Linden Lab’s policy on region rollbacks is inappropriate

This week, when I changed some parcel owner rights on my sim, some objects got returned. Parts of the sim, a highly detailed city, were destroyed. I decided to ask Linden Lab for a region rollback. (That’s when they load a backup file of the sim to restore a previous condition of that region. These backup files or simstate files are made every hour, and you can ask for a rollback up to 72 hours.) So, I filed the ticket asking for a rollback to a state 2 hours before the incident. 11 minutes passed until I got a reply, that’s not too bad! The reply however was slightly irritating. Molly Linden wrote: “Could you please verify the number of prims we would be restoring if this rollback were performed? I am not seeing a substantial drop in prim count in the simstate at this time.” I replied: “The number of returned prims is low, however:
Shops of my tenants were destroyed and I need to provide a quick solution for them to continue business. Some prims are unique and were returned to a user who’s not available. The rollback is needed to secure the design of the sim and to maintain my tenants business. Please help me out here, it’s the first rollback I ever asked for.”
40 minutes passed, and then I got a message that the rollback was performed. “Okay”, I thought, ”they made it sound like an act of mercy, but at least I got it.”

However, when I teleported to Undercity, my mood did not improve – the damage was still there. I reopened the ticket and explained that prims were still missing, and I asked: “Are you absolutely sure I got a rollback, and not just a restart of the sim?”
Molly Linden replied: “You absolutely did receive a rollback of the region and the rollback was logged in our records”. Now that was really odd, because I saw a texture on the sim I had applied to a prim after the time Molly said she had rolled the sim back to. That was proof that the rollback had not been performed correctly or had not happened at all – and it was ignored.
Now, all this happens in a virtual world, in a 3D environment with avatars, but no one came to the region to look at these things. We kept filing ticket replies back and forth, and I asked myself: why does Linden Lab not use the 3D environment in such cases? Instead, I was now being told by Molly Linden: “(we) can only perform one more final rollback for this situation.”
At this point I started to feel like I was being extorted. As if Molly Linden had my balls in her hands and slowly started squeezing. It was like she was telling me: ‘We didn’t make a mistake. You can tell me another rollback time now, but in case this one fails too, it’s bad luck and you won’t get another chance!’.

A region in Second Life costs 1000 US$ to “buy”, and then 300 US$ a month for “maintenance”. After one year I need some serious maintenance – because of the lack of an undo function and land tools that don’t warn you before objects get deleted. Linden Lab’s support team however makes me feel like a rollback is an act of mercy. I also get an incorrect or faulty rollback, and although I have proof for this, it is ignored. When I ask for another rollback I am being told that this is the last one I will get, the last chance to save my work.
This is not the way I want to be treated as a customer, who paid 5000 US Dollars for the region in the past months.

Back to the story: Molly Linden insists that the first rollback was done correctly. I knew that I had not received the rollback I had asked for: I was standing there, looking at textures that were created AFTER the time it should have been rolled back to. Now, I had to consider that probably the simstate file itself was screwed up – and to ensure saving the missing prims I needed a rollback to an earlier time. This of course is very problematic, because people had built stuff in the meantime, and I had changed rental boxes and other things. Tenants and roleplayers would lose stuff they had created, I myself would lose hours of work…. But I had no choice, after all Linden Lab had told me that this second chance for a rollback would be my “last one”.
I got this second rollback. The prims were restored, whew. What remains is a feeling of being treated like a petitioner, not a paying customer. 5000 US Dollars a year, that’s my investment, and for that I get land tools with a lack of warnings and a lack of undo function, and a customer service that makes me feel like I am being extorted. Aside from the financial investment into a sim, me and my team created a successful community platform on that sim, one that has 7000-14000 traffic everday without any bots, without camping, without daily events at some dance club – people come to this sim to explore, to build, to script, to do business, to play and to network. For Linden Lab, this does not seem to count at all. This is what they say about region rollbacks: “We reserve the right to investigate and/or refuse a rollback, and they may not be granted in future situations.” Dear people at Linden Lab, THIS IS JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Add the fact that I received a faulty rollback and then had to roll back to an earlier state than I originally wanted, which lead to me and my tenants losing hours of work. I am really, really angry and disappointed. You are very close to losing me as a customer, and with me you are going to lose one succesful, interesting place and community in Second Life. Either change your policy on region rollbacks, or give us better land tools and ways to make backups of sims ourselves.

Vandalism on KIC – update

Hi there. A short explanaition whats happening on KIC: we had 4 attacks within 48 hours. someone is setting prims that are shared with the KIC group to “physical”, thus destroying builds. these attacks were increasing in severity, first only 5-10 prims, but the last attack today destroyed 70% of the KIC sim: the Milk N Kookies HQ, the skatepark, the old city and the sewer tunnels, even the transmogrifier.
The griefer was someone inside the KIC group, because he changed the prims that were shared with KIC group to set them to “physical”, thus collapsing builds.
We asked LL for a sim rollback two times, but we also need to set the prims to “unshared” after the next rollback so this cant happen again – LL won’t give us rollbacks forever.

