Do Abuse Reports Work

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Do Abuse Reports work?

We get an automatic acknowledgement, which tells us that we will never be told of any action taken. The TOS is the same.

I've seen one incident I reporting--replicating prims spewing particles, and dragging down sim/physics frame rates--carrying on for over 24 hours.

Is it worth bothering making a report? All the evidence I have is that it's not worth the trouble. Nothing happens. And this is pretty clear evidence of nothing.

 

[Marigold Devin]

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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

Do Abuse Reports work?

We get an automatic acknowledgement, which tells us that we will never be told of any action taken. The TOS is the same.

I've seen one incident I reporting--replicating prims spewing particles, and dragging down sim/physics frame rates--carrying on for over 24 hours.

Is it worth bothering making a report? All the evidence I have is that it's not worth the trouble. Nothing happens. And this is pretty clear evidence of nothing.

 

---

Out here in my real life, there were problems with youths causing a nuisance in the neighbourhood.  My neighbours talked about it with me, complaining that the police never did anything about the problem, but when I asked the same neighbours if they had actually reported the problems to the police it turned out that they had not.  How, therefore, could the police know there was a problem.?

Same applies in Second Life. 

Anything that is wrong is worth reporting.  If it doesn't get acted on straightaway, it's probably because there are bigger problems going on elsewhere and/or the abuse report office is not manned 24/7 by a team of people, or even the right people (speculation).

I'd say report it if you feel it's worth reporting.  It's better than not reporting and LL not being aware of the problem, wouldn't you say?

[Theresa Tennyson]

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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

Do Abuse Reports work?

We get an automatic acknowledgement, which tells us that we will never be told of any action taken. The TOS is the same.

I've seen one incident I reporting--replicating prims spewing particles, and dragging down sim/physics frame rates--

carrying on for over 24 hours

.

Is it worth bothering making a report? All the evidence I have is that it's not worth the trouble. Nothing happens. And this is pretty clear evidence of nothing.

 

---

And what happened after 24 hours? Did they finally take down the grid and we're all currently in some sort of post-Second Life Matrix dream world? Or did someone from LL EVENTUALLY clean them up? After they were REPORTED?

I've always seen problems I've reported in SL get cleaned up eventually but it sometimes takes a few days. I used to live in a RL city where certain property crimes realistically were NEVER investigated becase there were so many other more serious crimes that the police were busy with.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Well, most of the Abuse Reports I submitted over the past few years were acted on. 

1. Attacked by two griefers in a sandbox. Reported and they got a few days ban. I was able to figure that out from the police reports (no longer posted by LL).

2. Near neighbour started a disco on the roof of his Linden home in contravention of the covenant and it was causing serious lag. LL removed the disco within 8 hours of me submitting the AR.

3. The neighbour moved the disco up a thousand metres or so. LL removed it within 12 hours of me submitting the AR. The neighbour subsequently left the home or was booted out of it by LL.

4. Another near neighbour comverted his Linden home into a business breeding Amaretto horses in contravention of the covenant. Again, this was causing serious lag. He pretty much ignored our IMs but they were gone within a week or so of submitting an AR.

[Pamela Galli]

Over in commerce Madelefiest Oh reported this same kind of attack preventing ppl from visiting her store, over 60 hours before the problem was taken care of.

[Ariel Vuissent]

It's not always immediate, but in my experience, it does help. It doesn't mean that whoever is AR'd will instantly be banned, or anything, but I've found that while it may take a few days, the Lindens will, if the issue is valid and the report accurate, intervene eventually. It's hard to imagine how many AR's they get in any given day, though. I doubt they have a few thousand people sitting around to go through them every day which means everyone working in that area gets probably a few dozen at the least, if not a hundred or more, to look through, evaluate, examine, and solve. And we don't know how that process works.

If you DON'T file an AR, though, how are they supposed to know what's going on? Instead of things taking a few days, they could stay the way they are indefinitely because no one bothered to inform LL that there was a problem. They might be slow, but they are effective, at least some of the time.

[Tari Landar]

Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. There doesn't always seem to be rhyme or reason behind either. I am sure there is, I just don't know what it is

LL has never been consistant on any large scale. They've also never been fully inconsistant on any large scale.

Clear as mud, ain't it?

I say report what you feel is worthy of reporting, do whatever you can to fix whatever problems you can, without making them worse of course, and hope for the best. That's what I do. Not always successfully, but I try.

[Perrie Juran]

I will echo what others have said here, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to how quickly Removal Linden responds or is assigned to go do clean up.

I have seen same day response but then we also read of responses taking much longer time.

