Sim Bans Question For Sim Owners

Hello, I am trying to get some input on how sim owners ban. Yesterday, one of my groups received a group IM, that a person (they named the name) had just been banned from Caledon, for caging people that someone had called on the Caledon group for help and help arrived, and the person was banned. Then I saw it appear on other groups of mine. So the word was spreading, and I've seen this happen before. It's kind of like a mass hysteria once it starts, and word spreads fast.

As I know Desmond, from the forums here, I IM'd him, to ask if it was true. He wasn't online at the time. So *if* it was true, someone else must have ban power there and did the banning.

I hate to panic and ban someone unfairly, just because of hearsay, the person could be innocent, and the victim of some other kind of agenda, I have no way of knowing, not having been there, myself.

So I'd like to know how 'you' ban. Would you ban a person, based on this kind of information, or would you need to have something more concrete to ban an unknown from a sim, like firsthand knowledge?

i never ban on that kind of information because it's been easily abused in the past as a way to grief someone..although if it is from a reliable source i trust such as my community channel and it is happening at that moment..the ya i'll ban..but never on hear say..

it's just too easy for a drama queen to spread a rumor through groups about someone..once it gets into the grapevine of sl it doesn't take long for things to make a full circle if they are bad enough..

i used to jump on people for posting this kind of thing in our club channel also..

i' just not in favor of blacklists or grapevines because they are too easily corrupted..

if they make it to us and are caging a few people or mario's pop up everywhere then they'll get banned but i'm not jumping the gun because it's on the 3:00 news and people are still getting first drafts..

Thanks, Ceka. I did 'caution' the groups I saw it on not to bring down the ban hammer based on mass hysteria. The person mentioned was new and has a basically blank profile. Doesn't prove anything, one way or the other, could be 'just new'. But like you say I've seen in the past, someone banned almost grid wide as the panic spread from group to group, and you'd see it popping up in the groups as though it were proven fact, not hearsay. See sim owners running home to drop the ban hammer over their sim. Thanks for the input.

Wah? Oh dear.

All news to me; my IM's cap pretty much instantly when I'm not online, so if you IM'ed me the odds of me seeing it are pretty low. desmondshang 'at' gmail 'dot' com works though, although it's a bit slower.

If you know anyone that has been wrongly banned from Caledon, by all means let me know. If I can't figure out why and who did it, and circumstances, I drop the ban. It's part of our Avatar Rights. Most of the time if someone is just being a tard with a cage gun or whatnot, I drop the ban in a few weeks anyway. It's not that big a deal unless it becomes a chronic problem. Our ban list is pretty small.

Unfortunately I have to have estate managers with ban powers, otherwise it would be a resident harassment~fest the moment I logged out each time. Since we got the community gateway, I have discovered griefers have begun trying the tactic of 'friending' me to see when I am on. They find out quickly that griefing right after my logout doesn't work.

* * * * *

We ourselves don't generally ban from reports. Or even documented blacklist, such as with banlink or any other kind of tool like that. It's pretty rare that we would ban someone before trouble, though in a few very very notorious cases over the years I have, mostly with regard to people using exploits that wipe regions or bring them down so hard they don't relaunch.

All that said, once it's outside of Caledon, it's out of my jurisdiction. I can't set policy elsewhere, and if someone hears about a ban in Caledon and decides to do so in their own region there is little I can do about it.

As a possibly bad side effect, many Caledon residents actually LOVE seeing griefers come by. The residents have a tendency to 'freeze' anyone caught griefing on their land, dress them up comedically and call a crowd to come see. Pics posted to the web and blogs rapidly follow. Oddly, the griefers don't seem to come back for more.

i've had it done to me with one starting the rumors..they edited logs put in attachments in group noticed to groups that some had more than 1500 members just in one group not counting the others it spawned up in..

it wasn't about griefing..just two people in a business and one wanting to do things one way and one wanting to do things the other and it turning into a bad separation with one feeling they had to kill me off..

all you can do is ride it out and hope not everyone believes the news..
i was just fortunate that the majority didn't..

i've had one place i found that i was banned in and after talking to the owners they had no problem unbanning me..
it could have been worse..so i won't do the same thing to someone else..

i know some are legit claims but with so much drama in sl it's not worth becoming part of the problem..

thats is so awsome hahaha..that sounds like us at skybeam..everyone kind of enjoys playing with them..it can make a borning day turn exciting pretty fast lol

I don't ban on hearsay... I don't have to. Usually the people are straight up horrid right to my face! *grin*

My favorite is when their friends (or "friends", as I've had people hop on alts to defend their "friend" IM me demanding that I lift the ban. Of course, when I say no, then then demand to know why their friend was banned, claiming they have a right to know.

