The Metaverse or the Fetaverse?

If the Metaverse is to be an open and free and creative place, and not the Fetaverse, run by a feted few who are special, recognized "content creators" and programmers in an established, loyalist pioneers' colony, then various insitutions have to come into being eventually.

If you care about how the Metaverse will be made, you have to care about how the people and structures who stand at its source make it, because they'll leave their stamp on it, and what they do now could have long-term consequences.

Many shy away from any notion of "bureaucracy" or "player government" which they usually mean "other residents who are going to make something that might control me". Some of the people who raise these valid concerns also have the invalid goal of trying to take over themselves, to make sure nobody creates any kind of hedge against their own personal plans.

At Pathfinder's on Friday there was an announced public meeting, well-attended about making something to handle Dispute Resolution. This might be evolved as a Better Business Bureau, with both Lindens and residents in it representing various sectors or trades, or something simpler, just one Linden who will be in charge of handling player disputes that do NOT fall under the Terms of Service because they are more complicated.

The kinds of disputes that often occur in SL without anything in the TOS to deal with them (or with inadequte TOS rules) include:

o fraud
o extortion
o racketeering
o non-performance of promised service
o libel of business reputation

The reason the TOS doesn't govern this area is because it invovles relationships between two or more residents, and not the behaviour and practices of one resident. Some were for automatically getting rid of some of the topics in this list, to preclude their disputes from ever being examined by any such mechanism that could arise. Pathfinder himself called the meeting to be about "transactional" disputes which would mean limiting disputes only to sales and services per se (i.e. not efforts to force sales that come in extortion, not protection rackets, not commentary on businesses that are libel, etc. -- all topics that some feel be handled by a dispute resolution center).

Ideas talked about at the meeting include:

o having an in-game mechanism similar to the Abuse Report system where two players who decide to make a contract can use text delimiters to send the chat history containing their agreement with a checkmark or button in the game to an Arbitration Linden who merely keeps these records and accesses them if a dispute arises.

o such a system would only cover two-party contracts for buildings, services, etc. and wouldn't address issues like fraud, where people do not draft a contract before a sale. Some at the meeting pointed out that either you have a serious system of contract law and a place for arbitrations, or you allow casual business transactions to go on, too. Some expressed concern that any more red-tape on the already controlled business environment in SL would dampen the economy as people waited days for busy Lindens to sort through contracts or dispute claims that some might insert to harass competitors, such as they misuse the AR system now to harry people they dislike.

o no one wants a bureaucracy, but in the name of simplicity and effectiveness, nobody should establish a monopoly -- various residents' groups of various types like trade assocations and consumer advocates groups could emerge and be working toward establishing what are "best practices" for good business in SL and also examining actual disputes to see how they can be prevented and resolved.

o there will be difficulties for any resident-based group trying to examine complaints because if they collect chat histories and IMs, not only could these be falsified, the Lindens could make a finding that such investigations were in violation of (admittedly vague) TOS prescriptions against publicizing chat histories.

o most of those present seemed to agree that a Linden-based dispute resolution center was preferrable to a resident-based one and a number of us spoke against the concept, put forth by Thinkers, that there should be a "whitelist" of approved, "good" companies because of the danger that certain players will make sure only they are on such a "whitelist" and use their self-designed anti-fraud system to keep out competitors.

o the followup on these discussions will come by Pathfinder presenting a summary of the transcript to other Lindens and talking further. Anyone who wants a full transcript can IM me in game.

Meanwhile, don't leave this important issue to just a handful of players with very determined ideas about it and "their" Lindens. If you have an in-game dispute, think about what way you'd like to solve it. One Linden who would have access to chat history agreements? A group of players who might help you to make your case to the Lindens or other residents? Who will watch the watchers?

A new SL feature that could help stop copyright theft, design stealing, fraud, non-performance of services despite payment, etc. could go a tremendous way to making this world a safer and better place for investment.

Your post is excellent, Prokofy, and I will reread it and digest its points before responding, but thank you for the word Fetaverse. It is entertaining.

Personally, I think the word Fetaverse is kinda cheesy.

I wanna know how feted I am on a scale of 1 - 10

^^ nice pun eggy

what was that linden comment back when they started ?

10% make the world 100% enjoy it ?

Fraud
Extorion
Tomfoolery
Abuse
Vindictive
Ego
Revenge
Sly
Envy

Heheh. Fetuses.

Hey, nice one Baba! Good work. The Metaverse will become all those things unless you think about this now.



Eggy, you've been set up, hon. I deliberately left that connotation open because I find that in any serious discussion, somebody is sure to come and distract by talking about cheese (or pie). "I like cheese" someone will say or "Why isn't this about cheese?" (or pie).

While some are busy getting laughs about that, others then take over.

Oh crap...is today the day we take over? Damn, I thought it was next weekend. There goes my plans.

*grumbles*

No no, Prok just jumped the gun.. We're postponing it til next month.. ;0

Aye its the last weekend of july.

Ah for the love of, can we _please_ stop rescheduling, I thought it was set for the 22nd...? =p

Nope, I will be out of town then. It has to be mid-July that we take over.

Neualtenburg is joining the coalition. We stand ready for orders.

Midnight Crew, checking in, standing by for orders.

Keep talking. Perhaps you didn't realize this thread was deliberately set up to have elements to invite ridicule, to make an easy target for the usual suspects, and therefore create a handy "whitelist."

