Block instant messages sent by banned users to visitors
KarlRichard Resident
A resident who has been banned from a parcel/region should not be able to message other residents on that very parcel/region. (Exceptions could be, that they are on their friend list or have been contacted before yet.)
Reason: This could help to prevent more drama and protect businesses. A griefer who is banned from our shipyard is frequently camping next to it and messaging our customers defaming us trying to deter them from buying our ships. I'm sure we are not the only ones who have this problem.
Edit: Additionally I would suggest that a banned resident should not be able to see other residents on the land he is banned from, neither inworld nor on the minimap. (Thank you @Bavid Dailey for this idea!) I think, this would make the "work" of any griefer harder, too.
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Wicked Nightfall
Lindens don't care!! They do not care about your safety in game or in real life. You are asking for something Lindens never will do as it costs money and Lindens want all of that for themselves.
All that aside - the non-existent abuse department is the problem.
If LL cared they would invest to protect the safety of their customers.
Skimming the feedback and the forums it sure seems the biggest issue is a lack of safety on SL.
AlettaMondragon Resident
They could still see who enters and leaves the region, the key here being the region, and you can't control anyone's access to anything (including data) on the region level unless you own the region or have estate manager rights. The other problem is that the IM system has nothing to do with the parcel someone is on at any time, again that might work on the region level but not on a parcel.
By the way if someone who is banned from a parcel couldn't IM anyone who is currently on that parcel, should it work the other way, too? If you are on the always allowed list of a parcel, should you still be able to IM people who have blocked you personally if they're on the parcel?
KarlRichard Resident
AlettaMondragon Resident Yes, but with the same reasoning you could shut down the entire ban feature in general, since everyone simply can create new accounts and continue the griefing.
There simply is no perfect method to stop griefing. All what is possible is to increase the effort of griefing and lessen the fun for the griefers by making it harder to manage. That's why the ban feature makes sense and that's why I posted my suggestion to extend it to first-messaging.
AlettaMondragon Resident
KarlRichard Resident I get the point but if you think about it, the ban feature alone is really not enough, and there's also the problem you can only hope the griefer gets bored sooner than they create more than 300 accounts just to harass you. Then managing the ban list will get really difficult, even with an orb, and they could quickly bypass the suggested features of not being able to see the names of people on the land or IMing them.
Bavid Dailey
I sympathise with your frustration, but think it through. Visitor comes to your parcel, their name is noted, after said visitor leaves, should your adversary be banned from contacting the visitor? For how long? Forever ? (that's not a serious suggestion, just a thought experiment ).
If you want to argue that the banned avatar shouldn't be able to see who is visiting your parcel, that's another story. But a determined adversary would have an alt, or alts who visits , collects names and passes to the adversary. Or, even a friend who isn't banned. So that's not viable either.
I don't support your proposal because the unintended consequences are worse (on the whole) for the collective community. People expect a lot from banning, more than can be sensibly supported. Sad, but true.
KarlRichard Resident
Only for the while that the visitors spend on the very parcel/region. I think everything else would be technically too extensive and - as you already mentioned - ideed have other negative unintended consequences.
I am fully aware, that a resident can note the names of visitors and message them later when they have left. But this is an extra effort a griefer has to accomplish and an extra source of mistake he can slip up to. He has to put far more attention into his destructive "work".
Compare it to a locked door in RL. It is not a too big obstacle to an intruder, but it still takes its time and effort to overcome it. If he comes without appropriate tools he might fail and have to give it up.
Thank you for the idea that banned residents shouldn't be able to see visitors, that would be an additional effort, a griefer would have to overcome.
AlettaMondragon Resident
KarlRichard Resident Don't underestimate them. Learning to work around this would take a few minutes for such people. And they can just make another alt and continue while you sleep. And they can use your store group if you have one and it has less than 5000 members. It should be much easier to report them and expect LL to deal with them, but I know, I know... I can see that with the account theft issue too and some other things. They never get resolved.
Caelan Whimsy
KarlRichard Resident To carry on with your analogy: there's nothing stopping someone from yelling through the locked door, which it sounds like you're asking for. I used to run a roleplay community and I get how irritating it is to have someone standing outside your space badmouthing you for whatever reason or for no reason. But even stopping griefers can't become more important than other people's free use of SL.
KarlRichard Resident
Caelan Whimsy Let's suppose it is a sound-proof door then. ;) Of course I don't want to lessen other people's free use of SL. But why would a non-griefer want to contact someone (for the first time) on land he is banned from?