Time and again, invokers of "Godwin's law" aren't making a good judgement about facile use of Nazi imagery or analogies, but shutting down a debate. (Hamlet Linden Godwined me recently on his blog.) They're shielding the Group-Think from criticism. If anything, we need to talk about "Aimee's Law," which is that "me and my friends get to propose fascistic and authoritarian concepts for SL and use our tremendous influence to get the Lindens to pass them, but can shield ourselves from criticism by invoking Godwin." In many cases on the SL forums, this can be seen in spades.
Such is the discussion today, where Aimee Weber (why are we not surprised) is proposing that people who have been disciplined in the SL punishment system should have colour-coding for their names, i.e. red for serious offenses like a 14-day ban, yellow for milder offenses like a 3-day ban, and green for a "clean rap sheet" as the Linden managers always briskly describe it. So if you were ever banned from the forums for the imaginary offenses that the FIC and their former-resident Linden friends cook up, you will fly around the world with a red or yellow name over your head like a Scarlet Letter.
Having a "clean rap sheet" is of course ultra-important if you want to be admitted to the Brahmin of Second Life, the Mentors, Greeters, Helpers, and now the Instructors. In fact, if before, someone who had once been nailed for swearing in PG served 3 days for it, that wouldn't prevent him or her from teaching others important skills. Now it will. The entire self-serving and biased system is part of the atrocious "MMORPG wizard" culture that is inherited in LL and permeates some of their worst decision-making.
In little petulant Aimee's vindictive world, those griefers "really have to get the book thrown at them". Of course, she'd like to make sure that I went around with my name in Scarlet Letters because that would help continue the bullying and harassment that she and others subjected me to on the forums, and against which I fought valiantly, and for which I was unjustly permabanned.
Of course, the notion of "double jeopardy" may never have entered the Geek Girl's head -- the idea that you can't be punished twice for the same crime. If you swore in PG, you serve your 3 days, then it is over. In the concept of corrective justice common in the Western democracies, anyway, if you did the crime and did the time, then it's over, and while having a police record, you are considered to have "paid your debt to society".
It's understood if you were to go around with a tatoo on your forehead saying POOR IMPULSE CONTROL like a character in Snowcrash, that would be adding humiliation and punishment to punishment already served -- it would be unjust.
The RL analogy isn't "Meagan's law," but would be akin to having every parking scofflaw, let alone kid who boosted hubcaps when he was 16, go around with a tag that enables everyone from store-keepers to movie-theaters even to schools or places of employment to automatically bar them from the premises, no questions asked -- merely fostering more crime in the end.
The zealous nature for retribution of SL's citziens always leaves one goggling.
These really bad ideas of branding disciplinary cases first began to circulate this summer in the elite circles of the Community Round Table list serve. I fought valiantly there, too, before being banned improperly and unjustly. There was quite the clamour from people like Cutter Rubio who wanted to "out" all "perps" and have all their names listed in bold on the SL webpage so that we could all ban them from our properties.
Smug little Preen Queen believes that all perps think they are unjustly punished and all victims think they weren't punished enough. Actually, no. You can have a system where there is a system of punishments. Everyone knows them. When you do those offenses, you suffer the punishment, and people accept it. In fact, that's more or less what we have.
On the Community Round Table, I was shocked to find how vicious people were in wanting those who grief to be nailed to the wall.
To understand what goes on in Second Life, you have to get the whole atmosphere. It's like handing out condoms to teens and then thinking they will just put them in a drawer and not experiment with sex. Of course they will. It's natural. In the same way, the Lindens put out these cool videos showing these avatars dressed up to the gills in various combat-style cool outfits, and various mecha warrior or robot style fighting avatars, and show how you can make all these kewl weapons. SL is always trying to pass itself off as a first-person shooter game, though old hands know the physics/FPS etc isn't good enough.
