Flagging Virtual World Provider Linden Lab Now to Flag Content
by prokofy on 03/05/08 at 1:33 pm
By Prokofy Neva, Kremlindenologist
Second Life residents in some select groups like SLDev were alarmed this morning to discover that in addition to nerfing traffic, and pitting residents against each other to police their “avatar rendering costs,” the Lindens are planning on instituting a system to flag objectionable content on SL parcels via search results.
In a note to the SLDev list read mainly by scripters and developers of the open-sourced viewer, Jeska Linden informed select residents that they could expect soon a system to abuse-report undesirable or illegal content on parcels turning up under search results. Several list members objected, saying that such automatic systems would lead to abuse.
In a comment for the record on the LL Traffic Future list, prominent SL educator Fleep Tuque said, “I think my biggest concern is that, yes, the immediate take down can be used maliciously. There is an appeal process in the outline, but for time sensitive events, that wouldn’t be adequate.” Argent Stonecutter, a long-time RL network administrator and SL scripter, said that residents had asked for tools to report spam, not analyze content.
Below the fold, the full text of the communication.
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 20:58:07 -0400
From: “Brandon Lockaby”
Subject: Re: [sldev] Your Feedback Wanted on Search Flagging !
To: sldev@lists.secondlife.com
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”iso-8859-1″
I think you’ve got the wrong idea with the “automatic” part.
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 8:08 PM, Jeska Dzwigalski
wrote:
> Heya,
>
> Thanks for all the great thoughts everyone, very helpful! I wanted to
> clarify that the Search Flagging described is for search listings — not
> inworld content, avatar or group profiles, land sales etc. – it is ONLY for
> parcel listings, classified ads and events listings. Also, for those who are
> concerned about abuse/griefing, here is some more detail on the proposed
> design:
>
> * If a listing is flagged as “Mature” by x Residents and is not marked
> Mature, it will be automatically changed to Mature – it will not be removed.
> Totally agree that more clarity is needed around what is “mature” (and
> “prohibited”) I will take that back to the Governance Team as feedback.
> * If a listing is flagged as “Prohibited” by x Residents, it will be
> automatically taken down and reviewed by the Governance team. Prohibited
> listings might include listings for gambling or child pornography.
> * Not all accounts are able to flag search listings, anonymous basic
> Residents or Residents who are under x days old will not be able to
> participate in search flagging.
> * Each account which can flag is only able do so once per search listing
> and there is a limit to the amount of search listings each account can flag
> per day.
> * One account flagging a listing will NOT cause it to be automatically
> removed
> * Nominate for Showcase is that exactly – a nomination for review by an
> editorial board for possible inclusion.
> * Any classified ads that are taken down will be refunded (prorated for
> time active), with notification
>
> Are there any other restrictions to who can flag or when/how/etc anyone
> can think of to help both prevent overt abuse while still helping stem
> grievous abuse of search listings (see: current Event Calendar spam as one
> example)?
>
> Cheers,
> Jeska
>
>
>
>
> Innes McLeod wrote:
>
> I have some reservations about this system. It seems to me that, as has
> been mentioned, it can be abused to harass. To prevent it’s use as
> harassment, you will have to add load to the database to record where every
> vote came from. The same will apply to the Showcase nominations. I can
> foresee hundreds of alts being created just for the sole purpose of voting
> up a single business.
>
> As it stands even with that system, if I see something that I feel is a
> serious offense I would still send a normal AR, instead of waiting for
> enough people to notice and hopefully cast their votes for the removal of
> the offending content. Generally, I only report for very obvious hate
> speech, or child related sexual material, and in my opinion both of those
> are to important to just have them sit waiting for enough votes.
>
> Something I would rather see would be an expansion of the categories that
> products or parcels can be listed under.
>
> Original Message
> *From:* Jeska Dzwigalski
> *To:* sldev@lists.secondlife.com
> *Sent:* Friday, May 02, 2008 12:35 PM
> *Subject:* [sldev] Your Feedback Wanted on Search Flagging !
>
> Hello!
>
> You’ve been asking us to do better with inappropriate content and content
> classification and we’ve been listening. In an effort to make our abuse
> reporting system easier to access and more effective, we are planning to
> introduce a flagging system for our search results – and we’d love to get
> your feedback.
>
> The new flagging system will help Residents to flag inappropriate postings
> for rapid removal, while preserving everyone’s ability to express themselves
> freely in world.
