How do YOU handle griefers (POLL)

OK, over in /139/81/113433/1.html Robin answered Travis' post by calmly asserting there was no problem.

My first thought was that it was standard LL *fingers in ears* 'LaLaLaLaLa - we can't HEEEAAARRR you!' - but Robin's not generally like that...

So, I thought maybe it's because a lot of us aren't bothering with ARs, Live Help, or inworld Lindens for griefing incidents any more - I know, after my first and only attempt at using 'the system', I don't any more... Maybe LL simply aren't aware of the real level of griefing



So, let's see... Faced with destructive/disruptive actions by aggressive strangers on your land/sim, what do YOU do?

I do AR griefers - it doesn't take much effort - but I can quite understand why people might not bother, particularly nowadays when you can register a new account within minutes.

It's not a terribly precise term though. There's a lot of difference in motivations and behaviour between random "pushgun lol" n00bs, determined furry-bashers, and people overreacting to some land dispute.

And the abuse reports that DO get filed don't seem to do squat cuz the same idiots are back months later (at least when I come across them again) and still at their griefing antics. ARs and the teen grid are worthless now that basic accounts aren't age-verified and free. Feh...what's the point now? Might as well be the wild west.

I think you are correct most are just not bothering any more to file abuse reports. It Is very important that every incident of abuse be reported.
This is the only way Linden labs will know if the new registration method is indeed helping greafers
If any one does not know how to report abuse there are several ways in witch you can

Abuse reporting
Abuse reporting is not a call to 911. Abuse reports are used to point out abusive behavior an object or what ever else an Individual may find abusive to Linden Labs. Not all abuse reports are necessarily bad. You can file an abuse report for a miss placed object on Linden Lab owned land or that may be blocking a road or water way to the extent it makes it un passable or if a neighbor has over lapped on to your land and you have attempted to contact the neighbor about the issue and they have refused or were unreachable
Abuse reports can be filed in a number of ways.
The most common way is in the help menu HELP>REPORT ABUSE… Here you will find you can report abuse for any type that has occurred. You will find options of type of abuse in a drop down window witch include Behavior, chat/IM, content, object, sound and texture. Select the type that you feel best describes the type of abuse. If it is an object click on the box with the arrow in it and then click on the offending object and check the include screen shot box. If there is any kind of chat involved click the include chat history box.
In the summary give a brief description of the abuse and in the details give as much detail as you can about the incident.
If you are with a group of people and someone is abusing every one in the group then make sure everyone that has been abused or witnesses the abuse reports the incident also and tells what happen to them or what they saw in there abuse report.

You can also check Help> view PVP abuse if there has been any detected PVP abuse a window will pop up and you can choose the incident that you want to report and choose report abuse.

If there is an object that you would like to report you can right click on the object choose more>rate>report abuse and then fill out the abuse form.

If you have some one that is being very persistent in there abuse and will not stop for what ever reason first file an abuse report then get the abuse report number from the email you receive then you can call live help give the abuse number and let them know of what is going on. If a linden is available at the time they may be able to come and take care of the situation. This is only helpful if the person doing the abusing stays in the area and continues the abuse. The linden will not be able to take any action if they arrive and don’t find any abuse being committed.
For instance I saw some one in the welcome are who was wearing a doz. or so floppy penises and I abuse reported him and then called live help and it took about 5 minutes but a linden did show up and took care of the situation.

Actually, it's the "pushgun lol" types that tend to be the biggest problem for me. But I never bother to AR anymore. The Linden's give them a slap on the wrist *if* they do anything at all, and there's *no* way that they ever do anything to stop *ongoing* griefing.

If the Linden's are seeing it as "not a problem" it's because people have just flat out given up on reporting it.

I mean, if griefing isn't a problem, then just *why* are there over 500 votes divided between the 4 seperate proposals asking of r a feature that lets you decide to turn off push on your avatar?

I'm sorry, but LL is just clueless on this one, and with their new "disposable Alt" membership policy, I expect to see it get a lot worse.

If it's not on land I own, I'll file an AR, and if the situation warrants (active/persistent cager, etc.) will contact a Linden (who, of late, simply tell me to contact Live Help - they used to be much more responsive), then contact Live Help (who will then tell me to contact the land owner to remove the cages - at which point I tell the live helper "If the land owner had been there, I'd have done that, TYVM" ). At which point I then encourage others present to also file ARs - at least it gives us something to do whilst sitting down (to foil pushguns) and counting the cages as they sprout.

