Superman Talks Down the Goons
by Pixeleen Mistral on 30/06/07 at 12:01 pm
By peppermint fizz, Virtual Convention desk
Mutually assured ban lists improve metaverse – Superman
One of the best parts of working for the Herald, above and beyond the office staff meetings and the fact I feel tall next to Pix, smart next to Jimbo, and quiet next to Prok, is the fact that part of my job involves coming to work and reading the comments. Whether it’s a rant about griefing, flaming furries, or a fashionista smackdown, the comments can be almost as entertaining as our staff meetings. Of course there are also the trolls who rank right up there with watching for signs of prim drift.
For a fan of the comments, one of the events at Second Convention two weeks ago weekend was a dream come true. It was like the comment board coming to life before my very eyes. Kalel Venkman, better known as Superman, founder of the in-world group Justice League United, gave a talk about sim security, and a veritable who’s who of regular commentators filled the audience.
The talk was productive in that those who wanted to learn about sim security and griefing got to hear Venkman go through his speech. The talk was exciting because the reporter pool was abuzz with IMs trying to speculate which of the attendees would launch an attack, and the talk was amusing because there was some especially sharp and clever repartee. One such exchange, illustrates:
Kalel Venkman: The South Koreans have about 27% of the online gaming community world-wide, just within their country.
Kalel Venkman: The South Koreans have about 27% of the online gaming community world-wide, just within their country.
Suzi Kiama: must be important, he said it twice
Kalel Venkman: Had to say it into the microphone so the back row could hear.
IntLibber Brautigan: what?
Kalel’s speech ran for roughly an hour, and then he took questions from the audience delivered through lecture host ZATZAi Austurias. Designed for every resident, he covered the options available for dealing with griefers at many levels, from the resident without land to the sim owner. “If we are a simple citizen out in public, our options are, of course, meager. We can sit on something, teleport out, mute the perpetrator, or log off. We can also file an abuse report, but one abuse report by itself doesn’t do much. As parcel owners, we have the ability to ban and eject, but often the griefers will simply hover outside our parcel and do whatever they’re doing anyway. This also does not stop sim crashers, which seems to be a sport growing in popularity these days. However, once one gets to the parcel owner level, we start seeing other options open to us.”
Venkman explained that sim owners are vital to stopping griefer attacks. According to Venkman, the first line of defense is that sim owners need to work together to produce reliable ban lists, such as the slbanlink.com resource, but stressed the need for sim owners to act in good faith. “If you start making a bunch of bad ban listings, people stop trusting you, and your bans are effective only on your own land after that,” Venkman said. Another important step in ending griefer attacks is that sim owners need to turn off “build, script, object entry and push permissions.” Finally, he added that residents and sim owners alike should be very careful who they trust. “In general, when in doubt, don’t hire a security group, or give security permissions to ANYONE you don’t know, he said. “If you don’t feel comfortable with whoever says “I’m here to help” – Justice League included – kick them the hell off your land and ban them if necessary.”
All of the information provided by Venkman, who delivered his speech dressed as Superman, was good basic information that was informative to members of the audience not familiar with the world of griefers and sim security. Those already familiar with the topic seemed interested in some of the things Venkman brought up as points of discussion. Some were even involved in the process, as Venkman pointed out that Angel Fluffy and IntLibber Brautigan, both of whom were in the audience, had both been involved in producing scripts that had helped with security.
At one point, for example, Venkman mentioned that because griefer groups tend to use alts who are only a few days old, security devices that ban people based on avatar age can be helpful to sim owners. This brought a brief discussion from the audience about whether such a device would be effective enough in fighting griefers to balance the fact that it would effectively ban newbies and the alts of experienced players as well as potential griefers.
Kalel Venkman: IntLibber here was working on one such system, which I believe is either near completion, or completed.
WeLoveYou Lane: Wouldn’t that stop all newbie influx into SL?
Dennis Albion: both the noob griefers and the experienced alts . Angel Fluffy originally wrote that system. Angel Fluffy has also written a new version, though the one done by Int’s team is more advanced.
WeLoveYou Lane: so it turns away newbies?
Duke McDonnagh: only within 96 meters
Thomas Shikami: and you log every avatar, with place, age and if it’s verified
WeLoveYou Lane: Is that good for SL as a whole?
