Suspensions for discussing exploits in the forums

Well, I have first hand experience in LL's stupidity when it comes to suspending people. Someone harassed me so much that they were suspended 4 times - without getting permanently banned. And when I finally defended myself against this person and their personal attacks, I was suspended.

LL's policy on suspensions and bannings needs work. It's too....reactionary and thoughtless.

Briana Dawson

Well, I'd have to agree that people shouldn't post exploits in the forums. It's just a bad idea, and it seems perfectly reasonable to suspend people for doing such. Bugs are one thing--things that people can't use to do something destructive, but once it passes that boundary, it's just not acceptable to post in a forum.

I think it's unfortunate that the threads containing this information are around long enough for people to quote postings of the exploits--it's unfortunate that the lindens aren't on top of that sort of thing a lot quicker, but it seems they've got their hands pretty full.

Brent Linden described what I assume is the Linden approved response to the discovery of an exploit:

The suggestion to contact Brent has a flaw; I suspect that Brent is not available 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year.

Determining whether a Linden is online or not is not something one can really do; I think they can be online but show as offline.

Those who are trying to spread news of the exploit from a desire to cause trouble could just create a new account to post to the SL forums with. The suspension process does not automatically perform a hardware and household block, so they would be likely to be able to do so, and get their newly created account suspended, with no real consequence.

There are other forums in which those working from bad motives wishing to spread news of exploits can use to reach an SL audience, forums.sluniverse.com and forums.secondcitizen.com come to mind. There are also places such as the forum mentioned in the thread about a raid by "b/tards" where news of exploits would be more likely to be put to bad use and less likely to bring the matter to the attention of the Linden staff for rapid correction. So it might just be that someone who makes an announcement of an exploit in the forums using their main account, the one their businesses are owned by and their group membership are held in, in the form of a warning to users and a notice to Lindens, was actually trying to do the right thing, and instead of receiving a suspension, or even a notice, get just an informative message advising them of the correct procedures to follow when the next exploit makes its inevitable appearance.

By the way, despite my comments on problems with Brent's message, please take it to heart.

Yes. You would think they would take the tone of the post and all that you have mentioned here into consideration when they "punish" a poster.

It seems to me that a warning might not be out of order. But suspensions?

Ridiculous. Makes criminals out of their customers. And I, for one, resent that. We are not criminals.

coco

In the suspension case I know of that no one else seems to know of, its not such a big deal.

For people with businesses in SL, suspending them for trying to help, even though in an officially unapproved manner, seems bizarre, perverse ... almost as bad as the pie menu and snapshot decisions.

Id be the first one.. >.>

Brent posted that in a thread where everyone talking about it had been very careful about not talking about details. Much of the discussion was about how to get their immediate attention on the issue (it was a seperate exploit to the grid closing exploit), but overall discussion was kept to a minimum.

I don't know how I feel about the suspensions, for the other exploit, not good really. They all got edited out, but I remember early posts it was just being reported as another bug, I'm not sure the people describing it early on thought of it as an exploit, the implications didn't emerge for a while. One person started a thread after the deleting had started, describing it, and seemed to know they weren't doing the right thing, but the rest... I think it's over the top, if they were punished. I think they had good intentions, and could have just been told what to do in the future. I'm sure if the advice on what to do Brent posted was available to them at the time, they would have followed it. It would suck if they punished a customer who was trying to do the right thing and draw attention to a problem, even if it wan't in a savvy way.

I agree with Coco and Briana, it's too crudely applied and needs to consider context more.

Every now and again I read something and think, I hope that person gets a free pass on this one, because at this point, they deserve it.

I actually feel that giving attention to an exploit on the forums probably gets their attention more quick and act upon it. As for filing bug reports, it just gets lost in the masses. The more the people know and report it, the quicker something gets done about it. Otherwise, it just gets left out to dry. I honestly don't think they take bugs serious enough that affect our experience here. Since well, there had been the same ones for years now, and never fixed.

The forums is a good way to spread the word quickly and grab their attention.

That's another thing! I read those posts and I don't evem recall being told how to do it! Just vague things.

coco

Wow. I just read about two people who got suspended, and I'm fucking stunned. It's not right. They went too far, and they've punished well-intended people.

Where are you able to read about this? It's hard to find out on the forums because it's all soooo hush-hush here.

And ... so ... does this mean that free accounts will now make more throwaway alts used to warn about bug alerts?

Disclosure of detials an exploit gets you very severe penalties. This is the case in most MMOGs. Exploits are things that compromise aspects of a game seriously. They either cause serious disruption in the behavior of the game or give someone undue advantage that compromise the developers' intended balance.

If the developer believes that programming out an exploit will cause disruption to normal functionality of a game. the developer instead can decalre a behavior (example: standing on a particular location) as a punishable exploit. In this case they do disclose the nature of the exploit and it can be discussed becuase propagation of such info keeps people from incurring the penalty. They will do this only if usage of the exploit is easy to report (example: screenshot evidence)

It doesn't matter who you are whether newbie or veteran. Disclosure of an exploit is still disclosure of an exploit, whether you stated it or quoted it. If you intended to quote, it is in your power to delete the critical portions.

