The newbies, guns, their victims and the grid

Thanks to my business, I frequently meet quite talented builders in SL. It has always been a rewarding experience for me to cooperate with experienced builders and help/mentor new ones.

One such new builder friend of mine came to the brink of leaving the game the other day when he just got tired of being assaulted on no-weapons/no explosives sim over and over again on a daily basis by various unidentified people. Now before everyone jumps in with their anti-grief shield and suggestions to sit on prims and such... let me finish.

The anti-grief tools and sitting and all are great. But they're hack solutions to a larger problem. The orientation is obviously not getting the message across to the new users that this is not a free for all shoot them up grid. What can we do to improve new user understanding of what this place is and what is proper conduct and what is not.

Let's focus this thread on this facet of the issue rather than how to protect ourselves from attacks. I am suggesting this direction because I remember seeing countless threads with VERY good information as to how to protect one's self. And I thank the contributors for all those good suggestions.

So.... let's discuss...

Troy

Troy, I've been fighting to get better controls and anti-griefer options implemented for a while. I really do hope that LL does address enhanced mute, effective ban, and push issues that would allow someone to 'opt out of the griefer experience'.

For individuals, yes, there are homemade shields, sitting and not moving until the attack is over, or leaving the area. But really, I feel that anti-disturbance tools on the personal level should be as integral to SL as the building tools are. If you do not want to be bothered, you should be able to simply opt out of the ability for others' messages, physics collisions, scripts, or sounds to interfere with what you are doing.

We still do not even have the ability to mute annoying sounds from one individual, without simply turning off audio alltogether. This is rather behind the times.

For landowners on the mainland, it's tough; we're saddled with a joke of an 'eject', a 'ban' that really does nothing but allow griefers to get a higher perspective, and on an individual level, mute is extremely limited as well.

I've heard that the reason push cannot be stopped is due to technical constraints of the system, but as time goes on I tend to believe that less and less.

The tools, controls, and defenses are outdated, and mainly have not changed since 1.0. (Except for owners of private estates who can shut off scripts or physics for individuals who are causing trouble --- something I can only wish for and probably will never see on the mainland, even though we administer three contiguous sims.)

Such issues do need to be addressed. I don't know when we'll see them, but I have been told it will be 'soon'.

Mainland land, as well as newbie players, seem to be "fair game" for griefers - they know rather well that there are few defenses in place except for an abuse report, which, understandably, with the growing size of SL, will likely become less and less effective.

I'm sure this thread will attract some "quit whining and just deal with it when you get thrown out of a sim - it's only a virtual world, go outside!" respondants. They always do. But I really feel that this sort of a response is a red herring; if SL is going to function, and people are going to participate, it should function well, and people should be able to participate effectively without unwanted harrassment.

Often those crowing about how griefing is 'not a big deal' are the ones who find entertainment in it themselves -- they simply don't want their lolly taken away.

We (Luskwood) are going to try to address this at a panel at SLCC in August; I'm hoping there is some improvement before then though.

The Shelter is in a similar boat as Luskwood, and have about exactly the same perspective on Mainland land tools to be proactive against grief.

I try to keep a positive attitude about SL 99% of the time. However, this is one of those things that I feel beaten down about, with no real solution in sight. I keep hearing promises from Linden in regards to "Improved Tools" that never come.

Prop 244 was accepted by Linden last fall. In a reply to an Answers post on the subject, Robin indicated these improved tools would be available the first quarter of 2006. As you can see, not only hasn't that happened - there isn't even a set timeline of when they will be available. Part of me feels like it was accepted just so I (and others) would stop harping on the subject.

IMHO - We can attempt to educate new residents that this isn't a free-for-all, shoot-em-up grid all we want. Regardless, there are folks who get a lot of enjoyment out of griefing, and no amount of social pressure is going to change that.

What we desperately need, are tools that will allow us to be proactive about grief, and prevent it from happening before it starts. Until this is provided to us, the best we can do is react: Kick the individual with our feeble tools, and file an abuse report.

I'm not convinced that Linden sees this as an important enough problem yet that warrants their attention, unfortunately.

In the sixteen months I have been visiting Second Life I have been shot at random by a griefer MAYBE eight times total. I really don't think this is as big a problem as it's made out to be.

I've had about the same rate of encounter, but personally, I feel that it all depends on where you hang out. I rarely go to sandboxes (Not a huge builder, and when I do build, I just drop my belt and build wherever I stand) and tend not to go to clubs often. However, I do realise that there indeed are griefer "magnets" out there, and that all you have to be is at the wrong place at the wrong time to get hit... sometimes even the wrong place anytime.

I hear this sort of response often when the topic of grief comes up. It does have everything to do with how you choose to spend your second life.

If your SL experience is more on the solitary side - away from crowds, indeed - grief is likely an irrelevant concern.

However, if you spend most of your time around crowds of folks - I imagine that grief mitigation comes much higher on the top of your wish list.

