The Alphaville Herald

75 Responses to “Linden Lab Removes User Content”

1. 

   Lewis Nerd
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   Good riddance for a useless unnecessary feature that I’ve never seen the point of.

   Any ex-TSO’ers remembering “balloon whores” and their desire to be considered popular will know exactly where I’m coming from.

   I recall the “most popular” person at the time was a complete and utter asshole, and used cheats to get money to pay clueless noobs who didn’t know any better §10,000 (when it was a considerable sum of money) to give him a balloon. There was nothing good about him at all, and couldn’t really call any of them “friends” because as a general rule he’d never see any of them again after that date. I may not have had many “friends” but at least they were all genuine and not paid for.

   Lewis
2. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   Alana,

   I understand that you, as a long-time troller and stalker of me, are trying mightily to find something to discredit my fundamentally valid critique of the Sheep Search. And trying to find some “contradiction” or “hypocrisy” with regard to it. So go ahead, play that game, feel the rich, deep, gleeful, malicious inner satisfaction that comes from being “right” and “showing someone else to be wrong” and trying to goad, poke, needle, and harass me. I realize this is a great sport for you and others.

   But you know deep down inside, that my critique of the Sheep Search is fundamentally valid, and it doesn’t matter if you find something *else* that seems somehow “hypocritical” by your lights. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

   In fact, however, they are fundamentally different things.

   >People are NOT charged to post feedback, but they ARE charged to either respond to any feedback about them or to ask for it’s removal.

   Absolutely. Because there is simply no other way to get people to pay for a system like this unless you prick their curiosity, so that they want to see what other people have said about them. It’s easy to leave a saying yourself, but if you want to see what someone else says, you pay to play. Seems reasonable to me. But then, I’m not the one boosting trust circles and ratings games here. I don’t care for them much. I find it hard to sit still for them. This one worked for mere merely because it was searchable and had space to right.

   >You recently argued that the ESC sheep bot needed to be stopped because it forced people to go to the trouble of visiting the island in order to opt out from being on their list. I disagreed with your position, but certainly not with your right to say it.

   >These ratings systems (not just slrealreps but as I understand it also TrustNet) aren’t even giving people the ability to opt out.

   I’m sorry, but it’s *fundamentally different things* we’re talking about.

   You’re taking literally and flatly the idea of “opt-out” and thinking you can apply it everywhere. But you can’t. Because it’s beside the point or invalid in this case.

   Why? Because I get to express my opinion in public as I wish. Sorry, but if you behave badly in Second Life, you don’t have some automatic privacy button to push, I get to express my opinion about you. You may not like it, you may be made uncomfortable, but your need for some comfort level doesn’t trump my right to express and opinion about you.

   These are matters of human judgement, in a social circle, and people might agree as to their extent, but all can agree about a principle: I get to express my opinion. You can’t sway my opinion or undo it or take it off my blog, or my rating. You can only stay out of the system if you think the whole thing is stupid, and not validate it (that’s what Second Citizen is like — a place you shouldn’t validate with any kind of presence there, with an avatar, and threads originally posted) or you can answer the post you didn’t like with your own expression of opinion.

   That’s very VERY different than the issue of MY STUFF and some bot cruising it, grabbing it, storing it, and making it available for his commercial use. You didn’t like my expressed opinion, but you cannot trump my freedom with your discomfort.

   A bot, however, doesn’t get to trump stuff. He has no opinion or judgement. He is merely the embodiment of a will that wishes to scrape me for commercial game. I should have as much protection as possible from something that brutal, that automatic, and that profoundly intrusive and exploitative — to which I’ll have no recourse except to merely remove the public manifestation of my name.

   Your desire not to have a profile about you can’t trump my freedom of expression. But the automated will of a marketer or corporation in the form of a scraping bot can’t *force* freedom of expression *on* me. And I need to be able to withstand his intrusions. Very different dynamics and scenarious, and the opt-out decision formally similar in each can’t be allowed to obscure the fundamentally different dynamics here.

   In one, I’m trying to preserve the private domain of the individual or small business or other type of group to have rights and a domain and a being that cannot be encroached by larger things.

   In the other, somebody is merely pissed of about what I said about them.

   >They are in fact almost forcing people to participate in order to have any control whatsoever over what is being said about them.

   Well, another live human being doesn’t get to trump my free expression of will, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to live with that Alana, or except that some code of bloggers has to be imposed from some committee on the Internet, which no one wants to do.

