However, my usual response is to ask the person why they feel that way. Sometimes it’s because they bought a product and didn’t like it. If it’s because of a bug, I make a note of it and it goes in the list of fixes for the next update (and I try to make sure that the person knows that I take it seriously). If it’s because the person simply had difficulty understanding how to use the product or had trouble adjusting various settings, I usually refer them to a Customer Service Rep who’s online (I don’t usually do CSR work…not because I’m a scripter, but because I’m an arrogant jackass and even I admit that I’m ill-suited to the role).

Sometimes the person simply hates our company or products because of rumors or because they prefer another brand. I’ll sometimes pull out a recent product and show off some cool features that I think the person would enjoy. I’ve actually seen someone go from swearing that we were pure evil to asking me when the product would be released so that he could buy one. Granted, not everyone will react like that, and some people will just be assholes regardless, or just want to start a fight. The “mute” button is usually sufficient in those cases.

I have never had to file an AR based on someone saying “BlackOps SUX.” I’ve criticized other people’s products in SL as well, of course. All of this usually falls under free speech, and the mute button exists for a reason, use it.

But filing an abuse report for a license plate that says “JLU Sux” is wasting resources that could be put to better use. What happens if you guys are having an AR party over a “JLU SUX” license plate, and as a result, reports of people trying to crash the vehicle sandbox in Balance wind up waiting at the end of a long queue? Then you’ve actually enabled griefers by clogging the system with stupid ARs.

Further, isn’t the owner of that car someone for whom you have RL information in your database? I tried to avoid reading pages on the leaked wiki that contained any RL info, because I really don’t care to know, and my memory is spotty anyways due to a combination of neurological damage and powerful anticonvulsants, but I do believe that I remembered that individual as being one of the persons on whom you had RL information.

Is that really how low the bar is to have the JLU seek out private RL info? Rezzing a car in a sandbox with a license plate that says “JLU SUX”?

Hell, I’ve criticized the Herald plenty of times in comments here (and I’d like to think that my comments on Little Lost Linden’s bothunt were helpful, even if they were harsh), and some of my comments might even have been insulting to the Herald and to its readership. Nonetheless, I’ve signed my comments with my SL screename and included my actual email address. To my knowledge, the Herald staff have kept my email address hidden (as is proper), and have not retaliated in any way. Similarly, I have left comments on Prok’s blog disagreeing with that individual, and also using my SL screename and email address. Prok has not retaliated in any manner either, to my knowledge, except to submit a comment in response to mine.

To my knowledge, none of the above individuals made any attempt to compile and disseminate personal RL info about me. Why? Because that’s just sick and disturbing. Hell, Joshua Nightshade was mentioned above, and he and I have had many disagreements in the past, saying things to each other that were far worse than “JLU SUX” and yet to my knowledge he has not retaliated or attempted to compile and distribute RL info about me either.

So let’s make sure I get this straight, as to what statements might be deemed acceptable:

“SecondLife/Alphaville Herald SUX” – acceptable, no ARs filed, no personal info collected, will probably be mocked in ensuing comments, but that’s about it.

“Prokofy Neva SUX” – Acceptable, no ARs filed, likely to result in an understandably angry response, but no personal info collected.

“Joshua Nightshade SUX” – Acceptable, no ARs filed, likely to result in rather vulgar but humorous comments back and forth, with both of us displaying a maturity level that would make the creators of “Animal House” cringe. But in the end, no personal info collected.

“JLU SUX” – Not Acceptable, multiple ARs would be filed, and personal data would then be collected and placed in a wiki accessible to all JLU members.

Do I have that just about right? So then I shudder to think about what my previous comments calling your organization a bunch of vigilante wannabe superheros whose spandex panties were cutting off circulation to your brain will result in? Will I be labelled a griefer, and have my RL name and picture distributed to all of your members? I would strongly advise against doing so.

As to your comment on the world being a dangerous place, I am well aware of this. I have looked right into the eyes of a drunken, mentally unstable ex-con as he waved a knife at me, and then when I locked his arm up, I watched his face go dead white when he realized that his wrist and arm were about to break, and he dropped the knife so fast it practically bounced off the floor. It was stupid of me to have stepped into that situation in the first place, but believe me, I am well aware that the world can be a dangerous place.

The difference between you and me is, I prefer to think that people are generally good, and I try only to act to try to defuse a situation. I see no need to take pre-emptive action by compiling people’s private information. If a dangerous situation arises, it should be handled appropriately, with the goal being to end the situation as peacefully as possible. I have difficulty seeing how most things in a video game could even begin to rise to the sort of level that action would need to be taken. The closest I can think of would be various SEC JIRA tickets taken to close loopholes that could crash sims or clients, or use a sim for a DoS attack. Rather than compile personal information on the people using such devices, rational people acted to end the situation by working with LL to prevent such exploits from being used.

