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> Second Life, the virtual world, does not have this problem in-world. Second Life averages about 40,000 to 50,000 connected users, comparable to GTA V Online.

> Second Life, the virtual world, does not have this problem in-world. Second Life averages about 40,000 to 50,000 connected users, comparable to GTA V Online. Roblox is on a whole different level. Roblox has around 200,000,000 monthly users. That is 4000-5000x what Second Life has. The more users you have, and the more mainstream something is, the more likely you are to have some chunk of the population that are either sociopaths or otherwise think trolling or bullying or getting a reaction from people is fun. In addition, the target demo of Roblox is kids especially young teenagers. At that age, a lot of social skills and introspection and impulse control have not developed for a lot of people. In addition, by targeting kids, they are open to a whole lot more scrutiny. For example, having virtual sex or doing virtual drugs in Second Life would not cause anyone to blink. If that happened in Roblox, it would be front page news on The NY Times and headline news on every news station, and likely a Congressional committee.

Animats 6y ago
No, only about 40x. Right now, Roblox has 1,797,251 users online. And they're in multiple shards, not one big seamless world.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Still you might reasonably expect to need 6x as much oversight for 40x as many people. Instead it sounds like they have about 200x as much. Maybe the moral of the story here is don’t try to solve social problems for early teens until you’ve solved it everywhere else.
  - Animats 6y ago
    Facebook has something like 26,000 moderators and is being criticized for not having enough. A system that doesn't need so many moderators scales better.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      There may be nothing more difficult to manage than an adult who acts like a 14 year old. There was some research done a while back that concluded that a system where members could 'punish' people for misbehavior can be statically stable if (and I believe they concluded, only if) the punishment came at a cost to those meting out justice. Unless I'm mistaken, Stack Overflow read the same paper. Which is why getting upvoted gets you 10 points, but downvoting something you don't like costs you 1 point. You have to want it a little bit more than just the knee-jerk reaction. It means more to you, and therefore it means more to everyone else, too.

Animats 6y ago

No, only about 40x. Right now, Roblox has 1,797,251 users online. And they're in multiple shards, not one big seamless world.

hinkley 6y ago
Still you might reasonably expect to need 6x as much oversight for 40x as many people. Instead it sounds like they have about 200x as much. Maybe the moral of the story here is don’t try to solve social problems for early teens until you’ve solved it everywhere else.
- Animats 6y ago
  Facebook has something like 26,000 moderators and is being criticized for not having enough. A system that doesn't need so many moderators scales better.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    There may be nothing more difficult to manage than an adult who acts like a 14 year old. There was some research done a while back that concluded that a system where members could 'punish' people for misbehavior can be statically stable if (and I believe they concluded, only if) the punishment came at a cost to those meting out justice. Unless I'm mistaken, Stack Overflow read the same paper. Which is why getting upvoted gets you 10 points, but downvoting something you don't like costs you 1 point. You have to want it a little bit more than just the knee-jerk reaction. It means more to you, and therefore it means more to everyone else, too.