Wait, we're paying money for what?

Other games manage.

coco

actualymost games have in game moderators either volunteer or paid from the company to manage users.

What Yuriko mentions brings up a good point, and that is: think of GUIDEPOSTS. Leading to the destination, but not the final stop. So, Resis have the right to send abuse reports inworld, and report objectionable SL Forums posts with the button. In all cases, however, "the buck stops with Linden Lab". No final action takes place without a Linden's OKAY. In a world that's getting so big, I really appreciate volunteers highlighting what's wrong--and moreso, what's right.

Social networking = teh r0xx0r

As I said, what makes SL so special that they can't tolerate what so many other games tolerate, AND they have a greater ability for a player to create inappropriate content or harass other users because they can create anything essentially. If you can't answer that, you don't have a point.

In game volunteers work fine with every other game out there. The main use of volunteers is for low level moderation of user activities. in this case it would mostly be things like inappropriate textures, etc. Other web communities use volunteers to moderate forums, chats, etc. All fine, and they've been doing it for years. People use long time community members to help moderate submissions on sites. No one seems to have an issue there.

They're not just people random people who win a lottery and get to delete stuff all day to their heart's content. They'd have to apply and be chosen by LL based on whatever criteria they set. And they're all responsible for the moderation decisions they make. If LL decides they're not doing it appropriately, they replace them. Same as they do, anywhere else.

The company isn't putting the customers in the hands of volunteers to service them. The customer is still welcome to contact any of these companies as they did before. The point of volunteers is to provide man power the company can't provide. Are you concerned because they're volunteers which are a proven resource thousands of times over, or because moderation might become more effective?

Because like every other company that uses them, they make it so. If you have a problem with the word of a volunteer, as I've sent numerous times a system could easily be put in place to file an automatica appeal of a moderating decision you don't agree with, though you have to be prepared to accept the consequence of LL sticking with the decision and you being fined L$ as compensation for wasting their time. They could do it however they wanted, but that would be my suggestion to curb abuse of the feature. Succesful appeals would of course be free, and you wouldn't have to pay up front.

Policing would involve the moderation they're able to do, and alerting LL to certain things. LL would have to decide what abilities they wanted to assign to volunteers to take care of, and what to handle themselves. Volunteers may be allowed to remove textures that violate any policies LL wants to create, but they may need to report shapes created in public that violate policies.

The point is, this type of chaos doesn't work, becuase its very easy to harrass say your neighbourhoor with something that doesn't exactly violate the ToS, etc yet they have zero recourse, other than to up and move.

Its much easier to reform policies, and give a moderating group the power to deal with it than it is to try and balance the powers you'd need to give each and every user to actually do something about that. If you do neither, you risk losing paying customers who won't put up with the crap because they can't do anything about it.


For a company who wants to keep such a hands off approach, thats an interesting statement. The buck stops with LL, or just about any company out there, but they seem to have no issue with allowing those volunteers to make some decisions, and none of their decisions are final. Most are, but if there is a problem with how a volunteer is moderating, I've never seen a company who shys away from addressing that. Though I honestly haven't come across that many incidents where there were any issues with how volunteers were moderating.

Buy an Island and make your own neighborhood the way you want it and enforce your own restrictions like whatever kind of maniacal landlord you want to be. Enjoy the thrill of manipulating your own community to your own vision for what is best for them. Make curfews and taxes for common pleasures. Work with big businesses to dominate control of technologies and create temporary solutions that people must pay for again and again.
Censor the kind of words that you fear. Do not allow anyone to speak the words you fear on your island. Yes be free! Free to stop others from being themselves! Make them conform to your view. Find like minded people and spend your days criticizing how others live and spend your whole life doing it. Have meetings with your people once a week to focus their minds to one vision... your vision. Yes be the overlord of all only 195$ a month (plus initial sign up fees around $1500).

Life is what you make it.
And that applies to both your 1st life AND your second life


have fun everyone and be nice

I met that train. Wasn't he banned for killing the grid? *nods emphatically yes* He may be back though. One never knows.

