ToS violation inquiry

Are we talking 'competition' or annoyance? The original statement was about how cheesy it is to go to a competitors place and advertise yours without permission (and I agree). And I stated I did not go to places I felt were a conflict of interest in my defense. But you now seem to be changing the tune to its annoyance factor so I'll switch gears too...

FWIW, I generally go up to a Avi say 'greetings' then offer a invite to my grand opening. If they decline I move on. In full disclosure have I dropped someone a note as they walked by as I engaged someone else? Yes. But I did make the attempt to approach as many of those I offered my notecard too as I could. Not saying that makes it 'right' or a non-annoyance but I do try to approach people and create a bond with them. Much greater chance they will check the place out if they put a face/pleasant experience with the notecard then not.

RE: AR's - *shrugs* if thats what floats your boat then all the power to you. I have much better things to do with my limited time, mute works much better and much quicker. As I said if you need that ego boost to play 'SL Police' then go for it.

Appreciate the info!

I am so glad the Lindens have time on their hands to track down all of these AR's that could be solved by muting. I guess all the real griefers have been taken care of and the grid is totally stable.

Hell it sounds like some of you people file an AR if someone passes gas in a direction you don't like.

We're talking about TOS violation. I wasn't talking about competition. I was replying to your comments about going to freebie/newbie areas.



Personally, I'm not sure that I'd AR this. Chatting people up may get you around the "unsolicted" part.



It has nothing to do with ego boost.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here. You want to advertise your club in a more personal one-on-one way. I wouldn't call that a bad thing. However, I suggest you be careful about how you hand out notecards, landmarks, etc. to people you don't know and just met. Right or wrong, effective or not, it's considered spam and ARable by many people.

--Hugsy

I can't believe anyone would AR someone for this. No wonder the important things never get taken care of. Geesh.

Anyway, I created an alt recently and when I went to the freebie store to dress him I couldn't believe the amount of spam I received from clubs, etc. Doesn't seem like a good way to advertise to me. I would think a newb would be confused and irritated by it all.

I wouldn't worry too much about your employee. Obviously it's in very bad taste to solicit at someone elses club, but you know that. The most they'll get it is a warning, but I doubt even that.

I AR club/shop spam in a heartbeat.. especially, if I'm nowhere near the club/shop in question. If I'm building in a public sandbox, the last thing I want to deal with is the 50 or so blue screens popping up as I zoom into a project.

Now, why don't I just go into busy mode? Well, I run a business and if I get a note card from a customer who has a question or issue, I want to get it!

QFT!

Muting spammers only solves the problem for that one spammer. It does nothing to stop the next guy from spamming.

--Hugsy

Neither does clogging the AR system with pointless ARs.

Neither does sitting back and doing essentially nothing.

--Hugsy

Clogging the system with worthless AR's is worse than doing nothing.

There's a couple of extremes with this issue.

One is where someone talks to me first, then offers their notecard. This isn't unsolicited spam and they've skirted the rule just enough to not be in violoation of TOS 4.1. Here, an AR would probably be inappropriate.

The other extreme is where someone just drops a notecard on me from out of nowhere. That's a textbook example of spam and, hell yeah, an AR would be entirely appropriate.

--Hugsy

Mute is quicker and doesn't clog the system, taking up time the Lindens could be putting to productive work.

ARing the "textbook spam" described in my post isn't clogging anything.

--Hugsy

I run one of the freebie/new resident areas called the Shelter.

If one of your employees visited the Shelter and distributed notecards advertising your estabilshment without permission, they would likely be house-banned for spamming. Additionally, our bans are shared with other newbie locations - so your employee could potentially find his/herself unable to visit other places as a result; at least until the issue was sorted.

Whether an abuse report would be filed would depend on how extreme the employee got with distributing her message. If folks complained & found it disruptive, we probably would indeed file an abuse report for spamming along with a house ban.

On the flip side, *with permission* we encourage this sort of thing in the form of donated freebies with an advertisement inside. Its a win/win - because you get free advertising, and we end up with a wider selection of freebies for new residents. Things like a T-Shirt would be easy for you to make, and include a notecard with it advertising your establishment.

