Abuse and Misuse of IMs for group messages and event SPAM

Perhaps a lesson to be taken away from this experience is that people really do not like to have their manners corrected. And sometimes, despite your best intentions, you get rejected and there's nothing you can do but get over it and move on.

You pay your $1000 USD (when the new land store opens) plus the $295 USD per month for your own sim and you may operate it any way you choose. You "own" it, you make the rules and use it for commercial or private or residential or whatever. Your choice, your rules.

And that is how the person in your OP is operating.

Is it, perhaps, bad customer relations? Maybe. But, that is her choice to make, not LL's or yours.

What do you mean by a "commercial sim" - do you mean a sim that hosts businesses instead of residences? The use to which a sim is put is entirely (within the TOS) the choice of the landowner. If someone using their sim for commercial purposes chooses to ban me for some other irrational reason that is their choice, it is them who losing a potential customer. LL do not specify the use to which a sim is put, other than the cheap-rate sims for educational or non-profit use. There is no such thing as a "commercial" sim unless the owner makes it one - if IBM suddenly decide to turn all their sims into bestiality and bondage venues that's up to them.

It seems to me that the owner of this sim/group decided they didn't want you as a customer, I agree it's an overreaction, but are you seriously suggesting that the TOS should tell LL's customers (the sim owners) how they should run their businesses?

I cannot see that group IMs about the group's business could possibly be considered spam, and as for opt-in mailings, you opted in when you joined the group. In RL, when I get irritated by opt-in mailing lists, I unsubscribe. I don't tell the list operators to stop using the list for what it was set up for.

Many groups use the group IM function to promote events and they are not overlooking the group notice function when they do this. It's the way they have consciously chosen to promote events. If you don't like the frequency or content of the group IMs you are getting from the group admins then leave the group.

It generally doesn't need to be made clear to residents because it's common sense that group admins can do whatever they want with their group as long as it does not violate TOS (such as promoting SL gambling, SL banking etc.) just as it is common sense that they can do whatever they want with their land as long as it does not violate TOS including banning anyone for any reason without any warning. There is no distinction between what a "private" sim owner and a "commercial" sim owner can do with on their sim. It's all privately owned and if you really didn't care you wouldn't have bothered to abuse the AR system itself by clogging it up with a pointless report about Linden Lab condoned acts of the sim owners.

I think you'll find that the overwhelming majority of Second Life residents don't want your idealized "fair use and access" guidance crammed down their throats by Linden Lab. The Second Life community has worked well without such needless contraints for half a decade.

It does seem as if the sim owner kind of over reacted and I can see why it rankled. Of course the case can be made that you over reacted first to her IM.
If this person keeps doing things that are bad for her business her business will suffer. When she can no longer pay her tier she will be out of business. I don't know why the Lindens would care one way or the other; they seem to be doing all right as they are by providing a platform for a free market economy.
Of course if everyone who goes into business in SL fails that will be bad for the Lindens but that really doesn't seem to be happening.

I'd say at best, it's removing a problem before the problem really gets started.

What's unknown here is the other side of the story. Did Katya send a polite message informing the group owner about Announcements and politely inquire why IMs were being used instead? Somehow I doubt it. Did Katya send a hate/explicative filled IM demanding that the group owner stop? I doubt that too. My guess is somewhere in between using just the right language to push the group owner’s buttons to the point of not wanting to deal with it any further.



I suspect this is part of what happened.

--Hugsy

Katya - in the interest of being productive, let me share this:

Group communications have been a sore spot for a very long time. For years, there was no such thing as "Group Notices" - so the *only* way to communicate to ones group members was to send a group IM. Group chat was even more anarchic back then than it is today.

That changed with SL version 1.12.x, where they rolled out new group permissions, and the ability to send these "Group Notices". The problem is, the group permissions were half-baked, and remain this way to this day.

IMHO, what needs to change is not a modification to the TOS, or otherwise more regulation from Linden Lab on how one can run their buisness. What we need, are improved toolsets that allow both Group Owners and Group Members to better control the type of experience they wish to have.

For example:

I should have the ability to set my group to "Only Officers can initiate an group IM session". That alone would cut down in 90% of the 'spam' in my own groups, and probably many others.