>
> *How it will work*
>
> – First, when you post a classified, group, event or parcel listing,
> you will have to self-declare if your content is mature or not.
> – Second, every listing will have a “Flag This” link. You can use
> this to report inappropriate or mis-classified content or nominate great
> content for the showcase.
>
> *Flag Categories*
>
> – Mature – *the listing is adult only content*
> – Prohibited – *the listing contains content that is prohibited on
> SL*
> – Spam – *irrelevant listings (examples: commercial posts in
> non-commercial venues, event postings for non-events)*
> – Showcase – *nominate something for possible inclusion in the
> Second Life Showcase* (http://secondlife.com/showcase)
>
> *[All listings will still have to follow the Community Standards
> of Service
>
> *Types of listings that can be flagged*
>
> – Parcel listings
> – Classifieds
> – Events
> – You will not be able to flag avatar or group profiles
>
> *What happens when something is flagged*
>
> – Every flag counts as one vote for that flag category. While one
> (or few) votes does nothing, if a listing receives enough votes in that
> category, it will be auto-classified as reported.
> – Prohibited and spam content will be taken down immediately when it
> gets enough votes
> – When content is flagged several times, the content owner will be
> notified by SL support team and may be penalized according to Community
> Standards
>
> *Anything else?*
>
> – Residents will be allowed to flag a particular search listing only
> once. You cannot change your vote, so flag with care
> – There will be a limit to how many times a day a Resident can flag
> search listings
> – Anonymous basic residents or residents whose accounts are less
> than x days old will not be able to flag content
> – Residents will still be able to report abusive content from
> inworld via the Abuse Reporting system under the Help menu
> – Of course, no system can be perfect, so if you think something
> was flagged in error, you can always file a support ticket for review
>
> Thats it. We hope that this will make content flagging more effective and
> will help the community better regulate what is appropriate and what is not.
>
> Please reply to this email with your thoughts and feedback on this
> proposed design!
>
> Cheers,
> Jeska, Kalpana and the LL Search Team
>
> –
> —-
> Jeska Dzwigalski
> Community and Product Development, Linden
Labjeska@lindenlab.comhttp://www.secondlife.com
> Visit my Office in Second Life: http://tinyurl.com/nmhsa
>
>
>
>
>
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> _______________________________________________
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>
> –
> —-
> Jeska Dzwigalski
> Community and Product Development, Linden
Labjeska@lindenlab.comhttp://www.secondlife.com
> Visit my Office in Second Life: http://tinyurl.com/nmhsa
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 21:00:36 -0500
From: Argent Stonecutter
Subject: Re: [sldev] Your Feedback Wanted on Search Flagging !
To: Jeska Dzwigalski
Cc: sldev@lists.secondlife.com
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
On 2008-05-02, at 12:35, Jeska Dzwigalski wrote:
> You’ve been asking us to do better with inappropriate content and
> content classification and we’ve been listening. In an effort to
> make our abuse reporting system easier to access and more
> effective, we are planning to introduce a flagging system for our
> search results – and we’d love to get your feedback.
My feedback, as a 20 year network administrator who has at times been
at the forefront of the anti-spam effort in Usenet and email, is:
1. I have not been asking you to do better with “inappropriate
content and content classification”, I have been asking that you make
it easier to report spam. Spam is a content-free concept: the content
of a message is almost irrelevant as to whether it is spam or not.
2. “this is spam” should be the only option. Any other categorization
is too open to abuse and is likely to cause you a lot of extra work,
as well as cause unrecoverable damages to innocent parties. At least
that’s what’s happened in other environments.
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 21:03:30 -0500
From: Argent Stonecutter
Subject: Re: [sldev] Google Summer of Code 2008 update
To: SL-Dev Mailing List
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
On 2008-05-02, at 14:46, Anna Gulaev wrote:
> I always thought it’d be a good half-solution to allow builders to
> define a volume (a prim) as “indoor space”. So, you’d place a few
> large prims inside your building to roughly fill the space
> (including the interior wall surfaces, but not the exterior), make
> them fully transparent, flag them as “interior volume”, and any
> surface that was fully within one of those volumes would not
> receive sun/moon lighting or any local lighting that originated
> outside the volume.
Only if these prims were guaranteed to never under any circumstances
able to be selected unless you have BOTH “show transparent” and “edit
mode” on. Trust me, it’s swingingely hard to interact with ANYTHING
when you’re inside a prim.
