Second Citizen Shuttered

Second Citizen, that obscene, scatalogical cess-pool of a forum where I'm glad I don't post anymore (except for the occasional forray when I'm summoned to a thread, to defend myself) is closed "until further notice".

Odd, that. I have no idea why -- precisely because I didn't keep up with it much lately. I think I saw yet another "Open Letter to Prokofy Neva" where somebody was ranting the other day about something, but I didn't have time to see if it was new or necroposted. I think it was a thread where Jauani Wu accused me of pyramid-scheming tier from wide-eyed newbies through Ravenglass Rentals and then sex-trafficking them into third-world slave dens, while working for Bush as an agent to install wire-tapping in Second Life. I let it go -- you can't be everywhere.

I noticed there was actual closing of threads going on lately, which seemed highly out of character; maybe old Mother FIC was starting to fray at the edges. I believe Steve Mahfouz was accused of bad landlording by some guy who raged and spammed and finally it was closed. I didn't really see anything controversial there, like a hack tip to mine dead people's Social Security numbers and sign up for fake alt accounts, or glorification of the PN's infiltration of the grid --the the usual fare at the SC. But maybe someone knows?

One odd thing is that in the last few weeks, somebody went to a lot of trouble to do a massive advertising campaign of flashing fancy photoshopped logos and witty sayings as you can see here -- but they were only on SC, not on other blogs. Some of them were dorky but most showed some promise, and you realized that when whoever made them got over his bad meth or dope habit and got off Second Life and WoW, they might get a real job in an ad agency or even a metaversal myrmidonery.

I have no idea whether the sudden shuttering of SC is related to Karl Rove's resignation, the collapse and perpetual bonding of Ginko's or Mother going into rehab -- or one of these oft-threatened libel and takedown actions finally sticking, but I can only say that while I don't wish SC well, as it's an empty trash lot of rabid junkyard dogs, I'm never for any free press outlet being shut down.

Comments

[Wendel Gascoigne]

Odd. I was there this morning and it was running as usual. The landlording thread you mentioned only had some of its spammy repetitions closed, but 2 were left open. The issue kind of resolved itself in the end. The closure happened some time in the past 3 hours. But I have no idea why.

Wendel

[Lum Lumley]

"bad meth or dope habit"
"Mother going into rehab"

...yeah, I'm not thinking SC is the obscene cesspool in question here.

[kendra bancroft]

From the keyboard of Prokofy --as usual more yellow journalistic shitstains based on speculations and conjecture.

Why not wait on facts, Ms. Neva? Or do they get in your way?

[Lordfly Digeridoo]

Looks like it was shuttered for forum drama -- Prok, do you see this as chilling on free speech, even if you disagree with 90% of the posters?

[Desmond Shang]

There is the usual, far-too-dragged-out explanation on Cristiano's board.

Let me save all interested parties 30 pages of reading (I quit around page 15 I think) and sum it up: Mulch and MadameG got into it and Mulch posted some things that would have had Mother in big trouble.

More or less. I really don't have any beef with either of them, so if it's wrong I can be chastised on secondcitizen. Oh, wait... I guess not, hmmm?

I would say this, however. For whatever ills secondcitizen has (and it has many) - it has never banned Prokofy for an idea, or for being wrong, or for simply getting under someone's skin.

Further, with a few exceptions that den of rascals actually *participates* in the metaverse, in good ways and bad, and actually knows what it's talking about in terms of life on the virtual street, virtual business, and so forth. That put it above Terranova and a number of other venues, in my book.

My guess is it will be back. Ridiculous drama seems to go hand in hand when anonymity meets relatively free speech.

[Cocoanut Koala]

Well, the interesting part about this is nobody ever KNEW what it was about! Or what happened!

And those who know aren't telling.

It all started with someone's ginormous annoying signature, and ended - as far as I can guess, and I am strictly guessing - with real life being dragged into it, and things posted that could be construed as rl threats, or were threats (I didn't see them).

But the whole thing was phenomenal mainly for the reason that no one understood any of it in the first place! Sort of like a whole TV show about nothing . . . or something.

The huge signature was never explained; nothing. Out of all the things that have gone on on SC, I would have put this inscrutable drama as the least likely thing to end in closing SC.

Some nutty people were apparently doing nutty things behind the scenes, is all I can tell.

As for the banners you mention, I believe they were made by many people, and yes, they were brilliant!