   But bots aren’t humans. They are the instrument of someone’s will, however, and that will isn’t willing to be restrained. It should be. It’s grabbing information from me. Going in one direction. Very different than me putting out expression about another resident.

   >The maker of TrustNet has actually stated that opting out isn’t possible. The slrealreps site states that you have to pay them to have anything said about you removed.

   No, you just have to pay to see what is said about you, then write your own self-defense, or you mutually can get it removed.

   In the Sims Online, no one ever had a problem in exchanging balloons and writing something, usually funny and nice, because it was part of gaining skills and enhanced reputation. You could also “negrate” people by gloving them. Everybody played that part of the game, without getting into a clutch about “no opt out”.

   >Can you honestly stand by your support of the ratings systems and not see the contradiction?

   Absolutely. Because there isn’t a contradition. One involves saying “no” to people like you who want to restrain my freedom of expression. Another says saying “no” to a bot that wants to force me to have a conversation with it about what’s on my yard.
   Posted by: Allana Dion | April 14, 2007 at 01:13 AM
3. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   BTW, I love how you and others here have falsely morphed my mere REPORTING on various ratings systems and my characterization of the Lindens removing content — which indeed they are doing — as some kind of overall *endorsement* of ratings systems and some importunate demand to denounce any that don’t have opt-in only.

   I simply refuse to play that game. I don’t care much about ratings and social media based on constantly rating stuff (I found that one of the really creepy things about omidyar.net for example). I hate the ratings on ebay. I hate the Slashdot system. All of this stuff is really anaethema to me, as it is all about trying to harness the dumbness of the crowd in the name of a fake democracy instead of having reasonable human judgement. If I have a bad experience with a seller on ebay, what good does it do me if that person has 100 satisfactory customers? I hate the majoritarian approach that these systems bring to the scene.

   I’m merely going to play along with them, however, if they are introduced into the scene, especially if on the Lindens’ client.
4. 

   Allana Dion
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   >”BTW, I love how you and others here have falsely morphed my mere REPORTING on various ratings systems … as some kind of overall *endorsement* of ratings systems.”

   *ahem* “… but I personally am liking Shaun Altman’s slrealreps.com …

   … I would say try all the ones Jeska recommends plus slrealreps.com which she missed”

   >”I understand that you, as a long-time troller and stalker of me, are trying mightily to find something to discredit my fundamentally valid critique of the Sheep Search.”

   As I’ve tried to point out before, I only crossed paths with you by chance this past year, I’ve been a fan of using forums and blogs and things for a number of years. The fact that I knew you as far back as TSO, but it’s only been recently I’ve had anything whatsoever to say to you, should make it clear that you’re barely a blip on my radar.

   I do not “stalk” you prokofy, we simply disagree fairly often.

   >”there is simply no other way to get people to pay for a system like this unless you prick their curiosity, so that they want to see what other people have said about them.”

   Which basically amounts to extortion. As a basic free account holder you can see that someone has said something negative about you, but you have to pay in to be able to read it or respond to it.

   If he wants to charge people (and he has every right to) he should be charging the individuals who wish to GIVE feedback about others and they should not be able to give any feedback on someone who has not signed up and paid for an account.

   But since Shawn Altman has personally stated to me that he plans to stick to the current method, I will be choosing to not participate and therefore anything anyone writes about me on that site, I guess I just don’t need to read. (His words)

   But Prokofy, you can’t seriously be equating this with balloon buddies in TSO. People in TSO weren’t running real business that connect to real money for them. They weren’t dealing with situations where a professional reputation can be seriously damaged.

   When I signed up for TSO, I chose to participate in that ridiculous balloon thing. When I signed up for SL I chose to participate in the (gamed as it was) profile ratings.

   I did not choose to participate in outside website ratings systems, which have more potential for drama and gossip than actual usefulness, when I bought my SL account.

   As much as you dislike the Sheep Bot, and have every right to your opinion, at least it does have the ability to choose NOT to participate. These ratings sites are not even offering that much.

   I’m not overly concerned about my own reputation as you are the only person I know who will have anything negative they feel just needs to be said. But I am shocked that you are not more fully considering how incredibly gamed this thing will be and what an effective griefer tool it is.

   But nevermind, forget it. I’m done for now. This is all just so childish…rating each other. *sigh*
5. 

   Artemis Fate
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   “Can you honestly stand by your support of the ratings systems and not see the contradiction?”