The griefer is obviously out to destroy the KIC project, which was meant as an open platform for building and creating together. We have reason to believe that the attacker is working from Undercity, because the KIC sim was closed down when the 4th attack happened, so he or she is using a large draw distance and setting the prims to physical from within Undercity.
For security reasons all KIC members where ejected. There is a second group with public enrollment, please join it now, it’s called: “KIC – Kids Information Center”.

This is all very sad and disappointing. The griefer already destroyed trust and disrupted events we were planning for Undercity, we were planning exciting changes for KIC, but instead we are now talking to Lindens about reviewing logs, rolling back the sim, investigating, searching for the griefer. Today sacha Magne even closed down the K-Grid to make backup copies… this is a very sad day. One terrorist attack can screw up a country. One griefer can disrupt the fun and creativity of dozens of people
Please keep your eyes open.

Lindens explain new adult regions – MnK show today

For todays Milk N Kookies radio show I visited a Linden Lab press conference about the upcoming “Adult” flagging for regions in Second Life (in addition to the “PG” and “Mature” regions we have now). Adult regions will be only accessible for users who age verified. I asked the Lindens questions about how the new flagging system might change SL, especially for the kid avatar community, whether this is part of the plan for merging Teen SL and the main grid, what kind of contents will be rated “adult” anyway, and more. The Milk N Kookies show will be live on KIC, the Kids Information Center sim, 12:00 PM Second Life Time.  Podcast will be available later (by the way, the Mik N Kookies show now is also a podcast officially listed on the Second Life website. 

KIC, the first 2 weeks

So, the Kids Information Centre is around for some time now.  Building and organising it with such an awesome group of kid avatars was great fun. The opening celebration was a whole weekend of party, live concerts and a tour all over the sim with the Kulture Kids.  Some were surprised about the hidden stuff on te sim (for example sewers and underground tunnels…). Sven and I were showing around people in the old city, downtown, at exhibitions, the new Milk N Kookies Radio HQ and lots more.

Some kids started to use the sandbox for building already, I’m quite happy about that. It’s much more fun to build in a sandbox compared to some boring sky platform. Some just hang out on the sim to have fun, and I saw several adults transmogrify into child avatars, yay! SL mentors and KIC teachers are teaching newbies. I think we had a pretty good start with KIC.

Here are some more pictures of the opening celebrations.

Party on the playground:

Live concerts in the KIC Arena. This is also a place where some of the workshops and classes will be held:

Unfortunately, the dragons already found the place, too.

Today I will start part 1 of my audio production/radio classes. I will talk about good audio software, microphones, things like voice changers and my experiences as a music producer and radio guy in the last couple of years. There will be lots of time to ask questions, it’s an intro and not the hardcore audio class yet. ^^

There is lots of space available for cool exhibitions and groups, if you want to exhibit, have fun and help other people, just contact a KIC mentor.  Oh, and feel free to drop some L$ into the tip jars hidden on the sim

K-Grid: The first event

K-Grid is an opensimulator grid made by child avatars. Pais Kidd posted a video showing the first event on K-Grid ever:  Last Saturday the 48th episode of the “Milk N Kookies” radio show was aired not in Second Life, but on K-Grid.  32 residents logged on, many more than we had expected, so we had some fun and made the sim crash 5 times lol. Thanks to sacha Magne for making this grid possible, plus a big hug to Pais for creating this video and for using my little radio segment in it *^^*

I admit it… I like pink furs

Undercity is dark, our kids are lost and confused, their language is harsh… Nothing like a bunch of pink furballs to lighten things up ^_^

Should we invent a new character class for them?  Stats something like Intelligence 55,  Strengtgh 80, Cuddle 99

lawl

Undercity RP starts Jan 31

nom nom

Character registration for the upcoming Undercity RP storyline is running for a few weeks now, and more than 100 kids have submitted their stories and character descriptions. Needless to say that’s totally awesome!

Official start of RP will be in one week, on Jan 31. No combat system for now, we want to roleplay first and see where the story will take us – at a later time we will include a combat syste, too – probably CCS (the Community Combat System, and open source thingy), but we are looking at other options, too.

If you have not already done so, check out the Undercitizens website for stories and submitting your character. Cheers, Rai  ^_^

Undercity: Dark Genesis

On December 8th, 2007,  Zak Kowalski rezzed the first prim of dance club Suite 15.  Back then Suite 15 was on a small parcel only, but its creation marks the rezday of what later became a whole city.  Beginning this weekend we are celebrating one year of Undercity, and we are finally ready to launch the Undercity Roleplaying Website.  Yay!  you can take a look at it now, it’s undercitizens.net. The website now features “Dark Genesis”, the beginning of Undercity’s backstory, written by lead author Tobiath Tendaze. The mysteries of Undercity’s eternal darkness, of its strange creatures, and of SAM (the rogue surveillance system controlling the city) – these mysteries are waiting to be solved. Be also sure to take a look at the city map for RP and OOC zones,  to read the article “About Dark Roleplay” and to read the rules of both Undercity and the RP.Once you have decided to join, please submit your character - this will not take more than 15 minutes.

We are looking forward to roleplaying with you.