I hope SC opens back up again - for one reason, I had just set a personal record last night with hours spent on uploading pictures to my thread about my daughter's wedding, and providing a lengthy dissertation on the whole thing. (And didn't keep a copy!)

coco

[Prokofy Neva]

I struggled to pay attention to that huge thread at Cristiano's, and gave up. I think the nut graph is that insatiable attention ho Mulch went to far and provoked some backlash from MadameZ something -- no angel, she. Typical SC drama -- but I don't understand all the nail-biting. If someone stalks in RL or makes RL threats, you have to delete the post. That's if you want to keep you Internet page and your host. In fact the first minute my home address was published on SC, inviting stalking that could and then did happen, that retard Mother FIC should have deleted it and said "we have free speech here, but not that".

Free speech is not an absolute, even on a free-for-all forum like that. What happens is that they become very tied up in their tribal loyalties and favour banks and warfares and local skirmishes. They don't understand, nor care about, the rule of law, and having a few simple rules above everyone, even the moderator, by which he must be bound, for the sake of preserving the group/society itself. And perhaps then they desire to die if they can't do that much.

Right now, third-party blogs aren't an issue for Linden Lab. They get their negative press not from these SL-related blogs, but from things utterly out of their control like Valley Wag or the Los Angeles Times. So they work at spinning that with real media, not caring about resident blogs. Yet media seems to be under stress these days, for sure, as there is a lot of pent up protest and unhappiness, a lot of turmoil with major events like Ginko's, and yet no coherent place to discuss it inworld or on LL-sponsored forums.

In fact, if you look at resident answer now, the Lindens have let that become "general" again possibly merely as a valve to let off steam at the moment.

But when both positive and negative press lull because SL itself will just not be growing as fast, they may turn their sights on the negative third-party blogosphere and suddenly introduce some TOS or some demonstrative object-lesson, and that will completely chill out the non-sycophantic press.

SL as a community of geeks and fantasists in a virtuality of a world is cracking and splintering along known fault lines as another group of business people, lawyers and advertisers burst in and make their own sort of virtuality which like two masses trying to exist in the same space and time can't co-exist -- and one displaces the other. I suspect pockets of it will live on but everything looks to me like a game of a year or so as LL cleans up the code and the illegality and even smut, and then IPOs, goes under a new board of directors, or converts to a non-profit like Mozilla and open-sources in some hippy sort of way, or whatever.

[Prokofy Neva]

Lordfly, what a stupid question. Of course I'm for the freedom of the press even if I don't agree with it. Shutting down even by the owner over forums drama is a chilling effect on speech, and merely shows the immaturity of the moderator, who doesn't understand the magnitude of his public trust. If he is personally burned out, he should turn it over to others but it really seems out of line to shut it down when the offending material can be deleted and that's the end of it.

It seems to me SC has trouble living with its own conscience, since it has a hypertrophied notice that speech must be so extreme and so free that nothing should ever be deleted. But my God, do they want an ISP or not? A simple caveat about RL crimes like physical threats and stalking is a basic ground rule. And I wouldn't add all the crap about libel since 99.9 percent of the claims of libel are ridiculous and that is merely manipulated by aggrieved parties. A bar against RL disclosure and harm in RL seems a very, very rock-bottom basic, and if they couldn't do that much, maybe it's good that they're closing.

[Allana Dion]

>"Shutting down even by the owner over forums drama is a chilling effect on speech, and merely shows the immaturity of the moderator, who doesn't understand the magnitude of his public trust. If he is personally burned out, he should turn it over to others but it really seems out of line to shut it down when the offending material can be deleted and that's the end of it."

He shut it down because he needed people to shut up and stop posting while he worked on removing the damaging content and because the man needed to step back and decide if it was worth all the work to keep it running.

Clearly you've never tried to moderate a popular forum, it's a job that is just too big for one person to do alone when certain posters are incapable of babysitting themselves.

[Prokofy Neva]

Yes, I've moderated forums, but this is silly. I don't understand why posts can' be deleted in a second.

If he needs to step back, that's fine, he can turn it over to someone else.

No comment on the need to babysit the assholes there -- I would never try.

[stpaulsub Clio]

ohh never mind it is really not worth it to try to address you in any civil way you truly have no understanding of the concept
but gawd i really wanna know what someone did to you to make you so bitter all the time.

[Prokofy Neva]

That's a question better directed to SC, n'est ce pas? They're the dysfunctional bitter ones.