The Lindens create an option to put your parcel on "unsafe" and encourage shooting in some sandbox areas, and draw heavily on the cultural cues of MMORPEGS and combat, and then expect that these people coming in and examining all these condoms are just going to put them in a drawer and never use them. It's insane. Of course when you make a game, people come and shoot in it. That's what games DO. So then to tell everyone they CAN'T shoot is unkind.
Yet that's what the Lindens do. A huge percentage of their time is spent chasing shooters and taking away weapons. They could, of course, adopt a no-weapons policy and stop promoting the culture of war and fighting. But they need to keep on the crest of the MMORPG wave and appeal to those demographics so they are vague about just how much shooting you can do in SL.
Meanwhile, hordes of people coming into SL for more "suburban" reasons of just wanting to couple and household are outraged that they cannot find peace in their homes. All kinds of asstard candidates for the teen grid are shooting up the place!
Philip Linden's theory that people will find so much freedom for creativity in SL that they will forgot to grief is all wet -- the steep learning curve is one of the reasons for griefing.
The easiest way to derail a griefer, and one few people really seem willing to use is to LOG OFF. It deprives the griefer of an audience, it lets him know you won't play, and it forces him to move on. Works better than any security system!
Most of the time people reach for aggressive security systems that become hugely annoying to their neighbours because they see griefing as a matter of machismo and honour. "If you had someone talk to your lady like that asshole did to mine, you'd shoot him, too," a tenant told me beligerently the other day, and then proceded to accuse me of siding with ineffectual Lindens and griefing asswipes just because I refuse to add aggressive bounce scripts to my property, and hence add to my daily trouble tickets 10 reports of being bounced by security scripts, in order to solve the one report a week of a griefer.
If ever there is a person who has seen massive amounts of griefers, it's me, dealing with hundreds of customers. And in nine out of ten cases, they are newbies flying around being asswipes, and 9 out of ten cases they don't repeat because they are random. In another five percent, they are mafias role-playing or people who come back to retaliate against you because you yourself have been aggressive. That final five percent are tgeb the hardcore griefers like W-HAT, and you can only assiduously abuse-report them repeatedly and in a chorus, and I find that eventually the Lindens do wind up expelling them especially if PVP is involved.
Most of the people branded under Aimee's Guilt Matrix, which will be a handy companion tool to her Party Matrix, will be these shooters. And their only crime, in many cases, will be the MMORPG culture itself, which promoted shooting, and believing this MMORPG, that it welcomes shooting as well.
I heartily oppose the branding system -- it is cruel and unusual punishment and has no place in a just society.
Many people are wrongly comparing this notion of tags over names to the availability of a police record on a person when they apply for a job.
Wrongly, because like many RL comparisons, it is made out of the context of a free society -- which we are NOT in, IN SL. In RL, when a person acquires a police record, I can obtain the name of the police officer who arrested him, and track the case through the courts, getting the name of the judge and the court proceedings. I also learn the name of the victims in many cases. I have a context to understand if the punishment was fairly applied. I have a whole system of checks and balances. I wouldn't if I plucked out of that context ONLY the police record. What I'd have, then, is a police state.
The forums gang, however, advocate keeping the name of the prosecuting Linden out of it, and never publishing the name of the whistle-blowing AR reporter. This is ostensibly to protect them from retribution. Of course, they whole reason I don't want to have offenders' names published is that I think all of us need to be protected from the retribution of the vicious FIC, especially when they get going on their rampages.
And I do not trust the system, since I know that it is unjust, not only with regard to me, but with regard to many others. I see how people on the forums misbehave and commit even serious offenses, with impunity. I see people banned for the same offenses and banned inworld, and I don't get it. Nothing is done. I see people play "gotcha" and chase others into PG merely to report them. I saw how Kex Godel and her little friend Nicole Linden set me up to nail me in PG because they didn't like what I wrote on the forums. This is SL sport, trying to AR people. The other day, I was on Democracy Island (*cough*) having a heated conversation with Zarf Vantongerloo, expressing my great dismay at him having "gone Linden". At some point in the conversation I said something like "that's fucked up" or something like that, and Kim Anubis, one of those little FIC busy-bodies who likes to play gotcha, threatened to abuse-report me for swearing in PG.
