Naming names.

I understand about forbidding players to name names in the forums. It would be quite easy to make false accusations. However, I see no reason why LL won't name names. Specifically in the police blotter. I understand LL wants to protect our privacy. But, it is one thing to protect our Real Life information, and a totally different aspect to protect the privacy of an imaginary character.

In RL police blotters are often printed in local newspapers without the names being removed. I feel that we as players should have the right to know who is being disciplined, particularly for major griefing incidents, so we know who to watch out for in world, and so we can protect ourselves. Maybe not for those 'first timers' who only receive warnings, but definately for repeat offenders. Especially in light of the overly lenient punishments often handed down.

Hey Devlin.

Truely, this is something I inquired about too before being a Linden. I know this has been "the way" for a long time--and we've been discussing ways of making the abuse process more "transparent", which basically means more openly understandable and not a "behind the red curtain" sort of confusion.

Another parallel thread is that in the future, more and more Residents will hand out their own brand of justice because of emerging self-governance. Different ways of social networking are of utmost importance to us in a world that needs good communication as a fundamental, so I would not call it out of the question, in the future, that we'd empower Residents to do things like have shared (networked) ban lists like "wanted posters" and more control of their own over who's grieved them. Not to say this is right or acceptable for *everyone*, but just like offline, there'd be different cultures within SL doing what's right for them.

Kind of like imagining this fantasy scenario: a group of tribes on the coast are struck by the same griefer. The head of each tribe, incensed, declares a ban on the troublemaker--and not only that, the tribes are connected via a future Groups system, which enables them to go, "Okay, this troublemaker's banned from my parcel, so he's automatically banned from every other tribe's parcel too. If any tribe chief disagrees, we'll hold a meeting." No disagreements, and keeping in mind this hypothetical future banning system is more effective, perhaps even attaining the "true mute" (muting text, audio, object transfers, teleport offers, and the very visibility of the muted avatar) that's been hoped for, for so long.

It puts more power into the hands of Residents so they don't feel helpless and at the mercy of griefers.

We want to enable this because we realize scaling makes that a necessity.