The ones ridiculing this problem will be the ones busy taking over -- um, just as soon as they can coordinate their vacation schedules. But maybe they can laugh because they already took over?

We are vacationing in San Fransiscon.. You know.. At "THE OFFICE" ...

Metaverse or the Fetaverse?

Well it's a good thing we're neither. o_o

I think we should have government, after all, as Prokofy continually says, FIC people have the most power, so if a Government were put in place, FIC would take over and become the official rulers of Second Life no?

Ooooh or we could put in lots of little governments and have big wars were thousands of players will be "killed" AKA banned like in the middle ages of Europe or Feudal era japan.

Isn't government swanky?

Two questions:

What was the discussion on enforcement policy?

and

I've noticed these "town announcements/Q&A's" are the equivalent of summit meetings between Lindens and residents. How do we determine (find out/judge/come to an informed opinion on) how much impact resident opinions have on Linden minds? Is it arbitrary and informal? Or is there some process?

Right for any one not clear, the takeover is the 30,31st of july.

Every thing else is in place, apart from a few cells checking in we are ready to go after we remove just one person.

Seth, ask me for a notecard and you can read the transcript and see if it answers this question about enforcement -- I don't think it really did. That is, there was a discussion about some kind of "Ombudsman Linden" having a repository of agreements, that he would then review if a dispute arose, but basically, it was one of those things where Pathfinder kept saying "let me hear from everyone" and "tell us how Linden Labs can make tools to help residents do this" and everyone kept typing.

It was typical of the "tools approach" to what is really much more complicated "soft" issues of policy and planning.

Then Adam Linden came in toward the end and basically seemed to undo some of the implied intention to review the issue and put in tools by saying essentially"Support@ already does this."

See, we established that there are AR'able complaints under the TOS, that's one set of things the disputes council doesn't deal with. Then there are the disputes eligible for disputes resolution, which are the inter-resident type i.e. fraud or non-performance of services and that requires a Linden, residents in a BBB, or a mixture of both. That requires definition of the "transactional disputes" to be addressed outside of TOS violations.

Next, Adam says but "support@ already deals with all non-TOS issues".

Haven't you ever had a Linden tell you "You'll have to get CS on that one." By that they mean "customer service" which you get to by dialing "support@".

Presumably enforcement comes when the Linden accesses the saved chat, says, "You broke your promise and didn't do X" and then the person...does what? Maybe pays a fine. There was even talk of having to somehow increase game subscription payments to finance all this that prompted the inevitable comment about the rich buying justice and having Lindens peddle influence, etc. Seriously, the Lindens might just charge a fee to access this just as anyone would pay a RL fee in Small Claims Court.

Adam's point was that you need a POLICY before you need a tool. I would tend to agree, but I don't mind if the tool-obsessed Lindens also get to thinking up some tekkie solution to this especially if it means just clicking to preserve chat and sending it somewhere. That's hardly going to be enough tho!

I would say these "summit meetings" which are more like "fireside chats" that not enough people ever get to find out about in time (which is why I'm posting here about it and holding events inworld about it) probably have nil to little influence on Lindens. Indeed, I tend to think they first pre-cook this stuff in their staff meetings, possibly by running it by their pre-established FIC sounding board, then they come out and put it on forums or inworld meetings to make it look like it is participatory. Hey, Seth, it's their server, not yours, and not mine. Can you blame them? We're only renting here.

Read my thread in Hotline to Lindens called "What is the Process for Change?" which outlines some of these very issues you raise.

Yeah... kind of a stinky cheese

Smart, funny, vocabulary the size of a planet. How can you not love Prokofy?

My crack team of assault ninjas is ready to rock & roll...

Didn't you get the memo?

It's July 22 when Flip & co & others are planning to head to LL for a big get together. Tickets have been booked.

anyway.

Prok, I want to compliment on your evolving notion of how to address important issues in SL without making broad generalizations about developers. There are a number of us who have been whispering to have a BBB in SL for sometime; there's a scripting "Let's formalize some good standards" thread in Scripting Tips - that's my contribution. I remember almost a year ago there was an association of business and a gold stamp insignia that could be placed on stores. I think that failed because it was sort of one person dictating it all, but I could be wrong.

While the majority of developers and store owners are nice, helpful, and reputable in their business practices, there are far too many who are not. It would be a great service if a BBB could exist.

One avenue would be to have the big online seller sites (SLB, SS, SLEX) continue to ban TOS violaters / fraudulent shopowners from their sites. I think Flip and Adam are pretty good with their sites, though as for SLEX, I think this item pretty much proves that they have some room for improvement.

Another Avenue is for mall owners in world to take responsibility for their sellers, keep a strict no-fraud / etc policy. I have not done any research into whether this exists and to what scale.

The scripterati, in the meantime, have a sort-of understanding that there are standards to be met; unfortunately, more less-reputatable scripters come into SL all the time, and unspoken rules that used to be able to be enforced privately is just not practical anymore. When ARPANet turned into the Internet, a similar thing happened; the once scientific community with high ethical standards was invaded by tons of less honorable folks. I have a friend who went to college in the early 90s who has this great story of how his buddy received this unsolicited email once, and it was so beyond the pale of acceptable behavior that they emailed the FBI about the issue -- and the FBI thanked them.