   “I understand that you, as a long-time troller and stalker of me, are trying mightily to find something to discredit my fundamentally valid critique of the Sheep Search. And trying to find some “contradiction” or “hypocrisy” with regard to it. So go ahead, play that game, feel the rich, deep, gleeful, malicious inner satisfaction that comes from being “right” and “showing someone else to be wrong” and trying to goad, poke, needle, and harass me. I realize this is a great sport for you and others.”

   And there you have it. He beat his contradictions and hypocrisies with his blistering insanity and shifty-eyed paranoia. Consider that lesson #248 in the book of “Why Prok is a nutbag: Teacher’s edition”

   “I love how you and others here have falsely morphed my mere REPORTING on various ratings systems and my characterization of the Lindens removing content”

   You know, speaking of things we “love”, I love how you consider yourself a reporter, and call this reporting, yet don’t understand the concept that reporting fundamentally includes objectivity.

   Now, I hate to inform you, but this is not objective:

   “I tried out Slicr today, after being a bit annoyed at being spammed repeatedly in IMs and emails to try it.”

   “Still, nothing beats the Linden’s own interface, since they can make it work best.”

   If you’d stopped before the “I tried out Slicr” 3 paragraph first person editorial rant part, it could be considering objective with a slant, but since you had to talk about how you feel about the difference services, you sacrificed objectivity and thus the concept of calling it a report and changing it to an editorial.

   Anyways, it’s clear from the article that you’re slanted towards “pro-ratings”, after all who would consider ratings to be “user created content”, it’s just adding +1 to a system completely made and controlled by the Lindens, and that somehow this is some breach of creativity (after all, how will people be able to express their creativity in SL without paying 25L$ to add the number 1 to a score developed by Lindens!). All that plus the end make it obvious where you stand on the issue.
6. 

   Ian Betteridge
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   Let’s just look at the kind of “feedback” that Prokofy is leaving on SLRealReps. All of these are “negative” ratings.

   Groove Mechanique: “To plunk a store with bright lights right smack into the waterfront area is just hugely inconsiderate… I view this action as griefing”.

   Howard Rheingold: “Howard Rheingold’s fascination with “collectives” and “groups” in Second Life seriously worry me…”

   Angel Fluffy: “Angel Fluffy is one of the most problematic people in SL, due to his cunning hijacking of the voter tool reform and his intensive preoccupation with “security” in SL which actually winds up harming the rights and liberties of SL residents in very serious ways.”

   …and so on. Not only can you not have these ratings removed without paying up (and having the consent of the person who wrote it), but without registering *you can’t read feedback about yourself*. Of course, registration is free, but you can’t opt out at all.

   And of course, non-opt out makes sense in this context. If you could opt out, someone who scammed lots of people could (and would) simply opt out.

   The same is true of SheepSearch. If the system was opt-in only, it would be useless. But this doesn’t matter to Prokofy, because her point isn’t about opt in being intrinsically better than opt out: it’s not about privacy either, because a site like SLRealRep is as much of a violation of privacy potentially.

   Prokofy’s concern, as it usually is, is based on her belief in the primacy of property – by which she means real, tangible things like land, not intellectual property. Once you realise that everything Prokofy says is based in the view that land ownership matters more than anything else, and that SL land is bound by the same moral laws as RL land, then her rants at least have a basis in reason – even if the way she expresses that reason is vicious, bile-filled and generally rhetorical rather than rational.

   Of course, her philosophical position isn’t tenable for many reasons, but that’s another argument – and one that she will never, ever engage anyone in rationally. She will start the abuse almost as soon as you ask her a reasoned question, because she is so wedding to her intellectual position that she will defend it literally until her last breath. Like all true believers, she’s become so close to an idea as to become the living embodiment of that idea.
7. 

   cickmy lunt
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   “that’s what Second Citizen is like — a place you shouldn’t validate with any kind of presence there, with an avatar, and threads originally posted”

   oh okay so you dont post there thanks for clearing that up
8. 

   Apple
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   Ok thats a hell of a lot of comments. But basically the question is this: Do you want more reliable Secondlife, or do you want ratings. I want more reliable secondlife, and I’ve never given a toss about ratings, so personally, out the window they go. If the Lindens want to develop an offworld system for ratings, perhapes even a myspace-esque type 2d ‘traditional’ web platform type dealy for ratings, and bio, and some youtube crap, and etc etc, then wonderful. it’d knock ratings into a cocked hat easily. If they cant be arsed, then also cool – server load decreases and performance goes up. By the way this is Apple posting here, whenever i write a comment here it says someone else did it and posts a blank post by apple underneth. I’ve even been profky, once. Anyway Apple is as apple does, so there you go.
9. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Apr 14th, 2007
   

   Oh, I like how THAT works. YOU don’t give a toss, so “out they go”. YOU are what the Lindens serve over a thing like this?