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

In my experience they work if what you are reporting is reported in a factual manner and clear evidence is given that there is a TOS or Community Standards violation or covenant violation on LL owned land.  If it is just a resident to resident dispute, they are not acted on as LL doesn't get involved. This also is true of petty reports that aren't violations of TOS, CS or covenants.  It may take a few days, and sometimes they don't appear to work because you are never told what action is taken. 

The offender could receive just a warning if it is the first offense and minor.  Suspensions are given for times ranging from a few hours to a few weeks depending on their 'record' and seriousness of the complaint. A short suspension may be over before you find out about it, if you ever do.  Bans are a bit different because the account is removed so their name disappears from search, but bans are not given out except for serious offenses.

Of course as other's have said, LL can't act against something they don't know about either. So, yes it is worth reporting things if for no other reason than it goes on record if it is a legit complaint.  If the person continues to act badly and is AR'd again their record may get them a longer or more severe 'sentence'.  If it isn't a legit complaint though, people have been known to get suspended for abusing the AR system if they file a lot of them.

[Perrie Juran]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote: Bans are a bit different because the account is removed so their name disappears from search, but bans are not given out except for serious offenses.

 

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Just adding a comment to avoid possible confusion.  A person can choose to not have their profile show up in search, so the fact that a name doesn't show up does not mean in and of itself the account was banned.

(at least that is my understanding)

[Czari Zenovka]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Over in commerce Madelefiest Oh reported this same kind of attack preventing ppl from visiting her store, over 60 hours before the problem was taken care of.

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Bumping this for the OP.  Madeliefste did indeed post about this situation on the Merchant Forum but it was moved by a moderator to General here.

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

Since there is now feedback, we don't know.
However, when inworld objects are the reason of an AR,
one can look, if the junk is still there.
If the junk is gone, there is atleast a 50% chance, that a Linden did the clean-up.
(The other 50% would be the landowner.)

I have had mixed results, some of the stuff is gone, when check back sometime later,
some of it is still there. The size/impact seems to play a role too,
big egregious junk gets taken care of first.

A lot of ARs would be unnecessary, if landowners would do something simple:

          Activate Autoreturn!

Most junk would be gone in a matter of a few hours or minutes.

[jwenting]

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Marigold Devin wrote:

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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

Do Abuse Reports work?

We get an automatic acknowledgement, which tells us that we will never be told of any action taken. The TOS is the same.

I've seen one incident I reporting--replicating prims spewing particles, and dragging down sim/physics frame rates--carrying on for over 24 hours.

Is it worth bothering making a report? All the evidence I have is that it's not worth the trouble. Nothing happens. And this is pretty clear evidence of nothing.

 

---

Out here in my real life, there were problems with youths causing a nuisance in the neighbourhood.  My neighbours talked about it with me, complaining that the police never did anything about the problem, but when I asked the same neighbours if they had actually reported the problems to the police it turned out that they had not.  How, therefore, could the police know there was a problem.?

Same applies in Second Life. 

Anything that is wrong is worth reporting.  If it doesn't get acted on straightaway, it's probably because there are bigger problems going on elsewhere and/or the abuse report office is not manned 24/7 by a team of people, or even the right people (speculation).

I'd say report it if you feel it's worth reporting.  It's better than not reporting and LL not being aware of the problem, wouldn't you say?

---

decent analogy. However I've filed over the last year at least 6 reports about vandalism and destruction of property with the police here in town and was literally told to "just ignore it, it's children having fun" (and that was a report about $20k in property damage).

[jwenting]

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Tari Landar wrote:

Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. There doesn't always seem to be rhyme or reason behind either. I am sure there is, I just don't know what it is

LL has never been consistant on any large scale. They've also never been fully inconsistant on any large scale.

Clear as mud, ain't it?

I say report what you feel is worthy of reporting, do whatever you can to fix whatever problems you can, without making them worse of course, and hope for the best. That's what I do. Not always successfully, but I try.

---

probably depends greatly on which Linden gets to see it first, and whether his coffee was strong enough when he got out of bed.

 Same as with anything else requiring human intervention in fact.

I've had ARs acted on in hours, after several previous ARs against the exact same item went unnoticed for weeks. Go figure.

[jwenting]

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Jadeclaw Denfu wrote:

 

A lot of ARs would be unnecessary, if landowners would do something simple:

         

A

ctivate Autoreturn!

Most junk would be gone in a matter of

a few hours or

minutes.

 

---

nope. Most rubbish that ends up in parcels and causes grief there or in other parcels is pushed there from public land with no autoreturn because object entry is enabled (which is in itself a good thing as it makes the use of vehicles possible) and those items seem to inherit the rights they have on the parcel they were first rezzed on.

