What's a Linden?

A Linden is a currency, an employee of Linden Lab, a kind of tree, the name of the street the companies' headquarters is on, a desert topping and a floor wax.

This turns out to be the case this time too - the current grid attacks are the work of a very small group of people who call themselves the Patriotic Nigras. Of course, they are neither patriotic, nor black.

Apart from the ease with which new free accounts can be created, the one thing that makes it possible for them to return time and time again despite being hardware and IP banned is "ShoopedLife", a modified client that spoofs all the user's hardware data. In combination with the use of proxy servers to evade IP bans, it makes the members of this griefer group completely unbannable.

It was created by a young man who calls himself "N3X15", and I've been seeing his real life data posted in the Second Life Herald and other places. Surely he could be held legally responsible for ALL these attacks? If the hacked client were to become unavailable, the grid attacks would most likely stop almost overnight.

While looking up something else, I found a Knowledge Base article about occlusion culling, a feature introduced back in 1.10. The basics:
Particles aren't mentioned, and I believe they wouldn't be affected directly by this anyway. Still, it shows that LL specifically programs the client to NOT render hidden items in order to save processing power. It is sensible to assume it might have occurred to them to do the same for particles.

As of right now the abuse reports don't seem to be doing much good. People are harrassing, spamming, and selling in sandboxes and nobody is out to fix it. When i was in live help i could listen to all the problems going on. Most everyone just had UI problems or noob questions. Attacks were actually rare. I don't think it would take 50 to 100 Lindens to improve the quality of SL.
If we are able to call a Linden to the scene, then they can observe what is going on and make a judgement. We should see less attacks if people knew there were real consequences.
I've seen a guy abuse 3 sandboxes every single day! People were fed up with him. Theres even a hate group dedicated to hating him. He was reported several times a day and still nothing happened. Nothing changed, he kept coming back just to harrass everyone. And if you tried to reason with him, he muted you. This went on for about 3 months. There was noone to help us.

The abuse reports do help - the trick is to get several different users to file a number of them over a short span of time. They have a software filter watching the abuse report queue, and when you do this it triggers a support event and alerts the Governance Team that there is a serious problem. This gets their attention right away, and they'll act, often within just a few minutes of seeing the alert notice.

This change in the abuse reporting system is only about three months old, so give it another try - I think you'll like the results.

sometimes right away, other time it might take awhile

took over 6 months of reporting an object that was rooted on my neighbours land, but sticking into my land, eventually it got moved

If this is so, then why is there even a place in preferences to adjust the max number of particles you can see?

On the subject of particles being processed while hidden... I don't think that's the case, because if you hide particles, go find and delete the object spamming them, then un-hide particles, the particles reappear in the same place they were before you hid them, and you just have to wait for them to bounce away.

I also would like to hear some thoughts on how to deal with floods of request permission to animate your avatar, and also locating those objects.

Linden Lab got the message: Fix the bugs. They are constantly fixing bugs. They don't have free time to come inworld. I find the irony amusing.

*moves*

Please be nice to each other.

True, but it would be nice to have just 2-6 accessable Lindens online all the time........

I agree, and i would like to be one of those Lindens

Oh yes, and make sure every single person sending an abuse report is a paid customer, anyone that is not paying 10 dollars a month, your abuse report goes directly into the trash, no questions asked.

I'm calling BS on this. If you actually have evidence to support this statement, please share it.

Oh, so they've got Liaisons, "Community Builders", and marketing folks debugging and coding now? I find the patent absurdity of that statement ironically amusing.

Support Availability by Account Type

Basic Accounts: If you are a Basic account holder, you have access to our in-depth Knowledge Base and Solution Finder. You do not have access to our Inworld or Outworld support teams. However, we're constantly improving our Knowledge Base and Solution Finder to assist Residents who are Basic account holders with resolving your issues independently. There are also a few Special Questions** for which we DO provide Basic account holders with ticket access.

https://secure-web0.secondlife.com/community/support.php

Claim BS all you like, LL has officially swept basic accounts under the rug. You are not eligible for inworld or outworld support. So guess what, it all goes into the trash. Oh, and this also holds true if you buy lindens, if your still on a basic account and something happens with your purchase of lindens, LL will in no way help you.

QFT.

I rarely post and rarely complain. Sinatra, I feel your pain. I've been enduring similar events of late on the Mainland, that seem to be increasing in frequency.

Before someone leaps in to instruct me about land management, yes, I have:
- disabled Build, Script, Object Intrusion and Push
- during assails, I also disable Particles
- enabled immediate Autoreturn
- AR done every time


All of this, to little avail. I do not have control of all my neighbours' plots and most especially, not Governor Linden's (which I just happen to border). While ARs may be all well and good, the response time has been less than helpful (hours into days), while these things continue to spew, scream, bounce and affect not only personal fps but sim performance. Sim crashes have also resulted. Your mileage may vary and I'm glad others have seen swift results. Alas, I have not. Couple this with an inability to swiftly contact a Linden for intervention to prevent sim deterioration, frustration and dismay do mount.