The above scenario is typical at Luskwood, where I spend a fair amount of time. And I've filed a _lot_ of ARs there.

On my property, it's typically freeze/eject/ban/AR.

On our collective friends' property (we are all on each other's delegate gohomer scripts) it's teleport-home/ban/AR (still requiring a landowner to return any unwanted objects).

I _do_ take the time to submit ARs.

I also think that the Lindens either do not understand the magnitude of the problem (comfortably nestled in their non-representational statistics) or simply don't care - or, perhaps, both.

May your AR-Fu be strong .

If I had own land, I'd AR them and use Teleport Home. On the Welcome Area, all I can do is AR them and call a Live Helper. In the past, there was no much happening (had a Liaision watch a griefer running around with a huge penis and insulting people for 30 minutes, then saying "Please watch your language.", but I saw the reaction improving nowadays, which makes me very hopeful

I still support the idea of having the names and offenses of major griefers written down publicly, so people can see instantly who is an idiot. People who get a warning don't appear there, but those, who deliberately and repeatedly shoot people in safe areas, orbit other residents or crash sims deserve to be publicly recognized as the griefers they are.

My land is always set to damage.
Anyone decides to grief me on it... I'll shred them.

While the answer I was hoping for was along the lines of "Yes we see a problem, and here's what we're going to do about it"....

Personally, I didn't take Robin's response as a "LALALALA I can't hear you" My take on it is, they're not analyzing the data properly. (Maybe that's the same thing, but I'm trying to remain positive )

What Robin is saying is that proportionally grief hasn't increased, considering the number of residents we have.

The fatal flaw in that, is that grief isn't distrubted across the grid evenly. Some places are greater grief magnets/targets than others... and as our population increases, so does the focus of grief on those places.

The tools we have to mitigate grief on the mainland haven't changed much since 1.2 - yet as our population grows bigger, these tools become more and more ineffective as grief is further focused on 'hot spots'.

That's my take on it, at least.

As far as how I personally respond to grief, it depends on the severity, and how many complaints I've received. But once it reaches that level, its typically eject/teleport home first, Abuse Report second, instruct those around me to ignore it & carry on third.

Exactly. It hasn't gone up "proportionally", but that percentage doesn't mean beans to us.

Because it has gone up, period. If you're running an area, and the new influx of residents has caused an increase in griefing, it's not like we can take any comfort in saying, "Well, at least the percentage is the same."

It has still increased.

A given area will be hit more. Certain areas have always been hit more than others.

Folks who have been banned are now coming back to give it another spin.

Groups who cause trouble, and are kicked, run back to the signup page and come right back to continue their 'performance art'.

We're getting 5-6 "funboys" a day now, when it used to be two or three on the weekdays.

Anyhow, I give this thread about 2-3 posts until we get the obligatory "There is no griefing in SL, and if there is, and it bothers you, you should just leave. Besides, nobody should be able to ban me from anywhere, as I am a space cowboy with nuts of steel" post.

So far most of the griefing incidents I have had to deal with have taken place when I am away from the land. Typically I get an IM from someone using my property saying they are being harrassed by someone. By the time I get there, the person is gone.

My solution so far has been to IM the griefer and ask what happened. If it was a personal dispute, I tell them to keep it out of my property. If they are a randome griefer d00d and they get belligerent, I simply add them to mute and ban them with my security systems.

The few times I have been present or called to an incident and had to confront the person directly, I called a Linden, and pinned the offender to a wall with a gravity gun until the Linden arrived. In all cases, the Linden sent the griefer home, but within seconds they were back. So...I kept em pinned in a corner until they decided that staring at a wall wasn't much fun and they left themselves. Afterwards I banned them with my security systems.

Most of the griefers I have had experience with are not afraid of Lindens or ARs. In many cases I think they even want to be banned for a few days. These sorts wear that as a badge of honour after all. Calling a Linden and ARing has not been overly effective in dealing with these types in my opinion. Mainly as LL...as a business...has a policy to try to keep as many customers as possible and thus hands out perma-bans reluctantly, as one might expect for a company hoping to make some money. Thus I prefer to rely on securing my own land and customers by using security systems, and force if necessary.

