An Open Response to Robin's blog entry

After reading Robin's comments posted here, I wanted to say a few things about reputation systems.

Robin says:

So far so good - yes, there is a loss of confidence among many of us. I'm still trying to follow the logic trail from "open, unverified registration" (especially without robust anti-griefer tools) to "retaining confidence and trust in the Second life community". There's a gap there, I think.

Some of the things Robin mentioned as possible enhancements to help restore the lost confidence:

* Add a field in the user profile that shows if someone is 'verified'.

- Of course, by the time a day-old newbie alt shows up at a club fully equipped with push shields, firebombs and a working knowledge of scripting, I'm not worried about whether he's "verified" or not. I'm worried about getting rid of him quickly and permanently -- along with all the junk prims he will rez on the parcel while standing outside allegedly banned, but still able to rez prims inside my parcel.

* Continue to improve features for controlling griefing, including better mute tools that extend mute beyond the avatar to objects and IMs.

- Remember, the flood of newbies in SL includes a majority who are here to explore and enjoy -- and who have NO clue how to use the UI. I've spent more time this past week tutoring on how to pan the camera, create landmarks and file Abuse Reports than I can ever remember before -- what you're telling me, Robin, is that being able to ignore the griefers will solve the problem? It'd be nice to have that, but if someone is in my club I want to know what they're doing so I can ban them rather than ignore them. This is more of a half-measure, not a solution.

* One is an improved, behaviorally based (if possible) reputation system

- There has not been ONE reputation system built into an MMOG that has ever worked as intended. I'm a veteran of Ultima Online (and almost every MMOG since then), and saw the floundering, broken, misguided efforts of Raph to get a handle on rampant PKing and griefing there. It ended up costing Origin thousands of subscribers who just got fed up with being PK'd constantly and losing their gear.

Allow me to cite from an authority on this. Dr. Richard Bartle said only last week:

So basically he's saying that a good reputation system must have, at its foundation, a committment by the player to his character. You value your reputation because you value your character.

Explain, please, how that synchronizes with an open, unverified registration system which sponsors exactly the opposite -- accounts are created with the foreknowledge that they will NOT be permanent, and will be used to cause grief until such time as they are banned? Then a new account, equally temporary, is created and the grief can go on, reputation be damned.

I'm glad the Lindens are aware of our concerns, and I'm also glad they notice the drop in confidence among users. What bothers me, though, is a seeming inability to grasp the solution: No verification system is perfect, and no one is claiming that it is. If you truly wanted to expand the user base of SL and lower the entrance bar, why didn't you implement tools that help us cope with the mess before the bar was lowered? Why didn't you fix the broken bits in the client (like banned people rezzing prims where they're not allowed) instead of giving us floppy prims and local lighting? Which of those features would have helped to maintain the sense of confidence among users more?

There needs to be accountability.

How can the value of an avatar be encouraged? What incentives are there to preserve the integrity of one's avatar, if any? There will be more success with this if this can be an internal desire on the part of the avatar and not something forced upon them.

What does an avatar have to lose if it makes bad choices?

How can an avatar be encouraged to care about their impact on others in this world?

Here are some of the immediate plans Robin says LL has in store for us:


Ok, so we have a field in a profile. How does this protect other residents from non verified users griefing or causing chaos? Sure its a first step but nothing in the future plans mention using it to make it useful.

This is good reguardless of verification or not. I would still like to stress the need for better mainland landowner tools.

Umm ok?

And we all know the Aqua Teen Age Force is out there patrolling...

The "verified" part is, theoretically, good for people doing business transactions; you could theoretically sue someone if they scammed you for $L50 or whatever.

Actually, nevermind, that's still bumfuck retarded. I can "verify" my alt and go around scamming newbies like woah and never get anything but a slap on the wrist.

GG LLabs.

A reputation system does nothing if the concept of identity is a fleeting dream at best in SL. Those of us who have spent years in SL building up a reputation by just being here are'nt going to be griefing anyone anytime soon,b ut Joe Q. Asshole coming in from the SomethingAwful forums doesn't give a shit about reputation; he just gets banned and starts a new account.

I am again failing to see how opening the floodgates to the Greater Internet Shitwad Theory is doing us any favors.

This is the crux of it, Salazar. The change in registration was done for the sole reason of artificially bumping SL's user numbers to meet some nebulous goal of 1 million subscribers. Everything else is going to take a back seat to that goal, including the fact that many of those 1 million subscribers are actually the same 16-year old griefer with multiple alts. That goal will be met even at a dire cost in user confidence and the sacrifice of the old sense of community some of us once felt.

You cannot encourage a subscriber to value their avatar unless you also give them the means with which to build worth -- be it money, accomplishment, or social connections. It's very possible that new, free, account holders will discover one or all of these worth factors, and I'm not saying they won't. What I am saying is that they aren't the ones fostering the loss of confidence -- that problem is springing from a very small percentage of new accounts who are exploiting the utter lack of personal accountability in the new system. LL can't touch them, and they know it.

Let me express this mathematically: One griefer can undo the positive work of 10 good citizens in less time than it takes to think up a phony email address. You can't fight odds like that without much better tools and much more accountability.

I would assume that the value displayed in that field would be accessible from the dataserver just like an avatars date of birth and ratings are, which would enable the creation of vendors, security systems, etc. that are capable of discerning between verified and non-verified accounts automatically. Although if the paranoia sweeping these forums lately is anything to go by I imagine this will lead to a whole lot of discrimination against new residents when they first sign up.

Hey, maybe that's what LL are aiming for!? They welcome everyone in with open arms and free anonymous accounts then get existing residents to bully the newcomers into going premium by use of aggressive discriminatory security devices and vendors, gadgets, etc that they can't access until they cough up their credit card details.

