Second Thoughts

What's Wrong With the Mentor Principles

There are so many things in Second Life that need work, so many things that are wrong, that it almost seems a luxury to fiddle around making "Principles for Mentors," but that's what the Lindens are up to now, so we're forced to respond.

Of course, I could make the rather pointed statement that we need "Principles for Lindens" before we could even begin to outline "Principles for Mentors," and among these might be things like, "Residents who become Lindens are required to refrain from major business, non-profit, media, or other projects in their roles as residents, as these present a conflict of interest given their connection to Linden Lab." Indeed, until we see that "Principles for Lindens" could be cleaned up so that it could beget "Principles of Mentors," it's really premature to inflict "Principles for Mentors" on us. Of course, I think I'm probably one of the very few in SL who even cares about his abstract issue...

I care, because it's abundantly clear that the Lindens have every intention of turning this awful system into resident governance. It's the horror everyone purports to fear and to fight against unto the death, in favour of their own anarchism, and yet it's the horror everyone is now letting seep in with their daily streaming world. As I put it on Robin's blog, where this stuff was first floated:

 

"The chief tragedy here is that it utterly ruins for now the possiblities of authentic grassroots government by residents, or even any kind of group governance. Instead of governance -- which should include among its functions the aid of immigrants/newbies -- we have a phalanx of Linden-filtered and caste-filtered mentors/helpers/greeters who take on the functions of world governance illegitimately, without even acclaim, let alone democratic vote. Having a mentor become a cult leader among newbies with their own named group of 77 isn't a substitute for being *elected by peers* or even *acclaimed by a wider cross section of the diverse community*."

First, I should make it clear that I've always held the opinion that the entire system of Mentors should be scrapped. Dismantled. And greeters/helpers/instructors, too. They are artifacts of MMORPG game culture, artifacts of the Middle Ages and various hierarchical systems and societies, and they have no place in an open, free, modern world. Their *functions* can and should be adopted by a host of volunteer organizations and commercial businesses created by residents for different purposes -- but as a caste society, as a restrictive guild system, they need to be scrapped.

In RL, to use Philip's beloved example, when I come to Grand Central Station, I am not greeted by a phalanx of Mentors and Greeters who tell me all kinds of stuff like 'You Don't Need Land to Have Fun," and hurl landmarks to their stores where I am expected to come and spend my initial stash.  I don't telephone "Live Help" and get a series of sometimes laughably incompetent mediocrities, some of whom are about five minutes older than me in town. I don't resign myself to endless hours sitting with "Instructors" learning arcane information to create unnecessary skills.

No, I am greeted by...stores and kiosks. Where the owners *sell maps and handbooks*. I might ask a kindly soul, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" and he might reply with the old joke, "Practice, practice, practice!"

A taxi driver will make himself readily available...but for a price. There would be double-decker tour bus to acquaint myself with the city...but it will cost something. A fellow with a sandwhich board will stroll up and down 42nd Street...but the clothes or electronics he offers, while cheap, still cost something. Someone else might press a flyer into my hand to learn Word or get my Novell license or learn how to bar-tend -- but these courses will all cost me something.

Of course, somewhere there's probably some Big Apple consortium or Welcome Wagon that tries to make sure that there is information and help for tourists of various types, including very visible policemen in Time's Square. But the bulk of services needed for day-to-day life are offered *for pay*. It's understood that the free market does best in offering these services, especially competitively, and most people don't go complaining to the Mayor that there was no one available in Grand Central at 1:00 a.m. to spend hours explaining to them that the Bronx is up and the Battery's down, and Avenue of Americas is actually 6th Avenue.

It doesn't matter that there are good mentors in Second Life; sure, there are good mentors. What matters is that the whole premise of mentors is a bad one. It implies that Second Life is so complicated, so hard, so scary, so fraught with evils, that you need a special guide -- that Second Life is a quest, to kill monsters, from which you might not come back alive.

Baloney! Second Life is just second life -- and you already had plenty of preparation from it, without ever having played a single game -- it's called "First Life"!

Mentors abound in games -- wizards, game-masters, whatever they call them, they're a type. And a type that we're supposed to appreciate for their "selfless work" and "help to mankind" but who we secretly find annoying. Even at their best, they have a tendency toward being smug and condescending.

Mentors are supposed to be defending the soul of the game. But...they tend to defend their own "honour of uniform," i.e. they circle the wagons to protect their own. If one is criticized, you're apt to hear 10 others gang up on your and tell you that Mentors are wonderful, the group is wonderful, and that one you didn't like is just a bad egg. But...bad eggs flourish, and the whole system stinks, really, because it is a prototype of resident government that we didn't pick, didn't participate in, didn't get to discuss, didn't get to shape, and which has no accountability whatsoever. It's for these reasons that mentors tend not to serve the bulk of the population. And why should they? Service is not their credo; protection of their own superior status is their credo.

Let's parse the draft Mentors' Principles (I have no doubt this is yet another example of Linden push media where under the guise of "discussion," all that's happening is the waters of the masses are being tested to see how badly it sucks, but to push it nonetheless.)

Proposed Mentor Principles --Proposed by whom? And why would only Lindens and Mentors themselves get to discuss this in the mentors' section? Why not the rest of us? How about making this the first of a proposal system that proposes policies and not just features in the software?

We believe this important first connection can make all the difference in the early SL experience. By hanging out on Help Island, the Welcome Areas and other spaces in-world answering questions and handing out information, you provide a crucial step in weaving the Second Life community together.

Actually, many of us believe that the "first connection" is one that the user needs to pick himself, and many savvy users simply bypass all this meeter-greeter stuff as being the "lame" part of a new game, the horrid newbie phase that many people want to skip over. So, hands off my first connection please. You don't own it. I don't care if you don't get a second chance to make a first impression -- I don't want you at all.

Why are you hanging out in places where newbies stream in once...but can't get back to? Why let the randomness and brevity of the help island experience, and the randomness and often deliberate pranksterism and griefing of the Welcome Area, define your presentation?

It would make a lot more sense to do two other things: if you're going to have a system of mentors, have them be on their own parcel -- let people chose to come to them, and let them define the space and keep out the banana-phone clip players. But more importantly, let them fan out throughout SL, at clubs, large events, first land areas, etc. and not just official welcome areas, so that they can be really useful -- that is, if they're willing to drop their dumb MMORPG wizard crap and actually serve the public instead of acquiring more reputation enhancement points.

When you put your Mentor title on, you are representing the Second Life volunteers as a whole and the Mentor group in particular. Mentors embody all of the best things available in the Second Life community; keeping the following Principles in mind will empower you and your fellow Mentors to continue creating an even better Second Life for all.

This is by far the worst feature of these proposals. Mentors don't represent me, and I'm a volunteer, too. I'm an unofficial volunteer who spends many hours helping new people and providing subsidized rentals and activities areas. More to the point, I don't at all believe that Mentors "embody all the best things available in the SL community" -- this is the worst possible definition of someone who in fact often takes on this role for personal gain or fake altruism to appear as if he is doing good.

Mentors should not embody "what is best"; they should uphold what is best. See the difference? "What is best" is a universal value, and an abstraction, above us all. It pertains, regardless of whether any one person "embodies" it or not. Mentors are not an end in themselves. There is something higher, which is "the best of SL and what is best for SL". This higher power is not the Mentors; it is above them. Mentors should serve the public; not do all kinds of vain "embodying" of "what is best" as individuals. They aren't necessarily the best, and we don't even want those who we might imagine as "embodying the best" to be then adding to that bestness by helping newbies. No, there is "what is best" about SL -- its creativity, its helpful people, its opportunities -- as something higher than us all -- and there is the wish of this or that concrete person to articulate and embody these principles. This is a subtle but important distinction and one the framers of these principles are either deliberately or stupidly blind about. Mentors aren't what's best about SL. As a class, they are merely old people with a hankering to appear altruistic. They can exemplify the best of SL only when they stop serving their own vanity, their class vanity, and serve the newbie in articulating the highest principles of SL.

Community
Be inclusive, active, and encouraging. Demonstrate and communicate tolerance, respect and civility to all Residents. Promote a sense of community and foster the formation and growth of communities in Second Life, and with your fellow volunteers.

This part is the sort of cloying Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood stuff we're often force-fed in SL. SL is a big fucking place, people. It's not your little sandbox. It's not your village. Get over yourself. I don't need you to define "the communitY' as there are lots of communities and any larger, overarching community is something way bigger than you, or the concept of "Mentors".  Get off the fanboyz band wagon here. You're not needed to be inclusive, rounding up everybody to get into your posse, putting them all into Tateru Nino's cultic group. We don't need false Polyannas that sugarcoat the difficulties of SL especially in the early days. Communities foster their own growth, with their own leaders which they pick, not the Lindens. So get off it, already. The only thing you should foster is the realization of each person's possibilities, providing them with tools to enjoy the freedom and creativity of the world while also being a good neighbour. To the extent that any use whatsoever can be gotten from this ghastly class of know-it-alls, we could rely on them, I suppose, to disseminate the values of good neighbourliness -- I don't leave out giant plywood boxes for months on end to give my neighbours ulcers and eyebleeds; I don't put out hugely laggy scripts and particles; I don't build RIGHT SMACK on the property line; I experiment on builds in sandboxes then put them away; I don't come to big events with all my hoochies on turned up loud and talking and proud, etc. etc.

Frankly, I'm even reluctant to let these Mentors define what being a good neighbour is, so driven are they by self-interest.

The absolutely appalling show of fuck-you hedonism displayed now in the forums thread about PG vs. M behaviour is the hallmark of this corrupt outfit -- corrupt because the concept is corrupt, even if this or that individual is decent and tries to help.

Mentors who are furries or BDSM or want to appear nearly naked in their slave outfits with their pierced nips hanging out and all the rest are insisting, in typical fuck-you aggressive hedonistic SL fashion, that they should Do the Fuck What They Want. In fact, ReallyRick cites other mentors and Lindens as telling him that they should "do whatever they feel comfortable with". Newbies coming in who might want to take one giant step backwards if they were met by a bound and trussed and controlled Pony Girl are instructed to Be Tolerant. Bleh to all this.

Greeters should be neutral. Neutrality means PG. That means they should pocket their sexual preferences in this non-sexual space of greeting, which is hard work, and often involves vulnerable people. You don't turn sex on all day 24/7, it has its appropriate place in your life, alongside work or other pursuits. So why should SL have to be different, just because it's a lucid dream? Keep the whips and chains at home -- newbies didn't consent to play your RP and you should be the tolerant one and not inflict it on them, not insist that they "be tolerant".

Fostering communities with fellow volunteers? Why? We don't need this New Class to keep bonding and elevating itself above us. Dismantle it, replace a lot of these functions with paid contractors, or various dedicated groups of volunteers that are resident, not Linden run, and which don't require this ridiculously arbitrarily concept of "the clean Linden rap sheet". Cocoanut is as helpful as all get-out. What, she is sidelined 3 days for telling Siggy he's a foul-mouthed thug and engaging in sexual harassment -- and she can then never be a Mentor? that's ridiculous. This SL growth thing is a all-hands-on-deck affair. I can only HOPE that SL will grow so fast that it will just overwhelm this ridiculous fanboyz MMORPG system of wizards decided to spoon-feed newbies into commerce circles. In fact, it is already overwhelmed, and that's a good thing. Thank God for independent alternatives like NCI.

Education
Be helpful, answer questions. Communicate with your fellow Residents. Turn data into useful, relevant information. Provide information, not misinformation. Show other Residents how and when to report abuse. Learn from each other!

This sort of happy sounding crap avoids the obvious: the word LISTEN is never entered. How about LISTENING to the needs of newbies? HEARING what they need and want? SERVING them? Why is it all about me and my push media and my COMMUNICATING and not my LISTENING? What sort of wierd Newspeak are we talking here with this "turn data into useful, relevant information". Since when do you present server statistics to newbies anyway? What on earth does a seemingly useful statement like this really unpack as? Can't we just say, "keep explanations simple and geered toward the newbies' level of understanding?"

As for "misinformation," nobody admits to ever doing that! I'd word this completely differently:  "Be willing to admit your wrong." The other day I got one of those aggressive new Lindens who kept haranguing me and trying to set me straight and arguing with me that she was right and I was wrong about a perfectly ordinary and obvious group tools distinction between "set to group" and "share with group". This gal had clearly never been IN a group and wouldnt' know a returning prim unset to group if it bit her in the ass. I abuse-reported this Linden, not because she gave out incorrect information -- that happens, it's a big game, it takes awhile to learn, you never learn all of it, etc. I abuse-reported her because she wouldn't listen to the citation of the facts, wouldn't concede she might not know something, and kept aggressively insisting not only that she was right, but that another Linden was backing her up on this.

This is what I mean by the horrid wagon-circling. They don't defend higher principles, principles before which they are humble, principles they serve, like the newbies should be served. Instead, they only defend their man-made institution, as if it was demonstrably excellent and we should all genuflect. Well, it isn't. And we shouldn't.

Communication
Be informed and informative. Keep up with in-world bulletins and forum announcements. Maintain good communication with your fellow volunteers and don’t be afraid to share information. This includes using the mentor group channel for good, not evil.

Gosh, these Lindens and wizards really don't like the word "listen" or the word "serve" do they? Everyone knows what it means to SERVE THE PUBLIC. It's work, it's service, it means putting another human being before yourself, not crushing them and getting them to adapt to the exigencies of your class, and its need for a constant fresh feed of a commerce stream. Can't we get some of that across???

The mentor group channel shouldn't exist. If the mentors can't eat the game's dogfood and use the same tools we all use, they are good for nothing and shouldn't represent SL.

Attitude
Be positive, courteous, professional and pleasant. Smile. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Be welcoming, fun, and helpful.

Um, I'm going to leave aside the problem of how you get your wooden avatar's face to SMILE, and the problem of how people who incessantly type *smiles* are merely signalling themselves as having come from some horrid mmorpeggy culture where people were always writing about themselves in the third person. As for the hortatory "be fun," I can only laugh. Be fun!

Integrity
Be reliable. Do your best to represent the community in a positive way. Maintain PG standards of appearance and manners when wearing the Mentor tag. Live your Second Life by the Community Standards as a shining example to others.

I hope Jeska, if she does nothing else with this exercise, keeps the PG standards stuff. She should fight for that against the hedonistic, aggressive bunch in SL because PG isn't about sex or about swear words, it's about maintaining a more generic, neutral space that doesn't have the imposition upon it of this or that lifestyle or choice.

Why are we waiting until the end to invoke the rule of law over this privileged class? It ought to come at the beginning. When you serve your country and the Constitution, you serve something higher than your class and uniform. Any system of officials or helpers has to start by invoking the higher principles, not end with them. The system of helpers is worthless, unless it always and everwhere invokes something higher than itself that makes it accountable; that is the Community Standards.

Tolerance
Be accepting of other nationalities, cultures and subcultures. Inspire curiosity, open-mindedness, and let the diversity of Second Life be your guide as you help fellow Residents.

This seems like a poor, politically-correct, and vague nostrum. I think here, the word has to be "tolerant" but not "accepting". I shouldn't have to *accept* a sub-culture that is antithetical to my own value for universality and for women's rights and human rights overall, and have to "accept" slavery or violence. I'm not REQUIRED to accept somebody's idea of fun, I'm merely asked to be tolerant and not interfere with their freedom of expression under the TOS. By the same token, I don't want them to be interfering with MY freedom of expression, and that means NOT ACCEPTING some cultures, sub-cultures, and ideas in SL. Hell, no.

No, I don't want the "diversity of SL" to be my guide. Again, it's not people and their sub-cultures I want to be whipsawing me hither and yon, I want something higher, called "the community standards" which I invoke as my flag and my standard in serving the public.

It's no accident that notions of higher principles, universality, service to something higher than oneself; subordination of one's own wants and needs for the sake of another -- all these values are thrown overboard for the sake of Hedonistic Me and My Need for Showing Off My Altruism. It's the malady of modern life in general, not only Second Life. Yet there is still a chance to change -- if the Mentors and the other phalanxes of Linden-designated privileged parties aren't dismantled completely, then they should at least:

o listen
o admit when they're wrong
o keep an open mind
o serve the public
o make sacrifices to help others

Let's try to remember what other institutions instil. Let's take the Girl Scout Law, for example:

"On my honour" -- that means I'm conscious that my reputation as an individual, my own sense of honour is at stake, and is being staked on the enterprise of practicing the creed of Scouts;
"I will try" -- I have to make effort, I don't just get a tag after 30 days
"To do my duty" -- I'm expected to do something, it's not about forcing everyone else to "tolerate my lifestyle" but it's about me serving the public
"To God and my Country" -- focus on the idea of something higher here -- principles that are higher, like the Community Standards, that are above the office of mentor and any individual mentor
"To Help Other People at All Times" -- why is that sort of obvious tagline missing from the Mentors? Shouldn't they have SOME binding law urging them to HELP? Indeed, even a Hippocratic Oath, "Above All, Do No Harm?"
"And to Obey the Girl Scout Law" -- again, something higher, a law where I am not unto myself, but unto something above.

Here's the sort of static even Jeska's mild efforts to get some modicum of order into this headstrong bunch generates, from Eloise Pasteur:

"I'm a teacher too and recognise Jen's comments. On the other hand, what if I'm asked to mentor in a Gorean sim (which has happened) - the "community" standard might require me to dress and act appropriately for the location in some sims, which isn't necessarily PG. Failing to do so could be regarded as implicit judgement of their lifestyle which is also against the guidelines.

OK, you'd hope the locals would understand, but the wording is sufficiently highblown that it is possible to be in a situation where they contradict each other without thinking hard about it. I don't know any kajirae who mentor, but any that do would be in a really tricky situation. Mind you, there are definitely furry mentors who would violate the local rules in most Gorean sims too."

Everything about this example is fake. Nobody is asked to mentor in a Gorean sim -- Goreans have their own elaborate induction and mentoring system called "dom and slave" etc. and have no need of another layer. Gorean is something people join usually after coming into SL, and it's silly to warp the newbie experience around some pre-anticipated "tolerance" of this "lifestyle".

No, Eloise, it's not "against the guidelines" even as written to have any kind of implicit judgement of a lifestyle. Hey, they get to have a lifestyle, and i get to implicitly judge it against what I view should be the perfect lifestyle. That's life in the big city. Nobody has to make way for somebody else's vaunted lifestyle and shut the fuck up. What can be done, however, is to keep a neutral public space -- a space that Goreans must be expected to honour as much as furries or norms. No one group and its mores should be allowed to dominate that public space or make others uncomfortable. Civic neutrality should be the norm here, not a politically-correct splintering into a million little splinter groups.

If the Goreans can't understand that it's in their best interests to have the existence of a neutral, broad, civic space in SL, which is the place where the rule of law emerges as the community standards, then they are being allowed to tear the whole fabric of society in the interests of their own belief system. No one should be allowed to prevail in SL in that fashion.

Bitzer Balderdash then retaliates, against those who would expect a PG neutrality,  "If the rule becomes that I MUST ALWAYS act PG (which I generally do anyway) when wearing my tag, I will simply stop wearing it when I am not on HI / WA - which would be a real shame, since I get several people a week asking me questions that start "Oh, I see you are a mentor, could you tell me..." in all sorts of situations and locations."

...And now we are getting to the really rub with this whole Mentor thing. It's not just a defined role, a service, a task one does for a set amount of hours, but something that people expect to be "always on" -- and to gain all the social good and perks that accrue to it. Well...why? Ask not what Mentors can do for you. Ask what you can do for Mentors. Yes, stop wearing your tag when not on the HI/WA, please, or when you're not specifically willing to be "on duty," say, at a large public event. If people have questions, they know where to find you -- your mentor status is a group on your profile, without you having to wear the cap -- while dancing naked in a club with your piece hanging out.

This refusal to accept some limitations on one's behaviour lets me know that these Mentors are not willing to throw over some of their own selfishness and sense of entitlement and *serve the public*. They are not fit to lead us. We can and should overthrow them. Fortunately, we won't have to work very hard at this, as hopefully more and more people will bypass them and their old-fashioned insular and backward ways.

The End of Premiums

Premiums haven't ever been a really huge percent of the Second Life population, and I expect they'll become less.

They bury the news about how to get these accounts way on the back pages, and encourage the throngs of people coming to www.secondlife.com to get Basic and Free accounts.

Back when the population was at 40,000, we were told that there were only 9,000 premiums, and of these, only 6,000 used their 512s on tier and bought land. Wierd, eh? Why buy a premium and not get a free 512 and live on it or have a shop or even just sell it?

That's because people bought the accounts in order to get the cash. The Lindens explained it that way, themselves. Of course, I pointed out that the anti-land propaganda, the fear instilled into newbies of getting robbed or griefed or uglied if they bought land, and all those cards shouting YOU DON'T NEED LAND TO HAVE FUN played a role, too.

In fact, the Lindens set the stage for a rather casual attitude toward land-as-sandbox when they write "Land is your blank canvas." When it's a blank canvas, not your home or neighbourhood, well, you buy it, scribble on it, throw it away, and tier down to basic.

It was always odd to me that this real estate game, where the Lindens said they made a lot of their revenue from selling servers as pixelated land, would have so few actual land owners in it.

You can actually get a good idea of what's going on by looking at the new land stats -- only about 1,000 people are selling about 6,000 parcels. Given that a lot of those parcels in fact belong to one Very Big Baron and a few dozen medium and baby barons, there are only like 327 people probably actually selling land lol. Well, ok, so let's figure that these unhappy people represent 25 percent of the actual land owners, would that be fair? Hmmm. Wait. That can't be. Ok, 10 percent then? So let's say there are now 10,000 premium accounts where the people are using their 512s to hold land? Make sense? This is my point then -- out of the $59 million in stipends glutting up the currency market, a relatively minor number are premium account owners. Those people are the working middle class who own stores or land business or who do content creation and keep land to make and sell it on -- so they perhaps rightly view their $500/week as a kind of kickback or sweetener for all that god-awful tier they pay for.

The $500 a week would add up to $2,000 a month (let's simplify this and not get into the few 5-week months of the year), and that used to be not quite enough for you to pay for your account -- sell 2,000 on the GOM for about $8.50 US if the Linden rate was up really high to $4.25/1000, and you'd feel like you were getting ahead. That is, you could describe this as the $4.97/$1000 L Linden -- but the people who bought accounts to mine them for their Lindens would usually get the $22.50 3-month subscription. That means that the 6,000 Lindens they got would then price at $2.66 -- and that seemed a real bargain, back in the days of GOM, when the Linden was $4.00 routinely, and when it was $4.00, Philip would reassure us in town hall meetings that it "never fluctuated more than 7 percent up or down". Gosh, remember that! those were the days!  (Ricki Zamboni of GOM puts this figure at $2.88 by calculating it more precisely, but let's just say that it we had ourselves some pretty cheap Lindens!)

That way, you got paid to play -- but it only seemed fair. After all, the basics got free accounts, why shouldn't you, too?

Ok, ok, there were *some* who bought the annual subs to farm the accounts -- never as many as everyone imagined. Remember, only 9,000 out of 40,000 bought them, and of these, most were monthly or quarterly, not yearly. But let's say they got the $72 sub with the $24,000 in Lindens, why, then they'd be getting bargain-basement Lindens at $3.33/1000. A steal!

Shaun Altman, who is much better at math than I am, worked it like this to get what he called a 361
Linden:

Five premium annual accounts.

USD Cost: $360.00
L$ Income: L$130,000

USD Income From L$ @ 300: $433.00
Free Money: $73.00
Free Tier: 2,560m2

USD Income From L$ @ 250: $520.00
Free Money: $160.00
Free Tier: 2,560m2

Paid to play! Nice! And people wonder why the L$ valuation declines in spite of a booming economy. If you could pay your annual premium and get your full L$26,000 immediately, the rate would be 361 immediately

Makes you nostalgic, eh, touching, that, the "300" plugged in as "the normal rate" for the Linden. Hahahahahah.

Another way to put it in terms you can see on the LindEx is like this:

$9.95               $2,000 $L  201/$1.00 USD
$22.50             $6,000 $L  355/$1.00 USD
$72.00             $24,000     333/$1.00 USD

I don't count these oddball weeks because when the Lindens bill you, they bill you once a month, they don't adjust their bill up or down for longer or shorter weeks. It's $72 a year, so you get $24,000 out of their cycle, and that gives you a $3.33/1000 Linden.

Did I get any of this wrong? I sure might have, because I absolutely suck at math. I can't even see the numbers, it's a long story.

But I think whatever math or figures you use, tweaking whatever way, you will understand the stark problem: now that the buy orders on the LindEx are at 350 and up, and the sell orders are at 334, we've long since passed the point when buying a premium to get dollars makes any sense whatsoever.

So they will cease -- but I'll go you one better.

Why will anybody need a 512? They can't use them on islands. In fact, I wonder if the Lindens will bill "basics" for their island tier of $195 without them even having to get a premium, given how the tier schedule is for the mainland.

Island dealers already advertise to their customers that the islands are "cheaper" than the premium mainland parcels (!) because they don't have this "recurring subscription fee" of $9.95 just to get these lame Lindens, which they could buy cheaper on the LindEx. Plus that lame 512, which will be pointless to keep (unless of course you'd like to donate it to help out the SL Public Land Preserve, which I encourage you to do!)

Of course, psychology dies hard, and we can see from some of these really aggressive types on the forums that we'll have to pry their premiums and their free stipends out of their cold, dead hands. Getting those Lindens effortlessly in your box each week without having to go struggle to figure out the LindEx as it swings up and down (or mainly plummets), having it noiselessly, invisibly charge your credit card somewhere for less than what it costs for a pizza or a few videos, it all feels free!

But...Perhaps if they look at the cold, dead math on the LindEx, they'll see that they aren't getting their money's worth with these stupid accounts which also saddle them with a dangling 512 they aren't going to use (some people count the stash you can farm as having an extra $3500 if you flip the first land, but these days, with the land glut, you first land might sit there 90 days unsold and you might only get $2500 or less for it, because it will be in a horrid swamp of newbie horrors...)

Once Jonas Pieterson and other Stipenders look at the math and realize that for $9.95, and just a few seconds of clicking on the LindEx pages even with the "basic" (non-expert" options and the instant "buy" options, they should be getting not 2000 Lindens for their $9.95 a month, but $2,979 or more, at today's rates which are 334/$1.00 (I just checked now and saw my best buy was $3.34/1000), the lightbulb may go off, and they may conclude, as the Mentors have been drilling into our heads from Day ONe, "You Don't Need Premiums To Have Fun".

Why are you hanging on to this stupid premium account, Jonas, that's like highway robbery?! Hang it up, dump that stupid 512, go buy $2,979 worth of Lindens for $9.95 for crying out loud, it will still come into your box "like magic" from Linden lab and it will still invisibly charge your credit card!

 

In fact $22.50 USD *right now this evening* gets me $7,326 LL at the instant buy rate of $325/$1.00. That's $1,326 more Lindens than I'd get hanging around waiting for my box to fill up for 90 days with that $6,000 off the premium quarterly subscription. And frankly, given how the rate has changed *right now as I've been writing this, and will be worse tomorrow* -- why wait 90 days to see how bad it will get?!

It's like what they tell you about the difference between "term" and "whole" life insurance. The advice is, "buy term and invest the difference" -- instead of buying these ridiculous whole policies that only take your money, keep it, and put less interest on it than you'd get in a better investment vehicle under the guise of making your premiums "vanish".

Buy $2,979 with your $9.95 Jonas, and invest the difference -- the $979 you now have in excess Lindens over the 2,000 you were used to -- get yourself a nice island rental like the kind Desmond Shang has -- he charges about that for a lovely grief-free, lag-free 2048 m2 with 468 prims. Or heck, come to Ravenglass Rentals, I will give you about 3,000 m2 for that price and you will still have a nice managed view and get more prims for the buck!

So what are we waiting for? The Lindens can safely dump the premiums and their flush of money into the system that everyone is ranting and raving about. In fact, aren't these people buying more expensive Lindens this way, far from being the evil, rapacious, parasites of the forums caricature actually helping to prop up the Linden price at 261 or 288 or whatever? In fact, let's not be too precipitous here, we might want to keep the premium middle class intact, as some of them in fact are not only on 512s, but they pay tier on larger pieces.

I imagine that in the "insect politics" world of the Lindens, however, as they look out over their data and see the relatively minor number of premiums, their relatively minor use of their land tier option, their expensive Lindens, and their hassle in billing -- all those individual little accounts with all their little 1024s and 2048s, yeesh -- then the conclusion is clear. End the premiums, let people buy their cheaper Lindens, let them get island rentals.

OK so that leaves the relative handful of us who own land on the mainland, pay multiple sims worth of tier, and would like to keep the flexibility of adding or subtracting tier. We've now become increasingly hard to please boutique customers -- we're like the island customers used to be! -- but we'll settle for 1:1 trade offs of mainland servers to island servers with no extra set-up fees due to the hardship, economic loss, and mental suffering we're going to have to endure to uproot ourselves from the Mainland and go live in Trumanville with the Stepford Wives.

The Great SLEALASHOW!

Every once in awhile I get a brain wave -- usually I'm inspired by SNOOPYBrown Zambroni whose RL self is named Jerry Paffendorf.

I like to think of these ponderings and musings as Metamusals...that exciting cusp of Metaverse-meets-mind that so inspires us all...