Seriously GLC, you and Kalel need to seek behavioral health support. Let video games be video games. If it poses a legitimate threat to the platform, report the exploit being used and try to get it fixed. If someone tries to stalk you in RL (as Tizzers was accused of), then let law enforcement deal with it.

But other than that, just let a video game be a fucking video game and get over yourselves about whether a car had an offensive license plate. Unless they’re directly affecting your ability to enjoy SL, or actually affecting your RL, you guys need to just let it go. Think about how much easier the G/RESI team’s job would be if the ARs in SL dropped by 10%. They might actually be able to concentrate on real griefers instead of someone rezzing a cop car as a parody.

But should RL be stored on an external DB? Of course not, it is nothing short of Obsessive Cyberstalking! It is irrelevant that it is not available to the public. Neither Kalel nor any of the groups ‘leaders’ know the psychological profile of its members. If fact a group like the JLU would attract them. Google for the profile of a Cyberstalker/Cyberbully.

At the end of the day Second Life is a game type social experiment which allows people to be anyone they want, and for the most part this is good, but sometimes it is very bad. I am not the one to pass judgement on the JLU members. But I have (as is my entitlement) my opinions.

Peace and love!

“Interestingly, this is similar to the plot of a comic book story, which I’m sure you can relate to in this situation; Very appropriately, it’s even a Justice League comic. Batman has been secretly keeping detailed information on all his fellow leaguers, strengths, weaknesses, history, and how to defeat them, without their knowledge. This information gets leaked and used against the league by the villains, who practically decimate the league with it, in true comic book fashion they eventually overcome the villains and manage to keep the league from being destroyed. However, the ultimate result of it? Batman is kicked out of the league for secretly keeping and gathering this information, by Superman’s swing vote no less.

Something to think about.”

This is priceless 8D

@GLE

“So the end result is that both JLU’s web server and Senban Babii’s computer have the personal RL information of a few SL avatars on their hard disks. You say yours is a legitimate use, we say ours is a legitimate use. None of the information from either hard disk is being used to harass or stalk people. To say that one use is legitimate but the other isn’t is, in my opinion, a judgment call.”

This is a false argument, probably one of those strawman or red herring or argumentum infinitum things that people bandy about so much these days. I’ve never figured them out tbh so I’ll stick with “THIS ARE BOLLOCKS” because it gets the point across nicely

The Nazis (ONOZ GODWIN’S LAW!) conducted experiments on people to amass a large database of scientific data on how the human body responds to cold etc. Such a database is obviously unethical, immoral and so forth. If I later have a copy of that database for the purposes of writing a book about Nazi atrocities in the mid-20th century, you simply can’t compare the two. One is the primary source of the ethical problem, the other is the legitimate use of the information for reporting of the facts. If I had a copy of your JLU wiki on my hard disk for the purpose of picking up where you left off, of continuing your work or recreating it, *then* you could compare the two.

“You should name it “Cuddles” and put a pink bow on its head. ”

Cuddles sends hugs <3

“As I recall, the license plate on that car said “JLU SUX” or something similar, or maybe there was something insulting written on the side of it. It looked to me like they were asking to be ARed for it, so I gave them what they wanted. “Intolerance” and “Defaming Individuals or Groups” is roughly the same thing. Back when the GTeam was holding office hours, they gave us conflicting information about that. One week they said that defamation and intolerance applied only to RL people or groups, so if someone said something bad about furries, that couldn’t be classified as intolerance. A week or two later, a different group of GTeamers said that defamation and intolerance applied to SL groups as well as RL groups. The second group seemed to be more sure of themselves, so we took their guidance as the gospel.”

The G-Team has a tendancy to give conflicting opinions. The community standards defines specifically:

“The use of derogatory or demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is never allowed in Second Life.”

Furries are none of the above nor is your group. I believe the other interpretation would leave some questions to ask, like is any speaking out against of any group intolerance then? Therefore all your speaking against PN or griefing groups would be intolerance. As I consider intolerance, you can only be intolerant of something that isn’t a choice: primarily ethnicity and gender(And yes I purposely do not include religion). I see a message like “JLU SUX” as no more intolerant than someone saying “The New York Yankees Suck!” at a baseball game.

“No, I can’t. As I said, the page was created in 2007 and I don’t know why the personal information is on it.”

Then it seems like this is a question to take to the leadership, why they’ve been collecting this information that neither you or I can see any reason for having. I trust in your ability to do so.

