User:Fr43k Paine/Dealing With Griefers

Intro

To hear all of the talk regarding the problem of "Griefing" in Second Life, one could be excused for thinking our world is overrun with juvenile delinquents with nothing better to do with their time than spoil other people's fun. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth!

In my experience, Second Life is full of wonderful, creative, intelligent, talented people who contribute positively to the content & culture, the economy & ergonomics, the diversity & direction of our world -- but if you do happen to come across one of the sad few whose purpose is to diminish your enjoyment of Second Life, it helps to know how best to deal with the situation and what tools and services Second Life has in place to enable you to do so. This tutorial presents some tips and tricks to help you out in this regard. Here they are:

Basic knowledge

Do not trust "SL Police" groups, it`s a scam, never pay those griefers if they tell you they will protect you if you pay them, #1 rule: Stay Calm, mute and report them. Resist under all circumstances to make any damage on the griefers avatar! File an Abuse Report (AR), then go on exploring or, if needed, log off for a bit to calm down. Never give out your SL password or any other personal informations that is either related with your RL (person) or your SL account (like debitcard-, creditcard number, adress, phone...), that could cost you serious money. You are responsible for the security of your account, always remember that. No LL employee will ever ask you for such informations on IM, mail or phone. If you need some help, ask trusted residents first (SL Mentors, NCI helpers/Officers...), if that won`t help, use LL support at https://secure-web9.secondlife.com/community/support.php

Note: Why should I trust NCI helpers/officers or SecondLife Mentors?
Groups such as the NCI or SL Mentors are SL Volunteers. All NCI Helpers and especially Officers are trusted NCI members. Same applies for the SL Mentors who stay in contact with some of the Lindens. They wouldn`t do the job if they were after money. But still remember: Do not trust anyone with your SL password or any other personal informations. Even if it`s Mentor asking for your SL password, he/she is up to no good. Always report people who try to scam/cheat/grief you.

Stay calm

Why stay calm? It spoils their fun, because they're looking for a reaction, so they get bored if you just stay calm. So, don't give them the attention they want. If they get bored it might spoil their fun for the future. Even caging a griefer is nothing else than griefing (a griefer) and they can use that to report you! So, take a deep breath and stay calm!

On muting

Sound sources can also be muted. If something in the area is making an annoying sound, mute its owner. That will prevent you from hearing any sound an object of thiers makes. If the source isn't obvious, click View -> Beacons -> Sound Sources to show all nearby sound sources, then move your cam near each one until you find the one making the annoying sound (the one the sound is loudest near), then rightclick it to see who the owner is, click Profile to get thier profile, then click Mute. No more annoying sound. Unfortunately, theres currently a bug in the SL client that causes mute lists to be emptied on each relog. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

If you mute a resident, they are muted in Open chat, IMs, Voice and Group IMs. No items can be transfered.

Beacons

Use Beacons to find scripted sources: "View -> Beacons -> ... " You will see some different options there, you can chose from. If you "x" them, they will appear on your screen as a beacon, if you activate beacons by pressing CTRL-N. Also you have to have "Render Beacons" and "Render Highlights"enabled, else they won`t be displayed on your screen. Check "Sound Sources", "Particles Sources" there, so they will be displayed as beacon. Red outlines mark a scripted object. Purple outlines mark an active particle source and yellow marks an active sound source.

Note: If a source is not active, outlines are red to highlight at least that there`s a scripted object. If the source becomes active, outlines will change their color.

Use the beacons to locate scripted sources and for sounds, use the volume as a track too. If it gets louder, you`re coming closer. Finally r-click the sound spammer and mute it directly. Land owners can r-click it and delete/return it, or use the land options to return yunk to their owners. Do not forget to file an Abuse Report first (if needed).

On sitting

Don't sit on the ground. Ground sit is weakly linked. A decent push will break it and you can still be orbited. Sit on a non-physical prim.

Particles

You can shut off particle rendering by hitting CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-=. You simply won't see particles until you hit it again. When its in effect you'll see (in a very small font :P) "Hiding Particles" in the lower right of your client.

Getting rid of followers

Followers are scripted objects that will follow you around doing one or more annoying and abusive things. Playing sounds, burying you in particles, etc. You have a few choices for getting rid of them:

Use a physics disruptor on them. This is basically a pushgun that targets objects nearby. This is a *BAD IDEA* unless you are completely certain there are no innocent physical objects nearby. You may be considered a griefer yourself if you destroy someones physics project. Also, this will only work if the follower is a physical object.
Scrape them off on the edge of a sim. If you're in a sim bordering on nothing (islands, or the edges of the mainland), walk to the edge of the sim and try and walk out into the void beyond. You'll appear to be bouncing against a rubber wall. The idea is to try and get the follower to follow you off the edge of the world. You'll bounce back, but the follower will be destroyed.
Outrun it. To follow you, the follower must keep you in sensor range. 96 meters. A flight booster helps a lot with this. Fly slowly up to 300m or so, allowing the follower to follow you up, then fly back down at maximum speed. Hopefully you'll outrun its ability to track you.
If all else fails, lead it up to 300m or so, then teleport down. It cannot follow you through a teleport.