Jerry is going to do this REALLY COOL Mash-up Multi-Media Mixed Reality Thinger called SLoW, (Thanks to Tony for tipping us off!) where he's going to make a bridge between World of Warcraft and Second Life. The Woods Between the Worlds is coming soon to a terminal near you!

Of course, each time Jerry talks about these bold, pionering "first ones to do this in the Metaverse" type of adventures, I have to remind him that it was really me and Mr. NoCal who were the first to link worlds in the Metaverse.

See, while SL won't let you start another window with another session of SL in it (they're greedy that way), you can open up The Sims Online while doing SL. So I go in TSO, see, and I go to the Flamingo Court in Alphaville and I IM Mr. NoCal who is chalking it up on the boards and broadcasting his TSO radio show, see, the way that works, you have one of those little DIY Internet radio station you broadcast on and people inside TSO tune into it and you have a party. BTW, this is before Mr. NoCal even came to SL, so there.

So I IM Mr. NoCal while actually sitting on my lot in Refugio, and I paste in Mr. NoCal's URL. And I say, Mr. NoCal, play a tune for me, would you, by Robert Palmer? So the next thing you know, right there on my Second Life club lot, I'm hearing Mr. NoCal in his dulcet upstate tones, cry, "This tune is going out to Dyerbrook in Second Life, "Which of Us is The Fool?" by Robert Palmer."

He's in one game, I'm in the other, and I hear him, and...well...wow...just...WOW!

Gosh, it makes you feel all tingly inside when Worlds Collide like that. So when I read Jerry's thinger today, I just got really super inspired.

Jerry asked for help so I don't want to disappoint. So I'm announcing....SLEALASHOW!

This is where Second Life meets Real Life Meets World of Warcraft!

See, what we'll do, my son will log on to World of War craft in one corner of the living room piggybacking off some dude's wireless.

He's going to go to the Valley of Heroes and dive right in the water and fish!

I'm going to be *right in the same room* logging into Second life on my DSL. There we are, in the same room in RL, on two separate games! 

At no time do the fingers leave the hand!

Then, just when some posse is getting started up and that cheesy Hollywood heroic music is cranking up in WoW, I'm going to *get up from the desk* and go "AFK" as it were, telling my tenants that I will be in the vernacular "brb".

Maybe by the time I get back from dinner Ingrid's house will be rented! Woot!

I will then stagger on my two stumps over to the kitchen and dump some spaghetti into a pot of water which I will have handily left boiling there not 20 minutes before this Amazing Mash-Up Event.

In a mere 7-8 minutes, at what we might call the "al dente" stage, I will type "in a few" to my clamoring tenants and then dump the spaghetti into a collander, whisk the salad on to a plate, and shake some Parmesan vaguely over the entire thing.

I will then call my son to dinner. He will complain. He will get up and not have to go anywhere far because the living room and the dining room are all mashed-up, see, this being a Manhattan apartment.

Now...This is where our SLEALASHOW gets complicated, and where asset servers and patience can be exhausted. Meanwhile, my daughter will have forsaken her efforts to link up NeoPets to our SLEALASHOW (the technology just wouldn't let us, damn!) and take her seat at the table.

Reluctantly, my son will eat his spaghetti and talk with his mouth full about stupid people who RP and imitate them in a fake Harry-Potter accent. I will say stuff like, "Gosh, those damn sneakers you got cost a mint, and you don't even run outside in them, why, when I was your age..."

About 5 and half minutes later we will both look up at the screens. Cash will be ringing in the SL till. Some kind of monster will be gnawing at my son's leg. My son will witheringly ask me why I didn't put the garlic salt on the spaghetti and go back to SL.

The richness of meaning...there we are...*right in our living room*...all mashed-up...with *both games going on at once* and...Real Life...and...spaghetti...and...stuff. The integration...the heady seamlessness...I'm almost overcome...but...there was only that one little thing wrong, and they were fools to criticize me, because I will tell my family the hugely relevant cybertronic truth of the situation, the truth they need to learn now to get prepared for their Exceedingly Special and Electronic Metaversal Virtual Lives:

In the Metaverse, You Can't Taste the Garlic Salt (TM)

Destroying the Village in Order to Save It

WA in Ahern, moments before Lee Linden closed SL for maintenance and a new patch, ending a way of life for thousands.

Second Life has died. Long live Second Life! Of course, Second Life is always dying a thousand little unattended deaths and being midwifed through a thousand unnoticed little births. But something dies in each patch, and if you cut Second Life open some day, you'll see the rings that are more scarred with termite infestations or more burnt with lightning strikes. Even if a policy impacting a feature set isn't even in a patch as such, certain political realities and policies seem to be tied to SL's reproductive cycle of patches. I often wish these people who charted the GOM or who chart the LindeX or other economic stats would put it on a table that shows simply the dates of game patches. I'm going to call them game patches under my operating theory that SL may not be a game, but it is play -- and these patches often play havoc, if nothing else. The other day in the town hall when I called it a "patch," Philip Linden at first didn't seem to understand me. I think they get into believing in their own newspeak. He then corrected me to call it something I can't remember now, like "the latest software edition" or "revision" or...something.

The death of Second Life isn't about the death of tails that can't flip and flop or gowns that can't flow up a spiral staircase, or about lighting that looks like my elementary school play. It's about Big Business. Obviously, Big Business (a term I'll use to include big non-profits that must show market share and profitability to funders  in the new post-911, leaner charitable ethic) doesn't care very much right now, anyway, about flex prims or local lighting.

What they care about is the cover of Business Week, I guess, and the burgeoning world. Except...no, that's not the way to think about it, as I've increasingly understood.

People wail and gnash their teeth in the SL forums and at Second Citizen and inworld discussions about the destruction of the economy, the crashing of the Linden (at 325 as I write), the devaluation of land, the end of dwell and the ruination of the club microeconomies -- and of course my theme, the harming of the mainland business by privileging the island features ahead of the queue.  All this is important, but not very important to the Lindens. How can it be? These people -- that is, "us" even though we aren't an "us" to each other -- aren't important and can't be important.

The inimitable Reuben nee Linden Tapioca has explained it all in the Metaverse Sessions podcasts, where Johnny grows up a little bit and sheds Torrid and Aimee and Jauani and the other girls and just interviews the men who go to conferences. (Podcasting simply had to emerge anyway if somebody didn't invent it, just because the crush of new technology and new news are so overwhelming that no one can keep up with their existing 24/7 news consumption and sleep cycles, and need to access pods in what Joi Ito is calling the polychronic conversation on their own idiosyncratic time.)

Walker Spaight (Mark Wallace), Ming (John Swords) and Reuben (Reuben Steiger is his RL name) talk about how business is playing out in the Metaverse. First, there's the companies that Reuben emphatically tells you that he "helped get going" -- Electric Sheep (FlipperPA Peregrine) and Rivers Run Deep (Fizik Baskerville). So if you thought evangelism was just an outward kinda thing, you would have forgotten the work that Jesus Christ himself had to do before and after Golgotha -- prepare a group of 12 men (with some women assisting around the edges) to be the essential team to go forth and spread the gospel). So the Lindens -- in the person of Reuben and others -- consciously helped these metaverse-ready companies they saw emerging in SL with an eye not only to helping their own product but the whole kit 'n caboodle, and in Reuben's case, his own spinoff, called Millions of Us. This might not be "fair," but it's normal.

The task at hand in trying to hook up big companies from Real Life to our synthetic life to, as Reuben says in this podcast, "focus down the folksomony space...to something really interesting to advertisers." Well, the erm, folksomony space, in case you didn't get the memo, has to do with what I called "the picks people pick" in my queries to the Lindens which were covered in the Herald, Robin's blog, and even Hamlet's blog. What people want.

It's about "how trends form, what's interesting, say in Reuben's Stylehive project, to get people buy ing SL home products that they then discuss and tag and blog and utube and Myspace until they actually buy it take it to their RL home. Walker pointed out that SL doesn't have enough of this, it needs more "hooks between the real and the virtual" which would link up social software better with SL. (That's going to have to wait until Havoc-on-a-Prim, Walker).

Bear with me now as you try to grasp this little inversion that's about to take place. Those of us steeped in the world, reading gossiping third-rate forums from third-party sites know that the StyleHive thing was considered a "bust" even by some pretty first-rate designers because, as they sort of summarized it, Aimee got drunk and dissed her friends and colleagues by using a kind of "roast" genre in this coming-out-party in front of her new RL clients -- she appeared, to some (I wasn't there), to be willing to expose her inworld pals, who were obviously very flighty and nervous at having to appear in a RL website thingie, to a harsh reality test by making common cause with what she imagined to be the critical eye of these RL peeps.

The entire thing sounded like it was a mediation of the whole insecurity/security machine of the FIC and the RL-in-SL gang -- our world will have to endure a whole bunch more of these painful sessions before the 'verse is over. No doubt the RL people were either in awe of SL and the kewlness of being in it, or else struggling with getting their game's own draw distances down to reduce lag, to notice somebody's stocking seams not aligned right on the runway. No doubt the SL people were horribly overcompensating...but whatever the case, Aimee lost a few acolytes that day. It's not diminished her juggernaut, evidently, because Reuben and others haven't gotten tired of her precocious petulance yet.

But...as I was saying...the inversion that takes place:

This is how you "use SL for business," Reuben evangelizes to us. You "assemble communities" and
"engage ongoing dialogue around a brand in a way that is authentic." If you thought that sitting around ventilating about your feelings about Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid would be un-fun, I assure you that Reuben is on the case, and they're going to pick *way* more fun stuff to dialogue on, in ways people might dialogue anyway -- you know how people get discussing baseball, and then the equivalent scores and players and their attributes -- the same kind of discussions that emerge around rock bands or types of cameras or whatever.

"Our nightmares are about the 1000 ways to do it badly, the Golden Arches," says Reuben. "Big Macs across the grid."

But it's not going to be like that. We're not going to have hilarious, broken-down little Big Mac stands in the corner of our lots, with hamburgers that only gave us "2" on the feeding green-up scale, like we laughably had all over in TSO.

Well, says, Walker, business can succeed with this platform but the "timing has to be right, the right services, the right audience, people your clients want to reach, the techology has to be right," and then he and Reuben murmur about how SL "is not ready for prime time" in some ways (laggy, crashy, doesn't do those script calls they need, whatever).

You see, the trouble with our thinking about how "Big Business" will come in is that people keep thinking of it in RL terms where Big Business comes to a billboard, or a store, or an event right in your hood. You think, oh, these big companies won't bother with SL, we're not big enough, thank God! And the world is too atomized and too hard to learn, others think with relief. And...besides...the Lindens said...the Lindens *said* they weren't going to treat Big Business any different than their little-guy customers.

 

They don't have to. They've already assured that their FIC, SIC, and RL-work-in-SL gangs will do all that *for them* so they have plausible deniability!

But that's not how to understand it. If you're a Big Business, you don't have to worry about what SL has in terms of "world world" or "population" -- not one bit. "You *have* your audience," Reuben tells Big Business. In their normal course of business, they already have customers in a market unrelated to SL. "You reach an enormous audience through direct marketing, huge lists, you know who your best customers are, you know who your user groups are, your web based properties," he explains. Duh *slaps head*.

These companies ALREADY have customers. In fact some of us are ALREADY their customers outside of SL, but who cares? ""So you want to pull those people into an environment" like a virtual world -- the object is not for large companies to come in and play to us chickens, the chopped liver, but for them to drag their existing customers either actually into the virtual world, or merely to just have their customers read about this kewl thing they can't even turn on yet because it is too space-age -- the media hits are a free form of advertising.

"It doesn't matter that there are 200,000 or 300,000 people in Second Life; it's simply a platform," says Reuben.

Let me say that again for you.

"It doesn't matter that there are 200,000 or 300,000 people in Second Life; it's simply a platform," says Reuben.

(If you thought the "Millions of Us" was *inside* of SL you'd be wrong -- they're *outside* of it.)

He says this pragmatically, earnestly, and with great love for Second Life. But...a different Second Life that he *uses* because the *world of SL* is not in his view. He has concerns that SL is just too hard for the "completely uninitiated." Its growth is "very organic, very word of mouth, one person who is hip is able to cope with technical complexities by virtue of being friends, and that person who knows them may hand-hold them through," he explains (hence the Linden obsession with creating the army of hand-holders in Jeska's Domain, the helpers/greeters/mentors/instructors numbering over 1,500 now).

Could these companies make something that will take people who have never made a virtual world, and bring them here, and make them stay? Could they represent at last for the Lindens the Holy Grail of basic-to-premium conversion?

No. "While large populations may come in because a corporation has brought them in, they may be transient -- are they likely to stay? 3 hours? 10 hours?," asks Reuben. That is, while we may measure client retention in 7 days or 30 days, and ask ourselves if they will hit the refund button, for a man at what I could call the "feeding edge" of the Metaverse -- willing to stake his family's very livlihood on it! -- the time is measured in hours -- and isn't even important.

If he plans a big campaign for, say, a record launch by Warner Brothers, they have a build for a singer, Aimee gets paid to build it, Reuben gets paid to sherpa it around, the singer gets paid, they get the media hits, the client is happy, the Metaverse Consultants are happy and...who cares what happens to any of us, after we are done leaving our dwellnor spore and viraling around our MySpace and our UTube and our ParentsWallet, or what happens to that 2048 m2 in Kasba and its neighbours, and its life inworld?

Kasba's build may or may not be folded up like yesterday's carnival tent and thrown away. It may or may not develop some fantastic Metaversal adventure where all the neighbours who were trying to live out their second lives in peace and quiet are annoyed at the "feeding edge" bunch drawing huge amounts of avatars to the area and eating up the goddamn FPS (ever notice how being at the "feeding edge" of the Metaverse always tends to use up A LOT of FPS???). Perhaps all the used condoms and cigarette wrappers the masses will leave behind will anger those upright citizens of Kasba. Perhaps they'll red-bar the faux-baked (we were trying to decide whether to call it half-baked) distressed brick building on 4 sides of its parcels, and Warner Brothers will be forced to call Kenny Linden to come in and tell the good people of Kasba to take the red bar down on at least one side of the parcel. The possiblities for saga and drama are endless.

(I am wondering why they chose a mainland parcel, and actually delighted that they did, instead of following the private-island fad. Maybe they wanted to come in on little cat's feet like Microsoft.  Of course, it might go the other way, where they drive up property values wherever they appear as being a safer bet for a good build.)

So how will this be the end of our world? Well, as I've explained in the other threads about Dublin, Microsoft, Harvard, and Second Life Library 2.0 and so on, these entities don't have to live in our economy. Our economy is absolutely irrelevant to them. If anything, our silly little economy is *in the way.*

It's a platform, not a world, they step on it, on their way to other things higher up the scaffolding of the Metaverse, which is mainly about themselves getting paid by their outworld clients. It's very much like the formula of big corporations or the World Bank barrelling into a developing country and putting in some giant project where all the white folks get paid enough to feed a local family of 10 for a year, and where only a few locals get jobs as fixers if they have a little English, or people's daughters are introduced into the sex trade, and where only some corrupt government officials and suppliers in state-run industries can get paid in any serious way. The disempowering and brutal situation, of the kind that happens in a Burma or a Thailand, let's say, drives the older people to stay up in the mountains and keep high on opium and not even bother to use the nice water pumps those nice people from the UN bring them.

Of course, after a civil war or a terrorist bombing or three, all those white people go home, and the locals settle back down to paying baksheesh to the corrupt government official and trying to get their daughter married to an American through a mail-order service instead of providing sex to UN peacekeeping forces. The water pump doesn't work because the vandals not only took the handles, the part needed to reattach them is available only in Germany.

The presence of a handful of consultants and a handful of their contracted builders and scripters shouldn't be enough to throw off a world economy...should it?

But...the Lindens appear to be over-anticipating the need to make the 200,000 "big business ready" and they are focusing primarily on crashing the Linden down to acceptable levels to get people to buy it more (they don't), and removing every form of support of indigenous forces as unjustifiable expense, and putting Lindens not to work solving inworld problems, but to evangelizing and squiring around big newcomers.

That process is what destroys the world.

This is why the lash is so harsh. Right at the time that club owners are stripped of dwell, and right at the time when they need to sell their old club land to get out, the LindEx is crashed, and land is in the toilet. They can't possibly hope to get back what they paid for their parcel or sim; they can't possibly hope, even if they do, to cash it out at the rate that would remotely compensate what they put in. Only those willing to tough it out and gut it out and hold their Lindens and be willing to at least to pay tier with them at horribly inflated values will be able to make it the next few months.

This isn't about "making people adjust to new features". It isn't about "having to adapt to an ever-changing world" -- it's about a nasty whack over the head by the Lindens to brutalize people who've they've come to see as competition, not only to themselves but to these big businesses that need the blingtards not to go to those boxy clubs with the avatars clicking on each other, but to their new venues. These are things like going to see the Warner Brothers build, or going to hear the records on Spin Martin's Hipcast.com island, or going to the BBC's giant attraction, stage-managed by Fizik of Rivers Run Red. Get the green dots to pile up there, for God's sake, don't have them off playing Tringo or Primtionary somewhere.

For now, none of the big businesses want anything of the 200,000 except for them to show up and be colourful in their native costumes of dwarves and vampires and dragons and busty call-girls. They aren't selling anything...just yet, although very soon they will.

Well, you might ask, isn't there room for everybody? Couldn't you do Tringo *and* go listen to Spin spin the platters? Well, kinda...except that the people who are faced with this competition now, the club owners or event organizers, won't have the glamour, the Linden feting, the media coverage, and the build and content to keep people from leaving them in droves to go see what Twentieth Century Fox is doing.

I could have a conversation about the fall of the Linden, or economies of virtual worlds, but what sort of chump am I, for ranting about a game world, when Harvard's Berkman Center has a RL guy from RL India talking about India's RL positioning of itself in the IT sector in the RL international economy? Isn't that a heck of a lot more interesting?

Of course, the masses will continue to make their little worlds and be interested in their little issues, but it will be very hard to get people to retain the integrity, or the 4 walls, of their nativist SL life. They will be drawn to other big builds, they will be hooked outside to other sites and social softwares, they will be whisked away to other shopping sites with RL products on them.

Or will they? This is what will be interesting to see. Reuben's banking on them integrating with the rest of the WWW, and whether there are 2 people or 200,000 actually inworld pushing a broom around after the circus leaves town to clean up the stray prims, who cares?

Of course, some people surprise you, the way they come here on some RL projects and get immersed, make content, get caught up in issues, become passionate about the worldy world of SL. But they're like the summer people in Cape Cod. They don't pay land taxes. Their brother isn't the sheriff, and they don't run the local 7/11. They leave, and our world is diminished utterly.

As I've already written in the "Whack" thread, a whallop is coming to the mainland rentals, land dealings, and related businesses, and it's hard to know where this will go. I've noticed the Lindens have had a veritable frenzy of auction activity this month, as we can see from their new economic stats page:

Acres Auctioned
Month        Acres
2006 April     597
2006 May - MTD     1,799

Remember, that these aren't private islands, which also grew by leaps and bounds, these "acres" are only on the mainland (an acre is 4096 m2). That means that the Lindens TRIPLED their auction sales on their seemingly sluggish auction, where Philip claims with a straight face that there is "no land glut." (I've just sent him a query about this.)

Most of these were not even new sims, I suspect, but the continued offloading of the telehub lands devalued after p2p, and many, many, MANY purple squares of land less than a sim in size or even a half sim that were simply abandoned as people either left the game and went to play WoW, or left their valueless mainland parcels and went to rent or buy island properties.

I noticed a huge upswing in the manual processing of all that abandoned Governor Linden land -- all those parcels I've seen sitting around for a year were moving, and people were buying them. So the combination of more whole sims just because the world is bigger, and the combination of offloading of all those purple bits has led to that triple in sales -- and the month isn't even over.

Where are they going with this? They are likely to end mainland production. They ducked this question before, they made all kinds of noises about how the mainland is "not going anywhere" in Daniel Linden's famous double entendre of the year, they claim they are making sims through the end of the year, but watch, they may close production -- or even close the mainland itself. As Reuben has helpfully explained, you don't need 200,000 people  doing anything special, and especially not showing up for work in the indigenous land or content business, when all that will be done by a few select craftsmen and guilds from the FIC and SIC for those with budgets way outside of SL in the stratosphere by comparison.

Philip and other Lindens were always afraid that if they stopped mainland land production, that there will be scarcity that will drive up prices, or that there will be "overcrowding". I've always thought that was absurd. Now it makes no sense to even talk in those terms. Philip and co. have just handed the private islands a huge 10-mile lead in the race between island and mainland development. In the new patch, once the bugs are fixed, the island dealers will now have the ability to set parcels to sale, and not only can they relieve themselves of a lot of man-hours by setting literally hundreds of islands out to sale for much less prices (Anshe lowered all her tier prices last night), their customers will increase now, secure in the knowledge that they can sell their land to willing buyers in an open market instead of waiting for Anshe to come online to undo the deed.

So if in that climate, mainland overglutting on the auctions ceased, mainland value might still be upheld -- as a possible collectors' item, or a place where there is more freedom, or where smaller parcels that people would like to control on their own could be had. So rather than shut down the mainland, which they might find more convenient, the Lindens should:

1. Shut down their production of new sims and close their own wholesale auction.
2. Recode it and reopen it as a resident driven, demand-driven auction for residents' own parcels on the mainland *and not on the private islands*. This would help the mainland catch up to this huge 10-mile lead the islands got.
3. Reduce stipends or tie them to an actual USD/Linden dollar value each week, and let the Linden strengthen.
4. Retain the 10 percent tier bonus for groups that manage projects or businesses to have some tier relief.

Whether these steps, or other steps, the Lindens have to do something to stop the death of the mainland, which is the death of Second Life in their original version. They can dump their dreams, but they cannot dump the people who believed in their dreams along with them.

Reuben Drives On Deep Into Egypt

I didn't have to worry about Reuben Linden, oh, no! 

Reuben Linden's alt, Reuben Tapioca, lives on! He started something called Millions of Us, which is about getting a million people in SL and in general millions of people on the 3-D Internet, I guess.

Reuben is so far beyond "landing on all fours" or "golden handshake" it isn't funny. He is like -- in escape velocity!

When last seen, he was dissing GOM and implying it was unreliable" at the SXSW panel and causing a shitstorm. I was willing to give a contorted sort of understanding for him doing that.

Then he hooked up with Aimee Weber (bleh) to make the planets and the gig in Turkey involving the eclipse of the sun. When he wrote that he fell asleep, tired as a fairly new father, and slept through it, I thought, hmm, poor Reuben is going to have trouble, especially being hooked up with the Winged One.

I should never worry about Reuben. Reuben is more than ok. Reuben isn't dropped out of a helicopter over the swamps of Omidyar, the void sim, not on your life. To be sure he disappeared really fast out of the Linden list and Linden employ after that GOM-dis incident, but that may be unrelated.

Today, Reuben nee Linden Tapioca, who is really the best evangelizer any company could want, is squiring around the big guys. I'm sure he's making sure his friends get the gigs, too. Why, I even wrote a letter to [email protected] and asked, did they need anybody with expertise in deeding television sets in SL : )  Hey, you never know.

Now Rueben is waxing ecstatic on...you'll never guess...GENERAL in the forums! Hah -- and you think big important people don't pay attention to GENERAL? Bah.

Wow. Just like some other Linden alts I won't name now, and some other people starting little Metaversal start-ups like Maxx Monde, General is the place to be. Of course, if I were to put ads in General or Anshe were or Cocoanut or just about anybody, even somebody recognized as cool, they would find their ass moved to classified be zealous resmods.

As Cocoanut summed it up, they need a new section for SPECIAL PEOPLE AND THEIR SPECIAL EVENTS.

Except, Coco, I think the rule works like this:  if you are doing something Metaversal, i.e. bringing a big RL company into the Metaverse, then that gives you an exception.

Of course, the usual suspects Siggy Romulus and his gal Jonquille Noir, are actually defending this nee Linden's use of GENERAL and even aggressively so, quoting Linden forums policy at those who objects. And they're accusing us of being "jealous".

Um...I did a thorough examination of my conscience like they taught us in Catholic school, and I didn't find the sin of coveting my neighbour's wife or property. I guess that's because my idea of fun wouldn't be hanging around making planets with Aimee, or making black boxes to listen to CDs for Warner brothers.

I just like rules to follow. They invoke them on me or you, why can't they invoke them on Maxx or Reuben?

I guess I'm old-fashioned, this thing where you go in SL to listen to the CDs isn't quite catching on for me. I enjoy going over to Borders' for the more complete experience -- I get the latte, I see a neighbour or school teacher or somebody and chat with them, I read some of the covers of the new books, I listen to some of the new CDs, and maybe buy one, and then buy a copy of the Atlantic. Once home, I'll want to lie on the couch and read The Atlantic, and put the CD in on the player because it's just going to sound better there and be more consistent in delivery than it would be off an SL parcel. Of course, I quite understand that sitting on a laggy, crashy sim with my beloved in SL and listening to a choppy new tune, well, that has its charms. I'm all for that. It's just, for me, music is hard to listen to just by itself, I prefer to have it on while I wash dishes or something.

If you're reading this, I hope you will go to GENERAL to this thread and abuse report our beloved Reuben nee Linden Tapioca. It's not personal. It's just about making a Better World For All of Us.

BTW, his blog made me think too how cool all this is so I posted a comment. In fact, I'm starting to get just how cool it will be to live inside an album.

What Ben [Doesn't Erase But] Is Going To Take His Time Responding To)

I let Ben Linden's post age for awhile before I answered it. I wanted to take the time to martial my thoughts before posting them. I want to make all the right arguments.

 

I remember fondly that Ben Linden was my first Linden. I even used to have a picture of him I saved on my hard drive, the first one I took of a Linden in Second Life. I was so startled to find one of the game devs actually in the world, after being in The Sims Online and hardly ever see them coming in unless on some deep alt, that I did a double take seeing his name tag. There he was in jeans and a vest jacket, building a target game in Waterhead. I remember saying "Hi" and he ignored me because he was in build mode. He had some kind of "warning construction under way" sign up. I gave him a posrate for the build, and flew on my way. I was just so thrilled that he was there.

Another time, I saw he had a post on the forums telling some persnickety oldbie FIC type that renting was ok, that renting didn't cost the Lindens money and wasn't eveil as this oldbie was claiming -- not in those words of course, but he simply explained that LL approved of renting because it helped retain customers. I thought, hey, that's great, those Lindens are finally stepping up and answering all these socialists on here.

I never got to talk to Ben Linden, however, until one time I asked him for a radio repeater for a town hall back in the old days when they were typed. And I asked him if it were true that Nexcom would be handling their townhalls in the future, as chad statosky was bragging at the time. And he said, no, and put the issue to bed further in a longer conversation. I thought, hm, that Ben is ok, he gets it.

Of course, I was a great admirer of Ben's builds, and own property specifically purchased in order to be next to Ben's builds around the grid (it's hard to know whether he, Eric, or Xenon built some stuff because sometimes one's name is on as creator and the other is owner, I never did get how that works.)

Thus, I had nothing but a good impression of Ben Linden, and no reason to bear him any grudges. I asked an innocent question about a linkage to a possible alt, and merely as part of what I view as the public's right to have accountability from the rulers of the world.

Some of you may have seen his post on his own blog, and the sycophantic answers below it, and wondered where it came from. It came from a discussion on the Herald, but I think more than that, it came from an increasingly hostile and defensive posture some Lindens are taking among themselves about the issue of their alts. They want these alts to be able to be successful and to retain all their props and identities and successes and media hits even if they Lindenize.

I posted it, it sat there for awhile, and when I checked to see if it had any comments to it today, I saw it was erased.

Here it is:

Ben, many of us see Lindens as public officials or public servants in a country or virtual world, not game-masters and game devs only. Much of what you're saying rightly resonates with a former MUCK wizard -- because the entire way you are framing this issue comes from MMORPG culture and IT culture, and that's of limited value in the vastly grander enterprise of the Metaverse, that will intersect far more with non-MMORPG cultures and societal norms.

I find this post entirely self-serving, frankly, as you neglect to discuss what triggered the need for your post: residents speculating on your identity because of your use of your resident alt to advertise your projects and business on the general forums, instead of in classifieds. Indeed, the very notion that a resident goes on engaging in high-profile work like that with huge publicity, and a situation where only a small circle knows that he is a Linden.

This is the sort of thing that non-Linden residents and those who aren't Friends of Lindens find unfair.

You claim "here is enough visibility in the community that someone would notice most abuses of power, but there is not much transparency into what extra powers Lindens have." While there might be visibility, there is no process or procedure to do anything about these suspected abuses of power -- and indeed we have no catalogue of what the special powers are.

Can a Linden alt, for example, fall into conversation with someone they are working on a project with and gossip about a resident, and can that alt, using his Linden account, go and look into that other residents records, and then circulate claims about them, such as their true identity, or the fact that they may have defaulted on their tier? Just where are these firewalls and how are they supervised?

You make an eloquent case for why public officials should have privacy in their off-hours. Elle Pollack says everyone should have a right to a Second Life. But that's not at issue -- have a Second Life all you want on the most private and secret of alts. But if you use your resident account *also* to catapault yourself into the public eye with business or other activity, then expect people to raise an eyebrow as to why you get pride of place in any SL-related venture.

