Down with the leader board! :)

My number one new feature suggestion is one of two things, and you can totally forget everything I have ever said in the past, these are now number 1 on my list above everything else.

A) A complete removal of the leader boards.

or

B) An opt out of leader board option.

Why? The same reason I dont go giving random people in the real world my account balance at my bank, its none of their business. How much money I have, how many calling cards I have etc is only information that benefits the lindens and myself to have and if they need to check it they can.

From what I have seen the leader boards do nothing but provoke scuffles and people picking on people because they have more of something than someone else. Its not cool and is a near useless feature imho.

Just my two cents.

-Neil

I think the networth and land leader boards should be gone, and their weekly counterparts (only the networth has one). The others are relative because your ranking on them effects your stipend and bonus. The other solution is to at least make your ranking in the other boards available to you. For total score and ratings its not how many points you have that ultimatly matters - its how many points you have compared to others. So that information needs to be available.

On the other hand the weekly networth boards have helped me track down 2 people that cheated me out of a LOT of money in the past. So they can serve a purpose.

I think we need to be able to opt out. However, if the opt out feature is added, we need a way to 'supeona' Linden Lab for the FULL leaderboards, especially in cases like Ama's, where someone cheated for money.

When I first started playing, I thought it was odd that you could see how much money the top players had. I can see how it might be difficult for the leaders. You might not tell others how much money you had in the real world, but if you were among the richest in the world, we would know. Just google Bill Gates and you can find out his worth, think he likes that? Fortune 500 lists the top 500 richest people every year for all to see.

But, afterall, in the whole scope of things, SL is just a game. The leader board is fun to look at, it gives others an idea how they measure up against the top players. Relax, its just a game.

It is just a game, but if you need any more reason as to why they should disappear go have a chat with Onei. One, the leader boards are glitchy, very, according to a few people I have talked with they have been that way since beta. Also yeah, they do post the 500 richest people etc, however thats the beauty of SL we can make it better than RL, personally I dont care what bill g is worth so long as he keeps signing my paychecks.

So far as the getting the info from the Lindens, I'm for that in certain circumstances such as Ama's. But at any rate my opinion still stands that they are not usefull and inspire more trash talk and mongering than they help. Opting out would be the best option as it allows those for who it matters to be in and those for who it doesnt to be out. (or vice versa however that should have been said, its till early )

There have been occasions in the past where players found money exploits and quickly took full advantage of them. People who are cheating or taking advantage of the system would be the first ones to opt-out of the leader boards. I think it does serve a purpose of community oversight and accountability.

I know that many people do not benefit from the notoriety of being on the Leader Board. But there's danger to any kind of fame, popularity or attention. Standing out is a double-edged sword.

I think the value of the leader board as a community tool should outweight the preference of the richest and most popular to add anonymity to their privileges as well.

Personally I don't like the leader boards at all, the totals there really don't mean anything relevant. It can inspire competition in matters where there really shouldn't be any.
They can go ASAP as far as I am concerned.

If there is an issue like Ama's, then Linden intervention is the answer.

fen-

there are good arguments presented here both for and against the leader boards. however, theya re all moot if the cursed things dont WORK properly. That's my main issue with them- they are buggy. The ability to fix that lies solely in the Linden's hands. Understood that when problems occur it takes time to correct them, but allowing inaccurate information to remain up there while the fix is found? Not a responsible solution.
Yes, the leader boards serve a purpose. But only when the information they give is correct.
For example, the land-ownership errors that were appearing not too long ago. Look at the trouble that bug caused for Onei, all because it coinceided unfortunately with a certain event.
I know that was a temporary glitch, but if it happened once it can happen again, and who knows who may get raked wrongfully across the coals next time?

Bottom line, if they are going to be there, they need to be scrupulously accurate. If they cant be accurate, they dont need to be there at all.
People love thier sour grapes. As long as there are the leader boards, the ppl on those boards will have some hating going on over the fact that they Have,while others Have Not.
I guess that in SL as in RL that is the price of sucess.
However, when the hating goes on towards ppl who DONT POSESS the resources the boards say they do...that boils down to the Lindens negligently allowing reputations to be wrongfully smeared.