IntLibber Brautigan: Ng Security’s Rat Thing deals with new alts, banlink deals with old alts, together they work pretty well. We’re developing libsl tools to work with estate banlists in a way like banlink.
Also as part of his talk, Venkman did a good job of explaining that his Justice League is not dedicated to the eradication of any particular group, but rather the individuals in the group who insist on making trouble. “When you encounter a new group, do not be quick to judge the entire group by the actions of a few ill-behaved members,” he said. “When we first encountered the /b/tards, for example, we believed all of them were simply evil miscreants. We later learned our mistake – they, like any group, had a mixture of a few rotten apples in amongst what turned out to be a very nice bunch of folks. Most of the W-Hats are not only completely benign, they actually provide helpful services to the community. For example, the W-Hat name to key database has been very useful to a great many businesses and commercial ventures.”
Points like that one, about groups, brought a great deal of reaction from the audience, some amusing, some informative. Before Venkman clarified his point about the W-Hat, moo Money pointed out that “The W-Hat Relay for Life group is doing better than 2/3s of all the other teams.”
When the floor was opened to comments from the floor, those of us in the reporter pool waited for electricity and Jell-owned signs. Instead, we got some interesting and at times amusing, dialogue. The following excerpt has been slightly edited for length and clarity, and I apologize in advance for the lengthy transcript, but hearing and seeing the interaction some of these residents, the famous and the infamous and the SLebrities, should probably be preserved somewhere.
1nt3rn3t Hax: is there a way to spot a griefer besides looking at their suspicious names
Kalel Venkman: Good one!
IntLibber Brautigan: like 1nt3rn3t?
Final Laval: they’ll be the ones griefing you
Ryozu Kojima: Greifers are not a species =P
Ryozu Kojima: Well
Ryozu Kojima: Heh, what Final said
1nt3rn3t Hax: i am not a griefer i am a concerned citizen of second life thank you sir
IntLibber Brautigan: lol, jk
WeLoveYou Lane: I’m the queen of africa.
Kalel Venkman: Yes – griefers tend to wear outfits from the library, or free stuff – they usually have no money, so their appearance is poor.
Final Laval: hey…
IntLibber Brautigan: free tux is better than no tux though
1nt3rn3t Hax: is there a way to ban someone from your land based on the amount of money they have?
Kalel Venkman: They also hover about 15m off the ground, because they fly around shooting for maximum effect.
Superman Magneto: Not always…..
Kalel Venkman: No, Hax, there’s no way to detect that.
1nt3rn3t Hax: i see
Kalel Venkman: There are too many griefer traits to identify, really – almost a subject for another lecture.
1nt3rn3t Hax: how about charging admission to your land? buy pass option??
Final Laval: that’d be a good lecture
1nt3rn3t Hax: would that help?
Ryozu Kojima: Probably
WeLoveYou Lane: 1L entry fee
Mecha Dinosaur: Not all places can do that
Linden’s abuse report system works so well now that shooting griefers is pointless – Superman/Kalel Venkman
Kalel Venkman: You don’t have to be a member of the League to fight griefers. Just be a part of the community, and above all, talk to your peers who have similar problems.
Enigma Snook: everyone should work to stop griefers
Kalel Venkman: We are far stronger as a community than we are as individuals.
1nt3rn3t Hax: what are some techniques the league uses to pinpoint and pincer the griefers into submission until a linden can respond
Kalel Venkman: We don’t restrain griefers. That would be griefing.
1nt3rn3t Hax: oh i see. you’re right
Angel Fluffy: There are also groups that land owners/managers can join. I run one such group, and there are others also. If you are a landowner and want to help secure your land against griefing, enquire about membership of a security co-operative for sim/parcel owners.
Kalel Venkman: We don’t shoot them either, for the same reason. The abuse report system actually does work so well now that such measures are pointless.
1nt3rn3t Hax: what steps can i take as a land owner to ensure that people added to the banlists provided by these security groups are legit and not adding people based on association (ie, adding all w-hats or something)
Final Laval: you simply have to trust the person compiling the list
Kalel Venkman: Well – one of the big ways is not to subscribe to groups that you feel do that.
Tizzers Foxchase: Prokofy Neva sez: Don’t use teh AR system!! =|
Kalel Venkman: The Banlink system allows you to subscribe only to those other estates whose opinions you trust. You’re not forced to accept the opinions of people with whom you disagree – it’s a self-limited system
Mecha Dinosaur: I recommend trusting newbie education centers, they tend to get alot of griefers.
