CS WHAT & HOW ??????

This is meant as a general discussion of SL's CS that I hope our friends the Lindens will take note of.
Please feel free to add any none-specific comment that could help in guiding them along the lines we would like to see happning in SL bearing in mind the increasing emphasis on age verification and media attention.

Second Life is a game where your dreams your imagination can be freed is what we are all trying to achieve, but I think you will all realise that where it involves interacton with others, there must be guidelines that we all should follow. Although we don't want rigid or limiting guidelines that means we cannot enjoy our experiences in Second Life there may be cases where they should be tempered when interacting with other residents or should on occassions be kept behind closed doors, where those with a similar ideal may operate without forcing themselves on residents who are unwilling to paticipate.

It is far better for people to find a release within Second Life than the Real World, and Second Life should allow this to be achieved as long as it is not affecting those non-iterested residents, and is kept confined within a specific area. I am not talking here of ghettos, these activities can take plavce throughout the grid in the correctly allocated Mature/PG regions, as long as the activity if generally deemed as non-acceptable by the general population of Second Life is made non-apparent to the remaining population.

At the moment there are two categoies. "PG" and "Mature", with the introduction shortly of "Adult" for the more extreme activities, These three categories should allow meaningful segregation of the types of activity, which unfortunately is currently definitely not always the case, and should also ease the situation when full age veification is to be introduced as an option for all residents.

Please note I said non-acceptable by the general population of Second Life above. This is a vague statement, and in a similar vein to the Real World, Second Life should be governed by a group of Elders of the community (no I do not mean those who have been here longest. I mean a group of residents who are interested in the overall welfare of our Virtual World), although a general indication of the activities acceptable and allowed within the various classified areas of Second Life should be available and used as a guideline for all to follow. Any one with a dispute or requiring clarification should have the facility to approach the Elders to gain a ruling of acceptance or non-acceptance if not specifically covered in the guidelines.

At present we have an Us and Them situation.......The Residents and The Lindens....As I understand it the Lindens do not want to act as Big Brother, even though they are under increasing pressure from Real World Authorities to become just that. By introduciing Elders (or Judges, or whatever you wish to call them), they would be seen to show the Real World Authorities that they are policing their Virtual World and can step in where necesssary if specific situations arise; But by allowing the community to be self governing, things will get out of hand unless there are guidelines in place and an authority, which in the eyes of the Population of Second Life is seen to be fair. It i also necessary to make sure that any new system that is adopted is made of glass so that all actions are visible and clear.

I know from past experineces that the abuse system is far from adequate. I accept the principle of anonymity that they allow, but the current guidelines are so loose; and it is impossible to get any pre-view of acceptable activity by talking to the current powers that be, namely the Lindens, since no reply or guidance will be forthcoming. No-one will stick their neck out and make a decision.
I do not know how many abuse reports they receive daily but from the police blotter only a handful of them are ever acted on, so how can we accept that abuse reporting is a relevent or a purposeful way of control of offensive/indecent material.

Island owners can implement and enforce their own "law" by the nature of their authority and in world priviledges; They in a sense are Dictators, within Second Life. However the "Mainland", is governed by the Lindens and until they make their processes open and clear to the population, all residents on the mainland are now in the dark as to what is and what is not acceptable, and have nowhere to turn to to fnd out the answers, or get help if they feel they are being abused.

If the long term goal is for the Lindens to withdraw from Land management and sell off all there holdings in game to private landlords (Hey I am not saying this will happen, it is just a thought), then some of these current problems will disappear, and we will end up with a whole series of dictators in their place; But in the current situation, they need to take the lead and lay down some very basic laws, and introduce a system for their control. Yes a little like the Real World, I admit, but it does not have to be anywhere near as stringent, but should have controls independent of Linden Labs.