Imagine the mentality that goes into something like that! Imagine! The petty, vindictive, little bitchy attitude that overlooks the reasoning behind making something like Democracy Island PG (to prevent it from becoming blatantly sexual given the presence of university students and the need to keep a relative decorum for a university-funded project) and hammering on some little incident of someone technically "swearing in PG".
The other day, Ingrid Ingersoll IM's me to play "gotcha" about one of my long-dead groups which has Xenon Linden in it because one day, I invited him for a talk and he joined a group to get the title "Moth Worshipper" out by the Moth Temple in Iris. We used to have events with this group, but then got too busy to keep it up, and forgot about it. Ingrid pounced on this (she must have spent hours studying all my groups) as "proof" that I was "hypocritical" about Lindens joining resident groups. *Shrugs*. I pointed out that if she has a new-found value about Lindens not joining groups and not abusing their own rule, then she should look at Bedazzled Studios or a dozen other groups that have Lindens in them. But of course, she'd rather just play Church Lady.
Imagine the mentality that goes into this. But then, that's the culture we currently have in SL -- the culture of a six-grade girls' school clique, gossiping, back-biting, playing teacher's pet, and being a tattle-tale. The system *fosters* this kind of horrid little vicious personality, and the result is what we see on the forums. Shame on you, Linden Lab, for being party to this awful culture.
So the system is widely misused, and to sustain any kind of publicizing ONLY of perps in this flawed system is to continue to celebrate what should be reformed, not praised.
If someone doing an AR on another person anonymously fears retribution, then we have to wonder what kind of world it is if the Lindens cannot protect us. More to the point, however, if we publicized the names of the abuse-reporters, we'd have some social awareness and pressure on those who do these ARs not to misuses the system. We know they'd be judged.
The resident review board is a joke, and to make it have real teeth, it could actually operate independently of the Lindens, and make findings independent of them.
Let's start out with one bit of transparency: how many "review panels" result in aquittals? That's the test of any judicial system. None, I bet. Or less than 10 percent.
But without transparency of this system, without being able to see which Lindens are doing what, without having any accountability from those who report anonymously on others with all the pernicious police-informant mentality that goes with it, without a free press, without an independent judiciary, without a properly informed public, these sorts of brandings are going to be done injuriously.
In fact, what some overzealous smug little forum FICS recommend is triple jeopardy, have the Lindens do a ban, have them brand people's foreheads, and then be banned from various lots. In fact, Aimee wants to have something automatic in the land tools to automatically detect and ban all those "red headed" ones.
Good Godwin!
Why is it ok to invoke Godwin-able stuff? Because branding like that *is* tatooing arms. It's not like anything else! And while it might make someone feel self-important to invoke Godwin, in fact all they've done with that is remove a really serious effort to examine these issues.
That doesn't mean that in any way we compare the RL suffering of Holocaust victims with those who were banned in PG for swearing. No way! They are completely worlds apart.
But the *mentality* at stake is not, and in the virtual real, the spiritual similarities in fact have greater potential for amplitude and viral spreading.
We can recognize that we can't have an authoritarian metaverse take shape like this. We cannot have branding, in a context where no free press, no transparency on Linden action, and no trustworthy courts can operate. Such a system without that context of freedom is merely a witch hunt.
i am looking forward to see your name in bright red with the following epitaph in your profile:
"forum troll"
"liar"
in hope it could persuade you to leave SL
Posted by: Kyrah Abattoir | 01/20/2006 at 10:24 AM
This reminds me of SPAM woes I have to deal with almost daily. The filters've become so intelligently stringent that they'll often block legitmate mail even from one internal list to another.
