What Would You Restict to Verified?

As I said in another thread, I support distinguishing between verified and unverified accounts as long as the account type info is integrated into all of SL's functionality. But that raises the question, what things exactly would it make sense to restrict to verified accounts?

For exampe, I had to decide yesterday whether to restirct my own land, and it was clear pretty quickly that I shouldn't. I don't hold events of any sort, and I give away build tools there that I wouldn't want unverified folks, especially new ones, to be unable to get.

So I started to imagine what I would restrict. I could see restricting an event meant for experienced users to verified accounts, such as a forum for developers of building tools. I could see restricting some sort of business association to verified users, or a resident government group. Maybe if I ran an upscale boutique I'd want to restrict it; maybe I'd even advertise that. I probably wouldn't restrict most things because I'd rather not keep people away, whether it's their money, their involvement or their attention I'm after.

But that's just me, and I'm not very active in-world. What do you think you would restrict? Have you restricted your land access now; why or why not?

On my personal land, I've actually removed the access restrictions I used to have, after the fence height went to 200m. I kept the security orb in my skybox - it's not going away.

The community I help manage, however, is for adults only. We will probably be adding security scripts to query on the field or, if LL adds it, use the land tool.

Personally I would prefer to use a script even though it might add llListen lag for the simple reason that we already have some established members who are unverified. We would want a script that queried on both "V" flag *and* membership, and if both were false then llEjectfromland. No TPing people home, and there would be a 15-second polite warning before eject.

(Sidenote: I did a bit of profile surfing last night and was pleasantly surprised at how many of the recent free account holders actually qualify as "verified" because their payment info was given to LL. I would guess that most newbies are not even going to notice the coming changes in land tools after they've bought a few $L.)

If not now in the long term I expect every business with adult content will need to restrict to verified to avoid legal liability. I can't see LL making the grid open and not passing liability for restricting access to adult content on to the provider of the content.

I can see them restricting un-verified accounts to pg sims only and then allowing land owners the option of restricting them from their parcel directly.

why are they unverified?

I can't see them doing that. If they did that they might as well not have unverified. Expect LL to make unverfied look as enticing as possible and let other players take the blame for what unverified account's can't do.

I considered this and it actually seems that this is probably the position of LL . Much like their Copy right stance etc. They are providing a service the content is someone elses responsibility.

So perhaps the no verification / verification is less for LL's sake and more for content providers. At least making things seem more reasonable from that angle.

That was the first thing that came to mind for me...events can be so easily disrupted by griefers. Perhaps it's a controversial idea, but I think LL should maybe consider restricting attendance at Town Hall meetings to verified account holders (they need to do something to make official Linden events less chaotic).

As a provider of adult-oriented entertainment products, I'm going to restrict all my land to verified only when those controls go live. A credit card doesn't guarantee adult status, and nothing will stop a sufficently motivated child or griefer, but it does show due dilligence on my part.

Groan.

And so it begins.

Rusty - Are you mainland or private island?

Well, it's highly unlikely LL would ever do something like that. But the Town Hall meetings (and other Linden events) are accessible in a number of ways...attendance is not mandatory to listen or participate. And if you really, really gotta be there in person, verify your damn account. Duh.

This isn't racial profiling. An unverified account can pretty easily be changed to verified by the vast majority of SL players (who tend to own reasonably fast computers and subscribe to broadband services, and thus have payment info readily at hand). SL is a commercial service, and like other commercial services it's not unreasonable to expect a participant to show some evidence that they are demonstrably accountable for their actions

Pol, with all due respect, it is profiling, it's even on their profiles.

But the reason I am choking on it is because the folks I see disrupting town halls are definitely paying residents. Ones who are allowed to stay in SL after doing so, many times.

I am sure I don't need to name names.

The "duh" is scaring me. Stop reading that blog.

As a start, perhaps giving up on pretending that SL can support such events? If they aren't disrupted by griefers, they are disrupted by Phil's machine crashing, or the sims crashing, or a 100 AVs saying "I lurve your new shoes".