1. Constantly improving on my anti-grief equipment. They're not perfect but they are helping.

2. AR

3. Security system that covers exactly the area I want covered, no more, no less. No overactive security script here.

Walk away, but I have dozen of things to do other than play SL so that's easy for me. An hour or two later they've moved on and I never hear from them again. Griefers aren't generally attracted to me anyway. Just lucky I guess.

Oh, if their interrupting something important, I bandy back and forth a few good one-liners with them and go away. Let me not pretend to know how that works; it's just a talent I have. Perhaps there will be a workshop in the future. Do you think griefers will flock to it if it's posted in the events calendar? Well no, they'd never find it there ha ha ha.

AR them, and don't interact with them at all.

It might be satisfying to orbit them from your own land but don't kid yourself that this does anything other than encourage them to come back and "play" with you again.

I will take the time if the landowner requests it. Normally done while I just stand by with my $3500 shield on, something I only bought because the system doesn't work. Nor can it under the current conditions.

Even island sims can only have 63 people in the ban list. No doubt there are griefers out there who have more than that many accounts already, consequently the only way to keep them out is to make the area private. While this works, now all the new *good* people you want to first your place cannot find it. And the open access sims will wind up as recruiting points for the private areas, leaving the public areas full of the griefers and rejects. Not a good first impression to make on a newbie.

LOL How true, Khamon

Seriously, I don't think griefers go scowering the events calendar for their next target. Instead, I think they're attracted to green dots on the map like moths to a flame.



Here's yet another way of describing it:

-A bank in a small town with a population of 5,000 gets robbed on average, once every 5 years.

-The population of that town increases to 250,000 - and now the bank gets robbed once every 3 months on average.

Its like the Police Department saying "Proportionally, bank robberies haven't increased."

I've noticed an increase - first time warning and ejection - second time tport home and banning.

Pretty much takes care of it.

Two sex clubs on the same sim where I live. Naked people--mostly guys--keep showing up demanding money, doing live performances, shooting at me and my friends, etc. Ask them to leave, they tell me to eff off, I freeze/AR/Eject/Ban, including screenshots of nakey people and their language in my AR.

Sometimes I wish I was a Linden and could make a book of the Abuse Reports and the photos they receive along with them

I sexually harass and abuse them until they're so embarassed they leave. Works every time!

This is what my friend Wildefire suggests also, but somehow a dungeon just doesn't fit in with my lifestyle

I usually first try talking with them, then if that doesn't work, I take a seat to avoid push weapons, file an abuse report, talk to the griefer and do my best to embaress or humiliate them, and then hunt down a Linden if possible and it is an event and is being disrupted.

If it is on my land, I will freeze them, lecture them, eject and ban them, and then file an abuse report.

1) Politely and casually ask the griefer to let me (and whomever I'm with) finish what we're doing before engaging us in combat. (if they're an assault-type griefer). If they agree to wait, they usually get bored and leave before we're done.

2) if 1 doesn't work... Tell the griefer that in SL it's usually considered rude to fire at unarmed people. If you want to fight, ask first, or go to Jesse where the battle never ends.

3) AR the griefer, open the profile page of everyone with me... jump to a new far off spot in an empty sim, send tp invites and carry on.

4) If the griefer finds us again... well the only time this happened to me someone had one of Starax's magic wands and we hit the griefer with a train.... then a tidal wave... then a bunch of random stuff. His smoke/fire bomb attacks just couldn't compete with all that. He eventually flew off frustrated.

freeze is nice, it block their teleport function

I typically turn damage on, and hit them with a autokill nonphysical attack. Added points for each greifer beyond the first I send home in a single shot.

Interesting - WAY too soon to come to any conclusions - but it's currently looking like about a 50/50 split between the 'AR' group and the 'take other measures' group...

Well, the poll's got a way to go yet (I deliberately made it long lived to maximise the data gathered) but initially it looks like LL might only be aware of some 50% of aggresive land griefing incidents - which isn't good, but could explain the bland assurance which seemed rather at odds with reality.

Keep the votes coming people. And thanks those of you who already have voted and posted.
Rest assured, these votes will count for something...