   I think if they asked people, they’d say, sure, if you can make SL work better, we’re happy to let our CONTENT go.

   But they should ASK. After all people PAID FOR THIS CONTENT. They are not getting a rebate, refund, anything. They are just getting SCREWED.

   THAT IS WRONG.

   Of course, there’s a coterie of people like yourself who says SCREW EVERYBODY WE GET TO DO WHAT WE WANT. But most people would say, you know, we don’t get why you get to do this. We paid for these ratings, they mean something. We took the time to put them in, they mean something. They’re our content. Take it away if you must, but provide due compensation.
10. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Apr 14th, 2007
    

    The usual tendentious tripe from the premiere trollster, Ian Betteridge. Most of my profiles there are positive. Even for Philip Linden, my God!

    But he selectively picks out a few negative ones. And my God, I sure do get to leave negative feedback about people when they do bad things.

    I’m so glad you gave more publicity to this bad action:
    Groove Mechanique: “To plunk a store with bright lights right smack into the waterfront area is just hugely inconsiderate… I view this action as griefing”.

    I have a poll behind this store about what people should do about grief builds — come and vote! Groove Mechanique even tried to abuse-report me, and tried to get my voter removed, from a Linden who was probably five minutes ago a resident, but I just overturned it. I put it back. And it’s staying. You don’t get to remove content from my lawn like that, and meanwhile give a pass to somebody building a grief build. As grief builds go, it isn’t the worst, but it’s in the wrong place, and deliberately, so as to create an annoyance. The person who sold this piece of land who is old-time FIC did this deliberately.

    >Howard Rheingold: “Howard Rheingold’s fascination with “collectives” and “groups” in Second Life seriously worry me…”

    And so they do. You don’t get to have THAT much influence on the making of entire worlds of virtuality and not have some feedback from people like me who dont’ want the collective to dominate the individual. As it does for you.

    >Angel Fluffy: “Angel Fluffy is one of the most problematic people in SL, due to his cunning hijacking of the voter tool reform and his intensive preoccupation with “security” in SL which actually winds up harming the rights and liberties of SL residents in very serious ways.”

    A seriously scary phenomenon, and one that right-thinking people need to be worried about. The Lindens let one person decide whose content gets to be removed. A very, very troublesome precedent, and one you should be a lot more worried about than you are.

    >…and so on. Not only can you not have these ratings removed without paying up (and having the consent of the person who wrote it), but without registering *you can’t read feedback about yourself*. Of course, registration is free, but you can’t opt out at all.

    Well, better not to read negative feedback from yourself then, eh? I mean why PAY to read stuff you think is false or wrong? On the other hand, those using the service can now think about some serious problems in SL caused by these serious interveners. What, our mouths are to be stopped up by little tekkie-wiki dweebs like yourself?!

    By your logic, nobody in SL should ever make content you don’t like, that you might disagree with, and therefore we need a content-clearance committee that you and your little friends run.

    >And of course, non-opt out makes sense in this context. If you could opt out, someone who scammed lots of people could (and would) simply opt out.

    >The same is true of SheepSearch. If the system was opt-in only, it would be useless. But this doesn’t matter to Prokofy, because her point isn’t about opt in being intrinsically better than opt out: it’s not about privacy either, because a site like SLRealRep is as much of a violation of privacy potentially.

    I’ve made a profoundly persuasive argumentation about this that you cannot sidestep. One person — even 100 people in a club – can take very actions you might like or not like. But they are limited by scale and remedy. THat is, the remedies against them are more apparently and useable and their scale is naturally limited.

    Not so with CopyBot and SearchBot.

    >Prokofy’s concern, as it usually is, is based on her belief in the primacy of property – by which she means real, tangible things like land, not intellectual property.

    ABSO FUCKING LUTELY champ. Intellectual property is only ONE KIND of property. It is not even necessarily the BEST KIND. There absolutely must be private property in the form of real estate, houses, land, server space that can be built up as a HEDGE against the content-fascists who inevitably take over when IP is the only form of value recognized.

    In a world where IP is the only form of value, then code-as-law reigns, and coders become a tiny, ruling, unaccountable elite.

