User-Controlled Push Restriction Features

Instead of, or in addition to, land-based Push restriction, I propose that each user have the option, in the client (and perhaps via script), to toggle Push restriction for their avatar. By default this would be on (allow Push). If ON, Push behaves per the current system. If OFF, the avatar cannot be Pushed by any source, -except- those sources owned by the owner of the parcel they currently occupy. Failed attempts to Push should notify the player.

http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2136

That won't prevent you from getting "pushed".

Push is no longer the problem. Griefers are using physical impact and non-physical superposition attacks to get push-like effects. I've been orbited on my own land with third-party push disabled. Push is now nothing more than a scapegoat.

As usual, Argent Stonecutter is completely right : push restrictions won't help much now, given that griefers have already moved on to new methods.

I'd also like to add that I've been orbitted on land I own which was set both no-push and no-outside-script at the time... and was far from a parcel border, and was done by someone who wasn't inside the land group.
Oh, and not only did I get hit with this orbitter........ EVERYONE around me did too. It was a push/script-restriction bypassing mass orbit device.

We need to change our focus away from 'push'... towards scripting/building permissions in general.

I'd love a way to set it so that group-deeded objects on my land could rez objects (teleporters rezzing beams, for example) even with 'create objects' off. Of course, I'd then give everyone in the land group the power to bypass 'create objects' restrictions too. The effect would be that scripts on the land which were deeded to group would work, people who were in the group could rez stuff (though, if they rezzed a replicator, it would fail)... and people not in the group couldn't grief us.
That's a very rough idea, but I hope that LL are beefing up the usefulness of no-script and no-build in these ways.

Oh, I certainly don't disagree, something needs to be done about alternative push methods as well. As far as I'm concerned, avatar autonomy is paramount; no-one but myself should have any ability to move my avatar without my permission, with the exception of the owners of whatever land I happen to be on at the time. I just don't like the current push restriction system because it requires me to a) own land, and b) not leave that land, if I want to avoid being shoved around.

As for these other push methods, they sound like people exploiting flaws in the physics model. I've never understood why a prim should eject an avatar with any sort of 'force' if they're found to be interpenetrating.

An avatar with full push-restriction enabled should be an 'immovable object'. No physical collision should budge them, and non-physical interpenetration should simply be ignored, ie. the non-physical prim should be treated as phantom by the engine until it is no longer being penetrated by any avatar. That would pretty much neuter these other attack methods, would it not?

That's still too tight a focus. The problem isn't "push" versus "other calls", it's "tools" versus "actions".

We need to look at the behavour, not the mechanism.

Adding more restrictions on mechanisms will just cheapen SL for everyone.

Making effective restrictions on behaviour is the only way to control bad behaviour. It doesn't matter if someone's using push, physics, particle bombs, or just hanging aorund and being creepy JUST over the parcel border... if they can use a completely anonymous alt to do it we've already lost at the starting line.
If there's any place you hang outthat doesn't have push turned off, talk to the owner.

Well, that's just it. I don't usually want push turned off for my avatar. I'd just like to be able to choose when I don't want to be pushed, instead of having blanket land restrictions.

I'm a big fan of avatar autonomy, I guess. If I want/don't want to be pushed, I should get to decide that. If I don't want to see someone else, I should be able to make them vanish from my client. Stuff like that.

Obviously, land-owners rules would take precidence in some instances.

And I don't want avatars who can't be pushed falling down a lift shaft or standing around wondering where everyone went.

The second-to-last episode of SecondCast has an interview with Chance Takashi where he outlines the impressive push-based ballistic pneumatic system that he has in place, if anyone is looking for some examples of benign push.

Or walking off the edge of a building after their friends who just jumped to the next building using a rooftop jump point in Suffugium...

Although that would be quite funny. If you could change falling damage so that it actually killed people if they fell off a building.

The only restriction you could put in place to stop the physical bullets would be to disable physical objects that are not a part of your group. ie they would just rez as non-physical objects.
But this would mean checking everything that is being rezzed to see if it's the same group, or the parcel owner, which wouldn't be very nice I think.

Really I think that firstly, push restrictions should be ON by default for land, and the icon changed so that it's only visible if pushes are allowed.
Then focus really needs to be on stopping griefers from getting into SL in the first place, as per the numerous "Remove/restrict unverifieds" threads.