Kalel Venkman: It neatly gets around that whole “who guards the guards” problem.
Ryozu Kojima: NCI probably has a good ban list
Kalel Venkman: Oh, yes, good point, Mecha – NCI is really good. They’ve done more to help people in SL than probably anybody. So far as SL itself is concerned.
Final Laval: problem is we never have problems with people on OUR land, it’s the adjacent sims that bring everyone down
Angel Fluffy: My basic suggestion for trusts on BanLink is that you start off by trusting everone, so that you can see the entire ban list, then de-trust everyone but the sites whose bans you see and like.
Kalel Venkman: Oh, and if anybody was curious, we actually do have /b/tards in the Justice League. Not many, but we have ‘em.
Ryozu Kojima: lawl
innocent but added to a ban list? your only option is to get a new name – Angel Fluffy
1nt3rn3t Hax: what are some steps you can take if you are accused of being a griefer yourself when you are in fact, innocent? i was just accused recently because of my name alone
Tizzers Foxchase: And that’s why we love Carigorp.
Mecha Dinosaur: Not all /b/ are moronic underaged teenage boys.
Kalel Venkman: Just so, Mecha, just so.
Angel Fluffy: 1nt3rn3t Hax: in your case, your only option is to get a new name, one that portrays you as a legit SL user. Avoid numbers, avoid the name ‘Hax’… make something like your real life name.
Kalel Venkman: False accusations don’t last long.
Soleil Mirabeau: obviously if your last name is Hax or Dix you’re a griefer 
Katar Supercharge: but not TOO close to your RL name
Siobhan OFlynn: or Mirabeau
Kalel Venkman: I think it’s the first name, really – l33t sp33k and all that.
Siobhan OFlynn: 
Ryozu Kojima: Aww, no love for me Tizzers?
Angel Fluffy: 1nt3rn3t Hax: while people accusing you in particular won’t stand up, as long as you have the name ‘Hax’, or use leetspeak, you will be branded.
1nt3rn3t Hax: I am really good with computers ^_^
Kalel Venkman: However, actions do speak louder than words.
Soleil Mirabeau: I’m a Dix too. 
Siobhan OFlynn: you are?
1nt3rn3t Hax: yes that’s why i made this name
Kalel Venkman: And if your actions are honorable, your reputation will grow in the right direction no matter what.
Soleil Mirabeau: Sio, new alts
Siobhan OFlynn: I gotta make some new alts
Final Laval: hard to maintain a rep among “3 million” users
Kalel Venkman: Remember that ill spoken of you is fleeting, where your good deeds have
As Superman logged the evening broke up. Several members of the audience congregated for small group conversations and the press corps huddled up to hash over what we had just listened to. The Justice League had been popping in and out all night, often in costume, clearly expecting some sort of trouble. Ironically, several members of the audience had also come to the lectured dressed in various costumes, such as WeLoveYou Lane, who came as a Green Lantern. The groups trickled off into the night having come together, interacted successfully without explosions, and been heard.
So while I’m looking forward to the next staff meeting because Pix has threatened to release a box of angry smurfs she found on the grid, I’m really looking forward to the comments that readers leave here day in and day out, and I’m even more looking forward to covering the next security lecture.
DerkaDerpaDerp
Jun 30th, 2007
I have a ingame picture of kalel venkman yiffing with frontier linden and 2 of frontier’s furry friends.
BEND OVER SUPERMAN
Jesus
Jun 30th, 2007
—–”This also does not stop sim crashers, which seems to be a sport growing in popularity these days.”
Growing in popularity because the more stuck-up and serious land owners / lindens get, the harder it is to do things that are funny and make people laugh (making fun of furries and their fandom/fetish is apparently considered racism and intolerance by LL, which is hilarious for obvious reasons, but still annoying to get banned over).
On the other hand, it’s basically impossible to stop someone who knows what he’s doing, from crashing sims, turning off build and script won’t necessarily stop it either. So a lazy griefer that doesn’t feel like running uphill to do something hilarious will settle for crashing sims, like most of the time, it’s the opposite reaction from what LL probably wants, they just don’t know what they’re doing.
