LL enforcement priorities?

I just read today's police blotter to see what sort of sentences have been issued and for what violations. I don't intend for this post to be overly critical of LL (even though I've been criticising them aplenty today) -- I've been on the enforcement end of managing websites and chat rooms. I know it's a tough, thankless job and I also know that the general public cannot tell much just from what information is released to the public.

Furthermore I can't tell you that any of these violations should not have been investigated and resolved. For the most part, they sound like they should have been. But when the crisis du jour seems to be land scams and newbie-scamming in stores, you'd hope for more weighty issues to be addressed on the blotter.

Right now, here are our enforcement totals for Monday morning, going back the last 25 incidents (the cap for the blotter's report).

TOS, underage: 1
Obscene group name: 1
Prim litter: 1
Blocking land access: 1
Quoting chat log in profile: 1
Threats: 1
Verbal abuse: 1
Offensive profile (language or nudity): 2
Assault with scripted objects: 2
Account security (sharing password or accessing someone else's account to steal $L): 3
Trademark violations: 4
Parcel encroachment: 5

So from what we see here, more time was spent on settling land disputes ("his tree is over my line!" than we do on griefing with scripts or scamming new people?

Am I being unfair here, or would it help anything if the report cap was raised to, say, the past week, instead of 25 incidents? Are the enforcement priorities of LL going toward the right issues here -- should nude avatars in people's profiles have priority over scams and assault?

yup, over the last weekend i`ve reported 2 times

incident 1: player nude with erect penis attachment in area where nudity isnt allowed

incident 2: brosing the dominus shadow shop, guy walks up, calls me a practicier of beastiality (i`m a furry) and proceeds to shoot me 3 sims away


both of these incidents have been "resolved" (read, ignored and deleted)

nothing about them on police blotter, users are still in game

There are several things needed before something can go on the blotter.

1. The crime should be committed.
2. Someone should have reported it.
3. There must be evidence.
4. The evidence has to be reviewed.
5. The case has to be judged.
6. If guilty the sentence has to be passed.

Just because a certain kind of crime appears more often doesn't mean that LL spends more time on them, there's something in common with the ones that appear more: they are easy to prove because the evidence is more visible, accessible, and clear cut.

That makes reporting fast, and judgement is also fast.

I don't know what it is that is needed to prepare open-and-shut cases against griefers.

I really would like to know from LL:
1. What is it we as victims need to do when we're griefed in order to get enforcement action?

2. How much value are our in-game Abuse reports?

3. Is there anything actually being done that's just being kept invisible?

At first glance this looks good.... someone was bad, LL spanked em.

Date: Monday, June 19, 2006
Violation: Community Standards: Assault, Scripted Objects
Region: Teal
Description: Use of weapons.
Action taken: Suspended 7 days.

But read a little further....

Date: Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Violation: Terms of Service: Account Security
Region: —
Description: Logged into another resident's account and stole L$.
Action taken: Suspended 7 days.

Apparently stealing gets the same spanking.

Granted there is no way to know the details of either of these cases or any others. But I have yet to see anywhere on the police blotter that says for any offense;
Action taken: Permanent ban

Earlier this morning when I logged in, I got the usual friendly little log in message from LL, this one stating (paraphrasing of course) that anyone bringing down the grid or committing other acts etc etc can expect LL to disclose their personal and account information to the proper authorities.

I read this as I was waiting for the page to load thinking... Erm..how? LL doesn't have any personal information on new accounts any more.

What are they going to give the authorities? "Well Mr. FBI, the person who stole several thousand real $ from players and repeatedly crashed our grid, did so under the name of ImmaDip Wad. Hope you catch him."

EDIT: My apologies to anyone who actually has that name... I swear I just made it up.

Sadly, the Police Blotter currently _can't_ display that someone's been Expelled from Second Life -- it doesn't have the functionality! Until we get that little bit fixed (and being a very little thing, it might be awhile), you can assume that any listing with a 14-day suspension will likely result in an Expulsion. A 14-day suspension automatically triggers a Peer Review to determine if the Resident should be removed forever.

A note about priorities: Linden Lab reviews and acts on every Abuse Report we receive in the order they are received. Our priorities are, in effect, your priorities -- what you report is what we investigate. Property encroachment is --and has been, for three year-- one of the most reported forms of abuse!

