No Alts in the Forums

Although alts are beneficial when used in world, they seem to be detrimental when used in forum. Alts in the forum are often used to create an illusion of support (appeal to popularity fallacy) in debates and as vehicles to deliver nasty insults without repercussion.

If LL has the means, should alts be prevented from posting to the forum?

What's delicious about such a poll is that those who are in favor of keeping alts are those most likely to submit multiple votes using their alts, thus skewing the results in their favor. See the problem?

~Ulrika~

So let's say my family also plays SL off the same credit card, only one can post...


ok now lets say Im one person with alt accounts....

I could just say they are family anyway....

Accept the fact that there will always be alts

It's that old quandary though, they have no mechanism by which to determine if they are really alts, or another member of that same household, short of driving to their homes and checking in person.

I suppose they could demand a faxed in copy of an ID or DL, but that can be faked SO easily, not to mention they would have to do it for 55,000 previously existing accounts, a task of epic proportions.

They are erring on the side of the possibility that alternates may be other members of the household, just as they do with First Land eligibilty and with suspension/bannings. It's possibly an unfortunate side effect of allowing alts in the first place in some cases, but a necessary evil.

As much as I hate alt abuse, I'm going to have to agree with Ferran here because of the reasons she states. It would be too easy to hurt legit uses of "alt" accounts, and those who wanted to be griefers would just lie and do it anyway.

Or lets go from hypothetical to real:

Who gets to post? Me or Jonquille?

I joined SL first - but we're both on the same credit card (mine).

And just to make it a lil more difficult - rather than say who you'd PREFER to post, tell me which of us has has the right to post, why that's the case, and if you think that wouldn't be a violation of that oh so important 'freedom of speech' of the other.

Siggy.

What about the freedom to bicker with yourself in the forums?

Oh I don't want to post who has the right, you've made me squirt beverages through my nose SO many times

P.S. Agrees with Ferran..

What's the difference? Some individuals are as annoying and toxic as 10,000 alts put together

I'm really not sure the forums are worth the effort of such heavy regulation.

Eh.

Shut down General and Off-Topic. Make Land and Economy a pre-moderated forum.

Let a third party community fill the ensuing vacuum of dick-headed free-for-all.

Problem solved.

The "appeal to popularity fallacy" is only a concern if your playing to the crowd, instead of expressing your point.


Aside from that.... I kinda' feel about people posting as alts the same way I feel about people posting to message boards or newsgroups anonymously. Its a pretty weak and chickenshit thing to do, but I support other people's right to be weak chickenshits.

As long at the forum managers can tell who people are (so affording them a better if imperfect means to keep banned people from sneaking back in) I don't lose much sleep over people posting under their alts for I vote NO on the ban.

Sorry, but I think this is kind of going overboard just 'cause some people abuse alts.

Ah, but they can't, and that is center stage in this issue. They cannot tell who is an alt or another member of the same household.

I strongly oppose the use of alts in the forums! Anyone who does so is shady and disreputable, like that awful "Cubey Terra" fellow! His alts should be banned!

Another bloody poll in which none of the options accurately describe my point of view. How about "No - for another reason stated below"? ("The Yes's got one like that," he whined.)

This is one of those times when reality rears up and bites my idealistic point of view in the butt. I don't like what people do with their alts on the forums. And in the past I haven't felt the need to have an alt. But I do like my privacy.

The list of people I have been accused of being an alt of has now grown to 13, and some of them are fairly ...um... notorious, infamous, well-known, I guess are ways of putting it. So a "confusion of identities" is a small, amusing, but constant theme in my second life, and on IRC, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Actually, I'm fascinated with this issue - privacy in SL is necessary and enforced, but privacy is often used to abuse others or social privileges in ways that are usually not possible in RL. People in SL respect privacy, mostly, but spend a lot of time speculating about alts and connecting the "features" of alts in ways that are often directly applicable to RL personalities and experiences. And, of course, who we are in SL is largely an extension of who we are in RL, so such "connections" are often easy to make or speculate about. And all of this has to do with the concept of a "virtual citizen" and how that entity relates to the rights and privileges of human beings in the real world - which has never been defined, imo, in a satisfactory way.