_______________________________________________
SLDev mailing list
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https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sldev
End of SLDev Digest, Vol 17, Issue 8
************************************
Sigmund Leominster
May 3rd, 2008
Put another check mark next in the “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” box of the Linden Lab (R) Customer Satisfaction form. Seems that it really doesn’t matter what LL does. some folks will simply move that chip to the other shoulder and continue to moan, carp, whinge, and generally feel unhappy, while at the same time staying on-board the allegedly sinking ship rather than joining the rest of the rats in making for the water.
Message 2 contains the phrases “here is some more detail on the proposed design” and “Are there any other restrictions to who can flag or when/how/etc anyone can think of to help both prevent overt abuse while still helping stem grievous abuse of search listings.” The word “proposed” is neither a synonym for “final” nor “completed,”and the final sentence sounds to me like an invitation for more comment – which, hello, the respondees did!
My experience as a 20-year receiver of spam is that I applaud ANYONE who at least does something rather than nothing. All we armchair experts can typically, at the stroke of a keyboard, fix ALL the problems at LL, and do it in such a way that everyone will be happy and a golden statue will be erected in our honor so that ecstatic residents can worship the very prims (low) upon which we’ve been erected. Or maybe not.
Doubtless this thread will turn into yet another predictably vapid and turgid “I-hate-Linden-Lab-and-here’s-how-it-should-be-done” along with the “I’ve-been-a-programmer/analyst/god-for-200-years-and-I-know-everything” comments, but I wanted to get in and stir the pot first rather than leave it all to the disaffected and curmudgeonly.
Let the bitchfest begin – or is that continue?
JimBean
May 3rd, 2008
In other news, Linden Lab announces a profit sharing program, where each resident will be given one million US dollars.
Residents are uniformly outraged by the decision. Some indicate such an unannounced gift will ruin their tax planning. Others are angry that the gift is in the form of US dollars, which will need to be converted to their local currency.
Prokofy Neva has already burnt her check, and is organizing a group protest where others will do the same. “If Linden Lab doesn’t agree to take back this money, our next step will be to gouge out our eyes” says she in a press release.
Meanwhile, longtime Neva rival Pixeleen Mistral issued a statement “I burnt my check before Prok, she shouldn’t get all the credit, that bitch.”
Rawst Berry
May 3rd, 2008
Lol, how is this a bad thing? Basic accounts can’t flag so that eliminates abuse by griefers. The main thing that will happen, is that we’ll see less annoying and irrelevant advertisements in the events listing.
Btw I also support the new Showcase thing. Its not perfect but its better than the current system based on traffic which doesn’t work at all.
DinkyHockerShootsSmack!
May 3rd, 2008
Prokofy Neva is nothing less than that she tries to portray others as. An elitist, close-minded control freak.
Alyx Stoklitsky
May 3rd, 2008
So this article was about what exactly?
Ann Otoole
May 3rd, 2008
I am coming to the conclusion that SL may be a game but the game is how well the “gods” can do pitting residents against one another.
Kanomi Pikajuna
May 4th, 2008
I would like to commend the Second Life Herald for taking quasi-professional web journalism in a strange new direction. One facet of journalism is to present multiple point of views to the reader while striving for neutrality for onesself. Clearly the Herald is not hampered by such traditionalist nonsense.
A journalist’s job is also to inform, to take complex events and condense them for a broader audience who lacks the specialized knowledge of the source material.
Boldly, you eschew such principles and dump undedited, copy and pasted Email chains right on the unwashed masses who have come here, primarily judging from your recent screeds, for excruciating poetry and naked catgirls.
JimBean
May 4th, 2008
Exactly so, Ann. Lord knows that back in the 90s when craigslist started letting its users flag inappropriate content, that was the beginning of the collapse.
Nevermind the fact that craigslist today makes over $150 million per year, with only 24 employees. It’s a quickly sinking ship, where its users are vicious backstabbing narcs. Everyone I know hates craigslist.
Ditto with Wikipedia, which lets its users REMOVE offending content. Everyone knows Wikipedia is an utter failure.
I must say, very insightful. Perhaps you ought to write for the herald yourself.
Ishtara Rothschild
May 4th, 2008
So, people wonder why this is a bad thing. I can tell you why censorship is bad. By flagging ads that you personally don’t want to see, you will not only remove them from your screen – you might cause someone to lose 300,000 L$ when their classified is deleted without refund. The business behind the ad will not only lose 1100 US$, but also the traffic and the sales that this advertisement would have generated.
