Eshi Unloads: Should Unethical Businesses Be Banned from Second Life?

Virtual world builder Eshi Otawara is happy that the Lindens have banned unregulated banks from the world, but what she'd really like is "a rating system which would ban businesses with repetitive negative feedback off Second Life".  This after the renowned artist (she created the beautiful interactive space for the revolutionary voice-to-virtuality site called Parsec) recounts a string of negative dealings with SL-based business people, from unknown operators who disappeared when it came time to pay the bill, all the way up to IBM, which she says failed to properly credit her SL efforts to the outside world.  Her outrage is understandable, though I wonder if a rating system would be feasible.  Is it consistently easy to distinguish genuinely bad behavior from honest misunderstandings?

Comments

[Anon]

aahhh the ban happiness begins.. soon you'll get banned for haveing a bad looking av or not aggreeing with someone.
I hope it keeps going intell that happends let people dig thier own graves.

[Daman Tenk]

No. Plus, who's to say people won't game the system like they game the AR system now?

Lindens don't even check AR reports properly, and automatically ban you when X amount of reports were filed by griefers. Even if those reports were unjustified.

Now you propose to expand the system to be able to take someone out of business as well? Holy sh-t.

[Rodion Resistance]

A thought--if something can be exploited to further one's cause, someone will exploit it, to YOUR detriment.

-RODION

[Wasted Outlander]

I agree with Eshi that it is good to see the banks gone. However, please, no more talk of rating systems. Those things are so easily "gamed" and are such a joke. As for Rodion's commment - amen and well said.

[Tateru Nino]

In general, people negatively rate because they're having a bad day, because they're grumpy, because they're in error, because they've had a bad experience with something/someone else and are taking it out on someone, for laughs, or... just possibly because they got genuinely bad treatment from someone they're negatively rating.

In my personal experience (YMMV) the latter category is generally the smallest.

[Ann Otoole]

if it can be gamed for advantage it will be gamed. all ratings systems are flawed by the subjective nature of their design.

but the proposition theory is good. for instance, if you use bots or camping to artificially inflate traffic to gain an advantage you are unethical and under this proposition you would be banned. if you use the BSD open source skin PSD files and do not credit the original author (many many skin "makers" (actually light mod and resellers)) you are unethical, violating the license, and would be removed from secondlife. if you are selling ripped items you would be removed from secondlife. if you have more than one legitimate DMCA filed against you then you are unethical and would be removed from secondlife.

wouldn't it be great if this level of standards was applied to the US, State, County, and local Governments? Hardly any of the existing politicians would be allowed to remain in the USA. And there would be no shortage of cheering as they were floated off into the ocean on a barge since nobody else in the world would take them in.

yes it is a needed concept but LL is about the last place in the universe to adopt ethics in business since they apparently want all the bogus camping bots to inflate sl participation metrics.

[Eshi]

Rating system....or not- well- *something*.

[Cyn Vandeverre]

I can't begin to figure out how many dozens, or hundreds, of employees LL would have to hire, to police the world for this sort of thing.

[CyFishy Traveler]

This is a case, I think, where self-policing would be more effective than dragging Linden Lab into it--simply raising awareness of the kinds of scams that are out there and using word-of-mouth (or keyboard) to let people know which businesses are worth dealing with and which ones to avoid.

If you go into it with the understanding that SL is, in fact, a largely unregulated environment, then you stand a better chance of correctly calculating the risks that you take.

[pia_qi]

Better Business Bureaus in the First World aren't government institutions and yet they manage to do some good for consumers. They're not perfect, but few things are.