Ratings site linked to by Lindens in blog is shady to say the least.

The sign aside the enterance to my land... and there it stays!

Morwen.

Not locality per se.

For the sake of example, assume groups (wide definition of group here such as furry, gorean, people who use steampunk avatars, people who work on reputation systems, etc) X and Y hate each other's guts. With the old system this would have resulted in scores that depends on where you hang out. Members of X hang out in place X, members of Y hang out in place Y, and when they both meet everybody has good scores, as members of the group rate each other mostly positively. Yet they hate each other all the same.

TrustNet has the ability to represent a situation where you're well regarded in a group, yet hated in another. So if you belong to the "group of people who hate linux users" you'd trust people with thoughts along the same lines, and see a negative score for me despite whatever score I might have elsewhere. I consider it a good thing, who cares how popular somebody is somewhere else when they're somebody you're likely to despise?

BTW, I don't intend it to be a popularity contest. In fact, scores are capped at 9.99. Your own rating on somebody is worth +10 or -10 and completely overrides whatever anybody else thinks. A trusted person's rating is worth +/-1, so if you trust 10 people, who all trust Bob, Bob's score isn't getting any better (assuming no negatives)


Sure, I'm not saying everybody needs one of these. If somebody is interested then great, if not then it's less load on my server.

But while we're at it, I can suggest alternative uses without a trust network:

You can use the scanner to rate positively people you like. It makes different sounds when people you personally rated appear nearby. So you can use this as a "friend/enemy notification" thing, ignoring the trust part of it.

If you own land, you could use the orb(not yet available) to manage a banlist on multiple pieces of land at once. Got 15 parcels all over the grid, and want to ban people from all of them at once? Put an orb on each parcel, then rate negatively unwelcome people.

AH wow -

Okay then.

Ability to comment good/bad for free -

Pay to see what people have said about you?

A certain infamous resident giving out neg rates? - evidently he didnt learn his lesson about drama mining when he got banned from the forums.

And its Linden Endorsed no less?

Lovely.


The fact they are removing ratings is trivial.

Them endorsing these thrid party sites as a substittute to deflect complainers - Is irresponsible.


It is like I said in my previous post a Gossip tool.

Gossip is usually negative.

This one charges you to see what people are gossiping about you. Nice.


Its one thing to get your products reveiwed ina blog - your selling something. Its entirely something else for people to be tracking your personal life.


******************************************
To any of these rating sites people reading this.

I hereby formally request Off any of your inane websites that serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

Thats right - I object to any system thats Opt Out that I didnt even know existed. Keep your gossip limited to and about people who you know, like normal people.

I hope this banlist idea works as well as the anti-spam filter my last e-mail account used. My e-mail continued to be filled with stock and porn offers on a daily basis, while friends' e-mail never came through.

Are you saying in your case Har you were added to banlist without even being informed first?

If this is the case, then yes, this is extremely worrying that users might get unjustly banned from a great many sims and then have to spend many days trying to clear their name, all because some horrible person just got them banned cause they didn't like them.

This needs some real clarification right now. That anyone who is considered for adding to this banlist IS ALWAYS notified by IM first and that facts are thoroughly checked.

Lets not go into the dark ages people. Innocent until proven guilty, should never be the other way around. It's what our rl societys are built on.

I think this deserves a new coinage which I will modestly call "Petunia's Conjecture for SL Forum Threads":

One does not shield oneself from all legal liability merely by calling one's product a game. And Second Life isn't just a game- Linden Labs advertises it as much more, as a conduit for business, education, and other transactions that do not qualify as an "activity engaged in for diversion or amusement."

That doesn't change the fundamental point of the post, however.

Godwin's law says that once in a discussion people started comparing others to Hitler or Nazis, any useful discussion can be assumed to be over, as that's a sure indicator of that people gave up discussing the matter logically and resorted to an appeal to emotion by doing a comparison with the greatest evil they can imagine.