Having listened to a few from the safety of a repeater (where you can also play the drinking game of doing a shot everytime the phrase "coming sometime soon" or "send me an e-mail" is uttered) it is not as if they are all that substantive.

All avatars are equal, only some are more equal than others.

Would figure access restriction gets used mainly to control access to places with 'mature' content, simply to protect the owners' hide in the world where there can be now large numbers of underage players.

Status implementation is a bit odd though (with both the 'provided and used' and just 'provided' payment info) ... so a bit curious if people will also apply access restrictions to the latter of these two groups, because of the "well that info could be fake" reasoning. Until the open sign ups policy that particular group was granted access just like the premium members, now, who knows. o.O;

Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, li'l mister. Profiling by itself isn't a good or bad thing. If you're being profiled by criteria not under your control, that's when it gets bad. My point is that toggling your verified status is tons easier than, say, changing your skin color. Thus, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the "I'm being oppressed because I'm unverified" posts seen on the forums lately.

My concern is that griefing is getting exponentially worse with the influx of new players who have absolutely nothing at stake. Linden events are already on the edge of being too chaotic to be worthwhile, and from what I hear the birthday celebration was the worst yet. I think the Town Halls, etc., are a great SL tradition, and I'd hate to see them disappear under an avalanche of disposable accounts on top of the already extant inconsiderate paying residents.

Shit. Did I "pull a Prok"?!?! Someone orbit me now.

Pol, wouldn't you think that the Lindens, keepers of the Great Key, would remember to disable scripts and building in a sim while they're holding events?

Maybe they had a meeting on doing that and someone forgot to keep notes?

One thing I (as a person in the no-payment-info group, even) would like to see is restricting features. Like scripting. It would be nice if an area could be set not to run scripts by un-infoed, but still allow them in, maybe allow them to use scripts others have written.

To me, the ability to let them in but restrict the ways they can cause trouble (with the unfortunate side effect of restricting ligit things as well...) seems more reasonable than banning people completely.

I think, also, that having a rotating seating mechanism which constantly sent players across sim borders was not the, er, savviest move. (I am reluctantly beginning to suspect a number of high-ranking Lindens don't use their own product. That was basic stuff they fumbled.)

So maybe the death of the Town Hall will be at the hands of the Lindens themselves.

But my larger point is that events are extremely vulnerable to griefing, and restricting attendence to verified accounts may be one (admittedly blunt) tool that can be used by event holders to maintain some semblance of order.

When you put in payment information with a CC it does check to make sure the credit card information is valid. You not only need a valid card but it has to have some amount of money left on your limit.

As soon as I saw all this verification changes I verified my Unverified account and it would not take the First (*laughs* run up but active) Credit Card.

Kyevan, turning off script push is one of the things LL is talking about doing (when?). It still doesn't answer the second issue involved, which is underage players accessing the adult grid.

I agree that banning people completely based on their payment info is not the best solution, but it's the only solution we really have when it comes to restricting access to adult content. It's also the precedent already set on the rest of the internet.

Yes, that is true... but 1/2 is better than 0/2, don't you think?

Mainland.

I don't currently plan any restrictions based on verification status at all. If InnerLife projects or future events somehow manage to attract griefer attention, we may reconsider, but at this point, it's not a problem. I don't have any mature content, so no worries there. (It's interesting -- most of the time, the only real indication I have that there's mature content in SL is here on the forums -- somehow I don't seem to run into that stuff in my travels. My web experiences are largely the same. Boring search criteria, I guess.)

My main concern was always the lack of verification on the Teen Grid, and that's been addressed, to my relief.

That being said, I appreciate that there are folks who will see a need to restrict access to their content by unverified accounts, and I support their ability to do so.

neko

So I should not be allowed to participate because I did not provide optional information? I should be barred from official Lindan events because I do not choose to provide billing information because I do not plan on spending my limited firstlife paycheck here? What if these 'repeaters' bar me as well?



Is that Orwell? Animal Farm, right? Mind if I quote you for my Unverified! group charter?