Linden response to racist incident in Ahern Welcome area

A resident showed up at the Ahern Welcome Area today wearing a KKK outfit, pushing other residents around, spewing racist, homophobic, and sexually explicit epithets, and attacking other avs.

This incident was reported by several other mentors, but when no Linden arrived on the scene and the resident continued to harrass and upset other people in the area, I also contact all Linden liasons who were online and asked them to come to Ahern and remove him.

I was initally told by all the liasons I talked to that I should file an AR. Coffee Linden told me she was busy and could not help with this situation, and that Lindens could not be expected to respond to griefing incidents.

I was also busy: I was receiving IMs from residents who were upset by the KKK outfit and by the resident's actions, I was trying to file the requested AR, and I was trying to get a real and swift remedy to the situation, which was getting chaotic as other residents responded angrily or with confusion to the racist, homophobic, confrontational behavior.

This was not a matter of someone being shot across a sim. This was repeated, continuous, offensive behavior. When I told Coffee in IM that this was racist, sexually explicit chat mixed with attacks on other avs, she said "ya." Then she told me to contact live help in the future, in other words saying, I suppose, not to contact her. I also recall in mentor chat someone saying that Live Help had the same remedies as us, so contacting them would not provide additional remedy.

I thought I had been told to contact a Linden in situations like this. I also thought Lindens would care about swiftly putting an end to a situation like this -- racist, sexually offensive activity in a welcome area! I also expect Lindens to treat me -- a customer who is *volunteering my time to improve their business!* -- with concern and respect. I do not appreciate the flippancy I received in response to my requests for help. And while the racist was finally removed, it was only after I and other mentors repeatedly badgered the Lindens who responded to my IM.

We need a much better, faster way to deal with these situations and we, as volunteers, need to have a clear path to remedy. If there are not enought liasons to handle it, another solution needs to be developed. Maybe some volunteers need to be deputized. Maybe more liasons need to be hired.

For those who may think I am overreacting or may think this incident is funny, or normal, or not that big a deal, because it happens all the time or because this is a virtual world, I'd say you really need to question why we are here in SL. I don't want to play a game or participate in a community in which that kind of behavior is normalized, viewed as unimportant, or seen as an acceptable consequence of community.

I was not there but there is no need for that behavior in SL at all.
He or she needs to be banned. SL is a lot of fun and we do not need racist ppl coming in to it and just starting stuff.



Have a g00d day!!

Pretty sad situation. I personally would have left the game if that was my first impression of SL.
I guess business is so good that the Lindens have better things to do than deal with shitheads driving off potential customers.

I saw that IM... and tried to go and help out, i asked atleast 4 times which welcome area with NO response as to which it was. If it was all that important somone should have said which.

I'm sorry no one got you that information Eric. It would have been great to have your help there. I think your requests came before I arrived there, and I did tell all the Lindens I talked to which area it was. But the fact that no one gave you the information doesn't make it any less of a big deal or change the fact that my requests for help weren't handled well.

Frank-

While it's not a perfect solution.. there is the (Mute) feature.

If you can educate and convince the people present to mute the offender (and mute anyone who refuses to dis-engage with the offender as well), then the griefer can only offend with actions.

I'm sure this jerk's actions were extremely offensive, incendiary and provoking. But threats and retaliation only encourage griefers to new lows of behavior.

Despite the overwhelmingly strong urge to fight back... Don't. IM the people around you to mute the offender... or IM them to join you some place else away from the offender.

A griefer without an offended audience quickly gets bored and moves on...

Lives are not at stake. LL staff shouldn't have to maintain a 911 level emergency response for griefers. Things that threaten the stability of the grid? Yes. Griefers? No.

If they can't or won't enforce the TOS, why do we even have it?

It would be in the best interest of their bottom line to respond quickly to situations similar to what has been described.

This is a tough one. Personally I have zero tolerance for that type of crap, but at the same time, as Jopsy pointed out, they are just words and we don't have any guarantee of going through life without ever being offended. Mute the person, AR report them and it will be handled - not instantly, but it is addressed. While I definitely think it would be in the best interests of the Lindens to keep that kind of stuff out of the Welcome Area, it is not an emergency situation that requires instanteous TOS response, no matter how desireable that might be. Would it be great to have that? Yes, definitely - but again, there are tools at our disposal to mute the resident, or to just flat out leave the area.