In any event, since what I really like to do in SL is build, recently I broke down and bought myself a little building privacy, away from the identify confusion. I will not bring this "solution" to the forums, but then none of you really know that, do you? You'd have to trust me. And therein lies the nub.

So my answer is, "No - because as yet there's no satisfactory solution to the issue, and I would rather err on the side of privacy."

No.

Address each point logically as if it came from an individual and you won't have to worry about who is an alt and who isn't and alt.

Or just poke fun at them...

-----

See I'm trying something new - if I post in disagreement with my 'alt' I can appeal to the 'fallacy of phallusy' where whomever is the biggest dickhead wins the internet!

You win.

I'd just like to state my reason behind supporting the banning of alts:

The forum population would be decimated and I'd have a much better change of becoming the Forum Empress.

Thank you, that is all.

Alts have feelings too, you know. You are all showing insensitivity to alts!

I am a fourth generation alt and I have my own ideas and beliefs.

I just had to come out of the closet to prove we are out there, and proud!

I am an alt, live with it!

You forgot the

Ok. Problematic to be exact I grant you, but it comes down to a responsibility of the card holder at that point, right? I mean, if my kids or my girlfriend goes and does something stupid with my card or a shared card, the CC company is still going to hold me as the cardholder responsible and I'll pay the price. Which forces me to "police" my own card use...which is fair I think.

I mean, if I let someone use my card and they use it to create a bunch of alts to cause trouble on the forums I should know about it. If I don't I soon will, and can fix the problem from my end.

Anyway. I see the point that in that specific instance there's some degree of question on who *exactly* was causing havoc, but for me I think its a reasonable expectation to hold the card holder responsible for policing the use his/her card is put to.

That's what you call biasing the polls to favor an outcome.

The poll isn't asking whether alts should be banned after they've caused problems. The poll is simply asking whether alts should be banned from posting in the forums. I am on the same CC as my husband. We share financial accounts, as many married couples do. There is no real way for LL to tell whether we are seperate people, or the same. Neither of us has done anything deserving of being banned from the forums and/or game.

I accept that if my husband does something super-retarded, I may be banned along with him, and vice versa. But to be denied the priviledge to post simply because we don't use seperate financial accounts is wrong.

Isn't that a bit like saying that if your dad gets too many speeding tickets, no one else in the household should be able to drive the family car? That the police should take the keys? And don't forget they can and do ban by IP as well as credit card.

I once got IP banned from my favorite Neverwinter Nights world because my old room mate's son was a punk and was pulling scams. Did I deserve to be banned too? I wasn't even related to the little dumbass.

It was highly irritating, since I was an established player, and he was fairly new.

Edit: Apon reflection this whole post has a snarky negative tone that I did not intend. apologies for any evil intent, i didn't mean it that way.

I find this statement amusing since you are so "anti-alt" in Nburg.

To me the key word of the whole agreement is the word "Resident" which is a teensy bit vague (and most folks don't talk about), but is a key term used by LL to define individuals.

An alt that lives it's own life, has it's own house and it's own fiends, IMO is a "Resident" and should be treated as a full member of SL. An alt that does none of these things is just a mask worn by another player.

On the forums, I only see the second "mask" type of alt being a problem. This helps little with the orginal question of this thread, but as pretty much anyone with a brain has already pointed out, there is no solution.

Outside of the forum problem though, and especially in terms of any "in-world" SL activities that attempt to mimic RL activities, like...hmmm... lets say voting in an election for example... the *only* logical course of action is to treat all "Residents" equally, as people. More importantly, it's also the only *honorable* way to treat them. This is what LL does.

If I have a name, and I own property and all the rest, why should I be treated differently just because on every odd day of the week I am perhaps a different property owning person? What is the essential flaw in one of the two Avatars that makes it "not a real person," and which Avatar is it?

If on the other hand, I am just someone else "for an evening" or for a quick laugh, I would expect to be treated like that. In that case, I am sort of a "disposable android."

I feel it is every Avatars inalienable right to be treated like the person they pretend to be, and more, that these pretend people should all be equal under the law.