How do you feel if strangers come into your SL home unexpectedly?

[HeathcliffMontague]

It depends. When I was quite new and renting a place, I had some real griefers drop by all the time who would not leave. The same people all the time. All that noise in local chat is just not something you can simply ignore. I got the landlord to ban them. Second rental, a guy dropped in and just stood there for a long time. I said "can I help you?" His reply: So sorry, I used to rent here and have been out of SL for so long. Mind if I stay until I sort out my LMs? Me: Of course not, stay as long as you need to sort that out. He thanked me and left after a while.

In my first Linden home, a girl just dropped in. Quite new and confused. I helped her find her home and get her bearings, and we are still friends.

In my current skybox I returned from AFK only to find some demon avi trying to push me out of my own window. That annoyed me, so I changed the orb which was only used to keep track of visitors to  eject after 30 secs, and banned the person.

I usually have an open house at ground level on my Mainland plot (not currently, setting up something new. But open access/no rezzing). My skybox way above has several floors, and orbs with different levels and reach. I don't mind anyone using my stuff when I'm not around. But enter certain floors, and you'll get a warning and be ejected if you don't turn around or leave. 

That's the way I do it, but I have full respect for those who just want to have full security. Just try to use orbs rather than banlines if you can.

[Beth Macbain]

1 minute ago, Luna Bliss said:

Unfortunately, more often than not the "combine harvester" is an over-sized appendage on the wrong side of their pants...   

That can be fun, too! 

Several years ago, I had a naked guy TP onto my land. I was in a rotten mood and let him have it. To my surprise, he gave it right back to me, and included that maybe I change the picks on my profile from all having the LM to my house if I didn't want any visitors (I was absolutely oblivious to that, so I was actually thankful for the alert and changed them all). I was furious and wrote an entire blog post about the experience of the Naked Guy who had the nerve to get mad at me for not being welcoming. He saw it and still didn't back down, but in a humorous way. He turned out to be a great guy and we had some fun times for a few weeks. He runs one of the large surf resort regions and never wore clothes.

He looked really good naked.

Good times.

[Luna Bliss]

8 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

17 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Unfortunately, more often than not the "combine harvester" is an over-sized appendage on the wrong side of their pants...   

That can be fun, too! 

Not for me!
Over the years I have experienced that those who have no boundaries regarding sexuality & insensitively assume others don't either are often the most invasive people one could ever meet, on all levels.

[Selene Gregoire]

11 hours ago, ArgontheDevil Ormega said:

Depends on the parcel.  If I have a place that is intended to be open to the public I don't set security at all.  I just lock it down to prevent griefing.  If a bot appears I set the land to damage for a bit, shoot the intruder and then turn damage off again.  If it is a parcel I don't want the public on, I have a security orb set to send home instantly.  Of course if the land next door is for sale and I feel like a bit of fun I put a fence up about a meter in from the parcel line and set the orb to instant home.  Then when people look at the place for sale and don't bother to sensibly check for the real boundries of the land, they will sort of wander into the security system.  (Insane giggling as appropriate.)  After all, if they are looking to buy a parcel you would expect them to look at its boundaries first.

Which can be done by right clicking the terrain and selecting edit. No one needs walk around looking at boundaries. You are, flat out, griefing people. Not cool. Not funny.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Selene Gregoire

[Adamburp Adamczyk]

25 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

That can be fun, too! 

Several years ago, I had a naked guy TP onto my land. I was in a rotten mood and let him have it. To my surprise, he gave it right back to me, and included that maybe I change the picks on my profile from all having the LM to my house if I didn't want any visitors (I was absolutely oblivious to that, so I was actually thankful for the alert and changed them all). I was furious and wrote an entire blog post about the experience of the Naked Guy who had the nerve to get mad at me for not being welcoming. He saw it and still didn't back down, but in a humorous way. He turned out to be a great guy and we had some fun times for a few weeks. He runs one of the large surf resort regions and never wore clothes.

He looked really good naked.

Good times.

The trick to solving that is simple.  Most of my picks all used to lead to a water sim called Lembeck.  So anyone being nosy would wind up 4000m in the sky and freefall, all the way down, and ker-splosh.  The gift was a free bath.

[Selene Gregoire]

8 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

My point was that it is difficult. I welcome people who just wander in uninvited. Other posts in this thread make it clear that I'm not alone. I cannot be there most of the time to invite passersby in, even though they are very welcome. Others don't welcome strangers wandering in. How is an explorer to know the difference? As I said above, I'll put up a welcome sign. Let others put up signs saying what they welcome or don't welcome.

What I wonder is this: If people don't welcome strangers wandering in, why do they leave you land open to the public? They can easily keep strangers out without any misunderstandings just by limiting access to a group or to named accounts. If that's what they want, why don't they just use the free, easy-to-use tools that come with land?

It's really quite simple. It is personal space. Stay out unless invited in. Full stop.