To put it another way: Buggy sim crossings mean little to folks who don't play around with vehicles or physics. (I've probably ridden in an SL vehicle maybe eight times total in my entire 2-years in Second Life). To me, sim crossings aren't that big of a deal.

Does that mean that sim crossings are/aren't an important issue that should be addressed? Depends on how you live your second life. Same goes for grief.

I agree with the previous post. Addressing the griefing issue in a manner where it takes a certain minimum number of grief attacks before it is declared a problem is probably not the best approach. It so turns out the threshold is different for each person.

To steer us in the right direction, bear with me one more time: What about new user orientation. Or something that can added onto new user orientation that would prviy newcomers to more information about SL social environment before we set them free?

It is somewhat tempting to prescribe a solution such as let's put all newbies on a detention mini grid until they prove their SL worthiness... it is tempting believe me but I don't think this treatment is not quite fair to newcomers and might turn away many talented interesting people.

So any other ideas in terms of newbie education?

Troy

As a weapons supplier I firmly oppose any new restrictions on the sale of arms.

We have the right to bear arms.

OK... your point noted. But I do not remember anyone suggesting that we ban weapons. Am I mistaken?

Also, in Second Life you have no god-given rights. SL is not a democracy and all rights granted may be taken away at any time with no explanations, TOS etc etc. I think we must tell and retell ourselves this and keep things in context. This is not RL, we have no rights here so let's not fool ourselves into thinking such things.

I agrew with you completely, Jamie. Restrictions on the ability to 'bear arms' in Second Life is not the solution.

There's a time & place for it however.

This is why I'm such a strong proponent of proactive tools to prevent grief. If you're on a parcel where guns are cool, no change. If you're on a parcel where guns aren't cool - let us prevent the first shot from being fired. Then the grief never happens, abuse reports are never filed - and everyone goes on with their second life happily.



Troy, while I think it would be great if educating new residents were the solution: I think the majority of folks who chronically grief aren't doing so out of a lack of understanding social best practices. As foreign as it may be to me, some folks derive a great amount of pleasure out of negative attention. I think prevention is a much more realistic answer than education.

Admittedly, however - my own experiences on the receiving end of grief may have left me a bit jaded on the subject. If there are educational solutions, it certainly can't hurt attempting them.

As a Live Helper, I will sometimes TP into an area and instant get orbited.

It gets annoying.

I am in talks with some people to make a special dead-man device that will release when I teleport, before the client catches up.
That way everyone in 200m (dispersed sensors) will be able to have a nice chat with me.

Hmmm well you're right about that point. Lately I have been having discussions with my friends about the "asshole" factor. Apart from the attention grabbing name what's really important to note is no matter how many of us harbor benevolence and intellectualism that would make Dr. Spock proud, our species can not rid itself of the "asshole" factor. What does this mean? What it means is the "asshole" factor must be somehow necessary for the propagation of the species. I dunno what role it serves but it must somehow serve a purpose that the evolutionary forces have opted to keep it in the gene pool... but I digress... this is a whole topic belongs to another thread and perhaps another forum.

I am also against banning things. However I think even if we wanted to we would not be able to ban weapons for two reasons:
a. weapons are a big draw to SL, and Linden Labs would first shut down before they take the weapons offline
b. more realistically, it is hard scripting wise to separate weapon scripts from other scripts that are not weapons. Sure there are some LSL calls we can remove but some people use these calls for other products. I am not sure LSL or SL grid in general can discern between what's a weapon and what's not.

And in point b. lies the next point to think about. If LSL and SL grid in general can not tell a weapon from another scripted object how is it supposed to protect us from it?

One thing that came to my mind is perhaps a certain amount of virtual land (say it's 10x10x10 in size)that hovers around a user wherever they are. This virtual land however invisible would protect the user like it is their own land with scripts, damage, and edit turned off. This way scripted objects would not fly right into the person but would crash the invisible barrier of the virtual land and not harm the user. Just a thought....

Troy

I'd like to think that an education program for newbies at the Orientation Island(s) would be useful but I have my doubts. Why? At the moment the SL population is increasing by roughly 1,000 new residents per day. That's approximately 42 per hour or nearly 1 new resident every 1.5 seconds. In my short time on the Mentor program I saw nothing like that coming through the Orientation Islands and Help Island. That would imply that most new residents are taking the option to bypass the Orientation Island(s) and Help Island altogether. Which would imply that they either already know what they want (possibly 'cos they're an alt) or they have someone waiting for them in-world.

Also the number of new residents who availed themselves of the excellent facilities and helpers laid on for them at the Help Island was pitifully low compared to the number of new residents on any given day. There were a few cases of griefer types trolling around the Orientation Island(s) and Help Island but, by and large, the new residents who hung around were already the sort that we'd really like to see in-world: creative, considerate and fun types.

I don't mean to throw cold water on this discussion that Troy's opened up.. goodness knows we need and answer to the griefer problem. I just don't know what the answer(s) might be.

To be a weapon supplier you actually have to make a weapon, not resell freebies.

