Using orbit-devices against griefers

From this thread you would think the only people in the game were griefers and landowners on their own land, and the landowners visitors on that land. How many people on at any given time actually fall into these categories? I suspect a smallish minority.

So if you are not on your own land, and the owner or his empowered agent is not available, why should you be penalized by the presence of a griefer? And why should people who don't own land or aren't on their land not be able to defend themselves like the landowner can? Hardly seems fair to me - or wise.

Seems to me people should be able to deal with genuine griefers (it's usually pretty easy to tell which are griefers and which are just noobs or foolish).

Filing an AR is something everyone should do of course, but it's only a partial solution: Griefers use new alts like Kleenex, and it evidently takes weeks and many ARs to have any real effect.

Teleporting out is an option of course, or logging. So is quitting SL altogether. They are not always good options. And again, it is the innocent SL resident minding his own business who is inconvenienced; and the griefer still gets whatever satisfaction he gets from inconveniencing them.

Summoning help is good, if you can, and if it comes in a reasonably timely way. Not always an available option either.

It's very easy for a landowner with his freeze-eject-ban powers to tell everyone else to stand around and just be masochistic, but I don't notice any such landowners here saying they stand around and just file an AR, or teleport off their own land and leave it to the griefers. No, I notice they do something about it themselves, then file an AR.

And that is something anybody else should be able to do when they are persecuted in game: Deal with it. And THEN file an AR. The two actions are not mutually exclusive, you know. And that anybody else almost certainly includes the large majority of people in the game at any given time.

Yes well it seems some land owners like ejecting & banning a lot, and would just ban half a dozen people rather than get interested, including banning people of course who thought they were doing the right thing by defending the landowners land for him.
Easy way I suppose is when griefer arrives everyone just stop buying, leave the owners store, and just goto the next shop on your search list and buy stuff there, it may even have staff present who can help you as well as keep griefers at bay. AR's don't work and it's not your land so why bother, let the owner worry about the griefers ruining his sales.
And if they ban you, remember to ban them from your land too

It's not just land that gets griefed, it's avatars. People minding their own business who get attacked by griefers, often without warning, need to be able to defend THEMSELVES, not just some storeowner's property. Most of this "advice" wanting people to be passive just has the perverse effect of making SL more of a safe and trouble-free playground for griefers. We need better methods of making it an unsafe, unpleasant and troublesome briar patch for griefers.

Ideas for doing that would be welcome.

BTW, griefing land is a separate problem. Invisible prims, hidden prims that use up prim allowances, unwanted particle displays, etc. grief landowners whether they are present or not. But at least landowners have tools for taking care of that themselves.

A friend of mine was in a situation lke this, there's only so much griefing, caging and noobie 'lag guns' you can put up with.. he zapped the guy and is now banned!

Maybe if the griefer's AR may have been investigated, some logs checked or somthing they would have seen his 10 min non stop verbal and nub weapon attack prior to my friends single attack back.

Self defence is legit in RL, why not in SL?

Because SL isn't RL.... and self defence in RL is also not without limits or borders.

Morwen.

Self-defence should be MORE legitimate in SL than RL. In RL you can do someone permanent injury in real or supposed self-defence. In SL this is not the case. No-one is harmed by being caged for a few minutes.

I disagree. "Self defense" is often misused... in SL, but sadly also in RL.

Morwen.

One way Second Life is different from Real Life is that Second Life is essentially lawless. There are rules, but they are arbitrarily enforced.

So when you have a lawless land, people are going to start taking the law into their own hands. Second Life seems to resemble the Wild Wild West right now.

If the Abuse Report system were effective, then I think far less people would be worrying about what self-defense measures they could take againsts griefers.

from my observation lately the number of abusive sim admins have increased a lot. I have been a security officer and sim owner for about 2 years now, and lived by the TOS as my pillow. I made sure never to break it, but to make sure the griefers got what was coming to them. I've done my job quite well. However, recently i lost my SL partner due to a breakup of course.. So i partner with someone else I've cared about for a long time. My neighboring sim owner decided to estate ban me because i did that.

His problem wasn't with the breakup but that he hated the guy i partnered. What the hell ya know? What do i have to do with this? The sim owner was my friend for a long time, but hes shown where his loyalties lay... he muted me, defriended me, kicked me from his admin group, and banned me... He didn't even bother to talk to me. He responded to my emails though.. But was completely irrational and incapable of reasoning with. He was dead set that i was a bad person because i partnered with one of his enemies.

Also another unrelated problem... There was a griefer i once banned a long time ago, who through time has reformed their selves to a state where hey became a estate manager of a popular mass of sims. About a month after i banned this person, i unbanned them when i realized they changed. However, this mass of sims i chose never to go to because i once worked there and the sim owner made me feel unwelcome. Recently this mass of sims was sold to a nicer more understanding person.

The griefer who reformed himself is now one of his Estate managers and has banned me from all of his sims. My guess is he wanted revenge. Well he got it. I talked with the new sim owner and was able to get myself unbanned because he knows me personally and that i would never do anything offensive. So i IMed the reformed individual to try and talk 1 on 1 with them about this problem. I got no responce. So they probably muted me.

The weird thing is, the new sim owner knows all about this situation yet he still lets this guy be a Estate Manager of his sims. I don't quite understand why he would want to have a estate manager who will ban people over personal reasons like that... There must be something hes not telling me. However i think kindly over this new sim owner, and think they are capable of making good decisions. I just hope to get to the bottom of this.