My advice: If you wish to advertise in private locations, get the management's permission first. More than likely they'll work with you, and even help you get your message out. Linden-owned locations are a grey area - many folks are sensitive to spam, and may individually file abuse reports if they perceive it as such.

Good luck!

I don't know where you are hanging out but maybe you should find other places. In the nearly 2 years in this game other than the auto notecard givers I get upon landing to a place I TP'd to I can't honestly tell you I've ever gotten more than 2 or 3 unannounced notecards from anyone. Filing an AR for such petty "offenses" IS, in fact, clogging up the AR system.......wasting some Linden's time to even delete it from the inbox. Everyone knows it's against real life laws to change lanes on a freeway without first signaling......but how many times a day do you see it happen? Suppose if everyone quickly picked up their cell phones and callled the police to report the occurance (with all pertinant information like license plate number, location, discription of vehicle and driver, weather/traffic conditions, time of day, etc.) would be something one could do and "justify" it with the explanation that is "against the law and should be done". But, you know damned well it is wasting the police departmet's time and resources that could and should be spent on other things infinitantly more important. Some things are just way to petty to get your panties all wadded up over.

It's a violation of TOS. Unlike other Linden policies, this one's clear. There's nothing to debate on this specific point.

Next, is it a big deal? In one of the latest gambling threads, I posted about keeping things in perspective. I do understand what you're saying here. An individual instance of getting spammed isn't that big of a deal (I'm not talking about the auto notecard givers after landing either).

My own personal experience is also that it doesn't happen that much. I'd like to keep it that way. Sitting back and doing nothing didn't do much to help with real-world e-mail spam and it won't help much in SL. In fact, if SL spam follows suit, they'll have to deal with it anyway because it will get so bad the Lindens will have to "waste" their time implementing spam filters instead of fixing bugs.

And, since it's as rare as you suggest, then any ARs wouldn't be enough to clog the system anyway.

--Hugsy

I can't believe there are actually folks who are not only justifying unsolicited spam as being okay, but applying negative peer pressure to those who dare to suggest that folks do the right thing and bring it to Linden's attention when it happens.

Spam is a TOS violation. If Liasons are 'overburdened' with the abuse reports they receive as a result of this policy, they can choose to modify the policy if and when they feel its neccesary. Note that the Liasons that address abuse reports are not the same folks that fix bugs or work on features.

More importantly than anything else, its not *neccesary* to spam. There are hundreds of more productive ways of getting one's message out that don't involve breaking the TOS, or interrupting folks for an 'important message about a great opportunity' when they didn't ask for it.

It is against ToS to run your business competitively; didn't you know?

How dare you compete efficiently in the same market sector as her!

Well Travis, I don't consider one piece of "mail" from a person to be spam or an ARable offense. Your AR is not going to do any thing but clog the system. You already gonna be interrupted, just mute them and go on.

I think spam is important because it tells me which business not to patronize. Hi Travis.

Without the takeaway menus that regularly come through my mail box at home I would not know what to order.

If Abuse reports on a certain topic are clogging the system, that's indicitive of a larger problem, is it not?

Say, just for argument - that there was indeed a spam problem in Second Life, negatively impacting the experience of others. How is Linden supposed to gauge the scope of the problem, or any problem - if everyone decides to sit on their hands for fear of 'clogging the system'?

To turn it around, how do you think Strauss would feel if other establishements called open season on his customers at Club Penumbra, and sent the folks there advertisements "Just Once" (each).

How would folks who spend time at the Forum Cartel hangout feel if advertisers had full liberty to send a notecard (just once, each) to everyone that visits there?

Sure, you may have recieved that notecard just once, and it only takes a second to mute. Rest assured, hundreds of folks have been interrupted by the same message before and after you got it. The abuse report you're not going to file wont do anything to stop that particular spam to you. But by not filing an abuse report, you're ensuring everyone else has a chance to get interrupted too.

Does sending loads of ARs count as spam? I think there is a strong argument that it does.

Does that mean that we can AR people who admit to sending trivial ARs?

Those people can be taken care of using tools residents have, mute and banning by land owners.