The Abuse Report, Reborn!

Over this last weekend, my team and I had a chance to put the new AR system to the test. We were apprehensive at first - after all, with no access to Help Request anymore, how on Earth were we going to call a Linden in case something really bad was happening?

We went out on three trouble calls. In these cases, somebody was at the site shooting and caging, crashing the sim as part of his defense strategy against other people (who were also shooting and caging) or disrupting some kind of event.

So, we did as we'd been told. We filed abuse reports, nothing else. We did this as an experiment and carefully observed the results to see how well the new system worked. What we were not prepared for was how well the new system would work.

In each case, the scripted prim litter or other artifacts being used during the griefing vanished in under two minutes, as if swept away by an unseen hand.

Some of us were a little slow on the draw filing our abuse reports - and were perplexed when the person we were trying to report was failing to show up in search. As it turned out, their accounts were suspended that fast. In each case, we were there barely three minutes, and in every single case, the griefer accounts were gone from search. Just GONE.

Not until after the three incidents did one of us speak with a Linden. Lucy Linden explained that the new system worked by reading the incoming abuse reports, detecting the pattern, and raising an alarm to which the in-world support team to respond. We had backup in the form of the Lindens, who came to the rescue each time.

We asked if the system could be gamed somehow, and Lucy explained that there are safeguards in place preventing that. You can't just go get a gang of people, file a bunch of AR's against somebody you don't happen to like and get their account deleted. The Lindens see the database evidence - and that cannot be falsified, so the system cannot be used as a weapon.

Just as importantly, she explained the use of the email address 'inworldsupport@secondlife.com'. If you think your sim is likely to crash, you can use this to notify the inworld support team. You'd think it would be slow, but it isn't. They process this mail queue at a very high rate of speed, and response is astoundingly better than Help Request ever was. Again, you don't get to talk to a Linden about the problem directly, but surprisingly, this isn't really necessary unless you really have a special situation (in which case a Linden will probably contact you.

In short, the new abuse reporting system is nothing short of a miracle compared to what we've been putting up with for the last year since I've been in SL, and Lucy Linden was a tremendous help in explaining to me and my team how it works for us in world.

Thanks to Linden Lab and the Linden Lab In-World Support Team, and in particular to Lucy Linden, who taught us all how it works.

-- Kalel Venkman

Confirmed. Just today I filed an AR because of a region being unusable because of massive camping ... not even 60 minutes later the investigation was in progress! The case is not resolved yet, but this understandably takes time.

The system really seems to be working.

So, apart from all the griping ... let's give the Lindens a hand where this is due!

That's interesting...there were several threads on here complaining about hours long griefer attacks over the weekend. I get the impression that the griefer accounts were removed, but nothing was done about the scripts still running on the parcels in question. Since people couldn't fill in a name on the abuse report form after the account was removed, they couldn't get any further help from the Lindens. That's a bit of a problem.

With all the bitching and moaning going on, its good to see progress occuring out there.

Three last things on the police blotter are from April 26th, April 28th, and April 30th.

What team do you mean? Is this some kind of 'police' group? Just curious.

That's what the [email]inworldsupport@secondlife.com[/email] email address is for. To report sim problems, use that. You'll get results.

I wasn't the one with the problem, I was just mentioning what I'd seen on the forum.

Oh - I didn't post with the intention of plugging my group, but it's the Justice League Unlimited. We're a sort of civilians' aid group, and despite the costumes, we're not a roleplay group - we just use them to make ourselves more easily identifiable without projecting a threatening persona.

We do go out on trouble alerts caused by griefers, but we're meticulous about following the Terms of Service, not sticking our noses into other people's business, and staying far away from places we haven't been specifically asked to go. We don't use weapons of any sort in our work. Neither do we presume any authority over anyone else. We're citizens like everyone else. The idea is to help people, not to descend to the griefers' level.

We also help new arrivals, helping them find resources for learning, interesting places to go in SL, and sometimes helping them with technical problems in building, scripting, costuming, and other aspects of Second Life.

I always hesitate to speak about our group in general, for two reasons: first, because it's so easy to perceive any volunteer peacekeeping group as Yet Another Pretend Police Department - a very negative connotation, since almost without exception, all of these are griefers themselves. We're just out there doing our best to make SL a happier place to be. You don't make that happen by shooting up the place. And second, we're not glory seekers, that's really not the point of the organization. We don't even accept donations.

We're just here to help. That's all we want out of it.

- Kalel

Yes, I noticed that too - the police blotter seems to be a random sampling, not necessarily a complete listing. Also, when people are permabanned, the police blotter doesn't show these events at all.