So, "self-defense" is alleged to be often abused. From what I can see in this thread and others, it appears the powers of landowners get abused more...so, by Morwen's logic above I suppose we would have to eliminate landowner powers as well, since they are apparently even more "often abused." You know what they call people who abuse powers, whether they are on their land or not? Griefers.

No, I don't want to eliminate landowner rights; I just want people enabled to defend themselves from griefers when going about their business not bothering anybody. That dpesn't mean getting into shooting matches with griefers who might only find that fun. It means finding either ways to make the griefing experience an unpleasant one the griefer would rather avoid, or otherwise inducing the griefer to knock it off: The poster who pointed a griefer on his land to a combat sim and got rid of him that way turned a lose-lose situation into a win-win situation, and tactics like that might be worth trying too.

Anybody have useful suggestions for when landowner powers are not available to the victim(s), or war stories of successful self-defense?

As long as there are unverified accounts there are going to be a surplus of griefers in SL, IMO. A big step would be getting rid of unverified accounts, but here I'm asking about what individual residents can do that might actually work.

So basically you call me a griefer because I don't let people play with "weapons" as little children around on my land? And that I use my land owner rights on those who do after being warned?

You want fight griefers? AR them. Just today I got an reply back an AR I sent in.... of course no further information was given on how the AR was handled... but one look on the police blog told me enough. The AR was handled in a good way.... as it was not a very big offense a 3 day suspend was on place.

Morwen.

There's only one time I ever used an orbit on a griefer; before the disable push was installed, a guy with a push machinegun came to a hub and started shooting at me because of the group I was in. I calmly activated my non phys shield and sat rendering his attack useless but his response was to open fire on about 30 poor noobs, scattering them simwide. I was planning on sitting his attack out and AR'ing but when he started killing the first experience of noobs in SL despite being told multiple times to stop, I orbitted him and that was the end of it. Calm restored.

Now I don't advocate this course of action all the time. But I've filed so many ARs and I must say I'm very disappointed with the rate of response and action. I keep a check on the people I AR, and lots of them are still around despite very good reasons for them to be banned. In my experience AR does not work.

I also don't buy the argument that you should tp away and don't let them win by giving them attention - if you stop what you are doing and are driven away by them, if your enjoyment and freedom is curtailed by them, you have lost and they have won.

However, I will say I've been pleasantly surprised by the response by Liaisons. I tend now to just sit and ask for help from them and one will turn up and deal with the miscreant. Much better than time consuming ARs AND the perpetrator is caught red-handed. I tend therefore to use this rather than to orbit back now.

The invisible wall trick sounds fun, but will work only against a noob griefer. Another I like is using a targetted sphere which goes to the griefer and encloses them but doesn't cage them. You can see in but they can't see out, which means if they only have a mouselook-aimed gun, they can no long aim lol. Of course it won't work against superweapon-orbitters etc.

Another tactic that sometimes works is I give them a LM to Rausch....saying you can shoot anyone you like there. The reflex by a lot of noob griefers is to click the teleport button and off they go....so they're gone. Also they don't understand the difference between Rausch and other places and if they shoot someone there, they will be SO pwned by the experts in combat who can shoot you from hundreds of metres away lol.

So while I don't advocate orbitting (despite my first story) I would say sitting and AR'ing does almost nothing to solve the problem. There are other more effective ways which are also legal.

Sorry, the bulk of the Abuse reports sent in by normal, every day people are never acted on by Linden Lab. Got another option? No? Did not think so.

Strange that all AR's I send in where handled in a proper way with reporting back to me. I must be a very lucky and special person then....

Write you AR's detailed, without flaming, serious and add all the information you can.

On a "He, there is a griefer there and there" (or something alike that) I wouldn't react either.

And even then... all use of weapons on my land will be handled equal... one warning and ban if not listening.

Morwen.

I think the Lindens favor you. I've written very detailed, polite, grammatically correct AR's with chat logs (when applicable) and pleases and thank yous and times and dates and screenshots that have never received a peep back. Or maybe it's the subject matter that fails to get their attention. After all, who really cares about naked porn pic rotating ads or parcel pictures that involve very young looking girls in a PG sim?

Since your AR's get better attention than 95% of the ones reported by the rest of us, would you mind giving us an example of one? I'm really curious what it takes to jolt a response out of these folks.

Well, I do care about those... as for misbehaving people in the welcome areas... and so on and on.

As said, I must then been lucky then. Your AR's sound as mine... but mine may hold grammatically errors, after all is English not my main language.

Still I think filling AR's is the best way to deal with griefers.

Morwen.

Morwen would make the perfect anti-griefer vigilante! Here's the idea:

Are you being hassled by an annoying griefer who is making like miserable for you? Send for Morwen! SHE will file an AR on the pest, and LL will take action because the AR comes from Morwen! (Whereas it would be ignored if you filed it yourself.)

Perfect, problem solved. * Takes a bow *

YEEEHAW, ya got that right, pardner!

Yeah well, I guess it may have not been the smartest thing to do from the point of maybe putting your own head on the block, but man, I would have orbited his azz - sorry guys but all thus "turn the other cheek" stuff caves my head in some times. Ever wonder why idiots like griefers get away with so much?

Where were you when I was surrounded by about 10 or 12 griefers all pushing me at once, one with an obnoxious banana phone dressed as a zebra and all of them shouting french at me??!!! What I would've paid for a lil' crash and burn on their assess...

Meggy

maybe because so called "none griefers" lower themselves to the griefers ways?

More likely LL just don't care...................