Losing the Battle, Winning the War

I view the Linden response to the scores of anguished cries about the aggressive bounce script, and the response to me about the process for change, as inadequate, and it's clear we've lost this battle.

Linden Labs will do nothing about the aggressive bounce scripts NOW or even in the next patch. They will do nothing because they were "gotten to" by the scripterati and the fanboyz, ganged up on in the IRC channel and the Hotline forums and bullied into submission. Score one for their side!

However, what's very instructive about this particular lost battle is that the skirmishing was quite successful. Possibly for the first time (I don't know the history) a significant lobby of "livers in the world" -- residential people especially new people -- made enough complaints, some random, some concerted, some in Hotline, to get the Lindens to seriously look at the non-tekkie consequeces of their technocentric approach.

I think that's a wonderful thing. And that's why I say this battle is lost, but the war for civility and decency isn't lost.

Aggressive bounce scripts benefit:

o private island owners with projects where they want to exclude people, like Cabinhead
o clubs that are magnets for griefers that need immediate bounce capacity
o large landowners and older players with estates who especially want to keep out those in a flight path out of telehubs
o war-gamers
o bounce-script makers
o most script-makers in general who want their profession protected from inquiry

Aggessive bounce scripts don't benefit:

o people flying around exploring
o people whose computers crash when they get the "teleport home" order
o small land owners who create residential neighbourhoods who want interactivity and freedom and don't want large swathes of the sim tied up with a bounce script block
o rental agents who want to keep areas free of aggressive harassment of tenants
o land dealers who want their land to remain available for people to look at and sell, and who don't want a land parcel offered for sale to go "dead" because of one bounce scripter on a sim
o stores looking for random shoppers who make impulse fly-by buys

It was my hope that the Lindens would really review the conflicting needs of these conflicting interest groups -- private island/club/large estate managers versus smallholders/explorers/renters and realize they have to make a compromise.

It was my notion from the very beginning that the way to make this compromise was to go in the direction of permitting bounce scripts, and not seeking to remove them from the world (so that shooting games and club management would be disrupted) but that they would require two features:

o warning time limits to clear the area to avoid being aggressively bounced
o not being bounced all the way home but just a fair distance that isn't disruptive, so as not to punish casual air travelers.

For some reason, though it involvse not a "version" or a "program", the Lindens don't seem to want to use this simple method, that involves just their will and determination to ban those who use scripts that don't warn and that bounce that far. They don't need blanket enforcement, they need a policy statement and a few arrests to make the point.

But in this programming-and-version driven world, they've opted first to have a "deprecation of a script" then to allow themselves to be shouted down and bullied over this executive decision which I believe is a very bad precedent for them. They can call this merely "reviewing all the public forums" if they like, but I see what's up here.

My advice to those in the second category adversely affected by the scripts is to go on abuse-reporting and neg-rating. I think this will be heard.

And I urge script makers themselves to do the right thing and create scripts that do warn and do have options that do not bounce all the way home.

I still don't comprehend the Linden's thinking completely, but it's not something I can control. I fail to see how a property owner's need for security (which I support) should extend to abusively throwing me home or three sims away. I understand and support the need for push scripts in wargame sims.

This is what got my attention:


I recently vacated a rental property I had planned to use for a storefront. One major reason was because someone turned one of these aggressive push scripts loose on a parcel directly between my store and the telehub, thus complicating customer travel getting to me. I don't see how that helps me as a merchant at all. I'll build somewhere else, thankyouverymuch-Mrpushscripter.

These things are harmful to the community for this very reason. So for those of you who utilize aggressive security scripting and refuse to acknowledge the harm you're doing to those around you --- you're wrong.

There has to be a better way that is acceptable to both sides. Those ways have been proposed here. Where is the LL response to those ideas?

Prok,

In the context of your comments, do you make any distinction between "bounce scripts" and "agressive bounce scripts"? If you see both of them as the same, that's fine - I just wanted to be sure I understood your viewpoint.

We may disagree (which is fine ) But I see security scripts falling into two categories: one (what I would call agressive) - where they bounce everyone that comes into contact of them with impunity, automatically with no user intervention.

The second - is still a bounce script, but less agressive. This type requires manual intervention, and only acts against specific individuals.

From my perspective, it is the former that has everyone's ire, not so much the latter - because very few of us are griefers, and would be acted upon in such a manner.

What are your thoughts?

I agree with you that we will ultimately win this battle. Because nobody wants to play a game where they can't do what they want and other players are pushing them around all the time. It's infuriating. One's level of desire to play has to be pretty high and one has to be pretty committed to playing this particular game to put up with it.