It takes hours sometimes to backward chain the events to determine why mails were dropped or tagged and returned. We're actually beginning to educate users to not create obviously SPAMish subject lines.
It's become absolutely necessary though to automate the process, legitimate mails being returned, even whole domains being mistakenly blocked, notwithstanding.
Considering the nature of online populations, just considering the sheer number of transactions involved in something like SL, automated account tagging and related enforcements are inevitable.
Posted by: Khamon | 01/20/2006 at 11:01 AM
Khamon, you appear to be justifying this tagging in the name of some "big management problem". Sounds pretty short-sighted. LL might internally tag accounts in some fashion to show a record of punishments. But I don't believe that they should make such a tagging obvious and external to expose people to constant harassment, vilification, banning, etc to keep endlessly alive what should be a one-time punishment and serving of a sentence.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 11:07 AM
"But I don't believe that they should make such a tagging obvious and external to expose people to constant harassment, vilification, banning, etc to keep endlessly alive what should be a one-time punishment and serving of a sentence."
Agreed, what they should do is have the tags automatically downgrade over time so that any automated system based on them would respond accordingly.
Our antiSPAM software steadily downgrades tags when they're not being hit so that they eventually retire and are no longer considered SPAMish.
Posted by: Khamon | 01/20/2006 at 11:45 AM
Yahoo, for example, deals with the exact same type of emails coming in from the Second Life system by putting them in regular mail AND in spam. I've learned to keep checking that bulk mail spam folder to see if there are any "good" messages coming in that in fact are from a live tenant, not some object spamming to me that it is returning from a parcel to lost and found.
I'm not comfortable with taking your experience in dealing with spam in email and applying it to *people*.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 12:21 PM
I do think that people's 'crime records' should be publicly accessible, perhaps through the website. Even if it just lists vague terms -- the offense and the punishment -- not the involved parties or the prosecuting Linden, as that might get them undue attention. But being able to identify "problem users" with a bit of research would be useful, I think.
However, I am against branding, though, for a completely different reason. I think getting different colored names is something that true griefers would strive for and embrace. It would be a trophy for them. It's the sort of mentality that a true griefer adopts -- and good ones are able to walk the fine line very tactfully.
Posted by: Aspen Normandy | 01/20/2006 at 12:42 PM
Commentators on Terra Nova point out in the discussion about the Cornfield that branding offenders like that only creates a badge of honour for griefers and increases griefing, as experiencein MMORPGs shows time and again.
I'm all for getting away from the silly game culture of MMORPGs with their wizards and leveling and points and offenses.
A system enabling everybody to browse somebody's offense records puts all the power in the evil Group-Think and protects none of the individuals' rights. It's a very unbalanced system. It's a system prone to abuse and IS abused as we know all to well from SL. We have no way of telling if the punishment is just, because we don't have the first thing about it in terms of knowing acquittal rates, types of offenses in the aggregate, repeat reporters who might have a grudge, biased Lindens who were previous residents with bias, etc. etc. It's an awful system because it is closed and unbalanced, and branding only increases it.
It's all about putting power in the hands of a few, then creating an aggressive-obedient Group-Think to pretend it has "mass consent" when it just has the power of the unjust mob.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 01:00 PM
I'd be proud to have my name in a different color because the retards of the SL forums decided to gang up on me.
I wonder if LL will ever realize how much money they're losing by letting those people in the forums treat new people and people with beliefs that are different than theirs the way that they do. I was a paying customer until a few days ago, when I got suspended for 3 days from the game I pay for without any sort of explanation from the people that suspended me. They didn't bother to explain their reasoning the first time I got suspended, either. So now I'll just use their service for free and not have any land. Fuck em.
Posted by: Stankleberry | 01/20/2006 at 01:02 PM
One should never, ever, describe themselves as 'valiant' or say they themselves fought 'valiently'.
Tooting your own horn like that leaves the taste of something like buttermilk that turned bad cloying in your mouth.
