Community Action Against Splitters Through the Arbor Project

Just a quick entry (I'm very, very, VERY busy this week) - within SecondLife, if you're tired of those rotating ads - there is a growing community project to deal with those which ruin the SecondLife Experience. It's the Clocktower Blacklist Project, Managed by the Arbor project, for the residents of Second Life.

Basically, the Arbor Project maintains a blacklist - and people who split parcels are submitted for the blacklist. It's that simple. At least one person who was on the blacklist has been removed. From a notecard in world:

Clocktower Network Information

The Clocktower network is a distributed blacklist system for use in the virtual world of Second Life. It allows a central repository of banned avatars to be automatically distrubuted to any parcel in the world that has our network client (probe) installed on it.

The Clocktower network was designed to limit movement of Ad parcel splitters. This notecard describes the basics of how the system works.

A Centrally managed repository of names is created and updated by the Arbor Project.

Instructions for Joining the network:
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1) Rez the object "Clocktower Network Probe 1.0.4" Somewhere on your parcel
If you own the land there is nothing more that needs to be done

If your land is Group Owned, the probe needs to be deeded to the group so it can manage the parcel banlist.
To join: Place the Clocktower Probe on your land, if your land is Group Land, share it and deed it to the group.

** VERY IMPORTANT: probes on group owned land MUST be deeded to the group or they will do nothing at all!

Make sure you join the "Arbor Project" group for updates and questions.

Frequentlly Asked Questions:
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Q: How many parcels can I place it on?
A: As many as you or your group owns, the more probes places, the wider the coverage. So All of your land parcels would be appropriate.

Q: What is the colored orb I see everywhere?
A: This is the network 'client', it communicates with the central information repository to retrieve, and apply blacklist entries to individual parcel banlists.

Q: What does this have to do with clocktowers?
A: I (The Author of the technology) Have in the past had to build large clocktowers to keep unsightly ad farm parcels from plain view of my land. This was written in hopes that I have to make less and less of these in the future.

Q: Someone put one on my land without my permission, can you come remove it?
A: We only place orbs on parcels of land we own. If you rent land and find one there, Your landowner may be a participant in the network.
If it is your land and you did not place it there, it has no effect on your parcels banlist. You can and should return it to whomever placed it there.

Q: This thing is lagging the whole sim
A: No.. It's not likely the probe itself is causing performance issues, The probe runs a single timer event, no sensors, it doesn't listen to chat, it doesn't log avatar information Except the owner or group key
of whoever placed it there.

Q: I want to leave the network
A: No problem, once you delete the orb from your land, it will no longer be able to manage your banlist, you can either manually remove the banlist entries or let them expire automatically.

Q: What can/cannot the orb do?
A: The Orbs only function and ability is to install bans in your parcel banlist, it is not capable of doing anything else other than that.

Q: The Orb Disappeared off my land, what happened to it?
A: The orb normally runs in 'Stealth' Mode, basically it turns itself invisible, but it is still running. We control this setting at the repository level. If the Orb is actually gone from your parcel and you did not remove it, That is probably because we discovered a bug or an issue in the current version and told the Probe to commit SLUicide.

Q: Who runs the repository?
A: The Arbor Project sets policy, and manges the blacklist repository

Is it effective? Maybe. It's increasing in size as more people participate - it costs nothing to do so, just a matter of getting a ClockTower Probe and placing it on your land. So how do you get a Clocktower probe?

Glad you asked. Go to the distribution center - Pero (157,209,108) and touch the picture of the clocktower IN the clocktower. You'll get information and a probe! Or, if you have trouble finding it - IM me (Nobody Fugazi) and I will send you a vendor as quickly as humanly possible.

Present statistics show about 500 probes deployed with 239 regions covered - and over 50 people participating so far.

Oh - and if you look at the Clocktower from above - you'll see the 16m plots that it hides. Special thanks to James Gill for pointing me to this.