Well, exactly. The police are an arm of government. And despite your assertions about how well such things happen in other 'games', I used to live in a virtual world where it most certainly *didn't* work, and it was a miserable place to live.

Most companies can't afford to hire the manpower necessary to moderate their communities, this is why they inevitably turn to volunteers or the community goes to crap because they won't take care of it properly. Beyond the need for more moderators in the game, there are those who want policy reform, and to do that, you definitely need the manpower to enforce it.
I'm still waiting for you to show why SL is so special that it can't have what thousands others do.

Feel free to provide an example. Did anyone contact the company about the volunteers if there was a problem? If you did, and the company did nothing, thats the fault of the company, not the volunteers. They may have chosen bad volunteers, it happens, but if they refused to correct their mistake, that is not a problem with the volunteer program.

We have them, too. They're called "live helpers," and "mentors," and "greeters."

But they aren't police, and police I do not want.

coco

Call them whatever you want, they likely wouldn't be called "police". They might be called community moderators, community caretakers, helpers, etc. The point is the ability they have, compared to other games and communities. The name is immaterial. Heck we could call them all Larry if it made people feel better about it. In other games the volunteer mods have the ability to handle certain violations of ToS and take certain actions. This can include banning individuals. The system works fine there, its not like they are above the law and every decision they make can be subject to review. they can't go on banning sprees, or ban you unjustly. Maybe the people who don't get it, can't see themselves being responsible in that position, lots of people can and are.

I don't want Larry either.

coco

So then make the case.
if you have a point to make in the discussion, I encourage you to make it because that furthers the discussion and encourages shaping of the idea.
saying no-no-no doesn't really help anyone understand your point of view.

I've asked numerous times for someone to explain why the SL community is so special that it can't have what works wonderfully thousands of times over, and no one has stepped up and given any good reason.

Well, first off, I don't think it does work wonderfully in the other games. I haven't played one that has this set-up, except maybe ATITD, and their having a similar set-up is one reason I didn't play that game long. Perhaps you could list some?

Second off, I think the Lindens should hire employees to police the game if they need more people. I never buy this business of, "Well, we're just poor little people here, and we can barely afford to put out this game, so you'll just have to do the work yourself." No ma'am. Those people are making a living off this game, and doubtless making a better one than I do.

Thirdly, the other games don't have custom content, and the can of worms that gets opened by that - what is offensive to some, but not to others, etc. - isn't something that can be easily handled by residents.

Fourthly, in SL it's hard enough to tell what has been done to whom first, and that's WITH the logs at your disposal. And I certainly don't want my logs at the disposal of other residents.

Fifthly, I don't want to pay LL for something, then have the Lindens give some other resident just like myself the power to make decisions over me and dole out punishments.

And finally, the Lindens don't do a very bang-up job of elucidating their rules themselves, or to each other, as we have seen on the forums. I would prefer that they get their rules down pat before expecting others to enforce them. And I still don't want others enforcing them.

coco

Besides the obvious of web communites and forums where volunteers moderate quite fine, I can speak of mmorpgs I've played, and ones i've spoken with about with my friends. I don't play WoW, but checking with a friend who does, he belives the GMs are members of the public chosen by blizzard. Given that its essentially the most popular one out there, with an obscene amount of subscribers, this seems pretty telling that people do accept it en masse. He also plays BF2, which I play as well and servers are generally administrated and moderated by volunteers associated with whoever owns that server. Could be members of the clan, friends, well known visitor who's established a fair reputation, etc. Ranked servers are typically EA controlled, but the public can go through the process of controlling a ranked serer themselves.

are you prepared to see your subscripting fee sky rocket? The amount of people they'd need to moderate a game of this size, multiplied by a fair salary would kill their operation costs. This is why companies do this. Unless you're making millions in profit every month, its not going to work. If you need 50 people to moderate the gameworld, and you need to pay them a wage of say 20k/year ($10/hour for 40 hours/week) Thats a million dollars. Guess where that comes from? Guess what the operational cost of using volunteers is? 1-2 people to manage them for a total of maybe 40-50k/year. When you're a company looking at your bottom line, guess which one you choose?