The ones who have been here from the beginning are already established in their activities and routes for the most part, and consider it just another interesting intellectual puzzle they will be able to protect their own personal selves from with their deeper knowledge of scripting and/or scripters. The ones who are new and expect to explore with freedom will get pissed off and leave.

God knows it's hard enough to get around in this laggy, beta-style joint as it is, without other players taking advantage of their (current) freedom to make it even harder.

coco

Better Land Owner Tools: best solution.

There will never be a unified agreement on the use, settings or validity of security scripts.

Cindy and Cocoanut, you've really summed up the issues well.

Travis, I don't like commercial bounce scripts in general. I think they feed this whole aggressive, macho, fuck-you hedonist feel to SL where people sequester themselves, load up on expensive stuff, then put in a script like that whose main purpose is to make other human beings feel humiliated, and to be forced to acknowledge the power of the human beings who wielded it. That's at the root of it.

I think the Lindens have perfectly fine tools on the land to make a list of avatars you don't want to ban, or to make a group in which only you and your selected friends can be on that land. The notion that you can get around these land tools up in the air just doesn't bother me or tenants enough to be the problem that "the intellectual puzzlers" as Coco aptly put it seem to make it out to be.

I'm not the kind of person to put in an elaborate home-owner's security system nor am I the kind of person who obsesses about how aggressive I can make myself look to would-be intruders. I think if anything, an elaborate home-security system signals "wealth" to a would-be robber LOL.

But clubs and bounce script makers have a lot of power in the game, and they'll stop at nothing to keep it. So I don't try to fight all bounce scripts, I try to focus just on this aggressive one that has no warning, because we've got several things in our favour here -- Lindens have been willing to admit that the no-warning scripts may constitute weapons, and there are a significant lobby of people now as I've listed who just don't like living in the world created by these aggressive bouncers.

Of course, the concerns of these groups of people mean nothing to those on the aggressive list -- they don't feel the bounce, and they don't care about exploring or smaller residential living or non-club existence -- it means nothing to them. It's that aggressive and condescending attitude toward others right there that, not surprisingly, engendered their need for an aggressive and condescending script that bounces harshly without warning and sends someone home like a dog kicked to the curb.

I agree, I dont see a reason to keep people from flying over your property, when you arent home.

I dont see much of a reason to keep them from flying over when you are home. But can see people's need for privacy.

There definitely needs to be a way for employees and renters to Eject people who are disturbing the peace after they have been politely asked to leave. It shouldnt be necessary for every land owner / group make people working for them officers in a land trust.

Hmm..not sure what you mean by aggressive bounce script.

To me, that means a bounce script that sends you flying (either home, or quite some distance away) when you fly over a persons land, without warning or apparent reason. I think this is what 99% of the complaints are about.




Again, I don't think private island Estate controls are what folks have issues with. You can limit access on any private land, by using land tools. With Private Estates, banning folks from your land, denying them access, makes the island invisible to them and they are unable to teleport to that island.



Agressive bounce scripts don't benefit, nor are they used, by club owners. Manual defense scripts might be used to bounce griefers, but that would be on an individual and justified basis, much like the owner of land using the "Freeze" and "Eject" functions. A typical club owner actually LIKES people to be able to fly to and land at their club. It helps business.



99% of the aggressive bounce scripts I run across are on very new players land, and usually on small plots, and usually placed for no apparent reason. Most older and larger estates I've seen are built better and actually encourage visitors. Older players never really had this issues of agressive bounce scripts in the older world of SL.



They typically favor turrets that actually track and shoot you and kill you. Makes it more graphic and a tad bit more sporting.



Not sure what this means. You can buy bounce/defense scripts all over. Do you mean that most scriptors bounce folks from their land? If so, I would definitely disagree.

/120/3d/50177/1.html
is a thread I started to help finish just such a script, one that allows time, non-aggressive, and not automated.

script is almost ready to roll

Yes




Read all the past month's threads about bouncescripts, and read cua Curie's complaint addressed from Cabinhead's interests, they want to install their own script, which would bounce all players over 90 days not on their list, and with warning, send them all the way home -- they want an aggressive script to deal with griefers, they want that power to "send them a message". Read what they wrote. This is not about estate tools but add-ons. And with islands, there is the additional complaint that they "have to" bounce home because otherwise the bounced person bounces endlessly up and down around the island.



Um, I guess you don't get out much. There are numerous clubs that use this. Mafia clubs, all kinds of clubs. They get together and install this kind of aggressive bounce script. They WANT to bounce avs around and keep out people not on their list.

Now, they also want to freeze and eject. But they want to do that AND teleport them far the fuck away -- that is the mentality.




