what are your gripes about the new resmod system?

Perma-ban has plusses and minues. Provided the resident hasn't been inactive (such that a ban may not concern them) then it would make a great deterrent. The downside is that the punishment is harsh enough where I suspect you would never see a "guilty" ruling.

This bothers me because there is an expectation that if a ResMod abused their authority, a "guilty" determination by Jeska or Robin could reverse the damage done. For example, say IHateAimee Bobbysocks begins a campaign of creative interpretation of the TOS which eventually results in diciplinary action on my record. Even if the evidence indicates abuse of privileges, Jeska and Robin are going to HATE perma-banning that ResMod, so I fear I would never get exonerated.

These are my concerns, but if a ResMod program rollback isn't an option, I would be in favor of the Permaban as a patch.

HA HA HA HA that made me laugh so much I cant believe it...still laughing and I think thats about right.

By the way, what would you think if you learned one of the resmods did NOT have a clean LInden rap sheet and the infraction was a nasty forum post!?

I am not a prude Thelma, really (or are you Louise, who do you want to be?) but this is such a contradiction. I mean doesnt the resmod selection mantra state no past infractions yet here is a resmod who admitted the disciplinary action in a past post!

COME ON THELMA..pass the bottle, this whole thing is a mess.

Robin? Jeska? Any explanation for this?

problem with disciplinary action is:

"please volunteer to do our work for free. it's really hard and important work that you should get paid something like 50k a year, but we will pay you in smilies . btw if you fuck up we will burn down your house."

does that kind of contract encourage you to sign up for the bake sale?

You are an evil genius.

Someone back there asked, "What does PG mean anyway?" and pointed to a "PG" movie with all sorts of rotten language.

That's a very valid question. I might point out that using Hollywood as an example of propriety might not be the best choice.

But in regard to what is allowable under PG, the answer to those who visit our island sims: your judgement call. Cross the line... and it's my judgement call.

Our visitor guidelines put it simply: conduct yourself with honor. If you don't want to do that... conduct yourself elsewhere. That's what PG means. It means if you want to use foul language and insult people and cop an attitude... go to a flamer board and do it there. Pretty simple really. I think all anyone wants in these forums is to be able to discuss different aspects of Second Life without having an obscenity-spouting troll jump down their throats. All comes down to simple respect for others.

Hahaha, seriously.

And he's right. I saw job offer for a community moderator for a discussion forum serving user base that's a tiny fraction of the SL population. The salary was remarkably close to Wu's figure.

You're onto something. ;0

addressing a few points here..

as far as ResMod behaviour vs. discipline, this quote is taken from the ResMod guidelines:



on the topic of "PG", i will grant that looking to Hollywood may not be the best practice, but it's geenrally true with any PG material. you can use almost any curse word in any PG medium, whether that be movies, television, magazines, books, and so on. this is one of the things i have struggled with most since becoming a ResMod.. and my personal opinion boils down to intent.
if someone uses profanity in a post along the lines of, "this is the word %^@&", then i don't think it should be a problem; however, if a post is made along the lines of, "you are a $%&^", then that would be an infraction. like Wayfinder said, it all comes down to respect for others.

the concerns about ResMods being able to affect disciplinary actions on any Resis is really of little concern. anyone can report anyone for anything they feel is a reportable offense and actions taken aren't based on who reported it, just on the details of what is reported. in other words, a Resis' word is as good (or harmful) as a ResMods. i would hope so anyway, i know some may say that a ResMod would have more clout due to their position, but i choose to believe that something as dire as a permaban wouldn't be based solely on a persons word and would ratehr be based on the actions of the one reported.

-

this discussion is going great, by the way! it's been heated several times, but overall it's been fairly civil. it has resulted in a lot of reconsiderations and further definitions of both the ResMod program and the forums as a whole. some topics in this thread can only be answered by a Linden and some possibly preferrentially via PM and i hope that they are answered to satisfaction.

Maybe that system is already implemented.

But G/PG/R/M/etc are constructs of the entertainment industry. You *have* to look to them to know what they mean, because otherwise they are uselessly abstract... "M" mature stuff has nothing to do with maturity, for example.