I personally like the leader boards just so I can keep tabs on where I stand in relation to the rest of the community. When my position starts to slip I know it's time to go be social for a while. I think the benefits outweigh any downside to having them. I personally don't mind if everyone knows exactly what I have. I think what happened to Onei was a unique situation, and the lesson we can take from that is that people shouldn't be so quick to rush to judgement about things they weren't directly involved in. That was all blown way out of proportion considering that the intentions were good on both sides of the issue. Nice people disagreeing about the best way to be nice... kind of an odd thing for people to get bent out of shape over.

i like the leader baords too, cept i can understand not wanting to be on the money one, way back when i got up there on the money leader board i didn't like it either

I have never been a fan of the leaderboards but I do think they are a necessary evil. People who game the system stick out on it like a sore thumb. Mules are also quite obvious howver there is no telling who the mule owners are (although the Lindens probably can tell).

So, I hate em but I'm not for eliminating them.

I would like to see the leader boards gone. They do nothing but encourage behavior that is detrimental to the game, such as rate mining, hoarding etc.
And btw James its spelled "subpoena"

Chip-
I agree with you that the whole thing got blown out of proportion, and that tempers flared high over it...and I am as guilty as anyone involved of letting my emotions get the best of me when i percieved a dear friend to be under attack.

But what I am talking about here has nothing to do with that- I'm talking about glitches on the leader board and the misinterpretations of Onei's situation resulting from it. (specifically, the well-documented land ownership glitch going on at that time that aggravated the whole situation). Yes, its an isolated circumstance, but if it's happened once it can happen again.

If the boards are out of order, then we do not need to be able to acess them until they are fixed. Thats my main point. Either they give scrupulously accurate information, or they dont need to be there at all.

I feel the need to amend to my last post that the only reason I reference Onei's situation in my posts is that it is the most recent and glaringly obvious illustration of my point.

I hate to sound naive but there are a few terms you have used that I dont know or fully understand and would love some clarification. If someone could point out an example of someone (omitting names please) gaming the system and how the leader boards assisted in dealing with that issue I would be very appreciative.

Also I am not familiar with mules or mule owners, again an example of this would be great, if there is a definate positive to having the leader board and those are two examples of good reasons then please elaborate on those points.

Thanks.

When you see top 10 land owners being noobs with zero ratings, you know something fishy is going on. Plus back in the plot swapping days you could see people at the top swap their land to someone else who would briefly appear in the top 10 for just a day, while the other person evaded his or her taxes.

I won't argue in support of bugs hehe. I agree that they need to be more reliable. My point was that I think what happened in your example had far more to do with human errors of judgement than with a technical glitch. People made an assumption that the recipient of a charity benefit must be in dire need and when they found out he wasn't they cried foul about a misrepresentation... wrongly since it was never represented that way in the first place. Had they not made that wrong assumption it wouldn't have mattered if Onei showed up on the boards afterwards as a result. It's that pesky human nature bug that we never seem to get a patch for

My instance is what was referenced I think (by me!). I make gambling games. Twice (three times actually - once with Alek) we had problems where linden bugs caused some of our games to break in such a way that a great deal of money was stolen. Once it was 35k, the second time 70k. Both times Linden was unable or unwilling to share with me who it was that had gamed my machines. They were able to get my money back but for me that was not what I needed. I needed to know the bug and the problem so that it wouldn't happen again. In this regard I was unable to get help from any lindens, despite my attempts to. In both cases I was able to tell from the weekly networth leader boards who it was that had done the damage because in 1 day they were suddenly on the leader boards with an amount earned for the week matching what I had lost. In both cases I was able to talk to the person who had caused it, and in both cases was able to figure out what it was that happened.

That paragraph sounds unneedingly mean to the Lindens. They did help me, they refunded my money, and in one case gave me more help than they should have in figuring out what went wrong. What they didn't do was tell me who or exactly how it happened. For that in both cases I used the leader boards. If it were not for the leaderboards in those cases there is a large chance that Omega Games would not exist in any form today. I am sure there are a few here that remember the couple of weeks when I was in serious doubt, a time when I didn't know how I lost all my money even though it was refunded me, and all my games were down.

I also think that the leaderboards should not have been necessary in that case. The lindens should have been able to find out quickly and efficiently who had my money, how they got it and what the issue was. They were not in this case able to do so because of policy or other reasons. I think policy mostly, a policy very similar to what the proponents of removing the boards favor - anonymity and privacy. However that policy will need to change, I think in any case, but especially if the boards are taken down.

chip-
ROFL!
I agree compeltely, a patch for that would be nice. it would solve a lot of problems

It occurs to me that when viewing SL from the social experiment angle, the LBs play a role similar to that of the media in RL society, from the revealing of the Haves to the shooting stars that get thier 15 minutes. That is an interesting function that comes loaded with all the love/hate that the RL media carries.

Also, my sincere thanks to all of you who have posted your thoughts here. This thread has been interesting and enlightening to read, and I look forward to hearing more ppl wiegh in on the subject