So having autoreturn set on your land, or even having no-rez set on your land, is no guarantee you're not going to get prim litter.

And of course particle poofers used by griefers have a range of hundreds of meters, could be rezzed the next sim over or even further away and if the wind is favourable (for the griefer) you're still getting your sim filled with junk.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

48 hours since my original Abuse Report, which was before the weekend.

The problem persists.

The affected region has over 38000 scripts running and the sim is running at no more than 20% of normal speed.

Scripted objects do eventually respond to triggers, but it takes over 30 seconds for a door to open.

I very much fear that expressing my opinion on the Lindens responsible would trigger a pile-on by people with no obvious connection to the Labs, making some claim of being a moderator. But I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that Linden Labs is run by a bunch of programming prima donnas who still haven't realised that Second Life is a 24/7 internet service.

(I could replace everything after "is run by" with two simple words.)

[ImaTest1488314069]

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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot wrote:

48 hours since my original Abuse Report, which was before the weekend.

The problem persists.

The affected region has over 38000 scripts running and the sim is running at no more than 20% of normal speed.

Scripted objects do eventually respond to triggers, but it takes over 30 seconds for a door to open.

I very much fear that expressing my opinion on the Lindens responsible would trigger a pile-on by people with no obvious connection to the Labs, making some claim of being a moderator. But I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that Linden Labs is run by a bunch of programming 

prima donnas

who still haven't realised that Second Life is a 24/7 internet service.

(I could replace everything after "is run by" with two simple words.)

---

Sorry you're continuing to have problems.

I've had mixed experiences with ARs. It's rare for me to file one. In your case, I would have done just as you did.

In fact I have done, just as you did. Twice I've encountered a problem very similar. Once it happened on a Thursday night/Friday morning. That one took until the following Monday evening to be fixed. The other one started on a Tuesday evening and was back to normal by Thursday morning.(before that, actually, but I hadn't been online Wednesday night to see it, I was told it was fine).

I am not saying the day it appears to happen plays any sort of role. it very well may not. But it IS entirely possible, that it might. Not that I agree with that sort of process. But we already know there is very, very limited staff on from Friday through Monday morning, so I wouldn't rule that out. Still think they should have people available on the weekends for this kind of stuff. It's a terrible nuisance.

 

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

I beg to differ.

Case at hand: The Boulito-Incident.
http://sl.jadeclaw.de/Snapshot_383.png
What happened:
A griefer dumped hundreds of yellow balls onto Shermerville,
these balls have a peculiar kind of motion,
using rounding errors to move into 'No-Entry'-parcels.
The key-point here is, Autoreturn took care of these balls
on Linden-land AND on all private parcels, where Autoreturn was active.
The balls only remained on the borders of parcels with Autoreturn off,
producing a ton of red particle balls and a deafening noise.

I travel a lot, so I see a lot, also a lot of junk dumped on public and private land,
and where the junk remained, Autoreturn is always off.
The latest cases (Goonsqad cubes, the rotating genital cube @ Shelef,
the rotating junk @ Sage, AnnMarie's automated abominations)
where all on land with Autoreturn switched off.

 Addendum: I just logged into my parcel @ Patagonia and what do I see:
A bunch of particle spammers, raining 'Say it with Pen**'-particles down on the ground below.
And guess where they were placed? On parcels with Autoreturn set to 0 (Off).
The majority of parcels are owned by Ravenglass and these are set to Autoreturn 1 Minute by default.
Result: No junk gets deposited there.

 

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

It may have helped that I eventually submitted a support ticket based on the secondary effects: general region lag associated with a huge number of scripts. My original AR seemed to have been ignored. The Linden who checked on the support ticket apparently escalated that to an AR which was acted on. But I had waited.

Original AR: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 12:34:54

Support Ticket: Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:08:01

Response to Support Ticket: Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:15:08

(All above dates/times in PST, aka SLT)

Of course, the Governance Team never says anything. I was wondering if there even any point in logging in before around 09:00 Monday.

 

[Mister Acacia]

My personal experience is mixed. I have reported griefers/attackers and after some short time (days) I see no evidence of them again, not even the sake kind of griefing/attacks.

But then I have been reporting objects on premium land for several weeks, including the parcel owner, with no apprent response. Live chat was useless, and the objects remain, affecting at least two Linden home regions.

Sometimes it makes me wonder what benefit I'm getting out of my premium account if I have to put up with this. Oh sure, I could move, but why should I have to resort to that?

Sorry for ranting, but it is what it is, my experiences with abuse reporting. At least I didn't mention the hundreds (thousands?) of ARs made on someone who keeps abusing one of our support groups, for whom no apparent action is being taken.