Talk:Second Life/Archive 10

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Terrorism in Second Life

Natalie O'Brien wrote an article in The Australian, a Murdoch owned newspaper about Jihadi terrorism in Second Life. Major tenants of the article have already been debunked by an Information Week columnand its been slashdotted (only one post though). In case this is a rising meme being kicked about somewhere there probably should be some discussion or at least a placeholder for it on the talk page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haverberg (talk • contribs) 17:30, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

This is the best NPOV on these articles I could draw up: "Throughout the Second Life community, there are many places that an avatar can aquire a weapon to turn Second Life into more like a Massive multiplayer online role-playing game rather than an MMOG and then participate in acts of fantasy violence." Since Linden Labs has declared the game to contain mature content and there is a clear separation from Teen Second Life for reasons as stated above, free will for anyone to own a weapon is allowed. Since there's a possiblity that this article could be found as propoganda, mentioning at least that Second Life has ways to aquire virtual weapons for role-playing is fair. Because many people of different religious beliefs, associated or not in a group, play MMOG's, I would think that stating anything other than what I created to include in the article may potentially be disruptive and lead to satisfying one's own need for personal gain. Also, it should be noted that to call this terrorism, it would have to be an unwelcome act brought on to the community. Groups have the right to assemble regardless of wherever or whomever they are so long as they are doing so in a peaceful manner. If the individuals in question were to use Second Life and disrupt its main grid by means of hacking, then that could be virtual terrorism. At this point, I fail to see how doing anything other than just pointing out a group is considered terrorism. --Mnemnoch 22:16, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Another NewsCorp article on SL Terrorism by way of the London Sunday Times, borrowing from the O'Brien articleHaverberg 12:37, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I corrected your link for you. --Mnemnoch 19:23, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Now, with the above being said, I want to point out that I'm attempting to keep a neutral point of view on the articles that you're bringing to the table rather than supporting anyone. The London Sunday Times notates that there are groups, like the "Second Life Liberation Army" run by children in an effort to "grief" others, but it isn't run by a specific group of individuals who are notorious for terrorism by means of a Jihad. The group mentioned is a bunch of "geeky kids" and I have to point out that right after that statement in the article that it becomes biased. I could blow my own horn about how there are "geeky kids" on any MMOG that do the exact same thing because I was one of them. I've tinkered around with SL enough to know that you can manipulate the LSL coding to create distributable and buyable code that anyone could have that could upset an entire area. I digress. They're creative but not terrorists.

Second of all, I find this section to be highly mislabed and one that is biased to supporting a viewpoint since there hasn't been terrorism in or occuring from Second Life. I think that it's very easy to say that the parties writing the last article are using the Sunday London Times as a platform to very creatively advertise MetaSecurity at the expense of Second Life. Third, it's very important to point out that they notate that there are not any "extremist" groups operating in Second Life. That allows the press to state whatever they want since until a Jihad turns into an act of terrorism, they're simply another extremist group. Either way, this is still very debatable prose that I don't find worthy of mention in the article unless under controversy or using a statement like I did in my first commentary. --Mnemnoch 20:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right, its important to keep NPOV regardless of personal feelings on the subject, even in the talk section. I edited my subjectivity out. I also removed the Metasecurity link since its not germain. I do think its appropriate however to keep the "Terrorism in SL" heading (in talk) because that is how the mass media (or subsectors of it) are attempting to define it, and therefore how the major society is introduced to the subject matter. We have to live with the agenda they so set. I also don't think it is appropriate (yet) for inclusion in the article, but this may become a forced issue from media speculation - which is why I bought it up in the first place. My focus isn't so much on the possibility of terrorism in second life so much as the media perception of such - justified or not. I do find it interesting, however, that the media properties most concerned about this belong to Murdoch, but it would break NPOV to speculate whether there is a motive.Haverberg 00:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Picture?

Is there a reason this article has no picture? garik 22:29, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I would assume that there are copyright issues. --Mnemnoch 07:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, other than perhaps the logo, is there really a single image one could prepare that would properly represent Second Life as a whole?--MythicFox 13:04, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Flying penises? OK, seriously, I've seen the former login screen used in some news articles, and there should be no copyright issues with that one.Haverberg 19:06, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, intellectual property issues. We had some pics of representative scenes and reasonably typical avatars that had to be removed because of the intellectual property regime that operates in Second Life. Metamagician3000 03:41, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The article needs a screenshot. We cannot take a single screenshot because of copyright shit? A screenshot should be fair use... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frap (talk • contribs) 22:11, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Other language versions of this article are illustrated with screencaps, including the Dutch, French, Italian, Polish and other ones. The German version, in particular, has a whole section with screenshots. Presumably we could use some of those. It could be good to include screenshots depicting a variety of "typical activities". I can provide a couple if anyone's interested (such as: a rather nice picture of two avatars ice-skating amidst falling snow, on a rink with Christmas trees in the background). 83.114.178.87 (talk) 00:12, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I've got a screencap showing a fairly large gathering at the official headquarters of the French Socialist Party, if we're looking to show a variety of activities (and a variety of uses SL has been put to: the party's SL HQ was officially launched by Ségolène Royal, who made a video encouraging people to visit it.) 83.114.178.87 (talk) 00:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Names

It appears Second Life adds new surnames on occasion; is this the case? --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 06:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

In an attempt to allow for more population or expansion, I would imagine this is the case. I would look at the Linden Labs site to see if you can find some history as it is worth noting in a "growth" manner. --Mnemnoch 07:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Read the Knowledge Base. (You may need to be logged in to see that). --Pak21 07:51, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Pricing History?

