.

In practice, actually, the odds are even more heavily weighted against the vigilante, because people get *less* scrupulous and *more* likely to treat marginal cases as positives the longer they go on. By treating people as pure random actors I would be giving the vigilante more credit than is really justified.

Anyway, there's a difference between "that person is throwing tubgirl bombs at a club of people he doesn't like, I'm going to AR them", and "I'm going to go out looking for scumbags to AR".

In RL, this is how you end up with vigilante neighborhood associations terrorizing old ladies out of their homes. Yes, that really happens once you switch from a reactive to a proactive behavior, from being a good citizen to being a vigilante.

Edit: Now if you decide that this predictable outcome is worth the results, then that's your decision. It may even BE worth the results. The point is that if you're going to do it, then you've got to look at the facts and decide that OK, you're going to go out and run a vigilante campaign knowing that it's going to hurt innocent people. Take responsibility for your actions.

Not if you cannot properly quantify the parameters of the experiment. People's behavior is a WHOLE LOT more complex and a simple cardgame, and if you don't quantify it properly, any predictions inferred from the analysis are not meaningful at all.

That's where part of the "whitewash" comes in; you're over-trivializing the analysis by using an invalid, oversimplified analogy.



What's the difference between a thousand reports by a thousand people resulting in one innocent person getting ganked, and one person ARing a thousand people causing one to get ganked? The statistical result works out to be the same, after all.

Every time I AR someone I am taking the same risk that that person was actually innocent, AND that LL bungles it and punishes them anyway. It doesn't matter if I AR one person, or a thousand, the chance is the same. Thus, any supposed "responsibility" is the same.

I maintain that *I* am not responsible for punishment, I am responsible for the report.

Let me give you an example that happened near me in RL. There was a police shooting which resulted from a botched drug raid that killed a 90-year-old matriarch in Atlanta. Someone gave the police a tip that there were drugs in her home, and they got a no-knock warrant to break into her home and search for drugs. When they did, they found the old lady was armed, and she fired at them, thinking that they were drug dealers trying to break into her house. Only after the police had fatally shot and killed her did they find out that there were no drugs, and that the police had unlawfully obtained the warrant without cause. In the ensuing court cases, the person who gave the tip was not charged, but the police were. That's the way it should have been; the police were the ones who erred. The tipster could have believed in good conscience that the tip was genuine, and that there were drugs in that home, and should not be blamed for the result. The police had more than ample opportunity to investigate the tip and see if it had any merit, but in their zealousness to stop drug crime, they cut a few too many corners, and an innocent old lady paid for THEIR errors with her life. Thus, they were prosecuted and put in prison.

If people of good conscience are going to be afraid to report what they perceive as illegal activity and not trust that the police are going to do their jobs right, then everyone should refrain from reporting any crime, because there's a chance that some innocent person will end up being punished or killed because the police COULD err.



It's not even remotely the same. THERE ARE NO VIGILANTES IN SL. NO RESIDENT CAN ACT AS A LINDEN AND DEAL OUT PUNISHMENT. Could we PLEASE get on the same page about this and stop misrepresenting the situation?

People reporting what they feel are violations of the rules, even if they are going out looking for them, are not necessarily going to get any LESS accurate in their reports, and are likely to become MORE accurate, because they learn what the Lindens will actually act on, and can corroborate their views with others in groups to reduce the chance of bad reports. This is what happened with the Ad Zoo and Arbor Project, too.



Yeah, there's a difference, because they are two totally different classes of situations. One is what happens when the offense is found, the other is what happens before the offense is found. That doesn't necessarily make one better or worse than the other, though.



It is also how neighborhood watch organizations all over the world reduce the incidence of crime in their neighborhoods. Thanks, I will still take the HUGE positives over the exceedingly rare negatives.



I think I have stated that I am well aware of the facts throughout this thread. It doesn't change the fact that I, as a REPORTER of a "crime", am not responsible for the disposition of the "perpetrators" of said "crime". I can't take credit for the police stopping it, simply bringing it to their attention in the first place.

Here's a hypothetical for you: Say you are passing through a neighborhood and someone starts acting a little nuts and waves a hunting rifle towards some of the people present, who are acting scared and running away. You call the cops, who then show up and try to stop the nut, but not before he shoots at someone, wounding them, during his apprehension. Do you feel responsible for him shooting someone because you called the cops? Maybe it would have been better to not call the cops and let the drama play out along a different timeline, after all.

Also, in that situation, calling the cops is not vigilantism. Vigilantism would have been to pull out your gun and put an end to the nut's antics before he had a chance to hurt someone else.

i must say, when you and Argent decide to debate, you both ferret out more information but it does tend to drag on...

Rabbiting on a bit aren't they? Never mind, they'll asleep at their consoles in a minute

Just wonders what Hari Seldon would think of this conversation?

actually, what i really meant was, they will take a topic and chippeway at it...

what?!?! is it THAT time again already?

Peoples behavior, individually, is complex. People's behavior, in mass, is a lit simpler and more predictable. The more people who are involved (remember, I'm talking about groups of people, not individuals) the more predictable it is.