Got caged?

Sit on the cage if possible or sit out. If the area has "build" on, you can rez a prim outside ofthe cage and sit on it. If that won`t work, teleport out. Do not forget to file an AR first (r-click the cage, select "More - More - Report Abuse" from the pie-shaped menu) and include a screenshot.

Getting trashed (deformed) and how to fix it

A trasher is a prim thats scripted so that touching it will force your av to play a series of animations designed to confuse SL as to the position and structure of your body. The result is, you look like you've been run through a wringer and stretched on a rack. If this happens to you, don't panic, it isn't permanent. Just clear your cache and relog and you'll be back to normal. You can also use the tool that was inside the class supplies (Stop all animations (unDeform mod)).

Spoofing

"I didn't say that!"
Spoofing is when a griefer gives a prim your name, and has it say things. It will appear as though you said whatever it was. The trick is to watch the *color* of the text. If you look in Preferences -> Chat, you'll see the colors assigned to different sorts of messages. Only text in the "Users" color came from an actual person. Anything else is *not* someone talking. Unfortunately a lot of people will just look at the name and ignore the color, which is why spoofers continue to work for griefers.

Texture Spam

"Someone is giving me lots and lots of textures!"
Thats a texture spammer. They're fairly harmless now. Until the last update, there was no limit on how fast you could be given textures, and a texture spammer would bury you alive in spam, and likely crash your client. And there was no way to tell who did it. Now though, theres a reasonable limit on the speed with which you can be given textures. Also, look under Preferences -> Pop-Up, and *uncheck* "Automatically accept", and the "Automatically view after accepting" (just in case), that will prevent them from automatically opening, and burying your client window in garbage. If someone is still trying to use a spammer on you, click Mute in the dialog that pops up, then abuse report them for attempting to spam you.

Getting blitzed

A blitzer is an unstable physics prim. Basically its a prim rotating at a ridiculous speed. When it hits you, it transfers a *LOT* of kinetic energy to you. This will often knock you so hard that you'll end up getting bounced so high that your altitude will roll over into negative numbers. Don't bother waiting to fall, you won't. Relog. The bad part is, theres a *small* chance that scripted attachments you're wearing at the time will crash. If this happens, the best you can do is reset the ones you have perms for (edit the object, then click Tools -> Reset Scripts in Selection). For things you don't have perms for, and have no backup copy of, try talking to the creator of the object, a number of people are fairly sympathetic about things like that, and may replace the object for free. They aren't obligated to, however.

Chat Spies

People make much more of a big deal about these than they warrant. Especially the people selling scanners to detect them. I've been on SL since Feburay 25th, 2005 under my original account, and I've had a chat spy used on me 3 times. If what you're saying is really *that* sensitive, use IMs. IMs cannot be monitored by a script.

Going Home

Often there will be a nearby push-restricted area. You can TP there if you know where it is, and you're safe from pushes (though not from a blitz attack).

Homeland Security

Please visit: http://www.rainbowdragon.ca/rainbowcreations/grief5.shtml to review this chapter.

Abuse Report

You can find the Abuse Report under "Help -> Report Abuse...".
But it`s recommended to r-click on object, or resident and got to more -> more -> Report Abuse, so SL will catch the persons name or if its is an object the owners name and location.
Select the a category and chose a good headline for the report. "Someone was mean" would just suck and maybe even ignored! So chose a good title such as "....caged me and other residents" or "... caged and harassed people".

Remember the 0 privacy rule in SL so always fill out the AR as completely as you can, including date, time, location (sim name and coordinates if possible) and short summary what happend. If there are chat quotes, include them as well and do not forget to check the "Include Screenshot" option. For an "advanced" AR as I would call it I recommend to activate the "Show interface in snapshot" under File -> Take snapshot". If you got orbited or caged pull down the Help -> "Bump, Pushes and Hits" box, then file an AR. Because you have enabled the "show Interface in snapshot" option, the LL investigation team is able to see the info as well on the screenshot you`ll send them with the AR. It`s a good and additional proof you got hit by ... if you report them. Especially if you got caged its useful to pull the box down and evwen to r-click on the cage/edit and display the creator and owner under the genrals tab in the edit mode. You won`t receive any other info what has happened to yourgriefer afterwards. You`ll only recieve a mail from the investigation team if your report has been received and they are working on it.

NEVER misuse the AR to take revenge as in "fake a report". Remember LL logs everything and it is not possible to fake a chat quote. or screenshot on the AR. LL has its own server logs and they are always able to jump back to a/the point of a convo/incident you have reported. I think it`s clear that LL will suspend people for misusing the AR and try to fool them.
However, it`s also an advatage for you because if nobody can fake a report it is not possible to make you responsible for something that you haven`t done.

It won`t guarantee you`ll never be griefed in SL, but it will help you to deal with the vast majority of griefers and keep you out of trouble as good as possible. Take care :)

Contributors

Trent Platthy - Original Concept
Fr43k Paine - Extensive mod
Zai Lynch - Wikification