Prokofy Neva
Jun 30th, 2007
Also as part of his talk, Venkman did a good job of explaining that his Justice League is not dedicated to the eradication of any particular group, but rather the individuals in the group who insist on making trouble. “When you encounter a new group, do not be quick to judge the entire group by the actions of a few ill-behaved members,” he said. “When we first encountered the /b/tards, for example, we believed all of them were simply evil miscreants. We later learned our mistake – they, like any group, had a mixture of a few rotten apples in amongst what turned out to be a very nice bunch of folks.
This is the Big Lie of SL’s main griefers, and “Superman,” in falling for, illustrates that he is naive and unseasoned or in on it, and infiltrated into the JUL to “turn” it. That’s been obvious for some time — that the Justice League suffers from intel ops and infiltrations to discredit it.
OMG, how can you tar a group with the same brush and be guilty of “guilty until proven innocent” and “collective responsibility” — principles that run against international law?
Because…you can find that criminal groups organized for the sake of conspiracy to collude and deceive can, as a group, be responsible. Most countries have laws about conspiracy in the technical sense, using groups and group operations.
Two such groups that were criminal in nature, and which countries have historically struggled to deal with are the Nazi Party and its organizations like the SS and the Communist Party and the Red Army. Nuremberg was unable to deal with the former as a criminal group because of the latter’s interventions in the form of the Soviet Union wishing to avoid scrutiny of its own criminal gang in charge of its country.
Nevertheless, later Germany successfully created a denazification policy and some former communist countries developed lustration policies to remove high-ranking CP and intelligence operatives from public office. These policies are certainly controversial, and in every age, every country struggles with how you deal with the fact that criminals form groups to commit crime, then lie and distract and confuse and deceive and beg for liberal tolerance of the group, and examination of only its members. This enables crime and terrorism to flourish, because the group keeps its rallying point and its center of ideological indoctrination readily.
How does this play out in SL? W-hat, voter 5, b-tards forming groups over and over and rallying and indoctrinating and deceiving and constantly crying for liberal tolerance.
What can liberals who are also concerned about crime and griefing do?
Name and shame. They don’t have the power to declare a group itself unlawful, and even Linden Lab exercises such a right rarely and very cautiously, but it can expose the tactics of deceit.
So the first question you have to ask is: if all the members of voter-5 are innocent, and only a few were bad apples, why are all the members banned , not because the group is banned, or because they were judged by their group, but because each and every one committed griefing and got banned on his/her own merits?
Why have a number of groups associated with W-hat and v-5 and b-tards been closed, some evidently merely because all the people in it got banned and it lacked the 2 people needed to keep it open?
Why has “Woodbury University” and “Woodbury Security” been a particularly rich harvesting ground for griefers and griefer apologists?
In a world where you are recognized by reputation, and people, not having the normal cues, have to go by other markers, a group that keeps spawning new members on alts, having them grief and get banned, and spawning more new alts — like v-5 or anti-v-5 — has to expect to acquire a bad reputation.
>Most of the W-Hats are not only completely benign, they actually provide helpful services to the community. For example, the W-Hat name to key database has been very useful to a great many businesses and commercial ventures.”
I don’t see any “most of the w-hats who are benign” when all of them without exception to two things: a) never condemn individual griefers by name and expel them from their “benign service group” and b) play up the idea that no group should be tarred by its individual members and beg for disassociation, but *themselves* never disassociate the group from those bad actors, never condemn them, *and never expels them*.
Those two lines of behaviour let you know that SA, W-h and others are simply supportive of the conspiracy of griefing, even if only passively. When they are ready to roundly condemn griefers by name and remove them from their group, and censure their behaviour on their websites instead of snickering or applauding it, then we’ll believe their ill-faith incitement of liberals.
Grabbing avatar key names without their consent for the purposes of marketing is like picking up email addresses. Sure, you can do that, they’re all over. That doesn’t mean it is a good thing and that opt-in should be introduced rather than opt-out. Yammering on and on about how keys are needed in SL for many interactions, just to buy and sell for example, is no excuse, as people are not given control over their keys and their use once W-hat and their supporters swipe them and store them.