If you loved your resident activity or business so much, perhaps you should have remained only a resident, and thereby enriching the world, and making it less of a top-heavy world, where the administrators often seem to have to come in and build or script or perform because their residents don't quite pass muster?

No one expects that Lindens should have to forcibly out their private alts used for their down-time.

But that's not what this is about, and you know it. It's about residents who have prominent roles in the community either doing non-profit work or running businesses, and then elect to keep those roles and leverage their status as Lindens to become more privileged than other residents. That's wrong.

When Jeska modeled for a resident, when Shaun DJ'd for a resident, when you promote your projects on any forums you chose, when dozens of Lindens join all kinds of cool residents' groups and amplify their coolness by their presence, that's not creating a level playing field.

I personally think that Linden Lab needs a much more stringent code of ethics governing the behaviour inworld by all these Lindesidents -- residents who become Lindens and keep their original accounts as alts -- such as to prevent every kind of violation from theft to sexual harassment. Any company will have a standard guidebook on these practices, and a company that has to deal with many people in vulnerable situations should be even more sensitive to these issues.

All residents who chose to become Lindens should be required to give up their prominent roles inworld -- either you live by the slogan that it's "our world, our imagination" or you don't. That doesn't mean they can't be actively engaged in the world, but there should be more ground rules about Lindens who stage events, earn money, and post to forums, classifieds, etc. to promote themselves.

Most importantly, the terribly intimidating shroud of secrecy over residents who become Lindens really ought to be rethought. At this point, there are at least 4 Lindens who openly give their resident-Linden connections and names inworld and in real life.

When that's the case, it's very wrong for any special old friend of these residents-turned-Lindens to go on resident websites and threaten to abuse-report, or get banned, or harm in any way, anyone who raises the question about, or publicizes, the alt of a Linden, or who rightly asks questions about the misuse of alts leveraging the Linden connection. Intimidating the public in this thuggish manner is wrong.

While "disclosure" is a TOS rule we all respect, there isn't any specific guideline about "outing Lindens" such as to invoke such banning or suspension over these issues -- it's far too harsh and punitive an approach to what has become a very controversial and permeable area.

The world is growing by leaps and bounds. Do you really think the special and intimate relationships of beta-testers and early adapters can be the culture by which the whole world has to be defined?

Any person who decides to serve the public, and become involved in customer service, design, programming, or creation of a virtual world, has to realize that in a *massively multiplayer online* environment, he is in the public eye, and has to give up a certain amount of privacy -- or at least not expect that he can have his cake and eat it too, enjoying a prominent life as a resident in business or non-profit projects, and not expect the Linden connection to be scrutinized.

Honestly, you really can't be taking this subject as personally as you are, even implying that anyone who speculates about your identity or purposely or accidently caused some harm. This issue is larger than you, and your company has no clear-cut policy on it. Worst of all, you seem to have no awareness of what it means to make and maintain this special little group of friends who know you are a Linden, but the rest of us don't. This sets up a situation where the rest of us are second-class citizens -- ultimately, it means that we cannot participate in decision-making about features, and in the economy, at the same level as these special friends.

The status of Linden is a sacred public trust -- don't violate it.

Posted by: Prokofy Neva at May 21, 2006 3:39:01 AM

Librarians

Robert Preston harangues Barbara Cook, "Marian the Librarian," in "The Music Man."

Scene:  The Second Life Library 2.0 on Info Island
Events Description: SL Business Discussion and Support Group
Moderated by Residual Overlord, this is an opportunity for people running businesses in Second Life to get together and discuss common issues, opportunities and problems. In the future, we hope to get speakers from different types of businesses. This will be an organizational meeting. For more information, contact Lorelei Junot
Setting:  Residual Overlord has failed to show up, leaving the moderation to Lorelei Junot, an avatar with a 4/08/06 birthdate and lots of library and "RL-in-SL" type groups on her profile.

There are 10 questions that I have resulting from these sorts of encounters, which I typed and just lost by accident but will be back to fill in. I leave you to reflect on your own--PN

TRANSCRIPT 5/21/06 INFO ISLAND 2-3 PM slt

sublicious Ramos: to bad i missed it
Lorelei Junot: At that meeting there was interest in having a group meet regularly to talk about small business issues and share expertise
Lorelei Junot: The library would be glad to have a meeting place, sponsor programs, whatever would help you out
Marquis Desoto: /ao on
Lorelei Junot: Do you all want to introduce yourselves, the business you have or would like to have
Kitten Lulu: Hi Prokofy
You: Hi
Pamzy Warrior: ty for the background Lorelei
Lorelei Junot: and some of the programs you would like to see from the library
Dexter Tones: sub, I have a transcript of the event somewhere. hehe
Lorelei Junot: This is Planetneutral
sublicious Ramos: great tyvm
Lorelei Junot: He is Director of Progrmas and Publicity here
Planetneutral Fackler: howdy all
Pamzy Warrior: hi planet
Lorelei Junot: Were any of you able to attend Katt's program?
Lorelei Junot: Would you like us to repeat it?
Pamzy Warrior: i would like a repeat
Kitten Lulu: I couldn't.
Lorelei Junot: ok, I will see if she can repeat the program
Lorelei Junot: Are all of you running businesses already in sl?
sublicious Ramos: yes
Pamzy Warrior: a budding business
Lorelei Junot: also what days and times work out best for a program or meeting
sublicious Ramos: evenings would be nice for me
Planetneutral Fackler: just the business of getting the library off the ground
Lorelei Junot: Sublicious what time in the evening
Kitten Lulu: I have a shop. Being European this is almost the best time, may be a lil earlier.
Lorelei Junot: yes, getting a business off the ground
Pamzy Warrior: weekends - anytime for me - or early morning any day
Lorelei Junot: This is Eiseldora Reisman
Lorelei Junot: She is our training director
Lorelei Junot: Eis come meet everyone
sublicious Ramos: on tues or thurs anytime is fine
Lorelei Junot: If you have a training program about finding information, or about sl, Eiseldora knows how to do a lot of things
Lorelei Junot: and how to find information
Lorelei Junot: Eis, this is the small business group
Lorelei Junot: You are more than welcome to join us
Lorelei Junot: We are talking about types of progrmas, training and meetings people would like
Eiseldora Reisman: ah sorry to just drop in
Lorelei Junot: no, you are more than welcome please join us
Lorelei Junot: have many of you experienced trouble getting your business off the ground
Lorelei Junot: We are just getting the library started
Lorelei Junot: Iti has been much more work than anticipated
sublicious Ramos: its sometimes a very slow process
Lorelei Junot: and we are trying to get things organized
Lorelei Junot: How long has it taken some ofyou to get your businesses off the ground
You: Lorelei what I'd appreciate hearing from you and the other librarians is, what is your own experience in actually running businesses in SL, as distinct from non-profit group projects.
Kitten Lulu: a month or so
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy, what do you mean?
You: I mean I'd like to understand how it is, that someone like you is going to train me, or offer services to me, a person with a business in SL.
You: I know that may seem like an obvious point, but if you haven't yourself had the experience of strugglign under the difficult conditions here to start and sustain a profit-making business
You: then this may not be the group for me or others
Lorelei Junot: We want to offer library services in sl as we do the regular communities
You: I just came because I thought you were discussing common problems that business people have here
Lorelei Junot: I do not have expertise in running a business in rl, much less sl
Lorelei Junot: however, we can be a gathering point for groups
Pamzy Warrior: ouch
Lorelei Junot: If you want information or articles, we can try to get them fro you
Lorelei Junot: Pamzy, why do you say ouch
You: OK, well then it's up to me to understand whether I need a library, or whether I need a political lobby to wrest power from Lidnens privileging some groups over others, that sort of thing
Lorelei Junot: Profkofy, we want to provide programs from people here in sl to meet your nees
Lorelei Junot: No we are not experts in running business
Pamzy Warrior: well i have to admit that Prok, while abrasive, has an excellent point
Lorelei Junot: we want to help you get information
Lorelei Junot: hoook you up with experts
Lorelei Junot: bring training to you
You: Well no one expecdts librarians to be experts in every subject in every book
Lorelei Junot: Profkofy you have an excellent point
Planetneutral Fackler: two things on that Prok: one a library is in a constant state of struggling for survival, so there is a connection there. second, the concept is to provide a forum for conversation, which, as I can see, is going to get lively quickly
Lorelei Junot: We had a business person lined up to lead the discussion today but for some reason he is not here
You: but what's annoying about this frankly is the idea that you can leverage our presence, our very traffic and dwell, to enhance your own project, but without any clear evidence of real expertise.
Lorelei Junot: right we are not ere to tell you how or why to do things
Lorelei Junot: They are taking the traffic funds away
Lorelei Junot: We are trying to help
Lorelei Junot: This is what the group last time requested that we do
You: If I want to have meetings I put them on my own land with public spaces like this one, I don't use facilities like what you have, business here is a harsh task-master and you constantly have to think of your own dwell.
Lorelei Junot: is provide a forum for people running businesses
Pamzy Warrior: taking away traffic funds is hurting so many
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy that is fine
You: Well now we're giving traffic to Lorelei
Lorelei Junot: This group will not meet everyone's needs
You: she'll get at least half of her dwell anyway lol
Pamzy Warrior: traffic is a mute point Prok
Kitten Lulu: so?
Lorelei Junot: At the last meeting, this is what people said they wanted
Lorelei Junot: If you don't want it that is fine
Lorelei Junot: I am here to ask how we can help you
Lorelei Junot: if we can bring in programs for you
Lorelei Junot: from sl business experts,
Marquis Desoto: I thought dwell was going away in a few weeks, anyway
Lorelei Junot: what kind of programs you want
Lorelei Junot: If you do not want them, that is fine
Pamzy Warrior: it is Marq
Lorelei Junot: This is what libraries in rl do
You: Dwell payments are of little use to someone like me who has land in groups and tenants sharing the dwell, so my critique of the removal of dwell is different than yours may be Pamzy
Kitten Lulu: (traffic is still useful to attract attention, Marquis)
Lorelei Junot: Reach out and help businesses get the information they want
Lorelei Junot: and individuals too
You: Yes Lorelei, I'm well aware of what RL libraries do, having worked in them myself
You: but the context is very different
Lorelei Junot: If you don't need anything, that is fine
Isabell Shriner is online
Pamzy Warrior: may be - but this organization has nothing to gain by dwell since it is being discontinued
You: Libraries are funded by my tax dollar in SL
You: many other differences
Lorelei Junot: no they are not
Lorelei Junot: this library is not funded by tax dollars
Lorelei Junot: the library is funded by donations
You: well dwell payments are not the only thing from traffic; traffic builds more traffic, and that builds usage and sales, so it's still a relevant toic
You: yes I realize
Pamzy Warrior: he meant RL libraries
Lorelei Junot: Look, if you don't find this helpful, you don't have to come
Lorelei Junot: I am asking what can the library do to help business people in sl?
Michael Hatfield is online
Lorelei Junot: One is we will repeat the excellent program by katt Kongo
You: No, I don't, and I'm disappointed, because I thought to find actually other people sharing the same issues as I do.
Lorelei Junot: It was an introduction
Pamzy Warrior: prok has an inquisitive nature - dont take it personally Lorelei
Lorelei Junot: We can get a more advanced class
Mimborin Flagstaff: I think i t sounds like you have alot to offer the group, Prokfy.
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy, bring your issues to share up then
Lorelei Junot: I will be quiet and let you disucss
Kitten Lulu: well, one thing it could do is provide training materials or teacher for specific courses: marketing, product placement, product pricing.
Kitten Lulu: or to analyze specific markets in SL
You: Well marketing and product placement and pricing as topics are for a more advanced stage of the society and platform
You: that is you can play at it
You: but basic power-sharing issues aren't decided yet
Timeless Prototype is offline
Kitten Lulu: I thin Prokofy, if he wants to join, would be great at explaining the land market behaviour
You: and the very basic issues of the Lindex and how it functions
You: and it's crashing
Michael Hatfield is offline
You: until you solve those larger political and social problems with the Lindens on their policies
Timeless Prototype is online
You: trying to fool around teaching someone how to update their vendor prices seems a bit pointless
Kitten Lulu: vendor prices?
Kitten Lulu: I was talking how to structure your products
You: people change their vendor prices constantly to meet the demands of inflation
Kitten Lulu: to partition your potential client base
You: and the land glut
Kitten Lulu: not that
You: people have to constantly adjust to the falling Linden
Kitten Lulu: that is not what I meant by product pricing
Isabell Shriner is offline
You: well you mean how to price it at the get-go
You: how to judge the market
You: and here we have an artificial phenomenon
You: which is the stiped
You: forcing many products to be priced at $50 or $500 or inbetween
You: to get the vast number of players who spend within their stipend
You: so that's an example of a major policy issue
Kitten Lulu: yeah, an additional variable to know about
You: some percentage overthrow those bounds, but there aer no markers for them
You: until they become your customers
Pamzy Warrior: i think there is room is the macro AND the micro outlook
Marquis Desoto: I am learning a lot just from this discussion :)
You: we don't even know how many premium accounts there are because the Lindens refuse to publisht hat information as proprietary evidently
RL Education Places in SL Networked Kiosk v2.1 (no mod): Thank you! Your notecard will be delivered to you soon!
You: we knew that there were 9000 when the population was 40000 but it is not growing at the same rate
You: so depending on the product you might have 27000 people who have $500 a week
You: at least initially for 30 days who won't buy Lindens out of fear or reluctance
You: but will buy something for under $500
Pamzy Warrior: but prok you are drifting from the event planners topic - i say let them ask us what we need and see if they can provide it
You: more and more since the Business Week article there aer higher-lfying customers who come in ready to spend $5000 US they can write off as business or recreation costs
You: well she asked for feedback I gaave it
You: just as a sample of what really larger issues there are to solve
Pamzy Warrior: i understand but i for one would like to hear from others - no disrespect
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy would it be helpful to see if one of the Lindens would speak to the group and answer some of these questions that many of you would like to pose
Kitten Lulu: the economic new Linden maybe?
Kitten Lulu: How is she called?
You: These new economic Lindens have never been inworld to meet in public.
Pamzy Warrior: i understand that prok has serious and well-founded issues with SL but...
You: Tbone Linden gave exactly one town hall 9 months ago
You: Vasudha has never entetred the world to my knowledge LOL
You: so sure, try to get them to surface and see if they can talk more than they do in the forums
Lorelei Junot: When I asked at the last meeting, someone said there were no business groups in sl
Lorelei Junot: Is that true
Sweegy Manilow is online
Lorelei Junot: do some of you belong to business groups
Pamzy Warrior: not yet
Lorelei Junot: Would one or a few of you like to take the lead in creating one
Lorelei Junot: to make sure the programs and meetings are on topics of interest to your group
Pamzy Warrior: i'd like to explore what is available first i think
Shaun Altman: Hello
Lorelei Junot: Welcome Shaun
Lorelei Junot: We were just discussing possible topics and programs for business people in SL
Lorelei Junot: I am not a business expert
Lorelei Junot: I do not profess to be
Lorelei Junot: I am just here to get ideas on how/if the library can help you
Lorelei Junot: and if so what types of programs or informatin the library can help with
Lorelei Junot: There has been some discussion of getting one of the Lindens here to discuss economics
Pamzy Warrior: i think kitten had some good ideas
sublicious Ramos: i missed what kitten said
Pamzy Warrior: perhaps she should restate them
sublicious Ramos: that would be nice
Kitten Lulu: basical stuff any business need:
Little Brown Cat: Meow
Kitten Lulu: materials, courses if possible about marketing: positioning your product, choosing a product and pricing strategy
Pamzy Warrior: i know that is micro to Prok, but important to most of us i think'
sublicious Ramos: what is important to me
sublicious Ramos: is having the very best possible item i can make to sell to the public
Kitten Lulu: Personally, I am not here to make money. Paying my rent is enough, I just want to enjoy it and LEARN something.
Kitten Lulu: SL is a good ground to try new strategies
Kitten Lulu: being a business owner in RL, I could try some stuff here that I wouldn't have dared in the activity that pays my bills
Pamzy Warrior: good way to think about it Kitten
Sweegy Manilow is offline
Pamzy Warrior: learning in SL to carry over strategies to RL
Kitten Lulu: as Prokofy said, you have to be careful to carry stuff over
Pamzy Warrior: indeed
Kitten Lulu: but it's much less complex to try out stuff here and much less risky than RL
calmtommy Lowell: i have a question , what is the aveage number on line and what are peak hours?
Pamzy Warrior: the man is brilliant - dont get me wrong - i just want what i came for
Kitten Lulu: I don't know if that stats are available
Pamzy Warrior: average? 4,000 at any time
You: there aer said to be 30,000 concommitant users on line
Kitten Lulu: it could be extracted from the homepage, if the numbers there are correct
You: the 220,000 is inflated with the vast number of basics that don't stay 7 or 30 days
Pamzy Warrior: the homepage never goes ovre 6,000
You: but during the 24 hour cycle it is 30,000 or so
You: they claim
Pamzy Warrior: i see
You: i've seen even claims of 60,000
You: not sure what is real
Kitten Lulu: 30.000 different users, so
Lorelei Junot: I know we see much more traffic during the evenings and weekends
Lorelei Junot: later evening than earlier evening
You: Lawrence Linden says aveerage log-on is 4 hours, average expenditure $1500 LL during 4 hour sesssion
Marquis Desoto: 6,302 online right now according to secondlife.com
Pamzy Warrior: that seems right to me Prok - u disagree?
You: 3-9 pm EST or 12-6 PST seem peak times but it can really vary depending on events inworld
You: disagree about what? it says 6000 are online, they are, but are they just the same 6000 all day or 24000 different, we can't know from that
Pamzy Warrior: yes prok - your own quote from the lindens
Kitten Lulu: well, they do have to sleep sometime
You: oh I think $1500 is exaggerated
calmtommy Lowell: so as a whole breaking down the numbers how does the equate to the 171,000 us that is said to be spent here every day?
You: I think these Lindens count stuff twice, coming and going off the Linden, and that inflates it sure
You: I don't even spend $1500 per 4 hours it sounds nuts to me
Lorelei Junot: I asked about the traffic count
Lorelei Junot: that is confusing to me the way that is calculated
You: ?
Shaun Altman: back
Lorelei Junot: traffic count on land
You: oh that is by an arcane formula
You: it's not a one-to-one ratio
Lorelei Junot: right
Kitten Lulu: I spent -12884 this week
Lorelei Junot: Welcome
You: it's a formula based on log-ons and other factors
Isabell Shriner is online
You: and they generate a payment based on it
Siouxsiesioux Banshee: Where am I?
You: and it has a significant number of days where it is stuck or doesn't work each month
calmtommy Lowell: is it true the traffic paymnets stoped on may 1?
You: They were cut in half
Kitten Lulu: they are being phased out
You: and will be ended June 15
Shaun Altman: thankfully they will end entirely soon
Pamzy Warrior: why thankfully - usee it as unfair?
You: cutting them in half hasn't done a thing to help the Linden value
Shaun Altman: Pamzy: well it's an entitlement
You: 4 million of those sources as distinct from the 59 million in stipends as sources
Shaun Altman: I think the sense ov entitlement that infests SL is already bad enough
Shaun Altman: I am for a society which is free of entitlements
Pamzy Warrior: u dont think those land owners earned it???
You: So the solution then Shaun was to keep the content buyers and content makers entitled with their stipends
Shaun Altman: Pamzy: no
Pamzy Warrior: i disagree friend
Shaun Altman: If they earned it, those using the land would have given it to them
You: and screw the much smaller number of mainland businesses who work and get that as an incentive
You: ok
Shaun Altman: it would have been EARNED, rather than GIFTED
Shaun Altman: do u see the difference?
Lorelei Junot: Shaun, who do youo think feels entitlement and why
Pamzy Warrior: they earned it by attracted traffic
Pamzy Warrior: attracting
You: and I hope you're exercising the same degree of zeal about ending stipends then Shaun lol
Siouxsiesioux Banshee: excuse me..
Shaun Altman: Loreli: clearly Pamzi does.. she feels that she "earns" free money from the government.
Pamzy Warrior: i know the stipends is a problem for some people
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: it is clear that eventually stipends will have to go yes
You: trying to get the kind of more complex economic relatinoships and micropayments that can come from visitors paying you for their visit to their land is not something you do in 30 days.
Pamzy Warrior: but if i invested money in my property that the lindens also benefit from
Pamzy Warrior: then YES i earned it
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: people have had a LONG time to do that
You: As usually the Lindens phase-out is a Stakhanovite shock tactic, not a real phase out
Mimborin Flagstaff: People are too dependant on the traffinc entitlements although I could see the entitlements being replaced by external advertising for more visited sites.
Shaun Altman: It has been clearly known that dwell would go away
Shaun Altman: nobody bothered, and now everyone is angry that their own incompetance has cut their revenue streams
You: It wasn't clearly know you'd have to pay for FIND ads out of your group tho Shaun
Kitten Lulu: traffic is not going away, just dwell
You: no
Pamzy Warrior: how did we bogged in this BS anyway
You: there's no incompetence involved in expecting that by now surely they'd have these group tools they promised LOL
Shaun Altman: If I had a business dependant on visitors to my properties, I'd have been charging them long ago
You: to enable you to manage finances better than through the hippie commune method
Shaun Altman: Well yeah I agree there
Pamzy Warrior: then maybe u should change strategies shaun
You: I speak as someone who gets very little from dwell
Shaun Altman: The group tools SHOULD have been done before dwell was cut
Shaun Altman: but unfortunately, people need too much liquidity
Lorelei Junot: Eis, does Teazrs offer classes for businesses in sl
Eiseldora Reisman: not really
sublicious Ramos: not that i know of
Lorelei Junot: ok
Shaun Altman: so pulling currency inflow back 10% became a more pressing issue than they probably thought
You: dwell is spread too thin and even on the Developer's List I got something like $150 USD for my work in maintaining 12 sims with hundreds of tenants doing all kinds of activities to build their traffic.
You: So what, a half sim of tier? That's worth fussing about?
Eiseldora Reisman: it depends on the teachers expertise
Pamzy Warrior: not really
You: Dwell cost the Lindens what, $250,000 per year USD?
You: what does the cost of basic accounts for free cost them by contrast?
Shaun Altman: dwell costs RESIDENTS 250,000 USD
Eiseldora Reisman: the Academy of Secondl Learthing might be helpful
You: Well we're straying from topic here again
Shaun Altman: every time LL prints an excess L$, it is a direct tax on YOU
Shaun Altman: in the form of loss of value
You: because I think Lrelei's point is that she will offer training services that will enable us all to resign ourselves to these virtualties LOL.
Shaun Altman: and YOU or YOUR CUSTOMERS must bear that cost
Shaun Altman: so someone can have free money
Shaun Altman: it isn't right
You: well Shaun that's all fine, just direct your ire on the stipends then
You: and you won't do that because that's not popular
You: lol
Pamzy Warrior: please
Shaun Altman: I will when they need to go :D
Kitten Lulu: not necessarily :-) we could use some help on how to organize a party to put pressure for changes
You: anyway it's a oplitical debate that is for another kind of meeting than this one
Shaun Altman: I think the 10% reduction was perfect
Shaun Altman: Oh ok.. well I didn't start the topic :D
Shaun Altman: what is the meeting about?
You: oh dear God, I'll organize my own parties without libraries training me LOL sorry
You: well read the events thingie
Pamzy Warrior: omg
You: it's about a library with a mission to help the community
Shaun Altman: I heard some people were going to make a library, and teach people about business
IanLee Patton is online
Lorelei Junot: ok, You would be surprised librarians can be pretty hard partiers
Lorelei Junot: No, we are just doign what we do in rl
You: um, no doubt
Lorelei Junot: bring resources to people in our community
Lorelei Junot: to people who want them
Shaun Altman: Well that's cool
Lorelei Junot: and need them
You: but I need a party that advances a political platform, rather than dances on anims
Shaun Altman: resources are wonderful
Shaun Altman: what types of resources?
Lorelei Junot: We can help you find articles, books, information on a topic
You: what I'd rather have frankly is just one Linden, any will do, it can be a junior telecommuter, who answers for mainland business, period
Shaun Altman: RL books?
You: every other service they have fetes private island owners and educators on non-profit sims
Lorelei Junot: I would like to provide some training programs, speakers who would be of interest
You: cough
You: well getting the economic lindens to come out of their caves would be a cuop
Lorelei Junot: That is why we are having this meeting - to see what/if we can do something for you
Planetneutral Fackler: this group was billed as an opportunity for discussion of business. that seems to be happening quite nicely.
Lorelei Junot: If you don't need anything, that is fine
Shaun Altman: I see, kind of :D
Lorelei Junot: yes
Lorelei Junot: the discussion is very interesting
Lorelei Junot: it has met some need
You: well I have a group called Doers that just *does*
You: lol
Kitten Lulu: also the "strategic vision" kinda meeting that Philip talked about in the last town hall meeting
Lorelei Junot: there are a good number here
Kitten Lulu: can we get a Linden to talk about what they want to do?
Lorelei Junot: what does your group do Prokofy
Kitten Lulu: or just talk ourselves?
Lorelei Junot: Kitten, I will try to get someone
You: We take up single issues and work them to conclusion
Lorelei Junot: You probably don't need the library to get a group of you together
Lorelei Junot: that was a need brought up at the last training
You: for example, a campaign to get the Lindens to mitigate the Bush Guy
You: or a campaign to remove officer recall functions from groups which were misused by griefers
Sweegy Manilow is offline
You: or meetings to develop lists of proposals to the Lindens for how to fix the group tools -- all of these were very successful I think
You: it's hard to get things done in SL except by doing them lol
You: the hard way
Kitten Lulu: It's hard also in RL
Pamzy Warrior: what is the name of your group Prok?
You: I have lots of groups: Doers, Consumer Advocacy, Fair Play, SL Public Land Preserve are some
Jessica Ornitz is offline
Pamzy Warrior: i have been to one of your discussion groups - always a good fight going on there
You: just trying to work the issues of the mainland I have now made "Mainlanders" which consolidates two other groups
You: well you may have come to the economic meetings on Fridays, those aer debates
Lorelei Junot: Prok, would you be willing to do a program here on your groups and what is involved in them
Pamzy Warrior: perhaps but i for one would like to encourage the library
You: I just hold the group meetings and people come to them on my land, Lorelei
Lorelei Junot: ok
You: that makes more sense for me to do, than to enable you to claim to Lindens, or funders, or someone else, that you are "providing resources to the community" by hosting me.
You: THat may sound harsh.
Lorelei Junot: No, that is fine
You: But SL is a fierce battle for influence, favour, market share, dwell, funding.
You: It's frontier justice.
Pamzy Warrior: true
Lorelei Junot: We want to provide programs, resources and events for SL residents
Lorelei Junot: not to compete with businesses, take business or traffic away from them
Shaun Altman: How many of you are SL business owners?
Kitten Lulu raises hand
Pamzy Warrior: hand raised
You: Then it's important for you to face your OWN needs for: 1) a way to pay tier 2) a way to show RL funders you are successful; 3) your connections to Lindens; 4) your status as someone who pays less tier on YOUR non-profit sim than I pay on MINE etc
You: see?
Lacy217 McLuhan: hand raised
calmtommy Lowell: hand raised
RacerX Gullwing is offline
Pamzy Warrior: but Prok i think u are accusing the library of something they are NOt doing
Pamzy Warrior: i honestly believe they want to be a resource
Pamzy Warrior: nothing more
Lorelei Junot: That is our goal
Pamzy Warrior: is that true Lorelei
RacerX Gullwing is online
Shaun Altman: resourses are good
Lorelei Junot: We are certainly not here to compete with you
Kitten Lulu: well, there is a simple solution/test.
Kitten Lulu: which would help both of us
You: Yes you are Lorelei, whether you recognzie it or not
Kitten Lulu: let me make an example:
Lorelei Junot: The businesses we are seeking funding from inRL are library-related busiensses that you probably have not even heard of
You: You displace other residents' initiatives by creating a meeting place and resources that draw away from other people's activites
Lorelei Junot: Another example is if you wanted a research study done on some topic and some articles
You: you undermine their gruops, you see
Planetneutral Fackler: all we wanted to do was provide a forum that was requested of us by SL residents
Lorelei Junot: We would be happy to do that and provide that for you
You: and you do it with RL funding from grants that we don't access, as we are world-indigenous
Pamzy Warrior: Prok you can say about any place in SL
You: The landscape has changed dramatically with the introduction of people like you
Kitten Lulu: we want a briefing on the land market, Prokofy could do it, on his own land, in a set of meeting organized by the library, using some signs to make it clear that it's sponsored by both entities. Would this work for you?
Door: JBalla Thereian is at the door.
You: with RL funding accessing RL grants
Lorelei Junot: How do we underminen the groups?
Pamzy Warrior: change is good
You: and leveraging that over indigenous peoples
You: Not always
Planetneutral Fackler: what grant money?
You: sometimes it's terribly distructive
You: grant money with things like the SL Medical project
Shaun Altman: Why does it matter if funding comes from L$ or USD?
Pamzy Warrior: again Kitten's great idea got lost in the cros-tal
You: Shaun you're not hearing my point
Shaun Altman: I'm sure that if you wanted to raise funds tgo provide a resource, u could
Kitten Lulu: you are basically saying that any no-profit is bad?
Lorelei Junot: We don't have money for the medical project
Shaun Altman: well I guess I'm not :P
You: If a group comes here in which their tier is paid for by a government or private grant in RL
Lorelei Junot: We have a free trial from a database vendor
Lorelei Junot: We have been paid for with donations
You: then they compete with me as a person who doesn't use that "camp chair" windfall but makes my money the hard way
You: inworld
Lorelei Junot: and we have as much right to be here as you do
You: with income from other residents
Zarf Vantongerloo is offline
Lorelei Junot: We do not want to compete with you
Shaun Altman: How does a library compete with you?
You: I'm not sure you do Lorelei, that's the point.
Lorelei Junot: If you want to have events on your place, that is great
You: I'm not sure that you do get to have a non-profit fee for your sim, and I don'.t
Shaun Altman: And have you not heard of gov. grants IRL?
Lorelei Junot: Yes, we do
You: Let's rest on that issue for a second
You: Do you pay $150 of $195 for your sim?
You: Did you buy the sim for $950 or $1250?
Lorelei Junot: I say we end this argument right here
Lorelei Junot: We are not going to agree
Lorelei Junot: You have your point of view
Pamzy Warrior: me too
Lorelei Junot: and I have mine
Shaun Altman: oh I agree, all land should cost the same
Lorelei Junot: You have your right to yours
Lorelei Junot: If you do not wish to use our resources, that is fine
Shaun Altman: I have lots of non-profit stuff that I'd like to do on free sims
IanLee Patton is offline
You: Well, no I am not going to agree that you get a $950 island but I'd have to pay $1250 even if I do non-profit work on it because I'm not a 501-c-3 as such inworld
Lorelei Junot: But many here would like to, and we will do the best we can to provide that for them as we do in rl
Pamzy Warrior: but you are hijacking the meeting!!!
You: Lorelei, I know yuou want to have a nice tea party, ahve it.
Lorelei Junot: Well, in rl, libraries get land, money, etc. donated to them all the time
You: Yes but by another planet?
madddyyy Schnook: lol
Lorelei Junot: They get governed by a public board
You: If you get it from RL you are on another planet than me
You: yes
You: but do you get donations by $5ll or $500 LL
You: or $5000 uS from a government grant?
You: do you see the incredible gulf that has opened up in SL?
You: Whowever had a library before, and there were lots of them
You: had donations in Lindens from others making Lindens
You: now you will invoke the power of RL donations and grants, correct?
You: or have I misudnerstood?
Kitten Lulu: You can't fight the influx of RL money int oSL.
You: No, but I can point o ut that there is a class warfare to be had
You: and point out that those doing that shouldn't pay $150 for tier
You: among many other things
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy what did you expect from thsi meeting
You: it's srong
You: *wrong
madddyyy Schnook: i agree
You: I thought I would find a group of BUSINESS PEOPLE
Pamzy Warrior: he apprently wanted to run it
You: not a group of LIBRARIANS
You: no
You: I thought I'd find people with common concerns
You: such as I have in my blogs
You: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/05/the_coming_main.html
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy it sounds like you have a lot of wonderful groups of business people already
You: the coming huge whack on the mainland economy for example
You: yes I do Lorelei thanks
You: I'm always happy to meet NEW people tho : )
You: and see if they share these urgent concerns
You: like the HUGE whack coming against the mainland
You: and I mean HUGE
You: you have no idea
You: you yourself may be affected
Kitten Lulu: We are a group of people who run businesses in SL -which doesn't automatically grant us the business people mindset- who were here for a specific subject, how to leverage a library for our own SL businesses.
Kitten Lulu: At least, that is my case.
You: ok well leverage away!
Pamzy Warrior: mine as well
Kitten Lulu: ok. what else we could use the libary for?
Kitten Lulu: mmmh... I have an idea, but I am not sure if the library is the best setting
Pamzy Warrior: exactly
Kitten Lulu: we need some better way to match people who make components to people who make final products
Lorelei Junot: Well, we are at one hour
Lorelei Junot: We had a request to get business people together
Kitten Lulu: I am a scripter, most of my work is providing stuff to other businesses
Lorelei Junot: this may not be the best place
Lorelei Junot: that is fine
Patrick Witherspoon is online
Lorelei Junot: but if any of you need help locating articles, information on the internet, etc we would be more than happy to help you
Pamzy Warrior: Kitten i encourage you to meet with Lorelei privately and giver your list of needs as outlined earlier in the cross-talk
Toneless Tomba is offline
Door: JBalla Thereian is at the door.
Pamzy Warrior: allt he things you thought the library should bring
Lorelei Junot: If you have any informatoin needs we can help find for you, we would be more than happy to do that
Lorelei Junot: If you have other ideas, you are welcome to IM me
Lorelei Junot: Prokofky, you have a lot of great groups that will benefit this group
calmtommy Lowell: well , what i would like to see from a libray is such things stats about s/l buss and meetings ofr diffent artest
Lorelei Junot: We are here for a year whether you think we should be or not
You: Lorelei, be here all you want
Keely Lawson is online
You: as I have been here for 18 months toyour less than one month
You: you claim to want to "serve the community"
Pamzy Warrior: oh gee
You: maybe be willing to listen more
You: about what people alerady struggle to do here
You: before purporting to "train them"
You: geez
Lorelei Junot: Prokofy I have listened to you for an hour
You: that's just insane
Lorelei Junot: and we cannot agree
Pamzy Warrior: resources not training
Lorelei Junot: WE will have to agree to disagree
You: No, because you have trouble even telling us whether you pay $150 tier or $195 like the rest of us LOL.
Lorelei Junot: No I have no trouble telling you that
Lorelei Junot: We pay for $150
Lorelei Junot: but I am not going to allow you to bully me
Planetneutral Fackler: where is this offer to train you?
Lorelei Junot: WE hae a right to be here
You: Ok, so what can YOU tell me about how I pay for that extra hard to get $45 in cost coverage?
Planetneutral Fackler: nothing in the listing said anything about that
Lorelei Junot: We have a service to offer
Lorelei Junot: and if you don't want to use us, that is fine
Lorelei Junot: There are some who will use us, others who will not
Lorelei Junot: that is everyone's choice
You: OK
Lorelei Junot: however, I am not going to cutyou up one side and down the other because I don't agree with our views
Lorelei Junot: If there is nothing we can do for you, that is fine
You: Cut away, hon
Lorelei Junot: I think you need to cut away
Lorelei Junot: I think you need to go away
You: Well, I never imagined YOU could do anything, I thought the people coming to the meeting might be fellow businessmen
You: but that was silly I guess
Lorelei Junot: You have taken over what could have beena very positive conversation
madddyyy Schnook: lol
Shaun Altman: <--- business fox
You: so then it jsut becomes an interesting exercise in examining and perhaps exposing hype?
Shaun Altman: <--- in business week
Shaun Altman: <--- pays full tier :D
Pamzy Warrior: All I ask is that i come to Prok for discussion on global Sl issues, and I come to the library for RESOURCES
You: ok well have a positive meeting then please
Lorelei Junot: the person who requested the meeting and who offered to moderate did not show up
calmtommy Lowell: lol@shaun
You: ok resource away then
You: yeah that happens in SL a lot
You: it's not like RL!
You: pesky avatars are unreliable!
calmtommy Lowell: i think you are a fox in bussiness
madddyyy Schnook: perhaps this should be put on the forums
Kitten Lulu: why?
madddyyy Schnook: why not
Lorelei Junot: Madddyyy what should be put on the forums?
You: yes I think this wuold be a good transcript to puoblish for pubilc dialogue?
Lorelei Junot: If the business people feel the non-profits should not get a discount you should put that up
You: what do others think?
Kitten Lulu: I don't see anything useful here
You: it's interesting
Kitten Lulu: not in the long term
Pamzy Warrior: me neither
Lorelei Junot: from the library or from this discussion?
You: Is this a public meeting with a public transcript? or?
Pamzy Warrior: except Metting Hijacking 101
You: no it's not hijacking, just trying to see if there is common ground
You: there is not
You: so that's fine
Pamzy Warrior: right
Kitten Lulu: I assume it's a public meeting with a public transcript, you can put it on if you want
You: let the buyer beware
Kitten Lulu: I just don't see what it would be useful for in the forums
Planetneutral Fackler: i'm ALL for a public transcript
Abbey Zenith: We offer support not competition. You have your own agenda evidently.
Shaun Altman: Isn't everything in events public?
madddyyy Schnook: yes it is
madddyyy Schnook: i have never heard of this 150 for non profit before
You: You have your agenda too, Abbey, and it's better to be frank about it.
You: You compete with other residents, and that's fine.
You: But you compete on *unfair grounds*.
You: and that creates conflict in society that is actualyl unnecessary
Pamzy Warrior: so rpoviding a service is LESS valuable than SELLING one?
You: People think dwell should be removed?
Pamzy Warrior: are u high
You: well why shouldn't these non-profit rates be removed then?
You: People pay for the services of renting
You: including to rent space for meetings
Shaun Altman: I have to agree with that
You: or they get it for free
Shaun Altman: because
calmtommy Lowell: / i truely attended this meeting to gain some insight on opening a bussiness here in s/l
Shaun Altman: a LOT of people would like to do non-profit work and can't afford it
You: Your service represents something more complex that may not be viable yet I'm not sure
Shaun Altman: why should LL pick -some- to give free land to, and make others pay thru the nose to donate content?
Abbey Zenith: Prokofy, do you realize that the people who work here will add to your economy?
You: I do nonprofit work her ein SL and I pay for it from the income from the business
Pamzy Warrior: if u are not sure - why are u putting it down
Shaun Altman: everyone should pay through the nose, equally
You: so that's why I"m particularly pointed on this issue of who gets $150 tier
You: No, they are outlanders who will simply strip it down
Lorelei Junot: Profkofy we hae brought in over 100 people to this economy who are buying products here
Kitten Lulu: why don't you fund a registered NGO and register with LL, Prok?
You: and show off to their RL funders what kewl things they will do to "serve the community"
Shaun Altman: Prok, is it 150 tier or is it just free tier?
Abbey Zenith: Your issue are with the system, not with us.
Shaun Altman: some of these islands are totally free
You: the community they will be busy undermining and displacing with their subsidized projects
Shaun Altman: no purchase cost and no tier
You: wait
You: there's no issue of FREE tier is there?
You: nobody gets free tier do that? i hope not
Lorelei Junot: No we do not get a free tier
Shaun Altman: Yes I've heard that several of these nonprofits are on free land
Kitten Lulu: apart charter members, I think no one
Lorelei Junot: This discussion is going nowhere
Shaun Altman: Lorelai: are you the island owner of record? What is your tiering cost for this sim?
Pamzy Warrior: nowhere
You: Well I just finished paying my tier for the month with the plunging Linden, suffering at least 3 days loss of down time due to grid crashes by griefers
Lorelei Junot: I am the land record of owner
You: so that's the sort of business problem I'd like to discuss
Lorelei Junot: I pay $150 per month as I said before
You: not how I can help a library find its mission
You: I'm sorry but it has to be said
Kitten Lulu: oh yes
Abbey Zenith: This isnt' the forum for that.
You: you do people no favours by telling them you're helping them in busienss and giving them resources
Lorelei Junot: You need to contact the Lindens about that
You: when you don't give them resources for dealing with these harsh virtualities
Lorelei Junot: why is that Prokofy
Kitten Lulu: (off topic: how about a cut off of our land tiers for any days that SL is down?)
You: um yeah
You: Lindens
You: sure
You: Lidnens you tell me YOU will bring in as speakers
You: LOL
Lorelei Junot: If you want to use your groups
Lorelei Junot: to fight this, I encourage you
Lorelei Junot: I think this meeting is over
You: I have Lindens speak occasionally too, but I wouldn't do it that way frankly
You: no I have better things to do with my groups
Lorelei Junot: I am sorry you have a problem with us Prokofy
Lorelei Junot: but thatis your right
You: Yes I continue to have a problem with people who have $150 sims yes
You: It's unjust
Lorelei Junot: You do not have to use the library
madddyyy Schnook: i agree
Lorelei Junot: Others will and you cannot stop them
Lorelei Junot: I have no say about who pays what
calmtommy Lowell: well tahnks every one for the help
You: it's especially unfair when they are paid for by RL taxpayers, and not this community here
calmtommy Lowell: see ya
Lorelei Junot: so get your groups to do that
You: so they have noconnection
Lorelei Junot: PROFKOFY this is paid for with donations
Pamzy Warrior: night Lorelei - tommy and i support the library
You: I don't need a library
Lorelei Junot: NOT TAX dolars
Lorelei Junot: why did you come today then
You: Lorelei,k do you want to sit there with a STRAIGHT FACE
Lorelei Junot: if you don't need a library, then do not come
You: and tell me your donations for all your purchase price and your tier
You: come from INWORLD DONations in lindens????
You: Please
You: Lindens?
Lorelei Junot: You please leave
You: as in $1000/3.00 US indens?
Lorelei Junot: the meeting is over
You: OK bye!
Lorelei Junot: I am sorry it turned out this way