“The wiki leak occurred “on or about July 17, 2008.” Nikola was removed from the JLU on July 26, 2007. All of the ARs on Nikola were written between August 18 and December 23, 2007. Here’s the basis for one set of ARs against Nikola: “In the first of many instances of content theft, Nikola distributed scripts of an early version of Brainiac Mini. For his efforts he received an AR party which resulted in his first suspension by LL which only embittered him further.” Other ARs appear to be related to his disclosure of RL information by distributing notecards inworld.”

You make a good point, and I’m not sure exactly what happened with Nikola in the month immediately after getting kicked out of JLU.

However, another example of Abuse Reporting disclosure when there is no disclosure in Second Life has been thrust upon me. I took it upon myself to put up signs in the Sandboxes the night before, and in fact we talked about them, where you had said, I believe your words were: “I wouldn’t write an AR on this and I doubt anyone else would.”. However, from information I gathered from you and two other JLU members I had nice conversations with over the course of hanging around my signs, it seems Kalel disagreed and formed what he calls an “AR Party” to mass-abuse report me. Though one Linden apparently had checked out the sign and thought it fine, in true G-team conflicting opinion fashion, another evidently came later and had an opposite opinion. My account was unceremoniously suspended for 2 days with no warning for “Disclosure”, despite never having a violation, and despite not disclosing anything within Second Life.

My point, and part of my gripe with the JLU, is that I wonder if this would have been simply looked over and declined, as one linden did, if this had not been mass-reported. The JLU is looking for ways to game the Abuse Report system, like Kalel commanding multiple people to Abuse Report my objects, and to find Lindens sympathetic to their opinion and mark them down as useful contacts. I believe that this kind of vigilante-posse tactics can get through Abuse Reports that are not in violation of anything, something that the ever-shady, vague, and conflicting G-team has often had trouble with, but rather are just against the interests of the JLU or Kalel himself.

When the suspension goes down, if the dispute is successful, I intend to put the signs back up as they are, if it’s not successful or ignored (I imagine the latter is most likely), I will still put the sign up again, but with the wiki information removed. I will be interested to see if Kalel forms another AR Party to get it that time, what form of “abuse” it will be taken as, and whether the Lindens will pay attention.

“If you don’t take anything else away from the conversation, remember this: The World Is Not A Safe Place. I say that not to frighten you, but because it’s the simple truth.”

It works both ways though, Jahar Aabye, stating in another Herald article comments, sees Kalel as a potential threat for RL violence and stalking as much as you seem to think Tizzers is a threat for it. Does this mean I should be setting booby traps in the hallway in case a murderer comes by, and keeping detailed documents on my friends just in case they betray me?

Interestingly, this is similar to the plot of a comic book story, which I’m sure you can relate to in this situation; Very appropriately, it’s even a Justice League comic. Batman has been secretly keeping detailed information on all his fellow leaguers, strengths, weaknesses, history, and how to defeat them, without their knowledge. This information gets leaked and used against the league by the villains, who practically decimate the league with it, in true comic book fashion they eventually overcome the villains and manage to keep the league from being destroyed. However, the ultimate result of it? Batman is kicked out of the league for secretly keeping and gathering this information, by Superman’s swing vote no less.

Something to think about.

The vast majority of hits seem to link to the secondlife.com domain in some form or another, though, or else to the Herald or a few to SLU. Now granted, I’ve posted to a few blogs using just “Jahar” when it was people who knew me in-world, where it was obvious and they wouldn’t be scratching their heads going “Jahar who???”

However, just searching for my SL first name, “Jahar,” is unlikely to be of much use. I chose the name based off of a character in a book, so you’ll just as likely get thousands of hits to Robert Jordan fansites about Jahar Narishma, a semi-major character in his novels.

That’s not to say that someone couldn’t connect my RL and SL identities, just that it might be a bit harder than a simple google search, as GreenLantern implies. It would require some serious research and the effort required would probably be enough to qualify as stalking in and of itself.

The only people in SL whose RL information I have (and potentially vice-versa) are my girlfriend (since that’s an RL and SL thing), and a few coworkers where necessary…and that information is most definitely subject to NDAs, etc.

I really don’t care to know the RL identities of anyone in SL. Ok, it was cool when a (former) member of LL brought a CalTech astrophysicist to give a talk in SL, but it wasn’t like he was hiding his RL identity. I guess maybe I’d be curious if someone who was famous had an SL screename (but I’m geeky enough to care more about Richard Dawkins or Neil Degrasse Tyson or some such than whatever anorexic shikseh ingenue is the flavor of the month for the various tabloids).

