Estate-level governance coming to Second Life

By ianbetteridge
When you are running your own Second Life server connected to the Linden grid solely for money, ID and inventory management, who should you appeal to if you’re being abused? Not Linden, clearly. According to a post by Daniel Linden, ...

On the Official Linden Blog comes the announcement that estate owners - people who have rented their own island from Linden - will have power to settle abuse reports:

As Linden uses the same tools on the mainland and develops out the
Second Life experience our way, residents will have the option of
resolving issues their way, or opting-in to the way Linden runs the
Second Life grid. The community team firmly believes that the residents
of Second Life should create and enjoy their own experience, and is
dedicated to delivering that promise.

This is, fundamentally, a step towards the kind of distributed governance of Second Life that will be essential once the grid itself becomes distributed. When you are running your own Second Life server connected to the Linden grid solely for money, ID and inventory management, who should you appeal to if you’re being abused? Not Linden, clearly.

According to a post by Daniel Linden, the results of an earlier trial of estate-level abuse management…

…have been impressive. Serious, disruptive incidents are
often resolved nearly immediately, and overall response times for
behavioral issues have been reduced from days to hours.


I’m not surprised by this. Those closest to the action are the most likely to take action.