    Even the things I buy from them they call “not my property” but “their software” which I am “only licensed” to use.

    Hell no, I won’t go.

    So my property rights have to be very emphatically confirmed as a very proper check and balance on their rule, which is misrule, and a malignancy in cyberspace.

    >Once you realise that everything Prokofy says is based in the view that land ownership matters more than anything else, and that SL land is bound by the same moral laws as RL land, then her rants at least have a basis in reason – even if the way she expresses that reason is vicious, bile-filled and generally rhetorical rather than rational.

    No, your notion that content fascism trumps all is what is bile-filled. Your notion that an automatic bot gets to have more rights than people is what is bile-filled. Something that pushes back against bile-filled stuff can sound bile-filled, but who was bile-filled first? An aggressive, unthinking bot representing a human will trumping every one else’s will against their will.

    Land has always been an important basis of civilization. Those who want to deconstruct and destroy civilization always attack land first, and come up with various ideas of how it can be “socialized” or “communized” or taken by the state in eminent domain. Land, in whatever form it takes, real or virtual, is vital to keep as a domain to protect the individual and his rights, and the group and its rights, against other groups and individuals bent on taking over.

    >Of course, her philosophical position isn’t tenable for many reasons, but that’s another argument – and one that she will never, ever engage anyone in rationally.

    I have the rationality, the law, the philosophy of the ages behind me affirming private property as a hedge against the king. You don’t. You have five minutes of human history where hubris and irrationality have taken over merely because the form of nature is different and not carbon-based.

    >She will start the abuse almost as soon as you ask her a reasoned question, because she is so wedding to her intellectual position that she will defend it literally until her last breath. Like all true believers, she’s become so close to an idea as to become the living embodiment of that idea.

    Absolutely. And it’s a good thing, too! Because the really smart people haven’t shown up yet. Not enough minds are applied to these problems. There’s only mediocrities like yourself banging dully on a drum, a monkey banging a bone on an obelisk.
11. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Apr 14th, 2007
    

    P.S. and I hope the reader can see what those critics of rating systems are trying to achieve: systems THEY can control and repression of people’s legitimate criticism (or even illegitimate, it’s up to them) so that they can always whitewash themselves.
12. 

    Allana Dion
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    The whole idea of rating someone and writing up comments about them on some website is highschoolish, it’s myspace kiddie drama. The reason the old positive ratings worked for awhile (and yes there was a time when it was actually really popular, waaaaayyy back) was because the idea behind it was to compliment someone’s skills or behavior. If you really admired someone’s build, you rated their building skills. If someone helped you in some way or performed a kindness, you rated their behavior. If you saw someone with a really amazing avatar you rated their appearance.

    Back when it was possible to neg rate someone, it was nothing but a griefing tool. People could do things like track down someone and triple neg rate them and leave and never have to explain themselves. A shop owner would ban someone from their land for some awful behavior and be neg rated for it by that person and there was no choice but to accept it. It was gamed and useless for everyone but the assholes who gamed it.

    Getting rid of the ratings is not a sudden decision. I know it feels that way for people who are fairly new, even those less than a year old. But the fact is that the Lindens have been saying they would eventually phase out the ratings system for quite awhile now. What they probably should have done when they made the announcement, was reminded people of that rather than chalking it up to a database issue.

    As I mentioned in the Linden Blog, the majority of these new resident created ratings systems are mere toys, they have little to no impact on anyone who doesn’t choose to participate.

    But Slrealreps is a griefer tool. It is designed to be one. The person who created it knows the damage it can do and intentionally designed it that way, in my opinion. Throughout this I have been stunned that it would be something Prokofy, who speaks out against griefing and for the protection of people’s rights so often, would actually not only use but support.

    However today, I found out why.

    ————————-

    Prokofy’s feedback on Shaun’s profile:

    Left By: Prokofy Neva (Feedback Received: 0 Total, 100% Positive)
    Left About: Shaun Altman (Feedback Received: 10 Total, 100% Positive)
    Date: January 26, 2007
    Type: Positive Feedback
    Shaun has long been among my best friends in SL. He is among the most innovative of avatars, having founded the first stock market and also worked hard at getting a workable ratings system created. I’ve always enjoyed Shaun’s sense of humour and dry take on SL. While I wouldn’t say that Shaun is unflappable, I would say he is reliably flappable. He is a reliable business partner and has a flair for interior decorating.

    ————————

    >”Shaun has long been among my best friends in SL.”