Daniel, thank you for your response. This is very helpful, IMO, because right now there seems to be a crisis in confidence among some of us as to how much LL really does in enforcing TOS and investigating complaints -- and how effective that enforcement can really be when registration has been reduced to checking a few boxes on a form with no proof of I.D.

If you have any input at all with your team, please underscore that right now, a fuller disclosure of information would help to dispel the perception among users that nothing is usually done, or it's done too little/too late to be effective. And in the world of customer service, perception is everything.


I could see that. My own experience has been mixed on getting neighbors to cooperate - in most cases, a diplomatic approach has resulted in them agreeing to cooperate without ever getting LL involved. Only once has a neighbor gone so far as to litter my land with prims, and that's when LL was called in.

Still, I'm sure you can understand how user perception is focusing on the more egregious abuses we're seeing. If it delays the Lindens one day from banning someone for scamming newbies while they police errant trees that grow over property lines (or nekkie pics in someone's profile), that scammer has an opportunity to scam more newbies, discourage shop owners and chase new SLers away from the world. I hope you can understand my concern.

Daniel, my great concern is that with the recent changes to the Registration process, there is no longer any real weight behind these punishments.

There is nothing stopping a member from creating an Alt-a-day and running around sending people into orbit, getting banned, and moving onto the next anonymous Alt.

When a credit card was required to check the age of the human behind the keyboard, there was a way to block their access into the game should they break the TOS... lock out their Credit Card. That is no longer the case.

Does LL have any plans on how to combat this, or better yet, reinstate the CC check at registration?

You bring up a good point - to get evidence, you frequently would need to have a photo of the actual griefing taking place, and even then, sometimes all you have is a picture of a guy standing there. You'd actually have to catch him in mid-shot, blazing away at somebody to have any actual evidence. Somebody caught out on his own would have almost no chance of doing this, and no corroborating witnesses either.

So it brings to the fore, exactly what constitutes evidence? How would the Lindens tell the difference between actual griefing, or a group of people just out to get somebody?
In a virtual world, you don't have fingerprints, and it's nearly impossible to leave clues behind.

On the contrary there are probably a hell of a lot of fingerprints your every keypress leaves in a virtual world. Most of us just don't have access to them.

As to the first half of my previous post, thank you Daniel. This answered some questions I had and is good to know.

As to the second half however, I'm sure you can see the big concern so many people have just from skimming the forums. Our perception right now is that there is no way of holding people accountable for their actions with no way of telling who those people really are.

Is there some information about the registration process we are not aware of? With no credit card or other real personal information, is there some way LL has of ensuring a banned individual stays banned that we customers haven't been told yet?

Azrael hits the nail partway.

As a virtual world where everything passes through and is handled by computers, clues are not left behind, instead the entire incident can be recorded.

It's true we don't have access to such data. What additional needs to be pointed out is that sometimes LL doesn't have access to all the data either. The data passes through the servers but sometimes LL can't get at it. How is this possible?

1. Anything that has to be accessed needs a program to access it. If you intend to locate something later that item has to be recorded. Though everything passes through LL not everything can be recorded. This is a practical thing. We residents generate tremendous amounts of data in our regular play. You just can't record everything.

2. Anything that has to be accessed needs to exist. In another game I played I got to talk to a GM and learned that trade logs of the game are kept only for 48 hours. This is a practical concern because of the huge number of trades made. If something needs the trade log to investigate, the trail goes cold if it's not reported immediately.

What I dearly would like to see are improvements to the AR's capability so that it can report the current crop of unreportable crimes.

1. Right now we can't report orbiting and push griefers. No PVP abuse report appears. If we report it we have no data to back it up. If I get orbited from a "safe" sandbox or from my property (it has PVP off) I WANT a means to report it.

2. We can't report people who play shrill, deliberately annoying sounds. Thrice I encountered a very loud looped sound that resembled a cross between a shrieking banshee and air-raid siren. A friend of mine asked him/her to stop once and got the effect of a "tough" or "make me" response. What if one day some neighbor does that?

Guys, care to add to the list of "unreportables?"

i have yet to see any mention of griefers to the Gor sims....despite repeatedly reporting it and having to have live helpers come help clean up the mess left from the griefers. Can someone tell me ......did i just miss them?