Just fyi
Posted by: Red Mars | 01/20/2006 at 01:14 PM
You know what? I've had enough of your harassing Aimee. What in God's name has she ever done to you? She avoids you, does not talk about you, does not write flaming rants about you. This is harassment what you're doing here, Prok. If you want to pick on someone, do it to someone who'll fight back, or are you too much of a chicken to do so, and you'd rather pick on people who don't talk back? You're such a troll.
Posted by: Hiro Pendragon | 01/20/2006 at 01:19 PM
I don't see how having a list of someone's past offenses is a bad thing, Prok. Whether they be just or not.
People would only ever look it up if they were given reason to, by someone's behavior, or what-have-you.. so it should only come up for repeat offenders, whom I would think people /should/ have fair warning about.
Stankleberry: The amount of money LL is "losing" is negligible. Maybe a small handful of people are willing to pout so much over forum activity that they boycott SL. You are an unimportant minority, in the economic sense.
Posted by: Aspen Normandy | 01/20/2006 at 01:31 PM
Hi, Red, I don't often toot my own horn, actually, but "valiant" is the only way to describe my fight against these amazingly evil fucktards that populate the SL forums.
You know what, Hiro? I've had *enough* of Aimee trying to influence the Lindens to change our world *for the worse*. And it is NOT harassment to *fight back* against such undue -- and unjust -- influence.
Furthermore, she has regularly and often attacked me on the forums, where I cannot defend myself. So I rebut any such attacks vigorously, and often here on my blog, as is my right.
Um, take all your words about chickens and trolls, and send them to Aimee's address. She has done outrageous things on the forums, starting with her "Aimee hates you" branding campaign against me months ago, and culminating in her hysterical insinuation that my criticism of her undue influence and her role on the forums constitutes "stalking worthy of reporting to the FBI". Honestly, I don't care how lonely the fight for freedom gets out here, I'm happy to go on engaging in it, it's the right thing to do. You, however, can go right on being a suck-up and a paid fanboy : )
LL as the federal government, for better or worse, can manage the repeat offenders. After all, they have the power to track alts and manage IP blocks. There is no reason to put this information into the hands of a vindictive and stupid mob, such as we find in SL.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 02:06 PM
"I'm not comfortable with taking your experience in dealing with spam in email and applying it to *people*."
Don't preach that shit at me. I'm sick and tired of you're holier than thou attitude accusing me of being a heartless techi-wiki block of ice.
Emails are people. That's my point. It hurts me to the core that the staff and students here can't just use email to readily communicate with each other.
We have to deal with all this automated antivirus antispyware antiuseable bullshit software because of the kinds of people that exist in online communities.
My comparison is between email populations and the Second Life population in the fact that dealing with griefing types in Second Life will certainly have to be somewhat automated for many comparable reasons.
Tell you what though, if you're gonna keep pushing my technical background down my throat like it somehow prevents me from seeing the soulfelt needs of the masses, I'll bow out of the discussion and find something else to do.
Posted by: Khamon | 01/20/2006 at 02:15 PM
Well, Khamon, I will preach it when you are so casual about comparing spamming emails about enlarged penises with live people who require more nuanced care.
Emails aren't people. Spam about stock, and Nigerian letters, and penises are just automatic ad texts.
People in a world should have better systems of justice, appeal, etc. than a text.
Don't push tekkie solutions, Khamon, if you want me to feel your soul. I appreciate that you are tekkie but soulful and thoughtful. I recognize that. But you do have to realize that your automated systems have no context, no appeal, no adjuciation. They rot in SL.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 02:21 PM
*adjudication, i.e. no live human being exercising judgement over them, they are just junior Lindens handling the switchboard with a lot of automatic stuff that they don't make sense of.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 02:22 PM
Prok: I can't follow your stance on LL. You believe that they unjustly punish people for no reason, yet you also think they should have complete secrecy in doing these things?
Do you see any sort of logic disconnect there?