Anyway, right to bear arms? Come on, SL is managed by a private company and we're not guaranteed anything like that. LL could ban all prim hair and you would have no recourse, though the reality is they don't like to mess with content creators. I think the issue is that LL is getting annoyed of almost every weapon having push modes that break the TOS if you use them which people obviously do. I imagine it counts for a vast majority of their abuse reports.

Phillip mentioned push weapons in his speech, I don't imagine them cracking down on everyone who makes a push weapon but I'm sure they'd like to see people stop including push modes.

It's not even getting shot per se. There is a kind of "non-griefer" griefing that is everywhere lately and you can't even report it because they are supposedly just "accidents" that result from high spirits (even though they are mostly not.)

It has become almost impossible to work in a public sandbox anymore.

Building space at public sandboxes is at a premium, so when you stake out your little corner to do some serious work and some idiot drives his exploding dune-buggy into your build and then just leaves all the pieces there, you are effectively screwed for the day. You can't move his stuff and it isn't going to go anywhere for 12 hours! Ditto for the guy that "accidentally" drops bibles all over your building or "forgets" his cool car right between you and your work.

Island sandbox in particular has devolved into just a place for idiots to fool around and show-offs to put out gigantic builds for the day. No one does any serious building there anymore and the Lindens don't patrol it or do much of anything about it. There are giant signs up about no weapons and Linden approved weapons testing sandboxes, yet the majority of what goes on at Island sandbox is .... you guessed it, shooting and weapons testing.

I have resorted to using mostly private sandboxes lately or sandboxes run by a community like the furries as they are at least policed a little bit.

What would go a long way towards solving the problems is having your objects disappear a half an hour after you do.

The number of little boys that go to the sandbox, run around dropping their junk all over and then leave five minutes later is astounding. This effectively ruins the area for building for the rest of the day because of five minutes of idiocy from a couple of kids.

Having objects disappear when they are not being attended to or worked on would also stop the selfish showoffs that put up the giant phallic towers or floating spaceships five minutes after the wipe and then leave the sim for the day so everyone can ooh and ahh at their "work."

~claps~

Nuf said.

Amen, sister!

I think I'll create a sign that says:

"This was built by someone who still lives with his mommy and daddy"

for the pg sandboxes

and

for the mature sandboxes

"Even a crackwhore wouldn't s**k this guy's c**k"

and sell them for 5L

Any takers?

Are they copy and modify enabled?

They'd just be prims w/ textures on them. Yeah, copy, mod, no trans.


I'll get to work on the signs.

I was thinking a big bold font, black on white for best visibility.

I presume you want me to write actual words for the mature sandbox sign?

Oh I could do it on my own, but its your idea, and Id love to see how creative you can be. I might add an animation to the textures in the case of large starships, and put them underneath so anyone loking up...

and I just uploaded the signs!

oh well, I'm sure somebody will buy them.

I could sell them in a cube for 10L

LL can't possibly lack for ideas on how to solve this. I've heard any number of good solutions proposed and proposed a few I thought were clever on my own. Not a peep . I rather liked There's solution... make avatars impervious to all things physical when they have their shields up. There lacked in a lot of ways, but I didn't hear much about griefing inspite of the fact that it had paintball guns which could shove you across a field, and vehicles which could knock you half a mile. Don't want to be knocked, turn your forcefield on and go about your business.

I'm interested in helping if i can. Like the shelter, The Forest also gets griefers. But not every day... Lately it's been kinda mello. But my security system lays intact and ready to use if needed. We shouldnt have to rely on laggy sensor scripts to protect us...

Like i mentioned before, i created a account for THERE.com, and was supplied with a tool that was part of the GUI. It was a ForceField. It protected me against any pushing attempts. Also it didn't give me any control over others. If a car hits me they bounce off, but if i hit them I bounce off. Paintguns did nothing to me. It made me feel more comfertable then i ever did in SL. Only reason i don't stay in THERE is it's lack of furry content... c.c


You can bear them all ya wan't but using them on others without consent is a violation of the TOS. I bear fangs but i don't use them unless someone wan'ts me to, but thats another story... :/

They put those giant phallic towers and floating space ships and not only leave them to ooh (what's this still doing here) and ahh (get it the hell out of here) but they also eat up the prim allowance of the sandbox itself.

I think they don't understand that in SL a bigger *whatever* is nothing more than a copy-paste and a parameter adjustment that anyone can make.

Griping about me again, Dianne? From my POV, you're the griefer.

Yes, I do large scale builds. I think big. That's my nature. I'll start work on a project and I might get called away to the phone, or other family demand in RL before I've had time to save my work. Am I going to delete it to keep miserablists like yourself (who resent the fact that anyone else can do anything at all) happy? No, I'll leave my work in place until I can get back online.

Don't like it? Get a Linden on the case, because until the day I get a Linden asking me not to use the public sandboxes, they're my space as much as yours. And as a premium account holder, I'm paying for the priviliege of using places like the public sandboxes.