Maybe you were banned from Second Life and maybe you were just banned from some site or parcel within it. Maybe your problem is with another virtual environment.
There’s certainly a chance you can sort it out, but you’ve got to approach it the right way. Most folks don’t do any of the things that will get them through the process successfully.
(Due to the large volume of specific queries, I’ve written a guide on how to get your account unbanned from Second Life. For more general advice, read on…)
Firstly, be civil and polite, and be prepared to answer any questions. If you’re calling the virtual environment operator, they’re going to want to verify that you actually are the account-holder.
Whether you’re talking to someone who owns a little parcel of land in Second Life, or whether you’re talking to Blizzard or Linden Lab, do not let the conversation start like this:
Support rep: “Hello, this is Pat MacGroin. How can I help you?”
You: “You stupid f*****g sacks of s****t you %*@#*$!!”
This will not help you get you unbanned. It might make you feel better for about five seconds. Barely.
Support reps have very limited powers of discretion. They can’t exceed their job parameters, but generally they’re not obligated to make things easy if you’re rude. If you are rude and abusive, nobody in support, or their manager, or their manager’s manager is going to give you the time of day, let alone sort out your account problem. You’re just not worth it to the organization to keep as a customer, if you take this approach. They would rather lose you as a customer forever than have you yelling at their staff over the phone.
Secondly, if you did do something wrong, ‘fess up. Come clean. Apologize.
If you were banned from a service or a parcel with good reason, apologize. Say you’re sorry. Actually mean it. It doesn’t matter if the reason you were banned isn’t something you thought you should be banned for, if you did it, say sorry. Eat crow for 30 seconds, and just don’t do whatever it is again – because if you’re asking someone to unban you, you really don’t want to get banned for the same thing again down the track.
Lots of folks are happy to give you a second chance. Hardly anyone will be willing to give you a third chance.
Don’t argue rules. If you did whatever it was, don’t try to argue that the rule shouldn’t apply to you. Or that it’s a dumb rule. The person you’re talking to is the only person who can organize your being unbanned. You are a unique and special snowflake, but so are seven billion other people. Don’t expect or demand an exception.
Remember you’re trying to assure them that you’re actually an okay person, and that you’ve learned your lesson and you won’t be costing them time or money dealing with a future infraction or ban. If you can’t convince them of that, you’re just not going to get unbanned.
Likewise, don’t argue that your brother, your friend, or your cat was using your account when you set fire to that cathedral, spray-painted crude slogans on newbies, or ran naked in circles singing songs about goblins.
The most common thing reps hear when someone’s asking to be unbanned are:
- You &%&*@#! You’re like some *&%&% dictator abusing your %*&@ power!
- It never happened.
- I didn’t do it. Someone else did it using my account.
- It shouldn’t be wrong.
- It shouldn’t apply to me.
If you try any of these strategies, you’re screwed from the get-go.
Be courteous. Be civil. Be polite and helpful. Apologize for causing problems. Assure them it won’t happen again. And make sure it doesn’t, because if they lift your ban, you aren’t going to get another chance if you mess up later.
It’s possible that you didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone makes mistakes but the onus of proof is on you. Have any documentation handy. Emails, transaction records, dates and times of events and conversations. They might help. If they don’t or you don’t have them, then ask if there is some other way things can be solved. There might be.
Lastly, there may be nothing the rep can do to help you. Some organizations have a policy of not unbanning people. Some have policies about not unbanning specific offenses. Almost all of them have policies about not unbanning rude and abusive people. And whatever the policy is, the computer system may not let them unban you if it would violate policy.
So, whatever the reason, if the rep says they can’t do it, that’s probably very likely because they can’t. No amount of verbal abuse on your part will make the computer system change to allow them to do something their managers have decided that they’re not allowed to.
If they do have options available (maybe their team-leader or supervisor has the authority), then they’ll try to arrange this for you – but only if they believe you and like you. Call them useless and demand to speak to their supervisor, and this is what happens:
Pat: “Boss. Line 37 wants to talk to you about getting unbanned.”
Supervisor: “Hmm. What do you think, Pat?”
Pat: “Well, he just told me to stuff my head up a pig’s ****.”
At this point the supervisor is going to tell Pat to tell you that she’s left the building, or in a meeting, or unexpectedly dead of Myxomatosis. If you’re very unlucky, they will agree to speak to you personally. And you won’t enjoy it.
At the end of the day, you’re someone who maybe misinterpreted, or misunderstood, or was a bit too short-tempered or whatever. You screwed up. Make sure the person knows that you know, be as nice and polite about it as you can be, make a good impression, and you maximize your chances of getting off the ban-list.
And heaven help you, if you turn right around and make the same mistake again.
“Have any documentation handy. Emails, transaction records, dates and times of events and conversations.”