This is already happening inworld. People AR others (usually business competitors I assume) based on their classified ads, the ads get deleted, the poster gets banned for some days. Now, what exactly are those ads about you might ask? Do they advertise gambling or child porn? Far from that. All it needs is a bare female nipple.
That’s right, it’s no longer allowed to show or name (!!!) any adult content in mature classified ads. Your business competitor advertises revealing lingerie? AR him. It was never easier to get rid of competition. Soon you won’t even have to write an abuse report, just click a button and ask two friends to do the same, severely hurt a business and drive another talented content creator out of SL.
Read it in Linden Lab’s own words:
“You may continue to advertise mature events, services, objects, businesses etc…, but any pictures or text related to any such classified must be PG in nature.”
The above quote is taken from a reply to one of my tickets, signed by “Linden Lab and the Second Life Community Team”. This is where LL’s greed for user numbers / the total lack of age verification has gotten us. Everything that is visible grid-wide, like classifieds, group charters or even resident profiles, must confirm to PG standards. Since you can only sell what you can advertise, it’s no longer possible to sell adult content on the adult grid (without risking a permanent ban). Or, from the viewpoint of the adult roleplayer: Soon you won’t be able to find adult content in SL anymore. It won’t show up in the search.
If LL wants to prohibit certain (perfectly legal) content, they need to hire a team that reviews classifieds before they get published. Just imagine a magazine publisher would work like this. Submit your ad and pay up front, and if we don’t like it we won’t publish it, nor will we refund you. Great.
If this continues, LL will soon have kicked the kneecaps of enough business people and will find themselves confronted with a class action lawsuit. In court, establishing L$ as a currency will be a matter of minutes. Ripping the TOS to shreds will only take another minute, it’s already been done. I wouldn’t want to be in the skin of the new CEO when that happens (Philip had good reasons to step down).
JimBean
May 4th, 2008
You’re absolutely right Ishtara. I’ve noticed in RL how ever since TV stations won’t take ads that show bare nipples, or let you say “penis”, the porn industry in the US has completely collapsed. It’s gone. I’ve seen porn stars on the street begging for money. It’s heartbreaking.
Sigmund Leominster
May 4th, 2008
Hi Kanomi
)))I would like to commend the Second Life Herald for taking quasi-professional web journalism in a strange new direction. One facet of journalism is to present multiple point of views to the reader while striving for neutrality for onesself. Clearly the Herald is not hampered by such traditionalist nonsense.(((
Hmm, “point-of-view” journalism has been around for some time now (also called “advocacy journalism”) and this approach is closely related to the notion of the “Op-Ed” piece – an article written overtly taking a point-of-view for the purpose of stimulating discussion. The Herald (whose masthead proclaims “Always Fairly Unbalanced”) is possibly a textbook example of advocacy journalism, so much so that I would personally recommend it to all students of the Fourth Estate. The skill in reading the Herald is to actually find the objective article, which in itself a slippery word frequently used by writers who want to pretend they have no point of view, when, in fact, they are as partial as anyone else.
)))A journalist’s job is also to inform, to take complex events and condense them for a broader audience who lacks the specialized knowledge of the source material.(((
I second that opinion. However, see my first paragraph. Prok’s piece was never intended to be a piece of objective reportage and should probably have come with the label “Op-Ed” just to make sure folks didn’t mistake it for objective journalism.
)))Boldly, you eschew such principles and dump undedited, copy and pasted Email chains right on the unwashed masses who have come here, primarily judging from your recent screeds, for excruciating poetry and naked catgirls.(((
Don’t forget male strippers, eating naked women, and awful poetry. I know it’s unfair to mention bad barding twice but pathetic poetry can be ten times worse than poor prose. I am, by admission, a lousy judge of what is “good verse” and never really got further than Tennyson and Coleridge – both of whom I would happily read to my girlfriend by the flickering flames of a log fire while sipping merlot and gently stroking the back of her soft neck.
The readers of the Herald who spend the most time in Second Life are probably not only unwashed but close to naked and overweight due to the solitary life they lead hunched over a computer and having the pizza delivery guy as their only friend and contact with the real world. If they eek out a crumb of comfort from the tabloid trivia of this august periodical, then Heraldic Scriveners have done their holy duty.
Can I take my tongue out of my cheek please?