I LOVE when that happens.

It's usually the worst offenders, the ones where there's no doubt or second guessing or "Hmm.. maybe I overreacted", that are the most adamant about their "right" to know.

OOH! Or the guy who straight up told me that my products were overpriced (turns out it was because he had no money and wanted a free one), then, when asked why he IMed me about this, why he felt the need to give me "advice" on pricing (his suggestion? To give him a free one so he could go 'round "advertising"! LOL), told me that I had lousy customer support.

Um... dude? You're not a customer and we've established, through your own words, that you'll never BE a customer...

That one didn't get banned, though he demanded that I ban him.

But, yeah... unless an administrator or estate manager sees the offence, or there's logs and/or screencaps, I usually let it slide, adding a note in the person's profile.

Only time I have to ban when a competitor came to "view" us and it was pretty obvious what they were doing. Ours is a wedding sim and Will keeps the agent count very low unless we have a wedding. So that all but elminates any possibility of griefing.

Unless they actually DO something, I don't do it.

Thanks all. And, Des, I have no idea if it was a rightful ban, or not. It popped up on one of my groups, from someone who 'supposedly' was there, and after that I saw it a bunch more times other groups, being reported as fact. So I don't know, firsthand what, if anything, actually happened on Caledon. That's why I was wondering if sim owners 'panic ban' 'just to be on the safe side' or if they don't. Appears they dont, and I didn't either. Thanks.

I don't know about my managers, but I surtenly never ban on hear-say.
My banlist at the moment has the large amount of 0 bans. usually after a while I clean the list. Rarely noticed that someone banned for a month, all of a sudden comes back after I lift the ban.

I use the TOS and CS as a guideline for banning and my own common sence. I am very slow with a ban, I usually first TP the person to his/her home location and leave it at that.

SL sure has drama, in my experience more drama than RL even. So the chance that an advise to ban a person is just a revenge from the one starting it, is for me too big to follow up on that, even if that advise comes from a close friend.

Also banned people IMing me with a normal 'sorry' and explanation of their behavior can cause me to lift a ban to give someone a second chance. But rightout idiots that are griefing are absolutely excluded.

Only once did I ban someone that was not causing trouble at my sim, but I personally saw him attacking noobs for fun and decided to note the name and ban him from my sim. Long time and several cleanups ago though

Thanks, that was different, as you personally saw him. This was one of those 'ban by group hearsay' things. Virtual Ability is also a gateway, we receive mostly disabled, but often receive others as well; so we are very newbie friendly and don't like to swing the ban hammer unless really necessary.

I hear of many places that are so called "ban-happy."

If someone is being attacked or harrased on my sim, I will help them but make sure it's a valid complaint.

In my oppinion those that are like you, cautious with the Ban Hammer, are doing it right.

But on the other hand, anyone can do on their land what they want and that's a good thing. But group IM's or notes that call for a ban for an individual, I never respond... or better, in some cases respond with leaving the group, or kick from my group for spamming.

Most welcome After three years, most estate managers in Caledon don't bother to react much; if someone who is known to be sensible says "griefer dropping particle prims in region X" then usually one will go over there, press the right buttons and TP back to whatever they were doing. 10 seconds. Nuff said. Ban usually sticks a few weeks.

Incidentally, Char of Skybeam Estates is one of Caledon's estate managers with global access *everywhere*; I'm also one of her EM's, so if there's trouble we'll cover for each other. Same with Winterfell, same arrangement with Serra. Also Lovelace, and Zeppelinheim.

I can't imagine a griefer knowing where else to go, so generally there's no point to run around to all of those estates, banning. There are thousands of other places for a griefer to choose from, hence not much need unless something actually happens.

Considering there are handfuls of distrubed souls who make it their life's work to endlessly create alts for the purpose of griefing, I'm a bit more inclined to belive reports of griefing if the AV in question is a day or two old. That said, the griefing needs to be on the order of intentionally trashing and crashing sims or fraud as opposed to minor nuisances.

Conversely, if the AV in question is well established, there's an increased possibility that the report is a false accusation from somebody who's got an axe to grind, or it's an inexperienced estate owner / manager who's pointing the blame at the wrong avatar. Before you pass on reports to groups, you should know the practical difference between an object creator and it's owner & you should know that most chat spam is often spoofed to frame others that happen to be within 96m of it - locate the actual object that's generating the spam and see who owns it.