Second Life community standards updated
by Tateru Nino 
Jun 27th 2009 at 6:00PM
Filed under: News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
There are several sets of rules for users of Second Life. The Terms of Service (TOS) and Community Standards (CS) which combined form your explicit service-contract with Linden Lab, and assorted implicit ones, like following any additional conditions the owner of whatever land-parcel that you are currently on may have chosen to impose.
Well, the Linden Lab have updated the Community Standards for the first time in, well, perhaps forever. While the Lab has said that it has updated them in the past, the document has remained unaltered since at least 2005. What's new, however, isn't necessarily as interesting as what's missing.
What's new:
Explicit reference to the Adult content rating, Adult continent (Zindra), and PG and Mature ratings relegated to a minor mention.
What's missing:
Missing from both the Terms of Service and the Community Standards are:
- Any mention of the banking restrictions.
- The ban on gambling.
- Any mention of sexual ageplay restrictions.
- Any mention of restrictions on methods of gaming traffic (eg: Camping/traffic bots).
- Heck, maybe some additional restrictions that fail to come immediately to mind. How, exactly, would you know?
If you're a new user, none of these things are made known to you, they've never appeared in either of these documents, and you'd have to dig pretty deep into other sources to find them. None of them are a part of your explicit service-contract with Linden Lab, but you will be cautioned or banned for violating them.
While Lab staff have publicly and repeatedly stated that some of the above have previously been incorporated into the Community Standards, the fact is that if they ever were, those versions were never published to the users by the Lab.
Is Linden Lab doing the users a disservice by this? It seems hard to see how the failure to make this information readily available to all users benefits either the Lab or the users.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Caliburn Susanto said on 7:28PM 6-27-2009
Disservice. Wielding the Ban Hammer against Residents for behavior or procedures that are not explicitly forbidden relegates the documents to whimsy and calls credibility into question.
Obviously they feel their team of lawyers can squelch any litigation from suits over lost monies, regardless of their Terms of Service or other (apparently ephemeral) rules. :-/
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elle said on 7:40PM 6-27-2009
All these years and years and years, and you all still expect Linden Labs to be competent administrators?
They never have been and never will be. They'd gain nothing from expensive-to-implement good-business practices and lose nothing by failing to do so. Why would they do even simple good-business actions like updating their binding rules to actually include all of their binding rules?
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Maggie Darwin said on 8:10PM 6-27-2009
The way they roll is to make up a rule, stick it in the KB somewhere and end it with "will be considered a violation of Community Standards".
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Snickers Snook said on 9:37PM 6-27-2009
Second Life is falling apart at the seams. Group chat is completely messed up and unusable. People are burned out on all the Linden Lab goofiness over adult content. Sales of virtual goods are way off for most retailers. Clubs and shops are closing left & right. And on top of this, the moves to Zindra are going to be handled by an already swamped ticket system???
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deejrandom said on 12:08AM 6-28-2009
Hmm.. I don't see how that is any different then the entire life of Second Life. I meet new people all the time, clubs have always closed left and right, retail has always gone up and down, group chat has never been perfect and tickets have always been swamped.
Honestly SL doesn't feel any different to me since when I started.
Snickers Snook said on 2:02AM 6-28-2009
When did you start?
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Rai said on 7:04AM 6-28-2009
Three days ago Linden Lab banned one of my tenants, a great artist who contributed amazing content to Second Life for years. The ban was completely unjustified, yet her appeal was rejected. The ban is permanent. I am watching this behaviour by Linden Lab for years now and it makes me sick.
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Ari Blackthorne said on 1:03PM 6-29-2009
@ Nadine
You've said nothing at all. (Just stating it, not trying to be abrasive here.)
Who was banned?
Why (alleged) were they banned?
What did Linden Lab say in response (They always give at least a generic reason in email)?
Was your friend aware that LL (and are you) aware that Linden Lab (according to TOS and CS that we all agree to in order to access the grid) states that Linden Lab can ban you for any and no reason whatsoever?
Just food for thought.
My point being that your post is just a rap against Linden Lab, but you don't give even a hint at the other side of it. Disingenuous at best in my opinion.
Ari Blackthorne said on 1:05PM 6-29-2009
ACK!
I meant @Rai, not @Nadine!
:P
areeisme said on 10:23PM 6-28-2009
Those have never been listed in the CS. Policy for them can be found here:
Gambling
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/08/10/anti-gambling-policy-update-faq
adfarms
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2008/09/13/more-information-on-ad-farms-and-network-advertisers
Copybots
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2008/04/11/protecting-your-copyrighted-content
ageplay
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/11/14/clarification-of-policy-disallowing-ageplay
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Nadine Neddings said on 12:37AM 6-29-2009
That's handy to know, but how in the world can new residents (or indeed, the vast majority of existing residents) ever hope to find that info?
I've never, ever come across a service provider which made seemingly-arbitrary adjustments to their TOS and then failed to update their TOS to reflect those changes! LL has gotten absurd in their management.
SL continues to grow and evolve IN SPITE of LL's oversight.