Dealing with abandoned groups and trolls.
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Zandrae Nova
An abandoned group is a group where the owner and moderators capable of changing settings in a group have all left Second Life or the group in question.
Problem: Some very old very large groups exist with thousands of users who are unmoderated resulting in constant trolling. Recently one troll who creates a new account every day to bypass blocks was promoting real life violence against minorities. People join these groups trying to find someone to play with because they are large and people want to cast a wide net. Instead they have this super negative experience.
Solution:
When a group no longer has an owner or officers who can manage the group in the group or the owner / officers have not been online in X time, do one or more of these:
- Disable group chat for the everyone role. If there's no one to moderate, it's probably best to not have chat. If an owner returns, they can always change it back. This shuts down trolling and compromised accounts.
- Disable notices in abandoned groups. Same reason as #1. Shuts down trolling and compromised accounts.
- Disable joining these abandoned groups. They're effectively dead, people shouldn't join them as they will have a degraded experience. If an owner comes back, they can enable this again.
- Delist these abandoned groups from search. Again, these groups are unmoderated and probably shouldn't be listed. If an owner comes back they can always list it again.
- After y years of being abandoned, if there are no avatars in owner rank or with access to officer powers, and there is nothing deeded to the group, delete it entirely.
These changes will help users in the following ways:
- Group search will no longer be a graveyard of dead and unmoderated groups.
- People will be able to find groups with players in them that play.
- Players will have an improved quality of life by finding people with less seeing trolls promoting violence against people irl.
Thanks for reading.
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Oatmeal Linden
updated the status to
contact support
Hello Zandrae! Thanks for the suggestions! Currently support is able to assist with group issues, so it may be best to file a support ticket for any groups needing assistance.
If there is an abuse related issue within a group, please be sure to file an abuse report for it. Thanks!
Extrude Ragu
My account is 17 years old. Some of the groups I am in are definitely abandoned, but those groups hold value to me as memento's.
They contain early memories of the friends I made at the time and the things I did together with those people.
I would be very sad if those groups were deleted. It would be like someone was deleting my memories.
In addition, there are groups I have where I would be very happy if I saw a message in them after all these years. Reconnecting with people from years ago is a joy I've experienced many a time.
That's not to say I don't recognize there is a problem, I just disagree somewhat with some aspects of the proposed solution.
I would say delist old groups from search, sure. But don't delete them. Those are precious memories.
Disable chat on the large groups sure. But leave the smaller ones that are probably just a group of friends who might reconnect in a few years alone.
Just my thoughts
Zandrae Nova
Extrude Ragu The problem is, when these abandon groups start being used to promote real life violence against groups of people based on their race, religion, gender, or sexuality, and Linden Labs cannot seem to do anything about it, I think the harm may exceed the potential positive from these groups, this is why shutting down group chat and joining at minimum is a good idea. People could still IM others.
Vanity Byron
Instead of disbanding the group. Linden Labs could pit group up for sale if group creator and group officers are away from Second Life for more than 6 months ,a automated group notice could be sent saying "this group is now for sale" put it for sale 100 lindens ,if no one purchases group in 14 days then close the group ,it is highly doubtful that any of the trolls would bother to buy the group, let alone have 100 lindens .
Toothless Draegonne
Vanity Byron
I've seen troll groups literally buy their way across whole mainland regions by forcing neighbours out with crashes and using griefer tricks to slam objects off the region by forcing mass object returns. Buying a group to destroy it for the cost of a pint of beer? Well within their budget and even more amusing than driving people out of their mainland parcels.
100L to get ownership of a massive group specifically to ruin it? The ratio of lindenbux spent to trololols to be had there is extremely economical.
Northlander Resident
Vanity Byron Good idea but I support disbanding the group. There are too many groups that are abandoned and they need to be cleaned up.
Extrude Ragu
Vanity Byron
I don't think this is a good idea because it will let griefers take over abandoned groups or even claim to be the legitimate owner of an organization they are not the owner of. Groups are often used as a form of security check too on certain scripted items.
GreenLantern Excelsior
Vanity Byron This is a better idea than simply deleting the group. This is how Reddit operates. If a Reddit community is inactive with no moderators, someone can request to be made a moderator. It keeps groups active and prevents group members from violating the rules without consequence. Another idea would be for Linden Lab to publish a list of groups that are looking for owners. Group members might have group notices turned off, so they wouldn't see a LL notice, but the list of groups needing owners might become a very popular SL resource.
Zandrae Nova
GreenLantern Excelsior The problem is that groups are sometimes connected to things that are deeded and whatnot and so changing ownership might not be the best move. I think allowing members of a group in good standing (no history of bans or whatever) to apply to adopt a group that doesn't have deeded assets might work.
W
Walt Finesmith
I would agree, although I would add:
If a group owner as well as any moderators, fail to login in for more than 30 days, proceed as above.
If a group remains abandoned, prior to deleting it kick allembers so they don't end up with a group membership they can do nothing about.
If, after x months a group owner has failed to login butoderators still do, offer the moderators a chance to take ownership.
Isabella Cinder
I second that.
Furthermore, the people trying to cast a "wide net" are mislead by dead groups with a lot of offline accounts and zero to no way of knowing average last login date (you could even try checking the 'members and roles tab to infer if the group is active but most people don't even know that and those who do, trust me, it's a hassle scrolling that to infer activity, unreliable at best, and most times the list doesn't even load properly on too large groups).
This is clutter, not community. It doesn't help giving the impression that "SL is big", it does the opposite.
Haridsam Resident
Totally agree. Disable them, and delete after a year at most. There is so much clutter in all search...