The same way, Petunia here suggests that once you're starting to suggest or threat with lawsuits it can be assumed that nothing else that's useful will result out of further discussion, because again, nobody cares about logic anymore, and they've turned to threats of potentially overwhelming force.

yes, and that is the biggest problem in the whole thingaming. I am an "old" guy on the internet - I remember my mail inbox without spam - what is the current solution to it? Beside filtering on the client or some server, it's banlink equivalent lists. IP-lists of machines seen as bad for a different number of reasons. Lots of different lists of those IP blocking stuff. And _every_ single one I encountered or had the "fun" to work around or against or whatever - every single one sooner or later turned bad.

The main problem is not the tech, not the original idea and not even the original ppl in their original mindset - all of them meant well when starting the list (well, ok, most of them meant well - even in the land of banlists you get your regular asshole).

What made them turn bad where two things: the option of power (or even only perceived power) and personal grudges. You see, if you are at the administrative end of a banlist, it's easy to just click the button with someone who really dislike.

Say, first you only ban technically verifiable spam. You put up rules how servers end on your list and how they are removed, often done through some hoops for the admins to jump through. All is well, because well, you do the right thing, right? Youre list gets famous. It's a good list. Peopl use it.

Fame has downsides: you have exception lists from the technically verifiable spam, because well, some big-co leaned hard into you to get off your list, because they don't like to be spammers. And well, it's really their users and not them, right? So - ok, you still have your technically valid spam server listing. And some way to unlist. And another way to unlist - for those who can put up a bit of pressure. Nobody can expect you to fight with lawyers in court for it, right?

Then you have a run-in with some spammer on the anti-spam mailing lists. Those hardcore spam-free-speach discussions. You know them. They stink. They get on your nerves. You see, the guy explicitely _told_ everybody he spams from his network. Well, you allready have the white list. It's not farfetched to have a black list, too, right? Come on, just because you didn't ever get spam from that network - does that really count? Obviously thousands of people got spam from that guy. He gloats about it.

Well, next you have some discussion about tech done right - some asshole not running his servers the way you see they should be run. You see - spam, well, that's a broad thing. What is it, anyway? Spam is annoying messages. Irritating messages. Clogging up the tubes of the internet. So - unnecessary bounces? They are just the same as spam. Auto responders? Suckers. Spam. Throw them in - whoever produces a reply message, in with the others in the black list.

Well, some of them complain? They discuss and counter your technical points? They even talk against using your list? Obviously they are friends of the spammers. In with them to the list.

One day you look in the mirror - and if you are _lucky_, really _lucky_ you will see what an asshole you turned. If you have the stomache, you will tear down your shit and will be a vehement anti-blocking-list advocate from then on. Or maybe you stay an asshole and to hell with them ...

You see, many blocking lists start out with good intentions. But running one wears you down. You _will_ be under constant attack. You _will_ be asked, questioned, even attacked for what you do. Regardless how sane you were when you started - it will wear you down.

Ask any one running one of the big blocking lists on the internet whether they never ever thought about putting someone on the block just because they fucking annoyed them. And then ask yourself if you run a banlink like service, at what time you will press that little button that kicks some user out of a bunch of sims, just because all those users handed over their brain to you - and you have that little piece of power. And that big pain in the ass.

Well, but the argument posted before was reasonable - that some people, even those whose real-life name is not well known, nonetheless have a lot of RL interests invested in their Second Life avatar. The obvious example is Anshe Chung, but that is a bit confused because her real name is well known and Anshe Chung is also the name of a company. However there are several other avatars I know who have large RL stakes in SL but do not release their real names publically. (I don't want to mention their names in case they don't want that fact revealed.)

I've tried to look up UK libel law, and it generally seems that the deciding factor is: if a person is identifiable from the alias used for them. But I couldn't find anything that would establish whether or not "being identifiable" necessarily means knowing their name. My own non-lawyer feeling is that it doesn't. Someone already posted that Katie Price would be able to respond to libel against Jordan. Thinking about this then - if she had always gone by the nickname "Jordan", and her real name had never gone out to the public, would that mean she couldn't respond to libel against Jordan because her real name wasn't known? I doubt it, personally..