Well, we just have different experience. Most of the bounce scripts I see are used by owners of huge tracts of land. The smaller parcels and newer players don't tend to use them. You may be are thinking of a few old themed sims that welcome people and want the traffic, but I mean the kind of large estates by the SL elite and well-to-do who often tie up a quarter or half a sim with these things. I could go make a documented report of all the ones I've AR'd in the last month but I don't have the time. They are all on large plots or are clubs. Fly around more, David.




David, I think you're just in the category of people who argue with me just for the sake of arguing because it's me.

I'm not the one who says wargamers benefit. It's ALL OF THEM who say it. Go read all their posts. The single most common complaint from the scripterati was "oh, teleporthome will ruin war games". They want the ability to push avs in war zones and don't want that removed from the game. They want to keep the eject and the bounce and the tp home functions to help them have interesting war games.



Again, read all the other threads. All those in the script-making field have closed ranks around this issue because they don't want scripts to ever be removed from the game -- ever. They want maximum creativity. They want maximum Linden doing of their bidding. They want maximum freedom to script what they like and have their scripts then controlled only by something vague and squishy called "user education". Bleh.

Well..that's a pretty darned isolated instance. Most of the posts I've seen, in fact a huge majority of posts I've seen, are complaints about flying along over the mainland and getting suddenly bounced.



Well..lo.l..again very isolated cases, and not really dance/entertainment clubs, but private builds for private reasons. All kinds of clubs?? Well..mafia hangouts/headquarters..umm..yes..I can see them doing that. Do you have examples of other types of clubs? Or do you mean private residences that act as hangouts for a small group of friends? Like a kids clubhouse. But dance/entertainment business clubs doing that? I don't think so, unless you are talking about a defense system just for repelling greifers, which again, is not what folks are taking issue with.



Well..we certainly have had opposite experiences. Every dance/entertainment club I've ever been to has welcomed me and never bounced me. Not sure, maybe you are on alot of folks lists?

And almost every "just for the hell of it" bounce script I've run across have been an small plots, usally with a small, generally newbish style dwelling, or even no build.

I'm beginning to think that maybe you are just on alot of peoples security script bounce lists? But even if that IS the case, I would definitely agree they should give a warning and some time before the bounce.




ok. That's nice that you think that.



I think you need to reread their posts. You misunderstood them apparently. They don't wish all push scripts to be crippled, for obvious reasons. They are for a different solution. You are, once again, missing the point there. Push scripts are used in many scripted objects, besides bouncing, and crippling them would cripple alot of good uses for them.

What the huge majority of folks complain about is the mis-use of those scripts, by griefers with push guns (which LL will take action on), or by bounce scripts on people's land. As far as wargames go though, killing will tp you home. That's not too much much of a penalty for dying, and as long as it is in a designated wargame area, shouldn't be a problem. Sure haven't seen too many people complaining about it when it's used responsibly.



I really believe that YOU need to read them again. You are getting confused about the use of bounce scripts, the use of aggressive bounce scripts, the use of push scripts, and the solutions proposed. You are jumbling them all together, making broad generalizations (all kinds of clubs, older, larger estates, private islands, etc), in order to make it sound so much worse than it is, when in fact, the problem most people have with them can stand on it's own as a problem and be addressed as such.

Ah, the attacks on Cabinhead didn't make it in time before the monopoly thread got closed, I wondered how long it would be before you went back to harping about your other obsession. I didn't have to wonder very long.

Why should you care about the policy of a private island? None of your business really.

i hardly see this issue as resolved. i think LL just wanted more time to think about their attempt at a solution.

You can easily create an object that can allow resident non-land owners (so like a renter) to eject people from their rented plot.

The object just has to be owned by the land owner. But it can react handily to anybody on an access list...like the renter. I did this on a plot for a while and it worked just swimmingly. I owned the land but somebody that was doing some testing for me could boot anybody even though he wasn't deeded or grouped in any way. I could even shut off the capability without logging in.

I've always found this model to be more exploit proof. If I own everything and just script the ability for people to use the objects, security is pretty absolute unless I blow it in the scripts, but then I can fix it. For instance, the vorago mHUDs are not owned by the user, they are owned by me, so they can't be taken into inventory, copied, or inspected in any way. However, they perform actions solely for the user they are assigned to (I also have a mail account that receives notice anytime anybody uses one).

Though I've never tried it, I'm assuming the same properties would work for land editing or whatever.

I guess basically its sort of like credential impersonization. The object authenticates the incoming user via voice/key whatever, but performs the operations under the rights of the owner/land owner. It's up to the scripter to ensure that the user can't do things they aren't supposed to do, which puts me in pretty absolute control.

This can even work for building if you really got creative I suppose. A user would just need a "build" object, which would spawn objects based on requests ("cube, 10 x 10", etc.).

I think an /ignore person/group feature as I have proposed is an answer worth looking at. This way you as a landowner can focus precisely on the people you have problems with and not affect the community negatively as a whole.