No. PG-rated movies can't contain harsh sexual words, such as the F word or the C word, regardless of the intent inherent in the dialogue. That is common understanding in all PG mediums.

coco

We can change over to British profanity... wanker!

I wouldn't say "can't", I'd say "not supposed to".

For example, Crocodile Dundee has an instance of the word "fuckin'", yet it was rated PG.

I think "PG" is absolutely silly for SL, which is made of up all 18+ aged people. "Parental Guidance" suggests a child should have a parent with them. Why? I don't know - what the heck is the difference if a parent is there or not, when there's not supposed to be profanity, nudity, or illicit drug use? At any rate, the use of PG in SL strikes me as a misnomer. I would think having "normal", unrated sims, and then "Mature" sims would be less confusing. After all, PG isn't in use in all countries, and certainly not all countries in which SL residents live.

I am not advocating that the rules in place for PG sims be changed, just that I think the descriptor is whacked.

Nolan, i have to agree about the whack-factor. "PG" might be the easiest to understand as to its implied meaning, but maybe we would be better off with "Normal" (as you suggested) or possibly "Innocent-ish", or "Reserved".. but having an "R" rated sim might cause a little confusion when it's supposed to mean "PG-esque".. hehe.

CocoCo, that's why i had said almost any curse word. the more raw sounding ones are usually frowned upon and in the context of these forums i would say they shouldn't be banned from use, but they should be discouraged. of course, no matter what the word is, if it's used against someone's character, then it would be a definite no-no.

Ah yes... another thread derailed so some people can flex their waggle finger skills again. Great.

Farkin incredible!

Whatever the words are we aren't supposed to use here, we need a clear list, so that people will at least know if they are going to get reported and warned for it beforehand.

coco

P.S. Cybin: "no matter what the word is, if it's used against someone's character, then it would be a definite no-no." That hasn't been true before.

P.S. Ingrid, do you mind if I talk?

Bloody hell, British profanity is pants. Makes ya' sound like a right ponce. Sod that.

*Apologies to Eddie Esher, despite your best tutaledge, I probably got that all wrong.

Not at all. Please start your own thread about the word tard. The topic of this thread is people's gripes about the resmod system.

actually, it has been true, it's just been difficult to enforce. befoer the ResMod program, we basically had Jeska to moderate these forums.. and it surely isn't an easy job to begin with, not to mention for one person to attempt alone.

because the forums are incredibly vivacious and faster moving in the past several months than ever before, it's hard to keep track of every single infraction and every thread. even every AR would be hard for one person to keep with.

so, i don't think that it hasn't been true, but rather that it's been problematic in enforcement. hopefully the new ResMod program will help curtail name calling and similar affronteries of etiquette.

as always, anyone can click the AR icon and send moderators a helpful pointer which will increase attention to problems. sometimes you may not see any actions taken, this could be because the moderator responding to a particular AR doesn't interpret it the same way and doesn't find something negative in the ARed post.. although, these days if there's a question as to the proper actions to be taken, then it will end up being posted in the thread for ResMod discussion where all the ResMods along with any Lindens (mainly Heska) who pop in to review it as well and then decide on a proper action to be taken. (this is one place where we're working to strengthen consistency).

so, CocoCo, hopefully this will be rectified in the comiong weeks. if you see where we can improve this problem or any ideas for streamlining a process to address it, please feel free to share them.

Well, Cybin, you are saying that such things were reported in the past but not acted on because Jeska was too busy to get around to all the AR's?

If so, that would definitely be unfortunate. But I don't think that is the total explanation. I made such an AR once, waited a week or so, and made it again, in case it had been overlooked the first time. However, it was not acted on, even though it was clearly egregious, so I have to conclude that it simply wasn't the case that bad words directed at a person's character were always a no-no. And there are other examples of similar things other people have reported. which weren't acted on either..