>Points like that one, about groups, brought a great deal of reaction from the audience, some amusing, some informative. Before Venkman clarified his point about the W-Hat, moo Money pointed out that “The W-Hat Relay for Life group is doing better than 2/3s of all the other teams.”
moo Money and RC Mars/Randall Moss should be ashamed of dragging ACS into this scandal. I certainly won’t give a penny this year or any year to ACS for their support of a group that destroys property in Second Life and harms business and private lives. They shouldn’t have become part of this conspiracy.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jun 30th, 2007
Aw. Had I known this was going on I would have attended. I should pay more attention to upcoming in-world events, I guess.
As ‘Jesus’ said, LL’s actions have only worsened the situation.
moses
Jun 30th, 2007
to “jesus”
what is the problem with furries? i am not one or part of there fandom/fetish but what did they do to you ? were you gang-yiffed during some walk in the forest ? did a giant skunk drop you on your head one day ? cat REALLY get your tounge ?
you seem to me like a spoiled brat that needs some one to hate. and if you can not, you will take it out on every one else.
“let me grief the furries and i will leave you alone.”
what ever happen to the old philosophy of minding your own business and leaving every one alone ?
Jesus
Jun 30th, 2007
“moses”, like at least 80% of furries, can’t argue with facts, and instead uses yiffing as an insult, because in the end, they know wierd it is.
Closing yourself off to non furries to make you feel like your fetish is normal, but it only makes it harder for you to understand how normal people think of you, which is where the persecution complex comes in.
Ordinal Malaprop
Jun 30th, 2007
Terrific. So, it is now Superman-Approved: the way to get around a ban is to change your name, which is coincidentally the only way that you have of avoiding bans based on you simply having numbers in your first name (for example). That sounds like a workable and effective system for general governance.
On the other hand, the widespread adoption of BanLink will result in such incredible levels of drama that griefers will be obsolete. So maybe it would be effective after all. Even the ban tools that we have now lead to drama levels way above FDA-approved.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jun 30th, 2007
“Moses”: The /b/tards hate furries because furries cried and caused endless flame wars and drama in the /b/ image board when they posted their furry porn and then exploded in a fit of rage when non-furries told them it was vile and disgusting.
And I don’t mean “If I want to post furry porn, I’ll post furry porn.”, I mean “YOU ARE A BLIND BIGOT AND YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! FURRY HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE BEFORE THE BIBLE! YOU ARE INFERIOR BECAUSE YOU CANNOT FIND YOUR TOTEM ANIMAL. YOU ARE JEALOUS OF WHAT WE HAVE.”
… Needless to say, such bullshit and excitability instantly made them a target for trolling and mockery.
Hazim Gazov
Jun 30th, 2007
Lawl, WeLoveYou Lane was me.
Bullshit Caller
Jun 30th, 2007
You wanna know what griefing is up, and furry hate is at an all time high?
People getting banned for no reason. (people who have never been banned will call bullshit on this too)
I’ve had two accounts banned for little or no reason at all. I never caused problems. The first account I think the name was too much like a popular griefer’s name, which got me reported as one despite never doing anything. My second account was 100% legit, but it got banned twic, first time was because I got reported by a furry who didnt “like my tone of voice”, and the second time, I told a furry to get the hell out of a sim it had no business in because we had recently had problems with furry spies setting up spy objects. still have yet to be unbanned for that one. Yes, simply telling them to leave or telling them to get the hell out because they were up to causing problems is why I got banned. They probably reported me for intolerance and racism and griefing. This is why people hate furries. As much as they scream they’re being persecuted (I refuse to say their retooled version.) they go around looking to cause trouble and banning people who arent like them or are in groups they dont like. I talked to many people who have banned through very similar circumstances and they’ve either been tempted to or have resorted to griefing as they see no point in playing the game legitimately anymore because they know whatever they do, they’ll be banned within a short time because someone will just find a reason to report them.
People should not be marked by name or association, that’s the worst policy to have. this will only stir the pot.
The other thing is that people are tired of furries being the only group being treated as first class citizens because some lindens are furries. If a furry demands it, it is done. Anyone else? told to fuck off. everyone else are treated like third class citizens. Linden labs is doing everything possible to alienate their users.
Unofficial rules of SL:
Dont make fun of furries, they are your gods. they suck up to the lindens, dont dare defy them.
Dont even talk bad about the JLU, you’ll be marked as a griefer and banned.
Dont be funny or mock anything or even show any signs of free speech, this is apparent griefer activity, and if what you say goes against the grain, expect to be banned or blocked.