I was very careful at every stage of the texture exploit. However in retrospect I still feel that I should have been a slight bit more circumspect than I had already been.

My report was heard. But I didn't have to scream my head off to do it.

The right way:

1. Post on the Answers forum but leave out all the critical details. Post in a sober and mature tone. This is only for additional coverage in trying to get a Linden's attention.

2. Do as Brent said. Submit a bug report with EXPLOIT in its title. He may not be on 24/7 but screaming one's head off does not speed up the process. He has given us the main contact point.

3. Supply details only to the Lindens and make sure your communication is only with the Lindens. Torley IMed me in-world using a name I didn't recognize, but she gave me enough info that I was able to use to verify it was indeed her. At the end I used her Linden email to send the flood of data I collected for their use.

What was the result? The bug's been entered into the system and they are fully appraised of how bad the situation is.

Folks, DATA presented in a formal way by the correct channel gets results, screaming doesn't.

(screaming)

Fade! Your private messages mailbox is full!

Not anymore. I'm so lazy about deleting.

Aodhan, I think in two instances, advice for the future would have been sufficient. They were dealing with adults who've proven their maturity, they didn't need a time-out, or a sledge-hammer approach.

It hurts really bad to know that veterans got hit hard however the alternative is even more unattractive.

A stern private warning would have been enough for the two but if Linden Lab went easy on them and meted a different penalty then you will have instead a revolt claiming favoritism.

I apply the TOS and the Community Standards very seriously on myself in everything I do on the forums and in-world. You may not know this but I was afraid of disclosing the method to you even on IM because it is actually a violation, but I decided that in the interest of completing the investigation that I had to in order for us to do that test. I mentioned that to the Lindens.

There was no screaming that I recall.

I disagree that a suspension was necessary or people would scream favoritism. I think it is relatively simple to tell when someone is divulging an exploit to be naughty and when someone is trying to do it as circumspectly as possible to help people protect themselves.

The first type of post, a suspension, yes. But for the second type of post, that's unnecessary overkill.

coco

Yall all know by now how mouthy i am here in the forums, a couple months ago i got suspended for 3 days, while i broke a rule, (not having a host at an event) and i deserved to be repremanded, the rest of the rule breakers caught that day by the "event posse" got a warning. i called and fumed and demanded that they lift it, i did get an apology by one of the customer service reps, in an email, but they never lifted the suspension.

So i think LL choses who they want to slap the hardest and do so...perhaps its a way to scare us out of posting..who knows but in the cases mentioned above, it was not intended to inform us how to build the bomb, but to advise LL that it existed, cause lord knows we all have emails full of abuse report memos...advising they are being looked into, and most never are...till you call and raise hell, or post here...

I didn't even retain the information Aodhan. I comprehended the implications, and then forgot everything you said about the method. I have no idea how to do it now!

I understand what you're saying, but people wouldn't have known who got favoured or not. I don't really see it as favoured either, just a case for appropriate treatment for each individual case. Equal treatment isn't always equal justice.

We have a world increasing in size and complexity. We need a more sophisticated AR and discipline system.

It looks like a very classic response: kill the messenger.

If there were adequate channels for reporting critical bugs, other than a bloated, impersonal system, people might use that instead of posting them to the forums.

Many of us did use the channels they have provided...and were still ignored. Repeated posts to SL Answers, IMs to Lindens, and the like were ignored and unanswered for more than 24 hours.

My equation is equal violation requires equal justice and treatment. That is, the penalty is meted out depending on the violation with no prejudice as to who performed it.

The violation we're looking at is disclosure. For legal purposes, propagation (i.e. quoting) also qualifies as disclosure since the end result is the same which is someone learns how to perform the exploit.

Now, of the three suspensions I can only speak of one of them since I did not see the texts of the other two. One poster performed clear disclosure, and got censored for it. I saw the text prior to the censorship and it qualifies as disclosure. I remember replying in this thread, informing the OP that he was violating the TOS with the disclosure.

The other two I can't say if the sentence was deserved or not because either I did not see the posts at all, or did not notice them as I scanned.

In order not to qualify as disclosure, the actual exploit procedure must be removed, even when quoting.

Exploit and exploit disclosure are among the most serious violations in the MMOG industry. They carry really stiff penalties. This is the case everywhere I went. A two-week suspension is a light penalty compared to some I've seen (character deletion, account permaban, large character level reduction).

Which is exactly the problem. Banninating folks for getting the issue addressed does not set a good precident. It's unprofessional, unnerving, and tells your customers to not bother at all.

And that is far more dangerous than a single "zomg texture exploit."

Jeffrey, I was the one who talked about the texture exploit, and I'm still here. I spoke a lot about it but I'm still here.

People don't get banned for addressing an issue, they get banned for disclosing the details of the issue in public. They also get banned for losing their heads and cussing left and right regarding the issue.

When I posted regarding the texture exploit, I left out a lot of important details, I called for a Linden to establish direct contact with me so that I can transmit all the other details (that was 3 emails and about 6 or 7 attachments worth of documentation).

There is a PROPER way to handle exploits and issues. The fact I'm posting right now, not serving any suspension, and having gotten thank you emails form the Lindens is proof enough of that. Lex Neva and I got the texture exploit into the bug system using proper channels.