    >”I personally am liking Shaun Altman’s slrealreps.com ”

    I’m no longer stunned.
13. 

    Mem
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    Wait? Prok is actually supporting a system that isn’t just not opt-in, but it is impossible to opt-out of? Wow, I wonder if her few supporters who are currently raising respective stinks on the message boards of other third party rating sites, about the lack of opt-in options and the flat out inability to opt-out are aware of Prok’s apparent double standard on this issue?

    At least with the ESC search there was multiple methods available to opt-out of the system and unlike SLrealreps.com one didn’t have to become a ‘premium’ paying member to even be able to rejoin or reply to (with no way to remove false negative ratings or attacks unless both parties agree to do so) the negative rating attacks Prok has historically and (apparently from the above posting still) currently enjoys using.

    I’d say I was surprised at the double standard, but I’m not.
14. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    There isn’t any double standard, Mem, and I think if you read what is said here and other threads about the distinctions proper to *scale* and *remedy* not to mention *volition* you might grasp it. You can only *find* a double standard because you don’t really wish to think about this, you just wish to spout off something nasty against me, from long practice and for the sake of tribal bonding. Try to think about it deeper.

    People must have the right to express their opinion about other people, even negative opinion. What, you’re for shutting them all up out of some fake notion of “privacy” or “opt-out”? But that’s ridiculous. You don’t have that in RL and you can’t have it here. How dare you prevent people from free speech and free assembly? this is people doing the talking here.

    How frivolous and even SINISTER to proclaim that what BOTS engage in is free speech and freedom of assembly? In fact, they engage in abrogating that from people by intrusion.

    In RL, you have the inviolability of the home and the person, and private property. And the emulation of that in SL is important, whatever the scorn of your particular clique, to most people.

    The bot scrapes that info without consent, for its own commercial purposes, automatically. The comment I make on my blog is made of my own volition.

    By finding a “double standard here,” you are playing your true hand, as tekkies always do, when they reveal they are merely about power over other people.

    In the case of Slrealreps.com, you want to shut me up, prevent me from expressing my opinion, in the name of some putative discomfort or embarassment someone might feel. So… people get to be assholes for ever, protected from free criticism? No one ever gets to complain about a business, a fraud, an arbitrary behaviour?!

    You dislike that they have to pay $99 to find out what was said, never reflecting that they can chose a higher road and simply not care, not pay the $99, and not enter that world of unseemly gossip — if that’s how it seems to them. If that’s all it is, like Second Citizen, it will have a die-hard, but small following ultimately.

    However, if you bother to join it, you’ll find the overwhelming number of comments from me and others are positive, interesting, and helpful. They help you explore SL.

    Then in the other case, you also want to exert power over me. You want to have a bot take something from me that I haven’t given voluntarily, my parcel and avatar information. Why? For the sake of one group of tekkies in a commercial operation who want power over people.

    That’s all it’s about.

    In the case of my particular negative ratings, I’m attempting to publicize some criticisms and concerns that are real, in the interests of these people not being able to gain exclusive power and influence over Second Life.

    And in the case of my campaign against Grid Shepherd, again, I’m for an automatic bot not having power over people against their will.

    Ultimately, the world of Slrealreps when you look at it now is a small world. I doubt it has more than a few hundred members. If anyone dislikes what’s written about them — which they can only learn about from hearsay — they can join for a nominal price and print a rebuttal and criticize the person back. There is scale — small — and remedy — rebuttal space — and that scale remains manageable even if used by thousands.

    With Grid Shepherd, the scale is the *entire grid and every parcel*. He has more than 700,000 objects catalogued and his appetite is unsatiable. I cannot stop him from cataloguing because he crosses even bans with his radar; I can’t stop MY GROUP LAND from showing up in his pages. I can only opt-out from my own creations and owned objects, which is hardly of much concern (my owned land is far more relevant as I *own it* and *he does not* and I have *tenants on it* whose privacy I’d like to protect. On the mainland, you cannot ban avatars at one flick across sims unless you use things that bring with them their own problems like Ban-Link, so it’s a huge nuisance.

    No, the only double standard is in your approach which is always and everywhere about giving over power to tekkies and taking it away from those who object to them — you want freedom to take away other people’s information and exploit it for your own ends, and you want oppression for those who criticize this state of affairs.
15. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    >”Shaun has long been among my best friends in SL.”

    >”I personally am liking Shaun Altman’s slrealreps.com ”

    I’m no longer stunned.