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We are also busy building on Alton Icarus: The “Kids Information Center – KIC” is about halfway finished.

Now, what is KIC all about?

We want a sim that is

- a place for Second Life Mentors with kid avatars to teach new residents

- a sim for art exhibitions, (for everyone to see what we kid avatars are all about).

- we will have a playground with new toys,

- the transmogrifier is back,

- there will be a public sandbox

- and a home for the Milk N Kookies Show, yay!  The MnK studios will be a place to learn, too –  to meet other kids interested in radio production: we will teach everyone who’s interested about how to do interviews,  journalism, or recording stuff and hosting shows.

- The Kulture Kids will have their temple on the KIC sim.

- There will be a place to learn about music in SL and deejaying.

KIC is a community project, built with the help of

many kids from all kinds of groups. We are halfway through with building the place, and now calling out for those who are interested in exhibiting stuff there, people we might never have heard from during Kids5B even .

If you are an artist, musician, an SL Mentor with a kid avatar, someone who likes to teach or an aspiring SL kids journalist…. whatever, now is the time to contact either me, sven Homewood or sacha Magne.

By the way,  Sacha is the one paying the sim tier of Alton Icarus ever since Kids5B. Because we dont want to go commercial, there will be no rentals on the KIC sim. If you want to help sacha with the sim tier for Alton, feel free to donate.

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I recently was threatened by a fellow kid avatar. He claims he saw a “sex bed” on my sim, while in fact the bed has two cuddle poses in it, nothing else. He also said he would visit my sim with lots of different alts and send abuse reports about me and my friends, until “the sim goes poof”.

So, after being threatened like that I warned several sim owners   – and most of them basically told me the same story about that kid: that they were threatened in the same way, and one incident with the same person lies even 2 years in the past.

Yesterday, another interesting thing happened:  one of these Second Life Police Force guys offered me to help.  He says his police department is the largest in Second Life, and they serve and protect people from griefers and people who violate the TOS.  I told this guy that he can help me if he is willing to use a child avatar. But he said: that’s not possible.  So, cop roleplayers apparently think it’s perfectly normal to roleplay a big, strong adult police man, but roleplaying the same thing as a kid – on a kid avatar sim – is out of the question. I don’t understand it, do you? Anyway, we stayed on friendly terms, and since we allow adult avatars on our sim, (we just don’t involve them into roleplay), I invited him to stick around as a civilian. But for security and intel, I will rely on the power of the kid avatar community.

Back in action…

We started building next to Undercity these days. The sim’s name will be KIC, which stands for “Kids Information Center”. In German, KIC can also be pronounced as “Kids”

Here’s a picture of … well, an empty sim with a 3D map, and sven, sacha + me prepraring to terraform and rez the first objects ^^

Building doesnt really look like that, but don’t you love those wireframe pictures

Between inviting other builders to the group and rezzing prims, we found some time to visit Loki’s Hay Barn at Burning Life festival. Here’s a picture of the burning of the wickerkid (aww):

There always has to be some time to huggle a puppy. Or a blue wolf.

I will do an interview with Tom Boellstorff, author of the book “Coming of Age in Second Life” on Saturday – be sure to tune in for the “Milk and Kookies Show” on Oct 11th, 12:00 PM Second Life Time.

Statement on abuse reporting

I recently banned a girl avatar from Undercity for abuse reporting another kid.
The girl abuse reported a boy named Zakari right after he said he’s 16 years old in RL.
Now you might say: “The Terms Of Service are on her side, she did right.”
Here are my reasons why I feel bad about people abuse reporting a seemingly underage resident that quickly:

1.  We have no means to verify the real age of a resident. To do so, we would have to meet them in person or check their real life ID, which we are not obliged to do. A resident stating to be underage could have lied, could have been drunk, could have made fun. Heck, it could be a typo.  A chat window is not RL identification.

2.  I abhor discrimination based on age.  Psychologists and psychotherapists all over the world plead for a society where adults and teenagers, kids and old people mix up.  Seperation based on age creates social stupidity, ignorance and mental illness. Where generations learn from each other, social intelligence rises.  This is the state of science today.
I am happy to live in a place where it is perfectly normal for teenagers to hang out in dance clubs after midnight with adults, to participate in eduactional projects with adults and to voluntarely work in the care of old people.

3. The girl who abuse reported Zakari told me her reason: “I am not putting up with RL kids.”
So, someone who likes to play a kid in a virtual world feels unable to put up with someone who might be a RL teenager (16 years old) in this virtual world?  To me that’s hypocrisy.

An abuse report is a measure not to be taken lightly. Residents banned from SL lose their land, their Linden Dollars, their creative work and probably their friends.
I will abuse report kids for griefing, and for running around naked or violating the rules of my land or community. I will not abuse report residents solely based on them saying they’re less than 18 years old, as long as I can not prove this to be true. I will take appropriate steps when finding out they are  underage indeed, for example if I know them in RL or after I saw their ID. Since this is highly unlikely I think that age verifaction is something Linden Lab should do, not me or any other resident.
On my land I will ban residents who are known to be AR trigger happy.

Kids Are United
Love you all,

Rai