Linden responses encourage griefing.

To start, pardon if I ramble a bit. I'm writing this after taking a break from doing astroparticle physics studying.

Yes, I know, its a bit of a confrontational title, but its the truth.

My nae is Harlequin Salome, and I'm a member of one of the largest combta groups in SL, called the Alliance Navy. It is the policy of the Alliance Navy (henceforth the AN) to not grief. We don't shoot people that don't attack us, and we don't grief on safe. In fact, we don't allow people to even use shields or superpush, to avoid using griefing tools. As such, you can be sure that we get attacked *alot* by various groups that I'm not going to name, usually the flying, shield wearing, C-4 and nuke using, stand on safe and shoot into unsafe land types.
Henceforth known as Scum (for Stupid Curse-inducing Unintelligent Morons.)

our group tends to avoid calling in a Linden for attacks on our base, to the point that we get our sim nuked at least once every couple of weeks, and don't respond. What we do is we find the enemy, in their unsafe lands, and we assault their baes (usually just a big box with some posters up all over >.> using replica rifles, grenades, and aircraft. Our weapons are, on the whole, damage only, nopush. When a person is specifically causing serious issues, however, we do ask for a linden. And this is where the issue comes in. The other day, we had been getting shot at from safe for at least an hour. We had done multiple abuse reports, and given the number of people on site, reporting each time we got shot from safe, the ARs must have been in the double digits. When we struck back, by firing from unsafe, into unsafe, over an intervening parcel of safe land, a Linden went ballistic on us.

Said Linden said we couldn't shoot over unsafe, and couldn't even engage in combat if it disturbed the neighbors, but it was okay if our land got nuked. I would post the exact conversation but said Linden refused to consent to that.

Many griefer groups sit in safe land, then attack, meaning we can't hit back. We also apparently aren't allowed to attack another group, even if they're on unsafe land, because we might "disturb" someone. When we asked what we should do when another group, even a non griefing group, attacks us, the response was "Abuse Report them."
This same linden, the day before, had been summoned by me and some friends to a sandbox in a PG sim, where soeone was cursing both in shout and at us, disturbing our builds, putting Mature pictures up all over, etc, and the Linden said that since the person wasn't doing anything right when the Linden showed up, they couldn't do anything.

AR's don't work. I have seen amny, many people get ARed. I know of one incident where the griefer got over 20 ARs for numerous actions, in under 5 minutes, and said greifer is still around. LL talks about Prosecution, and sall that, but they don't *do* aything. Ask any member of the AN how many times they've been griefed without reaction from anyone. We all have a laundry list of incidences. Meanwhile, since we're a combat group, wear big armour, and carry guns, when we do *anything*, Lindens are more than happy to yell at us, since because we use guns we must cause trouble. *snort*

One group even attacked me and a friend on safe land. A live helper not only was right there to witness the over 20 rounds a second each of us got hit with, said live helper got superpushed TWICE. Meanwhile the Linden showed up, and did *nothing*. LL wants to help us with updates. With neat thingies. With flexi prims. You want to improve SL? Start dealing with these idiots on the spot. We all sign a waver to follow TOS, and if memory serves you guys have the right to terminate an account. Do so.

One last little issue. A user on the grid was apparently asking around, seeing if anyone would "kill a person for me. In RL, not SL." I didn't hear it myself, but I took it seriously... Long story short, due to the nature of this person and other factors, I sort of assued this individual (an unstable and rather crazy guy, really) was meaning either myself or my friends. Never mind he doesn't know who we are, he's threatened it before. When I spoke to a Linden about it, I was told to file an AR. Because threatening a person's life IRL is on par with a rotating "Impeach Bush" sign.

I expressed dismay, and asked if LL would contact the authorities. She said "no." that I would have to do it. "You mean LL will use the FBI to defend their grid, but not users?" And since, in pure linden fashion, she said I couldn't post the exact log, I'll paraphrase her: "Linden labs will not do anything about threats outside the grid. Its not our problem."

I wish I could post the actual logs. I really do, because Im sure many thing I am quoting out of context. Sadly, I was not given that ability.

Bottom line is, without actual enforcement, the griefers are in a better spot. They can cause hell, becuse ARs, though a handful get dealt with, don't get dealt with enough. I know gfriefers that have gone on for MONTHS without any sort of reprimand, whereas a pal of mine was banned for a month for running into someone with a helicopter. LL, please. Either do something about these people, or let we residents police ourselves.

but, play combat games, get zorched in combat. c'mon... none of this 'we don't shoot first' balony... if you can't keep your games on your own ground, then...

(my apologies if i'm misunderstanding your message... i thought it read like some sort of 'involvmenet' with the current outage... so sorry if i was taking out frustration unnecessarily upon you.

time to fight dirty then. If they stand in the safe zone shooting at you in the combat zone this is clearly an indication of their desire to fight. Orbit them.

