Penalties – Actions
Abuse Reports do not often result in a permanent ban. There is an escalating series of actions the team uses. Many people just need some education. So, the process is a series of warnings, suspensions of increasing length, and finally a ban.
The geeky have ways around the ban and can sneak back in. So, a permanent and effective ban is for practical purposes impossible. However, this pretty much relegates the repeat annoyers to noobish accounts. These are easier for residents to deal with.
Corky Linden – Sept 2018
There are somethings that will result in an immediate ban. In other cases, when the behavior shows a pattern the progression of escalating actions may be skipped and the user banned.
Violations and actions are not necessarily accumulative. Kristin provided an example. Say someone got a 1-day suspension in 2008 and hasn’t misbehaved since then a violation in 2018 may only result in a warning.
Blocking specific machines and IP Addresses is complicated because some people come in from Internet Cafes and others share a machine. So, the Lindens are careful about using those as a means of blocking to protect the innocent…
Black Listing
The abuse team will black list items and take them off the marketplace. But, they are very cautious about such actions. This is a controversial area. Because the Linden and resident viewpoints differ.
The problem is like gun control. Guns can be protective and save lives or they can be misused and take innocent lives. The same is true of machetes (the new weapon of choice in the UK) and ball bats. The problem isn’t the device, it is the one holding the device.
Contacting Abuse Team
Those of us that attend a lot of UG meetings get to know some of the Lindens. We also learn that direct contact with them regarding a problem, bug, or other issue will almost always result in a ‘file a JIRA’ or Abuse Report, or trouble ticket.
Lindens are at work and they have a process for handling their workload. So, someone contacting them is outside their normal process and likely to fall through a crack. The most efficient and effective process for getting the Lindens to do something is to file the appropriate paper work… report and do a good job of it.
Bypassing the system is a poor idea when working with the Lab.
If you are active in SL the Lindens in those fields of your activity will get to know you and you’ll build a reputation. In viewer design and bug reporting Whirly, an amazing bug tracker and finder, has a great reputation based on her ability. Others work with the viewer and on occasion have worked with the servers to add features the Lindens didn’t have time for.
Working within the system and keeping a good reputation along with speaking/writing clearly is the best way to be able to get the Lab to handle problems.
Resources
- How to deal with abuse and harassment – 9 languages
- Filing an abuse report – 9 Languages
- Governance Meetings – English, text and voice
Darkmoon Creations – DMC were reported at least 9 years ago. Complaints have been made since then, that the store/s have been deliberately defrauding customers in some cases for over $100USD a time and as far as I can tell NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE ABOUT IT.
Darkmoon Creations has several inworld businesses, including a couple re-selling dances. They have lots of dance packs for sale and when you buy one – nothing is delivered. The published Customer Service process is a dead end too, with no response.
The owner, sometimes via an alt, is online regularly. They appear to be monitoring online activity, while offline. They come online to ban people regularly. Additionally, the owner is a member of several groups and one of them shows their roster……along with last login and the DMC owner is online every few weeks.
I did check. But it appears a higher total amount would be required to engage the FBI to investigate the fraud complaint, even though, there appears enough for the German gentleman who owns DMC to be earning quite a good RL living from it. Perhaps, a little adverse publicity might do the trick.
If repeated acts of fraud are reported to LL over almost a decade and nothing is done, then the whole process is a joke. If I had a choice, I would no longer be in Second life, no longer leasing a region and spending several thousand USD per year, there. As it is, I no longer spend as much, and limit myself to those stores I have had a good relationship with in the past.
I used to get into the police blotters many years ago, because I refused to put up with rudeness from others, who then found how eloquent I could be with my put-downs. Linden Labs has played at abuse and enforcing behavior. But it can not and should not be taken seriously.
There are two Darkmoon stores in the marketplace. One is empty the other has products and has been around since 2014. There are two similarly named avatars; LilithDarkmoon1181 and Darkmoon Lilliehook. There is a wholes string of people with Darkmoon in their name.
Visiting the marketplace I find the Darkmoon’s have dissimilar products.
In world, I find no presence of one and a region owned by the other. The later is full of various products.
I can try out numerous demos of the products. If one has gone to the trouble of building a demo, there would be no reason to sell it as an empty box. One could make more money selling a product and generating customers for repeat sales.
As I looked through the world and and various Darkmoon and DMC products it looked like there are 3 maybe 4 people with similar names and dissimilar products. One has products that have a very unusual use/rez requirements. I know some would never read the instructions and would probably think they got an empty box.
There may have been a Darkmoon selling empty boxes for L$25,000. But, I can’t find them.
The point is, if the seller is still around and selling it is because the Abuse Reports are so vague the Lindens can’t identify the seller with any certainty. I certainly have had trouble trying to find them. Otherwise if well defined as to who it was and I can’t find them then they were removed. Either way the state of things seems to support the narrative in the video.
Apologies for the confusion. I wasn’t looking for help. I was simply stating a case. I am not looking for reparation for myself -that is long gone. I am looking for this known ongoing fraud to be stopped and for abuse report processes to mean something.
The name to look for inworld is DarkMoon Lilliehook, last online August 26th. In RL, they appear to be known as Carsten Lilienbecker and I have addresses and phone numbers – if I was to trust the information.
The specific store is DMC DarkMoonCreations 2 (37, 65, 64) – If you arrive somewhere, where there are 258/300 people banned, you are probably in the right place. Lots of people got banned, pissed at being screwed over.
Here is some of the original details I supplied in my report. If this wasn’t enough I, as a 30+ year veteran software engineer, would have ASKED FOR MORE.
On 12/29/15, at DMC ‘s Intan Couple Dance Balls, Couple Dances, Packs & more (0822cc65-a127-e903-11b8-7e72360ad11d), I ordered “3fx Club Design Dance Pack v3 – Intan Ready”.
However., the delivery failed. I raised a ticket (#558953) at the website – http://darkmoon-creations.com/support/tickets.php
Transaction History: Date / time ID prefix Detail Debit Credit Ending Balance 2015-12-29 20:23:13 f31e88b8 Destination: DarkMoon Lilliehook
Payment
Region: Hento Nine
Description: 3fx Club Design Dance Pack v3 – Intan Ready L$3999 L$1078
My chatlog at that time was as followed :
[20:23] 3fx Club Design Dance Pack v3 – Intan Ready whispers: Thanks. Product coming shortly. Any problems, contact DarkMoon Lilliehook for help.
[20:23] DMCvend Server 3FX IR + DP v2.5: Sorry, but the product is temporarily out of stock. Please contact the merchant (DarkMoon Lilliehook) who will be able to help you.