Furries may hold a solution to the unverified problems

Earlier on the forum, there was a discussion about furries. From what i have seen both based on my own observations and from talking to others, furries as a group tend to cause the least amount of griefing.

The question is why, and I think the answer is that most furries put a lot of time into their shapes and skins, making the humans behind the furries very much attached to the accounts. And humans attached to accounts cause far less griefing than someone who plays what is percived to be a disposable account.

This time in creating an account has been used elsewhere. I won't post the sites here, but if any of the mukety mucks are interested, I'll certainly provide a link. That site uses a free sign up for anybody, but to weed out trouble makers, they specifically designed the sign up process to take 15 to 20 mins.

If the signup for new accounts were to use something along those lines, most people would probably think twice before doing something dumb on an account, and would almost guarantee a greater attachment to accounts.

I'm curious as to what others think.

That's because Second Life allows all furries to express their "animal spirit" through this medium. It's a well-known fact that every furry believes they contain said spirit deep within (like a soul) and must express it somehow, and by doing that on SL they become very attached in hopes of finally releasing their "animal spirit" into the real world.

I'm sorry my sarcasm meter isn't working, must be a lack of the proper amounts of caffiene in the system. Are you being sarcastic or are you claiming to know what "every furry believes"?

Feel free to laugh and mock me if you're just being sarcastic.

I agree about the concept that someone who spends more time on an avatar would be less likely to be a griefer. However all the components of an avatar from skin, form, hair, eyes and attachments, can be passed to and used by an avatar in under a minute.

This makes avatar creation time assessment impossible.

Now as to putting a delay in registration? No good either. Griefers can make an assembly line. You will delay only the first griefer alt. He can have another one cooking in the background.

You seem to have your heart and head in the right place. I will give you one more item to help in your (heck, our) search for anti-griefer solutions:

To test the feasibility of your solution, perform these tests:

First. Become a normal user or power user. Ask yourself "How will I be affected by this? Will I still like the environment?"

The solution you propose will slightly inconvenience the first group, but most will go, "Hey, what's a 20 minute wait?"

Second. Become the criminal. Ask yourself, "If I were a determined griefer, what can I do to bypass this?"

Your proposal fails the second since griefers can cook new accounts in the background while they're playing the first one.

Not a bad idea, actually. (The signup one.) Make it take around.. 20 minutes to do, and you'll have a lot less instant throwaway accounts made.

As of right now, it takes less than 30 seconds to sign up an account.

Agreed; after years of MMO gamming; Ive seen griefers go to great lengths both in effort and time to set up for actions. Not only will it not stop them but will only make it that much funner while they plan in thier heads the attack during the 20 mins of registration. Only answer is to return to accounts with some form of accountability. Problem is how do you tell current unverifieds that "opps sorry but ya got 1 hour to verify or we locking you out." Not fair to those thats already in, especially since quite few them are not griefing and just wanna have fun like the rest of us. Im guessing LL needs to admit they made a mistake and have to clean it up but reinstating verification for all new accounts, coupled with aggressive enforcement via a heavy banning finger to weed out the undesirables that slipped in.

That's why if you notice I am a staunch advocate of killing griefing methods rather than trying to detect griefers (not possible at account creation).

The anti-push land feature is one such feature I was waiting for with bated breath. It's only the first necessary tool to anti-griefing. Several more are needed to complete the set.

I'm still waiting for the per-avatar anti-push option which when active and when avatar is on safe land, will allow pushes only by a landowner's object or by your own object. A tamer option can be supplied which will prompt for pushes.

I'm also waiting for an anti-push option for vehicles.

Granted these will not stop all forms of griefing but they are necessary strides. We have to continue to find ways to counter griefers.

...Ya Srsly. o.o

Quote: ...It's a well-known fact...

Indeed, seriously.

Thee's only one *fact* when it comes to the Furry fandom, and that is that it has something to do with animals.

That's it. The rest is just interpetations, opinions, personal preferences and personal experience. No facts whatsoever, not anywhere.

I respectfully disagree. Based upon my experience of the furry community, quite a few people are in it because there is nowhere else that will accept them, and the 'having something to do with animals' is just something they have to fit in. So, in some cases, it doesn't even have anything to do with animals.

Do you people like furries or dislike furries? I've seen a lot of talk about them being weird because people believe they all have crazy animal fetishes, but now I see people saying they are nicer than people who aren't furry.

I believe your opinion to be true. I'm sure they would be less likely to grief since they spend a lot of time making their animal avatars look cuter or what have you. What I don't believe, is that you infer that non-furries who are unverified cause all the trouble. I personally have not paid regular money yet, and probably won't. I am only 18 and live in Australia, so payment would be a drag to do. I'm also not a furry because that's not how I'd like to express myself, even though I love animals.