I think it is important to remember that although SL is a community..or "world" , it is..for all intensive purposes..a piece of software or game, depending on your viewpoint. I really believe that the current methods of "government" is not adequate, that being said... i would be aposed to a third party or group of elders running and governing Secondlife.
When it comes down to the crunch, I believe the best people to govern Secondlife are the makers of this platform, Linden labs. I am 100% certain that there is no way to acheive complete user satisfaction in SL.. just a somewhat lukewarm medium..where the least amount of people are unhappy and the majority are kept apeased with decisions made by LL.
I cant see a method where every faction, fetish and belief is represented in a completely non biased way and any attemt to do so will just create more mayhem on the grid. If you allow age play, the people aposed will shout and scream, if you ban it, the supporters will do the same. If you sit down and fix problems experienced by a minority, and ignore the majority, you will lose customers, yet if you just appease the masses and dont listen to the minorities issues, the same will happen.
The partition of land into its current segregation of Mature and PG (and soon to be Adult added) is adequate for our current community and I dont think the idea of "its my land and I will do what i want on it" is a usable excuse. Its LL's platform, ts LL's software its LL's rules. It HAS to be this way as they have the pressures and weight of the media, the law and the "moral police" completely on their shoulders.
For the most part... if we misbehave we get to walk away with a slap on the wrist and a "dont come back" type message put on our account. LL on the other hand have to face all the previously mentioned groups and explain and mabe even legally defend actions taken against them. We MUST play by their rules..as they have everything to lose.

The way I see it now, LL are trying to give us the freedom to do what we want...within the bounds of decency USING THEIR PLATFORM..sure, recently there have been major issues tackled that not everyone likes...but I really belive that LL are making an effort to fix things for a majority and they receive far more critisism than praise for their efforts.
I would agree that the abuse report system needs work..but can you imagine the amount of "heresay" and trivial reports they have to sort through on a daily basis? Also the amount of "faked" greifing reports that would be lodged? It must be a terribly time consuming practise and I am sure that LL have their best minds on the job, trying to sort out a better, more effective method.

As I have stated before, its their game or platform..and if we dont like their rules, we have the option to leave and go somewhere where the rules DO suit the individual.

According to the famous/gonna-be-famous Daniel Linden video, ARs are currently running at 5000 per day.
IF we had a group of Elder lemons (elected how?) , how would they deal with that (growing) volume any better than LL? Would they be purely volunteers? How long before the volunteer movement shrivelled up and died, passing the buck back to LL?





The basic laws already exist.
What is missing is a full transparency of AR resolution. Without that people don't trust the process, and have no guidelines (if they actually need them) on *the kind of thing* that is considered to be unacceptable.

Whoever might end up dealing with ARs, they have to have informations systems that
- allow collection and resolution of many thousands of ARs per day, every day (5000 and rising) - so good luck with that!
- provide a clear public audit trail
- cater for an appeals process (x% of decisions, most decisions?)
If that function will be able to impose some form of penalty (last resort), then I doubt that that could be done other than LL being the final decider on what happens to their customers.

Sling Trebuchet Quotes:
"According to the famous/gonna-be-famous Daniel Linden video, ARs are currently running at 5000 per day."


Ok if that figure is anywhere near correct. All I see in the police blotter is maybe 10 of those per day, being resolved in action being taken. So am I to assume that 4990 of them are bogus or unfounded. I believe what you are seeing may be Linden lack of time to deal with these abuse reports, (because hopefully they are all working on getting the platform stable again), or they may be resulting more from the fact that the guidelines are so general as to not really make sense and be meaningful to most people.

Unfortunately the "utopia" isn't possible, and LL and others on SL are learning that now. This does not mean that SL is going to fail, far from it, it just means that alternate goals will need to be found.



I really hate this argument Basically it's saying, that if someone wants to do something in Second Life that is illegal and immoral in the real world, we *have* to let them, because otherwise they might do it in the real world (and somehow that's our problem?). But if you're going to say that, why stop at sex? If someone wants to commit murder of innocents, do we have to remove all safe zones from Second Life so that those people don't commit murder in the real world? And why shouldn't this same privilege extend to legal, moral behaviour?



The Lindens are the most interested in the overall welfare of our Virtual World - if the Virtual World fails, they'll all lose their jobs, so that's a pretty big incentive! If they are interested in the business and legal issues, then, well, we'll have to trust them that those are important. After all, a lawsuit or a dissent by the investors could close Second Life down for good.



The Lindens *are* the "judges" you've described. You're quite right that it would be nice if the resolution of AR's could be more transparent so we could know what was and wasn't deemed acceptable, though.



Island owners have no greater privilege than parcel owners with regard to implementing their own laws. The only small difference is that they don't have neighbours they have to allow for. That's all.