Bad idea, apparently this is going to get you yelled at by a linden, regardless of their intentions. If 20 AR's on the same person doesnt at LEAST lead to a cornfielding, something is rotten in denmark.

Regardless of the efficacy of various tactics, if one were to decide to retaliate the way to do it is *not* to be declare it in a public forum, of course, or say to Lindens "well if you don't do something about it I will", or anything like that. Griefers certainly never would.

No you just threaten and whine and litter on your neighbors land! whaa whaa whaa you set up a army base and peopel attack you gee think about it, And as teh person who's land you have shot over i'm GLAD the lindens tell you to knock it off
i am tired of finding litter from your lil boy games on our land
Go buy a sim so you can play army there

What the hell did you join the war for if you can't handle your own battles?
C'mon, what a waste of time griping about this. No offense, but you're in SL to play with weapons and fight with people, so quit complaining to Lindens when you lose.

Nice acronym...



Basically, the idea is that if you set your land to 'UNSAFE- DAMAGE ENABLED", then you're fair game -- PARTICULARLY if you're an army/navy/militia GROUP that uses weapons yourself. You're setting yourself up as a viable target. Now you're whining because someone took you up on it? <puzzled>



Hmmm... that's why computers have LOGS, I thought!



No, I think the idea is that if you set yourself up as a group with weapons, other bang-bang idiots are gonna wanna use THEIR toys on you, and you basically ASKED for it.



Agreed - I had an incident with a slimy neighbor about a bush of his that stuck across my property line -- and since there really wasn't much room around my house to walk (it's only a 512sm lot, the shop/gallery takes up 10m of the 16m width), I had to walk through his big damn bush every time I walked to the other end of my land. I IM'd him a couple of times, and when I got no answer, planted a nice BIG eucalyptus tree that stuck into his living room. That got his attention.

The next day -- first visitor at my shop, while I had a friend over -- who was personally offensive and then would NOT leave my property. The NEXT DAY, another such moron, making sexually-oriented comments and suggestions, and being obnoxious and rude. Two in a row, both with names related to World War II history, both of whom had just joined SL, but were NOT behaving like newbies at all - so either they were alts of my neighbor, or new buddies he dragged in just to grief me. I AR'd both of them, and banned them as well, but never heard a thing more about the incidents. No feedback about warnings, or anything.

One question -- when the attack occurred while the Linden helper was nearby as a witness, WERE YOU WEARING WEAPONS IN PLAIN SIGHT YOURSELF?



In Virginia, we just had an incident where an "unstable and kinda crazy guy" ATTACKED A COUNTY POLICE STATION, killed one detective, and wounded a number of others. Just because they sound crazy DOESN'T MEAN THEY'RE HARMLESS.

HOWEVER, unless you have included RL info in your profiles that would allow this person to identify you (the members of your group) individually -- and identify your RL locations, more importantly -- I don't think I'd worry about this too much. Just eliminate everything from your profile that could POSSIBLY be used to identify you -- email address if it has any part of your RL name in it (get a HOTMAIL addy with only your av name in the handle), website URL if your website has any info anywhere (even in the html source code) that could be used to track you down), phone number (I can get an address off the web or a big fat book at the local library, given a phone number), your IM profiles if you use those on your website or your SL profile.... basically, wipe out your back tracks.

Unfortunately, I doubt he would be asking around for people to do this unless he has at least one person actually located in RL... maybe so, maybe he's just frothing at the mouth.



The twit that brought down the grid last October was well-known as a griefer already.

At first I was on your side man. But you are on unsafe lands, so anything goes. Granted, these S.C.U.M may be dicks, and it seems like you've also dealt with a few dick lindens.

It's always sad to hear an MMO's mods, lindens, whatever seem inept. But that happens in every MMO I've been a part of.

I see a few solutions to your problem.

1-Fight dirty

2-Make your land safe

3-Make up a combat system, like ACME did but for firearms, give it away to other people and start up a big happy battle netowrk.

AAAAAAAAAAMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111

I am sick and tired of Lindens doing s**t!
When I was in the SLPD, we would occasionally call over a Linden if things went from bad to worse.

Let me tell you, this did nothing at all.

They would come over, and they see what's happening, I explain, they say "abuse report" then leave. The griefer is still shooting. We AR 100 times, and about 10 mins later the griefer is still there.

There needs to be some sort of better griefer management system in effect here. I personally once made a bullet detector for a security system that detects all objects moving at a certain speed, then notifies the people in the building, and if the object is verified as a weapon by a guard then they set off the alarm. If the object's name includes "bullet" then the alarm is automatically set off. Maybe land should have this "bullet" name in effect. I know, then people will change the names of the bullets, but still... the noobguns out there will be of no use anymore (specifically the M16A1 that everyone has).

