Topic

Neighborhood Surveillance (or some way to hold people accountable)

As the organizer of a community group for Hauki Seeks Manor, I'm at my wits' end when it comes to dealing with griefers. It's really the typical stuff going on--piggies being stolen and notes being taken from the bulletin board--but it's gotten out of hand. We had over 30 piggies in our building (we have 19 floors plus a lobby) but are now down to under 10. Our bulletin board used to be regularly covered with 5-10 notes at a time, but now it's almost always blank because of someone raiding it as soon as anything is (re)posted.

We knew who was behind the griefing at first (someone who lives outside the neighborhood, of course), but now it seems that he's not the only one doing it. Lately there's been another outsider who's been trying to trick newbies into letting her into their apartment so that she can steal their belongings.

I know most people aren't open to the idea of locking the neighborhood to outsiders (even though I think that would be wonderful, because people who don't live there really have no business to be there unless they're invited in by a friend), and I know any mechanism that would let us punish these people would just get abused... So instead of coming up with something that would let us directly stop or punish the actions, my idea is something that would let us know exactly who is doing this crap and what they're doing! I want some kind of "surveillance" mechanism that would tell us who took piggies from our building and when or who cleared the notes from the bulletin board and when. If we could only have some irrefutable proof, then I think it would be much, much easier to confront the griefers about it or be able to file abuse reports.

I know there are going to be piggynappers who are quick to respond, "But it's legal to take pigs! Anything in public places is fair game!" I don't want to illegalize pig capturing. But it is NOT fair game for you to come in and ruin the communities that we work hard to create just for marginal profit or for your own twisted satisfaction. It is NOT fair game when it takes no effort to wipe the bulletin board clean but it takes us all a lot of tender love and care to write our notes and post them. FAIR GAME would be a game where it's equally easy for us to thwart you as it is for you to thwart us. If we could just have some kind of accountability, I think that would be a big step towards making Glitch a fairer game for communities who want nothing more than to share gifts, notes, and piggies with their neighbors in peace.

Thoughts?

Berskie

Posted 14 months ago by Berskie Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Um a question about your pigs disappearing. Were they being fed? Regularly? If not then they just died or fled the place.  I have no idea about the note I just know that unless there is a tree around then a pig can't survive without someone feeding them all the time.
    Posted 14 months ago by Silaqui Subscriber! | Permalink
  • No, a specific Glitch was stealing them. We have confirmed that. He admits it himself. We've always posted fliers reminding people to feed their floors' pigs, and people were doing well about that. We had around 30 pigs in our building for several days without any of them dying.

    But you see? The fact that you doubt we have the problem is exactly what I want to eliminate! If we had some kind of record for when people take pigs off of streets, this conversation wouldn't even be happening. I could simply show you who stole our pigs and when.

    Also, I know for a fact that the same Glitch was stealing the notes from our board. He would tear down all of our notes except for his own "apology" letter that he posted regarding the pigs. We have witnesses and he even left a gravestone right in front of our bulletin board once.

    The fact is that this is being done by griefers. Piggies are not going unfed and notes don't walk away on their own. I want some kind of record about the actions taking place in neighborhood streets so we can simply point to those and PROVE to others what we in the community already know.
    Posted 14 months ago by Berskie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • -1000
    Users should never be in the business of policing other users. Once you track down someone hog-tying a lot of pigs, they may have an acceptible reason: repopulating empty streets, finishing a quest, etc. Or it just may be a fairly new person thinking "extra piggies." So if you take vigilante action against them, how are you making the Glitch community more friendly?

    If you think that someone is doing something that violates the community guidelines, report them to the TS staff. If you think the game mechanics are allowing destructive behaviors, post an idea to fix it in this forum. The surveillance you are suggesting will give greifers the means to follow your actions all over Ur. Do you really think that this will help improve things?
    Posted 14 months ago by KhaKhonsu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Did you read my post? I don't want to punish people if they took a pig from our building innocently, but there are specific players who are taking our pigs (and just as importantly, taking our NOTES) for no reason other than harassment. Don't even try to paint me as some kind of villain here who's making the game less friendly. I'm trying to do everything I can to make the game MORE friendly, but griefers are persistently working against me and the other members of our community.

