Event moderation

Work-in-progress until proven otherwise...

If you own or manage an Estate (which consists of one or more Regions), several powerful tools help you prevent griefing (malicious behavior which is against our Community Standards) during an event. These tools can also be useful for hosting private events, where you want to limit attendance and know who's attending.

First, go to World menu > Region/Estate to open the Region/Estate controls. These are the primary tools you use to restrict who can come to your event. Here are several situations you may run into, and what to do in each.

If you own an Estate, or even if you don't, there are parcel tools in About Land described below, which can help you control the experience at a more finely-tuned level.

What are some general tips on dealing with griefers?

See "Guide to Filing an Abuse Report" for self-governance best practices.

What's key to understand is that the following About Land settings are set per-parcel, not across an entire Region or Estate. If you have several parcels in a Region, you'll need to move your avatar to each one and set them accordingly.

Set options

These settings are a good starting point.

Go to World > About Land.
Click Options tab. This contains fine controls to specify what can occur on your land. Generally, unless you specifically know you want it, these should be OFF:
- Edit Terrain - You almost never want this on. It means any stranger can come by and terraform your land, ruining the way it looks and possibly burying or causing objects to be returned.
- Create Objects for All Residents - This can usually be turned off for exhibition areas and wherever it's unnecessary for visitors to create and edit their own objects. You should be well-prepared, since lots of griefing involves objects designed to annoy others, such as a spinning cube that plays screaming sounds while spewing particles that cloud your sight. (Like a smoke bomb.)
- Object Entry for All Residents - By extension, this means someone can't slide an object over from a parcel where creating objects is allowed. Enabling this can also block stray bullet fire if a griefer is persistent about causing a long-range nuisance.
- Run Scripts for All Residents - Also by extension, scripted objects can be used for griefing, whether it's emitting particle spam or self-replicating (an object makes multiple copies of itself, which in turn make more copies, quickly clogging an area).
  - Turning this off also disables benign scripts like animation overriders, and doesn't fully disable scripts: if you fly 50 m above terrain, scripts will reactivate, and stay active when you fly down. It functions this way to prevent breaking content like passing vehicles, which are rare at at events.
And unless you're otherwise certain, these should be ON:
- Safe (no damage) - Should always be used on land you don't want combat on.
- No Pushing - Enabling this prevents the effects of push scripts — such as in guns and other weapons — from being used. A good thing to leave on during events.

If the group the land is set to allows anyone to join, you may want to also disable Create Objects, Object Entry, and Run Scripts for Group too. (Or disallow people from joining the group to begin with — they'll need to be invited.) While it's rarer, on occasion, a griefer will join a group to cause its members mayhem. Be cautioned disabling group scripts may disable needed gadgets such as a presentation screeen; you should always weigh your needs beforehand and test to make sure everything works smoothly well in advance of the event.

Set parcel autoreturn time

If you're sure you want people to be able to create objects on your land but don't want them cluttering, change each appropriate parcel's autoreturn time.

"0" means objects can stay indefinitely, which is problematic for not just deliberate troublemakers, but incidental litter cluttering up your space. For instance, someone might rez a bunch of junk from their inventory and leave it blocking a stage before a presentation, confusing the audience.

Again, go to World > About Land.
Click Objects tab. You can use the Show and Refresh List buttons to make sure all desired objects are set to group or owned by the landowner. Otherwise, they'll be returned, disappearing off the land in the blink of an eye.
Click in the Autoreturn other residents' objects field, enter a number, and press Enter. A reasonable period is 5 minutes, but if you have prior experience, use what works best.

While it's not possible to foresee everything that might happen during an event, doing the above greatly reduces the chances of griefing spoiling your event.

Also, there's an old Second Life joke which doubles as a useful tip: "SIT DOWN!" In other words, to prevent movement, right-click and sit on an object. (Specifically, a non-physical object like most chairs and seats are.) A sitting avatar will be tethered to their "sit target", and even if someone tries to launch the virtual equivalent of a nuclear bomb at you, you'll remain seated.

It's additionally handy to use beacons to track down problematic objects, as this video tutorial shows:

Someone is causing trouble. I want to get rid of them!

If time isn't pressing, you may want to warn them to behave. If they don't comply, you can eject them entirely:

Go to World > Region/Estate.
Click Region tab.
Click the Teleport Home One User button.
Type that person's name. If you have problems with the exact spelling (griefers sometimes use bizarre-looking names), click the Near Me tab to show people.
Click that name, then click Select. That person will be ejected.

To prevent that person from returning:

Again in the Region/Estate controls, click Estate tab.
Next to Banned residents, click Add.
Add that person's name.

Now, they won't be able to teleport into your Region or any Regions in that Estate, which is useful because Estates are usually contiguous and some griefers like to hover near a border and taunt.

