Unverified Alts AVIS are Destroying the Fragile Communities of SL

Certainly there are uses and purposes for having an Alt Avi, but the unlimited and unchecked and unverified use of Alt Avis are destroying Second Life. I am extremely angry at Liden Lab’s apparent greed at bumping population for some possible IPO offering (or whatever). The use of 98% of these unverified Alts (born one day and gone the next hour) are almost entirely used for deceit, deception, destruction of other people and communities, they are widely used by griefers and stalkers.

It has turned the once very welcoming community of long term residents who are always open to helping new people, into a community that can’t trust the next newbie that comes along and asks for help.

Liden Labs SHAME ON YOU!@!!!

I Hate what your doing to OUR community.

like all tools, alts can be used for good or bad. it is really a matter of intent to hurt, deceive, harm, ...

unfortunately, what we are seeing is massive abuse of no payment info recorded alts for negative purposes.

the underlying problem is that the costs and benefits are not cojoined. linden labs gets the benefit in thier ramp-up to get 1m kinda accounts (aka marketing body count) by eoy for a sale or ipo in early 2007. the costs are borne by the real residents in terms of abuse, deceipt, and harm.

Are you saying all alts are tools?

as i t seems highly unlikely linden labs will revert the policy, as they get all the benefit and we the costs, i have come up with one hack which would help.

like push, it would be nice to be able to configure land to autoblock no payment info received account holders.

There exists in SL a wide variety of communities, each held together by a thread of common interest and this in turn helps friendships to develop and grow. The demographics of these groups vary as widly as their interests. What is common to all of them is a recognized set of manners and conventions which form the basis of any community.
There also exists in SL, a group of people which take joy in the destruction of other people's creations, events, and social time together. They are commonly refered to as "griefers." In the past few weeks we have seen them attempt to destroy the summer sailing cup that many people worked hard to stage. We have also seen unprevoked attacks on people peacefully visiting. In all of the cases I have seen, those "people" doing the attacks were unvarified alts. Last night we had a situation where three freshly minted unvarified alts staged a sustained attack for over 30 minutes. Repeated calls to Linden Labs for help brought no response other than a poor volunteer who tried in vain to contact a "Linden."
I have "push" turned on on my land, and I routinely ban "griefers" when they appear. I refuse to play games such as "shoot back." I realize ISPs have both static and assigned IPs, but it would help if there were a menu item which allowed you to enter a "griefer's" nick and have their IP added to a data base which was viewable by the support staff at Linden Labs. Eventually, these pathetic individuals would be identified and banned. The choice is simple, anarchy or community?

Just one question, Saxxon Domela...
why diddn't you contact a land owner and ask them to switch the land to requiring payment info on file for entry? That's what I do when I'm attacked by a horde of unverifieds.... I just switch the land to payment info on file required for entry, until they go away. Takes a few seconds, zaps them all and any officer in your land-owning group can do it.

When 1.12 gets here, I hope that it's made easier to have land group-owned and define a class of people who can toggle flags like 'require payment info' without being able to toggle other flags - as an easy way to keep out griefers. Just IM a group officer, get them to teleport in, lock the land to those with payment info on file only, ban and AR any remaining griefers, and get on with your life

Corse the annoying catch is I dont belive my *only* account has payment details because I simply have no way of paying for it. when the old registration system kicked in many of my friends couldn't join as they lived in other countries where their mobiles and often credit cards were useless. And I cant use either because of the same problem... and the fact I dont have either X_X;

Corse on the other hand I do remember the good old days, when I was a newbe I had a $900 AV within 2 days just because the locals were so nice. Now days pople just ignore or avoid newbes in case they're simply griefers in disguise

Damned if we do, stuffed if we dont I spose

What LL should do is just ignore any complaints coming from not verified accounts. As a matter of fact take away the Rebort Abuse Button altogether unless you have a paid account.

That way you can cuss em out and smack em around without the worry of an abuse report. So if they want to be treated nicely, they should be noce first. Give respect to get respect.

(New thread )

i am an idiot. it has been there for two weeks.

SOUNDS LIKE A BRILIANT PLAN!
I can now rape newbies who can't do a damn thing about it in a PG sim and guess what? They never upgrade and pay LL money. LL loses unverified -> verified income.

Those days aren't entirely gone, AusFox. Just last night i gave 1000L worth of outfits (not freebies, but real no copy outfits that i had), skins (ok... these were freebies, but not the usual trash skins... those i just delete. These were good quality for being a freebie), and shapes (good ones) on a noob while i was at Awesome Designs waiting for their Lucky chair to change letters. I believe that she was only 3 day old.

I think the deciding factor for me now is that i won't go to the Welcome centers anymore and give out gifts to random noobs. This one was polite, didn't ask for anything from anyone, other than "how do i...". Had she been one of the current variety of obnoxious griefer noobs, who come in demanding that they be given things and demand answers to their questions, she wouldn't have gotten anything... not even answers to her questions. I know that at least two other people there also gave her gifts: one, hair, and the other, more outfits. Because she thanked each of us.

Not everyone is willing to switch their land over to exclude brand new newbies, although your suggestion to do it temporarily has some merit.

Philosophically, some groups would like to retain their welcoming atmosphere, although the behavior of the recent crop of newbs tests that principle to the limit.

well, i guess that's why it's only an option. but point taken. it's just that the influx has taken enough of my energy to be quite annoying. but perhaps i should not be so easily annoyed.