Massively^™

Have a lot of lackeys and an axe to grind? Come try out our new game, Flash-Flagging! It's fun for the whole family!

Here's how to play!

Step 1. Pick a target. Perhaps your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend who broke up with you recently, or someone who posted a nasty comment on your blog post!

Step 2. Find a listing for their classified ad, store location, or even their avatar profile! No need to worry about whether the content is actually objectionable -- just pick something that's important to them!

Step 3. Using the magic of the interwebs, get all your lackeys to flag it as mature, prohibited, or spam! Make sure all your lackeys flag it the same way, so the number really pile up fast!

Step 4. See how long it takes before your target's perfectly innocent search listing gets taken down!

Step 5. You win!

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I started to make another comment with a suggestion for how to discourage abuse of the proposed system, but the comment started to grow to epic proportions, so I turned it into a blog post.

The short of it is: have a "relevancy" score, based on how accurately a person flags listings, and use that as a weighting for how much influence their flagging is given.

You can read the full post here:

http://jacek.meratalk.com/2008/05/03/thoughts-on-search-flagging/

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"You've been asking us to do better with inappropriate content and content classification and we've been listening"

Ummm NO, we haven't.

This will, especially as it will be (according to the SLDev list) automatic deletion. Now all those groups that hate Kid avatars can band together and have adverts, events and parcels automatically deleted.

This goes another step up the griefing tree over Underage ARs as an abuse tool.

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I think it's fantastic. Open search at any given time and the big 8 classifieds are usually 25% mature (last time I looked there were ads for orgy beds and brothels, despite my mature box being DISabled.)

The events listing is full of so much crap I don't even use it anymore.


Lots of sites use a system like this. Flickr and Youtube do, just to name some big guns. I moderate a group of 6000 users on Flickr and let me tell you, they have PLENTY of drama and arguing, but I've yet to see anyone get deleted from there that wasn't obviously a fake account used to troll and harass people. With a little common sense, this kind of system goes a long way to keep content where it goes. As far as I know, Flickr actually has a policy in place to punish anyone abusing the flagging system... you act like a jerk and gather a lynch mob, and YOU will get banned.

Maybe I misread it, but it doesn't seem to me like LL is saying that with X votes your ad/land/event/whatever will disappear forever... they're saying that if enough people in the community raise an eyebrow at something, they will get re-checked by someone in charge. In other words, if someone decided to band together and flag child avatar hangouts (as the above poster stated) they certainly could flag it a million times, but that doesn't mean LL is going to remove it. Just that they will look at it. And actually, if you got flagged and checked and were deemed OK, it would seem to me that it'd go a long way towards proving your cred with LL.

Also, I love that this feature is only available to non-anonymous accounts. I don't want to start the paid vs. non-paid war, but I will say that LL would be very smart to start offering MORE features to paid accounts, and give less voice to people who refuse to stand behind their opinions with a verified account.

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aren't there free accounts that are not annonymous? (people nbought or withdrew L$ once or twice or somthing like that, and also, what about the identity verification thingy?)

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I think Jacek is on the right track. Without something to weight the system there is still potential for flash mobs or botting. Though the bots would apparently have to be paid accounts or somehow verified which will at least slow down anyone wanting to do quick alts for revenge against foes.

People will start offering pay for reviews same as any other system they've done regardless of perceived benefit. Frankly it might almost become necessary as a buffer, "Well, sure Hank's Hardware has gotten 20 complaints today but they had 40 plugs yesterday so maybe somethings off."

My concern is that its going to be like the AR system is now. A couple of overworked people that are likely to shoot first and ask questions later (if at all). Sure to some it might be inconvenient for an ad to be knocked down but if its done on the day you posted it there goes the fee and then you have to start fighting to clear yourself.

I do like that it sounds like a way to influence this new showcase idea of theres. Or maybe a way of doing the work for them, bit of that too. The idea has some merit, it just needs to be refined as much as possible to limit it going irrelevant like previous systems.

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I'd like to see better content classification. All I see now is Mature or PG. What prevents people with many "paid" and "old" alt accounts from casting more than one vote through their alts? Do people get graded based on their past accuracy? I mean, I go in and flag content as mature. A Linden takes a look as says - no, this is PG. So, is that available somewhere that the Lindens can see who has flagged it, and what their past accuracy has been? This may help to prevent people from abusing the system if they can be punished when swarming with a group of people to flag content. Why don't we make people pay L$ to vote against a listing? If their vote was reasonable, they get the L$ back, else lose the L$ to the person who listed the item. What if we see a reasonable classification? Can we vote on it to confirm that it is valid? (X out of N people classify this listing as correct). Also are we getting back to the classification system of who is privileged here? Many people with basic accounts can not go premium due to their country/location. The Lindens are apparently closing the doors on them.

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