Because we're not comparing a thousand people making one AR vs one person making 1000 ARs, we're comparing 1000 people making ARs as they see or are involved in incidents (because those people aren't going to go "oh, I'm not going to AR because the watch group's going to do it instead), PLUS, in addition, one person forming a vigilante group that makes another 1000 ARs per person in the group.

Yes, and if you make 40 ARs over a year (which seems like a nice healthy number for a fairly aggressive person) that gives you about 4% chance that you make a mistake. If you make 1000, you've got a 63% chance.

When you say "I'm going to be a vigilante" you're taking an action that is likely to cause at least one bad outcome (probability > 50%). You can say "it's worth it", but you can't say "it's not my fault".

On the other hand if the person who gave the tip had gone out every night for a year and phoned in several tips like that, do you not suppose things might have been different?

In RL, that person would probably have been in court before the year was out, or at least told to quit interfering in police business, even if there hadn't been a bad outcome.

I have not at any time suggested that. I'm not saying "you shouldn't be afraid to issue an AR", I'm saying "if you issue ENOUGH of them, you're going to hurt innocent people eventually."

Stop there. You're still talking about individual actions. I'm not.

Based on my experience as someone who oversees moderators for the boards on a corporate website, my answer to the OP is never.

The rules are the rules. With such a massive membership an AR helps to bring something to LL's attention which otherwise would not, but ultimately they make the call on whether action is taken and in what form.

Sounds like you're mixing up personal and crowd psychology to draw out the point. In general, most people acting to do ARs are doing it alone or in small groups. Even the "AR parties" that Arbor has are not usually more than 10 people, and are only ARing a single issue or a few related issues in one area. The whole goal of which is to reinforce through echoing. The rest of the time, it is people acting as individuals. I've done it in regions around where I live on the mainland.

I am not sure I agree with the assessment that crowd psychology is more predictable as it grows in size. I've seen some fairly large crowds do some unexpected things, especially at events, like sporting events. Even papers written on the subject describe a significant number of varied factors which allow for a broad range of complex behavior in the crowd itself.

Regardless, it doesn't really apply, because we're not (at least I am not) talking about crowds. The whole point of you bringing up statistics was for aggregation, not for saying that people are ARing together in large groups, or so I thought.



No, actually, you're the one bringing up the "vigilante group" concept. In fact, I think you're highly exaggerating the situation. I don't think there are 1000 ARs over the last YEAR amongst all members of the Ad Zoo / Arbor Project. Regardless, I am talking about primarily about a SINGLE PERSON or a SMALL group going around and ARing a handful of places once in a while.



Not going to deter me from doing it, nor should it. The risk is the same for each one, like I said. Eventually someone is going to get wrongfully ARed, AND LL is going to bungle it and act on it. I can live with that. I'll be happy to apologize for making the incorrect report, and am glad to help clear someone's name who was wrongfully prosecuted, but I'm not going to assume responsibility for the prosecution, because I had no hand in it.



I can take responsibility for the incorrect report. I won't take responsibility for the mishandling of it by the "police"; that's solely on their head, not mine. Their proper response is to inform/sanction me for the incorrect report (if it was intentionally false, I should be sanctioned; otherwise, they can explain why the report was false and I can improve my recognition faculties from that information). That's the way it should work.



Considering the informant was regularly tapped by the police for other tips, no.



Uhh. He was a regular informant, used by the police for a number of busts.



If you issue ONE of them, you've a chance to hurt innocent people. Why are you braying on this point repetitively if you're not trying to act as some kind of deterrent to it? Issuing ARs has a chance to catalyze a bad Linden reaction. So? I'll take that chance EVERY DAMN TIME over allowing someone to suffer unnecessarily at the hands of rule-breakers.



I've been talking about individual actions pretty much the whole thread, and you're just now figuring that out? O.o

It's because it increases the number of ARs, and increases the probability of errors.

Well, yes, that's right. I described what I would consider vigilante action. I haven't pointed fingers at any group and claimed that they're engaged in vigilante action. I haven't brought up any specific instances of vigilante action... you brought up specific groups, and I said that if they're engaged in vigilante action and it's justified, then maybe it is.

I'm not. You keep bringing up small scale stuff, I'm talking about permanent floating abuse report clubs.

If you don't AR, you have only two other choices: Take matters in your own hands, or watch SL sink under the weight of sheer uncontrolled grieferdom.

Also, if you do take matters into your own hands, then you need to AR, because it is probable that your griefer will advance his agenda by ARing YOU for defending yourself, and you need LL to have evidence on hand of your side of the story.

So - AR. Don't grief. Do retaliate in an intelligent, effective (and self-protecting) way, whatever that may be in the particular circumstance you have to deal with.

And don't worry about labels.

No, it doesn't. The probability of errors per unit AR does not increase. If the vast majority of ARs are for things that NEEDED to be ARed, it doesn't matter if it was a "vigilante group" (stupid name for it, again) doing it, or the residents impacted by it themselves. Multiple reports on the same issue do NOT increase the probability of error significantly. They MAY bring it to the attention of LL quicker, however.



Yet, there is no vigilante action in SL. Period.



Do they even exist? Or is this just a FUD fantasy?