Does Second Life's abuse report system need a serious overhaul?

The last abuse report I got a 'resolved' message for was in July 2007. Others whom I have spoken to give a date between June and October for their last resolution.

Hmm, yes, I've received "received and is being investigated" emails (probably automatic) more recently than that, but no Resolved ones.

This is a tempest in a teapot. As mentioned at the end of the linked-to story: "Update: the above referenced Linden who helped her to get rid of the objects helped her to get her suspension sorted out, too. But really, the whole process shouldn't be such a kafkaesk experience. Nontheless, said Lindens activity were nothing but helpful."

Right. So much for LL needing to rework their whole system!

I do agree she shouldn't have been suspended in the first palce, and apparently the lindens did also, and resolved it quickly and personably.

In recent months i've filed 3 abuse reports with very disappointing results.

Report #1 was for a griefer who tried to crash a sim with self-replicating objects, 20,000+ scripts. The sim didn't crash but was useless until cleaned up.

LL's Response: nothing.

Report #2 was another griefer that did something very similar, again trying to crash the sim with scripted objects. Sim was unusable until his mess was cleaned up.

LL's Response: nothing.

Report #3 was a griefer who covered 2 sims with thousands of objects emitting huge particle spam (covered both sims entirely) and had objects that pretended to be you and shouted obscene language over the sim. I followed this up with a complaint about the lack of action on the first 2 griefers.

LL's Response: 1 day ban for the griefer.

They did act fast but the response was pathetic.

Tateru, I appreciate your experience is your experience, but it's not at all representative, and when you express these anecdotes in such a widely-read publication, surely you're aware that you're creating a false impression and haven't done enough due diligence. It's like the time you said you hadn't seen Philip Rosedale in a year, and when you did, he looked "tired" -- although scads of people saw him many times and he looked as bouncy as ever on every occasion. That sort of thing. You can't take the sample literally for the whole; nor visa versa; it's a balance.

I am forced to file abuse reports probably daily, not because I'm griefed personally, but because I run a large mainland rentals business. I like to handle as many griefers, problems, prim litters, etc. myself, and basically that's my rule: if it happens on my land, I take care of it myself using my overall group rules and procedures.

But so often, with the mainland riddled with no-shows, and abandoned parcels and Linden land itself not turned to autoreturn, it's a no-man's-land where griefers can hide out and keep blasting you with particles and orbiting you, so you're forced to keep reporting them. These sorts of reports are now handled by the Lindens with lightning speed (and it isn't just me -- other landlords would concede the same). They usually solve the problem of massive attacks across sims within 20-30 minutes now of the first report of particle blasting or prim littering to crash sims, once they have the name, they act swiftly. So those kinds of reports I have tons of, all resolved.

Problems of grief objects, abandoned land with articles encroaching on your own parcel -- these were taking 2 weeks or more or not getting done. It wasn't uncommon to even have some stubborn cases take a year, as the Lindens religiously went by the book in many cases, if someone was paid up for a year, not even being willing to remove litter, and grief prims. They've changed that recently and are doing yeoman's labour freeing up about 16 sims of abandoned land, and responding now to complaints about them within days, not weeks. The Lindens *are* getting better.

Where they don't seem to be able to respond are on more complex things. Like repeated verbal harassment by one person against you on an infohub. Like a giant megaprim with your RL picture on it, left out for 3 days. That sort of thing. Personal attacks. They've just never been good at those, because they no longer have time/capacity to research logs and read he said/she said, and they remain absolutely still colour-blind on this matter of 'innocent until proven guilty" for day-old alts, and for groups -- despite some groups having 40 or 100 alts flying through them in 30 days, griefing constantly, being banned, and respawning. It takes them a VERY long time to get to brass tacks on that.

There's a very simple thing they need to do to reform their abysmal justice system, that can only work on the principle of "better, harder, faster" if they do not bite the bullet and articulate some just principles. This simple thing is to name all the names in every abuse report: alleged perpetrator, abuse reporter, prosecuting Linden. And no, don't tell me that spawns vigilantism; what we have now is a secretive police state whereby any police informer can rat on you to settle scores, and you can't mount an adversarial defense (that's Barney's case, perfectly) because there is no way to appeal the cases. So we need transparency, just like real life, where real-life judges don't hide the name of a plaintiff in a court proceeding under the mistaken notice that she will suffer retaliation -- because what kind of system would the judge be running if he allowed that to happen?! And so much less should the Lindens not accept that argument in a pixelated online world where nobody really *can* harm you deeply without your consent at some level if you don't log off. SO they need all the names, and that will make the score-settling stop, and will identify any overzealous Judge Dread Lindens, and also enable people to ban those they find to be too frequent flyers. Because the Lindens let an awful lot go down, and let some really bad actors repeat and repeat, and make us all suffer.

Unfortunately, they may tinker with the presentation of the police blotter, we're told (let's hope they give it a memory over 7 days and searchability), but they won't be naming names. Instead, they are going to make an empty and futile gesture that they will cover over with a propaganda saying it is about "giving us the tools to run our world". And that's having island owners receive abuse reports directly rather than have them go to the Lindens. But...we already get them directly and already act on them ROFL. This is utterly symbolic, and problematic, given no-show and fraudulent islands owners, as well.

Wow! Prok, whats the key, our griefer reports are almost never responded to, and never timely, are there keywords, an inside source, owning more than 1/2 a sim?

"The range of abuses reported in Second Life range from the extreme (being underage, paedophile porn) to the trivial (your tree is over the border of my land)."

If there is *real* child pornography in SL (and the only time I heard of it was the setup by the German media) you would break the law in many countries by reporting it to the Lindens instead of your local police.

Extreme items like kiddy porn should not be ARed but be *immediately* reported to your local police internet crimes section so that they can start the necessary procedures to apprehend and jail the offenders.