Oh, just as an odd addendum, a long time ago someone IMed me to tell me that they’d done a WHOIS trace on a website of an SL resident who they knew I didn’t particularly like. They said they had RL info, and before they could even say anything, I immediately typed something to the effect of: “NO!” “Do not tell me!” “I don’t even want to know that, please. I don’t like that person, but that’s because of things they did in SL. I don’t care about their RL, I don’t want to know about their RL, and I’d rather ignore them in SL as well.” To this date, I have no RL information on that resident, and I am glad.

The only people whose RL information I need to have are my girlfriend’s (kinda hard to live with someone without that) and certain coworkers in case of emergency. I cannot imagine caring about something that anyone did in SL or on an SL-related website that would justify wanting to know their RL identity. If someone in SL were to stalk me in RL, I’d contact law enforcement, and they could get the appropriate court documents to get the information from Linden Lab, who am I certain is more than willing to cooperate when presented with a warrant. Aside from that, you could be my next-door neighbor, someone I worked with in RL years ago, my 4th grade math teacher, or some random person on the other side of the world. Why the fuck should it matter?

I think I’ll amend my earlier comments on Kalel and GLC to include the sincere suggestion that they seek mental health counseling.

“That’s interesting, especially since you were the one who filed the Anti JLU car one.”

As I recall, the license plate on that car said “JLU SUX” or something similar, or maybe there was something insulting written on the side of it. It looked to me like they were asking to be ARed for it, so I gave them what they wanted. “Intolerance” and “Defaming Individuals or Groups” is roughly the same thing. Back when the GTeam was holding office hours, they gave us conflicting information about that. One week they said that defamation and intolerance applied only to RL people or groups, so if someone said something bad about furries, that couldn’t be classified as intolerance. A week or two later, a different group of GTeamers said that defamation and intolerance applied to SL groups as well as RL groups. The second group seemed to be more sure of themselves, so we took their guidance as the gospel.

“Can you explain this discrepancy?”

No, I can’t. As I said, the page was created in 2007 and I don’t know why the personal information is on it.

“The reports I was referring to are listed on the Nikola Shirakawa page, there are 17 abuse reports filed against Nikola, 13 of which filed under “Disclosure”, but all 17 of them seemingly having to do with the Wiki leak, which was outside of SL and therefore not applicable to the SL ToS as you said so yourself.”

The wiki leak occurred “on or about July 17, 2008.” Nikola was removed from the JLU on July 26, 2007. All of the ARs on Nikola were written between August 18 and December 23, 2007. Here’s the basis for one set of ARs against Nikola: “In the first of many instances of content theft, Nikola distributed scripts of an early version of Brainiac Mini. For his efforts he received an AR party which resulted in his first suspension by LL which only embittered him further.” Other ARs appear to be related to his disclosure of RL information by distributing notecards inworld.

“Ignoring the laughable fact that you consider it possible that Tizzers or any other griefer might try real life violence on you or someone you know…”

If you don’t take anything else away from the conversation, remember this: The World Is Not A Safe Place. I say that not to frighten you, but because it’s the simple truth.

“If it’s so easy to google, why not leave it as something to google, or keep this information in a private file on your computer, not in a wiki accessible by everyone in the group? You can collect real life information without posting it on a internet you know.”

URLs are revised, information scrolls off the page, and web pages generally keep getting changed. Also, sometimes you won’t be able to remember the search terms you entered to get the results you wanted. If you keep the information on your hard disk then it’s for sure you will be on an extended vacation just when someone else needs the information. As to why the information needs to be available to all group members, I think that’s a good question that needs further discussion within the group.

@ Senban

“But those things have been gathered whilst researching the various JLU stories which is a legitimate reason to have those materials. Now you could try and argue that in effect, I am as bad as you. But in truth, the information wasn’t gathered by myself. It was gathered by the JLU and later exposed by The Wrong Hands. I’m not gathering it – I’m analysing what YOU gathered so as to help show people what the JLU are really like.”

So the end result is that both JLU’s web server and Senban Babii’s computer have the personal RL information of a few SL avatars on their hard disks. You say yours is a legitimate use, we say ours is a legitimate use. None of the information from either hard disk is being used to harass or stalk people. To say that one use is legitimate but the other isn’t is, in my opinion, a judgment call.

