I have been meaning to talk about this interesting security system built into the Sistine Chapel build at the Vassar College sim (teleport SLURL). Vassar has instituted a mandatory "Code of Conduct" that they require all virtual visitors to agree to before you can enter the build. This was the first time I had encountered a system like this in Second Life, so I took a short video of the process in action.
After the jump is a fuller description of how it works, which is kind of hard to follow in the video. Then I discuss some of the larger issues around Codes of Conduct for SL sites and the trickiness of wording and enforcing them on your visitors.
(By the way, that’s my girlfriend’s avatar Szyndi Szymborska, in case you were curious.)
As you approach the Sistine Chapel, you are presented with a billboard. Clicking it produces this notecard that warns you that you are going to get stopped at the entrance to the Chapel and asked to agree to their Code of Conduct.
At the threshold of the chapel, you get assaulted with text in chat, blue dialog boxes opening up above you, notecards being tossed at you. I’ve been in SL for awhile, and even I found the process rather overwhelming. Here’s what you see in chat:
[18:18] NDE Agree Box: Sistine Chapel Re-Creation requires that you agree to a terms & conditions policy. This NDE Agree Box will now ask for permission to take your controls and freeze you in place while you read the terms & conditions. If you deny permission or ignore the request, you will be removed from the parcel.
[18:18] NDE Agree Box: You now have up to 10 minutes to read over the terms & conditions you have just received via notecard. If you agree to them before time is up, you will be permitted into the rest of the area. If you disagree or time expires, you will be released and removed from the parcel.
[18:18] NDE Agree Box owned by Bret Rydell gave you ‘Sistine Chapel Code of Conduct’ ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vassar/203/78/25 ).
And here’s the text of the Code of Conduct card that you get:
Welcome to the Vassar College Re-Creation of the Sistine Chapel.
We have re-created the Sistine Chapel as a proof-of-concept for how the technology of virtual worlds can augment or enhance a tradtional liberal arts education.
TO VISIT THE SISTINE CHAPEL ON VASSAR ISLAND, YOU MUST AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING "CODE OF CONDUCT." You will only be asked to do this once.
===============
CODE OF CONDUCT
===============Visiting the Sistine Chapel creates a deeply moving experience for many people for a variety of reasons, including religious, artistic and educational.
To preserve this same experience for those visiting the Sistine Chapel in Second Life, we expect all visitors to conduct themselves here as they would in real life: with respect for the environment as well as for those visiting the environment. Further, the Sistine Chapel was created for non-profit, educational use. You may not use it, or images of it, for any commercial purpose.
Any misconduct will result in banishment from Vassar Island as well as in a report to Linden Labs. Please contact Bret Rydell or Stan Frangible to report any such misconduct.
YOU MUST AGREE TO CONDUCT YOURSELF BY THIS CODE OF CONDUCT IN ORDER TO CONTINUE.
If you elect to disagree, you will be removed from the Sistine Chapel area of our island. However, you will still be free to visit other parts of our island. Note: the system that is used to remove you from the Sistine Chapel is one built-in to Second Life ("eject from parcel"). It is not the most graceful system, and we apologize in advance for the way that it may "drop" you on another part of the island.
Please use the blue menu on the upper right side of the screen to indicate your agreement with our Code of Conduct.
–Bret Rydell
——————————————————————————————————
Images are used with permission.The "Code of Conduct" agreement system was developed by Kenn Nilsson of NDE Enterprises.
I like the apology about how the ejection system is not very
"graceful." Getting catapulted from one end of a sim to another is
definately the opposite of graceful, although it’s often quite fun. The whole tone of the note sounds like someone who has grudgingly instituted this system at the insistence of Vassar’s legal counsel. "I hate to do this, sir, but I’m going to have to do a full cavity search."
I have no problem whatsoever with an in-world Code of Conduct system that ejects you if you don’t agree to it. That’s how the web works, that’s how it works at the Museum of Modern Art too.
I do have to say that the language is not very helpful as to what it is that is asked of you: "we expect all visitors to conduct themselves here as they would in real
life: with respect for the environment as well as for those visiting
the environment." What that means is highly open to interpretation. Does it mean don’t talk to people? Don’t brandish your sidearm? Refrain from smoking? Do the female avatars have to wear skirts and the men long pants like when you visit the real Vatican? It’s all so unclear.
This is Vassar’s house, and they can ultimately decide what a "respectful environment" is and isn’t. And it’s a small enough site that policing it doesn’t seem like too big of a chore.