The Coming Mainland Whack and Groups

Interesting that the Lindens are saying more now about what they are doing with groups. Kelly Linden even says he's "leaking" info from inside the devs' magic circle. Whatever the deliberate manipulation involved in this -- or the genuine sense of himself doing that (and we can't know the difference), the high-signs have already been given out by his bosses -- when I asked Philip in Skype at the Town Hall last week about the coming mainland whack, Philip answered very frankly that he was aware that this was unfortunate, that the islands got a feting ahead of time, and he explained matter-of-factly that this was because "the coding was just easier to do". He implied that the gap of favouritism wouldn't last long -- a week? Maybe 2. Maybe more. (Now we can see from Kelly that it will be more.)

I don't see a transcript yet, but basically, I was confronting him, as I did actually at the last town meeting, about his continued privileging of the private islands versus the mainland in the development of Second Life.

The funhouse mirror world of SL is such that private islands, who enjoy the lions' share of the rentals and even sales business now, can still perceive themselves as "victimized" by not being able to sell out of the client in the same way -- remember Ellie Edo and the furor she caused on the islands with Lindhar Lehane and other alts? Remember the absolute storm of harassment that they unleased, also with Cristiano's help, in getting the Lindens to go out of their own queue and deprecate the function of being able to advertise islands in the for-sale list??? Remember all that drama? That scarred the island dealers for life, and they imagine that they *go on* being disincented, though of course with a faster selling and  higher-price selling product, and a product  they can advertise in Classifieds, they are nothing of the kind.

 

Remember that old joke we used to tell about the guy with the withered hand who came up to Jesus? "Lord, lord, make my hand like the other one!" Pause. Then..."No, the other way, the other way!"

That's how I feel the Lindens are behaving with group tools and changes to the private island features.

They had this epiphnay that the problem with the islands is that you can't sell pieces of them, and the problem of the mainland is that you can't zone. Of course that isn't really the problem of the mainland, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, that Jesus Linden keeps zapping Withered Hand Man Mainland the wrong way, and he now has two withered hands instead of one.

 

You can pick up a card in my office in Alston that  outlines all the differences between islands and mainland, from which you can see that the islands have some decided advantages; only in lower cost, more freedoms, and more flexibility can you say the mainland, as a purchase or a rental, has more freedom. It's an interesting list to peruse and think about the economic stages and current economic life of SL -- it would never have occurred to me that TV-deeding would become the central economic issue I should have known it to be, seeing as how much time I have to spend on it : )

The one great difference between the two, the last advantage the mainland could really be said to have in any significant market terms, was the ability of anyone who had bought a mainland parcel to instantly set it to sale on their own, without having to summon a staff member of a private island system, like in Ansheland, and without having to then go search for a willing buyer through all kinds of inefficient methods like

Starting in the next game patch, island owners will now be able to set the options such that people who deed land from them will be able to set those deeded parcels to sale to another person though the client, i.e. by ticking off a box on their own game's tools on their parcel. These parcels are then to show up in the client or user interface "Land for Sale List".

So let's try to think what will happen when this kicks in. Currently, people will pay anywhere from $0 to $50,000 or more for a nice 4096 m2 parcel on a PI, and then ever after be willing to pay $25, as much as they pay Lindens, for the tier each month. In competition with Anshe, there are island dealers coming up with prices for as low as $15 to $22 for that same 4096 m2 monthly tier -- as well they should, given that at the bulk discount level, a land dealer paying $195 tier per island is paying only $0.002960 USD per meter, or $12 per 4096.

Of course, the private island owner will still retain nominal control over the land that you own, deed, and then resell. If you sell your Victorian-themed sim to someone who comes in and puts a metal Goth store with strobe lights, Anshe or Alliez or Hiro could, under their rules and terms of engagement, terminate your ownership. That's why the Lindens are trying to hurry to come up with a covenants system, so they can put this into place for island owners to ensure their investment and hard work in creating and maintaining themes isn't undone, the way it's routinely undone on the mainland. We're likely to see some nasty incidents develop, as people rush to use the new freedoms of selling deeds, their second or third generation buyers give weaker allegiance to the theme, and disputes develop over what is or is not within the theme or rules, i.e. not building a certain distance from the property line.

Many people enjoy the island parcels. Anshe has some 525 customers listed in the Dreamland group now -- that's 50 more than it was a few months ago, and she now has more than 100 islands. These aren't little 512 owners, either -- people buying a quarter or half or even full sim from her as a deed are common.

Currently, when people wish to sell their deeds, and try to make back what they put into it, they have to struggle, and sometimes take buybacks from Anshe or other deals, or huge losses, just to get rid of that recurring tier bill.

So several things are likely to happen now:

o Many people who have been hanging on to their island paradises just because they can't unload them easily will set them to sale now for what they think, and log off

o Freed up from endless labour involved in all these manual transactions for buys and sales, the Ansheland staff will first put all new parcels to sale, i.e. the newbie starter parcels they have for only $1024 for a 1024 on new islands like "Sakharov" (I can't help thinking that the RL Sakharov, whom I knew, would be startled to find himself commemorated by rows of flat sugar-cube squares with canals dividing them and waving palms LOL). This will enable them to turn over land faster -- volume always works in their favour -- and free up staff time for more mature development like extending their terraforming, prefab builds, etc. to new islands

o Those 6000 plus would be land sellers in the mainland list now, some of them with parcels that languish even for the bargain price of $4/meter, will now be facing competition not only with $1/meter attractive starter land way better than Governor Linden's First Land on the islands, but much larger and prettier and safer parcels than for most mainland areas -- and they will find their land increasingly hard to sell, except to others who are on the same sim with them and need prims, or people who just have a fine conoisseur's eye for these often difficult-to-build-on but geographically interesting mainland parcels. So they will liquidate -- to Anshe, of course, and sometimes for a trade to a PI, or to many other liquidators now available, some of them freeing up or adding tier now for just this coming mainland adventure in firesales.

o There will be people who do stuff like buy up all the PG or all the snow or all the waterfront or all the feted colour sims or whatever, just as has happened in the past, and then raise the price on it. So while there will be mainland deals to be had during this period, there will also be scalpers and it's worth waiting even 60-90 days for the scalpers to get tired of their tier and let it go.

o With owners of deeds vying with each other to sell, with private island owners creating now more and more cheaper parcels (they've been positioning themselves to do this for awhile), the price of private island deeds/rentals will come down to more comfortable levels and many people will find it an attractive option.

o To keep their income high, the private island dealers are already creating more attractive and expensive options, or more attractive bargain options, i.e. the "skim sims" as I call them, sims without their full prim usage, say, only 1875, the amount you'd get in a 8192 m2, placed over half a sim or 32k plus -- that way you get space and vista, something that you don't often get on the mainland unless you have open, Linden-protected sea, or own a whole sim or set of sims. These 4-pack skim sims will cost the same as one island, but will appeal to some people for their seemingly very low cost (Dana Bergson has them for $32,000 or so upfront cost now, and $40 of tier a month to have the feeling of half a sim around you). I already see other communities developing rapidly with very intense and intricate builds, themes, features, commons, shoppings, etc. continuing on the overall intense development phase that began in SL since the Lindens began to social-engineer and demand that the land industry not just "flip land" but have "value-add" to their parcels, i.e., convert land to *content* as befitting their content-driven world model, rather than to continue to perceive land in that old meat-world notion of "private property I have as a bulwark against the state" lol.

o Anyone coming into SL would have to ask themselves the sense of having a premium account -- private island dealers now rightfully point out that it is cheaper to live with them and pay the same tier to Linden Lab like $25 a month -- but without that extra $9.95 a month you'd have to pay in subscription (or $6 annualized). People will get

o More and more people going to islands, where they don't need to use tier, will have a 512 left over.For 18 months now,  I've already been offering people the option to donate that left-over 512 m2 or 1024 m2 in a couple or whatever to my land groups like Ravenglass Rentals, in exchange for a $250 or $350 discount off rent. I have dozens of people who do this and it works great, despite the insane campaigning against this concept that Jauani Wu and other oldby FIC types do out of some odd jealousy.

Now that Laukosargas has climbed on this bandwagon and called on everyone to put in their 512s for an events space they could share, something I've already done for ages with the SL Public Land Preserve which also has tier donors, it will be interesting if Jauani keeps savaging it. Of course, he does this primarily as a way to find a way to jeer at me, so he's likely to do nothing to counter another "community-minded socialist" like himself like Lauk.

Of course, Lauk's project has that same in-group, restricted feel to it. It's "our club, those of us who feel we can share, and share something complex like an events space." Of course, when I offered to people earlier this year to save Lauk's nest, I got like one offer of 512 lol (I was willing to put tier on it, but not cash -- in the end she declined to save it that way collectively, and got some individual buyer who agreed to preserve it).

Group projects have a troubled history in SL, and often flounder. Still, I persist with my 512 tier donation idea because it's absolutely the right thing to do to get some usage for people out of these free 512s that otherwise sit there. At one point we heard that only 6000 out of 9000 premium owners had bought land. That'd 3000 unused 512s, that could have been bought and sold for a profit first, then the tier freed up for other projects.

o If the Lindens completely stop manufacturing mainland sims during this period -- and I recall at one point they said they had plans to make X number more that we had calculated would run out by September or something, then two things could happen: the mainland will be pronounced dead, or the mainland will be a kind of mixture of vintage collectors' item land sold for higher prices, sims with people who just dig in and keep up prices by trading prim land to each other, and the wasteland that everyone associates with the mainland -- something that is as incorrect and hysterical a notion as the commonly held misbelief that telehubs were laggy and grabbed avatars.

o I see that a number of people have viewed the continuing Linden land glut, the privileging of the islands, the delays in group tool reforms to advantage the mainland, as a signal to move to islands. I haven't. I continue to believe in the open society of the mainland.

Of course, in doing so, I'm well aware that when I continue to ask Philip about this over-privileging of the islands, I'm something like the old high school girl friend who goes to visit her boyfriend in college, and is dismayed to find he "didn't stay as sweet as you are" as the old high-school yearbook adage had it, because he has now found his old home town to be backward, his old girlfriend and uncomfortable reminder of his youthful ideals, and merely an embarrassment.

Whatever Khamon says, Philip didn't stick to his One Mainland All Hail the Mainland concept and let the "united we stand, divided we run free at last" adage rein supreme. 

o At best, what will happen now is that many weeks (not "a week" or "a month" as was implied) after the private islands continue to run roughshod over the mainland, engaging in deliberately false and negative advertising, enjoying new tools, and getting the lion's share of

(Indicative of that was the bewilderment I had at a thread about sterling customer service with glowing contributions from people like Desmond Shang  about Cyn Linden. Cyn Linden never answers my emails or offline IMs, and if I get her in world, she usually promises to do something she never does. I ask her to find a way to get autoreturn on and clean up garbage over and over on certain sims -- I also ask her about things like whether a police blotter on a "griefer wall" might be a sign of hope that there will be more enforcement of the TOS against mainland ugly-build griefers.

My bewilderment is merely a function of my naivety about what this Concierge system is for. See, I thought it was for anyone who owns a sim or more. But it's not. It's for private island dealers exclusively. In fact, I don't think there's even a department for mainland sim owners equivalent to the concierge, which is why I'm reduced to having to try to catch Governor Linden himself online, and have conversations with him like this (I'm not kidding, he actually talks to me although I think he doesn't have any corporeal presence.

Prokofy Neva: Hi, I'm your tenant : )
Governor Linden: Good day to you Prokofy!
Prokofy Neva: Can you come and deed my video?
Prokofy Neva: Just kidding!
Prokofy Neva: When will the group tools be fixed so that we who live on your estate can catch up with the private islands? They're getting privileged again in the next patch! They'll be able to sell from the client like we do here.
Governor Linden: Sorry, the phone won't stop
Governor Linden: I may have to lock it in a cupboard.
Prokofy Neva: Could you reveal yourself to us? Do you have a grey beard and a 3-piece suit? Could you put your picture in your profile?
Prokofy Neva: This absentee landlord stuff has *got to stop*.
Governor Linden: Bringing better tools, especially Group tools is right up the list and we have lots going on in that area
Prokofy Neva: Timetable?
Governor Linden: Mainland is, of course, extremely important but it is harder an implementation than for islands in some features.
Governor Linden: I don't have an ETA i'm afraid.
Governor Linden: A picture of Gov Linden?  Hmm that would be a tricky one
Prokofy Neva: If it is "extremely important," why don't you a) put on autoreturn by roads to prevent garbage piling up and b) put it on for longer on water sims for boating; and c) get rid of that eyesore road running out of Brownlee?
Governor Linden: Gov Linden is, more a function than a person.
Prokofy Neva: well, do you exist? or are you a fiction?
Prokofy Neva: well could I suggest that's your main problem?
Prokofy Neva: If youd don't believe in yourself, who will?
Governor Linden: lol
Prokofy Neva: he's a function...who doesn't function...cuz he's not a person!
Prokofy Neva: Honestly, the mainland is sucking hind tit Gov.
Prokofy Neva: Garbage everywhere, land extortion, "uneven sim performance"
Prokofy Neva: what have you done for the mainland *lately*! YOUR estate!

So...now that we've envisioned the coming depression of mainland sales and rentals (for some -- and windfall for a few liquidators or nimble vintage-land purveyors) -- what can we expect down the road?

When I first began campaigning for group tool reforms last year, I thought they might be the salvation of the mainland. If only people had the ability to bring in partners who wouldn't steal land out from under them, if only they could give at least some tenants basic rights like being able to deed their own TVs, or even return others' prims from their land, or terraform group land, then perhaps some of the riskyness of land ventures and other projects might be removed.

What's been amazing to see is how people have adapted even using the crappy tools.

o people buy up whole sims, because it's easier to do, put out 12 or 16 or more rental units, and by securing the whole sim, they can reduce griefing, the ugly-view problem, etc. Of course, many of them opt to make cookie-cutter, Levittown type arrangements, but that sells for some. It's hard to make a living from sims these ways -- I often fly around and notice people are making less than $100 per sim, and often only like $32 or not even breaking even, even if they have full occupancy. But as  I've found, by combining mainland rentals with sales of land and sales of content, as well as ensuring volume and fresh opportunities, you can try to lift the profit margins.

o People even deed away land that they can't get back to others in a trusted group and do share projects and do make use of the 10 percent tier bonus. Given this latest favouritism of the islands, the Lindens better not even THINK of removing the 10 percent bonus that anti-land Sheeper Hiro Pendragon maliciously campaigns against, or the Techno-Socialist Entity Wu campaigns against, or the Terrorist Entity Zugzwang campaigns against, or others who just *hate* competition of any kind under "no business but my business" ethic.

Like the whopping 4 million of sources that the Lindens now cut in half when they removed dwell payments for land and club owners -- when contrasted with the whopping 59 million in stipends used to feed the content barons' businesses -- the 10 percent bonus on tier can't possibly be as significant as other "losses" for the Lindens -- instead, 10 percent incentive to group land and stay on the mainland sounds like just about the right level of compensation people should have for enduring everything from the Bush guy to this overstacking of fancier private island sims on their backs -- I am now routinely finding through Max Case's "Neighbours" that my laggier mainland sims only supposed to have 4 on them if they are class 4 have now 5 or 6, usually islands. Thanks, Linden Lab!

(BTW, I had to get a huge ROFL out Torley Linden transmogifying this rather pointed social commentary on the unconscionably bad Linden practice of over-stacking servers into some kind of "hey kids, look what fun!" kind of adventure in seeing what one's neighbours are. But look:

Furness, on a class 4 server that is supposed to hold 4 servers, has:

Furness

Rivata
Farfax

Sooseunhwa

Dreamscape 2

Elar Imerra

On Maryport, a class 3 server, there should only be 2 servers:

Maryport

Desires Island

Trouble

This ostensibly laudable exercise in getting the Lindens to be ashamed of their practice will probably fail but as we'll see in a coming post, Max Case himself is like most third-party data-scrapers in not wanting to be terribly forthright about how he might use this information that we can't know too much about how he gets.

As we all know from Lee Linden's celebrated post, servers stacked up as neighbours do not impact each other. That is, if I draw a heavily used Ansheland Plush server on to my lovely field in Jubata, as I have today, that shouldn't have a smidgeon of effect on Jubata, correct? Fine. But...if indeed Max is correct that "a class 4 server should only have 4 servers on it" and it has 6, well, I'm thinking that over-stacking is going to be an issue, no?