There are proposals people like myself have put forth as ideas on how to accomplish this. I would hope people would actively participate and vote on these proposals.


http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=401

Hopefully LL is taking these proposals seriously and is seen to act on them. Perhaps not verbatim, but at least taking these ideas and incorporating them into solutions.

I'm just not sure how plausible this would be to put into effect. So much would have to be engineered, such as every person legitimately on the land would have to somehow be deafened and blinded to the offenders avatar, attachments, particles and scripted objects. Then every object, script and particle from the offending avatar would have to be blocked or otherwise rendered invisible/harmless right as it crossed the land plot border, which would be damn tough, considering how fast some objects can travel.

Seems like it would be a huge undertaking, and quite possibly lag-inducing.

Landowners can already ban individuals and groups from their plots. But the rest, well..that would be tough..

I have had some experiences with this, and there are a great deal of people who believe their land should never be touched by another AV soul and its incredibly annoying! I have been teleported home without notice, in a split second when traveling over someones land, I have also been pushed away from MY OWN LAND! from a push script that detected outside the owners own land, PISSED ME OFF! (was latter corrected)

but with most everything that exist in SL it was created for a reason, simply put there ARE grievers, and there IS a need to do something about it. I would love to see the land tools be overhauled to include some sort of LL created security system to battle this griever problem. limiting the push distance, and or creating warnings and min time limits to allow the avi to leave the area on their own power before you act apon them, would be appreciated by many. this would also aleviate many issues and allow SL users to focus on other things. and would still be able to freely traverse the metaverse.

Snake - while I'm sure your intentions are noble, what you are asking for is included in Prop 244. Having both out there only serves to water both of our proposals down, as folks only get so many votes to spend.

These aggressive scripts are unacceptable and LL must listen to their residents on this one. On a personal note, I wish someone could tell me why people use these things. Are they paranoid? What do they think they are hiding lol.

My only thought is that since a scripter made them, could another scripter make something that could be worn by people which would move them only a short distance away rather than several sims or home?

I would buy such a item and I bet others would too.

Alexa

This is interesting , was not aware of this. Would definitely be a good solution to my complaint of Employees being able to Eject people who have worn out their welcome,

Could it work for banning too?

For in the example ot the club - Land group officers are all offline , the Hostess needs to remove a disruptive influence use the device in question and the offending person is ejected and Banned as if the owner were there. ??? is this what you are refering to?

If this were the case would make a very good security system. Even just Ejecting would be preferable to using a push script since that seems to be a breech.

We can ban people now yes, the problem as has been noted in many threads is that they can still sit outside your property and continue the harrassment with impunity. I think this is something that can break this game for people and drive them away.

Hi Travis,
I've seen your proposal, however there is one point in your proposal that is contentious...

**Ability for landowner or delegator to right-click & TP home an avatar with warning

To avoid having a proposal disregarded out of hand by a lot of people who don't like for people to have this power I proposed my solution.

Good ideas though, just there is too much concerns people have regarding teleporting people home.

There is no war. Why is a certain someone itrying to create an us vs them mentality?

If we were to take away push script capabilities, many objects not used for grief would no longer work. Which means hundreds of people would be stuck with items that no longer work. No one argues that negative use of such a script is a bad thing, some content creators just believe that there is better ways to handle the situation.

In the case of push script, I think a very simple solution is to limit the force at which an AV can be pushed, there is no reason why someone should be push hard enough to land 4 sims over. I think everyone agrees with that.

As for the TP home problem, you got your wish. Even after many people in "FIC" voiced opinions on why not to take it away, LL still removed the command to perform this task. There is no FIC vs General Population.

Did I miss something, were these not considered the "Given the Linden Seal of Approval" situations to use a push script for "Home Security" in:

1) Scan in intervals greater than 1.0 second to reduce server load.
2) Maintain a list of recently ejected residents, as well as a "blacklist" of names forbidden by the owner.
3) After a new avatar (not recently ejected or blacklisted) enters, wait a few seconds, then warn the user via IM (one time only) that they're on private land and should //leave.
4) Give the avatar at least 10 seconds to leave for this first occasion.
5) If the avatar doesn't leave, IM them again, then llUnSit and llEjectFromLand.
6) Add the avatar to the "recently ejected" list. If they return, they receive a shorter delay before being removed.
7) Blacklisted avatars receive a short delay and IM warning before being ejected and added to the "recently ejected" list. Blacklisted avatars on the "recently ejected" list can be immediately removed.


Yup, I plagiarized Jack Digeridoo here, if "Home Security" items were required to follow these guidelines, which I was under the impression were put forward by a Linden, would not this situation resolve itself with prosecutions of violators?