Heralding Personal Abuse

It's easy to click on a spam prim and anonymously report the abuse and delete the prim.

Insulting, intolerant personal chat is still a violation of Second Life's Terms of Service or Community Standards, but it is a harder to deal with. SL Mentors and Greeters are often trained to take the following tactics, in about this order:

~~Chat a comment. The offender may simply be clueless, so you are a teacher.
::You: Avatar, please don't use that rude word here.

~~IM a comment.
::You: Avatar, please don't use that rude word. It violates terms of service and can get you banned.

~~File an abuse report.
Using the Abuse Reporter tool located under the Help menu in the in-world tool bar. You might click the avatar and "more" until the "report Abuse" panel appears, but that option is not available on all viewers.
Every Abuse Report is individually investigated, and the identity of the reporter is kept strictly confidential. After you file an AR report, you get a confirming e-mail. The accused only finds out about it IF the report is complete and shows a real rule violation.
Encourage everyone present at a violation to file and Abuse Report - many reports for the same area generates faster action from the Lindens. Here is a walk through on filing an AR, with instructions for other actions, too.

~~Mute Avatar
~~Eject avatar from the area
~~Ban avatar from the area

Since mute, eject and ban is wholly voluntary, there is no repercussion other than the questions other residents of Second Life will ask. Go ahead an answer individuals, even write a note card explaining yourself, you might even get through to the avatar. But do not to publicly say why you are banning someone: your publishing that someone is "guilty" in any form (Group notices, for example) without solid evidence opens you to real civil charges of libel or slander.

I've heard it commonly held that "AR's do no good" Yes and no. Anyone can make a new avatar, and there are ways around Linden Lab's limits on avatar numbers, so griefers can simply return in another avatar. But AR after AR after AR (from many people) and eject after eject after eject (from YOUR area) and canceled avatar after canceled avatar after canceled avatar (from Linden Labs), the mischievous DO get the message and lose interest and take their abuse elsewhere.

Some avatars just need training and attention brought to the rules. Others, though, we can best hope that they take it elsewhere. Maybe some abusers might come to their senses and play nice.

Love, Arth