Heh, or maybe the genuine non-verifieds will just head on back out again, as they have no where decent to go as a result of mass banning.

Lately?


You must mean "Latest-ly".

What good would a security script do? Is it going to send a "nuke ALL unverifieds in the area" bomb? What kind of message does that send to the unverifieds that arent actually griefing or causing problems? Usually a security script is set to target a specific name (or list of).

Why would anyone want to make a vendor script that doesnt sell to an unverified user? Some newbie joins SL, goes to some event and wins some L$. Then they go to spend it but your vendor blocks them.

I think that discrimination already happens to a degree. I know, before 6/6 my first approach to any new person was always on the assumption that they were honest and decent until they showed otherwise. Since then, I find myself checking their born-on date first and then (if they're post-6/6) waiting to observe their behavior before I offer my assistance. I've been open and friendly to too many of them only to then find out they're purposely jerks or an alt fully armed with push scripts (wow, in one day he figured that out, huh?).

That's an unavoidable consequence of the lack of ID verification and the ensuing increase in griefing I've seen.


There is always a tradeoff. LL will get their increased enrollment, but the sacrifice will probably be a sense of trust and openness among the users. You and I will feel the latter most painfully. LL won't.

lol!

Well either way the non-verifieds would be gone, which seems to be what the majority of folk here on the forums are campaigning for!





Hehe, sorry those are questions you'd have to ask LL! I'm just theorizing on the possible uses of the Verified field that's apparently going to be added to our profiles.

They're just random ideas, I never said they were good ones!

I don't think we really want anyone in SL who can't or won't produce a valid bank card. Free is okay, but anonymous isn't. I'm not trying to be discriminatory, but given the amount of money and effort residents are spending, and the amount of emotion involved, I think every person needs to be accountable for their actions.


Yes.

We must protect our borders... oh wait, wrong subject.

Fantastic post, Cindy.

While filtering out 'Verified' users may be useful for some in some cases, honestly - its rather useless to me & the Shelter in our case.

As you said: the majority of people signing up unverified are good, honest users. Its only a minority that are 'prats'.

To alienate the good (yet unverified) folks to keep out the prats completely goes against what we're trying to accomplish at the Shelter.

At the same time, those same prats make our mission tougher as well. So its a catch-22.

A big part of the answer (and I feel like a broken record on this) - is for Linden to be proactive about grief, not reactive - and give us the tools to do the same.

If only! The problem is, the current tools are not sufficient to combat griefers, they only make life slightly more difficult for them. They're not enough to deter a determined griefer, but enough to deter someone who is looking around to see what SL has to offer them.

Or, perhaps more succinctly, they aren't going to do anything. I'm utterly shocked given their historically pro-active stewardship.

FTW

It's going to look strange in a couple of years, seeing this on the front page:

Residents: 1,104,342
Online now: 23

all alts greifing each other on empty lands...

What has been most frustrating about the various responses to this issue is that all of the responses address adding "improved functionality" at some nebulous point in the future. There is much needed functionality we have been asking for since beta that we still don't have - LL has a horrible track record in that regard. Why should we as users and customers have to suffer through yet another experiment by LL in trying to get it right?

The sheer refusal to acknowledge that they could hold off on these registration changes until more robust controls are in place is maddening. That would be a good faith effort on their part that would restore the trust of users - this whole building the airplane while flying thing is going to crash and burn. How many users, even truly dedicated ones, will get fed up in the meantime and just leave? I suppose now it's fine because there is an endless supply of new users to bulk up those precious numbers.

Clem! Clem! That victrola's stuck again.

Someone kick it.

Exactly, LL should be careful what they wish for.

I have to agree, and I think the idea of discrimination against non-verified users is a lousy one!

Any such discrimination against non-verified residents (whether it be via script or through other residents attitudes towards them) will have a far more adverse effect on legitimate first time users than it will on griefers.

However, while I'm still not advocating it, discrimination through denial of access to certain areas & content (special events for verified users only, gadgets that only have limited function for non-verified residents, etc) would still be a more compelling argument for becoming a verified user than the impression that everybody in SL is rude and antisocial to newcomers!

Good post, Cris -- let me just add that the loss of confidence Robin noted is not a new thing. We've felt it before when updates were published that were of dubious real value while egregiously broken features remained broken. But now you have a situation where a very small minority of anonymous users are creating all new levels of non-confidence when the whole thing was very avoidable if LL had adopted a pro-active approach with the eventual goal of opening up registration.

I don't care if they reach 1 million users. I've always maintained that 1 million users would translate into more creativity and more business volume which are Good Things. But the way this whole thing has been done will result in 50,000 actual users, 1/50th of them with 100 alt accounts each, created for the sole purpose of destroying and causing havoc. What kind of world will that be?

I have to say that part has got me wondering! I think LL really should have taken a little more time and ensured that effective anti-griefing tools, etc. were available to residents before opening the floodgates.

With all due respect to Raph, I, too, am a veteran of UO and almost every MMOG since and a whole bunch of multiplayer online games before (not massive because they didn't get massive till UO). Raph and company didn't even TRY to stem the tide of griefers until 6 months to a year after release and that was because of loss of player base. I remember the "creative use of magic" comment with regard to house breakings. Their reputation system was based on an assumption that players wouldn't want to be evil. Yeah, right. So bringing up UO's reputation system as something that was tried and didn't work isn't a very good example.

I think you left out one basic flaw in Robin's talk. She talked about permabans as something doable. As far as I know, it is not. It never has been, not for SL, not for UO and not for any game before or since. AT BEST you can link a ban to a credit card as most folks do not have an infinite supply of those.