If you’re not a business, a spy, a furry, a “justice” team, or someone who sucks up to the lindens, you’re nothing. just give us as much money as you can and get the fuck out.
Most “third class” users are either sex enthusiasts who are too cheap to afford red light center with the rest just being 4channers, w-hat, ytmnd, reporters, RPers, and casual players who like dressing up their little avatars. aka, the majority of the players.
Hey look, the hierarchy of first life has now implemented itself in second life!
I’m loling hard.
Hazim Gazov
Jun 30th, 2007
Also, shut up Prokofy, Voter 5 doesn’t exist.
Pirate Cotton
Jun 30th, 2007
I’d be curious to hear about any good, legit security communities out there. Are there any where you can be fairly sure the people on the ban list haven’t been removed because of temper tantrums from sim owners? And is there any degree of automation to the management of the list and action based on it? Ta.
Rugal
Jun 30th, 2007
Oh my. What do we have here, but “Superman”..another fellow that knows nothing about what he is speaking (which reveals itself under scrutiny of what he speaks.) ..and basically likes to hear himself talk. Sounds like his superhero complex is more of a comphensating-for-something-fix. :p
WitnessX
Jun 30th, 2007
Great another article where the PN and the griefing /b/tards can spam with B.S.
Predictions for the comments:
PN/b/tards coming in trying to paint the JLU as completely rotten.
PN/b/tards whining and BAWWWing over things even though they claim Furries are more dramatic. HA!
Prok tossing more long winded speeches never realizing no one reads them by now.
PN/b/tards claiming WitnessX is this or that, example a “white supremacist.” When I’ve said countless times I’m not THAT WitnessX
Hazim with is usual “you can’t stop me” like comments.
PN/b/tards trying to make it look like the JLU were the ones that brought down the Woodbury University sim in cahoots with the Lindens. They’ll cry and whine about it when it was in fact their own fault Woodbury is digital dust now. About time it was gone too.
Prok with another long winded remark and Hazim poking fun at her (now this I always find amusing, this is about one of the few times I like Hazim)
Intblubber making comments not realizing that he completely lost all his credibility in by helping Tizzers and the /b/tards.
Anyways these comments will derail soon. It was a nice little get together on Ai, very informative. Kalel Venkman is not the root of all evil that everyone paints him out to be, he’s a real good guy. Now that Carigorp kid, the self proclaimed /b/tard of the JLU, that guy is another story all together and he’s a walking grenade.
Lawd Oh
Jun 30th, 2007
“Great another article where the PN and the griefing /b/tards can spam with B.S.”
penis
Hazim Gazov
Jun 30th, 2007
Shut up WitnessX, Hazim Gazov doesn’t exist.
Jesus
Jul 1st, 2007
I think WitnessX broke his hugbox again
also, sup intlib?
THAT'S RACIST
Jul 1st, 2007
—-”PN/b/tards claiming WitnessX is this or that, example a “white supremacist.” When I’ve said countless times I’m not THAT WitnessX”
No one really cares, you’re a furry copying the name of some stormfront (white supremacist) troll, that’s all that matters.
I could copy someone’s name, I actually do that already, I just dont claim it’s some omnipitent entity whenever I do it, but you fail for BAAAAWWWWing when people don’t care which one you are.
Blah
Jul 1st, 2007
If you want to get back at furries. Use GL_INTERCEPTOR. It’ll download all uploaded images on Second Life. Thus downloading the avatars of furries, and reuploading them for free, will destroy the furry crowd, and will rid them of Second Life. LET THE FURSECUTION BEGIN!
Coincidental Avatar
Jul 1st, 2007
Now I see what IntBlubber meant in his weird comment: “Griefers help community”
He meant that griefers help him to squeeze money out of the community by selling protection.
********************************
Another thing what is not spoken much is the griefing of business competitors.
**************************************
I have been banned twice by scrupulous business owners. How do you know from unknown banner list providers, who is reliable and who is not? And if you use only the known reliable, your ban list will be too short to be effective.
Oh, and I was banned too because I danced naked in Front Nationale HQ.
**************************************
I’ve never heard that LL had done anything to limit access to griefing tools. They are sold openly. Maybe NRA is against limiting access?
Of course, in case of alts, the transaction logs track from which alt the “newbie” griefer got his tools.