Now for a Code of Conduct for a larger build, or an entire sim, or a series of sims, you are getting into trickier territory. SL residents years older than me have been wrestling with this question of how to properly draft, disseminate and enforce a Code of Conduct or set of Bylaws of a given community.
As Second Life grows and expands and internationalizes, questions about how to institute Codes of Conduct, click-through agreements, and enforcement are going to get harder to answer. Will you have to have versions of your Code available in all the official UN languages, as well as Klingon? Clearly the Linden gods would like to push that responsibility away from themselves and onto the sim owners. I certainly don’t blame them, but it does make building and maintaining a healthy in-world community that much more challenging.
If you’ve encountered any interesting in-world Code of Conduct or security systems, drop me a note here or on my avatar Rik Riel. I’d love to check some more out.
Thanks for making us aware of the code of conduct matter, and nice video. I too would be interested in seeing further examples of this.
I have also taken some interest in self appointed police force type groups, as many questions about conduct, authority, etc., come into play.
There’s a certain irony in bombarding people with notecards and requiring them to let you freeze their controls (!) in order to “preserve” a “deeply moving experience”.
I am also not quite sure what such a system is meant to achieve, over and above a simpler and less intrusive notecard-giver or sign. I find the increasing tendency to require people to “agree to a code of conduct”, rather than simply saying “these are the rules of this sim” or “please behave respectfully towards other people”, rather aggressive, and hardly likely to dissuade anyone wishing to cause trouble.
There’s a certain irony in bombarding people with notecards and requiring them to let you freeze their controls (!) in order to “preserve” a “deeply moving experience”.
I am also not quite sure what such a system is meant to achieve, over and above a simpler and less intrusive notecard-giver or sign. I find the increasing tendency to require people to “agree to a code of conduct”, rather than simply saying “these are the rules of this sim” or “please behave respectfully towards other people”, rather aggressive, and hardly likely to dissuade anyone wishing to cause trouble.
Ordinal, good observations. There must be a lot more serious griefing going on in Second Life than I was aware of to see a sim owner go to such lengths of incorporating what appear to be pretty substantial user requirements. Perhaps agreeing to the code of conduct does several things: Is a definite record of your AV being there; is a very in your face method of impressing rules of engagement; allows the sim owner to say we are doing everything possible to ward off unbecoming behavior(whatever that may be); enables better visitor records for statistical and perhaps marketing purposes.
It would be neat if someone took time to contact the build patrons and query them as to why they implemented all of this, and expectations for such. Only then may we understand the true motivations.
Are you posing as me in second life? Are there conduct rules to that??
I am the person behind the code of conduct at the Sistine Chapel on Vassar’s island in Second Life. I enjoyed your blog posting on the code of conduct system, and wanted to comment on a few things: First, the idea behind the code of conduct system was mine, and not that of our attorneys. The press is littered with stories of avatars misbehaving in SL and I thought that it made sense to remind people that we expected them to act in a respectful way while in the Sistine Chapel. You are correct in that the code was fairly vaguely worded, but that was intentional I did not want to have a list of “thou shall not…” clauses. First, because such a list could never be exhaustive, and second, because the point of the code system was not to create such a list but rather to have people think about what is appropriate. SL, due to its anonymity, can encourage people to act in ways towards others that they would not in RL. The code system was an attempt, and a proof of concept, to see if it would, in fact, remind people that they should think about how they act. Actions and words in SL are just as powerful on people as they are in RL…after all, there are real people at the controls of every avatar. To date, over 650 avatars have agreed to the code, and only a very few have written to express concerns about it.
So, having said that, let me talk about the technology itself. In many ways, we are limited to what SL has to offer. In a recent system upgrade, SL instituted the “Keep/Discrad/Mute” blue dialog box whenever you are presented with a notecard. That was due to their desire to reduce notecard spam. However, by doing so they have now added a step that people must go through to read a notecard: namely, clicking “Keep.” This is not the easiest thing for many newbies to grasp in SL. Further, many newbies are not aware that messages are sometimes “chatted” to them. So, that is why I put the billboard out in front. it served as a way to let people know what they were about to experience. If you have thoughts on how to simplify the system, please do let me know. Or goal is not to make it burdensome, but rather to let people know what will be happening to them. And, yes, the eject system can be fun. However, it is disconcerting for those that find themselves flung 100m into the air with no idea why it just happened. I hope that this helps explain a bit about what we are trying to do, and how we are trying to do it. Thanks again for taking the time to write about our build.