If the griefer sends you rude instant messages or tries to harass you in other ways from afar, you can also mute them:

Go to World menu > Mute List.
Click Mute Resident button.
Enter their name again, and click Select.

Now, you won't hear from them, and other means of annoying you like sending junk to your inventory will be blocked. You may also wish to file an abuse report.

How do I moderate chat?

If your event is using open (public) text and/or voice chat and someone is being a nuisance (e.g., heckling the speaker), you can mute them: simply right-click their avatar and select Mute from the pie menu. However, this will only mute them to you — others will still see their text or hear their voice.

A more effective way is to remove the person from the Estate as described above.

If your event is using private text and/or voice chat, you can use the Communicate window's moderation tools.

I want to allow only specific people and/or group(s) into my land

You can do this on a broad, Estate-wide level, per-land parcel, or per-account status.

Estate-wide

Go to World > Region/Estate.
Click Estate tab.

How to "whitelist" access for specific people on your Estate:

Next to Allowed residents, click Add.
For Allowed residents, enter the person's name and click Find.
Click their name to highlight it and click Select.

Here's how you allow group(s) with similar steps:

Next to Allowed groups, click Add.
Click the group's name to highlight it and click OK.

In both of these cases, allowed person or group appears in the list.

When the time is right, ask an allowed person or person in an allowed group to try teleporting to a Region within your Estate. They should be able to enter. If something is amiss, like they find themselves bouncing high in the sky, make sure they aren't banned on a parcel. (This sounds odd, but happens on occasion, since parcel-level and Estate-level controls are different.)

Go to World > About Land.
Click the Access tab.
If their name is in the Banned Residents list, click it.
Click Remove so they can enter as expected.

Depending on the maturity rating of your Region, this person may also need to opt-in to access Mature or Adult-rated content: a notification will pop up with more info if this is the case.

Per-parcel

Each parcel of land in Second Life has unique, independent settings.

Travel your avatar to the desired parcel you want to allow access to. You must be standing or flying over it so its name appears in the menu bar.
Go to World > About Land.
If it isn't already selected, click General tab.
Confirm the group next to "Group:" is the group you want to restrict access to.
Click Access tab.
Uncheck Allow Public Access.
If it's not checked already, check Allow Group Access. The group shown here is always the same one in the General tab. Do not change this group in the General tab unless you're sure what you're doing, as it could result in irreversible land management problems.

Per-account status

While a generalization, griefers are more likely to not have provided payment info or other personal details to Linden Lab. Griefing accounts tend to be one-shots signed up for cheap thrills until they're banned, often before they're even a day old. At your discretion, you can restrict access to accounts that've provided Linden Lab with such info. This lets a subset of the general public attend your event: only people who have given payment info or been age-verified.

On the Estate-level:

Go to World > Region/Estate.
Click Estate tab.
Check Allow Public Access.
Check Residents with payment info on file and/or Age-verified adults.

Per-parcel of land:

Go to World menu > About Land.
Click Access tab.
Check Allow Public Access.
Check Residents who have not given payment info to Linden Lab or Residents who are not age verified adults.

Keep in mind: Region maturity ratings always supercede these permissions. If a Region is Adult but someone isn't age-verified, even if you've unchecked Residents who are not age verified adults, they need to be age-verified to enter.

If restricting per-account status using the system-provided tools is too limiting, shop Xstreet for "security orbs" and similar devices that can detect the age of an account and eject accounts that are "too new". Of course, you need to consider whether any legitimate guests have newly joined Second Life to attend your event, in which case, they'll be frustrated at inexplicably being kicked out if they aren't added to the device's own access list. (Which can work in tandem with the per-parcel land tools, but is otherwise separate.)

My event is open to the public but I want to change how many people can come!

Travel to the Region you want to limit attendance to.
Go to World > Region/Estate.
Next to Agent Limit, change it to whatever you desire. "40" is typical, and if you want more people, increase this number. Note that upwards of 50, server performance may noticeably get a lot slower.
Repeat these steps for each Region whose avatar capacity you want to limit.

Anyone trying to teleport or cross into a full Region will receive a message notifying them of such.

I've followed all the above advice, what else do I need to do?

We can't emphasize this enough: if you're griefed, even if you eject the troublemaker, file an abuse report from Help menu > Report Abuse so Linden Lab can followup with discipline.

We understand this may not be possible if you've got your hands full with an event and feel stressed and anxious, which is why it's useful to give someone you trust the role of "event moderator". They should be knowledgeable about what to do as shown above, and be able to respond quickly. This appointed event moderator may be an Estate manager or in an actual group role for group-owned land. The former generally has more power to stop griefers.

Griefers aim to cause confusion and thrive off of panicked reactions — being able to curtail them promptly without being sucked into their mind games demonstrates your professionalism and shows who's in control, and your audience will appreciate this, too.