Help, I've Lost a Friend. No mercy in SL?

i know of the person who has been banned and id like to say he is a v good friend to me and to my SL partner. a kind hearted person always willing to help others...and would not hurt ANYONE !!!yes he could speak his mind and some people dont like that, but he`s v honest and upfront...granted maybe a lil too much ...but that doesnt make him a bad person does it?


yes i do have other means of speaking to my friend and i have done so but my SL experience is v much poorer without him and id love to see him back.

he`s a great guy and i miss him on SL

I miss him too...
There is that spot that is not filled at each night now that he is gone.
But for what one can read on older posts i believe nothing will be done about it.
Doesnt hurt to try anyway.

Yes anyone can just meet that person somewere else from second life, yet as said before its not the same seriouslly.

*helps herself to some popcorn and has a seat*

Assuming this isn't all just an elaborate set-up (it would be a good one, and the pacing of posts is suggestive), I suppose we have to allow for the possibility that the Resi-team just screwed the pooch on this one. I mean, we know they do it all the time with *suspensions*, so we kinda have to allow for the possibility it may happen with *bans*, too.

( /me stops to pour a little more butter on the popcorn. )

Based on what's posted so far, we'd have to assume that a mistaken ban could only have been the result of a false AR (or ARs), filed as part of some vendetta.

So was it Emelyn Story's fault?

Wasn't there a thread started about an AI that was supposed to construct a story from SL drama? Didn't I suggest that the RA forum would be a good place to do this? Are regular participants bringing out their heretofore unused alts to advance the storyline? Should we take this seriously in the absence of any actual evidence that anybody has been banned, justifiably or not? Do I care?

Pep (More at 10)

Frankly, speculation about what my friend did or didn't do, and how we may, or may not, be able to carry out our friendship in another setting is beside the point. Sorry, but I'm not interested in salting anyone's popcorn.

I asked why there isn't due process in these matters. He wasn't given any details at all about what he was accused of, so there was no real opportunity for him to defend himself. And why isn't it possible for friends of the accused to make an appeal on his behalf? And why go immediately to a permaban? I'm not going to elaborate or speculate about what he did, but I believe it did not involve griefing, theft, or any other harm to another person, real or imagined.

Helpful replies about how Linden Labs handles inworld justice are welcome.

Veiled threats (aren't those against the terms of service by the way?) are not.

I'm amazed at the callous and even vicious replies in this thread.

The people in this forum never cease to amaze me in both good and terrible ways.

I've recently lost a good friend of mine to a needless ban Semyon. To something that should have, at most, been a suspension.

LL's does overreact sometimes, it depends on the individual Linden that gets the case and what mood they happen to be in at the time.

I feel for your loss Semyon, my heart bleeds for my lost friend too.

All I can suggest for you is to stay in touch with them as best you can and maybe look for another virtual world where you can meet and play. ( my friend and I have met in some of the open grids, and while its not the same it does help us both, IM me in world if you are interested in checking out some of the other grids and I can help )

My condolences,
Handy

I don't know who the OP or those other people were talking about, but there do seem to have been more "I was wrongly suspended or banned" posts than usual this fall. And I've had it happen recently to me, with a business partner rather than a friend, and I'm very confused and upset about it and still trying to figure out what to do.

When his first account was canceled and he said he didn't why, I was willing to take him at his word because, you know, LL, endemic customer service fail, duh. Anyone who lurks on these forums has heard the stories. He's shown more trustworthiness and a greater sense of community service than LL has recently.

And later he said he'd been in touch with them, that they had allowed him to keep his alt but were going to be watching him, because he was suspected of using one of the content theft viewers. And then just recently he was permabanned. And he still says he didn't do anything to earn it, and while I've seen that he has poor judgment sometimes I haven't seen anything from him that says he's unethical, or you know, DUMB enough to do anything to earn a permaban when he's knows he's on thin ice already. So now I'm trying to figure out how far I can trust him OR LL. If we weren't involved in the business thing, I'd just wash my hands of it all, we weren't close enough for a friendship to be lost, but it's too late to back out of the business thing even if I wanted to.

Unfortunately we have no more insight than you or your friend does. We do not know the answers to those questions any more than you. These things have been discussed for ages here. I know of someone, fully age verified who had their account suspended because of a griefer filed AR for being underage. They had to re verify. They had wait an entire weekend before they caould call LL to find out what has happened. Bottom line is, SL is LL's service and this is how they operate it.

Did your friend call LL to find out why he was banned?

Generally with a warning or short suspension, and a form letter telling the resident why they were disciplined.

If their account was deleted, they either did something very bad, or LL made a very bad mistake.