Posted by: Aspen Normandy | 01/20/2006 at 02:31 PM
The amount of money LL is "losing" is negligible. Maybe a small handful of people are willing to pout so much over forum activity that they boycott SL. You are an unimportant minority, in the economic sense.
It's not really a boycott, I'll still use the game, I'll just not pay to have land anymore.
You aren't taking into account the fact that quite a few other people are discovering how things work on SL, and which people don't seem to be welcome there. They'll miss out on quite a lot of money if they continue to let the morons that run their forums and the game pull this kind of shit on paying customers. Trust me.
Posted by: Stankleberry | 01/20/2006 at 02:57 PM
Stankleberry: The "quite a lot of people" you are referring to is still a very small slice of their userbase.
It's a tiny sliver of people that even bother with the forums at all.
Posted by: Aspen Normandy | 01/20/2006 at 04:28 PM
This whole idea is just a road to more griefing. People reporting people just to get their enemy's names a different color. Griefers reporting each other just to get that "badge of honor" or what-not. People using a "visible list of offenses" to reverse-harass the more serious offenders in what they see as "pushing the griefer into quitting."
Any visible system you have is going to end up being used to harass/grief someone. That's just the nature of the online gaming world.
I'm not saying the present system is the best, but the proposed idea is just not very well thought out at all.
Posted by: Venya Salome | 01/20/2006 at 05:24 PM
Prok >> You know what, Hiro? I've had *enough* of Aimee trying to influence the Lindens to change our world *for the worse*. And it is NOT harassment to *fight back* against such undue -- and unjust -- influence.
Everyone deserves to be able to lobby for change in a system they belong to. That's how business works in the real world, that's how it works in SL. Just because your sanctimony and viscious attacks doesn't influence people doesn't mean you should take out your jealousy on others who are more successful.
Here's a hint: Stop being such a mean old crone. As the expression goes, "You attract more ants with honey than vinegar". I've told you time and time again that you have some valid concerns, and it's a damn share that you are too stubborn to drop this role-playing bad-guy shenanigans to actually be constructive with your criticism and gee, maybe not insult people with every other breath, so that your concerns might not be missed.
That and paragraphs would severely help your arguments, but you call that your "writing style" to ramble on without any sort of focus or outline. Anyone who's taken a basic writing class will tell you that if you lose the audience because you can't logically organize your thoughts, you are an unsuccessful writer. End of story.
IRONY: You think Aimee has influence? You've got to be kidding me. The most Aimee has influence over is perhaps getting on a banner ad. The people who have the real influence are people who run businesses and do real world things - the "SIC" as you call it. You're barking up the WRONG tree! lol
Prok >> Furthermore, she has regularly and often attacked me on the forums, where I cannot defend myself. So I rebut any such attacks vigorously, and often here on my blog, as is my right.
You have a warped sense of perception. "regularly" and "often" neither apply. I do however see her perhaps write something bad when you've harassed her on this unreadable blog.
Prok >> Um, take all your words about chickens and trolls, and send them to Aimee's address. She has done outrageous things on the forums, starting with her "Aimee hates you" branding campaign against me months ago, and culminating in her hysterical insinuation that my criticism of her undue influence and her role on the forums constitutes "stalking worthy of reporting to the FBI". Honestly, I don't care how lonely the fight for freedom gets out here, I'm happy to go on engaging in it, it's the right thing to do. You, however, can go right on being a suck-up and a paid fanboy : )
Honestly, your actions do constitute stalking. Imagine if Aimee was an ex-girlfriend. I guarantee you a judge would rubber stamp a restraining order request on you.
SL is growing and innovating, Prok. And you know what? Despite your screwball paranoid ideas that you "sky-is-falling" claim constantly will sink SL. SL is growing huge, and this year you're going to find yourself just an irrelevant little troll unless you decide you want to behave like an adult.