[Amina Sopwith]

Just now, Adamburp Adamczyk said:

The trick to solving that is simple.  Most of my picks all used to lead to a water sim called Lembeck.  So anyone being nosy would wind up 4000m in the sky and freefall, all the way down, and ker-splosh.  The gift was a free bath.

What's nosy about clicking on a pick? I thought the whole point of them was to recommend places to people? 

[Cinos Field]

1 minute ago, Selene Gregoire said:

It's really quite simple. It is personal space. Stay out unless invited in. Full stop.

It's often impossible to tell what space in SL is a personal residence and what isn't. You really might want to use said tools, or perhaps put up one of those angry signs about trespassers.

[Luna Bliss]

Boundaries between humans...isn't it all just so......interesting.

[Beth Macbain]

7 minutes ago, Adamburp Adamczyk said:

The trick to solving that is simple.  Most of my picks all used to lead to a water sim called Lembeck.  So anyone being nosy would wind up 4000m in the sky and freefall, all the way down, and ker-splosh.  The gift was a free bath.

I found a place called No Where that is some sort of black void with a monster or something. All my picks are LMed there now. 

[Beth Macbain]

7 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

What's nosy about clicking on a pick? I thought the whole point of them was to recommend places to people? 

Exactly this. I couldn't exactly remain angry with him when my picks at the time were mostly sexual and accidentally included LMs to my house. 

[Selene Gregoire]

8 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

It's often impossible to tell what space in SL is a personal residence and what isn't. You really might want to use said tools, or perhaps put up one of those angry signs about trespassers.

If someone can't tell the difference they should do the right thing and stay out until given permission to enter unless otherwise posted. Let those who want strangers to feel free to abuse the privilege put up Welcome signs and let the rest of us be in peace without no trespassing signs.

Or we could all be reasonable human beings and respect each other by staying out of personal spaces unless given permission to be in them thus avoiding cluttering up the land with unwanted and unneeded ad farms that were banned years ago.

[Cinos Field]

14 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

If someone can't tell the difference they should do the right thing and stay out until given permission to enter unless otherwise posted. Let those who want strangers to feel free to abuse the privilege put up Welcome signs and let the rest of us be in peace without no trespassing signs.

Or we could all be reasonable human beings and respect each other by staying out of personal spaces unless given permission to be in them thus avoiding cluttering up the land with unwanted and unneeded ad farms that were banned years ago.

The problem is that you're expecting people to follow real life norms in a space where almost none of the symbolism and patterns of real life are present. We recognize a home in real life, generally. But in SL it could be anything from a forest clearing (public access in real life!) to a cruise ship (where you're implicitly invited onboard in exchange for money).

I'm really not trying to say that you're wrong, I'm trying to say how you can avoid a lot of frustration. I'd imagine that if you get a lot of unwelcome visitors, your home doesn't look like what one would expect a home to look like in reality. So you have to compensate for it, or use the tools SL has provided you with.

Assuming that every area is private unless personally invited would be the death of social spaces in SL. A barn? A warehouse? A space station? I wouldn't enter any of those in real life, but that's how most clubs and lounges in SL look.

[JanuarySwan]

51 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

It's really quite simple. It is personal space. Stay out unless invited in. Full stop.

The right to privacy is a basic human right.  We all have the right to privacy.

I don't use security orbs because I hate messing around with them but I still prefer for people to ask before entering.  I stated I let my landlord's know I am not using a security orb and my landlord's have told me to let them know if I have any problems and they will take care of it.  I haven't had any major problems with people being over-friendly as though it were their home.  I'd prefer to put an invisi-prim in front of the door.  I have used invisi-prims in many homes as I like my privacy to dress plus create.  When I am creating, I'm concentrating and I don't want that concentration broken because making stuff in SL is not easy.  The creator's can make it look easy but it is far from it.    

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

I like it when strangers drop by. Either they're going to be fun and interesting, or they're going to be jerks and I get the pleasure of releasing some stress by cussing them out then orbiting them into space. 

I have a tracker thingie that sends me an offline when someone drops by when I'm not home. I wish I could have something like a Nest cam so I could watch what people do. That would be fun!

A guy I know keeps mounted heads of his girlfriends on his wall.  These are the actual avatars, who have agreed to remain on line, seated on this special sort of poser that hides their body but sticks their head through the wall.  They're a sort of specialized "slave cage", I guess.

You could use an alt and something like this to serve as a "remote cam" to see what visitors do when your main account is off line.

It wouldn't even have to be creepy.  You could just wear a full body alpha mask.

[Beth Macbain]

1 minute ago, Cinos Field said:

The problem is that you're expecting people to follow real life norms in a space where almost none of the symbolism and patterns of real life are present.

Why is that, though? SL looks a lot like RL to me... or a pixelated version of it anyway. A home is a home. I assume it's private. Maybe if it's something other than a house, like a space station or warehouse, but something that is clearly living quarters feels different to me. I don't know what makes the rules different in SL. I'm not disagreeing with you, just wondering about the why. 

