Is Anonymity Really Necessary?

I never did any online socializing before coming here, and even then I wasn't looking to socialize per say, it just has become a by product of exploring the place. To address the OP, I don't think the annonymity from each other will be a hinderance. I think many people will join because of that. What is the problem is many are anonymous to Linden and can't be properly dealt with when they misbehave or cheat someone.Personally, I don't care who you are in RL. If you bother me personally, I just stop interacting with you. I don't enter into business ventures that involve substanial sums so if you cheat me out of the few pennies , I just make note not to do business with you.But for those that do, it would be a benefit if they could report someone who rips them off or harrasses them greiviously to LL and that person gets the EBook thrown at them.The knowledge that you can't hide from The Providers if you steal my Quatloos is far more important, than whether some Pole Dancer is really a Fat, Bald, Grade School Janitor in Schenectady.

I couldn't disagree more, Colette. We have to put up with behavior in SL that no one would dream of shrugging off in the real world. Back in the day I used to allow rezzing, scripts, pushing, and everything else on my land. Now I have to keep everything disabled, so no build, no push, no scripts, and no object entry. Because of the incessant actions of the anonymous antisocial few I have to restrict the freedoms of everyone else. Frankly, that sucks.

How many times have you had replicating particle screamers on your land that auto-return wouldn't eliminate, or that would just come back from an adjoining parcel that you have no control over two minutes later? It happens to me usually at least once a week and all I can do is hope I can get a Linden to come clean up the mess (rare) or log off in disgust and hope it's gone when I come back (common). Can you imagine in the real world if you wanted to go to the mall but it was overrun by people in teenage mutant ninja turtle costumes screaming into megaphones and shoving everyone in sight making it impossible for anyone to move? Would you consider that no big deal or a massive inconvenience that someone should really do something about?

With the exception of the anonymous part - that basically describes the reasons why 90% of our laws are in existence. We have laws because some people just can't resist the urge to be a**holes.

This is an interesting twist. Just as many are minimizing the instances of Real Life tradgedy and it's impact on Virtual Worlds, I am also of the mind that griefing is overhyped, becuase it has rarely happened to me. I've experienced so few incidents that I just shrug it off. The biggest detriment to my SL experience so far has been SL itself, with all it's bugs and glitches. Our perceptions RL and SL are going to be colored by our experiences, and no one can tell us that those experiences are trivial to us. Still,I continue to believe our identities should be private from each other, only Linden should know them, and use that information when necessary.

I'd get rid of unverified accounts, go back to having strict limits on alts, and I'd invest money into having LL people in world 24/7 that could deal with griefing and other problems rapidly. I think SL is badly in need of a large force of beat cops. I'd also (as Colette suggested) ban all banks and investment schemes.

Well heck, then we are in complete agreement!

coco

I disagree with the OP's premise that there is a desperation for anonymity, and I also disagree that anonymity (between residents) causes problems, or would directly cause problems in SL. I agree with the posters that are concerned about people using anonymity without accountability to not be nice. This is a different issue entirely. I will not expand on this as it has already been covered.

The main problem is that not only did LL not plan for scaling SL on a technical level, it failed miserably to plan or implement policies to allow SL to scale on a social level. Prior to open registration and the ability to create infinite free accounts without payment information, SL was expanding at a very good rate, with like-minded people bringing in friends, developing a community and developing the content.

I genuinely believe that if SL was allowed to grow at a natural sustainable pace, rather than have ambitions for exponential growth, we would have a far more caring, responsible, educated (in the ways of SL) and LARGER active population, and absolutely no need for the levels of breakdown in trust that makes people remotely consider that removing anonymity (between residents) is a possible solution.

I can't think of why anyone who owns businesses would need to have exact info about everyone else, though.

I have a business and I sure don't need to know those things about my customers.

Here's a little analogy for those who think anonymity is a bad thing in SL (not you, but those who do). It's yet another version of my Macy's Analogy. (Which is usually better than my Fruit Analogy!):

Let's say I go into Macy's and pay cash, like the other poster said. No need to for them to know who I am.

Let's say I pay on credit. Plenty of need for them to know who I am, and they do.

No need in either case for the other customers to know who I am.

Let's say I go in and shoot up their store, and run out. No need for them to know who I am when I walk in (though that would make things easier), because the government and police know who I am, and can likely find out and trace me.

Let's say they can't, though. Should this be a reason for all Macy's customers to be required to wear their names and addresses on their shirts before they can come into the store? Of course not!

And in any case, the whole thing is between me and MACY'S, not me and the other customers! (Minus the shoot-em-up story, anyhow.)

In SL, likewise, the whole things should be between me and LL!

I don't understand the drive some people have lately - and it seems to be a fair number who want this - to make everyone divulge everything to everyone, including information we would NOT divulge to all the other customers in Macy's.