    Um, what’s to be stunned about? I see a Linden putting up her little friends and her little favourites, and I think to correct it with somebody ELSE she hasn’t included, for whatever reason. And it definitely needs including. Having someone as a friend doesn’t preclude you from including them in a discussion of all the kinds of services there are. I also wrote about SLICR and my use of it even though I never heard of those people. And I praised SLOOG, even though I never heard of those people.

    What would be acceptable for YOU, Alana, who always plays the role of the contrarian bitch? Leaving out your friend deliberately even though they BELONG in the list?

    Hey, if you have some other rating/social media type services you feel have been left out, list them, and STFU.
16. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    The whole idea of rating someone and writing up comments about them on some website is highschoolish, it’s myspace kiddie drama.

    I agree. I rarely take the time to bother with things like that. I don’t have a MySpace, and I can’t keep up with slprofiles.com, it’s just too boring. As soon as I saw it was merely a device for Flipper or Spin to show off how many friends they could make, I lost interest. Nothing interesting is said really.

    It’s precisely because I don’t like these things that I wrote “I’m personally liking Shaun Altman’s SLrealreps.com”

    Do you have any idea how long this has been out, Allana? Shaun invented and posted this thing probably six months ago or more.

    If I was the payola type and boosting my friends, the way people do in SL all the time, don’t you think I would have blogged it, woven it into stories, put it on my profile, and boosted it a million times BEFORE NOW? DUH?

    Instead, when I was writing about something ELSE, which was the Lindens removal of content (the main story) and commenting on Jeska’s picks, I *corrected* what was an obvious omission by putting in Shaun’s thing.

    Your desire to make hay and drama over this only makes YOU look bad. Hey, I really need to visit your store, find your objects, and rate this shit out of you : )

    >The reason the old positive ratings worked for awhile (and yes there was a time when it was actually really popular, waaaaayyy back) was because the idea behind it was to compliment someone’s skills or behavior. If you really admired someone’s build, you rated their building skills. If someone helped you in some way or performed a kindness, you rated their behavior. If you saw someone with a really amazing avatar you rated their appearance.

    yeah, but you can’t just have a life of Pollyannas and happy little trees in the corner. Positive means nothing if you can’t have negative. If you can’t negrate a lousy builder or prefab maker who has just bilked you, the posrate you give a talented and helpful person means nothing.

    >Back when it was possible to neg rate someone, it was nothing but a griefing tool. People could do things like track down someone and triple neg rate them and leave and never have to explain themselves.

    No, it was a useful tool, that scared ninnies and thin-skinned children on the forums who were shocked that they had even one negrate from people less than thrilled with their bullying and capering on the forums worked very hard to remove. It was a great system. I’m proud to have given Philip Linden himself one of only 8 negrates on his avatar — for GOMing the GOM. He should have had thousands. You people aer spineless nits.

    >A shop owner would ban someone from their land for some awful behavior and be neg rated for it by that person and there was no choice but to accept it. It was gamed and useless for everyone but the assholes who gamed it.

    Good! I think it was a useful corrective. Everyone knows people banned from land leave negates. So? In some cases, the negrates are legitimate. If someone has 1000 posrates and 3 negrates or even 30, so what? Everyone realises those are just from malcontents or wierdos. Except…maybe not. And if 300 start to accrue, then you realize where there is smoke, there is fire!

    >Getting rid of the ratings is not a sudden decision. I know it feels that way for people who are fairly new, even those less than a year old. But the fact is that the Lindens have been saying they would eventually phase out the ratings system for quite awhile now. What they probably should have done when they made the announcement, was reminded people of that rather than chalking it up to a database issue.

    What’s annoying is that they bilked $25 out of everybody for months while they tested all their idiotic crowd-sourcing “yessing” stuff. It’s like the voter, where you can only vote “yes”. They wanted to see if there was “emergent behaviour” and whether people so valued the plussing they’d pay $25 for it. And lots did. Way more than expected. But not enough to keep it.

    >As I mentioned in the Linden Blog, the majority of these new resident created ratings systems are mere toys, they have little to no impact on anyone who doesn’t choose to participate.

    And…that’s the case of Shaun’s, believe it or not. So why are your knickers in a twist?

    >But Slrealreps is a griefer tool. It is designed to be one. The person who created it knows the damage it can do and intentionally designed it that way, in my opinion. Throughout this I have been stunned that it would be something Prokofy, who speaks out against griefing and for the protection of people’s rights so often, would actually not only use but support.