Has Linden Labs researched the "ratings systems" they have proposed?

Most assuredly not. They'd have to pay someone to research that.

Instead, the residents of Second Life will do the research. Those who try to use the third party rating systems, and those who are subject to them, will find out through trial and error which ones work and which ones don't. We'll spend our time and money in this grand research experiment. We will share our experiences in the forums. From that, Linden Labs will review our findings, and then maybe pick one to endorse.

Why would Linden Labs spend money doing research that it can get its customers to do for it for free? They wouldn't.

And thus, you see the ultimate logic in Linden Labs' proposal on third party rating systems.

LOL you might call it logic =)

I call it watching us like lab mice in a cage.


******************
There no Ratings system for me as an individual person in real life.

WHY does there have to be one for me in Second Life?

This is why I do not run TrustNet this way. TrustNet isn't some sort of "Dale's list of undesirable people". You decide whose opinion you want to trust, which may be mine, your friends', or anybody else's. AFAIK, BanLink works on a very similar principle.

Besides that, you can ask the server where it got that score from, so you can see there are no strings attached. If I started messing with things, eventually people would notice.

Soon I will improve greatly the "explain how ratings are calculated" part, so that you can see a pretty graph instead of a confusing text dump (this is unfortunate, but had to be done to stuff as much info as possible into the little memory LSL lets me work with).

I am going to start a ratings system for ratings systems.

I'll welcome that, I like feedback

I wonder what rating will it have for itself, though.

It happened for internet diaries (now blogs). Ratings and critiques of diaries, then ratings and critiques of the ratings system.

It's logical from Linden Labs' point of view.

From the consumers' point of view, it wouldn't be logical to volunteer to be a lab mouse without compensation. But watch it happen.

Ratings systems for ratings systems will be Gamed!

That's why I'm going to start a rating system for your rating system of rating systems!

*thinks*

Yes, right.

I think maybe we have this whole ratings thing wrong anyhow -

Ratings should be less who trusts who - and more like a movie rating. Like "2 stars) Hes action packed but the corny dialog ruins believability." OR "3 stars) Shes a lil boring in the middle but the ending brings tears to your eyes"


On that note =>

I think maybe Ill start a ratings site for my ex cyber lovers on how good they were.

Then Ill take bribes to adjust the ratings upwards.






Now I just need to remember some of their names.

Hrm... why only stick to the past? You could sell Rating Insurance to anyone new you meet...

Wow, you must be new. Not only do we not get paid to be lab rats, but many of us pay The Lab to experiment on us!

New, but I think I'm quickly catching on.

Another way to put it would be that SL is a playground for lab rats to attact experimenters

Not fully serious here, I don't think of my users as "lab rats" or anything of the sort. But got to say that if you've got an idea that needs to be tested by (or on) large amounts of people, then SL is probably a good place where to try it.

One of these days, SL will become known in two circles: Among normal people, as an interesting virtual world, and among psychologists, as a place where to research various weird people in their natural habitats

Ah, but your system is open to gaming!
I shall be starting a rating system of your rating system of his rating system of rating systems. It shall have one option, labelled "bad". All ratings systems shall receive the same rating, no number of votes will be recorded and gaming will be impossible

I'm skeptical of the various third party ratings systems, simply because most will be offered by people who don't have a clue what they are doing, and any frontrunner will be based not on the soundness of the system, but the marketing ability of the creator.

However, assuming that a rating system is legitimate, the standard for any system should not be its level of perfection. Any rating system is going to be strategically played. The ultimate goal should be the quality of the information. That quality is based in part upon the transparency of the system- who is making the ratings, what the ratings mean, how the system works. Those things should be easy to identify. They will help someone who is considering the use of a ratings system to decide whether it is actually useful or not.

I have a feeling that most sim owners do not want some sort of arbitrary ban list. It's bad for traffic and bad for business. Probably, most sim owners are ideally looking to make sure the good customers feel safe to come, and only want to ban people whose presence actually hurts business.