and becuase they lack that custom content, there is less ability for abusing certain things. SL has a greater ability to abuse the world and other players.

which may be something thats designated LL only to handle. Its not that hard to figure out that the prim belonging to Joe Blow with the 10 foot gaping genitals I mentioned above is inappropriate and should have the texture removed. Difficult moderation is usually left to the owners themselves. A forum I visit can allow moderators to ban up to 3 months, but if someone has done something warranting a permanent ban, it needs to be passed up the food chain for an actually employee to handle.

In world of warcraft millions pay 50% more a month and thats what they receive? No one is going to cut LL off from the users, its just a first line of handling things to help manage resources for dealing with problems. Should anyone feel the need, they could contact LL directly same as you could anywhere else.


This I agree with. Which is why part of the thread is about policy reform. I personally would like to see a resident reforendum on various issues to create policies the majority are happy with as far as the need for zoning, moderation, rules themselves on content, etc.

Only once those are clearly established should we go ahead and work on applying them.

I have been a GM for 2 games. 1 game which was just people were selected by staff who they believed to be trusted members of the community and who would fairly uphold the TOS of the game. Another where you had to fill out an application where its reviewed and you need ot meet diffrent requirements. which in both cases your power is still very limited with the highest power beig able to zap people to a diffrent location through cords and being able to temp ban someone for no longer then 24hrs. Which abuse in that situation is alot easy to correct.

i ban Joe for whatever reason he writes an email fightin his case staff decided that wasnt a bannable offence they reactivate his account give him an apology nothing loss..

Where sl is little more damage can be done specially if you allowing someone rights to edit land or what not. say you thing someone build is inapporate to "community standards" and decide to delete it they contest it and ll agrees with them.. they now have to place it back up.. now lets say that build was 24 prims all unlinked.. now not only do they have to place there object back up they have to line up all 24 pieces, and most would not be please with oh he got charged 100L for wrongfully sending my sh*t back.

Also from what i last know ( i havent tried to test this theroy to see if it still the same) but anything group owned if deleted or return gets lost in the sl void, and if its lost in the sl void the only way to get that from what i know of last is to roll back a sim. again i see that causing more problems then it is worth..

as far as what your saying about bf2 i use to play a game called counter-strike which did the same and i too bought a server and gave clan members and some friends admin. which lead to me having to listen to tons of people cry admin abuse. Web site fourms filled with posting how so and so was admin abused, im from people talking about how so and so abused there admin. I spent more time listen to people complain bitch and moan about certain people having admin that i found it more time consuming dealing with those complaints then i did actually having to fix server issues myself (i.e server restart, seeing if someone was hacking and so forth). i found it to be easier and less time consuming to just revoke everyone admin and just get ims about so and so is hacking and looking for myself.

I can soo forsee that too LL having to weave through the handfull of complains from people because a volunteer decided to do this and that.

The key there is to make sure the system doesn't get abused on either end.
In the case of a server, you coudl simply say:
If you submit more than 2 complaints that are found to be frivoulous about the moderating, you'll find yourself banned from the server/website/community/etc This encourages people to take their lumps.

In the case of SL, I'd suggest a fee for false appeals, and repeat offenders should probably see restrictions on their accounts up to account removal. If they're violating that ToS that much anyway they probably don't deserve to be here.

If the LL team finds someone abusing their powers, simply remove them, if they've done something horrible, perhaps consider cancelling their account and seizing their assets.

That type of stuff, as well as a screening process is usually enough to curb most abuse.

wait a minute!

dont we have in game lindens?

i know not everyone with the last name linden work from inside the company at there home office..

now im not sure of of the kinda of power they have.. but i think that if LL was gonna create some kind of consept that you are proposing i would think the residents who were appointed "linden" status would be more likely to get that power then a set of random residents who want to police and volunteer.