Consequently, no, I don't believe this has been the policy in the past, or if it was, it wasn't enforced in a number of cases due to a conscious decision not to enforce it, rather than having overlooked it.

coco

i'm not saying that it's definitely the cause, but it sure wouldn't surpriise me.

consider Jeska trying to moderate the forums alone, having to keep an eye on ALL the threads in ALL the forums.. or at least skimming about. it really couldn't effectively be done. now, on top of that, she would have had to have her email open in a seperate window so she could keep abreast of the ARs that were coming in on any given day.

so far today, there have been 12 ARs. it looks like yesterday saw just under that number. so, 1 AR in a period of one week does stand a chance to either be overlooked or not garner the attention it should due to moderation burn-out.

so, thee is merit to it as a possibility. either way, yes.. it has been policy not to post anything harmful.. the implementation is what may not have worked out quite right. hopefully the instance of ResMods will help to address this problem more efficiantly and effectively.

in the meantime, i would like to implore everyone to use etiquette when posting. everyone has a right to their own opinion and the expression of such, just as we all have a right to express our disagreeance with someone else's opinion. but we should all strive to make these points without attempting to belittle someone else. of course, it doesn't hurt for us to remember that we all have differing opinions of what's comedic and what's tragic and as such we would do well to slough off some remarks that might be slightly inciteful and if attention needs to be paid, to pay it where there is a clear presence of harmful language that really cuts to the bone.

Hi Cybin,
Thanks for taking the incredible amount of time you have been taking to try to address all this bickering!

My point about nudity wasn't so much *about* nudity as it was about how subjective the interpretation of some of the rules can be and how one can be a member of the forum in long standing and still not really know precisely what the rules are or what they mean. Also none of my comments/disagreements were intended to be directed at you personally.

As Aimee and Torley said (grossly paraphrased), nothing unites us like an "Attack from Outer Space!"

The other point I was trying to make is how all of a sudden, people that you respected and agreed with before, seem "different" with the res-mod tag attached to their name (well actually there is no indicator which maybe there should be).

Reminds me of the Stanford(?) experiment, where students modeled a prison system as a social experiment and found that those tagged as "guards" almost immediately started to behave in a more authoritative and decidedly unfriendly fashion. Not that I think this is true of your moderation per se, but you can see it happening in some of the res-mods already I think.

I am reasonably certain that if I was a res-mod the power would go to my head almost before I received my shiny badge in the mail.

Well, it's kind of being between a rock and a hard place, though, Dianne, don't you think? If one is assigned to be the resmod, then one does have to get a little authoritarian, which can seem kind of non-friendly.

Some people can straddle this resmod/non-resmod bridge more charmingly and diplomatically than others, sure. But - I wouldn't want to have the job of trying to be authoritative while trying not to seem less friendly than I once was, you know? Cause you can't really be as friendly as you once were in some ways, I think.

And there's the other side of the coin - how we perceive them. Lots of people don't like the idea of having a resident tell them what to do, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the person. That can affect how friendly or non-friendly, or how authoritarian, we perceive them.

coco <----- reports self for waggling fingers

Dianne, you're quite right. interpretation of the rules will always be a bit wonky. this isn't something we can get around by detailing each and every particular tpe of infraction that could ever exist, so we need to find other ways of handling it.

for instance, in reagrds to nudity.. explicit depictions of sexual acts would be crossing the line, i would imagine; however, a picture of a topless female avatar simply posing for a picture might not be considered to be a violation. but where's the line? how can we know that our individual interpretation falls under the general standard for the forums? there's no clear-cut answer to this.

this is another reason why there is the thread in the ResMods forum that i've mentioned before where we can discuss threads/posts in question before taking any action on them, so that there is a better picture of where that line is. there is one such thread being debated now.. and it's not easy to tell what to do sometimes. it concerns a thread that we would rather not see closed, but it includes nudity. nothing explicitly sexual, but a topless shot.. which may be able to be considered "PG" in some mediums.


as for the effects of being bestowed with ResMod powers adn how it might effect one's actions.. again, you have a valid point. one that resonantes through history (and comic books, like Spider-Man), "with great power comes great responsibility".. or the more political version, "absolute power corrupts absolutely". however, the second statement is of a defeatist stand-point and being an optimist, i tend to subscribe to the first statement.

for the record, i used to test the ar system out to see how it was applied. and the answer i got was that it wasn't very evenly applied. and it still seems to be uneveny applied.

what got acted on seem to be a function of time of day, contentiousness of the thread, and who was insulting whom. the type of insult didn't seem to be a factor. however, this is just an impression i got.