Additionally, group members should be able to selectively mute group chat (Perhaps receive notices only), especially when they're sensitive to the amount of communications eminating from the group in question. Today, there's absolutely no way to do that short of leaving the group.

There are JIRA issues logged that deal with this very thing. If you want them to change, I'd strongly encourage you to vote - and encourage others to do the same And if this issue is important to you enough to make a crusade of, take these JIRA proposals to the right Linden's office hours... for extra attention

Check out:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-64

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-731

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-389

I mean a sim (or a signifcant portion of one used as, for example, a club) that is set up primarily as a venue for social interaction and entertainment. I'm not commenting in this thread about sims that are mainly selling or leasing real estate. I'm focussing on the ones that use the SL tools to solicit members for group gatherings.

And I am fully aware that the TOS and present rules have zip to say about the operator's behaviour. Which is of course why I raised the issue in the first place.

And I fully expect most sim/group operators would resist any limitation on the use of "their" space.

So telling me that such guidelines don't exist, and that owners would hate them go without saying.

These reactions are still very helpful, however, and I thank you for them. They, along with the posts by those who share my concern at arrogant, short-sighted behaviour by what I define as "commercial" sim operators confirm that there needs to be a serious information resource for all the *non* property owners. I mean a resource that would advise these ordinary members about commercial sites that spam unnecessarily, that ban or eject visitors or group members arbitrarily without cause, or where the "group" is run as a personal little fiefdom and the views of the members of the group are ignored or used as grounds for ejection.

Clearly, the Lindens are not going to ever provide the equivalent of an IW "Guide Michelin", since they don't have any interest (given their understandable short-term survival objectives) in further ticking-off the sim owning minority.

LOL - I wonder how those who so desperately want visitor traffic that they will SPAM to get it will like reading about themselves in a really well-done consumer guide!? Ditto the ones who hang out a sign inviting simple folk to come, then ban them willy-nilly?

Because, property operators cannot in real life, and, ultimately in any simulated one, have it both ways: if you insist on the right to eject anyone for any reason, then you must accept that visitors have every right to know what to expect from your group or club or whatever before they visit it or sign up.

Hey! It is just possible that if the ordinary members in here, the ones who sign up expecting to have a good experience without being arbitrarily abused by irresponsible sim operators, had some *honest* source where they could learn what to expect in the club-type sims, they might actually stay engaged, instead of giving up on the whole SL experiment after a few weeks of frustration, as -- do the math -- clearly 70%-80% or so do.

Wow, what if more than a small percent of those who "joined" actually *stayed* long enough to make SL really a viable community, and in the process make these very same commercial operators successful?

To be honest, I think that your reasonings are so far off the mark, and other people had already posted many of the details, I thought I'd be a little different and suggest you have a good night's sleep and then read what you wrote again

It's very very hard to believe that someone who has been in SL as long as you have, could come out with the arguments and reasonings that you made.

Of course your RL business experience that you talked about is irrelevenat to SL. SL isn't a business platform (LL is a business; SL isn't). What you wrote about it is nonsense - I'm sorry but it is. For instance, people can treat their businesses in SL as children's playpens all they want. It's nothing to do with anyone else what people do with their land and businesses in SL, as long as they don't harm people.

The only light that I can see you posts in is sour grapes - *I* was ejected and banned; how dare she do that to *ME*; LL should do something about it so that nobody can do that to *ME* again, dammit.

I'll echo someone else's thought: what on earth did you think that group IMs were for, if not to let group members know about group business?

Good productivity, Travis.

Next!

Thank you for the clarification. I am however still a bit confused. From your explanation I gather the following:
- the group is owned by people who own/operate a location/venue that is primarily meant for social interaction and entertainment, and where group events are organised.
- the owner of the group sends out invitations/announcements about these events in group channels.

The owner may have overreacted by ejecting/banning you, but that is difficult to say without both sides of the story.

If my understanding is correct though, I´d be surprised if the group owner did _not_ use group IMs to announce events and gatherings. In most if not all cases that is what such groups are for.

I´ll add that group notices have been unreliable at best recently so group IMs have been used as an alternative in many many groups.

But, if you don´t like a group or the way it is operated, the easiest way out is the "leave" button.

Emphatic yes to everything Travis said.