    The surveillance I'm suggesting isn't for every single street--just for neighborhood streets. And it's not to punish ordinary players, it's so we can prove that SOME players are systematically violating the community guidelines. An abuse report doesn't do much good if you can't prove who stole your belongings and when.
    Posted 14 months ago by Berskie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would just suggest having the buildings locked to non-residents. Of course, if your problem is internal you're still hosed, but hey, can't win 'em all.
    Posted 14 months ago by Rilebre Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Players conducting surveillance on other players is simply a witch hunt.  If you think someone is causing problem use the Report Abuse feature to let staff investigate.  They already have access to the information that you are requesting.

    You don't have to have access to that information to file the report. 
    Posted 14 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think the issue is there's no definite way to tell who's doing the abuse. Even if they admit to it, what's that get you? You can report them, but what proof do you really have? And worse still, you can't report someone if you don't know who's doing it. But, for the most part, I agree players shouldn't police other players. That just invites problems. With any luck the mods will be able to tell what's being going on in your area and will be able to take action if they deem it necessary. Best of luck.
    Posted 14 months ago by Rilebre Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Windborn: I hadn't considered that the devs probably already have the information I'm requesting, so I guess I'll go ahead and file an abuse report. Thanks for the input.

    I think a lot of people who haven't run into griefers are skeptical of the people who have--but trust me, we're not paranoid or on a "witch hunt." Also, I didn't mean surveillance in the sense of following specific glitchen everywhere they go--I meant just keeping track of what happens within the building. People seem to be reading too far into my suggestions. I just want to keep our neighborhood safe from the people who are intentionally being disruptive.
    Posted 14 months ago by Berskie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Another idea that could be brought forward is: If you are not a resident of that housing area, you cannot remove ANYTHING in that housing area other than to harvest, pet and feed what is there. Notes cannot be removed except by the OWNER of those notes. I too believe that the residents of the housing area should have more control of their neighborhood.

    Now sadly, the one tricking newbies into letting someone in their houses to steal stuff... not sure how to deal with that other than make newbies aware of the situation and to not let strangers in their houses. I don't like the knocking notification to be honest. But the following are some ideas:

    Possibly another idea that could be submitted is being able to set "permissions" for someone to be able to pick up or remove things in the houses. I play Everquest 2 and that game does have an ability to do that. We can set our houses up as public visiting only, friend, or trustee. Public visiting only allows just that.. to visit and to click on things to see the name and description of the item(s) but you cannot move or interact with them other than the sales boxes (you can buy from them). Friend status,  the person can interact with some things but cannot take or move anything, and trustee allows you to do anything the owner can do other than take heirloom items (those only you or alts on the same account can take out of the house but can be moved around the house) and no trade items (they can be moved throughout the house but not taken out of the house). We can also set up our houses to receive no visitors at all.

    What would be nice is to set someone to "friend" status that will allow them to harvest, pet, water, etc but NOT take anything out of the house other than the harvests of meat, grain, milk, and stuff off the trees. I think if we had that we would have a bit more control of our houses and let us relax in our housing communities.
    Posted 14 months ago by Casombra Amberrose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 for the "permissions" idea
    +1 also to having notes removed only by their original authors

    Alternatively, maybe notes in bulletin boards could have time limits, that is, they disappear after 24 hrs, or something like that. Or make the player pay some currants to have the message appear for a specified time frame.