Even if they only wanted those who run businesses to identify themselves to all and sundry, well, hey - I would no longer choose to run a business in SL! And if a real-world company hired me and required me to wear my name and address on the street and in the store, I wouldn't work there either!

After all, in the real world, when you have a bone to pick with Macy's, you generally do it with the company itself, in their offices - you don't have to have an individual's home address and phone number to do it. (Though you could find such, of the higher ups, but it takes a lot of trouble.)

coco

So it was you who took out the perfume department with an AK in 1987! NYPD are still looking for you - that incident caused a really big stink!

I agree, and it's ALL THE LINDENS' FAULT.

coco

P.S. Lol, Snowman!

Which is what I thought you would say, and I am in 100% agreement. They have to step up and take some interest and responsibility. Come up with a real, workable verification plan, not the IDV nonsense they have foisted on us, and get some pixel feet on the street.
i don't want to hear about resources. It's a cost of doing business. If they can't handle it, stop growth until they can.

So basically your personal experience changes how you perceive the statistical risk?

It goes back to those BS Blogposts by Dan and Robin about trust and making the grid safer. In pimping SL to the Corporations, most who have seemed to have left, LL shot themselves in the foot, and they are looking to us to stop the bleeding.

I can't hazard a guess about the statistics, which is why I mentioned earlier that a stat I'd really like to see (rhetorically, since it doesn't exist) is how many accounts and business have been closed due to griefing. I don't claim that my experience is the same as everyone else's. We are all biased by our experiences, hence your claim that griefing is over-hyped. In the broader discussion about real world risks, we actually have statistics to look at.

Sounds like a normal weekend evening at any mall I have ever been to visit.

Zero. And my land is build and script enabled ... but I live on an island. 4/5 of the land mass in SL is now islands, as of Nov. 30th's economic statistics. Residential islands are hard to wander among, and such low density that they just aren't worth it for griefers. When you encounter residents who are puzzled about your concern over anonymity, they may live on an island. They may therefore feel that their personal freedom and ability to explore different aspects of themselves is worth more to them than being able to call a griefer's RL home and talk to his Mom.

I also have not been to a store when it was being griefed for at least 4 months. Increasingly, both the major stores and higher-class small retail seems to be on islands as well.

Well, I'm very sure that the population would be more caring and responsible. And I've often wondered about whether the active population would be larger or smaller. It is SO sad that there is no way to accurately know how large the active population is. Projections are interesting, but if I were at LL I would be working in my spare time to see if I could figure it out. Is it common knowledge at LL, I wonder?

Chip's points are well founded. Using his mall scenario, you would want something done of course. You would go to Mall Security or the Police to deal with it. That's where the Lindens come in, or should. But most of us wouldn't want to know who the punks are or where they live.

Mall security won't leave the food court. The cops are at the park shining flashlights into the backseats of cars hoping to find couples having sex. So in a way it is like how the Lindens operate.

hehe, an apt analogy. If you are lucky enough to find a mall security guard, they'll give you a form letter and suggest you try to protect yourself by rolling it up and hitting people with it.

Check out this link:

http://taterunino.net/statistical%20graphs.html

The graph that appears top right is fascinating...... I am not sure of how "active residents" is defined though.

Edit: Just worked it out - it is the "last 60 day" log in figure.

In that event, I'd just be kicking ass, without taking names.

[Gloom_and_doom_the_sky_is_falling]
The first two graphs highlight a major issue for us all.
From July '07, signup trend rocketing, 60-day login trend plummeting.
Concurrency as a measure of success is a myth. Going by my recent experience of RPing a noob through OI to HI to 'home' in Waterhead, I'd guess that a big chunk of concurrency are people who are not making_it / getting_it in the first critical phase.

The grid is being scaled up. We get instability as LL try to cope with increased inventory load and concurrency.
The scaling up is necessary to deal with increasing concurrency. The increased concurrency is being used by people who do not stay. The instability is making existing users leave.
[/Gloom_and_doom_the_sky_is_falling]


IBTSIF!! ............ (In Before The Sky Is Falling)

It's been pointed out that the Ginko principals are not anonymous.
I don't think that the people we love to hate actually give a s**t what we might think of them in RL.

Go back to my post referencing Ralsky the "Spam King" - or just Google for him. He has been major-league griefing the entire planet for years. His RL identity, address and image are all over the Net. He has yet to be spanked for doing something "illegal" (in relation to his spamming activities).
He's doing what he wants to do. He's making a lot of money out of it. He's going to keep on doing it.

No doubt the scammers, the notorious bot runners in SL take the same F... You attitude.
It's not illegal - or not illagal enough for authority to care.
It's not even against the TOS (as interpreted by LL).

Knowing *who* they are would not be of any use to residents.

depends... anonymity from whom?

short answer yes, at least some degree, just not as much as some believe

That happened to me once!