Police Blotter now syndicated on Livejournal

What can I say, I paid $5 to Livejournal just so I could create syndicated feeds for my friends page.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/sl_blotter/ now carries the RSS feed for the police blotter. I'm not completely clear on how well this works, but my hope is that the entries will be kept in archive longer in Livejournal than they are on the official page. It took about 60 seconds to set up, so I figure no harm in doing it.

There's also feeds for the SL_herad and New World Notes (sl_herald and hamletlinden respectively) and I can create Livejournal feeds for other "official" SL blogs by request up untill the end of this month when my paid account expires and I go back to the freebie option.

Why are internal disciplinary actions made by Linden Labs for Second Life available for syndication through an external service? That seems strange.

http://secondlife.com/support/blotter.php

Because it's public knowledge now.

Is it public? I thought you had to be a resident of Second Life to view the website. That's not public, thats paid up members only.

Kris, yes, you do, I've just tried. You have to login in order to view it. So it's not public, it's internal.

This poses an interesting question (which has prolly come up before. They all have! ).

See, for myself, I speak here in this forum knowing that I am 'talking' to the residents of Second Life that care to listen (all three of em). I am NOT talking to the world - I am addressing the other paid members of this service. I would be somewhat fucked off if someone took my comments and published them to an external website. It is NOT public domain information til someone makes it so. And if they do, they should damned well ASK first.

Ok. That wasnt really a question. So I guess the question is 'should anyone be free to take information/comments from this PRIVATE MEMBERS website and post them for the rest of the world?' As far as I'm concerned, NO.

Couldn't you just sign up for a free trial account to see it for free?

You just don't see the difference do you? You could only access the information whilst you had a trial account - you would still be a member of the site and once that trial account ended you would no longer have access.

There's a huge difference between requiring sign-up to view it and dishing the information out publicly elsewhere on the internet.

I think it's a very valid concern as the forum and most other parts of the Second Life "community" web site are only available to those with Second Life accounts. As it's not publically accessible then the taking of information and making it public is use outside the intended domain.

But above all this, of what use is the police blotter to people outside? Why syndicate it at all?

If I recall correctly, you don't actually lose access when your account runs out.

For example, if you look at the number of registered users on the forum, it's over 100,000 people, even though there are only about 20,000 active users.


I don't think it's so huge a difference, especially when LL has stated that SL is to become the Metaverse, no?

Newspapers publish police reports all the time. Even further, college newspapers will publish police blotters of stuff that happens on private universities.

For that matter, tons of aspects of SL are published in blogs and websites visible to the Internet. How is this different?

No names are being published. What do you believe is the primary concern of publishing said info?

Yeah well Hiro isn't going to see I've already replied on that, because he's got me on ignore cuz he's way too sensitive to deal with the likes of me (not my fault he doesnt know how to have a discussion. pfft)

But yes. As far as I'm concerned, I post on the understanding that it's a members only site. If the information is public domain by Linden agreement, thats a whole different ball of wax/kettle of fish (delete as applicable).

Maybe we oughta 'Hotline to Linden' it and get an official view?

btw, don't quote the bit about Hiro in any reply. It's more fun that way. Oh. And don't quote this bit either. That'd give it away. Pfft. Just don't quote me, ok? otherwise poor Hiro has to read my ramblings

So you can still gain access to the forum and all the other internal, community, parts of the Second Life web site if you sign up for a free trial account and never take it to paid status? Interesting. I just presumed the forum registration thing was that LL never bothered to purge, I didn't realise that they also don't purge their other login facilities.

You're making a correlation between RL organisations, such as the Police, that are covered by RL freedom of information and disclosure acts and a privately owned system that is not subject to those same rules and so does not have the same legal obligations to adhere to. Take that out of the calculation, and there's actually no need for this.

If they're doing this with the police blotter, what will be next? For instance, say they decide in the end that they will include the names of avatars in the police blotter reports, is that still OK? As for information being included in blogs etc., that's an interesting one, and something that would probably not become clear until somebody decided to take action against a site for slander etc. against their avatar - not unfeasible, and if it hasn't happened before in an online system I don't expect it will be long before it does happen.

But, as I said in my previous post, my primary thoughts are - why are they doing it? What purpose does it serve? Doesn't highlighting the griefing that happens in Second Life work against them, by giving the impression that this is all that goes on? And might it not encourage some griefers to join, seeing the large number of ways there are with which to grief?