Posted by: Hiro Pendragon | 01/20/2006 at 05:29 PM
Hiro, Aimee is the one who is sanctimonious, coming up with this prudish and restrictive Calvinist idea of having people show the Mark of Cain on their foreheads. Honestly, it's too much. And I'm doing precisely that -- lobbying for my point of view. That's the normal way to do things, and your hysterical and aggressive notion that everybody has to get in line with Aimee and can't criticize her ideas and her methods of promoting them is completely untenable.
Just because I don't want to get into step with the Group Think of you oppressive little fanboyz and girlz doesn't mean I'm an old crone. You're the crones, all of you.
Hiro, I know it's your conviction that I'm in some kind of "role-play". That's hilarious. I'm not. I'm being myself, and I'm expressing my views. Go to hell, Hiro.
I'm not here to catch flies, and vinegar is actually a good astringent to use with the high buillshit level one gets from the forums.
Hiro, go and look at all of Aimee's posts. Clock them. Date them. Read my extensive documentation about these issues in my interventions here last month. And then see how they are attacks from her *first*, making up all kinds of wierd shit, like the one in off-topic like "Dear Jake, there's this boy who has a crush on me and harasses me to show his love" -- utter unadulterated horseshit like that. Provocative, mean-spirited, taunting bullshit. THEN there are responses from me. *Shrugs*. Hard to take, I know, when people won't fall into line.
It's not me who connives with Barnes to lure me on to a "blind date," after all, eh?
Honestly, go see what the dates and times are, how she responds, and you'll see who is first on all of this.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 06:02 PM
Hey Prok, I hear you censored Gwyn after she totally pwned you with the "SIC" comments. That true, should we discuss "What Prok Erases?" Bwahaha!
Posted by: Hiro | 01/20/2006 at 06:32 PM
You know, I haven't read the forums, but reading this blog entry on its own (and not taking into account the comments afterwards), I actually find myself agreeing with Prokofy about not showing the colours for past offenses for the very reasons stated. I ignored all the personal attacks to see the important point being made. Don't give griefers badges, don't give AR abusers a score card to track.
Also, I don't think LL would do it anyway. Hell, they removed negative ratings, do you REALLY think they will re-introduce an even more significant neg rating feature?
:)
Posted by: Timeless Prototype | 01/20/2006 at 06:33 PM
My remarks aren't personal attacks, Timeless, you're wrong there. They are *robust criticism of ideas that are indefensible and need to be defeated as an obstruction of a free society*.
And no, I wouldn't put it past LL *at all* to introduce *yet another* stratification in their society. After all, they have the deliberately official feted categories now of Mentors, Helpers, Greeters, and Instructors. To that I could add Winners of Building Contests who they should really just make Hired Contractors. All of these folks constitute the overlords, all of them require the "clean rapsheet," so if they could enhance these people's status with an actual badge or header or colour, they'd probably like to do so. They consequences be damned. After all, the great thing about the negrate is that it was *in our hands*. I am proud that I negrated none other than Philip Linden himself for killing the GOM. I am only one of 7 negrates on the guy -- and there should have been many more.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 01/20/2006 at 07:00 PM
Very funny and memorable title to this thread, Prok! And aided me quite well in the interesting little trip to the Wikipedia I just took, since I think I've been calling it Hobson's law.
OK - so according to this law, you can't compare branding people with the branding people that went on with the Holocaust. Though you CAN compare it to wearing a scarlet letter, or to - as I discovered earlier today - something in Snowcrash about a facial tattoo, "Poor Impulse Control."
You can say the very same thing, but you have to put it in a fantasy novel, like Snowcrash, or place it in the context of Puritan times.
So you can say it's wrong and all, you just can't say it is anything whatever in any way shape or form similar to the branding of people in Nazi Germany, ALSO intended to cause people shame and humilation and make sure no one had anything to do with them.
And this is apparently a law because: (a) people get into heated debates about any old topic at all on the Internet and (b) eventually they get so worked up that somehow Nazis get evoked and (c) that kills the thread.