[Fox Stirling]

@stpaulsub Clio...

Simple, they disagreed and held their grounds on opinions that were opposite or not right on line with Prok's. But even that's not entirely true, I've seen cases where Prok has gone off on people who were backing her, with just as much bitterness and nastiness as she does with those who oppose her..

Thinking about it, I suppose there is no telling what the true cause of Prok's bitterness really is...

Anyway, back on topic, I was surprised to the sudden closure and I certainly hope Mother FIC is able to sort everything out and get SC back up and running again. When you can weed through the drama, though I admit it can be entertaining at times, there are plenty of helpful and informative posts to be read there. Whenever there are technical issues in world, or just a question on the current market status I always look to SC first for the straight bitter truth rather than the sugar coated half truths from the "Love Machine's" blogs.. Not to mention that most of the folks there are fun to talk to and really know how to have a good time..

[Erbo Evans]

Steve Mahfouz accused of being a bad landlord? That's really surprising, because Danielle and I deal with him (The Gin Rummy and Wilder Mall are on one of his sims) and he's about the fairest guy we've ever dealt with as business owners. Guess information quality control is a bit of an "issue" for SC...

[Desmond Shang]

>>"Steve Mahfouz accused of being a bad landlord? That's really surprising, because Danielle and I deal with him (The Gin Rummy and Wilder Mall are on one of his sims) and he's about the fairest guy we've ever dealt with as business owners. Guess information quality control is a bit of an "issue" for SC..."

Steve took part in the discussion, and to make a long story short he appeared (to my mind) as very honourable when it was all said and done.

He's got well over a million square meters of land, if I recall correctly, and no matter who you are, you are going to make mistakes.

I'm on the verge of sim #20 myself, with a squeaky clean forum record, and I'll freely admit I've made mistakes.

Accidentally reserved the wrong parcel, overlooked a payment, that sort of thing - at least 3-4 incidents I know about. I've taken pains to square up, of course, to the satisfaction of the person affected. But sooner or later a mistake will find the forums, before it finds a landlord inworld.

Everyone makes mistakes. It's how you handle it that makes the difference, and Steve came out looking pretty good when it was all said and done.

It's not how you deal with people who like you and are forgiving - it's how you deal with the rest. He clearly made an effort, and it showed. I'd recommend dealing with him, personally, even if in a way he's my 'competition' on some level.

[Prokofy Neva]

It strikes me that anyone in the rentals business will end up with at least a few disgruntled tenants no matter how perfect they are. As I have no direct experience of Steve, I can't comment on the story, except to say that anybody who is an SC regular is already unscrupulous in my book, just for countenancing the bad things that go on there. That said, they might be good landlords.

And what makes it difficult is that people are stupid, and scream at you about mistakes they themselves make. Like they put out a 2000 prim club on a 1024 parcel when the lease says "150 prims" and "no clubs". You return their items, because they've just sucked all the prims out of the sim, so that no other tenant can put theirs out.

Then they scream because you lost their sexgen bed, or so they think -- but hey, don't put out 2000 prims next time.

When you read the story by the fellow involved in Mafouz's case, while rabid, it sounded as if he had a case. And he should get to make that case. He was shushed on SC because Steve is one of the gang. And that's wrong. If he spammed, ok, sure, suppress his spamming, but don't deny him the right to pursue Steve with a complaint, because the tools for trying to solve this inworld are abysmal.

I had a tenant recently take up repeated air time in a Linden office hour, with me standing right there, because he was new, and hadn't realized that "ghost prims" are something a landlord can't fix, and somehow, the explanation I made wasn't clear enough or repeated enough. And the sycophants were making it worse, by claiming to him that I *could* fix mainland ghost prims, which was a lie.

And redundancy is the key here. I tell people things 4 different ways to solve the problem of people's newness, inherent cluelessness, or their inability to read more than a half a line of chat at once and absorb the scroll. I tell them on their lease; in FAQS prominently placed in kiosks; in a hand-sent card given to them upon sight of their payment; and in a live, verbal chat with them. And it is never, never enough.

So there will always be some who scream and scream, and I don't care, I will tell them they are assholes right back to them if they mistreat me. I'm not in Caledon : )

[Prokofy Neva]

Looks as if the odious obscene scatalogical place is back up again, anyway.