<grin>

Only way i can think of is if we had some way to protect us against llPushObject besides sitting down... Shields suck. I was wearing a Sion Shield fully activated WITH a protec shield at the same time and i was still orbited... If we had something like the "Forcefield" from THERE (another virtual online world) we would be home free. The Forcefield is a part of the programs GUI, that makes you completly unpushable (No Shoving or Pushing of any kind).

Basicly thats all griefers do... pushing! They know it anoys people us. Most of us get pissed off about it because we're trying to build something and suddenly get knocked 800000m away from it. If we can find a way to stop that one problem, we can simply just put the children on ignore and be done with it... Sitting isn't always fun ya know? It's terrible to think that if i wish walk around, i have to sit on a non phys vehicle and putter around feeling like i'm running on 5 FPS...

Don't worry about this. I get a death threat a day. They're all BS. I wouldn't be afraid unless they could show you satallite photos of your location or something.

In my experience with the abuse system, it is not looked at as soon as you file an abuse report. It may take a week or more to get it resolved. But they do get looked into. Patience is what is needed when using the abuse report system.

What I would like to see is abuse reports becoming totally transparent for everyone involved. If you file it or have it filed against you, you should have full access to see its status, the full text of it, relevant logs, the Linden decision regarding it, and justification for that decision. I also think we should be able to see our own rap sheets. This level of transparency is the only way to ensure any kind of reliable enforcement. Otherwise there's not enough incentive to actually do it right, and we find ourselves at the whim of someone who has power over us with nearly zero accountability to us.

OW! MY EYES! STOP MAKING THEM ROLL SO HARD!

..that the most obvious and effective solution would be for LL to outlaw all combat action/toys/avatars and have those twitchkiddies go back to Counterstrike or Battlefield:X.

I know I wouldn't miss them.

I love the idea that wargamers and military roleplayers would run to the Lindens to complain about the enemy attacking their base. That had me snickering for quite a while.

Abuse Reports can be gamed.
Not that it's worth messing with in the first place.

But take for example, and this is a NO NO by the way, what if an alt of mine AR's one person.
Then my brother AR's the same person with all his alts.
And my sister does the same.
Then my RL friends do so a week later. Etc.
Doing this is abuse also.

I think AR's are just another value to be hacked by someone. It never works on any online game and never will IMO.
In some cases I've heard of a game company putting an ARing system in place, just so they could tell the players to go send a report. As if that helps. Anger Managment systems.
Instead they should have a punching bag icon for people to click to death. It would be about the same.

In any case, AR them all you want since that's the only solution. And who knows, if you AR enough times then maybe the database will flagged your account as someone who AR's everyone. So the system doesn't take you seriously when you do.
"The boy who cries furry".. I mean "wolf".. or some nonsence like that.

If that's how it goes then eventually you get ignored by that system for good I would think.
I have a feeling it's something along those lines.

Then again if it's not an auto database setup, then maybe they might actually see all your AR's. And that might be why the Lindens get a little annoyed and come after you for any little thing.
Too many reports. Which is what they told you to do in the first place.
Heh it's all crazy isn't it?

Again I have no idea how SL is setup but in other platforms it was easy to fool that type of system by randomizing AR's and ordering them over a period of weeks. Slowly increasing the amount makes it appear they are getting reported more and more. And by people who may or may not have any connection at all. I dunno if that kind of abuse exists in SL or not. I don't play those games anymore. And it's really not worth it.
But it's easy for people to do if they have the ability to make free accounts.
Not that free accounts are bad.

I suppose my usless point is simply that I agree the system doesn't work. And it needs fixing like a lot of other things. But AR's seem to be a problem in every platform and game.

I don't know about unsafe zones or the ToS on that, except that it's funny to go there with a big Target T-shirt on, but I would assume any AR's with the "He shot me" situation gets discarded pretty quickly if it shows the report came from a person in those areas.
Because that is happening at any given time in SL.

http://teen.secondlife.com/




>.<;;;;;

SL a place for griefers!? come on... That can't be...

LL would NEVER let that happen.

SL has always been a place for griefers. It always will. It has been documented many times where even if all parties are on safe land or all on unsafe land, it doesn't matter. LL seems to always take the griefers side. I think it even hurts your position if multiple people take your point of view and AR the one individual. It is part of SL and can never be changed.

But with the right additude and knowledge that LL won't get involved unless you can be faulted, you can out think, and out manuver the griefers. This can be a challenge but most times they give up. Besides with as big as SL is you can always go to another place and hang out.

The big issue is the bullets out there that end up with no owner names, seems that is a secret of the griefers while your normal guns can get you in trouble.

I know, this message was of no help, just a little venting on my side.