03-22-2009 21:57
There have been numerous attacks on the various official sandboxes (cordova, goguen, plum, etc) that involve the same few scripts, the same looping sounds, the same cubes with the same textures, and the same particles. They affect everyone who is trying to work, wander, socialize, or even just idle afk in these sims (and probably others). Screaming hitlers, flying marios, "lower body attachments" that follow people, and so on. These are the work of script kiddies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddie ), nothing more. Yet they cause unwanted disruption, crashes, and other grief. It can't be too hard to remedy these. Delete those sounds, delete those textures, and filter out those scripts. They're all the same, week after week, these people can't even come up with new stuff. The problem isn't hard at all to take care of, yet everyone, paying customer or not, is left to deal with them by logging out, leaving the sim, muting the owner, or turning off particles, simply because there is no other method. So what happens if you've got unsaved work in that crashing sim. Or there are too many users (alts) making those sounds faster than you can mute them. Or you're trying to make particles of your own. Or you're trying to socialize with other people in that sim, even though they're not on your friends list and there is no certain way of meeting up with them again after they TP off. Or if you're just standing there doing nothing? All of these are the right of anyone, paying customer or not, but griefing isn't. But when someone rezzes hundreds of prims to cause grief in less than a minute and drags the sim down to a crawl, there isn't much recourse other than to leave. This isn't the solution, rather, it is denial of service. Abuse reports are of no use, they have a very small success rate, and even if they are acted upon (that'll be the day), the actee likely won't remedy the problem before the sim crashes and everything is lost. I feel that there should be some sort of automated system in place that catches these "griefers" in the act, and removes the objects that are causing a problem. Their accounts should at least be frozen until a real human can look at what the problem is, but I see no reason why they shouldn't just be summarily banned forever. I'd like to hear one LEGITIMATE use for hundreds of prims that follow you or someone else around screaming and spamming. Right, there are none, I didn't think so. So why isn't there some sort of automatic system that can remedy this, or at least notify someone that such an event is taking place? I suggest a system that shows the top creator of objects in certain sims, if not all of them, rated by the account's creation date, and maybe certain properties of the script contained in the objects. If the account was created 2 minutes ago, and they already know where the sandboxes are, and they already know how to make a script that spams, follows, etc, and there's hundreds of the same object using the same sound, or using the same script, or using the same particles, then chances are THEY AREN'T LEGIT. Please DON'T say that all anyone has to do is turn off particles, or mute the person, or teleport away, or file an abuse report, or whatever. We already know all of this. I'm not willing to let these idiots keep me or anyone else from enjoying SL under any circumstance, and there is no way I will just leave or give up. But I'm tired of dealing with these things on my own, there's only so much one person can do without help. And the residents that call themselves "sandbox police" aren't helping either, being a vigilante solves nothing (especially if you just sit there and provide an easy target). I'd like to open a discussion on this topic, please leave your suggestions. Please KEEP IT CIVIL, we already know that LL is a big fan of inaction on this subject, no need to restate the obvious. We already know that the people who do this are infantile. I'd like to hear from the community on how we can remedy this instead. And I'd like to hear from the Lindens on how they will remedy it even more, a normal resident is powerless to fight back, short of stooping to being a "griefer" themselves.