Except that they *are* the point if the friend's appeal has been denied. (If it's still pending and he just hasn't heard anything yet, that may be a different story.)

In the past, there were committees of residents who were consulted in a kind of private tribunal for appeal of a ban. I don't know if they got involved with every ban, or if they even exist anymore.

In general, LL keeps all disciplinary matters very private, as confidential information both for the accuser and the accused. There is no right of the accused to face the accuser, nor even to know the charges. I gather that rarely some hint of what the allegations were is disclosed in order for the accused to offer clarifying facts of the case, but otherwise it's held in strict confidence.

It's hardly surprising that folks will speculate about what the accusations were in this case. There are very few violations that will get a permaban without warning, and there are few here--not even the OP, I suspect--who would object to the banning of anyone who really did those deeds.

Oh, and third party appeals on behalf of another resident: How could those possibly have any value? LL is in a position to know a lot more about the in-world behavior of an accused than can any friend.

so you can type all of these other words, but VERY is too hard to spell?
im amazed at the short cuts people will take. whats the next step, the forums degrading to 12 year old text speak?

Basically, Shoot First, MAYBE ask questions later. That's why best course is to call them to find out what happened.

To my mind, the question of how ARs are handled is a very good one. There's no transparency about the process, and, as far as I can make out, no well-understood rules about procedure, standard and burden of proof, or any of the other things that one rather takes for granted in RL.

I mean, in the case of a complaint, do you get a chance to put your side of the case before anything happens? And if there's a conflict of evidence, who gets the benefit of the doubt and does whoever is adjudicating need to be sure about things, or think that, on the balance of probabilities, this is what happened, or what? Do both sides get the chance to put their case in their own language?

And what sort of oversight is there? I assume there's some internal procedure in place to guard against someone deciding he doesn't like -- for example -- Mexicans and taking the opportunity to ban anyone with a Mexican ISP at any opportunity, but I guess we have to take it on trust.

We're dealing with a situation in which someone can lose something into which they've put a good deal of time, money and effort, and which is important to them, and these all seem things on which it is not unreasonable to seek reassurance.

So how does Mother Theresa get permabanned then?

Pep (Such blind trust, in a void of ignorance.)

PS Drake1, you appear to have taken the next step already, by not bothering to capitalise your "I", nor the initial letters of sentences, nor insert apostrophes in "I'm" nor "what's".

And even that's playing roulette, depending on who answers the phone and what mood they are in, because we've heard people get told that they can't tell them over the phone either. Basically, there is no appeals process.

I had a friend recently get permabanned as well. And while I miss him, he and I both know he had it coming. And when I say banned, I mean IP banned. He, his wife, and all their alts are banned forever (as long as forever can be in the age of proxys etc).

I have in my possession a notecard with about 1000 lines (guessing, I didn't count it) copied from a chat history that LL gave him when they banned him (it was a griefing incident that went on for some time). So I know they notified him when they did it (and it wasn't the first time which is probably why another person involved didn't get permabanned).

Point is, LL didn't just notify him, they provided the chatlog.

I'm with Pep on this one.

Pep, I wish I lived in your world where unjust things didn't happen and innocent people didn't get punished for crimes they didn't commit. It would be so much simpler to be judgmental and smug then.

I'm not saying the OP's friend did or did not do anything wrong. Just that your assumption that no one ever gets banned for false accusations is naive at best.

Handy

Pep? /me squints. Izzat you?

When you say "Help, I've Lost a Friend. No mercy in SL? " one thinks that someone died. I have lost a friend, we spent 6 months trying to find out what happend when she vanished from SL. Yes, we had other ways to get in touch (e-mail, messanger, Facebook, and phone) none of those ways got any responce. She came back after 6 months, I was lucky enough to be online when she did, she told us she had cancer and was hospitalized the whole time. She will not be returning to SL. Having someone banned is not the end of the world. There are programs to change your ISP.
Forgive the rant, but this is a flaming trolling thread and it pisses me off. Obviously the person in question did SOMETHING to warrant the ban. If LL bans someone for no reason at all you can sue them for every penny you spent as they are taking property that was paid for.

P.S. I do know how to use the english language, I was making a point.

Simon, there are confidentiality issues involved in discussing a person's personal business with a 3rd party. LL simply cannot do that, allow other people to appeal or argue on behalf of a friend. It's this way in most businesses, and LL is a business. If I were to discuss my rl clients with a 3rd party I'd be hauled into court in a heartbeat, and rightly so. Quite simply speaking, the details of LL's decision are none of your business in regard to another person. It's between your friend and LL.

I agree with your sentiments . . .

Pep ( . . . but not with your "english"; people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.)

PS Treasure, do you really believe I would relax my standards *that* much?