There was a time we could call upon Lindens inworld for emergency measures. It worked splendidly. I can't seem to do that any longer. I fully understand the cost factor of installing countless personnel into the mix with the current size of our world. However, how unfeasible can it be to have a small dedicated grief AR team, accessible INWORLD to all Residents, separate from the full AR process, to target these types of urgent issues in a critical timeframe? If there is one and I can access them live INWORLD, please enlighten me.

My mermaid two cents.

@ YourA:

Oh I see... you have confused "Abuse Report" with "Support".

They are two totally different things, and from what people have said here, I believe they are handled by two separate groups of staff and/or contractors (or at least through a separate ticketing system).

"Support" is for getting help when you have a problem with the system: your credit card won't bill, your region needs restarting, your inventory is corrupted, stuff like that. Support is about LL doing something for you as an individual account holder, and therefore it is reasonable for LL provide a reduced level of support to account holders who do not pay for it.

An "Abuse Report" is for reporting other residents who are breaking the rules: griefing, harassing, exhibiting sexual material in a PG sim, hanging prims over parcel borders, etc. Abuse reporting is about identifying, warning, and sometimes punishing or banning individuals who are misbehaving. By submitting a legitimate abuse report, you are actually helping LL to police the grid.

To my knowledge, LL has never said anything about ignoring ARs from Basic accounts, and there is no reason for them to do so. You are doing their job for them.

That said, it seems to me that they may ignore abuse reports that are incomplete or incomprehensible, or are complaining about resident behavior that is not actually against the rules (like a landlord evicting you and not refunding your rent).

So, to help those out there who have trouble submitting good abuse reports, think about what the AR staff probably cares about and what they don't.

They do not care that you got your feelings hurt. They do not care that you gave an object permission to take your money, and then it did. They do not care that a landbot bought the land that you set for sale to anyone at L$1. They do not care that you are REALLY REALLY REALLY UPSET!!!

What they DO want is an AR that briefly and clearly, without emotion, tells what has been done and what rule it has broken, and properly documents the act in question (screenshot, chat log, exact time and place it happened, etc.). If you CAN submit a clear, calm, well-documented abuse report on something that is actually AR-able, I think you will find your AR is dealt with accordingly.

And also remember, most first offenders with minor infractions are only given a warning. LL considers this "resolved", without following up to see if the offender has actually stopped the behavior. If the situation is not fixed, you will need to AR again, being sure to tell LL you are following up on a previous AR that was not resolved.

---

Phew! To put all that briefly: Support is about you, so the type of account you have matters. Abuse Reports are about the offender, not the reporter, so the reporter's account type is of no consequence.

Gosh Sinatra, you are _old_. No offence. I suspect most SL users would trade 80% of their inventory contents for a 2003 birth date.

I wonder if you're in one of those old sims in the western half of the mainland? If so, until last Wednesday, it had been a long time since I'd witnessed sim-wide grief attacks. Then I wandered some of those sims (gualala, mauve, da boom, nova albion, etc) and saw that most of them were basically unusable due to the particle griefing.

I abuse reported one of them, but several hours later they were still there.

Don't say that. It makes me feel like we've been locked in school without any teachers, at the mercy of power-hungry hall monitors.

Actually, that's not an entirely unaccurate official forum analysis.

And I would LOVE you to be one of those Lindens!

Hello Walker, yes I am in Noyo, Da Boom, Stillman, etc...

Agreed. I would like to know how to access a live Linden INWORLD also.

I'm going to be super nice here, so listen up. It won't happen again.

Almost all reports of abuse of any kind will absolutely, positively, go ignored, period. This is because Linden Labs doesn't have the resources to hire an appropriately large staff for all the promises they made back when everyone thought Second Life was cool. (which was about the same time that people started thinking digital watches weren't).

However, if you file an abuse report on sunday morning, between 6am and 8am PST, it will be acted upon. I do not know why, and I do not know who's doing it, but whoever it is needs absolutely no proof of anything, no screenshots, nothing. It's actually become a great way to grief to tell the truth--just file a fake report during those hours on that day, and whoever your target is will certainly be suspended within minutes---whether they did anything or not.

Of course, this information should not be used for nefarious purposes, but should be used instead, by the Lindens, as a wakeup call to their own extreme incompetence.

I personally returned an item (I placed it though... lol) after seeing its effect, only to have that particle effect continue for another 4 or 5 hours at least. So having auto-return on doesn't solve it immediately with all particle effects. Also, this effect was huge, the second largest ive seen (Biggest being a max-size particle effect.. loved it tho lol...), and wasn't the prettiest in the world. I didn't put in a report, since it is my land and it wasnt hurting anything at present, but it wasnt gone immediately upon removal of the object. So no, it isnt just auto-return=problem solved.