What I believe the majority of griefers to be, is young children or teenagers who have lied about their age to be able to hang out on Second Life. There is no way to stop this apart from making the game pay to play. This would not be fair on the majority of adult players who just want to come on Second Life, hang out with friends they have made in the game and have fun. Some of you don't care about those people because they don't pay. It's a bit too late for those who just hate all free players because a few won't behave.

Blaming all non-furries with unverified accounts aint the way to go. Just make the sign up process longer.

FFS everyone, get it through your heads:

PEOPLE ARE FURRIES TOO!!!

Wait... I don't think my last post made any sense to anyone except me. >.>

I'm a furry, and so I was wondering about that "furries all have deep animal spirits that want to come out" bit.

Actually, the core central thing that binds all area of furriness is supposed to be anthropomorphic animals, not just animals.

I love SecondLife! I love it because it tastes like cherry. But I also love it because for the first time I can play a "game" where me and everyone else can be nearly anything they want to be. After spending so much time hanging out in furry chats/roleplay mucks/whatevers, it's interesting to see it all come to life in a videogame world type thingus.

Just to get things on track here, the thread is not about furries. The idea of avatar edit time vs tendency to be a griefer is the OP's main point.

Cannae only hit upon the point while noticing the furries tendency towards attention to avatar detail.

I'm a spiritual therian furry. My character passed away over a thousand years ago and was given a spiritual body. Immortal till i choose to release the spirit.

Nauv being sarcastic? Never!

Anyway, the reason furries are a target isn't because of what they do in SL, it's just carried over from elsewhere. Plus, they tend to be amazingly easy to taunt into persecution mode, so some of them kind of invite abuse. There *are* troublemakers among us, but they don't bother putting on the furry face when they act out, especially if it's a disposable alt. You wouldn't make the connection since they aren't trying to be activists, just assholes.

There's not really any good way of systematically reducing griefers short of stopping the unlimited unverified alts. Making sure accounts are verified before allowing multiple registrations would be great; enforcing it would be nearly impossible, and create support headaches for simple things like replacing a forgotten account.

no doubt this would be the case for "hardcore" griefers intent on destruction.

But then I am sure not all griefers are so calculating. It seems to me a lot of them are more opportunistic - bored kids who happen to stumble into an environment where they can make mischief for awhile, something they will most likely lose interest in once they find another distraction. In these cases having a delayed registration process might indeed help.

I was surprised when signing up to SL, simply because the process was so quick and easy. While I had to provide my email address, I didn't have to activate the account in any way. Even the most lax web forum will usually require you to at least activate via email.

A local forum I frequent has a delayed registration process. You have to wait 24 hours after registration before you can even read the forum. Anecdotally, there seems to be much less trolling and throwaway accounts on there than on most other forums I go to. Sure, anyone intent on making trouble will find a way...but then, the majority of people aren't that obsessive. Many will lose interest if it becomes too much hassle.

/shrugs
I think it's a good idea.

edit - spelling

Considering that from what i've seen: a lot of W-hats and /b/tards are furries, i'd have to disagree.

Unfortunatly, the most common account for griefers now are the disposable non verified accounts, and its people like you who are paying the highest price. As a rule, there is less of a chance that someone will be a griefer if they have a verified account, an older account, or an avatar that looks like some thought and effort went into it. Brand new unverfieds lack any of these charachteristics and its very easy for a determined griefer to beef (furry?) up their looks fast.

But nobody ever claimed to hate all free players. In fact, over the last two weeks, I've added two new players to my friends list, and have helped at least a dozen more. I've also dealt with a few others who popped in, said "nice tits" to any female present, and proceeded to try to head butt everyone else. I've yet to see an account from 2004 do that. .

I also highly disagree that furries put a lot of time and thought into their avatars, again from what i've seen from most of the community, plenty of furries are happy using the avatar as it was directly from the vendor.

Ultimately griefers seem to like to be furries because it's a quick, cheap, and easy way to get a full avatar that makes you look not like a newbie and requires 0 work to do.

Thanks for the construtive comments.

I agree that a longer sign up process will not weed out the determined griefer, it probably would reduce the opportunity griefer, those being people who grief because they are bored and its easy to do.

Ulitmately, there will be no single solution to minimizing griefing, but the more safeguards there are in place, the more effificent it will be to use the bigger guns against the true hardcore griefers.

One more thought on your comment as well. I don't know how feasible this is from a tech point of view, but to prevent multiple background accounts from being created, if an IP check could be done on new registrations and limit them to say one or two open registrations at a time, that would prevent a multiple registration workaround to a longer registration process.

This might work. It's not a complete system but it would slow the hardened griefer a small bit. My concern here is families that play on one IP.

It was never intended to be a complete system. And as far as families, if the IP limit was for registration only, not playing. Families that share IP would just have to take turns registering.

Might work.

But my preference remains disabling griefer ability inside SL. While hardened griefers will continually try to find new ways of annoying us, sooner or later with their options being cut off they'll eventually decide it's not worth it. My goal is to diminish their returns.

Furries seem to have more 'drama bombs' per capita. At least C4 only causes problems for a few seconds.