Hi Bret, thanks so much for your reply.
I think you are correct that the technical solutions within SL for ensuring the right environment for your space are pretty limited now.
Given the limitations, I think there’s a longer discussion about what different sims have instituted to ensure that avatars on their spaces are acting in accordance with community standards.
If others can suggest similar systems out there, we could hold a discussion on this in-world, maybe even at Vassar?
Oh and Cindy, I hacked your account. Sorry. My bad.
Bret, I’m glad to read some of your reasoning. Thanks for chiming in.
One thing that stands out for me is the contrast between your admirable concern that “Actions and words in SL are just as powerful on people as they are in RL…after all, there are real people at the controls of every avatar” (with which point of view I very much agree), and your choice to freeze a viewer’s controls.
Yes, in RL there are situations where we voluntarily, to one degree or another, submit to restrictions on our freedom in the name of security, like at airports. But never are we involuntarily immobilized. What are the security measures at the real Sistine Chapel, I wonder?
Rik, I hope you can get such a discussion together. Caledon is the sim with community standards that I’m most familiar with, and the community standards are almost entirely community communicated and enforced.
Otenth:
We thought about the imobilazation before implementing it. In the end, I felt that it would be too easy for people (especially newbies) to miss the fact that they need to click KEEP on the box in the upper right corner nd thus get ejected and not realize why. The ony reason to imobilize is to have people focus on the fact that (1) they need to read/do something, and (2) that they can’t continue into the chapel unless they do.
However, we can certainly think more about the freezing aspect as the build evolves.
Bret: In this instance I am thinking about the classes of potential visitors here. As far as I can see it, in terms of people who might interfere with the build and be annoying to other participants, they are:
1. People coming specifically to cause trouble. They will not be bothered at all by these measures and will just click through them and do whatever it is they came to do – it will not affect their behaviour. There is no benefit in terms of enforcement here either over clear signage, it does not make it easier to stop them or more likely that LL will take action.
2. People with no intention of causing trouble or irritation (the vast majority). They will be either neutral to the procedure or find it actively annoying. It will not change their basic behaviour – that is if they don’t find the process insulting or otherwise annoying enough to make them not bother.
3. People who came relatively innocently but have some odd ideas about what is permissible behaviour in public or semi-public spaces in SL. Whilst some of this group might be dissuaded by a specific mention, I doubt that it would be at all more than from a simple notice or notecard giver informing them of the same. Requiring people to click a button to indicate that they have read something doesn’t actually mean that they read it, as software authors know.
The conclusion of this for me is that measures such as are present here really serve only to annoy innocent visitors; they don’t dissuade hostile ones and they make little difference to the confused over simple “please behave”-type signs.
I am also a resident of Caledon, where we have very little griefing, and it is generally because people who visit simply don’t want to; they see general behaviour taking place, our rituals of politeness and interaction and decoration with all of the cultural artifacts that go along with them, and consciously or unconsciously wish to conform and participate. I lose track of the number of people who visit and quickly become embarrassed that they are not wearing appropriate clothing, say, even though there is no direct social pressure to do so, and there are no rules stating that one must (as a visitor in any case). A few people simply come to cause trouble and they are banned in a straightforward fashion; these people would not care about notecards and freezes on entry and so on and would in fact likely be spurred on by them to return or suggest the destination for other griefers, marking the area out as “precious” and “self-obsessed”, if I have any understanding of psychology.
Clearly Caledon cannot be an example for the rest of the grid, it has its own particular individual situation, but I might suggest that with a detailed and spiritual build such as this, there will also be an unstated impetus not to… I don’t know… bring out a sex blanket in the middle of the floor and, er, have at it. Anyone who _does_ is probably not the sort of person who reads notecards a lot anyway.
Brett, I visited last week and felt exactly what Ordinal feels about your attempt to control griefing; her reasoning is sound and matches my own experience exactly. I hope this feedback helps.
I was motivated to leave a note on your bulletin board asking that you extend the time a visitor had to read the card, as my avie got booted long before finishing reading.
At a minimum, consider drastically editing the required reading. You can nest a optional note within your note if you want to go on and on. Also, you might create more graceful entrance signs–they detract from the work of Michelangelo and others within 😉 Keep everything attractive and to the point and people will be more likely to both read and appreciate your stance.
I’ve always wanted to touch the hand of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel! ty