An Open Response to Robin's blog entry

Perhaps not at first, but over the next 2 years Origin wadded up their rep system and remade it a dozen times, even taking away bank priveleges from Dread Lords so that they had to have alts or friends in order to enter town and do business. My point was that Raph had glorified ideals regarding the player base and he forgot one very important thing: That players will always find a way to exploit the rules. No rules system is foolproof, but if you have sufficient accountability tracking to the account you at least have a way to stem the tide a little. (And note that many times it's the appearance of accountability that acts as a deterrent more so than the actual possibility of punishment).


Which, of course, is worlds better than what they've given us now. Like I've said before on this topic, you will never get rid of all twits. But you can at least inhibit their behavior by trying to impose some accountability. Throwing up their hands and removing all accountability is not the answer, it has only made the problem worse.

What way is there to reward conscientous, law-abiding residents that will give folks an incentive to be positive members of the Second Life community?

I was thinking that one example could be making it a privilege to participate in the Preview... but that might defeat the purpose of trying to get as many folks into the Preview as possible. But, at the same time it might make the ability to get into the Preview a valuable and desirable thing. Especially if there were special events going on there, prizes, etc. Make the Preview the place to see and be seen! Those able to access the Preview would have to have a clean rap sheet for the previous three months.

Other examples:

Folks with a clean rap sheet get a discount on their premium membership or land tier?

Folks applying for the Luna & Ben lotteries have to have the 3 month clean rap sheet.

Every month Linden Lab draws a random name(s) for prizes from the pool of residents with clean rap sheets.

Residents could also offer incentives and prizes on their own if they had the ability to query the resident database in some way that would allow them to select a random citizen as a prize winner who was "verified" and had a clean rap sheet.

Better tools are definately needed, but perhaps incentives like these could also help encourage people to act more positively.

In "those other games" there is some incentive to keep using the same avatar: you increase in level or the like. In SL (except for holding on to a few non-transfer items) there is no incentive for avatar long life; thus there is no incentive to avoid creating alts and letting the original avatar be banned or shunned.

Maybe long life should be rewarded in some way, either with "reputation points" or with Linden dollars on birthdays or some such thing, as as a way of encouraging people not to change avatars.

They could still have their main, and then 1000 greifer alts in addition.

The only solution I see to this problem is to limit all new accounts.

Freebee / unverified accounts, cannot have any inventory, hold any money, build objects outside of a few very specific Linden Owned sandboxes, and they cannot execute any scripts. They can look around, they can talk, and interact with objects, but that is it. They are visitors and nothing more. Land owners, especially those in the adult industries, should also be given the option to block Visitor accounts from their land. (keep the kiddies who snuck in, away from places they should not be)

If the Visitors like what they see, then they can pay the $9.95 fee, verifiy who they are through that payment, and become a full citizen of Second Life.

How does this help?

The Visitor accounts cannot do any damge to the citizens who want to be here... if they are greifer. Those that actually want to check us out get a chance to test out the Building system in a controlled environment, they get to view the world, talk to the residents and see what make SL worth paying for.

This, I believe, was the intention of Linden Lab's in removing the barrier to creating an account.

YAY!

Pay the fee and you can grief ehhhh.. Play ehh whatever its called now.

Gotta disagree, they might as well just browse snapzilla.

Androclese, your proposal as regards the status of the visitor accounts is pretty close to what I've been pushing over the last wweek except that i was a tad more generous in terms of features available.

Barbarra, the obvious incentive to hold onto an avatar is reputation, social network and in some cases business network. That's something that takes a while to build up. I have my main and several alts. But I am known mostly by my main and the reputation I've built up. That's something worth hanging onto as I'm sure it would be for most other players in SL.

Well, let's see if I understand it correctly (haven't made any alts, so I could be wrong):

1. New users start with L$0
   
2. The "verified" item means the user paid something to LL (like buying currency). This in turn mean they have actual data pointing to that user.
   
3. So, for somebody to acquire equipment to grief they need to: Pay LL to get the L$ to buy it, beg, or make it themselves.
   
4. Paying LL gives them more data on who you are.
   

Now, people can still make griefing scripts of course. Possible patches for this include:

1. Charge a fee for uploading scripts, like for textures. Not sure this is a good idea though. It's easily circumvented by begging and money trees.
   
2. Heavily restrict scripts owned by non-verified users. No push, no text output, no rez until the user becomes verified. This would stop weapons and orbiters from working.
   
3. Once a griefer pays, and gives LL a card number, and gets banned, it's trivial to refuse allowing other accounts using that card.
   

How does that sound?

I think when we start adressing incentives for holding onto an avatar, we are getting a little off-track. As was so eloquently addressed in Cindy's post, the real issue is the accountability (or lack of it) of every account.

I know this has been brought up a thousand times, (here goes a thousand and one)

Trying to step inside the head of Linden, what could be the possible negative consequence if Linden took a small step down from their privacy perch, and named names in the police blotter?

The only one that comes to mind, is resident retaliation, or resident ostracism. If someone receives a warning that goes to the blotter, I could imagine circumstances where maybe that could be bad. (maybe).