I had a long and interesting conversation about this inworld last night. I asked my opponent two questions:
1) Suppose the RL photos and personal information on the wiki were replaced with hyperlinks to where the information can be found online. Assuming none of the information was used for RL harassment, would this be an acceptable use of the wiki pages, where having the information itself stored there would be judged unethical?
2) Now suppose we leave the photos and text on the wiki page, but we provide a hyperlink reference for each one, and we check the links periodically and remove the information from the page if the link goes bad. Would this be a reasonable use also?
I was trying to determine why people think it’s immoral, unethical, or undesirable to have personal information stored on the wiki when it’s also stored on public servers where it can be accessed by anyone.

“So thank you for your kind offer to allow me to retain my righteous indignation. I intend to accept this offer and enjoy it. I will brush its fur daily and send you pictures of me playing with my righteous indignation in the park 8D”

You should name it “Cuddles” and put a pink bow on its head.

“I will let you have all of your righteous indignation, hold it close to your chest, take it out at night and brush its fur, if you will do one thing for me. Place your hand on a Bible and swear under oath that you have never in your life put someone’s name into a Google window and clicked the search button. If you have ever done a Google search, then congratulations – you did the same thing JLU did.”

Ooh! Nice try! Let me see now.

One, I can honestly say that the incidences of me personally needing to Google somebody’s name, whether RL or SL are so minimal as to be negligible. The honest truth is, I really don’t have that much interest in other people and I certainly don’t feel the need to go poking round in their business. I’ve never even Googled “Kalel Venkman” for example. The closest I’ve come to that for example was when I recently Googled “JLU” to see whether these Herald articles had begun to make the front page yet, as pointed out in another comment somewhere. I saw a link to Encyclopedia Dramatica from that search and clicked a few further links before basically losing interest. And I’d happily swear that under oath with my hand on any holy book of your choice and still be able to sleep at night. Incidentally, this applies to searches in SL too and even looking at the Facebook pages and blogs of people I know. As I pointed out in a comment somewhere in this mess, in regard to Intlibber Brautigan, I’ve never so much as looked at his profile and that’s pretty much par for the course. I just don’t find other people’s profiles that interesting and only ever bother to look at them if there’s a specific reason such as researching a story or someone specifically asks me to look at something.

Even the link I posted above showing an Green Lantern standing behind Simon Cowell on that video clip wasn’t Googled. It was something I noticed completely randomly in passing as I went to log into one of my emails.

Point two. Even on those amazingly rare occasions that I’ve needed to Google someone, I’ve never felt it necessary to retain copies of what I have Googled such as images or text. If you could look into my computer’s hard drives you wouldn’t find folders labelled “JLU” or “Kalel Venkman” and so forth full of gathered intelligence and I certainly don’t share anything of that nature amongst a group of secret superfriends. The truth is, you people simply aren’t important enough or interesting enough to waste storage on.

Oh, in the interests of full disclosure to prove I’m being honest, the closest thing I have to some kind of archive on my computer is a folder with all my SL snapshots and SL chatlogs in. There may be a couple of other odds and ends in there but nothing of any consequence as I recall.

Now you *could* at this point say “Aha but you’ve already said that you have copies of the JLU wikis on your hard drive! And chatlogs showing Maverick Grunfeld exaggerating an event to give the JLU more credence when the event was in fact blatantly escalated by Mr Grunfeld intimidating and boasting (actually I haven’t mentioned that yet but oh look, I just did 8P). And other assorted chatlogs and images”. Haha, see? That is evidence that could be used against me, see how fair I am in pointing that out? But those things have been gathered whilst researching the various JLU stories which is a legitimate reason to have those materials. Now you could try and argue that in effect, I am as bad as you. But in truth, the information wasn’t gathered by myself. It was gathered by the JLU and later exposed by The Wrong Hands. I’m not gathering it – I’m analysing what YOU gathered so as to help show people what the JLU are really like.

So thank you for your kind offer to allow me to retain my righteous indignation. I intend to accept this offer and enjoy it. I will brush its fur daily and send you pictures of me playing with my righteous indignation in the park 8D

“hell, I’ll prolly get listed for being in the Emerald Beta Testers group anyways”

Actually, GreenLantern Excelsior recommends Emerald:

http://kryptonradio.com/?p=524

“…you must have misunderstood.”
No, YOU must have misunderstood, GreenLantern Excelsior. Maverick Grunfield told me to AR him, I have chat logs, but I ‘must not’ post them, BECAUSE IF I DO- YOU WILL CRY OVER WHOSE CHOICE IT IS TO POST CHATLOGS AND WHO OWNS IT. And if you “can’t” pass judgement on that issue, then don’t. But if you dare say that without the “other circumstances that made the situation ARable” you cant “pass judgement”, then don’t make it an ABSOLUTE IMPOSSIBILITY that Maverick did as I said, because anyone with the slightest ability to reason will tell you that that WOULD BE passing judgement against me.