Newbie (stupid?) question/proposal re: greifers & banning

I am relatively new here so maybe there is a good reason why htis is not possible, but I don't see why. So here is a proposal I would like people to comment on.

There are literally hundreds of avatars I meet every week that I know are assholes or griefers of one kind or another. Mostly 20 something males, and mostly they end up doing something awful and sometimes I end up reporting them, but many are just jerks that somehow manage to stay playing the game even though I personally don't want anything to do with them. So my proposal is:

Why can't I simply chose not to associate with these people? Why can't I simply ban them from my land and my friends land? I know exactly who they are, but there is no mechanism to ban them except on a one by one individual basis.

Now there is a mechanism for "marking" them. There is that seldom used extra tab where I can (and I most certainly do), put a comment like "jerk with a gun" "spammer" "inconsiderate goon", "selfish script-king" etc. Now if I chose to use the same key-word each time, that means that within the database there is already a field that can be searched for a term that determines whether or not this person is someone I want on my land. So why can't I ban on the basis of such a mark or keyword that I put on a fellow avatar?

On a similar note, why can't I ban on the basis of any other criteria than just the avatar name? These are all fields in the same database aren't they? The scripting of the thing should be child's-play.

- There are "griefer groups" where I know for a fact that any jerk that is in them is someone I don't want on my land, but I can't ban that group.

- There are certain names of avatars that are a total giveaway, like anyone who's name is "overlord" or has the word "Sith" in it.

These are all people that I *know* for an absolute fact I never want to see on my land, so why can't I have the option of banning them?

The profile is an excellent tool for determining what kind of person you are dealing with, yet we are unable to use any of it's fields (save the key) to ban an avatar and we can't script our own ban list either???

It makes increasingly less sense to me in a "social" game that we have no social control over who we associate with and who we don't. In RL I could turn to my friend, or phone them up, and say "you know that Overlord Bergman guy? He's a complete jerk, you should steer clear of him and don't let him in your house whatever you do." Why not here?

These are all really good ideas.

Be careful with the "Overlords" and "Siths". While some may indeed be griefers, others might be Samurai, Star Wars, or Vampire Roleplayers. Plus, a note system like that would have perfectly upstanding avatars getting blacklisted once the griefers caught on and started adding those keywords into people's notes and whatnot. I mean, once they find out the word "Orbiter" causes an avatar to get banned from a large number of places, they'll be running around tagging everyone as an orbiter.

It sounds like you should just have your land set to ban all, and then your friends get access into your land..... seems easier than trying to ban 90% of SL

You can ban on the basis of payment info using parcel/estate tools.
You can ban based on ratings by using scripts.
You can ban based on avatar's age using scripts.



The following quote from here may be music to your ears :




Bad example. Many legit Star Wars (and other) people have names like that.
You'd be better off saying "anyone whose name has 'griefer' or 'hitler' or 'fuckyou' in it".
And you CAN get someone's name, and ban based on that name, with a security orb!



Bans by group will come, Robin Linden has said so.
Bans by name can already be done via LSL script.



You CAN script your own ban list. In fact you can have an orb that bans everyone except people who :
1) have at least one positive rating (in any of the categories), OR
4) have payment info on file OR
5) are over 1 week old

Use of all those criteria together would, IMHO, be pretty effective at screening out "created today" griefer accounts without being a pain in the ass for everyone.



Systems such as BanLink allow you and your friends to semi-automatically share ban lists. If you and your friend both know a lot of bad people, you can elect to trust each other's bans using BanLink and share information that way. It's not a perfect solution but as I and many other sim owners who use it will attest, it helps a LOT.

I agree that it would be great to be able to ban everyone in a certain group or groups from entering my parcel/estate.

That would be cool and would cut down on griefer alts.

Another good idea is that the "no script" restriction enabled by turning "run other scripts" off should extend all the way up to the parcel ceiling. When someone is driving, say, a plane, they should either bounch off parcels which have no script set, or they should be given 10 seconds to traverse the parcel before their scripts are disabled.

For more detailed proposals that would drastically enhance security in SL, please check out the link in my sig. It has a link to prop. 1632 which contains many suggestions on ways to beef up security tools to combat griefing.

And thus begins SL users 'profile profiling'

It's scary but true. The TWO times I have been in SL I witnessed are was the subject of abuse.

I quickly learned to avoid the (Mature) areas, even though it seems SL is predominately a virtual sex site. Am I wrong?

I am an artist in RL and thought it would be fun to have a SL gallery, etc... but am now totally turned off.

WHile my land is mature We run Vampire RP there.. Sex and such is nowhere openly allowed. I have been increasing bannings lately. A lot people seem to just create an account and then start making trouble...
Today I have used my estate bans 5 times, 28 times within 2 weeks. Its getting to sad new records. I have never banned as much as in the last 4 weeks.
It goes from insulting to weapons that push in no push areas. From unmature behaviour to sexual harassment.
Common sense and courtesy seem to be getting lost.
WHile I dont mind sex as much I just chose to not take part, sexual harassment and griefing I mind a lot.
WHere are those values like kindness and friendlyness.. lately there is at least one major annoyance per day and Sim...

I live on mature land and have my shop on mature land. That's because (a) mature land is worth more, and (b) I don't have to be paranoid about whether a visitor might use bad words or run around naked. (Not that they do; I just don't want to be responsible for it.)

I don't think you can really tell much about places based on whether they are on M or PG land.

coco

Dearly Darling,

You can always have a show at my home. Many sales are done throught private showings RL too. As for the "mature" clap trap... I live in Green an old PG sim...I'd never trade my land for any price.


Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

it's just a coincidence abuse the two times you were on...

and 95% of locations are labeled "mature" ... mature just means general, regular....
the PG sims mean polotically correct, censored, and conservative

I'm quite new myself, and, for the first week, it seemed like this to me too (that SL is just a huge strip mall of porn shops). I may not win any friends by saying this, but I think that what you are seeing is the unimaginative veneer that appeals to...well...the unimaginative. Let's call them "the masses." After I met a few people, I discovered that there is a whole world of fabulously creative and interesting people. Yeah, I suppose everybody stops by the porn shops at least once to look at the naughty bits, but that's not the whole story. Today, I went sailing, visted an art gallery, caught a live concert and finished off the evening dancing with a new friend, at a perfectly respectable nightclub that didn't have strippers

EDIT: Just realized I should probably qualify what I just said. There are certainly some people who are quite imaginative about their sex role play on here. I don't happen to be one of them but I wasn't equating the elaborate cultures which exist on SL with pedestrian porn shops.

You can set up a Gallery in the pg areas, but dont think because the area is pg that you wont run into the same stuff. i live on a mature sim as well and our area is cool, we do get the occaisonal dufi, but we dont let it discourage us. you will run into a lot of jerks and you will meet a lot of excellent people as well. just like in rl, except there's no eject button in rl, id kill for an eject button rl

oh and btw, welcome to SL .

third edits the charm
on the profiling thing: some of thats good but i agree with DD and Joseph, some people have those titles because they are on or a part of RP sims. not all overlords and sith lords etc are griefers. my theory is this: if You continue to have issues with a certain group, see if You can find the Leader or Capt or group owner, sometimes appealing to them works. many times they dont know that there are members of thier groups acting like that.