Fine then - what if names were blocked in the blotter for warnings, like today. But if a resident received a suspension of any sort (meaning they're beginning to establish a pattern), why would it be unjust to name the name?

This wouldn't help much with alt griefing - but it would make a step towards being more proactive on grief. If I could parse the blotter & look for key phrases that signal a griefer, and then add them to my security system automatically, I feel like I'd be one more step ahead.

Edited to Add: As far as reputations, what if Rapsheet Level (whether someone is "Clean", "Warning", "2nd offence", etc) was a part of the public profile, and could be queried with an LSL function. Wouldn't that be just as good?

Incentives are not a solitary answer, just a part of the solution. Like better land/group tools and verification. Anything that supports accountability should be part of a multi-primmed effort to make and encourage folks to be more acccountable for their behavior.

The concern is the ease with which griefers can create disposable alts. A disposable alt will not worry about being named and shamed.

I am sorry to say but the unverified would most certainly be banned from my lands.
Just yesterday a new avi showed up on my land and based on recet experience, I became suspicious of what they wanted etc. In this case my suspicions were correct they were there to cause grief.

It is a sad sad state when we imediatley assume the worst of someone we do not know.

I agree with others who said a system that links reputation to avi's as a means of stopping griefing is useless when avi's are disposable.
When I played EQ, your reputation was important to you because it took time to bring a toon up in levels. You could change your name but SoE had a name change board that was open to the public so it didnt take long for someone who had a bad rep and changed thier name to be identified as the problem child they were.

I think opening the flood gates and then 2 weeks later issuing boats is a bit backwards.

Why not make freebie avis unable to change appearance or wear nice clothes or able to creat prims outside sandbox areas. This allows people to see what is possible and then require them to pay to play


Have a cookie, I promise by the time you finish eating it, you'll feel as right as rain.

Karmi

On the whole "numbers" game:

I've been railing pretty hard against the open, no-verification system, and probably have yet to really point out the ultimate reason why it is so bad, from a real business standpoint.

Imagine, if you will, that SL had, at the 200,000-account mark, around 50,000 accounts that were not alts, newbies, people who logged into the trial and played for a week then left, etc. These 50,000 will play the game and continue to play the game for the "long term", eventually buying land, paying tier (if they haven't already), or just getting a subscription whether they buy land or not. These are the people who keep Linden Lab in the black, who have some long-term investment into the game, and the ones they should be most concerned about keeping happy, as they will be tomorow's Liaisons and pillars of the community. Note that there will be future accounts which will become part of this group as well, but that is not part of this point. The other 150,000 accounts amount to "dead" or "husk" accounts. Artifacts of the database which occupy storage but provide nothing to the game. Now, although these accounts are not necessarily griefers and abusive players; surely some will be.

Next, let's say, on average, that the presence of each griefing and abusive player ultimately causes the loss of at least one of the "desireable 50k", forever. Further, griefers have no long-term interest in the game. It is highly probable that the vast majority of griefers will be part of the "other 150k", never putting anything into the game, especially money towards LL's bottom line. They will only be in the game until they get bored or kicked out, whichever comes first. Now, with the lack of verification, it will only be the former, since they can never truly be "kicked out".

Given the concept that griefers and abusers are toxic to current and prospective members of the 50k group, it follows that minimizing the contact between the two groups is a very high priority. If your take this formula into the future, what you have is an environment ripe for the erosion of LL's important playerbase, the 50k. As time goes on, more griefers will come into the game, chase off their "fair share" of the 50k, and then they will fall away like the artifacts they are.

Ultimately, what you will have is a constant, steady erosion of the paying, supportive playerbase to the point where the game will become less and less viable. It will become a game full of database artifacts, dry and lifeless.

Yes, it is a "doom-and-gloom" scenario, but it has a basis in fact that cannot be ignored.

Talarus has, in my opinion, captured the essence of why player retention is necessary.

Great post.

I hope that the future doesn't play out as described, but I can't argue the logic of it, at all. If someone at LL is reading this thread - print out Talarus' post, and put it on Philips desk, RIGHT NOW.

Seriously.

I appreciate your sentiments, Androclese, but I don't see LL taking away inventory from newbies. For one thing, it would deny the 95% of decent free account holders one of the most potent hooks SL offers: that is, to own something, to shop, to create things you can keep. I think that would be cutting their noses off to spite their faces.

I think there's less-harsh scenarios that should be do-able.

1) Every other website I have ever registered for required a valid email address. I have a Yahoo account I normally use which is really a throwaway (I've had it for a year), but even so -- I cannot activate my membership on any website without first giving a valid email address, then clicking on the verification link they email to me in order to activate. Right now you can use [email=sdfkljsdf@sdfskj.com]sdfkljsdf@sdfskj.com[/email] as an email address and the dumb system will accept it.

2) The account verification flag actually has some possibilities. Any unverified account which is AR'd by verified users should be immediately deleted by the Lindens after appropriate investigation. No questions asked, no second chances. No more "3 day suspension" for script attacks like we see in the police blotter. Sure, they'll remake the account again but this is one more speed bump in their way. It's "no mercy" on what are essentially temporary trial accounts.