PS - the reason to use Live Help for this kind of stuff is because Lindens do also read that IM queue. The Live Helpers themselves cannot do anything, but in the usual Russian Roulette way of support, you may get a Linden who will help.

Sounds like a confusing situation all around though. I wouldn't necessarily put all the blame on the Lindens. I don't understand the thing about "which welcome area" though. There is only one Welcome Area. If people can't report the thing accurately, that's one reason why things can go wrong.

Also as others said, ignoring the griefer is really the way to go. It's like like griefer kryptonite when you don't get upset at their antics. Sounds to me like they were getting exactly what they wanted, which was a lot of hysteria and frantic arm-flapping.

I would have called live help and calmly explained what was going on while making an AR with a snapshot and chat-log, then encouraged others to do the same by IM. Eventually a Linden would have shown up to ban the idiot or he might even have moved on if you could convince people to ignore him.

I couldn't get 30 ppl, many of them brand new to SL, to mute this guy. And of course lives are not at stake but this was very very offensive. Read my post Jopsy. I would never ask for immediately removal of someone who shot someone across a sim or wore an x-rated attachment, but I personally do think extremely racist, homophobic speech and actions, especially in a welcome area, should warrant IMMEDIATE action. I'm not going to cave on that stance.

Had I been told by Coffee, "someone is handling this, we'll be there shortly," that would be a completely different situation. Instead I was treated flippantly and dismissed. I felt like I was dealing with a counter clerk at the DMV.

Meanwhile, citizens at the Welcome Area are looking to me and other mentors for help in this situation. If I don't have the tools and the support to help out, I won't continue to put myself in that situation.

I concur!

i'm equally frustrated by law enforcement where i live. once a robber was leaving my house as i got home. i called the cops but by the time they responded the robber was long gone. i understand they might have been answering other disturbances but this one was priority one!

Coffee is an amazing, and amazingly busy, person - someone who has been very thorough and helpful assist in a pinch.


I handle a mere three private island sims. When nothing is wrong, I get social IM's and it's all cool.

When a griefer shows up, or there's some lag on my sims, WOW do I get the IM's from everyone on the island that's affected. I do my very best to resolve the situation - and usually, when it rains it pours.

I can't even REMOTELY imagine how the Lindens deal with the whole grid - and have complete sympathy for anyone even trying.

No doubt there were a dozen other 'hotter' situations at that moment or Coffee would have been right there.

Frank I was inthe wa when that happened and that KKK person was purposely looking for problems. I was the mentor on duty there. I was calling two linden for 15 mins all i got was do a abuse report. I was screaming inthe mentor chat to get some support from a linden. I contacted two lindens direct wbu all i got from both was send abuse reports. I got the point that swearing inthe mentor chat to get a linden over. Finally one of the Lindens told me they where in the teen game and was busy fially they dealt with it....after 20 mins of getting run in but that KKK person and having him verbal abuse other in the wa. It was dealt with. This was really a sad case where action was not being taken when i did the first call for help.....
I am very sorry this happened......But in all cases the abuse system will deal with this asap.

What funny is when i swearing in the mentor chat ( i did so once) some just had to make a remark i did. Well that person should put their mouth where remarrks are! I did not see them in the wa helping.

Frank / Usagi -

While I can't speak to with any authority here... I have had some 10+ years of dealing with griefers. (much of which was in completely open worlds that couldn't effectively ban anyone from coming back.)

1) Griefers will usually find a way to make nearly anyone insanely and irrationally furious, even after years of dealing with them, once in a while one will still get to me.

2) Most griefers want attention, and the more 'important' the person they annoy the more fun it is for them. Stunts this blatent are deliberate attempts to annoy and waste Linden staff time. LL's TOS says that there will be consequences... it doesn't say how quickly those consequences will happen.

