only you can prevent jerks

From a recent post in Hotline to Linden , it appears that LL ain't into the policing gig. Here is the statement quoted in its entirety:So it looks like it is up to us.

I can't avoid the minor issue of how powerless AVs can maintain "order" given the horribly meager tools we have. Here's one silly but telling example: I got a Live Help request from someone who had a neighbor that put invisible, obstructive 10x10x10 prims overhanging their land. The prim "roots" are on the neighbor's land and "Joe" can't remove them; these are eating up 5m on two sides of "Joe's" 512m parcel, which is pretty significant intrustion (and against the CS). In days past, the Liaisons were happy to remove clearly obstructive prims. I was told that "Joe" would have to contact his neighbor. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd be reluctant to ask anything of a neighbor with signs all over saying "FooBar Mafia". So what can "Joe" do? Nothing it seems.

So let's assume that Linden Lab would like to make automatic tools (i.e. not spend money on in-game support) for the smooth working of of SL and wants our input. Forgetting for the nonce that keeping the asset server from failing seems to be overriding anything like massive game play changes. What could be done?

A simplistic answer would be that which the game mechanics allow is permitted. I mean, no one need enforce the speed of light in RL. But then what about "Joe" above? Do we give him the power to remove prims from the neighbors property in order to regain his land? Hell no, the abuse potential is obscene and the game mechanics (a prim lives where its root is) is NOT preserving order. Lucky for "Joe" that the walls are invisible and not spewing particles; it could be worse.

I have no idea what "top-down solutions" from LL means, but I've posted a plethora of suggestions and will dig some of them up and put them here.

Assuming LL doesn't want to be policing and will actually be able to implement game changes, what could a powerless populace do? Home Defense Systems don't work, shooting back doesn't work, I can't ban a repeat griefer, I can't even move impolite overhangs from my "leased land".

A broader question might be can humans peaceably cohabitate a world of finite resources? Given human history, (e,g. Medieval Europe, the "wild" US west of the 1800s, etc.). People do eventually impose authority over themselves when they get tired of lawlessness. But the Lords and Sherrifs had power which we do not (i.e. knights and guns respectively). As a student of human nature, I can say that we know of no stable human society in any place at any time where someone wasn't carrying a stick, nor do I think it possible. But if there is a credible substitute out there, I'd love to hear it.

The power of the Lords and Sheriffs is the power bestowed on them by the people, weapons were the implements of enforcement.

Sorry to be a broken record on this (well, not sorry )

Prop 244 includes a request to give landowners the ability to "move" any prim that is over their parcel, regardless of the owner.

This proposal was created back in April - and the original thought behind this particular request was because of ghost issues -- but I think it still applies today in reference to prims hanging over from another parcel onto your land.

Check it out - its in my sig.

It'll come down to RW influence imo. When real money comes into play (here or elsewhere), someone is going to be screwed imo.

If I let my imagination go for a moment I can see a time when someone is paid incredible amounts of money to provide services in virtual communities like SL. When (not If) someone does something that makes the person receiving this kind of money unhappy, there's no reason they can't respond all on their own - they won't need Linden Lab to enforce anything. It'd not take too much real money to hire a scripter to create some nasty code. And even less real money to hire outsiders to join the community for the sole purpose of doing one-time suicide runs. You could have waves of "gridcrashers".

As for anonymity, all those seeking privacy can forget it. Tick off someone pulling down some cash and watch how fast the real life information starts to flow... perhaps as part of a kamikaze run.

But that's just my imagination.

Yeah, and plus, who wants to deal with that crap? There might be the odd person who enjoys playing vigilante but frankly, I have no interest in telling people how to behave. Apparently LL doesn't either. But LL isn't paying me a monthly fee for a service.

Thanks Travis, but I fear I lost my point in the examples, yes, land use tool improvements is one aspect of the problem, but only one and a mild one at that.

Gabe, I agree completely, but even if all players wanted a new "sherrif" (and could agree on who and how), Linden Lab would need to give out the "gun". To date, they've shown great reluctance to do so. And Csven points out where lawlessness gets us.

I think Ingrid hit the heart of the matter. What are we paying for, mere server storage? Do the Lindens simultaneously want us to all be nice and not shoot back and let infringement of experience to rule? That's pretty poor custodianship of "Their World".