Ok. I Hotlined to Linden it. This actually does concern me. I'd like their views.

Ah Kris, I'll refrain from quoting you then so Hiro doesn't have to have his mind sullied by your thought processes

One thing though...what is this Hotline of which you speak? Do you have a batphone?

Uh... *points*

/invalid_link.html

That's why I specifically mentioned private universities.


Slippery slope fallacy. But, to answer your question, no, it would not be okay. The key difference is that currently it's a description of disciplinary actions, and the latter is a disclosure of player information, which is protected by the TOS. So I don't think a "what's next" scenario is likely.


Or Libel - yes, slander is spoken, Libel is written.

You're right - there are already tabloids out there that have opinion and news pieces that do shed people in a negative light and it's a matter of wait-and-see. I mentioned the blogs to show that if you could post something with more details than the blotter, then certainly you could post the blotter.


My immediate reaction was, "well, it's now archived in a nice handy manner", but I can see how other could be skeptical of intentions.

Also, interesting thoughts on the deterrance factor for both griefers or people turned off by griefers. I personally think that people who'd play SL are already MMO fans and would already know griefing goes on; in that respect I'd guess they might be happy to know it gets dealt with, and swiftly in many cases.

Good thoughts, though. Keep asking the questions, Moopf. I think that's a healthy thing to keep everyone in check.

Well I never Kris, how long has that been there? They keep on adding new forums here, it's difficult to keep track. Eventually we'll all have seperate, post only forums and we'll have to carry on a single conversation across mutliple threads on multiple boards, coordinated though PM. At times it feels like the Lindens are playing divide and conquer, splitting us sheep up into as many virtual sheep pens as they can to stop us from actually having conversations with each other

I've already posted about that, too

/invalid_link.html

/13/4f/35876/1.html#post387103 (worth reading if you havent read the thread, since 3 Lindens reply on page 1 then all hell breaks loose )

I'll reserve judgement on whether it's a possible scenario. TOS can be changed. If this is to be the Metaverse then it will have to change. Linden policies also change - I mean they're actually giving out details of what the crime was on the police blotter. Not so long ago, not only was it not being reported on the web site, but those accused and found guilty just got a copy and paste excerpt of the TOS with no details of what it is that they were supposed to have actually done. You see, policies do change.



Yup, my bad.



The biggest difference I see here is that what happens at blogs is written by individuals, not by Linden Lab themselves. The police blotter is Linden Lab publishing information publicly, something I'm suprised they would not distance themselves from doing. They obviously publish other things publicly, like NWN, but I believe that's with the knowledge and agreement of those the articles talk about. But if it's OK for Linden Lab to do it without permission on things like the police blotter...



Griefing does go on everywhere, you're right. But there aren't the multitude of ingenious ways to grief in most other places that there are here. That's got to be an attraction to the griefer, for obvious reasons.

I just looked at the link given above and it has two events listed that won't occur for years. This is truly an efficient reporting mechanism. What's really freaky is that the incidents displayed really will take place, no doubt about it.

Well, I think it's worthwhile copying Bens reply here. Pretty much what I hoped/expected (I dont actually care about the police blotter!).



Is information on this website/forums public domain?

somehow this doesn't strike me as being the best idea. but i just woke up.

I don't expect non SLers to take any notice, really, although I know there's only a handfull of Livejournal people who are also in SL. The idea behind re-posting the syndication feed was a response to a complaint someone else on the forums had: that the record on the SL website only went back a few days. Untill (and if) LL responds to such complaints by keeping older Blotter entries archived, this is my attempt at providing a usefull alternitive.

I admitidly hadn't thought of the whole "internal website" thing, so I'm sorry if that bugs some people, but as long as the Lindens say it's O.K., I intend to leave it up.

You're probably right, considering there's plenty of RSS readers avalible for free (including one coded into Opera, my browser of choise). I just happen to like them delivered this way.

Been looking at this as I keep missing the significant entries on the police blotter and I hoped there would be an archive somewhere. It would be interesting to do some basic statistics on it.

The LJ one keeps 20 entries. The SL web page has the last 25. The RSS page has the last 50.

None of these even cover the whole of last week. As I understand it incidents are recorded on the date they happened so if more than 3 or 4 days passes between incident and punishment we'll never know about it.

This means that we'll never know about permabans as there is an intervening resident review panel.