So . . . this law apparently means that even when the action someone is proposing actually is BRANDING people, and branding occured in the Nazi regime, and in the Puritan era, and in slavery, etc. - you can call it a Scarlet Letter but you can't call it anything like something the Nazis did. Even though it was.
What a nice little politically correct law. Or maybe superstition. It effectively eliminates from the language and civil discussion any reference to or mention of similar things that went on during the Holocaust.
"Lest we forget" becomes, "Don't speak of it; don't point to it for examples of dangers that ought never to be repeated again and never even get a FOOTHOLD into being repeated again. After all, nothing we could ever do could ever be that bad, could it?"
Well, yes it could, on it's own miniscule level, because the same principle is at hand. Stealing paper from the office is a far, far cry from holding up a bank, but - they are both stealing. Branding people is bad, period.
However, reading on in the Wikipedia, it also says this (regarding making comparisons of political leaders to Hitler):
"Godwin's standard answer to this objection is to note that Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt.
"It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate impact."
Well, if we are going to talk about branding people, then I consider this is an apt and valid point to mention, an important reminder, and thus an appropriate reference. Which is probably why arm tattoos, along with the Scarlet Letter, came to me immediately and obviously - and no other example did.
Branding is branding. Public shame, humiliation, and ostracism is just that, wherever it takes place, and for whatever rationale.
As someone pointed out to me (after the crap hit the fan), there is a presumed difference between someone who has committed an actual TOS violation and been suspended and people who have been UNJUSTLY branded, as in the Holocaust.
Meaning that it is EVER just to brand people. I don't think so. I think anyone who attempts to shame or humiliate another lowers himself in the process. Punish, yes. Try to lower a person's innate human dignity, no.
In the SL example, people would be walking around the world branded because, for example, they said the F word in a PG area. This despite the fact that the F word is thrown about with wild abandon on the supposedly PG-rated forums, and no Linden offers a peep. Or they shot someone who was griefing them, or pushed someone, or stupidly picked a group name that was too sexy. Etc.
Cristiano says on the forums that I am missing the point, that he hates the idea of branding residents according to their TOS violations as much as I do.
It is okay, he says, to argue that branding people would be an invasion of privacy, or to argue that it would not be a deterrant to further griefing.
But it is quite another, he writes to "evoke Nazi imagery and make any kind of association whatsoever with it."
Well, we are talking about branding people here. I think the association is already THERE, and blindingly so.
He then goes on to add that, "We are talking about disciplinary issues in a virtual world with avatars, we are not talking human rights and branding people."
We aren't? Maybe he isn't, but I am.
We are people in SL; this is not a shoot-em-up solitary game I play with myself on PlayStation II. I am talking about human rights and branding people, and human dignity, and that applies as much in online environments as it does in rl environments.
He goes on to add: "To add further insult to injury, you claim that those who would even consider this idea are demeaning the Holocaust. You brought it to this level, no one else."
I would say it is just the other way around. Someone ELSE brought the whole discussion of SL discipline to this level, however unwittingly, by suggesting we start branding people to begin with. I objected, pointed out the Scarlet letter and the Holocaust associations, and I get accused of demeaning the Holocaust.
And it's not just one person - several people were (and still are) chiming in with what a wonderful idea it would be.
It's not wonderful. It is like what they did in Nazi Germany, and in the Scarlet Letter. It's like that soldier standing over the naked men in Abu Grabe (or whever it was). It's like a lot of things, and none of them good.
As a child, I learned my lessons very well never, ever, to let this sort of thing start gain. I learned to speak out about this sort of treatment of humans anywhere and everywhere, including in something as supposedly trivial as an online game, as it involves real people, too.
The fact is, LL is never going to do this at all, because a great many people wouldn't want to play such a game, or even be in such an environment. I know I wouldn't.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | 01/20/2006 at 07:27 PM