[Beth Macbain]

2 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

You could use an alt and something like this to serve as a "remote cam" to see what visitors do when your main account is off line.

But then I'd have to wait around at my computer for strangers to drop in. I want to be able to open an app on my phone when my tracker gets triggered. 

I want my SL to be just like my RL*, damn it! 🤪

*I really don't.

[Adamburp Adamczyk]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

But then I'd have to wait around at my computer for strangers to drop in. I want to be able to open an app on my phone when my tracker gets triggered. 

I want my SL to be just like my RL*, damn it! 🤪

*I really don't.

*revs the combine harvester*

[Cinos Field]

1 minute ago, Beth Macbain said:

Why is that, though? SL looks a lot like RL to me... or a pixelated version of it anyway. A home is a home. I assume it's private. Maybe if it's something other than a house, like a space station or warehouse, but something that is clearly living quarters feels different to me. I don't know what makes the rules different in SL. I'm not disagreeing with you, just wondering about the why. 

 

Well, I've personally never had a stranger visit when living in a house-like house, like the linden homes, for example. They only tend to arrive when your home isn't entirely recognisable as one, in my experience.

Or course, our social groups and living sims are probably entirely different, but I can't imagine that unwelcome visitors are that common in white-picket-fence style homes or apartments.

 

[Selene Gregoire]

34 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

The problem is that you're expecting people to follow real life norms in a space where almost none of the symbolism and patterns of real life are present. We recognize a home in real life, generally. But in SL it could be anything from a forest clearing (public access in real life!) to a cruise ship (where you're implicitly invited onboard in exchange for money).

I'm really not trying to say that you're wrong, I'm trying to say how you can avoid a lot of frustration. I'd imagine that if you get a lot of unwelcome visitors, your home doesn't look like what one would expect a home to look like in reality. So you have to compensate for it, or use the tools SL has provided you with.

Assuming that every area is private unless personally invited would be the death of social spaces in SL. A barn? A warehouse? A space station? I wouldn't enter any of those in real life, but that's how most clubs and lounges in SL look.

You're barking up the wrong tree. I've been in SL long enough to know how it works. You are making a boat load of incorrect assumptions on top of making things far more complicated than they need be. I already "avoid a lot of frustration" simply by not going to places that are not open to the public (those places are usually group only) and by asking permission to be in someone's personal space if they haven't given it. And by respecting their want/need for personal space to be personal.

You are telling me that I can't have my store and my home on the same parcel AND have other people respect my personal space. I call bs.

I do not live on mainland.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Selene Gregoire

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

3 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

 

Well, I've personally never had a stranger visit when living in a house-like house, like the linden homes, for example. They only tend to arrive when your home isn't entirely recognisable as one, in my experience.

Or course, our social groups and living sims are probably entirely different, but I can't imagine that unwelcome visitors are that common in white-picket-fence style homes or apartments.

 

I've had the experience more than once in very "normal" homes, on Mainland and on private regions. You have been lucky, I guess. 

[Beth Macbain]

3 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Or course, our social groups and living sims are probably entirely different, but I can't imagine that unwelcome visitors are that common in white-picket-fence style homes or apartments.

In the early days of Bellisseria, it was quite common to have people drop in on my houseboat, but that's slowed down now that the continent has gotten so huge. 

My mainland home is clearly a house, but it's right between a Linden road and the SLRR, and I get all sorts of visitors. I enjoy it but I can see how that would anger some people. 

[Cinos Field]

5 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

You're barking up the wrong tree. I've been in SL long enough to know how it works. You are making a boat load of incorrect assumptions on top of making things far more complicated than they need be. I already "avoid a lot of frustration" simply by not going to places that are not open to the public (those places are usually group only) and by asking permission to be in someone's personal space if they haven't given it. And by respecting their want/need for personal space to be personal.

You are telling me that I can't have my store and my home on the same parcel AND have other people respect my personal space. I call bs.

I do not live on mainland.

Not at all, that's not what I'm saying. But I do remember a few shops where they have private homes next to the shop, and the buildings look exactly the same from the outside. I can't name any names here, but when I shop there, I see people wander to the wrong one all the time.

Also, coincidentally, in real life - if a shop owner lives on the same property as the shop is on, there's typically a sign reading "private" or similar on the home part of it, because otherwise people might assume there's more shop there.

It is, of course, also entirely possible that your sim just happens to attract an inordinate amount of terribly rude people, but it's not an experience I've ever really had in our virtual wonderworld.

[Gilgamesh Alpha]

I really don't care, especially if I'm not in my house at the time.

[Maitimo]

I have a home in Bellisseria and I would welcome visitors. I did have a few to my original Belli home last year, even before I converted it into a pub. I think @Beth Macbain is right though; as the continent has gotten so much bigger it seems to be less "neighbourly" now than it was then.