We used to be able to take possession of any prims left on land we owned. People would've been careful about leaving things lying around then except we were all pretty much techs that didn't care if everybody had a copy of anything we'd built.

Why is there so much conflict between people paying for space and processor time in the Second Life 3D protocol network and not such conflict between paying for server space and processor time on "the internet" protocol network?

Perhaps because the Second Life protocol is deliberately designed to produce conflict.

No one gets to barge into my silly little website on geocities and cover up my words and images with ones of their choosing. The system is designed in such a way as to make it essentially impossible through legal means. My web space is mine, nobody but me gets to mess with it.

People can affect a landowner's property from outside it by launching projectiles, using pushobject, sliding prims over the edge. etc. This is not a by product or oversight. It is an obvious consequence of the design, so obvious that it couldn't have been overlooked by the designers.

It may be illegal, but it is done.

Agreed. If I were to run a virtual world on my own server, the first thing I'd do is ensure the rules I claim to follow are enforced. And imo it's not even an issue of how a rule is interpreted so long as the interpretation is consistent. There will always be different perspectives, but the host's interpretation should be well-known and, should that interpretation change, be widely disseminated. That seems to get us back to issues of transparency.

Well put, SuzanneC. I said I'd made concrete suggestions, my apologies for reposting, but it makes for an easier read. From Favorite LL Diciplinary Inconsistencies, I wrote:In other words, what Csven just said more succinctly.

Not only are we not being paid for it, we're more often than not disciplined if we do deal with griefers, even using tools LL gives us, on our own land.

Screw that.

What Jonquille said.

coco

Yep. I personally think that a land owner should be able to do whatever they want on their own land, including using weapons against anyone they please, griefer or not.

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!


Think even if LL has a hands off kind of policy they shouldnt advertize it, just give griefers encouragement.

I do think the tools we're provided with have a lot to do with the problem. As Mal pointed out, its not the whole problem - but still I think the childlike tools we're offered have a lot more to do with it than we give it credit for.

To date, all of the tools we've been provided - both Linden sanctioned, and player-created - take a *reactionary* approach to grief.

I mean - the grief happens, then some sort of mitigation effort takes place. Be it retaliation, ejection, pushing, banning, whatever. That is the about the only way we can handle it today.

IMHO, part of the solution to this problem is to shift the focus from reactionary solutions, to proactive ones. I mean - prevent grief from happening before it starts.

Events that depend on a sound stream - should have the capability to disable player-initiated sound effects on that parcel.

If you don't want to be shot, push should be able to be throttled or disabled on a per-parcel basis, with a height limit.

If people are shout-griefing after being banned, the parcel owner should be able to mute the offender for all agents sitting on the parcel.

Neigbor rezzed a 10m cube half over your land? We should be able to move it back over the boundary, and then specifically deny that individual from rezing objects on your property in the future, and no one else.

There are more suggestions where that came from. The common denominator is - don't let the grief even start in the first place. Then, nothing escalates, drama doesn't happen, and no one gets banned.

Yes, I recognize there are exceptions to everything. And this is no silver bullet to solve all the problems. But I strongly believe that for as long as we continue to take a reactive approach to these problems, they will continue to frustrate us.

Funny I have been shoted out of several threads for saying we need to police ourselves, and that one of the m ore intriguing issues in SL is what happens when LL stops playing police.

First, thanks everyone for keeping what I feared might be a flamefest very civil and cogent. I think it speaks volumes that there appears to be a goodly amount of consenus on the matter from people who have been known to hold strong and differing opinions from each other.

Jake, I agree with you completely that the total abdication of policing by LL would be "interesting" as in the curse "may you live in interesting times". Unfortunately, we're now in some mixed model where they are partially policing. In some regards I think this is far worse than either end of the spectrum. If LL abandoned policing, we'd probably progress up some quasi-feudal ladder; if they drew clearer lines and were mostly consistent in the application people would know what to do and what not. As it is, it's a crapshoot these days.

For example, someone (forget who) has a quote from a Linden in their signature saying that "blow player off-world" land defense systems are prohibited and actionable. I read in other threads that people have stopped reporting them as it just seemed a waste of time as none of the reports were being acted on. This makes it simply impossible to both be free from griefing and remain in line with "stated" policy.