I personally am at peace now with Lee Linden. Lee Linden once told me that a sim I complained about as laggy in copious detail of the kind he demands in this thread was something he couldn't determine to be laggy, but as he pointedly noted, maybe that's because he was looking at the sim *when there were no avatars on it* -- and as I've long since understood, if I want my tenants to be happy and not have *any* lag, what I need to do is not have tenants, and perhaps just keep my land group members for a kind of fun hobby where we can get together on one sim and gaze into the other empty sim next to it, and admire its performance.

So what's the ultimate conclusion for the mainland?

o cheaper land will become available just when the group tools get improved in ways that the mainland can really use, and everything from rentals to businesses to art projects can get a big boost by using cheaper, less large and cumbersome and hard-to-manage land for their ideas. Perhaps there will be a revival of Philip's original dream of the One Grid the True Grid the Way it S'pose to Be.

o more griefers and ijjits and violently script- and particle-happy club owners will jump on a lot of cheaper land, too, meaning that these groups projects will continue to struggle with problems of unwanted neighbours on their sim or the next

o the advances in covenants and dispute resolution will go on being held out as a chimera to those still suffering on the mainland, but will be a very long time in coming (and maybe that's a good thing)

o Premium account memberships will drop so far down that the Lindens will finally feel safe in removing the stipend, because their biggest and fiercest critics of stipend removal -- the very active and land-owning middle class that views them as a "payment" or "sweetener" for all the shit they take in SL -- will be reduced in absolute numbers.

o An issue could arise with a slump in private island sales with all the land glut whereby the Lindens will start making budget choices of their own, not to upgrade servers on the less-used and less-valuable mainland, where a lot of the land is owned by Governor Linden or is for sale or even abandoned. They will upgrade island servers, and stiff the mainland.

o The land-glutting propensity of the Lindens on the mainland land auction will increase in a frenzy for a time, as the Lindens find parcels aren't even getting any bid at all -- why buy land and pay tier on risky parcels and pay recurring subscription fees? Even Anshe is likely to stop bidding on mainland sims -- she's doing so less and less-- and the enthusiastic land barons who came in the door with articles in Fortune or Business Week and bought up these sims for more than they really needed to pay (to compete against Anshe)

o In a few weeks the Lindens will overcome any mild resistance they experienced eternally or externally to a really wild case of feting -- streaming spawning newbies right into islands now, ending forever their concept of "First Land for $512 from Governor Linden." In fact, we might well see an end to the First Land program completely.  Would anyone miss it? A pious Linden announcement is sure to be coming, "We're finding that like the Developers' Incentive Award, the First Land program is not being used in the way we intended. People are buying up 5 accounts and farming the First Land and making groups out of them. Even those who just buy one piece now turn over as much as $5000 or $15 US from the sale of their subsidized first land -- a gift we cannot justify giving them when our main purpose here is to give cheap cash to newbies so they can buy content from our oldbies.

When they remove First Land, only a few old idealists will bitch, and people like Cristiano will applaud their difficult but important decision, which ends forever the evil exploiting capitalist running dog Cocoanut Koala who used her lackey-avatar Cocoanut Cookie and Cocoanut Shortbread to get more first lands for her evil capitalists goals of selling cottages to the unsuspecting masses.

Lindens will tell idealists like Prokofy that they should applaud the removal of the First Land swamps and ghettoes because they will create more rentals customers for Prokofy.

o The appetite from all sorts of special friends of the Lindens for FirstIsland will become so great, that the Lindens themselves will either give out way more non-profit sims for $950 and $150 tier only, that will be only very loosely connected to any notion of real non-profit work or they may even enter the island-leasing business for $250 a month. This temptation will be very great and they will not be able to resist it, despite their claim that they don't compete with their customers. First they will do it for special events and special friends, then finally when somebody bitches about favouritism, they will put it on the announcements board as a feature like the current renting of entire mainland sims for $4000 Lindens a day.

o Mindful that a lot of barons are getting payments of tier in PayPal completely bypassing their silly system of Lindens, LL will institute steeper chargers for PayPal transfers.

What's interesting to me is that the rentals business on the mainland is booming. I have more customers than I know what to do with. I don't have land enough to satisfy them all, and frequently am at full occupancy even with PG and snow. What's hard, however, is the constant drop in the Linden, and the constant expense of buying prim land or buying vulnerable land to save the view.

I see other rentals agents springing up all over, with anywhere from 2 cabanas to 4 sims with 64 units. They aren't always at full occupancy but the better managed ones do well. If the owners can forego the LL brass ring of volume and the lure of new fresh fast sims, and stick to their lasts building up slowly and on a manageable scale, they can do well.

But this increase in mainlands rental businesses may hit a wall now, with this coming whack and privileging of the islands. And the group tools, even if put in tomorrow, and tomorrow enabled us to be able to offer tenants the right to deed their own TVs, wouldn't right that forever skewed balance.

I'm going to keep thinking about it, but it won't matter what I think, I will either feel it in the pocketbook or I won't.