[Cocoanut Koala]

It's back, minus Mulch and some unknown person's alt.

coco

[Richie Waves]

Awww <3 you love us all really Prokofy!! admit it...

Who's your super secret alt? :D

[Hypatia Callisto]

Coco said: "The huge signature was never explained; nothing. Out of all the things that have gone on on SC, I would have put this inscrutable drama as the least likely thing to end in closing SC.

Some nutty people were apparently doing nutty things behind the scenes, is all I can tell."

What Coco said is on the money. Well, I have a tentative explanation for the sig, actually. It seemed fairly apparant that it was meant to force people to shut off sigs. If I was to guess, someone had something in a sig that upset MadamG.

And yes, this is about behind the scenes love affair crap, which irks me even more. It should have been handled by the parties involved, and not ended up being a forum drama ending in the forum's closure. Prok is absolutely right about this - it should have never lead to the closing of SC. The sig should have been handled by Mother from the getgo and told to cut that crap out.

Then I saw all teh wretching about the forum in general being to blame, when in reality it's got nothing to do with the majority of the people posting on the forum. Well, kinda lost me there folks. I'm outta there. I have certain rules, and this is one: a forum must have good handling from the top. This situation wasn't handled from the top, when it should have been handled, in the time frame it should have been handled in. It spiralled out of control. Nobody is responsible for that except for the person where the buck stops.

Flame me if you wanna, that's how I see, no disrespect intended.

Sorry, I don't feel responsible for people's love affair fallouts. I very well do sympathise, I know it hurts, but I'm not responsible for this personal crap. So once I figured out what was really going on, and I saw what was being bandied about (blaming the community at large) I got a little ill. The community isn't responsible for this. You have love affairs, take responsibility for them when they roll off the rails.

And yup, I've worked in a busy virtual world community forum in the past, in much the same position as Strife has now, so I know the rules very well, as well as the various kinds of BS that can happen in forums.

Nuff from me on that.

[Buretin Peart]

"As I have no direct experience of Steve, I can't comment on the story, except to say that anybody who is an SC regular is already unscrupulous in my book"

I CONSTANTLY see you committing this pseudo-reasoning logical Fallacy of Composition. You always infer that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole.

This line of reasoning is fallacious because the mere fact that individuals have certain characteristics does not, in itself, guarantee that the class (taken as a whole) has those characteristics.

To illustrate this point, Coco is an SC regular.. therefore, by your own words, you have just labeled your best friend unscrupulous.

[Prokofy Neva]

How can you be sure this is "fallacy of composition" and not "hasty generalization"? Are you *sure* you have your Wikipedia rhetorical terms mastered, son?

By all means, I'm happy to *reason by analogy* which is not a fallacy, but logical. Cocoanut is an aberration, a sport, an outlier on the SC. She doesn't use it to castigate people and run scurrilous posts about other people.

Meanwhile, most of these other "regs" there do. When I see Mafouz there posting constantly and chumming it up with really nasty people, it's logical to *infer* that he shares their values and goals.

Cocoanut is clearly not one of them, though she choses to go to that forum simply becaue it's free, and they are not likely to ban you (well, less likely than others).

If we can't make judgements about the whole from the sum of its multiple parts about which a great deal is known, we can't know and judge the world. We're not in composition class. We're in the real world, making valid judgements to get on in life.

Most of the class of people posting in Second Citizen indeed have those characteristics. To defy that statement is to defy logic and clear perception.

One of the things tekkies who are ignorant in general about literature, thought, rhetoric, philosophy, etc. is to try to play rhetoric cop. They try to jam concepts of rhetoric and reasoning down the gooseneck of their own very cramped programmers' type of language. They couldn't be more stupid doing this.

Absolutely: anybody who is an SC regular is already unscrupulous in my book.

Even if Cocoanut regularly posts there, she's not an SC reg. She isn't in Phreak Radio or the group "SC regs". She's definitely not one of them. And if you can't see that, you wouldn't know reality if it bit you in the ass.

[Name Undisclosed]

Richie Waves. What love fall out are you referring to? Or are you just making more gossip? Perhaps you could point us to a thread or some information that was posted so we all know what you are talking about.

Otherwise, stop making more rumors.

[Name Undisclosed]

Sorry, that post was meant for Hypatia Callisto, not Richie Waves.

[Nina Andrews]

Don't you love that place? Signs of an unchecked borderline personality by one of the party involved and freedom of speech to make death threats. Makes for great drama.