What to do about a rude, vindictive neighbor?

After a recent land purchase, I politely IM'd the owner of the plot next door. Some particle effects and prims were crossing the plot boundary a bit. Autoreturn would not return them because the root prim was on his land still, and movement scripts moved them in and out of my new property. I also complimented his build as it is a nice build.

The next day not only had the prims I asked to be moved a few inches not been moved, but I had been added to the land's Ban list. That was his response. None of my polite IM's are being responded to. Currently he is sitting on his land seemingly running scripts that are bringing the sim to a crawl with lag and putting up more flying items that cross the property boundary. (Lag has been nonexistant tonight in the sim until he showed up, and I have a lag monitor on my land that is recording very low FPS now.). The sim has already crashed once tonight.

Any advice from the community at large to handle the situation? Can the suspicion of running scripts inducing lag be enough to submit an abuse report? Would a Linden move the items with a standard abuse report?

Since I can no longer play on my land tonight, bed beckons. I wish this person no ill will, and am also not interested in starting a war.

Any helpful advice welcome. I'll be able to check back on this thread tomorrow. Thanks.

Ask a Linden to come and check out the lag, say that there is only 2 people in the sim, and you don't get it.
The linden will come, does some research and then he will slap the griefer silly or some such.

Post in the SLLM forum here about objects that you can't get the owner to move that are on your land. If they've been placed maliciously as vandalism, that's ARable; if there's retaliation for the objects being removed, that is as well. Overuse of sim resources can be ARable but I wouldn't bother unless it's really noticeably bad.

Just don't get into the "well I'll put objects on your land then" vicious circle, because it tends to escalate and means you'll almost certainly not get any sort of resolution from LL - it's very hard for moderators to work out what's going on in these circumstances, and if the matter escalates into a huge AR-fest you may find that somebody says "right, both of you are griefing, both of you are suspended".

Leave it for a day to see if the chap does move the objects though - he may just have been annoyed, or drunk, or split up with his significant other or something and in a bad mood. If it's a persistent thing, then you take action.

The Lindens will move those particles off your land. If he puts them back, file an abuse report and watch him be banned for 3 days and if he does it again, he will risk permaban

Submit an AR if you like exercises slightly more futile than your polite IM. It won't be acted upon. In all practicality, your most effective act would be to move - sorry to say.

I don't endorse (or not endorse) these services, but some players have reported that renting from a landlord who takes an active interest in maintaining the "quality of experience" in their sims to be a service worth paying for as the Lindens seem to have little interest in policing much these days. Hiroland and Dreamland are names that come to mind, but there may be others out there that I've not heard of. I'm familiar with none of them, so you might want to ask current residents of their experiences. With increased "protection" from jerks, you will likely find some curbs on your "freedoms" which may or may not be of concern to you.

I think your neighbor has already given you pretty good indication of his willingness to negotiate or accomodate, and the Linden policy has traditionally been "his land, his privilege to do whatever he wants on it regardless of its impact on others". I'm sorry the answer is not more encouraging.

Good luck.

Thanks to all the respondants. I'll persue an AR and the SLLM forum, and have a Linden come and look at the lag issue when/if it surfaces again. Bans, or the threat of one, seems to be the only way the community can police itself, if there is no other official option.

Because my plot is substantially larger, I could make life very unhappy for them with boundary crossing prims and particles of my own, but I understand the need to refrain from this sort of retaliation in order to get Linden support (if it is possible). Plus an eye for an eye makes the sim go blind, to twist a metaphor.

One does have to wonder at his "jerkitude" though. To respond that way to a simple, polite request that is certainly an issue of fair play... Is it the annonymity of SL/net life that emboldens acting so overly hostile? A lack of RL consequences? Macho posturing (his SL "lady friend" owns some of the prims and both were seemingly causing the Lag fest last night together)? Or a combo of all of that which is particularly ugly when it meets a RL jerk?

Off to buy that lottery ticket so I can get my own sim one day maybe, hehe...

Thanks again.

Congratulations for opting for the "high road" and not escalating the conflict.

As a divorce attorney I know is fond of saying: "There is no law against being a jerk, but sometimes I think there should be".

To answer your question about what makes vWorlds so significantly different than the real world in generated jerkiness, I think it has to do with people's inherent tendency toward selfish conduct which in real life is moderated by all sorts of social forces. When the "social" repercussions of your actions can be escaped by pressing Ctrl-Q, the strongest moderating force of jerkitude is largely removed.

Very good point Introvert Petunia! And probably good for me to keep in mind. It may not be "personal" at all (although there is also the possibility he's acting out of bias against me or one of the groups I'm in as well, I guess). If it is not "personal" and just someone who is a jerk in absence of normal social forces, then so be it. My prim wall between us can just get a bit thicker and I can use the AR's when needed.

Shame though since his really is a nice build, and I have good relations will all my other neighbors.