Kabalyero
Jul 1st, 2007
I had an encounter with a griefer once. I just muted him and banned him off my land!
Kabalyero
Jul 1st, 2007
About competitors griefing, yeah, I’ve seen that too. A club owner rezzed a scripted tube like object in a landing spot of another club taking those who teleported into that place prisoners. It took hours before the object was removed because the owner was offline at that time. It really annoyed a lot of avatars.
IntLibber Brautigan
Jul 1st, 2007
Um, I’ve never said that griefers help community.
Secondly, the Rat Thing avatar profiler has never been for sale, so I’m hardly profiteering on that system, though given all this free publicity, I might just start doing this.
We’ve recently upgraded its memory capacity, responsiveness, and integrated banlink functionality into it, was well as a nifty HUD for security agents to manage things.
Being protected by Rat Things currently is an exclusive feature of living in a BNT Holdings run sim. If you want to be protected by the best, buy land in one of our new sims of the Ancapistan continent: Jefferson, Bastiat, Spooner, Ron Paul, Ian Bernard, Von Nothaus, Randi, Teller, Jillette, Deckard New Atlantis, Fur Liberty, and John Stark. There are 10 more sims coming soon as well, so plenty of land is available in a highly secure environment that remains open to avatars without payment info, in an estate that can sell land to no payment info account holders as well. Ancapistan also features the record setting Von Mises Tower in Von Mises, with 36 floors of leasable space, and the Ginko Dome of Ginko Financial, a 150 meter diameter parametric oblated dome, the largest such structure in SL, with ATMs for Ginko, WSE, and AVIX, as well as stock tickers.
All Ancapistan sims feature the finest roads, subways, infocenters, and ATM complexes in SL.
Other estate owners that wish to obtain Rat Things can contact Jim Schack, General Manager of Ng Security.
Blingtard
Jul 1st, 2007
The jlu and any other security group are full of crap, i remember talking to SUPERMAN back when he was just a fweek in tights, he was weird then and he is weird now, when a sim owner or land owner has a problem with any individual they should kick them and ban them till they forget why, that would rid us of these super freaks who basically act like we need to all get together and ban people we have not had any problem with because that person chooses to act stupid someplace else.
im not a furry but every now and then i wear kitty ears cause they look cute, ive never griefed anybody, but if some dumbass puts anybody with horns or spots on a list they bite their own selves in the ass.
I had one dude at my buisness who griefed a customer, i kicked and banned him, then a few weeks later i looked him up, he was a customer, a talented builder and as far as i could tell he owned a sim, i dont know why he choose to put voodoo on somebody but i let the ban stand for another week then i took it off. i wanted to ask him if he knew the person or if it was some joke that i was not in on. but whatever
i aint gonna put his name on a list so superman could sit there staring at it holding is flexi penis irl that would be stupid,
if the lindens ban somebody because they have furry favoritism that sucks, but if the lindens ban you, they dont like post your name at ahern and tell everybody to ban you, that is what banlink is to me, a bunch of dumbasses amassing lists of names, some of those names are probably their own alts
Artemis Fate
Jul 1st, 2007
You know, i’ve been in SL for just about 4 years and have never felt the need for these extensive security measures above and beyond simply “mute, kick, and ban”. In fact, only time I ever had problems was when a JLU member tried to handle a “griefer crisis” in Nexus Prime (actually just a confused newbie from the Welcome Area who didn’t know it wasn’t kosher to fire a particle gun everywhere), and instead of letting me just handle it and going on their merry way, they refused to leave until they had “proven” that the JLU had the best anti-griefer tools and techniques. Didn’t want to ban them, but just about had to, to get them the hell out.
mootykips
Jul 1st, 2007
Like Artemis said, JLU just aren’t ‘worth it’ for land owners. They do nothing but create lulz for us/other griefers and are no faster to the abuse report button than anyone else. Their weapons such as the ‘SDI Defense’ are easy to avoid. They’ll show up and start drama when it’s pretty easy just to ban someone from a sim.
I was browsing the Something Awful forums a little while ago and there was a topic asking why superheroes didn’t exist in real life. Answer: why fly around and spend millions of dollars to create a bunch of gadgets when the police can show up and arrest prettty much anyone? Reminded me of the JLU a lot.
“im not a furry but every now and then i wear kitty ears cause they look cute”
doesn’t everybody?