    OH, that’s utter bullshit. I can leave comments about people on slreps.com I can leave comments on Twitter. I can leave comments on their blog or my blog or hire a blimp, for God’s sake. Why all this sudden girly nervousness about the modern equivalent of slambooks? They are as old as humanity. You cannot stop them. And you cannot stop freedom of the press, either, so please get off that train. I’d never speak out for the protection of privacy trumping the protection of free speech. That’s ridiculous. And privacy is vulnerable to those who are scraping data in commercial interests. Those speaking out against bad actors in SL if anything are trying to both protect commercial interests of their own, and their own reputations, and try to prevent others from libeling them without recourse.

    Trolling, trolling, trolling, Allana, and being a contrarian bitch. It doesn’t fly, as you’ve only attracted more readership to slrealreps.com than it might ever have had. I’m glad my friend Shaun Altman got $99 out of you : )
17. 

    Allana Dion
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    >”Hey, I really need to visit your store, find your objects, and rate this shit out of you”

    >”I’m glad my friend Shaun Altman got $99 out of you”

    See the final update toward the end of the post, and I’m done.
    http://www.allanadion.com/?p=93
18. 

    Aloe Stradling
    

    Apr 15th, 2007
    

    I just kinda want my money back for all the ratings they just made worthless. Sure, it’s only about 500-700, but, I don’t like having thingas I paid for wiped out.
19. 

    Da Truf
    

    Apr 16th, 2007
    

    Hey Prokofy, it’s pretty fucking funny that you accuse someone of being a “troll” and then become the troll yourself by calling the same person a “contrarian bitch”. PROTIP: the fact that someone disagrees with you openly does not mean that they are persecuting you.

    However I’m thankful you’ve finally laid it bare. I’ve been reading your insane rantings for a few months now, and I’ve always just wondered if I just wasn’t patient enough to read your posts all the way through (twice as long as needed, irrelevant side rants, etc). This blatant hypocrisy is irrefutable proof that you are no better than anyone you slander.
20. 

    Hexx Triskaidekaphobia
    

    Apr 16th, 2007
    

    Ratings say nothing about building skills, or social skills. Good thing they are going to be ditched. And anyone who feels the need to show some appreciation for someone else, can just as easily give them L$ 25,- (or L$ 10,-, or L$ 100,-, or whatever).

    This isn’t highschool, miss Prokofy, where grades count for something.
21. 

    Alexandra Serrati
    

    Apr 16th, 2007
    

    I honestly don’t see much coming from this. If a limited group of people keeps a web-accessible database of their various affections/animosities towards other people in SL, it only differs in persistency from posts in a forum or blog, and the fact that even reading the ratings comes with costs practically guarantees that it will be simply another parlor-game where gossip can be bantered.

    It would be different if LL endorsed this service as part of SL, or if this service would gain credibility otherwise, but as it is competing rating sites can be set up easily enough, and potential corporate customers for the incidental publicity stunt of having the opening of a SL-presence reported in serious media are unlikely to rely on a source with practically no significance.

    If people are willing to pay the operator of this service for yet another avenue for gossiping, then more power to him.
22. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Apr 16th, 2007
    

    Hi, Alexandra, how’s the forums psychiatry biz?

    LL just endorsed a bunch of services, and yes, they all have negative characterizations somewhere.

    It’s like the way they endorse the odious Second Citizen, calling it a mere “social site” under their new CONNECTIONS section. Ugh!

    You’re going to be seriously overtaken by events by things like this.

    da Truf: PROTIP! Don’t use a nick if you wish to be taken seriously! and here’s a telegram: ATTN: DA TRUF STOP. ALLANA HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CONTRARIAN BITCH STOP. LONG BEFORE YOU WERE EVEN BORN STOP. THE TRUTH HURTS STOP. BEST, PROKOFY STOP

    BTW, Facts on File: I have left 11 comments on other people. 63 percent of them are positive. None of them are about Allana…yet! Most of them are SL musicians, builders, and my favourite Lindens, and most are positive. A few are about grief-builders and a nasty landlord. Nothing very fascinating. Just testing out the system.

    I could arrange to use it more, though : )
23. 

    Nbkvqfk
    

    Jun 1st, 2007
    

    http://10.freesexxnet.info x
24. 

    Hazim Gazov
    

    Jun 1st, 2007
    

    Hahaha, oh wow. ^5 bot.
25. 

    Zmajrhx
    

    Jun 3rd, 2007
    

    http://sexxarab.info x

Leave a Reply