Travis, well said regarding pro-active mechanisms and all the ones you put forth are meritorious and address some of the most grievous troubles. But in the end, if you could mechanize the rules of a complex society then there would be no need for a judiciary. Put another way, human conduct is too complex to draw a bright, impenetrable line between wrong and right. I have seen one model of proactive grief reduction that seemed to work reasonably well. In PlanetSide, a three teamed MMO war game, killing your own teammates was considered "grief" - the more grief points you accumulated, the slower your gameplay would become until you were frozen. The grief points would bleed off over time; accidentally gun down a teammate - no problem - shoot a dozen you've now become a better target than a gun and are a liability to your team. Note well, this was in a war game where shooting other players was the point of the game. I don't think anyone puts SL into that genre.

Tacking on one last musing, I said "quasi-feudal" above because the forces that cause anarchy to resolve into something more "advanced" have a lot to do with real guns causing real death. Banning, pushing, or SL-killing are quite a bit less compelling than RL privation or death.

I think a big problem here is the soft gloves Linden Lab is using on obvious troublemakers. The warning business is just getting annoying. If you check out the Police Blotter, you'll see it filled with obviously-crappy behavior, punished with warnings.

Want to give an effective warning? Warn idiots who make trouble for others with a 12 hour suspension. Simple.

The only thing that complicates this is stories like pandastrong's, wherein a griefer AR'ed PANDA because PANDA got pissed and reported the griefer -- and panda is the one that ended up with a warning.

So maybe all the warning business is coming from an internal understanding that the Abuse system isn't very reliable? It's safer to just blanket warn everyone who is reported for bad behavior and then take action if a particular account has a few warnings stack up?

I dunno, I don't have huge confidence in discipline in SL at the moment. You can usually get some great help from Liaisons, who will dispatch griefers who just won't leave, and that's very good. But it doesn't help the longterm problem, which is that the griefers will go on to bother someone else.

I think the point is LL does not want to police SL at all. They do it now because somoene has to. They have much loftier pursuits in mind.

...and continue to fiddle while Ahern burns with a push into the Teen & German markets whilst the asset server crumbles, an ostensible consumer product fails regularly for reasons that no one can understand let alone fix, lose most of their strongest, longest evangelists to abject frustration from prims running all over the place, a dysfunctional economy, players tiering down like an inverse gold rush, support to rival Microsoft ("not our issue, reformat your machine" and absolutely desultory communication with their customers about plans, intentions, failures, aspirations.

I've given up. I don't care. Please ignore all my prior postings. So much promise, such acrid fruit.

I had been thinking earlier in the day about pushguns, I guess inspired by Malachi's tale.

Struck me that a landowner should have checkboxes for "Local Push Only" and for "Owner Push Only". Local push would mean allow or not allow pushes from outside the landowner's plot. Owner push only would mean only the owner could use push, or in groups, at present, the officers.

Better still would be to have "push ok" and "push not ok" lists similar to land ban lists at present in addition to the above.

One should be able to push other people objects off your property, regardless of the fact that in normal calculations the servers simplifies an object to a point. When the owner wants to move a object off his property the server would just have to get off its butt and do a little extra work determing what direction and how far the owner would need to move the object to get it off his property and back on the adacent property of the object's owner. If the object partially on your property didn't belong to someone immediately adjacent you would be able to return to the object owner's inventory.

Sounds might work like the pushobject above did.

The basic idea is that you stop trying to model physical reality, where people can play music from next door that bothers you, and instead try to make a virtual system that makes it impossible for people to mess with other people's stuff.

I'm with Travis in thought - find the problem that the security scripts are trying to solve, and you go a long way in cutting down their usage..

... that being said...

I don't understand how either poorly written or overkill these scripts are..

The tport home slam is overkill.... it wouldn't be hard to send a request to leave, a warning, time it, tport them -- ONCE... *IF* you needed to do that...

The superpush concept is overly silly too... If you took the time and did a lil work you could work out how to push someone away at a force dependant on thier distance and speed.. You can get this info - push back only as much as necessary while over your land AND within the radius -- effectively a gentle wall

Unseat from vehicles... if they're in a vehicle chances are they aren't interested in whats goin on... they're going from A to B..

If someone is on a prim to circumvent your push... if they get off it they'll get nailed anyways..


If there is a problem that absolutely requires these things (and there must be some problem or they wouldn't exist - let alone be so popular) - can we at least get them scripted to a level where both parties can feel they have 'met in the middle'?


Siggy.

Well . . . the communication, I think, is pretty good.

coco