3) Sometimes griefer's can be discouraged by pointing out that there are laws against obscene phone calls... and with a credit card it's not hard to find someone to pin charges onto. Usually they'll say they're using someone else's credit card, not their own... they'll feel secure in their anonymity if you try threatening them with charges of credit card fraud... don't rise to that bait.

4) In griefer attacks, it is good to have witnesses to corroborate what took place when an admin finally can intervene. While it's tempting to give into the rage that these perverted malcontents love to create... If you let them get to you... they win, even if they're banned moments later.

5) The number of Lindens isn't keeping up with population growth. Banning a griefer for an obvious, severe and repeated violation of the TOS can, actually, be quitesatisfying... if they don't jump right on it then I'm sure they have a very good reason, and probably a good enough reason to not respond with anything more asking for an abuse report. Give'm the benefit of the doubt.

There is also the ugly flip side... where effective griefers actually manage to enrage the players around them into such a blood thirsty lynch mob out, that they're ready to string him up from the nearest tree. Quite often the more nurturing and protective the person... the more the holy righteous fire of retribution will burn, demanding the powers that be strike the offender dead(banned) on the spot. That kind of rage makes the best of us into into violent, hateful, monsterous vigilantees... and making good people look bad is one of those bits that griefers seem to love most.

--
Relax. You're quite safe here.

jospey well i so use to this crap now its second nature on sl............I say as come as possible the wa is getting worse and worse these days.....and the drama is getting into the mentor groups as well.......

It's an unfortunate fact of the internet that more and more people with either little to do and plenty of time, or people who delight in upsetting other people deliberately, will gain access and cause problems. IRC and the like are just the same.

Whilst we might not always be able to control the actions of others you can control your own actions - people looking for attention are always delighted when they provoke a response. As the saying goes, 'Please do not feed the pigeons'. Should say here that this is just a general observation, not aimed at you guys!

KKK is pretty disgusting having said that. I wouldn't have been pleased to see that sort of thing turning up on me - the first journey into SL is daunting enough as it is.

Resently there been a rash of problems in the wa.....To the point even where the staff of the helpers (mentors to infact ) have been involved with neg drama problems inthe wa. It just the time of year these kids are doing their finals and are stressed in their rl......There so much hated towards people in rl, thats bad enough. Do they have to bring it into the game as well...... Today was just a sad sad case of drama inthe mentors in the wa.....I sure hope this wil be the end of it.........God help us all

You replied before I had edited True ... I don't understand why people have to bring RL nonsense in game - I'm betting that they are not the people who have invested time or money ...

I did once go down to the Welcome Area on purpose to wreak havoc but it wasn't the upsetting kind. I accidentally got locked into an oven I was trying to place - so I went to the welcome area I initially turned up in and offered to bake people pies. Next time I do something stupid I should go down there maybe, made a few people smile LOL

Makes me wonder, how many Linden Lab employees ARE NOT Caucasian (if any). IMO, most ppl who are of a minority descent would be at minimum slightly offended by anyting relating to the KKK. If there were any Liason or LL Employees that were offended themselves by the incident, I think it's more likely that they would have responded immediatley instead of telling you to file an AR.

I have seen LL Employees respond immediatley to lesser evils such as griefers and more minor issues. So I am not sure why they would allow this individual to harrass ppl in a place where New Residents gather. It just doesn't make sense for them to allow someone to leave such a bad impression on new customers.

Mad

It's a shame that LL is so overworked that they can't enforce their own TOS in the most visible location to new residents. It would equally be a shame if users found a new place to play where customer service is seen as paramount to providing a quality user experience.

Today's drama in the WA was caused by a single mentor who felt that somebody wearing a stone statue avatar and posing like Rodin's Thinker on a bench was somehow offensive (it wasn't, not to a single person in the WA including two Linden's who showed up to see for themselves). The drama started when this mentor posted the offending avatar's name to the mentor's group channel instead of just calling a Linden out directly. A dozen mentors showed up, mostly to defend the statue, and the whole thing got rather silly.

There are real problems to be solved and ways that mentors can be helpful in the WA ... and this wasn't one of them.

Lets the dream start. and end here milk bye

I think CS well take care of this problem, its getting too deep now. Sit and wait.......CS finds any strange play they will take care of matters.

Huh?