Resident Government

Transcript of Friday Night Sutherland Dam Club Meeting on Economy

You: Hi
You: Sorry I'm late
You: Come on up stairs
You: I have to IM my lists
Dana Strauss: that's ok...I was expecting more people...
You: well there are usually a group that comes, it's just that i'm late and didn't IM anybody
Dana Strauss: ahh
Dana Strauss: I missed the town hall. Does anyone have it up for download yet?
Dana Strauss: (that you know of)
You: Hi RacerX
You: did you go to the town hall yesterday?
RacerX Gullwing: hello
RacerX Gullwing: no
RacerX Gullwing: i get bored to ez
Cilis Nephilim: Hello.
DejaVu Skye is offline
Cilis Nephilim: hey racer ^^ I still remember those fireworks, pretty awesome.
You: Hi everyone
Rez Menoptra: thanks Prok
Shaun Altman: greetings
You: make yourself at home
You: do'nt knock your head
You: Hi
katykiwi Moonflower: hi :)
You: Shaun you're in the couple's chair!
You: lol
You: Did people catch the town hall yesterday?
Gxeremio Dimsum: Need a companion Shaun? :)
Abramelin Wolfe: hi prok and everyone
You: I have a partial transcript
Gxeremio Dimsum: i wasn't able to
katykiwi Moonflower: hi everyone :)
Cilis Nephilim: Hmm, that'd be a ricx pendant :P
Rez Menoptra: Hello all :)
You: Would anybody like to get a partial transcript of the town hall
Rez Menoptra: So what kind of civic redress did he mean?
Dana Strauss: I'd love to see one
You: it's my typewritten transcript I made as he was talking for the group for those without audio
Cilis Nephilim: I'd like that.
Rez Menoptra: sure i would
You: ok I will make a cube here with a ntoecard giver
You: he began by talking about turning grid crashers over to the FBI
You: he confirmed that he had done that and would keep doing that
You: it was vague as to actual prosecution of course
Cocoanut Koala: hi y'all!
You: but then he went on to say that we could use "civic redress" for offenses that were less than grid crashing
Cocoanut Koala: hiya rabbit!
katykiwi Moonflower: coco! :)
You: he ctalked about banning people from "masses of land"
katykiwi Moonflower: but how can you ban people en masse when its against the TOS to name names
Cocoanut Koala: hiya katy!
Gxeremio Dimsum: almost sounds like some kind of binding arbitration system among players, but usually the half that offended doesn't want any arbitration
Cilis Nephilim: So basically... he is saying we should do the work of his police force for him, and he thinks that we would be able to do this without naming names?
Dana Strauss: it's against the TOS to name names? (Sorry...still kinda a newbie)
katykiwi Moonflower: its against the rules
katykiwi Moonflower: so how would you get the word out
Rez Menoptra: I would think some sort of association of landlords or something in game
katykiwi Moonflower: i wonder how that would fly
Rez Menoptra: Probably like rocks
You: well there already is such a thing
You: and I have to tell you it doesn't work like you'd think
You: I have a blog up about this now
You: what happens is that it's all well and good for an ordinary
You: griefer
katykiwi Moonflower: the whores used to have a union where they shared names of johns who stiffed them no pun intended lol
Gxeremio Dimsum: on our esperanto campus, we're between two warring armies. they are constantly causing problems at events on our land. a system with big landowners wouldn't help us.
You: some kid flying around with his dick out screaming crap and dropping prim bombs and shit
You: that's fine
You: we can mass put out the word on the SLAM list
You: and everyone can know to ban that asswipe from their venue, fine
You: usually those people are gone from the list in a day or two
You: the LIndens ban them and they usually never come back
Cilis Nephilim: how's it suppost to work?
katykiwi Moonflower: what is the SLAM list
katykiwi Moonflower: well if you wanted to warn people about a problem griefer you cant post the name in the forums
You: that happens in like 75 percent of cases
You: but then ou get people getting on the list
You: who say
You: SLAM is a club and land owners group list
You: well you can't name names in the forums
You: but in a group IM who can stop you?
You: so every night SLAM comes on several timse
You: and someone will say "there's an idiot here with a cage bomb bombing the place ban him
Cilis Nephilim: Not just that. What tools do the public sector have to make conformations?
katykiwi Moonflower: yes but here is a prime example what about the rest of the membership that is not part of the group
You: so then everyone does if they have easy ban lists on islands especially
You: well they don't
You: that's the problem
You: that's my point
You: that there is no appeal, no redress,
Cilis Nephilim: A little social engineering and anyone with a few friends can blacklist and X boyfriend.
You: Philip calls it "redress" -- that's nuts
You: because listen what happens
katykiwi Moonflower: i mean if that woman can have the sl tourbus to hell and name names why cant we have a balck list
You: people say "ban this girl who is competing with my store I hate her"
Dana Strauss: Sounds like the RBL list
You: and of course people do ban her!
You: which is aful
Rez Menoptra: indeed
katykiwi Moonflower: trouble is a serious griefer can have alts
Shaun Altman: LL has a problem with SLAM?
Rez Menoptra: So did he outline some other method?
katykiwi Moonflower: and its easy to avoid bans
You: No not at all
You: you don't get what Im' saying perhaps
You: he is ENCOURAIGNG it
You: and that's the problem
Shaun Altman: perhaps
You: he isn't thinking of the consequences
Shaun Altman: b/c I know u have pointed out a few SLAMs yourself
Shaun Altman: I'm in that group
Gxeremio Dimsum: so much of it comes back to the same issue they were discussing on the last episode of SLCast...
Shaun Altman: I guess I'm not the right person to critique this though
Shaun Altman: I tend to be a bit of an "all or nothing" fox
Cilis Nephilim: He shouldnt encourage it AT all
Cilis Nephilim: how the HELL is it any differant from the SBP?
You: well I agree Cilis
Cilis Nephilim: (sand box patrol)
You: but it's already in play
Cocoanut Koala: what is SBP?
You: or you get things like the SL Metro Police
Shaun Altman: I would be very much for both personal and business blacklists
Cocoanut Koala: oh
Gxeremio Dimsum: you can't really make people do something (or not do something) like buy or not grief or whatever simply by exerting peer pressure in a place where no one really has to be.
Shaun Altman: on websites
You: Gxeremoio you sure can
Cilis Nephilim: They basically set up in a random sand box and try to play police, there for awhile they would bounce people up in the air, cage them, shoot them, etc
You: you can't imagine how it travels like wildfire
Shaun Altman: but I do think there should be the right to appeal, or at least state ur side
Shirley Marquez: you can if you're big and powerful enough -- suppose for instance you got banned from all of ANSHE'S land?
You: somebody says they have a competitor
You: and they can use this list to get hundreds of people in Ansheland on their side
You: there's only me to say, hey wait a minute
Gxeremio Dimsum: what if we do this a capitalistic way (Shaun, you listening?) - private police forces can be hired to manage ban controls on lands that sign up for their service, and the forces have a means of dealing with disputed bans?
You: no I dno't want private police
Cocoanut Koala: ooo! cute tin man!
You: they are always abusive
Rez Menoptra: It seems like more peoople would say hey wait a minute if they'd seen it not working, right/
You: look at the SL Metro Police
You: my God I had them as tenants, we went nuts
You: the police are as bad as the criminals
Shaun Altman: rent-a-cops?
Shaun Altman: lol
You: they provoke and stalk and force even good neighbours to shoot back
Shaun Altman: not on MY land :D
Rez Menoptra: hahaha
Cilis Nephilim: It needs to stay on the lindens payrole because they benefit from people competing and holding a business
You: I had a neighbour banned for 3 days for shooting the cop, and he gets nothing
Cilis Nephilim: they are just trying to make us do their work so they have to pay less people.
You: after harassing her and putting shit all around
You: yes Cilis it is about that I think
Cocoanut Koala: I do love a robot!
Gxeremio Dimsum: thanks cocoanut
Cocoanut Koala: yw!
You: I'm curious why you think capitalism is about private security
Dana Strauss: I have a feeling they're afraid of coming down on the griefers too, what with the lawsuit going on
You: capitalism in a normal democratic state would have a federal and local police force under civilian control
You: not just a million private forcles
Cilis Nephilim: The community cant do it, A) we dont have the tools B) too much room for corruption and shady usage C) it comes down to how much popularity you have, people will ban your ass in the heat of a moment
Cilis Nephilim: No questions asked.
Gxeremio Dimsum: well i suggest that if there are private forces, they work for money rather than vengeance. Better rent-a-cops than brownshirts, no?
Shaun Altman: I'm all for community policing
Cocoanut Koala: we live in a medieval land, with a distant and disinterested king
Cilis Nephilim: its like going into a counterstrike game and calling a vote to kick someone, all the kiddies click yes.
You: well I think we need to start putting the appeals process in place without even waiting for them
You: these Lindens are gunning to make a dispute resolution system
You: it will be made up of their pets
Shaun Altman: but I think there needs to be better access to information than an informal "group" can provide
Cocoanut Koala: GAH
Shaun Altman: there needs to be "systems" and "due process"
Cocoanut Koala: i don't think i can stand A BIT MORE OF IT!
Shaun Altman: and records
Cilis Nephilim: So basically, more FIC crap prokofy?
You: well you heard how Philip endorsed it yesterday
Cilis Nephilim: I've always thought they were in bed with quite a few types
You: FIC doesn't begin to describe it LOL
You: it shows they had this planned long ago
Cilis Nephilim: given how they keep removing ALL the damn insentives for new upstarts.
You: it's not even like "let me try this out on my blog" sort of thing
Cocoanut Koala: what planned?
Cocoanut Koala: what is planned?
You: the 8 people coming to SF
Cocoanut Koala: oh yeah
You: what do you think of that Shaun?
katykiwi Moonflower: who was invited to go
You: we don't no
Cocoanut Koala: read my dream on www.secondcitizen, Prok n everbody
katykiwi Moonflower: shall we take bets
Cocoanut Koala: oo yes let's!
You: yes!
You: let's short the ochocracy here
You: I'll bet Christiano is in the first batch
Cocoanut Koala: How's about Number 1 = Flipper!
You: no because he's doing SLCC
Cocoanut Koala: (unless he is a Linden)
You: this whole thing is cooked up to get around the SLCC problem see
Cocoanut Koala: huh?
You: my guess is that it will be Gwyn, who essentially ASKED for this to be done!!!!!
RacerX Gullwing: close captions?
Cocoanut Koala: yes and THERE is a person who actually WRITES MORE THAN YOU DO!
You: she told me she called a meeting with Jeska, she had a blog up saying the Lindens don't listen to their customers
Shaun Altman: I don't understand what u're talking about
You: hahahaha
katykiwi Moonflower: and her nose is permanenylu stained
Shaun Altman: LL is brining players to SF?
Cocoanut Koala: and lots duller, too! I can't get through them!
You: yes
Cocoanut Koala: yes shaun!
You: they are going to have a series of meetings
Cocoanut Koala: The Chosen Ones
You: 8 people per session
katykiwi Moonflower: last night hiro was wearing the group title metaverse consultant
You: they will pick based on most time logged in, content, land ownership
Cocoanut Koala: who will be forevermore on a special Advisory Comittee
You: oh geez
Cocoanut Koala: to advise how SL should be run!
Shaun Altman: Oh!
Shaun Altman: I want to go!
Shaun Altman: and get face time with the Lindens!
You: well I don't!
katykiwi Moonflower: aimee?
You: I refuse to endorse it
katykiwi Moonflower: neph
You: no see my theory is
Shaun Altman: quality time in a closed session!
Cilis Nephilim: Thats MAJOR bullshit.
You: they will put in people who aern't like Aimee and Flip
You: the next tier down
Shaun Altman: what will the focus groups be about?
Cocoanut Koala: MAJOR MAJOR
You: who are bitching that aimee and Flip get to be prom queen and king
Rez Menoptra: So you'd not go if they asked you Prok?
Cocoanut Koala: about ratifying the Lindens ideas mostly, probably
You: No
You: I refuse
Cocoanut Koala: nor would I
Cilis Nephilim: WHY the HELL do you let the best and brightest control everything? you know what the best and brightest will do?
You: it's an evil system
Cocoanut Koala: Well (a) they are not the best and the brightest
Cilis Nephilim: sabatoge anyone else following in their footsteps
Shaun Altman: Oh.. well the Lindens have had good ideas lately
Cocoanut Koala: and (b) that's just so . . . what is it?
Cocoanut Koala: it's so . . . something.
Shaun Altman: like ending dwell
Cocoanut Koala: top-down
Cocoanut Koala: um
You: Shaun you will change your tune when you're not invited LOL
Cocoanut Koala: ruling class
Cocoanut Koala: elite
Shaun Altman: and, aparently, encouraging the community to empower itself
Cocoanut Koala: King's Court
Shaun Altman: no I'm all for it Prok
Cocoanut Koala: aristocracy
Shaun Altman: invited or not
You: I said even if they serve me caviar on toast points and chilled Stoli in the presidential suite, I won't go
katykiwi Moonflower: no they are not the best and brightest they are friends of lindens and make an effort to butter them up
Cocoanut Koala: inequality, something like that.
Cocoanut Koala: *I* am the best and the brightest!
You: Shaun it wuold be one thing as a marketing gambit
katykiwi Moonflower: lol
Cocoanut Koala: *You* are the best and the brightest!
You: feting the prosumer
katykiwi Moonflower: yes coco you are I agree
You: but they are to make a permanent advisory structure out of this
Shaun Altman: well it IS a marketing gambit
Cocoanut Koala: in other words, there is no such thing as "best and brightest"
Shirley Marquez: I"m totally mercenary; I'd go for the free trip to SF...
Cocoanut Koala: that's CRAP
You: my God it's like Putin and the Kremlin and the human rights groups there
katykiwi Moonflower: flipper will be there i bet
You: total co-optation
Shirley Marquez: but it doesn't matter, they won't invite me anyway
Shaun Altman: at the end of the day they do what they want regardless
Gxeremio Dimsum: i was just watching a documentary about the french revolution...there was one guy fanning the flames, a permanent malcontent. Are you a permanent malcontent, Prokofy? :)
Cocoanut Koala: yes, shaun, but why create an official FIC then?
You: oh but this gives them social legitimacy
Cilis Nephilim: Exactly, remove the dev insentives, the dwell... everything that gave new players and land owners room to breath as they created
Shaun Altman: I must be missing something about this, that makes it evil
Shaun Altman: what's the rest of the story?
Cocoanut Koala: Gxeremio, there is no need to be a permanent malcontent - there is always so much to be discontent about!
Cilis Nephilim: now its all about keeping the people at the top at the top by stopping any competition by laying bear traps on the blazed path.
You: I'm not a permanent malconent, I'm someone who dissents against authoritarianism and pushes for greater democratic participation
Gxeremio Dimsum: So a citizen-run grievance system is democratic participation, right?
You: I've actually achieved something I belive by diong this
Cocoanut Koala: I would like to actually start the group "The Resistance"
You: I'd rather have it be resident based and be bad and something you cuold improve
You: then have it be run by Lindens
You: and guess what
Gxeremio Dimsum: well you made it in the wikipedia, so that's something.
You: they don't WANT to run it
katykiwi Moonflower: i think we need to form a group and publish advisory statements
Cocoanut Koala: YES KATY
Cilis Nephilim: Basically it gives them a larger E-penis to spout their bullshit on the forums, and more power to get people behind their stupid preposals.
katykiwi Moonflower: prok can you post in private group forums
You: Um, wikipedia is no source for me
Cocoanut Koala: maybe it should have a better name than the resistance
Cilis Nephilim: because everyone wants to kiss the ass of an asskisser whos made it to the top.
You: what matters is that I fought against officer recall, and they took it out
You: that was a plus
You: no I can't post to those forums
Dana Strauss: I like the idea of a solution of & for the citizens, but it sounds like there are technical issues that make it kind of difficult
You: Dana what are those reasons?
You: It's interesting what katy said
You: that we can't name names on the forums
Cilis Nephilim: he is banned from the forums
You: but you can name them in world from what I gather
Cilis Nephilim: which is bullcrap, I've heard stupid things before... thats where the bans should come in.
You: but I wonder if that's how people would fight any attempt at justice
Cilis Nephilim: Actually you can name names
You: begin to abuse report people for naming names
You: wel you can name my name and let the thread sit there and pound me for 3 days sure
Gxeremio Dimsum: Well I think one of the things about griefers is that they shouldn't take up too much time from average landowners, and if we have some kind of network with constant advisories, it's going to take up a lot of time.
Cilis Nephilim: as the policy states, the loop hole is you may do it if its in a positive light
You: Jauani does that all the time
You: certain names can't be named, let's amend that
katykiwi Moonflower: well its hard to spin a griefer report into a positive note
You: well there already is a network tho Gxeremio
You: that's what SLAM is
Rez Menoptra: ao off
You: and there are informal knock lists all over the place
Cilis Nephilim: I think they should just take it in the wallet and stop trying to push it off on us. we can not see scripts, chat, logs or look for timestamps
You: but it's not transparent
Cocoanut Koala: i agree, cilis
Cilis Nephilim: unless the average joe gets all that and more, it wont happen
You: good point Cilis
Cilis Nephilim: and I cant see them doing that, because privacy is an issue too.
You: I've wondered ifyou get a chat log and turn it in to a resident based committee
Cocoanut Koala: but the greater danger is they will appoint their own favorite residents to do it
You: whether you will be abuse reported for copying a convo without permission
You: see that's what they do
You: it's absurd
Gxeremio Dimsum: it's not even listed, right prokofy?
You: they will take the side of the griefers
You: SLAM may not be listed no
You: you have to be invited into it
Cocoanut Koala: yeah, what is this business, where apparently they are always punishing the person who strikes BACK at a griefer finally? is that true?
You: well remember when I went on the Community Round Table List
RacerX Gullwing: when you file an abuse report they ask you to send along any conversations
Gxeremio Dimsum: so that's not very democratic, prokofy - rather elitist, i'd say
You: and I said, hey, Lindens you are publishing people's emails here and that's violating privacy
RacerX Gullwing: like they cant look it up or something
You: one idiot kept emailing me at my individual email address and calling me a fucktard
You: and blaming me for the listserve problems, like they originated with me
You: like I was to blame for him getting a copy of my email with my address header
You: it was a Linden glitch
Cilis Nephilim: this is saini, a good friend :) anyway, continue ^^
You: so I cut and paste his message to the list and said, please, stop the griefers, and fix upyour List
You: wherepon I was banned for "disclosure"
You: copying a private convo -- which was merely an example of a problem
Cilis Nephilim: meh, all the furniture is taken up heh
You: see that's how terrible they are
You: I'll make smoe more chairs
Cilis Nephilim: thanks
Cilis Nephilim: Well I think linden labs suffers from a lack of professionalism
Cocoanut Koala: HUGEly
katykiwi Moonflower: prok they use any chance to exclude you
You: there's not enough of them
You: what I can't understand
You: is how they could justify spending 50k bringing 40 people to SF
You: and not spend that on paid benefitted staff
Cilis Nephilim scoots closer to saini and puts his arm over her hip.
katykiwi Moonflower: i used to think it was growing pains but coco is right its just unprofessionalism
Cocoanut Koala: cause they can show off to their fans? connect with their fans?
Gxeremio Dimsum: yeah imagine a venue with 7000 customers at it at once - it would have more employees than Linden Lab does.
Cocoanut Koala: get their fans to work for free?
Shirley Marquez: 50K wouldn't even pay for ONE person... not after benefits and stuff
Rez Menoptra: that's like one person's salary for a year at entry level, isnt' it?
You: well they are doing this tho as if it is a Braave New World sort of thing
Cilis Nephilim: Here is an idea.
You: it would if they had just one of these lisiaions
Cilis Nephilim: Why not have a guide program with insentives?
You: or telecommuters
You: telecommuters don't make any 50k even
You: buy 2 for that even
Cilis Nephilim: In exchange for doing 5 hours of police work, even if its just cleaning up griefer ressed objects, per week
katykiwi Moonflower: well whats interesting is they are trying to sell sl as a platform for business where meetings can take place in world and yet they are not doign that they are flying the chosen group to SF
Cilis Nephilim: results in a free 512 plot for yourself
You: Well is that bringing the same problem down?
Gxeremio Dimsum: what prok? 25k is not even base salary for a college educated person, not to mention benefits.
You: We already have 1500 of these mentors, greeters, helpers, instructors
Cilis Nephilim: That frees up the normal staff to focus on assult and ToS cases.
You: it's an army
You: part time
You: these are PART TIME Gx
You: they are kids
You: they don't pay much more than that for someone working half time or less as these telecommuters
You: please
Cocoanut Koala: well they just got ll million, what are they doing with it?
Cilis Nephilim: I mean, let residents clean up all the silly, cut and paste issues (like firebombs that leave laggy particals behind for hours) and in exchange they get a tier discount.
katykiwi Moonflower: why waste the cash to fly people to sf and put them up and at the same time insist SL is a platform for business where meetings can be held in world
First Page: of the 1500 people only about 5th actually do anything if that much
You: Cilis they cuoldn't do that technically tho
You: they can't get at people's land and Linden land
Cilis Nephilim: the remaining paid staff now has less simply stuff (though time consuming) to be tangled in
You: I suggested to the Lindens that when they have the new group tools
You: that will enable Gov Linden also to have officers who can't sell land out but who can push prims
Cilis Nephilim: *nods* they'd have to get special accounts away from their own normal ones.
You: so maybe we could take turns at least picking up garbage
Gxeremio Dimsum: i don't connect flying residents in to make suggestions for running/improving SL to the issue of advertising SL as a business platform - how do they connect?
Cilis Nephilim: Exactly
Cilis Nephilim: garbage collection
You: They connect for me
Cocoanut Koala: how?
You: They connect ever so much
You: It shows they are prepared to skew the platform to whatever whims their pets say
Cilis Nephilim: I've talked to a few myself, 50% of their time is used up on stuff such as that.
You: If Flipper needs a privacy button, drop everything, do that
You: if Ben needs a flexible tail, drop everything, do that
You: don't do group tools or get rid of grey squares
Cocoanut Koala: well, then, that's just a platform for a few, though
Cilis Nephilim: heheh :)
Gxeremio Dimsum: seems like market research to me.
Cilis Nephilim: well I am happy to get a flex tail soon >.>
You: you can't advertise this as an open, fair, market with normal open practices when you have that kind of wierd shit
katykiwi Moonflower: no it doesnt improve sl as a business platform when they message LL is sellign is have your business conducted in world
You: like it's friggin Opus Dei
Cocoanut Koala: which is why I suggested they actually DO market research, Gxeremio.
You: It's ilke Russia1
Cocoanut Koala: Like focus groups.
You: get in with this or that former KGB agent and friend of an oligarch, get a meeting to get your permit to open a business
Cocoanut Koala: not wineing and dining their favorite residents
You: I have no doubt that the next big change we'll see is Flipper in the client
You: SLB will be a button you can click on
katykiwi Moonflower: lol
Cilis Nephilim: the problem with focus groups is how they pick their subjects, if they want an end result they go for a spacific type liable to give them the results
You: Cilis if this were just focus groups
katykiwi Moonflower: scary but true
You: I wouldn't care as much
Cocoanut Koala: yeah, it's like a govrenment - with government functions, but at the same time - the government picks their favorite businesses to get perks
You: it's the idea that it is the permanent advisory board that is yucky
Cilis Nephilim: of course, by picking the most active, the wealthist, the one with the lost land, etc... you get a top down view
You: and I know what they're diong with this
katykiwi Moonflower: this is an advisory panel
Cilis Nephilim: mostly people too busy for interpersonal things
You: they're trying to create a fake ersident government
katykiwi Moonflower: yes
You: trying to give it legitimacy
katykiwi Moonflower: thats why i posted in robins blog to allow us to elect
Cocoanut Koala: like - "we want the residents to take care of the forums - so we're picking out the ones to do it."
katykiwi Moonflower: yes
Cocoanut Koala: which supposedly gives us the responsibility and power, lol
You: well katy how to go about that?
You: remember what a mess all those elections werein Anshe's group?
katykiwi Moonflower: exactly the resmod program invades the main grid
You: She split off from MJW over that when I protested
Gxeremio Dimsum: i think that's a narrow view of their purpose in developing SL...I think people like us have absolute freedom to bring together coalitions to tackle problems we see.
You: she closed off nominations and busssed in her tenants
katykiwi Moonflower: no it wont happen was a rhetorical point
You: I thought that was like communism
You: I refused to go along with that
katykiwi Moonflower: yes
You: But even something that was less robust than that
katykiwi Moonflower: well that group was a farce
You: even just some groups that already exist
You: picking their leaders as they already pick them
You: I mean have it at least as democratic as the 1989 Supreme Soviet
You: have like the scientists, the stamp collectors
You: by affiliation or trade or by size of group
You: I mean really, if you went by size of group, the sex groups would win hands down
You: well, that's fine, maybe they need better pose balls
You: maybe they want less lag
You: they have their issues
You: let them organize
Cocoanut Koala: When you have the people running the game also allowed to profit from their private businesses in the same game, you have a hopeless situation.
Gxeremio Dimsum: the residents of SL is a pretty fluid group...not the same this month as 3 months ago, and it won't be the same as in 6 months, so unless we're having elections all the time, no group would be representative and democratic.
Cilis Nephilim: heh, like scanners being the evil lag demon of poseballs... though, the change over to Csharp scripting language will help a great deal with server timing .
Cocoanut Koala: "Government by Cronyism" is what i think we have with SL.
You: yes well that's why I call it oligarchy
katykiwi Moonflower: yes
Gxeremio Dimsum: it's not government - they're not setting the TOS.
Cocoanut Koala: whatever it is, it gets worse by the minute.
Cocoanut Koala: who aren't, GX?
You: yes they are
You: they are creating poilcy
Shaun Altman: Someone should just make a government
You: that's the problem
You: they affect changes in the client
You: they decide, oh, let's get rid of the stalker button or telehubs
You: why do they get to do that?
Gxeremio Dimsum: changes in the client is not change in the rules of your success or failure in your chosen objectives in the world.
You: btw the transcript is in this blue cube everybody
You: yes it is
You: geez that's areally unsupportable statement
You: if they sway the lindens to hasten in getting rid of telehubs
Cocoanut Koala: they also have their chosen residents very directly deciding who breaks the TOS and who doesn't on the forums.]
You: those with telehub malls they've invested in which aer actually used by people and aren't laggy contrary to myth
You: lose money
You: so of course changes in the client affect busienss
You: very much so
You: you don't think the next patch's favouritism to islands isn't affecting business????
You: no change happens in some kind of vacuum
Gxeremio Dimsum: now you're talking about business, not government, and you've said that the big businesspeople SHOULDN'T be making the rules.
You: No
Shaun Altman: it's sure affected my business
Cocoanut Koala: but they are, GX!
Shaun Altman: I'm buying islands in response
You: I said that their shuoldn't be any one gruoping selected by Lindens
You: big busienss is a legitimate lobby
You: so is big content creation
Shirley Marquez: favoritism to islands? how so?
You: and big whatever
You: by enabling them to sell land on the land for sale list
You: a huge competition to mainland
You: Philip even recognzied that twice
Shirley Marquez: but that's just making them equal...
You: yesterday he even said when I asked about this
You: that it was unfortunate that there was a gap between fixing the island issues and fixing mainland issues
You: no
Shaun Altman: Shirley: not quite.. the mainland still gets a giant tier discount
You: because the mainland is already not equal
Shaun Altman: mainland owners get 10% off tier
You: because people can't have tvs deeded easily
You: customers cannot control the parcel as they can on islands
Shaun Altman: but it's a step in the right direction
You: island dealers charge way more as a result and get it
You: the 10 percent tier bonus can't possibly make up for that
You: islands are heavily privileged in the client now
You: they have vastly greater tools
You: everyone knows that
Shirley Marquez: island dealers are also delivering more in some cases, like zoning, which the Lindens won't do
Shaun Altman: If you really believed that, you'd have islands.
Shaun Altman: Sorry, but it's true.
Gxeremio Dimsum: but it's islands that are attracting new business, which is clearly a goal for LL.
You: it's only those who left the mainland busienss and don't want a shred of comopetition who start yammering about removal of 10 p ercent bosnuess
Shaun Altman: The 10% is HUGE
You: no
You: I don't want islands because I dno't ilke them and what they stand for
Gxeremio Dimsum: BBC, Harvard, you name it. Are they moving to the mainland?
You: Im' more ideological than you are
Shaun Altman: Well I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be removed
You: they get private islands, betraying their liberal ideasl
You: lol
Cocoanut Koala: I really believe that the people who will be flattered and go to SF will get a better deal than I will, but it doesn't mean I would agree to go.
Shaun Altman: I mean, islands have some edge over mainland
Shirley Marquez: there's a glut of land on the mainland right now, but the Lindens keep issuing more
Gxeremio Dimsum: haha gimme a break
Shaun Altman: but mainland also has that edge over island
You: they suer do
Cocoanut Koala: You can also choose not to participate in the thing that is a better deal
You: they go into gated privaet gardens
Shaun Altman: I think LL is just trying to balance everything out w/ the new features
You: they are unwilling to face the public
Gxeremio Dimsum: they have private buildings too - are they right wingers for that?
Shaun Altman: island owners need to offer 10% more value to make the same margins
You: it's not about right or left really
You: most of them have very leftwing ideas in fact
You: but their tendency toward social control shins through in the end
Cocoanut Koala: no
Cocoanut Koala: jhere's what it is
Shaun Altman: Well someone has to be in charge though
Shaun Altman: there can't be anarchy
Cocoanut Koala: it is social control for themselves and their friends
You: Yes, so why not make it be resident based
Shaun Altman: (forever)
Cocoanut Koala: but everyone else gets anarchy
You: rather than Linden picked
You: yes Coco
You: so well put
You: social control to their advantage
Shaun Altman: well this panel thing in SF seems to be a step towards that end
You: while we have to eat shit from the Bush Guy
You: so well said
Shaun Altman: that's why I'm FOR it
Shaun Altman: It seems to be empowering for residents
Cocoanut Koala: step toward what end, Shaun?
You: well if that's the only way they can get resident input that's pathetic
Cocoanut Koala: empowering for residents?
You: well residents shuold empower themselves Shaun
Shaun Altman: Coco: resident self governace
You: why do I need a trip to SF to run my world?
You: honestly that's foolish
Cocoanut Koala: you mean, empowering for the .003% of residents that the lindens love anyway?>
You: brb
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: well why don't you make a government then?
Shaun Altman: Coco: no, that's not what I mean
Cocoanut Koala: well, it's not like you can put in for it, shaun
Cocoanut Koala: they CHOOSE
Shaun Altman: We'll see
Rez Menoptra: It would seem you don't need a government if you own islands
Shaun Altman: b/c I'm GOING to put in for it
Cocoanut Koala: yes, they could change that
Cocoanut Koala: yes, i would advise you do
Cocoanut Koala: can't hurt!
Gxeremio Dimsum: yeah prok if you're waiting for them to make a government and then hand it to you it's not going to happen. but on the other hand if you build a coalition and form a government they're not going to stop you.
Shaun Altman: I have some stake! :D
You: well Rez that's an interesting comment
Cocoanut Koala: yeah, me too
You: except do you really have control even of your island?
Cocoanut Koala: but - my stake, you know, i can't go about it that way
You: look at Nberg and how that broke up
Cocoanut Koala: i can't go about things that aren't democratic
Gxeremio Dimsum: what did happen at nburg?
You: basically the Lindens are saying, yoiu don't like something, make your own island
Rez Menoptra: Was Nberg the ultimate model?
You: just keep breaking down to smaller niches
You: Not for me it wasn't
You: no way
Cocoanut Koala: socialist place, GX
Cocoanut Koala: the person who ran it to start, fell out with the people running it now
You: what happens is that people talk in such abstract and high-minded terms about resident governments
Gxeremio Dimsum: i didn't hear it broke up...they still have stuff there, i thought
Cocoanut Koala: yes they do
You: that they never get aruond to doing just plain resident governance
Cocoanut Koala: but the original person, that used to run it, she quit,
You: even on just a simple issue like: bounce scripts, yes or no
Cocoanut Koala: then came back, and said she didn't like what they had done
Cocoanut Koala: and it was a big blow-up
You: if you could frame that debate, push it, arrive at a consensus, you could present it to the Lindens
You: single issue politics from which you build up
Gxeremio Dimsum: prok but what does that mean in our context? i don't think LL can answer taht for us...we have to answer it ourselves.
Cocoanut Koala: huh?
You: yes we answer for it but put it to them
You: as we did things like their ethics policy
Gxeremio Dimsum: do all residents get one vote, regardless of how long they are inworld, whether they pay or not, whether they create or not?
You: we got them to publish that policy
You: it was lame of course
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: I framed an idea for a single issue political platform ages ago
Cocoanut Koala: i wish residents WOULD get a vote
Shaun Altman: everyone said that sucks
Cocoanut Koala: instead of having to butt-kiss their way up
Shaun Altman: b/c other people besides THEM could frame an issue and build it up :P
You: well I dno'tknow that it sucks Shaun
You: you have to poick the right issues that are burning for people
Shaun Altman: No, you don't have to pick FOR people
You: obviously griefing and bounce scripts are vital for most
Shaun Altman: You have to let people specify the issues that are burning for THEM
You: well y ou have to have resonance with the issue you pick
Cocoanut Koala: well I'd say this one is gonna catch on fire - where they invite 8 favorites to come to an all-expense paid trip to san francisco, and decide things for everyone else
Rez Menoptra: and mapping must be important
Saini Nadir: im no builder.... and im a poor scriter and don't really contibute, but it would be nice to get some say if im going to be in SL...
Shaun Altman: and then from community concensus narrow it down to a few to focus on
Cocoanut Koala: when people hear about that, I don't think they are going to be pleased.
Saini Nadir: scripter*
You: Coco they won't caer
You: they will not care
You: it will be a one-day wonder
Cocoanut Koala: well i know
You: what will be amazing!
You: is that they could bitch and scream when Anshe and some of us met with Philip last Sept
You: but for this they won't scream
Cocoanut Koala: but at least we can stand up and dissent about it!
Gxeremio Dimsum: i just don't get the opposition to including residents in decision-making. even if they handpick the residents, it's no worse than the lindens doing all the decision making themselves.
You: we were self-selected and merely asked for a meeting
You: anyone can do it
Cilis Nephilim: Well the closest we have is the preposal system, you've given so many votes a week which you can toss into proposals
You: but people hollered as if it was a coup
Cocoanut Koala: oh it is much worse, GX!
You: now there really is a coup, and they don't care
Cilis Nephilim: the BIG, big problem being that you can not vote against a proposal
Cocoanut Koala: Why should I - a mere resident like you - get to have say-so over what happens to you?
You: yes I have a proposal about putting no into the mechanism
You: as do 3 others
Cocoanut Koala: What makes me so all-fired special?
Shaun Altman: Cilis: my idea transcends the proposal system
Gwyneth Llewelyn is offline
Cilis Nephilim: so if a group wants, they can pay off people for their spare weekly votes to get their interests plugged
You: lol no one bothers Cilis
Cilis Nephilim: Heh, I'd like to see the preposal system revitalized over ANY other feature.
Saini Nadir: To most people SL is a game
Gxeremio Dimsum: as i understand it cocoanut, from what i've heard from prok, they don't have decision making power, just influence over what input LL gets.
Saini Nadir: nothing more so its treated like one.
Cilis Nephilim: Yeah
Cocoanut Koala: Even if that is true, what makes my influence more important than yours?
Cilis Nephilim: I just don't want some big ass, bloated land baron like anche chung coming along and shitting in my sandbox :P
Cilis Nephilim: that might ruin my castle building heheh
Gxeremio Dimsum: LL is not a government; it's a company. It's not like senators inviting the oil barons up to DC to write the energy laws. We have a lot of say in how we run our lives in SL, who we associate with, how we choose to ban or not ban people, what we do on
Saini Nadir: It doesn't im just saying that people see it as entertainment, not buisness. so proposals mean little and they vote to just keep that box from poping up again.
Cilis Nephilim: oooh that
Gxeremio Dimsum: our property, etc. We can create resident govenrments. We shouldn't expect them to do it for us.
Cilis Nephilim: Not the same thing saini
Cocoanut Koala: It's not a company like other companies - it is a society as well. You can't overlook that.
Cocoanut Koala: We LIVE under this company.
Cocoanut Koala: It's not like Kimberly-Clark.
Cilis Nephilim: there is a somewhat hidden part of the second life website where you can vote on changes for the world, its completely seperate from the groups in game.
Rez Menoptra: it's more like Gattaca
Saini Nadir: oh
Gxeremio Dimsum: haha rez
Cilis Nephilim: *nods* they really dont go out of their way to make it easy to find, which cheeses me off to begin with.
Gxeremio Dimsum: that's a great movie
Cocoanut Koala: what are you talking about?
Jonathan Kivioq is online
Cocoanut Koala: you mean the proposal place?
Saini Nadir: yes
Cilis Nephilim: its like putting up a sign that says "Vote on prop 33" by some trees, a week later clear cutting your kids playground because no one saw the sign or cared.
Cocoanut Koala: This 8 person thing - it is , as far as I can tell, a way to get the residents they listen to most anyway, and also to get to meet them!
You: well I tried to beef up interest in that at one time
You: it's very hard
Cocoanut Koala: ooo! daughter walked in with engagement ring!
Cocoanut Koala: brb
You: I tried to offer people even free rent space to put up signs for their proposals, I had hardly any takers
Cilis Nephilim: the prop system? really its up to the lindens to do it
You: it's not an easy thing to work, and people ignore that voter page
Cilis Nephilim: it needs to be just as easy to find as the forums section on the drop down bar.
Gxeremio Dimsum: I think it's to make it easier for brainstorming and idea sharing. I like what they're doing, hope they expand it to include other residents too. But it's a nice start and good for LL's future.
You: GX how is it "good for their future"?
You: people who have a great stake in it won't come
You: and people who need to be heard won't eb heard
Rez Menoptra: they won't?
You: well I wno't
You: I can't be sure Anshe will
Gxeremio Dimsum: Their product is more like what some of their target market wants...better for LL
You: I dunno
You: um what's their target market?
You: and why are we chopped liver?
You: that's the annoying thing
You: this idea that they are pitching to an elite prosumer
You: and everyone else is jack shit
Rez Menoptra: yeah, what were they four categories?
Gxeremio Dimsum: good grief why are you offended by them talking to other residents?
Cilis Nephilim: Prokofy, thanks for having us but I'm going to get in some time with my friend. see you later :)
You: because I haven't elected them?
You: I haven't chosen them to speak on my behalf?
You: no have any of my tenants?
You: or does anybody even know about this yet?
Gxeremio Dimsum: they're not speaking on your behalf.
You: who are these guys?'
You: yes well why do they get to represent "resident opinion"
You: honest where does this wierd tekkie corporativist ideology come from?
Gxeremio Dimsum: they're speaking on their own behalf, as consumers, to a company that provides a product (and service) they consume.
Saini Nadir: this is the first i ever heard this stuff....
Saini Nadir: i had no idea it was like this.
You: well why are only CERTAIN ONES of the community picked???
Rez Menoptra: wasn't there a post or two on the forum?
You: this is a complex world
You: no
You: it's only on Robin's blog
Rez Menoptra: i htought anyone come go?
Rez Menoptra: oh
You: no they pick
Rez Menoptra: could*
Rez Menoptra: geeze I hat ethis video card
You: no
You: don't confuse it with SLCC
Rez Menoptra: I have the worst lag in the universe right now
You: that's differnet
You: that's anyone who wants to go
Saini Nadir: well, c'ya hope somehow things work out for the better of all
First Page: *smiles* see you
Rez Menoptra: oh aha
You: HOnestly Gxeremio, tell me the ideological underpinnings of what you are saying
You: if you lived in America
You: and George Bush brought in only 8 executives from Enron, Wal-Mart, GM, etc.
Gxeremio Dimsum: do you expect to be invited to every meeting of every committee of Congress before they pass laws? Of course not. They call people of interest to the committee. This is similar. Only even more justifiable, cuz it's a biz, not a govt.
You: would you feel the public was served?'
You: um there's a big whopping difference
Rez Menoptra: haha isnt' that how it is?
You: I elect congressmen
You: they make commitees
You: that's normal
Shaun Altman: sry for AFK
You: this isn't elected
You: it's a committee with nothing behind it'
Shaun Altman: I was adding a post to Robin's blog
Rez Menoptra: hmm
You: a congressional committe stands for people who elected the congressmen!
You: this does no such thing
You: pHOnestly where DO you get your ideas
You: Please explain where you have gotten your notions of democracy
You: such as to endorse this mechanism
You: which isn't even aristorcracy
You: where/'
You: from what?
Rez Menoptra: maybe some sort of clients that have contaced the lindens, and these few are acting as go-betweens, getting information on what these clients might like to see happen with sl?
You: Rez
You: they are being picked by the Lindens
Shaun Altman: I really think that LL should be given a chance here
You: not by the residents
Rez Menoptra: right
Shaun Altman: this is an exciting move on their part
Rez Menoptra: so what i m saying is
You: and I don't want any go-betweens
You: exciting if you get to be picked, sure Shaun
You: and if you don't?
Shaun Altman: even if not
You: you'l be less happy
Gxeremio Dimsum: prok, bush has never consulted iwth me about anything (other than sending emails asking for my vote). the people i voted for for congress lost. and if i am unhappy with the way a business is treating me, i go to another business. so i don't see why i
Rez Menoptra: if the lindens don't have time to work on the project, they send it to some few residents
Shaun Altman: I'm fine with that
Shaun Altman: I'm excited for where it can lead
Rez Menoptra: and those residents can now come "check in"
Gxeremio Dimsum: should be upset using any of your analogies.
You: because this sin't a business that we just go away from and pick another business
You: this isn't Xerox and I switch to Hewlitt Packard
You: this is a world
You: it's a metaverse
You: it's where we are and plan onstaying
You: not just one producer that we prosumers leave
You: if it doesn't "perform"
You: there aren't other options for noe
You: and we shouldn't be boxed out of the development process
You: this is throwing development a certain way
Gxeremio Dimsum: prok: there are several clients similar to SL, plus there's no requirement to use it.
You: they are getting a sounding board that tells them what they want to hear
You: no
You: there are no
You: nothign like this
You: dno't be silly
You: Croquet?
You: you can't run a business in Croquet
You: Project entropia?
You: don't be absurd
You: when yo actually try to do a business other than an Esperanto Society here you may begin to grasp this
Shaun Altman: haha yeah u have to fend off NPCs away from ur business :D
Cocoanut Koala: If things aren't fair here, Gx, it will fail.
Shaun Altman: I hear there are people who make a profit trading items in PE tho
You: I really do want to understand where yuo pick up this world view tho
You: it's not Chomsky
You: what is it from?
You: where did uo get it?
You: it's not Toqueville
Gxeremio Dimsum: you are not guaranteed a right to have a business on the servers owned by Linden Labs. It is a company. It is not a democracy. As far as I know it's not even publicly traded. It's a privately held company. Like
You: it's a company that sells a product that is a world
Rez Menoptra: Are you asking me Prok?
You: it's not ap rivate club
You: it's a common carrier
Cocoanut Koala: Well, that's cool. But how many people are going to want to be in a world like that?
You: it's ap ublic place
You: with free subscriptions
You: it has certain public obligations
You: no Rez
Gxeremio Dimsum: says who?
You: I'm asking Gx here
Rez Menoptra: ah okay
You: he; is typical of a lot of technolibertarians who in fact hold rather corporativist views
Gxeremio Dimsum: what obligations does it have, other than to meet its contractual obligations with customers?
Cocoanut Koala: Anyway, what would it HURT the Lindens to do things in a fair way?
You: so I'd like to understand; where does this COME FROM
You: why do you celebrate the overreaching rights of a company to this extent?
You: this is what I don't get
You: a company is merely a group of people
You: they aren't Opus Dei
You: they aren't the chosen high priests of a religion
You: they're just a cmopany
You: people
You: who can be moved by argumentation
You: you can talk to them and attempt to work with them
Gxeremio Dimsum: prok, i am not threatened by the success or friendships of others. and i find no need to buy into anger about LL meeting with chosen residents to improve their platform.
You: why be in awe?
You: How is it improving their platform?
You: when they chose those who tell them what they ant to hear?
You: ?
Sekai Axon: nice
Cocoanut Koala: Well, fine, but -like I say, how many people are going to enjoy coming here to be second-class citizens?
You: And it's not abuot "anger"
You: it's about pointing out the obvious
You: this isn't the way you run a world
You: it's the way a precious game cmopany or software company behaves
You: but they have greater aspirations, or so they imply
Cocoanut Koala: if i were going to pick an emotion, anger would not be it
You: to be the founding group for the metaverse
Cocoanut Koala: despair, disbelief maybe
You: puzzlement
Cocoanut Koala: hate to see them ruin their own thing, hand over fist
You: I figuer they wnated to do this anyway
Cocoanut Koala: people don't like being second-class citizens
You: and then they decided to announce it to make it seem fair
Cocoanut Koala: they don't like having other residents elevated above them
You: well this they won't mind
You: what will happen is that enough of the FIC types will be picked or quieted by some fashion
Cocoanut Koala: what make syou think that?
You: and they will not complain