    I know there's a limit on how often a player can piggy-nap a piggy in one location (or floor). You could actually be dealing with more than one piggy-napper here. It is kind of hard to police a whole housing area, unless you hire another glitch to act as a security guard. 
    Posted 14 months ago by roderick ordonez Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @ roderick yep, good idea on the bulletin boards. I like the idea of a few currents to set up specified times so the notes are not sitting there for ages... and make the time renewable if the person wants the message up longer.
    Posted 14 months ago by Casombra Amberrose Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think it would be really helpful if non-residents couldn't remove notes or pigs! But I do think notes should be able to stay on the bulletin board indefinitely, until taken down. I also think that people who didn't post the notes should be able to remove them (some notes may be offensive, or someone may move out of the neighborhood without remember to take their notes down), but ONLY if they live in the neighborhood and maybe if the game could tell you who did it. That way there wouldn't be any anonymous griefing taking place.
    Posted 14 months ago by Berskie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've seen people gang up on other people on sites that weren't even gaming sites.  You don't have to be a griefer for someone to start a mob against you. 

    The Report Abuse function keeps this kind of "pay-backs" and retribution out of the hands of players, where  it is easily misused, and in the hands of TS staff who can decide in a much more uninvolved way what needs to be done to keep their website safe for the kinds of players they want to attract.
    Posted 14 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • not everyone wandering around your street is a mischief maker.

    sometimes i go into the residential neighborhoods just to pet the trees and feed the pigs. nit even my neighborhood.

    i was on one street and a guy followed me and i think he though i was up to no good.

    he found me at the end of his street fertilidusting their wood tree and let me be.
    Posted 14 months ago by flask Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not that I am doing this, but: if they're taking the pigs to donate them, is it technically abuse?
    Posted 14 months ago by mirth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @flask: Of course no one would care if all you did was pet, feed, and nibble the pigs. It's when other players start taking the pigs to sell for profit that people get upset. And my biggest peeve is when people take our notes. There's not even profit to be made there, they're just trying to be disruptive!

    @mirth: It's a moot point because you can't donate pigs anymore. But IMHO, if you constantly steal pigs to sell instead of hatching and raising them properly, then that is abuse. Especially if those pigs came from neighborhood streets.
    Posted 14 months ago by Berskie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Before you start seriously thinking about requesting all kinds of restrictions on who can interact with things in your neighborhood, be aware of the potential for this to bite you in the butt:

        If you really lock the whole street/block/building to residents only, other friends can never visit your house.
        The note that was posted by someone who quit the game 2 months ago can't be removed from the bulletin board.
        The five fruit trees on the block can't be changed for variety, because everyone living there is new and doesn't have botany.
        Someone decides to grief you by moving 50 piggies on to your street, and you now can't get friends from outside the neighborhood to help you move them.

    I'm sure I could come up with a lot more, and a real griefer would have more ideas in this line than me.  Changing major game mechanics is a very risky business; there are usually unwanted side-effects.
    Posted 14 months ago by KhaKhonsu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Berskie,
    My unsolicited advise is to wait for the implementation of the Group Halls.
    Posted 14 months ago by Mal'akh Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Surveillance is not a good option.

    Slight limited actions for non-neighbors might be a better option. Like, no napping piggies if you don't live there. If there are too many pigs, the neighbors can move them.

    Also, the 'permission' system is a good idea... not sure if it would be easy to implement though.

    About the notes, that is another problem entirely... people have been arguing about sticky notes and other ideas, but having only the owner remove them would cause a massive amount of unwanted notes, I guess.
    Posted 14 months ago by BlackPads Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think your concerns are completely legitimate, but like a number of people have said, I don't think it's surveillance that will solve the problem. I think a permissions system would go a long way to reducing this sort of griefing issue, but it would take some time, probably, to implement and perfect. I was surprised when I first started playing that there *wasn't* some sort of permissions system with notes and residential areas to begin with. Perhaps there should be a way for the writer of a note to "lock" it to themselves or to a group of people they specify. This could also happen with animals. If a stranger tries to take a "community" animal, they would get the message, "This piggie doesn't belong to you!" or some other statement.

    But like BlackPads said, there could be a problem with one person spamming notes and other people not being able to remove them, and stuff like that. That's griefing, too.

    The only other solution I can think of is: don't get attached to the animals you have at your block. They may disappear or die, and you'll have to hatch or buy another one.  It's just a game. *shrug* The note problem is annoying, though.
    Posted 14 months ago by Laerwen Subscriber! | Permalink