I'd never recommend random people be given it. It would be whatever process linden was comfortable with. Through interviews, applications, etc.
I would recommend though that non-LL employees who are given moderator power be given a different unique last name that players can't choose so that players can differentiate between the two.

From: someone

I have been a GM for 2 games. 1 game which was just people were selected by staff who they believed to be trusted members of the community and who would fairly uphold the TOS of the game. Another where you had to fill out an application where its reviewed and you need ot meet diffrent requirements. which in both cases your power is still very limited with the highest power beig able to zap people to a diffrent location through cords and being able to temp ban someone for no longer then 24hrs. Which abuse in that situation is alot easy to correct.

i ban Joe for whatever reason he writes an email fightin his case staff decided that wasnt a bannable offence they reactivate his account give him an apology nothing loss..

Not sure with you on that one. I've been working in an online gaming publisher in the Philippines for two years (company is three years running), a company first of it's kind in my country when it first opened. I've been a GM (for events, enforcement and hack investigations)--a paid employee, Customer Support Phone Agent, and product/customer support/GM trainer. So I'm going to speak through experience, well at least my experience as a GM in my country.

Banning a player wrongly, by even a GM is bad thing. It's not just easy to send an email saying your sorry. People will bitch. People will hear. People will believe. Customers will lose confidence. Customers will leave you. Company losses income. This is an employee, what more the kind of bruhaha do you think will result if this kind of mistake was done by a 'volunteer'?

An email is never enough, the fact that you think that it is, gives me a clue on just what kind of customer support the company you worked for had . This is a paying customer, wrongly banned. If we find out that we had a customer who got banned wrongly, we have to give compensation (because it is our fault after all) by giving him free game-play time (and even a personal apology letter from higher management depending on the gravity of the situation), which equates to another loss of income by the company.

Shoddy work gets you problems. You can demand quality work from employees since your paying them. You can't do the same way with volunteers.

We have experienced hiring 'player mods' in our game. They were using their personal accounts and their only job was to take screenshots of offendors and even participating in undercover work to weed out players who were selling private servers and third party programs. Each 'player mod' had a GM contact who he/she reports to, and has access to this GM's IM and email. It was okay for a while, but in the end we had to stop. Why? It wasn't just abuse on the volunteer's side, but because when this 'player mod' get found out, he became a target online and offline. He was harassed none stop inside the game, the company was accused of favoritism, not just on the player but also his guildmates and close friends. He, his friends, and guildmates were not only harassed in-game but also threatened with real life physical harm. If anything happened to this 'volunteer' we can be made liable.

In the end, after several months of experimenting, our company's solution was not to redo or fix the 'player mod' program, but to hire more people and invest (investment in both money and company time) on their employees, by thorough screening and giving them adequate training to do their jobs properly.

Afterall if you're going to go through the trouble of training and interviewing you might as well hire them so that they can focus on the work. Volunteers can't do that. Volunteers don't see the work as top priority as compared to employees who does the same thing.

I understand that player volunteers are useful, heck we have resmods even in our forums and they're doing okay. But that's fine. Our company's priority is to make sure that our game, the product is running smoothly in terms of performance and customer/player support. The forums is just an add-on to the website, where players go when the game is under maintenance or a place to get feedback.

Our competition, as far as we know don't hire 'volunteers' either (given that we do had employees who moved and have kept in contact with them), they do have resmods for forums and folks similar to Live Helpers and SL greeters but never as enforcers/in-game moderators.

But then again, this is how we do things in my country. Maybe its different in China or Germany, but given my experience at least you can see why I'm so against having these in-game moderators. The kind of grief this usually results isn't worth the company and your paying customer's time.

yes there is more to it then just an apology.. there are action and conquenses taking on the person who abused there power.. lost of time there is retrobution(sp) weather it be credit to there account added time whatever..

what im saying is its alot easy to clean up after that mistake then it would be here in sl. like i said say the deleted object had 24 prims all unlinked. your apologies your credits and you repermandment(sp) of the person isnt gonna bring my object and 24 prims back together as one.