Something else I would like see changed. You get no notice of what has been done about your AR, and if it isn't on the blotter, might as well have been a big black hole.

I agree with your concern - in our case, though, the results were immediate. The sound spam cubes and other artifacts were deleted while we were still trying to AR the darned things. We didn't even get to finish! So we got pretty immediate feedback, then and there, that we were heard. Individual people filing AR's may get different results, as the new system depends on getting a number of AR's in a short period of time in order to trigger a reaction. This is great for sim-crashing griefer attacks which is mostly what we deal with, but not so great for the occasional misplaced tree or single caging event.

There are other various support email addresses for various other types of issues, though - if you inspect Lucy Lindens profile and picks, she outlines a lot of them and what each one is used for.

Can't find anything dishonorable in any of that. I assume the costumes are of the police officer variety - I'd reconsider that, based on your own reasoning for using them. You'd be more distinguishable if you came up with something less police officer looking and more "I'm here to help".. Many groups travel around the grid in uniform and do nothing but grief folks

Maybe one of the many clothing designers who frequent the forums here could help you with something a bit more customized to your mission?

I'm making some assumptions here, correct me if they're wrong.

I was imagining more along the line of superhero costumes. I've got a Venom outfit I like to wear around. Need any help?

Hmmmm..........maybe I experienced help from Linden Labs last night too I was at my house trying to make my first flexy prim skirt and gradually began noticing rotating box prims just outside my property lines on Linden Land. When I got my skirt far enough to take back into inventory and rename I used my camera to look at them closely. There were about a dozen surrounding my property...........since I have "no object entry" on my land I figured that's why they were all around but not on my land. I flew to check to see if others were out there too........and saw maybe 3 dozen more close but not really near me. All these prims were on Linden Land (I guess everyone around me has no object entry on their land). Went back home and decided to AR the boxes. But I could get no name for the creator or the owner so an AR is futile. I went to Linden Village just in case a Linden might be hanging around..........nope. But I was looking for "office hours" and found a list of the Lindens who do have office hours there. I recognized one Linden in particular because he responded in a forum Sunday evening........that Linden was Heretic. I decided a blind IM might work so I did it with brief decreption and the inabilty to AR since I could not get a name of the griefer.

I went back home to try finding out who was responsible one more time. I thought of fellow poster here in the forums (he'll know who he is) and IM'd him to see if he had any ideas about how to find out who put those boxes there. My friend could not come immediately but offered to come in a few minutes after he took care of some things. While I was waiting for my friend to IM me for a TP I got an IM from Heretic apologizing for not responding sooner (it was about 20 or 30 mins after I IM'd him) and asked if I was still having problems. And before I could type the single word "yes" the boxes vanished!! I wonder if Herectic did it.........or advised the grid people to check and they took care of it. Whatever the reason the attack ceased instantly. I was thinking it was a coincidence....but after reading the thread here I think maybe not.

So, Heretic, if you did help..........thank you. And to my friend who I love to bang heads with here in the forums.......thank you for offering to come help too.

I may be a bitch about LL and customer service and performance issues.....I complain insessantly. But when they deserve it.......I'm very willing to pat them on the back too.

Oh wow, I'm so happy to hear this! This is great. Could there be brighter days ahead?

*applauds* I too am really glad to hear this! It's wonderful that they are getting the abuse end handled very quickly now, especially for griefing. WTG First-Response Lindens!

Sounds like it's working...

...my only concern from the original poster's message is that he quotes Lucy Linden several times. In my experience with her, not only has she been an insanely rude and unhelpful person--but she's also been completely unable to answer questions clearly or accurately, revealing a significant gap of any real knowledge.

In other words...I wouldn't take anything Lucy Linden says to be actually true.

/me is soooo excited to read this! Will post later when less excited and writing complete sentences.

At first I thought this was a step back with Help Request being gone, but now this has turned into a huge step forward for the entire grid. I thank the entire abuse team and their efforts as well as every resident out there who files ARs against those who deserver them. Were all in this together lets make the grid the best it can be :3

Someone have a link to the directions on how to use this new system and those e-mail addresses we are to use?

Support Update can be found on the Official Linden Blog:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/25/support-update/

Think super hero costumes Zaphod, most everyone in the league is a super hero of their choosing (There are a few duplicates). So there's not really any group wide uniform, but it's still pretty obvious everyone is together.

The AR and Email system proved itself again tonight when there was a string of sim crashes being caused by a select few running amok. It was quickly stopped obviously...

It's great to see it's working for so many so fast... and we are always working to make it better.

Doubtful, A friend of mine was accused of being underaged while being 18+. Her account is gone. So not completely failsafe I think.

Mandy C