BanLink

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BanLink is a Reputation System used in the Second Life Metaverse

URL = http://www.slbanlink.com/


Description

Commentary from http://www.3pointd.com/20070104/user-created-trust-networks-in-second-life/

"BanLink is a different concept, though it also creates a network of trusted links that helps users assess people they don’t already know. BanLink is basically a collection of SL communities’ ban lists. It’s not a universal ban list, however. Instead, you as a community administrator can choose which other communities to trust; the people banned from those communities are then automatically banned from yours. If one of those people then clears their name with you, you can unban them from your community, even while they are still banned in one of the communities you trust. (This last feature isn’t explicitly spelled out on the BanLink site, but that seems to be the case. If it isn’t the case, it should be.)

That’s good as far as it goes, but one interesting feature of BanLink is that the communities’ ban lists are all made public. Those who’ve been banned can dispute the judgement, and when people are unbanned they are taken off the list. I like the transparency of this. (It also makes for great reading. One person was unbanned because they “dressed during ban process,” for instance.)

Judging from the available ban lists, BanLink is being used by some 40 communities in Second Life, including clubs, hangouts and retail locations. These include Luskwood, one of the largest communities in SL. What would be interesting would be to see the network of trust links among all those communities. This would perhaps give a better indication of whether the networked aspect of the service was getting a lot of use. It would be interesting to know how many banned people are on the lists as well."


More Information

See our entries on Reputation Systems and Trust

See also: TrustNet