Kalel Venkman
Jul 2nd, 2007
For landowners, your best defense isn’t calling the Justice League after you’ve already been hit, it’s BEING PREPARED. Turn off build, scripts, and object entry to deter most griefer attacks. Leaving your land as open-build is just asking for it.
Make sure whatever estate managers you have are present enough of the time to do you some good, and make certain they know how to use the estate tools. I’ve met a few estate managers who don’t, and needed help to clean up after griefers.
If you really must have a sandbox in your sim, make it so that only members of a group can build on it, and add a small fee to join. This is enough to make most of them just move on to the next sim, as most of them get banned often and don’t have a pile of Lindens stored up for such things.
Whether you like the idea of guys wearing their underwear outside their pants telling people about security tips or not, these things will help keep your griefer problem to a managable level.
And as I mentioned in the lecture, by all means, compare notes with your peers who have similar problems and find out how they’re solving their security related issues. By joining together, we can draw strength from one another, and grow Second Life into a more peaceful and productive community!
Kalel Venkman
Jul 2nd, 2007
To answer Pirate Cotton’s question, the Banlink system (findable at http://slbanlink.com) is currently the single largest security coalition of any sort within Second Life. Any estate or business owner in the system is free to ban anyone they wish, for any reason. HOWEVER, if they do this, they get a reputation for unjust banning and quickly become untrusted, i.e., other members unsubscribe to that estates ban list. In this way, the system is self-regulating.
Once again, this makes one of the points I covered in my lecture: individually, no citizen can do very much. But the united will of the citizens, combined with the tools and assistance provided by Linden Lab, is an unbeatable combination.
Mako Mabellon
Jul 2nd, 2007
>So the first question you have to ask is: if all the members of voter-5 are innocent, and only a few were bad apples, why are all the members banned , not because the group is banned, or because they were judged by their group, but because each and every one committed griefing and got banned on his/her own merits?
I think you may be getting confused. Voter 5 are a supposed griefing group that seem to be capitalising on the bad reputation of Voted 5. (To be honest, it’s unclear how powerful they are). Voted 5 are the group that were mass-banned to placate the populace after some of their members took down the grid.
mootykips
Jul 2nd, 2007
“Once again, this makes one of the points I covered in my lecture: individually, no citizen can do very much. But the united will of the citizens, combined with the tools and assistance provided by Linden Lab,” is a beatable combination because all we have to do is make another alt in 5 minutes and keep going.
Snore. We’ve got new IPs, new MACs, new HDIDs, new alt names, real names, and email addresses. LL can’t do shit.
WitnessX
Jul 2nd, 2007
JLU shouldn’t expect PN to go anywhere, since they’re being paid by LL to stress test their servers.
TRUE LULZ
Jul 9th, 2007
“…so superman could sit there staring at it holding is flexi penis irl…”
VS.
“Snore. We’ve got new IPs, new MACs, new HDIDs, new alt names, real names, and email addresses. LL can’t do shit.”
Now WHO is waving the flexi penis? Seems obvious to me. Hey Mooty, my dad can beat up your dad, so ha-ha, dimwit.
Alexander Lucard
Jul 15th, 2007
I would like to clarify one misconception Artemis Fate has been pushing around every time the JLU is mentioned. I was the one who called for help after I was hit with a missile in the middle of Nexus Prime. I did not know who fired it, but the superhero that showed up taught me how to find the bump report, and furthermore she searched the area and found the shooter. This abuse of power Artemis brings up, was ntohign mroe than telling the guy to stop shooting. Artemis immediately labelled her a griefer, not because she used a weapon, but because she was not an offical sim owner. Artemis then proceeded to chastise the JLU and the GLC, despite the girl’s insistence that she was not in the GLC, and did nto want her actions to be held towards them in any way. She was not demanding that Artemis accept her help, but merely that she be allowed to try to persuade Artemis that she wans’t a griefer. Artemis’ reasons for labeling her a griefer: the jlu girl used Animation overrides and was wearing a shield, which, accoridng to Artemis, are the sources of all problems on the grid. After Artemis finally allowed her to plead her case, the girl gave her word that the JLU would not be in Nexus Prime anymore, and furthermore, that any calls for help would be forwarded directly to Artemis. I found Artemis’ behavior to be rude and abrasive, whereas the girl was polite and curteous.