For Second Life, log in at http://secondlife.com/ and go to My Account, then Transaction History. This will provide you with transaction records.
If you’re in Windows and logging chat, the logs are probably at C:\Documents and Settings\(YOUR NAME)\Application Data\SecondLife\(YOUR SL NAME)
The ‘local chat’ is in a file called ‘chat’, IMs are in files named the group or person you were IMing with.
DON’T edit the chat record you’re sending if you’re trying to get unbanned from Second Life. Linden Lab can read the original, and if you edit what you send to try to make yourself look good, you’ll look bad.
Apple Users can follow this path:
Hard Drive > Users > YOUR NAME > Library > Application Support > SecondLife > YOUR SL NAME
Note that “Hard Drive” could be named something else. You could also simply use Spotlight to look for the file Chat.txt on your computer.
Awesome, this article goes on my profile for future unban appeals.
Or create an alt and start over until you get unglued again.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
“It’s possible that you didn’t do anything wrong. … Have any documentation handy.”
I was banned from Facebook (rather than from Second Life) because I DID do something wrong. I registered as my avatar, instead as my real-life identity – which is against their policy. (Actually I registered separately as both.)
I made a very polite formal appeal, but at Facebook policy is policy. I’m still waiting for a reply to my appeal. Meanwhile I tweeted about the ban, and the news got splashed across SL blogs, including Hamlet’s and Tateru’s. I suppose that only worsens my fault in Facebook’s eyes….
Install ShoopedLife, f*ck Lindens, problem solved.
Although, as you might have noticed, there’s a bit of an arms race with that application. Just using it at all can get you banned.
No, you’re right about that. Even the PN admits that ShoopedLife will not stop all kinds of bans, just the most common ones. Their solution is just simply “stop caring about your SL account so much that it is not expendable”. Seems like pretty sage advice to me.
Sure, and people can stop caring about their legs, and their jobs, houses and property while they’re at it
The PN themselves don’t seem to be taking their own advice, however. So many of them seem to have just “gone native” in SL and similar environments over time, which I think only goes to demonstrate their basic fallacy. It’s certainly been a long time since they were relevant.
Thanks for reminding me that health and livelihoods are definitely comparable to a virtual world, Tateru.
And the only reason why the PN are now irrelevent is that their hijinks have been eclipsed beyond anything they could ever do by the Lindens themselves. The Lindens no longer need organized griefers, because they **** themselves over more than the PN or anyone else ever could.
Just pointing out that you’re trivializing human activities based on the medium by which it is conducted. Just as our own parents did with the telephone (your generational grouping may vary).
The medium by which a human activity is conducted does not intrinsically add or subtract value.
For many people, it’s not the account. It’s the friends. They care about their SL friends, and want to maintain regular contact with them.
For many people, they have no other access to those SL friends. They probably don’t know their first-life names, they may or may not have contact emails, and they certainly couldn’t afford to go down to the local pub with them – the most centrally located pub may well be in Hawaii, Fiji, or on some island in the middle of the Atlantic (is there one?).
For a smaller percentage, SL is their livelihood. And not caring about the account could well lose them their job and put their ability to pay their mortgage at risk.
Look, Tateru, I know you’ve got a good head on you–moreso than certain other Second Life “journalists”/synchophants, and I appreciate that. But you’ve gotta realize, while that may make perfect sense in your own avocational circles, out in the real world, with non-Second Life people, that doesn’t really mean anything. Real people don’t talk about “emergent technologies” or “new media” or “vee-double-you’s” or things like that. Out in the real world, yes, there are still such things as anti-social shut-ins that spend too much time on the computer. I’m not insulting you now, I’d just like you to realize, claims like that aren’t going to carry a whole lot of currency out past Web 2.0/metaverse types.
I’m quite well acquainted with the rest of the world. I’ve spent the last several decades working with people who have very little idea about anything once a PC is turned on. Heck, for most folks the Web’s only been mainstream for three years or so.
good day..this is caleb winstanley on second life.i have read the following statement. and some of those violations, i can say that i did in second life. i really apologize for what i have done,i am not aware of those voilations..i know some of those but not all of it..my account has been disabled by linden maybe because of doing unnesessary things.im really sorry about it. now i have read these voilations,i would be aware of doing such things. so im begging to please give me a chance to get back in second life for a second time. thank you.. and i really appologize.
Marion:
You do realise that Tateru is not an employee of Linden Lab, and has no authority to affect your status in SL?
She’s just telling you how to do it – she has no way of actually unbanning you. You’ll have to make your plea to the Lab, not to her.
She has authority over New Citizens Inc. land, but not over Second Life as a whole.
I might also add, by personal experience, that honest apologies and pleading not to repeat the offense in the future still isn’t guaranteed to unban you, especially not in the case of Second Life. In fact, it might screw you worse.