I do want to address this bit directly:But LL isn't and shouldn't be responsible for the stupidity of the businesses that operate using its platform. LL *does* have a legitimate business interest in protecting that platform from abuse that degrades its value to other constituent businesses (hence the wisdom of the adfarm ban, for example), but the fact that some groups let their chat become cesspools of spam in no way interferes with other groups using chat effectively.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out to the Group owner that there could be a risk of losing members because there's too much traffic on the channel. That owner can handle such a suggestion intelligently or not. And then one can respond accordingly: if not satisfied with an improvement, just leave the group. But an AR and a support ticket? It's like trying to press criminal charges against the chairman of Citigroup for sending too much direct mail. And then hiring a hit man to off him.

Hate to burst your bubble but they can and do have it both ways in both real life and in Second Life. There are any number of popular night club and social venues in real life in places like New York City where you can be bounced out for no apparent reason or for reasons that are beyond your comprehension. Happens all the time. It can be as simple as someone in the club not liking you even though they may not even know you well or at all or have any logical reason to not like you. There is nothing that logically mandates an imperative on the property owner of a social venue to meet any expectations of a visitor on the property in real life or Second Life.

There is nothing except your own highly speculative musings to even remotely support your conclusion that this has anything to do with attrition in Second Life. There are far far more probable causes for attrition in Second Life.

Thanks, Travis, for the relevant background. I'm not interested in mounting a "crusade", simply want to encourage those who want to see SL flourish to consider policies that may be timely or in order as the world, literally, changes.

Thank you Travis. Visited and voted.

It's pretty simple. If you join a group, expect it to be used. Used for announcements, used for chat. To have a group, and stipulate it can't be used for communication, is at best, completely absurd.

If you are in a group, and a group chat starts, there is a simple remedy. Click on the little "X" in the upper right corner of the chat window. The window will close, and you will receive *no further chat* for the rest of your online session. It's really that simple.

If you have expectations for how a group should be used, you are free to start your own, and enforce your rules in it. It only costs 100L

I might quibble with the "policies" term, but yeah: I doubt there's anyone responding to this thread who hasn't been frustrated by the mechanisms available to the individual group member, and especially the group owner, for managing group communications. Improving those mechanisms won't prevent stupid use of group chat--anybody can create a group and do something stupid with it--but they make it possible to manage an open enrollment group, for example, and to better cope with groups that get a little unruly on occasion. All surely good things.

The JIRA entries describe enhancements to group functionality. They don't describe making it a TOS violation for an owner to group IM something that may be better suited as an announcement.

--Hugsy

One thing we don't need to do is follow the example of RL and replace the true rights of property ownership and free association with the made up right of public accommodation.

Personally speaking (and it is just my twisted view of things) I don't mind Group IM spam. I find it quite entertaining and informative...AND I definitely find it far preferable to the endless whining that seems to follow an advertising message from the various politically correct wingers and kill joys... I'd have had you out of my group in seconds

I learned a new word today (at the risk of appearing uneducated hehe

attrition .... thanks Dagmar (I like it when I have to look up words, hopefully I will retain it and its' meaning and use it someday)

I learned a word a long time ago, that for some strange reason stuck with me...

dendrites... (not the mineral type, the memory type)

heh

Regardless of what it's called, it's damn annoying.

I've done the same exact thing on several occasions as the op. Then right afterwards I leave the group. No big deal.

I agree and take it a step further. I've been looking at the groups I'm in weekly... If I see a group name that doesn't give me land access permissions or hasn't IMed me at least one time in the past week.... I leave... No hesitation... (>_>

Really, what is a group for if it's not being used? Does it just "feel good" to be in an inactive group? What is there to gain by being in the group? Friends list not long enough? (o.o)

Is it just about the group tag. Well, I don't like most group tags myself. So I started my own group. It has few members, is not very active, my alt is the co-owner, and I get to set my tag to whatever I want. It's also invitation only because I'm selfish that way. Most peoples would be opposed to the content anywayz. (^_^)y

Ok just my two cents worth.

I really dont mind the IMs and notices. On the IMs I love to sit and watch hehehe. And I enevitably learned something, which to me is quite cool. If I am busy I just close that tab if it gets to be too chatty, and yes there can be chatty nites, but like I said I learn something new most times.

Notices, same thing... dont mind them either. To me it is kind of like a commercial on tv or the radio.

Bec