Gxeremio Dimsum: from what i understand of rosedale's ambition, this is the stage of development of SL when they add features and work out bugs, NOT when it functions as the true metaverse. That comes when the platform is open source and you can have your OWN server,
Gxeremio Dimsum: with your OWN rules
Cocoanut Koala: I didn't say the FIC types would complain!
You: we aren't there yet
You: and I see no reason why I have to turn everything over to Flipper
You: and the second tier
Cocoanut Koala: well, meanwhile, we are suffering under a fiefdom
Gxeremio Dimsum: i'm not suffering. i kind of enjoy life in SL
Cocoanut Koala: ok, well you aren't
Cocoanut Koala: you like the fiefdom
You: GX yuou merely expect the fiefdom to serve you
You: you figure it will give you the best deal, this sort of medieval system
nimrod Yaffle: I'm feeling quite ok too :-)
You: it's like the Knights of the Round Table
You: the king summons them to the Great Hall
Cocoanut Koala: hiya nimrod!
Cocoanut Koala: when did you come in?
nimrod Yaffle: About 5 mins ago?
Cocoanut Koala: my daughter was showing me her enggement ring!
nimrod Yaffle: O...K...
Gxeremio Dimsum: what are you talking about? do you know what a fief was? i'm not forced to do anything i don't want to. i might not be pulling in all the money i'd like from the content i create (thanks for your sarcastic remark, byt he way, about a new kind of conte
nimrod Yaffle: lol, congrats?
Cocoanut Koala: well, let me put it this way
Cocoanut Koala: not everyone minds living in a fiefdom
Gxeremio Dimsum: nt), but I don't need to kick sand in the face of people who are doing well.
Cocoanut Koala: but enough will
Cocoanut Koala: BX
Cocoanut Koala: GX
Cocoanut Koala: i have been in the world longer than you, it looks like
Cocoanut Koala: i have probably sold more things
Shirley Marquez: I have to go -- nice hearing what you all had to say
Cocoanut Koala: and certainly shot my mouth off more
nimrod Yaffle: unfortunately
nimrod Yaffle: :-D
Cocoanut Koala: *slaps nimrod*
nimrod Yaffle: haha
Gxeremio Dimsum: bye shirley
Cocoanut Koala: and won Linden contests
Cocoanut Koala: so - that means I should have prominence over you?
Cocoanut Koala: I think it does NOT.
Gxeremio Dimsum: so you've been inworld longer...should you have more say than me? cuz if you think so, you'd better reconsider what you've said earlier.
Cocoanut Koala: I think your thoughts are as important than mine.
nimrod Yaffle: BUT, have you ever been to the cornfield!? :-P
Cocoanut Koala: yes- and that was an unfairness too!
nimrod Yaffle: You have?
Gxeremio Dimsum: haha the infamous cornfield? really?
Cocoanut Koala: no - it was an unfairness that I didn't get to see it.
nimrod Yaffle: Oh
nimrod Yaffle: Bwhaha
nimrod Yaffle: Guess who outed it
Cocoanut Koala: *strangles Nimrod*
nimrod Yaffle: }:-)>
Gxeremio Dimsum: btw one potential feature improvement - show how many hours someone has been inworld rather than the first day they logged in
nimrod Yaffle: *shrug* I don't think that has to do with anything
nimrod Yaffle: what would it prove?
Cocoanut Koala: I wish it would show when poeple last logged in!
Cocoanut Koala: not how many hours logged in, that would embarass some people
nimrod Yaffle: Yes, only officers in groups show that :-/
Gxeremio Dimsum: be more helpful than when someone first logged in to know their n00bness :)
Gxeremio Dimsum: i meant when they first logged in, not last logged in
Gxeremio Dimsum: sorry, that didn't make sense
nimrod Yaffle: ahh
Cocoanut Koala: both would be good!
You: actually I just fuond a script today that does that
nimrod Yaffle: But what point would how many hours prove?
You: it's a script that shows how many hours you've been logged on
Cocoanut Koala: ew
You: angrybeth shortbread has it at that place called ICT in Pickerel
nimrod Yaffle: ohhh, that's cool
You: well they said one of the criteria they had for picking people was how many hours they logged in
online thing whispers: Online status display enabled.
You: lol
online thing whispers: Type /ol help for a list of commands
You: maybe that's not a good one
Hawk Lightcloud is offline
nimrod Yaffle: LL said that?
nimrod Yaffle: Picking people for what?
Gxeremio Dimsum: haha
Cocoanut Koala: for the Chosen Ones
nimrod Yaffle: The ones that go to the cornfield
nimrod Yaffle: ^^
Cocoanut Koala: no the ones that go to san francisco
Cocoanut Koala: for wining and dining and feting
nimrod Yaffle: hha
nimrod Yaffle: *haha
Cocoanut Koala: feteing?
Cocoanut Koala: how do you spell that
Cocoanut Koala: how do you spell wining?
Midtown Bienenstich is offline
Gxeremio Dimsum: so prok, actually i was a member of the libertarian party for a long time, i've swung leftist the last few years. pretty anti-corporate, don't shop at walmart, blah blah blah. in case you were wondering
nimrod Yaffle: I would apply for their intership, but it seems like it's more work than it's worth
Kasandra Morgan is online
Gxeremio Dimsum: as a RL french teacher, i do appreciate the way you guys use the word fete so often. :)
nimrod Yaffle: walmart has everything
nimrod Yaffle: but they're filled with mexicans where I live :-(
nimrod Yaffle: Not to be racist
nimrod Yaffle: but they really are
Cocoanut Koala: oh really!
Gxeremio Dimsum: after we watched The High Cost of Low Prices, we stopped shopping there.
nimrod Yaffle: hmm?
Cocoanut Koala: by the way, my girl and her fiance admired uyour robot outfit!
Gxeremio Dimsum: haha thanks i have to admit i bought it.
Gxeremio Dimsum: i wish i could have found an av of Dr. Zoidberg, from the same series.
Cocoanut Koala: yeah, she said it was from Futurama!
Sekai Axon: >.>
Cocoanut Koala: which i haven't seen
Gxeremio Dimsum: great show
Sekai Axon: Who dares click me >.<
Dana Strauss: This is a really interesting discussion, but RL calls. Thanks for the hospitality!
Gxeremio Dimsum: Bye Dana.
Gxeremio Dimsum: Gxis la revido as we say in Esperanto
Cocoanut Koala: Viva la Revolution!
Cocoanut Koala: this game has made me a revolutionary
Gxeremio Dimsum: haha berets for everyone! :)
Sekai Axon: I feel dirty now
Cocoanut Koala: i have forgotten nearly all of my very considerable french
Cocoanut Koala: j'ai oublie presque tout
Shaun Altman: heya nimrod :D
nimrod Yaffle: bonjour?
You: Tu sais ce que je dit
nimrod Yaffle: Hey Shaun
Gxeremio Dimsum: i would like for our esperanto community to eventually get an island, start a resident-run government. its a challenge, though, to get enough people truly interested in doing so
Gxeremio Dimsum: bien sur que oui. :)
You: well I have enough to do just with Russian lol
Shaun Altman: Who wants to be governed? :P
Shaun Altman: I can be governed IRL :P
Shaun Altman: hehe
Shaun Altman: that's the biggest problem
Cocoanut Koala: you are being governed by other residents, shaun
You: I thought Esperanot was a dead language LOL -- the idealists who used to push that at the UN died out decades ago, are they now making a comeback?
Cocoanut Koala: you just want to be ONE of them.
You: yes Coco is right
Gxeremio Dimsum: well it really brings the idea of the social contract to the forefront - when given a choice, what do people think is done best by a government and not individuals?
Shaun Altman: I'm not being governed by anyone but LL
Cocoanut Koala: ha
Shaun Altman: Try demanding that I do something, Coco :D
Shaun Altman: give it a shot :D
You: well there's no social contract with this group of 8 stuff
You: the g8
Gxeremio Dimsum: it's never died, prok.
Cocoanut Koala: i can't
nimrod Yaffle: Shaun, stay here
Shaun Altman: maybe for added humor, u could add a threat :D
Cocoanut Koala: but then . . . I'm not a forum moderator.
You: well it was rather moribund Gx, you must be merely a true believer
nimrod Yaffle: see? he listens to me
Cocoanut Koala: threats? i get those from Weedy!
Shaun Altman: oh if I ever got ResModded I'd repost the same thing over and overf
nimrod Yaffle: Ok
nimrod Yaffle: About Weesy
nimrod Yaffle: *weedy
Shaun Altman: Weedy is not the boss of me :D
Cocoanut Koala: not if they just suspended you
nimrod Yaffle: what difference does it make if she/he is and it/she/he?
Cocoanut Koala: it doesn't
nimrod Yaffle: *is an
Cocoanut Koala: it's just that she caught my attention
Shaun Altman: Coco: why would LL want to suspend me?
Gxeremio Dimsum: prok look it up. i use esperanto almost every day for international communication
Cocoanut Koala: and made me want to figure out what makes her tick
Shaun Altman: and lose all that money?
nimrod Yaffle: Pssh
Cocoanut Koala: I don't know, do they?
nimrod Yaffle: look at Shaun haha
Cocoanut Koala: they don't lose any money when they suspend you
Cocoanut Koala: YOU lose money.
nimrod Yaffle: Try to find something out about him/her/it
Gxeremio Dimsum: it's a fair way to communicate...easier on both sides than one side having to learn the other's language.
Shaun Altman: sure they do
Bellissa Dion gave you Neptune's Kiss Info.
Cocoanut Koala: shaun doesn't strike me as a pathological individual, so my curiosity is not piqued
Shaun Altman: I wouldn't sell islands, I'd turn them off :D
Kasandra Morgan is offline
Cocoanut Koala: and he poses no purposeful threat to me
Cocoanut Koala: when someone sets about to do me in, I have a tendency to try to figure them out.
Shaun Altman: I wouldn't want to do u in
Cocoanut Koala: i know!
Shaun Altman: I want u to prosper
Cocoanut Koala: ty!
Shaun Altman: as I want all residents to grow and prosper :D
Cocoanut Koala: most people are like that, i think
Cocoanut Koala: me too!
Sekai Axon: Evil ball >.>
Shaun Altman: I think it's important that we somehow learn to be a community
Deidre Frost shouts: Sek-chan! Watch out for that sphere!!!
Gxeremio Dimsum: ok amikoj, i'd better be going. enjoyed the stimulating conversation - drop by the Esperanto museum or take a language class with us sometime soon!
Shaun Altman: that's another reason why I'm FOR LL's new focus groups
Deidre Frost: >>!!!!
You: Shaun that's well said
Cocoanut Koala: we can't when we are constantly being divided, as every9one jockeys for favor
You: but why can't we make our own?
Deidre Frost: I BLEW MY COVER CRAP
You: cuoldn't we do that?
Shaun Altman: They'll demonstrate the power inherent in community
Deidre Frost: GO GO DEIDRE FLASHBANG
Cocoanut Koala: LL's new focus group - its divisive, not a community
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: we could
You: uhoh
Cocoanut Koala: the power inherent in THEMSELVES
Shaun Altman: we're not sufficiently motivated, however
Sekai Axon: o.o
Sekai Axon: My eyes >.<
nimrod Yaffle: Umm
Cocoanut Koala: BESTOWED upon them by the Lindens
nimrod Yaffle: I saw her earlier
nimrod Yaffle: why is she freaking out?
nimrod Yaffle: haha
Shaun Altman: Coco: Why shoot it down before you even know the details?
You: we've seen enough of how they behave Shaun
You: we saw the resmod system
You: where they picked people
Shaun Altman: Unless they invite Siggy and Lektor, I'm all for it
You: people who didn't even want to be picked1
You: yes well they likely WILL do that
Cocoanut Koala: bthey;ve told us enough details already
You: they may go with people they think are mainstream popular like Kitt Kong say
Shaun Altman: If they invite Lektor, I hope I'm also invited
Shaun Altman: so I can talk a bit about how griefing people destroys community :D
Cocoanut Koala: how about - we held elections and sent representatives to them?
Shaun Altman: (shocking that I'm still pissed about winterfest.. but eh..
Shaun Altman: )
Cocoanut Koala: why are you pissed about winterfest?
Shaun Altman: Coco: how will you set it up in a transparant way?
Shaun Altman: Coco: long story.. will tell u soon
Cocoanut Koala: i will allow one vote per resident
Cocoanut Koala: each account, when logging in, gets a vote.
Shaun Altman: Well I think they're after more specific people though
Cocoanut Koala: no duh
Couples MultiAnimator v2b whispers: * Abranimations Couples Animator Ready...
Shaun Altman: BUT
Cocoanut Koala: think about who it is they are NOT after.
Shaun Altman: there will be one random person in each group
Cocoanut Koala: as if that matters at all
Cocoanut Koala: what will some random person do?
nimrod Yaffle: the ball wins!!
Cocoanut Koala: that isn't a person wants to be there
Cocoanut Koala: it is only a person flattered to death
You: yes Cooc
Cocoanut Koala: making us think they will be considering "average resident"
You: I shuold think it would be hard not to be flattered
Shaun Altman: I dunno what a random person will do
Sekai Axon: I'm a random person
Cocoanut Koala: when average resident will just sit there overwhelmed and grinning
Sekai Axon: Why don't you ask me?
Cocoanut Koala: ok sekai
Cocoanut Koala: would you like to be chosen?
Sekai Axon: Chosen?
Sekai Axon: To?
Shaun Altman: I vote for Sekai! :D
Cocoanut Koala: me too!
You: let me see what Shaun posetd
Cocoanut Koala: to go to San francisco.
Shaun Altman: You'll hate it Prok
Sekai Axon: Dude
Cocoanut Koala: to sit with the lindens on a permanent board
Sekai Axon: I'd be so square
nimrod Yaffle: what will they do there?
Cocoanut Koala: to help decide things
nimrod Yaffle: ah
Cocoanut Koala: they will be on this board forever
nimrod Yaffle: whoa
Cocoanut Koala: all the names we already know
Shaun Altman: nimrod: the same thing they do every day, try to take over the world! :D
Shaun Altman: lol
Cocoanut Koala: will be elevated to this special status
nimrod Yaffle: I sure hope they don't pick random people
Sekai Axon: I would
Sekai Axon: Cause I like San Fran :D
Cocoanut Koala: they are picking one random person for every 7 of their favorites
Shaun Altman: brb
nimrod Yaffle: haha
Sekai Axon: I defeated the ball
nimrod Yaffle: Watch this
Cocoanut Koala: it's really all too ghastly, i don't think i can take much more of it, honestly i don't
nimrod Yaffle: wait
nimrod Yaffle: sit back down "-D
nimrod Yaffle: :-D
nimrod Yaffle: aww
Cocoanut Koala: life is too short to be thrown back into the dark ages
Sekai Axon: This is what box sex looks like.
nimrod Yaffle: haha
Cocoanut Koala: haha
nimrod Yaffle: it's humping your leg
Cocoanut Koala: thunk
Cocoanut Koala: I mean it, I'm not going to play this political game much longer
Sekai Axon: Ehem
Cocoanut Koala: it is too absurd
Cocoanut Koala: waste of time
Cocoanut Koala: you know,
Sekai Axon: Brb
Cocoanut Koala: when they start passing out free islands to their favorites, people are gonna say
Sekai Axon: Box porn will have to wait
Cocoanut Koala: "there;s nothing wrong with that, they are a private company!"
Cocoanut Koala: i'm a-tellin ya's
Cocoanut Koala: it can't go on this way forever.
nimrod Yaffle: I can
Cocoanut Koala: hey nimrod
Cocoanut Koala: you were gonna show me something about the vendor s or something!
Cocoanut Koala: you can; it can't.
nimrod Yaffle: I'm happy with what I have right now, I won't get jealous and greedy if someone gets an island
Cocoanut Koala: its not jealous and greedy
Cocoanut Koala: it's the principle of fairness
nimrod Yaffle: life isn't fai rthough
nimrod Yaffle: *fair
Cocoanut Koala: no, so why not have segregation?
Cocoanut Koala: after all, life isn't fair.
nimrod Yaffle: I agree
Cocoanut Koala: lol
Cocoanut Koala: lookie
nimrod Yaffle: down with humans, up with furries!
Rez Menoptra: you mean like a separate grid?
Sekai Axon: Why sould we segregate the boxes from the circles?!
Cocoanut Koala: what were you gonna show me about the vendor boxes or something?
You: eek Shaun what tripe you put on Robin's blog!!!!!
Cocoanut Koala: i am saying, the argument, "it's not fair, suck it up, life isn't fair" doesn't hold water
Cocoanut Koala: because then you could say, we might as well have slavery in the real world
You: I'm glad Ordinal weighed in
Cocoanut Koala: why expect fairness anywhere?
You: god bless her
Cocoanut Koala: why fight for fairness anywhere?
Cocoanut Koala: what are you look ing at, Prok?
You: we can always count on our communists to fight the oligarchs with us
You: Robin's blog
Cocoanut Koala: oh ok
Cocoanut Koala: NIMROD!!!!!
nimrod Yaffle: what?
Sekai Axon: I defeated the ball :D
nimrod Yaffle: haha
Cocoanut Koala: weren't you going to show me a vendor or something?
nimrod Yaffle: I was away
nimrod Yaffle: hmmm
nimrod Yaffle: a holo?
Cocoanut Koala: didn't you say
Cocoanut Koala: on forums
Cocoanut Koala: yeah, something like that
Rez Menoptra: oh hey, those are cool
Cocoanut Koala: you said you had a script or something, i forget
nimrod Yaffle: hmmm
Cocoanut Koala: for me to use at Luna?
nimrod Yaffle: Try those :-D
Cocoanut Koala: ok! thanks!
You: I just realized something, the teen grid with its land at a quarter or half the price of the adult grid is also on the Lindex
nimrod Yaffle: Np
You: katy I guess what I wish to ask tho, and all of you
You: could we make an alternative to this?
You: it's important not to just bitch
Cocoanut Koala: oh god yes please
Rez Menoptra: make?
Rez Menoptra: how?
Cocoanut Koala: Katy, think it up
nimrod Yaffle: Can we vote for ourselves?
Cocoanut Koala: people join by invitation only
Shaun Altman: im back
Shaun Altman: did u like my post Prokofy?
Cocoanut Koala: so's it doesn't get MJW'ed
katykiwi Moonflower: i think we can but and if we were to publish advisory statements after round table discussions it would be good but what platform for publication
Shaun Altman: wait
katykiwi Moonflower: your blog gets attention prok
Shaun Altman: you're going to restrict access to a democtratic vote, only to those who agree with you?
Cocoanut Koala: we need our own web site, like SLOG
Shaun Altman: How is this better than the way LL runs it?
Rez Menoptra: Slog isn't updated .... or hardly ever
Cocoanut Koala: because we would be saying things like - make the thing you are doing democratic!
Cocoanut Koala: and if SL did, then it would be better for all!
katykiwi Moonflower: coco i would love that wish i knew how
Sekai Axon: I'm not a democratic box :(
Cocoanut Koala: i don't know how either
Sekai Axon: I voted communist :(
Aly Shark is offline
Cocoanut Koala: well, i dont know much politics, but i think even communism is more advanced than feudal kingdoms
You: I hated your post shaun
You: are you like Eddie Haskell?
nimrod Yaffle: Can I get the link to Robin's blog, please?
You: "Gee Mrs. Linden that's a pretty dress you have on!"
Rez Menoptra: o.O haha
Cocoanut Koala: shaun doesn't want to ruin himself
Cocoanut Koala: he was against something - what was it?
You: "I think this is an exciting new idea"
Cocoanut Koala: then turned around right fast
Cocoanut Koala: what was that, Shaun?
Cocoanut Koala: oh yea- selling lindens
You: well Shaun what about your "just say no" campaign
You: say no to drugs
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: I'm just being honest
You: I mean to Linden printing
Cocoanut Koala: he turned around on that
nimrod Yaffle: Deidre Frost
You: what happened to that?
nimrod Yaffle: oops
Shaun Altman: I did not turn around on that
You: where is your "no"?
You: "no" means "no" Shaun
You: it means not going to be feted
nimrod Yaffle: Can I get the link to Robin's blog, please?
Cocoanut Koala: well, you did something
Shaun Altman: I still think you should say no, unless it is structured in the way I outlined
You: yuo are going to help print Lindens
You: http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/2006/05/announcing_seco.html#comment-17443238
Shaun Altman: but I don't think you should cash out, buy a gun and run for the hills either!
nimrod Yaffle: thaks
nimrod Yaffle: !
nimrod Yaffle: *thanks!
You: well what if you have to pay tier?
Cocoanut Koala: well me neither, but you were say8ng, Just Say No to Lindens Selling Money
Cocoanut Koala: simple
Cocoanut Koala: but, now you're not?
Shaun Altman: the people cashing at 315 when the rate should be 301 are NOT cashing to pay tier
You: I am so furious, some glitch happened and I oversold some Lindens and now Im' buying the cheapies back
Shaun Altman: they're in a panic frenzy
You: but there aren't enough of them
Cocoanut Koala: never mind that
You: all weak long the thing was in the toilet now it's going up
Cocoanut Koala: what about Just Say No to Lindens Selling Lindens?
You: I suppose this is what peopleodo
You: they buy and sell to themselves to jack it around
You: Shaun come and sell some cheap Lindens would you?
katykiwi Moonflower: shaun: do you think IGE is selling its linden now and that unloading is bringing the value down
Shaun Altman: No, I'm not in a panic frenzy
You: I can't get this money off one account on to the other
Shaun Altman: I have a better understanding of the economy than that
You: well they aren't buying
You: I think they closed buys
Rez Menoptra: at any price?
Shaun Altman: Let me show u a thread on why no may not mean no anymore
Cocoanut Koala: the problem with SL is - if you want to look out for yourself, you gotta sell out everybody else.
Shaun Altman: 1 sec
You: Sekai did anyone ever comment that you are hugely distracting with this av?
You: lol
You: could you simmer down?
Shaun Altman: Coco: NOT true
Shaun Altman: brb
Aly Shark is online
nimrod Yaffle: hahaa
Cocoanut Koala: I believe if anyone is going to SF, everyone should have a chance at it.
Cocoanut Koala: If I want to go, I should say I like the plan.
You: oh geez
Cocoanut Koala: Thus sell out everyone else for my own good.
Rez Menoptra: It's not a lottery?
You: I have to contact Master somebody to get this to stop
You: lol
You: sigh
Cocoanut Koala: no
Cocoanut Koala: it's a they pick the ones they want
katykiwi Moonflower: do you think they will be inviting international members
Cocoanut Koala: yes
Cocoanut Koala: lewis stands a good shot
Cocoanut Koala: because they will pick token people too
katykiwi Moonflower: why lewis
Cocoanut Koala: because, he wants to be picked
Cocoanut Koala: he's from england
Cocoanut Koala: he is a help to a game, if they work with him
Rez Menoptra: well, i guess that's slightly better than when they pick some idiots brother that logs on and camps
Cocoanut Koala: he would be a token "not loved by the FIC" person
You: you know I just feel like I'm in some kind of horror that is like a combination of the Soviet Union and high school
Cocoanut Koala: exactly!
Cocoanut Koala: while you were gone, i said prok, i'm not long for this political game
You: I just don't feel as if I can engage with these Lindens anymore
Cocoanut Koala: it is too absurd, and it is too high school!
Cocoanut Koala: see, that's what i'm coming around to.
Cocoanut Koala: all you get for it is suspended anyway
Cocoanut Koala: there will be more worlds, more democratic ones, come along
Cocoanut Koala: i used to think the idea of "King Philip" was cute, but it has gotten too literal
Rez Menoptra: erm, like alternate grids?
Cocoanut Koala: plus, he's a distant king
Cocoanut Koala: no - different games
Cocoanut Koala: someone will come along and do SL better
Rez Menoptra: that are as open as this one?
Cocoanut Koala: depends what you mean by "open"
You: Look remember when we had those focus groups on the covenants
You: those were also like 8-10 people, 5 groups
You: they were people who simply wanted to join
Rez Menoptra: content creation wise, and how they can connect to whatever the "backend" is
You: why not revive a group like that?
You: it's people who already bothered to show up
You: who care about those issues
Shaun Altman: I found it
You: then make 100 of those, per topics
You: and work them
Cocoanut Koala: rez - not sure i understand you
Shaun Altman: here is one example of how LL L$ sales could be a BOOM to the economy
Shaun Altman: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=106608
Sekai Axon: see you guys later
Sekai Axon: was interesting listening
katykiwi Moonflower: bye
Rez Menoptra: Coco: I mean like the way it's possible for users to create the content, really...
nimrod Yaffle: Prok can't see that Shaun
Cocoanut Koala: yes, of course someone else can do that
Shaun Altman: see u Sekai
Shaun Altman: nice meeting u
Sekai Axon: nice meeting you too
Rez Menoptra: And so which tools will be important to make it better than the way sl is run now?
You: oh I have a whole laundry list
Rez Menoptra: ones that deal with what things?
You: groups
You: land
Cocoanut Koala: well - having fair forums, having fair hearings about things if having any hearings
You: there's a list of 50 things
You: everybody has lists
You: texture makers have their lists
nimrod Yaffle: Prok, groups are going to have a major change soon
Rez Menoptra: right
You: well we'll see
nimrod Yaffle: Yep :-)
You: it's not the full monte at first
You: they are starting first only with communications
You: and crowd pleasers
You: like ability to have more groups
Cocoanut Koala: mainly, rez, it needs to be a world where people aren't picked out for special treatment
You: they aren't diong the hardest stuff first
You: it's am ystery to me actually'
Cocoanut Koala: and where the employees can't make rules to profit their own businesses
You: why some of it is even considered
Shaun Altman: Coco, Prok: did u read my thread?
Laura Ingersoll is online
Cocoanut Koala: which thread?
Shaun Altman: the one I just linked u to regarding LL currency sales and how they may be an economic BOOM
Cocoanut Koala: oh
Cocoanut Koala: no, i can't read stuff while i'm in the game
Rez Menoptra: So seems like you could use Phillip's comments about the civic redress to create a lobby group for the lists everyone has as to how to make SL better?
Fia Hartunian is online
Rez Menoptra: Or does that not see m like a possibility
Cocoanut Koala: I don't see HOW anybody can POSSIBLY not realize that the game makers printing their own money to SELL could possibly be in any way legitimate!
Shaun Altman: but they don't seem to plan to print it
Cocoanut Koala: *couldn't
Cocoanut Koala: oh?
Shaun Altman: a Linden actually IMed me shortly after I started "just saying no"
Cocoanut Koala: where will it come from?
Shaun Altman: said I seemed upset, lol :D
Shaun Altman: and while the example this Linden gave me was not SPECIFICALLY what I posted
nimrod Yaffle: Oh... BTW, 1.10 will come wednesday, and in the next preview will be mozilla integrated into SL, the page will be: http://secondlife.com/app/help/index.html
nimrod Yaffle: :-D
Shaun Altman: it did involve L$ that was earned through services rendered
Shaun Altman: and the Linden specifically pointed out that in their example, NO new L$ was printed
Cocoanut Koala: what services?
Shaun Altman: I don't know if I should say or not
Shaun Altman: I will ask next time I see said Linden
Cocoanut Koala: i didn't understand that, nimrod
nimrod Yaffle: lol
nimrod Yaffle: wednesday
nimrod Yaffle: 1.10 will be coming out
Cocoanut Koala: you mean like, costs for classifieds?
Cocoanut Koala: ok, yeah, i got that, but i dont understand the mozilla part
nimrod Yaffle: then in the next preview, this webpage will be the new helpfile: http://secondlife.com/app/help/index.html
Shaun Altman: I mean like L$ payment for services provided by LL
Cocoanut Koala: services?
Shaun Altman: I'll keep it general until I know if I can cite the example
Cocoanut Koala: like coming to take care of a griefer?
Cocoanut Koala: will cost you?
Shaun Altman: no
Fia Hartunian is offline
Cocoanut Koala: so you can see the helpfile in toto in the game, nimrod?
Shaun Altman: features.. like classifieds.. the one in the linden's example was a new feature though, not classifieds specifically
Cocoanut Koala: events
nimrod Yaffle: in toto in?
nimrod Yaffle: lol
Shaun Altman: (and I think it was a hypothetical feature)
Cocoanut Koala: completely ?
nimrod Yaffle: es
nimrod Yaffle: *yes
Shaun Altman: and, the L$ sales THEMSELVES are hypothetical
Cocoanut Koala: oh well i wont need to see that, so i dont need to worry
Cocoanut Koala: some hypothetical
Shaun Altman: so there is no good reason to be panicing and cashing out as fast as possible
Cocoanut Koala: the thing is, they are going to sell lindens whenever the company needs money
Cocoanut Koala: regardless of what it does to the "economy"
Shaun Altman: You've missed the point that in LL's example to me, NO new L$ were printed
Shaun Altman: a service was provided, charged for in L$, and the L$ was sold
Shaun Altman: plz read my thread for another example that I've made up on my own
Shaun Altman: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=106608
Cocoanut Koala: ok, well, even if so, there will be a new way for them to charge us our lindens for something,
Cocoanut Koala: then turn around and sell them to us, whenever the company wants that bit of profit
Cocoanut Koala: just tell me the forum it is in, shaun, easier for me that way
Shaun Altman: I don't see anything wrong w/ that
Shaun Altman: hang on i'll make it a notecard and pass it around
Cocoanut Koala: so you were only objecting to them printing lindens?
Shaun Altman: Yes
Rez Menoptra: I really don't understand how it's any different than what they've been doing, since you can't buy at the lowest price can you?
Shaun Altman: and I'd also object harshly to undercutting
Shaun Altman: on behalf of LL
Shaun Altman: but if they do this RIGHT
Cocoanut Koala: well they will do tht too
Shaun Altman: they could actually INCREASE the L$ value
Rez Menoptra: so they've been "buying lindens" the whle time?
Cocoanut Koala: they can, you know, its' their company
Cocoanut Koala: and life isn't fair
Shaun Altman: Coco: they will?
Shaun Altman: Where is this information from?
Shaun Altman: They WILL or they CAN?
Cocoanut Koala: they can, and i believe they will
Shaun Altman: I believe they know that would be ignorant
Crystal Lameth is offline
nimrod Yaffle: They probably will, they don't do random TOS changes for nothing
nimrod Yaffle: somethiing's up :-P
Bobofet Stiglitz: hi everybody
You: Shaun do y ou understand what they mean by those huge sinks and sources that are "other"?
katykiwi Moonflower: hi
Rez Menoptra: Hey Bobfet
Cocoanut Koala: I would have thought they would have known it would be disasterous of them to pick 8 favorites and wine and dine them in san francisco and promise them extra influence in the game, too
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: no but I'd like to
You: they won't put it that baldly I hope
You: well what could it be?
You: ?
katykiwi Moonflower: coco: what do you think the real reason is for them to do this
You: I think what happened
Cocoanut Koala: thanks, shaun
You: is that they decided to pick people and have them over
You: and then it leaked out
Shaun Altman gave you My Forum Post.
You: so they cooked up this program
Shaun Altman: there is my post
Cocoanut Koala: I think it is to distance themselves farther from a growing population they fear and don't much like.
You: I had a strange intuition about this.
Shaun Altman: did everyone get a copy?
Cocoanut Koala: This way, they can say, "we bounced it off the community," meaning, the people they chose.
katykiwi Moonflower: ty shaun
You: Remember when I told you that Robin IM'd me and asked for a meeting with me? and said she had to discuss "a new idea"
Rez Menoptra: that's a pissibility
Rez Menoptra: erm
You: so I met with her and we talked for an hour
Cocoanut Koala: Like the forums - they need no longer read them; they can rely on their favorites
Rez Menoptra: poosibilty
Rez Menoptra: lol
You: at the end she hadn't said any new idea
Cocoanut Koala: to bring to their attention things they want to , and ignore others.
You: and I began to get the distinct impression
You: that in between the time she first made the appointment
You: and then a week went buy
: that she decided not to tell me this idea
Rez Menoptra: ty shaun
You: which is THIS idea they are doing now
Cocoanut Koala: probly
You: but then she went to other people
Elaura Wishbringer is offline
You: and said "Oh, I've been meeting with Prok on groups and land tools"
You: see that enabled her to make it sound like she was taking the pulse
Cocoanut Koala: It is , Katy, a further corraling of the wagons
katykiwi Moonflower: so its a sham, do you think they will select people who are vocal on blogs etc to romance them and ensure positive things are written
Cocoanut Koala: them and theirs
Cocoanut Koala: jnot us
Cocoanut Koala: yes
You: During this meeting she asked me what I thought about resident dispute systems
You: even ersident judges
You: judges to render decisions on these covenants
Shaun Altman: who, Prok?
You: I thought about it for a while
You: and then I wrote her 2 memos
Cocoanut Koala: rpbom
Cocoanut Koala: robin
You: one on why I dno't need covenants
You: and 2 why I don't need resident judges LOL
You: not that way
You: where they pick them anyway
katykiwi Moonflower: prok: how long ago was that
Cocoanut Koala: spare me from resident judges!!!
You: it was about let's see
You: 4-5 weeks ago
Cocoanut Koala: i got enough of those already
You: I've been meanign to publish my memo to her on my blog
You: the reason she even had to begin the jduges thing
You: or let's call it a "dispute resolution panel"
You: was because of covenants
katykiwi Moonflower: i dont get this approach avoidance approach they use with you prok
You: because the first everyone says
Rez Menoptra: So who will go to SF then? Surely not Flipper --- they see him, and people like him at conventions all the time
You: first everyone says
You: how can you enforce it???
You: so they want to roll out covenants WITH an enforcer
You: and they don't want it to be themselves
You: so when I started saying, well it should be thus and so
You: it has to be legitimate
You: part of a government with branches
You: etc etc
You: she said, well, you sound like you have a lot of good ideas, why don't you be judge?
You: LOL
You: see she was just toying with me
Rez Menoptra: you don't think they'd let you be a judge?
You: of course I said, uh, I don't think I have any social legitimacy
You: it has to be someone respected
Rez Menoptra: bs you do too
You: that is a crowd pleaser moer than I am lol
You: well you know what I mean
Rez Menoptra: I know what you think you mean
You: social legitimacy with Flipper and with I dunno
You: you know a wide range
Rez Menoptra: but i don't think it's like that
You: and it's absurd
Rez Menoptra: I think you have more pull than you think
Cocoanut Koala: the problem is, the fact that we are all sitting around with a parlor game of guessing who they will invite, means that it is awful, right there
You: you can't have the Lindens pick an ombudsman
Rez Menoptra: with residents too
You: that person has to be chosen by the residents
You: in some kind of process
Cocoanut Koala: instead, think about the 99.9% of residents who are nothing but chopped liver!
You: well Gx was right on the money tho
You: his attitude and understanding
You: is exactly the one they share and the one they can count on backing them
You: all the tekkie wikis will endorse it with just that view
Rez Menoptra: they're contributing nothing but chopped liver for SL then perhaps?
Shaun Altman: Coco: what do you like about SL?
Wisper Patel is offline
You: they'll make JUST those analogies -- false -- about congressional commitees
Cocoanut Koala: building!
Cocoanut Koala: avatars like the robot and the rabbit!
You: see Rez? you summed it up!
ladyyve LaFollette is online
Wisper Patel is online
Shaun Altman: Coco: what do you like about LL?
katykiwi Moonflower: i agree that the person has to be a linden employee or if a member then one that is elected and not chosen by LL
Shaun Altman: (this isn't just to Coco I guess, anyone can feel free to chime in)
Cocoanut Koala: accessibility - but that is diminishing, i dreamed about it last night, read my dream on second citizen
Crystal Lameth is online
April LeMay is offline
Honey King is offline
Rez Menoptra: Coco: that will diminish as the place gets bigger tho
Cocoanut Koala: and I mean it, Shaun - READ MY DREAM.
Cocoanut Koala: yes, but they are still good at it
Shaun Altman: Okay Iwill but I have to go out and drink soon :D
Shaun Altman: it is friday :D
Cocoanut Koala: they are overly scared by numbers
Cocoanut Koala: they can still do it
You: wait
Cocoanut Koala: they just THINK they can't
You: not til I show you what I love about SL
You: if I can get the grey squares to go away
Shaun Altman: the last thing I'd like to know though
You: beautiful home I found this evening
You: in Gar
Shaun Altman: is what, in everyone's view, are the 3 best things LL has done in the last 3 months
You: can you see this picture?
Cocoanut Koala: "Gray squares . . . shine down on me . . . nothing but gray squares . . . do i see . . ."
Cocoanut Koala: p2p
You: there best things
Rez Menoptra: Shaun: the fact that I can build things people can interact with
You: well I wuold say:
You: 1) telehub buyback
You: 2) getting rid of officer recall
You: 3) classifieds for sale
You: I even opposed the way they did 3)
You: and they converted me on it later
Shaun Altman: So LL DOES do good things?
You: so I'm willing to be converted 1 out of 3 times sure
Shaun Altman: And SL IS enjoyable?
Cocoanut Koala: would we be here if it weren't, and if they didn't?
Rez Menoptra: yes, I saw that pic
Shaun Altman: So why can we focus only on the negative
Rez Menoptra: what about it?
Shaun Altman: I want to try to focus on the positive for a bit
You: because we need to presure them Shaun
Rez Menoptra: good q shaun
Shaun Altman: I don't want to pressure
You: why?
You: we get the positive all day long
Shaun Altman: I want to cooperate jointly
You: they are constantly jamming
Shaun Altman: and help to evolve a world
You: "we are getting web on a prim"
Rez Menoptra: haha
You: "we aer getting havoc"
You: Shaun, this dose not pay my tier
You: when the Lidnen is at 317
You: I mean comeon
You: this CEO Phlip Linden prints money
You: makes an announcement he is PRINTING MONEY
Shaun Altman: Well if u didn't panic so much the L$ wouldn't BE at 317 :D
You: and I lose hundreds of dollars US
You: that's not right
April LeMay is online
You: I didn't panic
You: I parked at 298 on May 8
You: on that day
You: and I held
You: but I do have to pay my tier
You: : )
Shaun Altman: Right
Cocoanut Koala: i didn't panic either! i haven't sold a linden! lololol
You: so I kindly sunk some Lidnens out of circulation for 10 days
You: lot of good it did
Shaun Altman: So the best thing to do is to put your faith in Linden, and show that support proudly
You: maybe I should have listened to RBD and put it at 304
You: LOL
Shaun Altman: so that others who are panicing will pick up on the fact that there is no cause to panic
You: um, well I need to pay my tier too
Cocoanut Koala: faith in Linden?
You: I refuse to pay it out of my regular money
Shaun Altman: then we can all better monetize our efforts
Cocoanut Koala: do you mean, the lindens, or the money?
Shaun Altman: both Coco
Cocoanut Koala: i'm too old to put my faith in people
Cocoanut Koala: if i see them doing something i think is a mistake, i will say so
Tiber Deledda is online
Cocoanut Koala: i don't think they know best
Rez Menoptra: Here's why they don't listen to things about paying tier, i think and are more receptive to things that seem more like tangible creation -- THEY can make more land, so concerns those people have are less relevant, cause if they don't have some great
Shaun Altman: So will I, but I'm not seeing recession/panic level mistakes
Shaun Altman: I'm just not
Rez Menoptra: plan for groups or something it isn't such a concern i'd think
Shaun Altman: and I deal with these numbers daily
You: yes Rez
Shaun Altman: my business depends on it
You: it's creator fascism pure and simple
Elle Pollack is offline
You: but that is not a basis for a good and just society
You: you can't have a society made only of craftsmen's guilds
You: it has to be able to sustain other kinds of people
Rez Menoptra: I agree
Cocoanut Koala: they are killing all the other kinds of people
You: exactly
Tiber Deledda is offline
Cocoanut Koala: and they are inviting 7 people to S.F. to tell them that is the right thing to do.
You: I dno't expet them to keep up subsidies
Rez Menoptra: At this point tho, I think it's still about being able to create things, rather than communities other than the main one
You: what I do expect them to do is not punish people with things like anouncing Linden printing
You: You know?
Shaun Altman: I'd rather see them earning and selling L$ than printing L$
Rez Menoptra: all the rest of the groups are nominal to them
You: these Lindens know where to find me : )
Rez Menoptra: yes
You: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com
Shaun Altman: I say tailor subsidies to match REAL, VERIFIABLE, economic growth
Cocoanut Koala: you know what? they know where to find me too
Shaun Altman: that is ALL the subsidy that is required
Cocoanut Koala: in fact, they can't get away from me!
Cocoanut Koala: hahahaha
You: hahahaah
You: I wonder if we have found a viable forums yet
You: Second Citizen was promising
You: but now it's filled with rap
Shaun Altman: or MAYBE, just list the L$ needed to match economic growth with the rest of the L$ that they earn, at a pre-defined rate
You: *crap
You: all the Poison Posse is there
Cocoanut Koala: there will never be a viable forums in the way you are thinking, Prok
You: Yuo know the regular forums
You: amaze me
Cocoanut Koala: because the posse comes around wherever I am
You: why is it that Mad Wombat
You: can post like this: "this thread stinks of vagina"
You: about some woman's post
Cocoanut Koala: thats why we need a website like SLOG
You: that's ok
You: that can fly
You: but I write that Ingrid should eat some chocolate because she's cranky and must have her period
Cocoanut Koala: I havent written my letter yet
You: that's sexist
Cocoanut Koala: but
Cocoanut Koala: when I do, see, i have figured out, i dont wnat to beg or whine
Cocoanut Koala: so I have figured out, I don't want to do anything but object.
You: mad Wombat can say somebody's thread "stinks of vagina" and Siggy can say "Anshe is a douchebag"
You: it's jus so appalling
You: so where is that forum?
Cocoanut Koala: it's outrageous
You: I don't want to be on a forum with 3 old ladies and a cat
Cocoanut Koala: which is why . . . it won't last.
You: which is what some of these side groups are LOL
You: and I say this as an old lady with a cat P.S. LOL
Cocoanut Koala: well, i guess you could try stratics
You: I don't want a forum like that
You: is it any good?
Cocoanut Koala: i don't know
You: I'm just so tired of logging on and seeing stuff like
Cocoanut Koala: i haven't wanted to bring my bitterness there
You: Poll: how far up Prok's ass is Coco
You: or "True Story: Ass Slack Child Abuse Victim Eats Horse Shit
You: ugh
Cocoanut Koala: that wouldn't be allowed on Stratics
Rez Menoptra: Forums are only useful when intelligent people post.
You: it's just so gross
Cocoanut Koala: yes, gross, i ignore most of it
You: well where are they?
You: I dno't want to read about pony girls
Cocoanut Koala: but at least there I can make a thread about what I think about something
Cocoanut Koala: without getting my stuff confiscated
Rez Menoptra: They are there, but thye're really few and far between
You: yeah I find it semi useful as a sounding board i guess
Cocoanut Koala: exactly
You: I think some of the conversations on my blog have been great
You: like with Jared Godel
Rez Menoptra: me too
You: that was excellent
Rez Menoptra: yes, I agree
You: or with Khamonn or Ordinal or really any of them
You: since I started that policy
Ouchquack Stern is offline
You: of no one can post unless they use their SL name
Rez Menoptra: I think those are important to see
You: it cleaned it up totally
Cocoanut Koala: people allowed to talk is a good thing
You: that's what is ruining Second Citizen
Cocoanut Koala: SOME people allowed to talk, only, is a bad thing
You: it's like at that Ralph Koster blog
You: generally a good blog that is a cut above
Cocoanut Koala: yes, you made a right call with that on your blog, prok
You: but that same ass Joe Public who I think is Nolan
You: is there to write tripe
You: Shaun what do you think of the economic stats?
Rez Menoptra: many times i think those peolple are rich irl
You: they seem massaged to me
You: stuff is missing
Shaun Altman: They're a good start
You: which people?
You: Shaun you are ddrinking the Kool-Aid
You: you are so funny
Shaun Altman: I think LL is clearly trying to move in the right direction
You: one month you aer happy with them
Shaun Altman: I'm not drinking anything yet :D
Cocoanut Koala: shaun is watching out for number 1
You: the next month you are filled with doom
You: oh
You: ok
You: lol
Shaun Altman: Coco: that's just a nasty and shallow thing to say
You: then why are you spouting drug-addled nonsense lol?
Cocoanut Koala: no
Cocoanut Koala: cause i don't blame you
You: actually I shuold do more of that
You: Shaun does well on this platform by doing that
Shaun Altman: if I put number 1 ahead of the community, I'd have a WHOLE LOT of free Cyberland stock
Shaun Altman: MILLIONS of L$ worth
You: and we wouldnt' expect anything less
Cocoanut Koala: no, i don't mean you do bad things
Shaun Altman: instead, I took the odd step of buying every share I hold with my own L$
Cocoanut Koala: i mean, you are being politic
Shaun Altman: so you see, I look out for the community, sometimes to my own detriment
Cocoanut Koala: of course!
Shaun Altman: I say what I believe
Cocoanut Koala: i don't mean that
You: well Shaun don't you realize that in your case looking out for no. 1 is taking responsibility for those investors tho
Cocoanut Koala: i mean, you also don't want to -
Shaun Altman: and I don't sugar coat
You: so maybe you are in a position to feel brighter about SL
Cocoanut Koala: - make things hard for yourself unnecessarily.
You: when you are wealthy here and buying islands and they do well
Cocoanut Koala: rock the boat too much
Shaun Altman: Prokofy: maybe! I can think of no better time than now to buy Cyberland stock!
You: and you aern't down in the weeds trying to pinch pennies and raise yuor rental micropayments $50 everywhere
Rez Menoptra: lol
Shaun Altman: especially with the new secondary offer going on
You: you have a kinder attitude
You: well when I have excess Lindens I will Shaun
Cocoanut Koala: secondary offer?
Shaun Altman: Coco: yes, we're printing new shares
Shaun Altman: L$18,750,000 worth of them
Ravenglass Rentals in Jubata $3000: Tennant refunded at Ravenglass Rentals in Jubata.
Shaun Altman: I figured if Philip can print all this L$, surely it's ok for me to print a few shares. :D
Rez Menoptra: and i can buy stock in them somehow?
You: woot finally the SLMPD moved out
Cocoanut Koala: well, you know i am economically backwards, dont understand most of it
You: does anybody want to rent 9800 m2 in Jubata?
Cocoanut Koala: i agree, shaun!
Rez Menoptra: haha no ty prok
Shaun Altman: Rez: yes Cyberland is publicly owned an traded
Shaun Altman: www.slsolutions.org
Shaun Altman: and*
Dray Brocco is online
Rez Menoptra: hey cool
Shaun Altman: If you want L$250,000+ worth of stock, u are currently entitled to buy straight from us, off market and commission free :D
Shaun Altman: If u want L$1,000,000+ u get an even sweeter deal :D
Cocoanut Koala: i dont have 250k
Shaun Altman: check out the press release
Ouchquack Stern is online
Shaun Altman: :(
Rez Menoptra: hey that's cool tho
You: $250,000 LL is about $750 USD today
Rez Menoptra: i don't have it either
Rez Menoptra: hehe
Rez Menoptra: least not right now
You: so buy the cheap Lindens even cheaper tomorrow and buy Shaun's stock
Shaun Altman: yes Prok
You: makes sense
Shaun Altman: pennies!
Shaun Altman: now that L$ is cheap
Cocoanut Koala: irl, I may not have 250k, but I still get to VOTE
You: yes it does make sense sure
Shaun Altman: I should actually be pontificating disastar, rather than sanity :D
Cocoanut Koala: but in SL, you only get to vote if you are chosen, see
You: but I could also buy cheap land liquidating out where i need prims
Shaun Altman: so everyone can pick up cheap L$ to buy shares :D
Cocoanut Koala: on the basis of stuff like, how big a busines syou have
Cocoanut Koala: <----still sawing at the same gripe
You: Like Ginko, shaun is helping to soak up excess Lidnens off the printing press
You: LOL
Shaun Altman: rez: it's .org
Cocoanut Koala: well I'm gonna get off and go read robin's blog
Rez Menoptra: erm
Rez Menoptra: lol
Rez Menoptra: well
Cocoanut Koala: i'll see y'all later!
Rez Menoptra: neat way to do that tho, eh?
Rez Menoptra: see you coco
Cocoanut Koala is offline
katykiwi Moonflower: bye bye
Shaun Altman: see u soon Coco
Jonathan Kivioq is offline
katykiwi Moonflower: on another topic..what do you think about the new law in iran
Jonathan Kivioq is online
Seifer Kennedy is offline
You: well I've been working this issue
Shaun Altman: there is a new law in Iran?
Isabell Shriner is offline
You: my son just came in and was upset to hear it on the news
Rez Menoptra: okay, I'm out for now...not cause of your q katy
Rez Menoptra: good to see you all
You: it is actually something they've done for awhile
Rez Menoptra: good talking
Shaun Altman: I've been too worried about the US importing workers almost as fast as it's exporting jobs to care what's going on in Iran
You: nice to see you Rez
You: oh
You: we were going to have a meeting Monday at 4
katykiwi Moonflower: muslims have to dress the same and jews have to wear a yellow ribbon, christians must wear a red gadge
You: if you can come
You: on the topic: are prefabs architecture?
Isabell Shriner is online
Rez Menoptra: yes, we can :)
You: remember?
Shaun Altman: see u soon Rez, nice chatting again
You: Coco should come too
You: lol
You: ok
You: 4:30 actually
katykiwi Moonflower: i will be there
You: I have a late meeting that day
Rez Menoptra: you goo, shaun
Rez Menoptra: erm
Rez Menoptra: too
You: I won't get home til 6:30 pm
Rez Menoptra: weird fingers tonight
You: I mean EST
Rez Menoptra: ah okay, cool
Rez Menoptra: yeah
Rez Menoptra: gotcha
You: so that's 3:30 SL time
Rez Menoptra: we'll see you then, then
Rez Menoptra: oh
MarkTwain White is online
Shaun Altman: Well I'm going to go out
You: and I need time to make dinner etc so let's say 4:30 is that ok?
Rez Menoptra: so when's the meeting?
Shaun Altman: it's already 9pm here :D
Rez Menoptra: ah yeah
You: 4:30 pm SLT
Rez Menoptra: okay
Rez Menoptra: cool
Shaun Altman: see u all soon
Rez Menoptra: lol okay then
Rez Menoptra: ciao
You: ok bye Shaun
Shaun Altman: enjoyed the meeting
You: see youb later
katykiwi Moonflower: bye

