Protection of Residents II

I think the OP should examine Travis Lambert's Banlink; it seems to work reasonably well.

I say this not as a ban-poster myself - I don't own land to ban anyone from and post on Banlink - but as someone who ran afoul of false reports posted on Banlink against me, once from a real malefactor who disagreed with me on a forum thread and who eventually himself got banned from SL for good, and once from an over-zealous vigilante in a sandbox. Each time I found the opportunity to respond to the false report, identification of the accuser, and the opportunity for the accuser to withdraw an erroneous complaint were essential elements in the system. In the first case, the malefactor self-destroyed his reputation on Banlink (and elsewhere) in the manner advertised. In the second, a conversation with the leader of the vigilante group straightened things out.

Banlink is for landowners, and the OP is addressing something that affects a far larger segment of the SL population (potentially, nearly all of us) and is also more difficult to deal with - scammers and other predators. I think the best way to deal with them is indeed to be very careful in dealings with others, especially involving money, as other have warned. I think the next best thing to do, if it is possible to do responsibly, is to get the word out, and if the OP can find a way do that for interested parties the OP will be doing SL a real service. It won't be easy, for the reasons set out by others - people lie, some are motivated by unfounded malice, misunderstandings arise, errors are made, and some people are all too likely to create or get enmeshed in Drama. But it's certainly something worth working on.

A suggestion earlier in the thread of publicizing the scam rather than the scammer also sounds like a good approach - and the two methods are not mutually exclusive.

This is a microcosm of a major problem in RL - that many of the people we must deal with are basically strangers or near-strangers to us and some of those dealings expose us to being cheated, exploited or worse. In RL there are D&B ratings, credit scores, better business bureaus, and the like, and the most important protection of all is knowing the person and the person's reputation. But that means you have to hear of it. I am aware of the dangers; I have had my reputation trashed behind my back in RL too, and I can tell you it doesn't feel very nice. There is no easy way. But if there is a way at all, it must include transparency, notification of the accused, and a way for the accused to respond.

Thank you Har........you just responded in a manor we all should.

Hope the OP gets to this post to read what you said.

Maybe another way to go is simply to have a Good Guys list that you and your friends have personally found to be reliable and honest in their dealings. Be far more useful I think.

"Reliable and honest" does *not* necessarily make you a "Good Guy" apparently!

Pep (Harsh but fair?)

I dont understand what you mean Pep ???

You are not alone!

Pep (A significant element of the problem! LOL)

k

/me grins

Peggy, I'm sorry you don't see this...but we are NOT being arrogant or dismissive. The people who are saying this (me included) are saying:

1. It's been tried before and it doesn't work, and

2. We can't think of any way to make it work.

Sorry, but I think this one is going to run afoul of human nature, every time. It's not that I don't want to be constructive, it's that I *do not see ANY way* in which a resident-run "blacklist" can be kept fair and honest.

If the OP, or you, or ANYONE has an idea as to how to identify and make public the "bad actors" of SL in a way that's verifiable and honest and not subject to abuse, please tell us about it...because I got nothin'.

I agree entirely with Lindal's post.



I suppose I didn't make my intent clear. You were asking why nobody was posting anything constructive. So, I decided to ask the OP, not you, some questions which, I felt were necessary for him/her to answer in order to make this idea work.

Without accountability, transparency and verifiability, this idea can be nothing more than a "he said, she said" finger pointing contest.

It will not be trusted and it can not work. Chances are, in the long term, this will do more damage to the OP's reputation than those they claim to be fighting against.

The only people that have the data to really verify what goes on inside the SL environment are Linden Lab.

The most constructive suggestion I can make is, as I stated previously, if you feel you have been a victim of fraud, file an abuse report with Linden Lab with as much detail as possible. IF enough reports come in pointing to the same place perhaps they will get the message and act.

But taking matters into your own hands smacks of vigilantism and will turn off more people than it will help.

To effect something like this, there needs to be real authority.

Authority which only rests in the hands of Linden Lab themselves.

However, outside of having Linden Lab policies change dramatically, what can be done?

I can only think of one thing that could be constructive relative to this, without LL intervention: Bring in the real Better Business Bureau. Not some resident-created one, but the real thing.

I know they don't handle cases of people just being jerks in general, they limit themselves to business transactions only, but it's something that can be done. Let them maintain the same info that they do on the Web about RL businesses, and allow anybody to freely look up the info, with details of complaints against avatars, if they were resolved satisfactorily, etc., and people can see their reputations easily before they have dealings with them, if they choose to make use of the information.

Also make an in-world BBB member logo that they actually enforce, so only those who would meet the criteria to use it in RL would use it in SL.

This is how it seems to me too.
So far no country anywhere in the world has figured out a way to eliminate crime. In fact it almost seems as if the harder legislative bodies try to pass the perfect set of laws the more they succeed in constructing big unwieldy systems riddled with contradictions and loopholes.



And they have no way of knowing what is said via voice or email. And I believe that if they ever intimated that they might arbitrate disputes between residents they would be inundated with cases, including many brought by people trying to scam the arbitration.

One difference between non virtual businesses and SL ones is that as soon as an SL reputation is damaged so much that it becomes difficult to find new victims a new and seemingly unrelated identity can be made almost instantly to continue victimizing.
Of course anyone who is defrauded of a significant amount of money in SL should be able to get help from real world law enforcement agencies - depending on where they and the perpetrator live, I guess.

The only real cure for this is to be aware of the risk and don't risk more money than you are willing to lose. Just like everywhere else.

Too true. But if we had an enforced standard for BBB membership in SL, perhaps we could see avatars being more careful about dealing with those who are not in good standing with the real BBB. It's one possible way to deal with the problem.

And I am very much in favor of educating people on how to recognize when something doesn't look right from the beginning. Perhaps something that one of the in-world groups like NCI, The Shelter, etc., should look into teaching classes on, and publicize them like crazy.

Especially since that has already happened.

It would have been really nice if Peggy, instead of bashing on the bashers, and before she picked up her toys and went home, had actually given us some ideas of how she thinks this could work.

Because there is no doubt that something like this, if set up so it could work, would be a very useful thing in SL. It HAS been tried before, and others have identified why it has had only limited success. In order for it to succeed, those issues would have to be dealt with.

Peggy seems to feel they can be, I'm assuming, so some dialogue on that topic would have been useful.

Also, she mentioned that another world (currently in beta) is going to be addressing this. Knowing WHICH world this is, possibly with some information on how they are going to make it happen, would have been very useful and constructive to this discussion. Someone asked, but it got lost in all the righteous indignation.

Repeating the past attempts, with no steps to address the issues which caused them to fail, is an exercise in futility, so I would like to see the dialogue continue with those who DO have suggestions on how the previous pitfalls could be circumvented in an effective way.

To the OP - I wish you luck - it's a worthy cause.