3) Allow scripts to identify avatars as verified/unverified. I realize this could possibly result in prejudicial treatment, but not always. And the gain could be more than any perceived loss. If security scripts are written that will bar unverified users from a busy club or other griefer-magnets before they've had a chance to cause harm, I think there will be an incentive for those unverified users to get verified. And you don't have to have a credit card -- you can also have a paypal account, of course, which is tied to your bank account. No bank account? Tough, why does LL think they want the business of people who don't even bank?

4) Alternate methods of verification -- this was the motivation for LL removing verification in the first place in order to inflate user numbers (they thought they were losing good members because they were asking for personal information). I'm still puzzled as to why anyone would ever expect to do anything on the internet with legit business companies without giving some personal information, but whatever (don't get me started on the rampant and naive revelation of personal info on Myspace). You can have a paypal account under another name, as long as it links back to your RL bank account. On some of the porn sites around the web, you can register with Adult registration services who hold all the personal info -- why can't LL start their own verification service or contract with an established one?


Great post, Talarus, and I agree with you on the long-term consequences to Second Life. Nothing ever stays the same, but I hate seeing the environment of SL become so suspicious, paranoid and griefer-cursed.

This is quite true.

Last night we had one of many new residents show up. One in particular, lets call "Bob".

Bob appeared with a join date of yesterday. I proceeded to give my newbie spiel, dump some notecards on him, and generally offer assistance if he needed anything.

Bob responded with "I'm not a newbie, I don't need this stuff. I just had to make a new account cause I got banned." Then he ported off.

Was Bob a griefer? No clue. He was pleasant enough for the minute or two he was with us. But its clear that folks can and are circumventing Linden sanctions by simply creating a new anonymous account.

And last night we were fire-bombed by a guy named "Ryan". Same first name as the dweeb who firebombed us 2 days ago dressed like a Star Wars trooper. Same MO.

Coincidence? There are none.

Oh, you guys got hit by him too?

(No, not kidding.)

We've had a rash of 'comebacks' after banning a few people in storm trooper uniforms who got a little crazy with the cheese wiz... Not that it's telling of the star wars community. Quite the opposite. Just saying that it's probably one or two people, coming back over and over again.

yeh they should ban Imperial trooper uniforms (or cheese wiz!)

Same guy, I bet. But I haven't received my obligatory "issue resolved" email from LL on this one yet. Today I got emails from 4 other ARs that were all last weekend, so there apparently is a backlog. (Right, Daniel?)

First of all, they get to try out only one aspect of the building system -- they can only build, not texture, except perhaps with the library textures. And since there's no inventory, they could only do things that didn't take a lot of time; no saving something into inventory and working on it later. Second of all, building is not the only form of content creation that lures people here. Under your system, they couldn't create clothing and couldn't try their hand at scripting.

There seems to be a notion in the forums that if you take features away from newbies, they'll be perfectly willing to stick around and pay for them. I don't think this is true. More likely, they'll get fed up and go -- how many newbies already leave because they don't find anything to do? -- and never get hooked, and never become paying customers.

Severely limiting newbie/freebie accounts may be one way to deal with griefers, but I think the costs are too high.

Miriel makes a good point. Limiting inventory won't discourage griefers -- they can grief just being a-holes and bumping other avies over and over. But it would discourage the legit newbies that LL wants to attract.

I also thought that, in addition to my "no mercy" suggestion on temporary trial accounts, the AR function should be disabled on them. This way we can push the crap out of them without any retribution

Ok, I'm only partly joking on that, but it's VERY frustrating. Instead of "Grim Babies" maybe someone should sell "Grim Newbies" you can abuse and kill?

Excellent summary, Cindy.

I find a few key issues about this registration change, and the response to date, particularly unsettling.

1. No age verification, but don't worry, the teens discovered on the Adult grid will be summarily shunted over to the Teen grid. Errm, was this before or after they delved into things inappropriate for their maturity level? Too little too late comes to mind here.

2. Being a long time resident, I'm wracking my brain to discover where I signed up to be a vigilante commando. The confused Mermaid truly thought she was entering a world to create, explore, enjoy and pleasantly socialize with those of like mind.

3. My focus on the sheer joys of creating, exploring, socializing and learning has swiftly shifted to watchful peering over the shoulder, suspiciously eyeballing any approaching green dots, guarding property and person. More the hallmarks of a nervous police state under siege than a welcoming joyful society, in my humble opinion.

4. A slim portfolio of tools after the fact is all well and good (cart before the horse aside), but really, how enjoyable is it to spend significant chunks of your Second Life time fending off attacks and fiddling with security features just to achieve peace of mind?

Granted, we have lived with our share of griefers and sneakers and age defiers before this. But I have to wholeheartedly agree with fellow posters who clearly outlined accountability as a critical factor. The lack thereof has dramatically INCREASED the potential for both troublesome behaviours and poisoning the environment against legitimate, reasonable newcomers. Accessibility is indeed a wonderful thing, but without accountability, anarchy looms.