"Civic Redress"

A great myth of the world of Second Life is that everybody behaves like interesting, intellectual, thoughtful ladies and gentlemen, sort of like the audience of NPR, and that "the community" is made up of reasonable, rational, well-meaning people -- instead of the often jealous, sleep-deprived, hysterical, overly-emotional, people you often find on the grid, suffering from the virtual-world bends.

The virtual-world bends work something like the RL bends of deep-sea diving, coupled, of course, with the Internet Fuckwad Theory, but it's more complicated. It's a set of behaviours that people develop in virtual worlds beyond just when they immerse or decompress, which affect the very way they behave -- I wonder why those people at the Lab never study this.

You know those asstards who talk on cell phones on buses? Those kids with the headphones on shouting at you without any awareness of how loud their voice is? It's kinda like that -- it has to do with distorted perceptions caused by over-emotionality and a fierce aggressiveness about whatever you're trying to accomplish because it has so many built-in hardships and distortions.

The Lindens are terribly reluctant to inhibit people's freedoms. God knows, they gave the Bush Guy plenty of latitude to extort land sales on hundreds of tiny griefer properties, making people buy their view back from the huge spinning ugly IMPEACH BUSH sign, even though most of them didn't like RL Bush, either. God knows, they hint broadly and wink at reverse-engineers, love artificial life experiments involving cute spawning fish, and protect every paranoid McMansion owner's right to to have nobody *ever* lay a grimy avatar finger on his sex balls by allowing him to use aggressive and stupid bounce scripts that bark like a GULAG guard "YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO CLEAR THE AREA" before bouncing you to kingdom come.

No, better to let the citizens police themselves, eh? What could be a better policy? We're all adults here. Why, in the creative world of Second Life, like in the bright world always receding into the future under communism, people will be gosh, so darn *creative* that they won't even THINK to grief! I mean, when there is so much open possibility in a world, people just won't harass others, as Philip said in his famous Herald interview.

Except...Philip doesn't really live here anymore, and he can't possibly imagine what a truckload of fucktards he's subjecting us to when he makes loose talk about "Civic redress".

I'm waiting for the town hall transcript or podcast to get the exact quote, but basically Philip said that for lesser forms of griefing that didn't rise to the test of grid-crashing, the stuff that just routinely takes place against homes, businesses, and clubs every night, there would be "civic redress".

Walker (Mark Wallace) unfortunately put the wrong spin on this calling it "conflict resolution". Ugh, ugh, ugh. No, no, no.

There's no "conflict resolution" in the kinds of things that happen in Second Life to deal with griefers, let's start with that. "Dispute resolution" conjures up notions of granola-crunching Zen practitioners holding hands and singing Kumbayah, but there's nothing of that here (and what we really need is justice, not dispute resolution).

Here's how it works. There are groups like S.L.A.M. with Jenna Fairplay and others in it -- I'm one -- that instantly transmits to all the major club and rentals managers in SL information about any griefer. All well and good when you have one of those candidates for the teen grid who comes in and flies around with his piece out, sexually harassing women, or when he starts shooting people in an unsafe zone, or fire-prim bombs, or keeps trying to put prims or scripts down on land even after he is banned -- something he can do, of course, under the existing insufficient land tools. Of course, any griefer can fly above the 40-meter mark on a parcel, perching and continuing to harass and fire at you. More often than not, by firing back at him, you're the one who is banned for 3 days, not him, as the Lindens find it easier to catch you, not him.

So that's good, if a concerted group of managers can get together and ban this person from a lot of major enterprises and with the new private island tools, from whole continents.

When Philip says this is a good thing, banning people from entire land masses like that, no doubt that's what he means -- trying to get at this problem of griefers, their alts, and their stupid habit of constantly flying around the edges of even when they are banned. I get asswipes, for example, that build complicated avatars and stand on a neighbour's land with that avatar (you can rez an avatar on yourself, even if you can't rez out objects on someone else's land either because it's full or they put "no create" on) -- and then they poke some long stick with an eyeball or some other rooted prim at you to annoy you -- you can't return or eject or freeze them because technically they aren't on your land. So the mass-ban is meant to try to get at that problem (not at all a solution, really, but in theory, if every parcel in your group land could instantly have the same ban list, then you wouldn't have to waste time manually setting it as you flew around one square ahead of a griefer).

So where does this go wrong? When the jealous content-makers of SL, ever insecure (often due to their amateur status) begin to misuse this concept to ensure their own secure market share, or dominance, or effective consumer boycott of others.

Example: somebody gets on the mass-ban group IM and tells everyone they have a griefer who is bothering them, and whom they also suspect of stealing their designs. This is a constant refrain in SL, and it's often impossible to check, or impossible to really judge, because both parties in the counterfeit suit have swiped their "original image"from somebody else's website -- you have to laugh at people having hissy fits over who stole the other person's knocked-off the Gucci bag design LOL.

So the call will go out on the mass list to ban this suspect. All the little friends of the caller -- it's a very tribal and fiercely loyal kind of place, SL -- will all chime in, sure, ok, evil, hiss, let's do it.

I often raise the question of why I should be banning suspects like this from my business of rentals. I'm sure as hell not going to go to every parcel and manually ban somebody who is suspected merely at nabbing a purse design because I want to keep a system open to the public. If someone has a very specific and well-researched case and has ejected a copyright theft out of their mall, I could consider doing the same thing, but I've never had occasion to be tested on that.

I don't like the zealous and vindictive atmosphere of Second Life, and I hate this idea that people in the Community Round Table have mooted, which involves publicizing names of perpetrators who are banned for offenses -- I view that as double jeopardy -- punished once for their crime of shooting, let's say, and then forever after banned from all the clubs and best homes of Second Life, punished over and over again by losing freedom of movement? (That's why I drafted Proposition 1355, which starts this process of "naming names" by having ALL the names named in forums cases, including the abuse-reporters and the Lindens who make the decision to ban people.)

It gets worse, however. The other day I was on the Dreamland group IM and a guy puts out a mass call urging everyone not to sell land to someone he said was "griefing" him. This person was bothering him, flying near his store -- a competitor in the same market with the same products, I guess. He wanted to make sure nobody in the group sold their land to his rival, that we stuck by him, with the fierce tribal loyalty that Second Lifers often demand.

Well...why? I'm supposed to forego the free market of land sales and rentals, and refuse to sell my Ansheland so that he can have a store, and somebody else can't? Huh? That's not right. That's not a free market, that's a guild society with vicious apprenticeship and exclusionary rules and horrid laws of conformity.

We can see this kind of horrid thinking on a recent PolySci forum discussion about ostracism. To be sure, the poll is running 70 percent against ostracism and 30 for - but those "for" are often in a position to make good on their threats. Fortunately, Aldo Stern, our old friend Aldo from TSO, pointed out gently to today's cyber ostracizers invoking "the practice of ancient Athens" as if it were the heart of democracy, quotes Plutarch's lives regarding ostracism of Aristeides:

"Coming together, therefore, from all parts into the City, they banished Aristeides by Ostracism, giving their jealousy of his reputation the name of fear of tyranny. For ostracism was not the punishment of any criminal act, but was speciously said to be the mere depression and numiliation of excessive greatness and power, and was in fact a gentle relief and mitigation of envious feelings, which were thus allowed to vent themselves in inflicting no intolerable injury, only a ten years' banishment."

Writes Aldo,

"Note that ostracism was created in ancient times, not for dispensing justice on a common and regular basis to control those who caused grief in the daily lives of the city, but as an extraordinary tool to end the political control of a few powerful elties who had taken on too much influence in the city's affairs. Ending tyranny was a high-minded goal, but in practice, ostracism ultimately worked against the public good, as according to historians who have studied its effects, it actually became a tool by which men like Pericles ended debate and discourse so they could pursue their own agendas unchallenged.

Yes, this current proposal has a high-minded goal, seeking to create another tool to fight the griefers and other anti-social residents of the platform. Sadly most of these simply would regard the infamy of being ostracized as a badge of honor within the context of their unique world-view. One can argue, however, that ostracism would actually do more damage than good to the social and political fabric of the platform, as such a system would most certainly eventually be used against other people such as the gadflys who irritate numerous people as they challenge conventional thinking, land barons whose success excites the jealousy and resentment of competitors, and insistent forum posters who present out-of-the-box ideas for discussion and then defend them to the point of appearing (unintentionally I am sure) somewhat trollish."

Of course, there are many captains of industry in SL who frankly call for ostracism like the creator-fascists they are. They'd like to be able to block ANYBODY they hate for ANY REASON -- whether they are a competitor, or a jilted lover, or an actual griefer, or someone they disagree with on the forums. They want to use the power and tools of SL to sanitize their environment of anybody that doesn't "fit" -- and Philip Linden wants to make sure they have that right. His response? Go buy your own island and ban that other person if you don't like it. That this leads to a world of impossible checkerboards and fiefdoms and warring principalities doesn't bother him in the slightest. Indeed, one of the more unsavoury features of the Linden auction process these days is the "reservations" that you "bid on" for future grid locations. Land barons rightly call this a "protection racket".

How this works, if you want to start your little island paradise empire, and buy 4 or 6 sims, you have to plan for growth. So you better reserve the open void water squares around your little dream world, or your rival could put up something right smack next to you. So people are "bidding on" (paying extortionist fees) these reservation holds - which in any event don't hold, and have to be renewed every so often -- really awful system, and the Lindens should be ashamed of themselves.

A vivid example of this type of "continent griefing" happened on the bulkauction sims, where it may not have been any accident, comrade, that Anshe put her snowy piney green and white sims smack dab next to Shaun Altman's sandy Barbados type sims, making buyers shy away from the sharp climate change. But of course, who's to tell? You buy a bunch of sims, you put the textures you want on it. "I get to do what the fuck I want" is a sacred holy principle of Second Life, so God forbid that I glance over my shoulder and try to fit in with my neighbour's temperate zone.

The "civic redress" that Philip imagines is more like a posse, a witch-hunt, a kangaroo court, a troika. It's what happens when you have a weak and inefficient, or remote state power, that leaves people to "take care of business".

Exampe:  Marcos Fonzarelli has "civically redressed" me by banning me from a large public aerdrome he has in the city sims "just because" he doesn't like what I saw on the forums. I discovered this while trying to show a newbie various sites in SL. Lots of people hate me for my forums post, my public position, and this blog. So they'll mass ban me on speech grounds alone.

Another example is the kind of thinking I've noted in the past from Traxx Hathor on the PolySci forum, who advocates a system whereby powerful individuals -- not accountable and transparent institutions -- will decide who is to be punished or rewarded based on non-accessible "aesthetics" and "ethics" determined by a powerful group able to enforce its will:

" Having been toying with the problem of protecting texture-creators' IP rights here, I tend to favor individual rather than institutional approaches. For example, products that self destruct. : ) It might deter miscreants if the IP owner did random audits to catch and nuke unauthorized copies. Honest people have nothing to fear.

But that's a specific category of malefactor. Desmond has a more general characterization:

Quote:

Ultimately this is a communications and commerce medium. As such, whatever provides the smoothest communications and commerce means will win the day.

To the extent that this is indeed a communications medium we can stifle malefactors by refusing to supply them with bandwidth on valuable high signal-to-noise communications channels. For example, on an individual level I like the mute function. It lets an individual explicitly choose to pay no attention to a time-wasting troublemaker such as an IM-stalker. On a group level those who own a communications channel like a forum are under no obligation to provide costly bandwidth to everybody who wants it. It makes sense to ignore those with a track record of grabbing way more than their share of bandwidth to use for self promotion and denigrating whoever is on their hate-list. In both of these cases the owner of the bandwidth is making the decision based on first hand knowledge; it's not some overarching institution doing system-wide enforcement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gomez How would an economy exist in such a system? Would it spiral rapidly out of control? How could it be protected?

Internet commerce is not spiralling out of control, but it's plagued by scammers and spammers eating up bandwidth at everybody else's expense.

So who gets to decide who is a "miscreant" and who is a "scammer". Traxx goes around calling me a "scammer of newbies" or a "griefer" just because he hates what he considers to be tacky real-estate dealings, dislikes me personally, and wishes to characterize my dissent on the forums as "trolling". Why should he get to decide if I'm banned from large land masses where he might put a word in the ear of an unsuspecting group founder, or get people to put out products that will "self-destruct" if they detect my avatar key. Honestly, Philip must never consider the endless possibilities of malicious-driven creator-fascists who want market share and unlimited power to sell their products and keep out "any business but my business".

Another common occurrence is when you refuse to sell land, and give into a neighbours' grasping for more prims. They retaliate by banning you from all their land, even if it is on 3 sides of you (the Lindens will police such blockages only if on all 4 sides). The possibilities for all these kind of low-level annoyances and griefing through ostracisms are endlessly played out and developed in SL, and if anything, people want MORE privacy and MORE bans.

The latest discussion on increased privacy revolves around turning off the map-tracker on calling cards. In the rosy past of Lindenor, people loved exchanging friendship cards and hopping around to visit each other like friendly little creatures in the 100-acre woods, and the map tracker was a great thing because you got a red vector to follow your friend. But with p2p, that meant that he could now land on your head even at the worst moment.

Another by-product of map-tracking was that the Lindens would have accountability when they logged on, at least for those lucky enough to have gotten their calling cards. You could see where they were located. If they were at Bad Girls, you'd wonder why they didn't cyber on their alts, geez. If they logged on and always went straight to visit all the FIC doms, you'd feel chagrined to find that it really worked that way, but whatever, at least you know.

Some of them, of course, turned off their trackability -- apparently they have that option. Not sure if they always do, but now not only have some of them turned it off, they've promised FlipperPA, who keeps yapping about this, that soon in the next patch, everyone can turn it off. I do hope it will be opt-out, i.e. that you can leave your tracker on if you want to be found. It's yet another thing closing our society, which already is so authoritarian in its aspirations.

When Philip said the thing about "civic redress," I immediately IM'd him during the town hall and said, "And what will be the appeals process for this?"

I imagine our politically-correct Lindenz would take action if they saw a continent that banned all gays or all blacks or all Asians or whatever discriminatory practice someone might think up. But how? They might do it if the residents made open calls to discriminate. But if they privately decide they want nobody on their land who disagrees with their worldview, that's their right. U.S. law would hold them up on this, as it did for the Boy Scouts and gays.

Already, for example, while I wouldn't dream of banning anybody from my land on basis of their affiliation with any group, lifestyle, RP, or whatever -- anybody who right-clicks on the box and abides by the simple rules is in -- the Gorean master dom has banned me from the main Gor sim just because he doesn't like my criticism of Gor. Typical.

In giving their residents more latitude to ban the shit out of everybody they hate, and increase the already vindictive atmosphere of SL, the Lindens remain blandly and blissfully unaware of the kind of society they are creating, but they also don't want to look to hard. To look harder would mean they'd have to make a serious dispute resolution system and get down into the weeds with how to adjudicate it.

In RL, if a group of African Americans are blocked for renting in housing in Westchester, they can file a civil suit and seek justice, and a judge will be forced to rule in their favour and compel landlords to open up their buildings and cease their discrimination.

In Second Life, if a group of furries, say, are blocked from some lovely new continent some land baron has created just because he doesn't like furries, where will the furries go? Anshe, for example, has been very savvy about following what you might call the American ethnic restaurant school or "gorgeous mosaic" school of how to have differing groups live happily on the grid. She deliberately creates themed sims to steer people -- Victorian girls' doll-house lovers over here, BDSM over there, furries hither, and GLBT yon. That way she doesn't have to deal with the kinds of tenant disputes that occur when somebody puts up a giant metal and Goth home next to a French mansion with frilly curtains. It works most of the time, although it's not the approach I use. I prefer to have simpler rules, and to try to talk to people that seem to go over the top, say, when somebody puts out ice igloos and wierd metal platforms next to somebody's cosy romantic Colorado pine lodge -- I ask for mitigation -- this doesn't scale, I'm often told, but that's ok, somebody who wants to constantly build mass production and "scaleability" can go on doing that in SL and I will not play along.

What's sad about Second Life to me is that neighbourhood associations never seem to take root and function. That is, I've founded, or participated, in a few that have worked, but most don't. Partly it's because nobody wants to log on after a hard day at work or school and sit in a stupid committee meeting about appropriate building codes.

A bigger problem, however, is this obdurate and aggressive notion that we can never ask anybody to change or mitigate anything about their build, in the name of an overzealous right to freedom of creativity. Actually, I disagree, as I routinely solve problems hundreds of times over with other neighbours, when their houses are too close to mine or visa versa, or when my tenants have put something out they don't like -- I try to get mitigate it if possible and hope others will do the same. For example, nobody seemed to step up to the plate for the longest time to tell this fellow to take his stupid $999999999 for sale land off. It was unnecessarily drawing shoppers to look to see if the land was sale, and angering people when they found it wasn't. I asked him, he turned it off. You have to ask.