There should be at least one Linden online 24x7.

Two reasons:

1. Vince Groshomme
2. Vincent Snow

These two winners spent the wee hours of Thursday, August 14 placing semitransparent cones (named "Jail." over the teleports in the welcome area, calling people lots of uncouth names (Snow particularly), trying to fly into people, harassing newbies, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

No Lindens were online during any of this.

If SL is supposed to be a 24x7 operation, it is high time there were people here 24x7. Any ISP or ISV that doesn't watch its operations round the clock is destined to run into problems. No Lindens online plus taking off the credit card restriction has practically demanded the presence of griefers.

ps: http://gallery.kadath.org/2ndlife/pwned

Yep this is pretty bad.
Now I'm thinking having no credit card requirement was the stupid thing LL could have done. All this has done was bring trash into a great community.
I remember going to an event that involved talking to the marketing team. I thought it was clear LL was trying to go for professionals and artists. All you did with this plan was open the flood gates to griefers/minors.

No CC is a plus for SL, more folks will try it, but some will be griefers. Lindens need people, people = revenue, revenue = years and years of SL to come.

But, as Huns points out, there needs to be 24-hour watchdogs. Those cones over the teleporters were definitely a problem.

Boso

p.s. the 4am-ish clean up routine removed them, but they were there until 4am! That's a lot of potential trapped noobies who's first experience of SL would be a tutorial, then a black inescapable cone.

p.s.s Hamelt Linden showed up just after the 4am clean up :), but Revoluntary Kitty chased him off. Sissy pants redcoat that he is. Last report was he was hiding in Olive under some prims.

Well, despite what they say, EZ Money continues to open trial accounts - sometimes several a day. I had Catherine Cotton turn her safety off so I could enjoy the distinct pleasure of shooting him in the crotch with a phase rifle. Later on, Vincent Snow referred to that incident, so I'm asuming that it's just one more account. I don't know about applicable privacy laws and all that, but I'd love to be able to let EZ's friends and neighbors know that they have a potentially dangerous sociopath in their midst.

I would like to support the need for 24hour Linden availability and state that Huns description of the events was close enough without going into needless detail.

I was there last night and saw it too. I reported them... but a lot of good it does when they easily learn when they can & cant get away with it.

There is no guarentee that this member or that is gone forever. Clear your cookies, make up a new name & address and you're on again.

IP addresses tell all

Assuming you have a static IP

just a suggestion. maybe they can limit the hours that trial users get to be signed on. so theyre only on when liasons are around.

yeah... if they have static ip's. Buf they have connections anything like mine, it changes all the time. Mainly so residential internet users won't suck up all the bandwidth into a monster business where a statiic IP is ideal for (web hosting etc).

--Water

Hey Lindens, can we make a one account per email address and one account per IP address rule? Yes people can make new addresses and some people have dynamic (changing) IPs but it'll at least cut down.

One problem with this: What if you have multiple SL residents in the same RL household, sharing one computer? Not everyone has enough $ or tech-fu to set up a home network...

Hrm. I was about to mention paying accounts with a set # of associated nonpaying accounts, but that really doesn't apply.

----

[edit] I had automatically assumed that there was at least one Linden running around even in the wee hours. It's a surprise to me that there isn't, but then, I'm usually dead to the world at 4AM.

While the current situation is probably understandable in view of graveyard vs first shift, this is a Really BIG Oversight that lets charming folks pull stunts like that. Please do remedy it PDQ.

Well a determined nut can swith from dsl to cable, and there are usually two or three options in each method. Only by going back to credit cards - and making CLEAR that the card is for age verification ONLY - are we going to flush these turds

Even if they do, all of those computers would still have the same IP address on the Internet.

Well, there will be idiots willing to pony up for the sake of making everyone else miserable, but that's definitely going to cut down on 'em. Life was quieter with the CC requirement. It's entirely possible that I could be viewing this through a rosy monitor screen, but I'm fairly sure that we weren't having all this hullaballoo about griefers before.

It's unfortunate that while the no-CC-needed method makes SL much more accessible to everyone, not just people who're genuinely interested in SL (all to the good), it also lays us wide open to the idiots and griefers (boo!). We've seen what's been happening so far, and while the influx of new blood is nice, the griefers (presumably a smaller # than the serious newbies) and the stress they cause us are, in my view, starting to outweigh the benefits. I rarely bother going to the new areas any more for the purpose of meeting new people -- I only go there for events. Which is not really a good thing for building community. :/


Nutshell: Longwinded way of saying that I agree with you, David, although with reservations (cf: observation about idiots willing to pay).

I have an idea that may work, volunteer Lindens. They could be people that have been in SL for a while and given only limited powers. Like removing objects from Linden land or banishing obvious griefers for a short length of time, say 6 or 8 hours until the “real” Lindens get on.

This could be as free or as structured as they want to make it. Set times to “work” or if you see there are no Lindens on, you can “take over”. Something for the Lindens to think about until 24/7 support is cost effective.

I’m not sure if I made this clear enough, but I hope you get my point.


-TK

Well, there's no reason some of the mentors could not be trusted with a FEW things, like turning on the build, for Stage 4, for instance, which has been a great nuisance, or maybe being able to delete UNLINKED objects from Linden owned land.

Seriously, if I had come into SL and encountered what is happening now, NO WAY would I have signed up.

YES lack of CC is raising #s but how many of those are artificial?? How many serious customers are now being lost over the people who are only here to grief?

No sir, I don't like it.

They need to get Linden staff online 24x7. Hire contractors or whatever. I will be very plain about this: I do not ever want to hear about how another normal user has more power than I do. I don't trust them with it.

Additionally, Linden Lab can gather all their evidence (IP addresses, abuse reports) and forward it to the griefer's ISP. I used to work at an ISP network operations center (NOC) and let me tell you, I have cancelled many accounts. Unfortunately some ISPs are lazy about this, but many of them will take action.

Agreed.

At least an employee has the threat of being fired/prosecuted to prevent them from doing stupid crap. "Volunteers" only have the threat of being banned. And if they've already decided they're quitting at the end of the month, there's no controls at all.

Amen. All residents are equal.

Candie

Erm... liaisons are just normal users who happen to have a second account named XYZ Linden.
They are just people for god's sake. People like you and me and all other users. If they fit all the requirements to be a Liaison in Linden's eyes, I don't care if they are paid or not. All the places I've ever been to online were "policed" by unpaid volunteers alone and they all worked wonderfully since the volunteers were well known and respected members of the community who were hand picked by those responsible for the game, chat room, mailing list, whatever.

Without going into details, we have fairly sophisticated means in place for tracking repeat griefing like this - sorry we've been slow on the enforcement - we will be very aggressive about making this work. Our concern is always for the community first.

Maybe Linden Labs should hire more Liaisons....

*nudge nudge wink wink say-no-more*

maybe linden labs should hire the night owl clown


"that linden" it has a good ring to it i think

"hey can we trap newbe's again?" "no... that lindens on"