My recollection is that originally SL charged $10 per month in usage fees, similar to MMORPGs, but they failed to sign up a significant population to pay the bills, so they started experimenting with other business models. Does anybody have any references for this? Why is pricing history not in the pricing section? --Psm 14:33, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

---

I don't have a source handy but here is my recolection of how it went:

-Prior to version 1.2, there was a plain old monthly fee

-From version 1.2 up through sometime in 2006, there were Basic and Premium accounts. A basic account was a one time fee of $10 per avatar. Premium accounts were $9.95/mo which included 512m^2 of virtual land; more land incured additional montly tier costs.

-For a limited time in the above period, LL offered a $200 Lifetime account to early adopters, which gave them 4096m^2 of perminent tier. As I recal it was discontinued in early 2005.

-In June 2006, Basic accounts became free.

Thx, that meshes with my recollection; I'll see if I can confirm your data points with press releases or whatnot. I did find the original coverage in the SF Chronicle (their original pricing was $14.95 per month but they got less than 2000 subscribers on that model). --Psm 21:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

SL History Wiki has some of this but much of the content hasn't been updated in a while. EllePollack 21:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Elle, thanks, but I zoomed in on that wiki with google and couldn't find anything, actually. --67.170.225.125 21:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Not sure how to work this into the main article yet... the basic fee to become a paying member is US$72/year (more if you pay quarterly or monthly.) Paying members get a weekly Linden dollar stipend and can own land on the "mainland" but they have to pay "tier" on holdings more than 1024 m^2 (up from 512 m^2). Anyone can own land on "private estates" but you have to pay tier to the estate owner. All members, regardless of payment status, are debited L$10 (a little less than 4 cents in US money) from their Linden dollar balance every time they upload a file into their avatar's inventory. (The upload fees are a major source of revenue.) Timothy Horrigan (talk) 03:42, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Second Life BOX - System requirements - 50 MB1000 MB HD space for Disk Cache

Is this a specification for Hard Disk space required (as for downloaded code), or Disk Cache space required, or both, and which is which?

Run-on typography ["50 MB1000 MB"] needs correction.SalineBrain 19:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Logo re-uploaded -- Neatly licensed this time

I reuploaded the logo, and this time, it's licensed properly. It's under the Fair Use Policy, as in any other logo. —Smiley Barry. _{(Full signature under work)} —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:49, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism / linkspam

I guess people won't need it, but... just a quick warning to people not to go to the link (teamer blog.com) which is being spammed onto this article at the moment; it looks like it's trying to download some form of nasty ActiveX control. I'm immune though :-) Cheers --Pak21 (talk) 16:25, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Trivia tag

Someone improperly added the "Trivia bad" tag to the "Second Life in Popular Culture" section. Obviously I removed it. 23skidoo (talk) 06:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge with MyControl Speedway?

* Support - The MyControl Speedway article really does not merit it's own article. JASpencer (talk) 21:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Withdrawn. Too long. JASpencer (talk)

Good reference

This http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons is a good reference. I linked it as a reference for the bit already there on griefers, but there's a lot of stuff more in this article. William Ortiz (talk) 05:29, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Is second life a MMORPG?

If not what's the difference? Serendi^podous 20:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not intended to be a role playing game, therefore not an MMORPG.

Signpostmarv (talk) 05:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It is, however, a MMOG (massively multiplayer online game), which is the same thing as a MMORPG, except you're not role-playing anybody but yourself. See Virtual Magic Kingdom for another example.--Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 17:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

That depends on how you define a game. Second Life, generally, is not a game.

It's a virtual world environment, not an MMOG, so you could probably just call it an MMO without any additional suffixes.

Signpostmarv (talk) 12:49, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Contested entry

Addition of the following section was contested by User:Beetstra:

--

In 2007, a number of online articles [6] [7] [8] alleged that Second Life's economy was itself a ponzi scheme. The claim is that the majority of customers purchasing L$ in exchange for US$ are new users, and thus constant new user growth is necessary to maintain the economy. Although this growth is successfully sustained at present, this nonetheless meets the technical criteria for a ponzi scheme: those who have invested in SL in a business sense are largely obtaining their profit (ie, their return on investment) from new investors in SL. Linden Lab have, to date, issued no response or disproof of this - although they have issued responses to negative economic allegations in the past [9]. It has, however, been noted that not every user of SL wishes to make a monetary profit, and thus many of the "new investors" who purchase L$ will have no desire or expectation to ever obtain any monetary return on that investment; this is not true of classical ponzi schemes and may be adequate to prevent problems occuring.

--

User:Beetstra argued that it lacks reliable sources. However, there are no more reliable sources than blogs for much information about Second Life. Second Life has not yet developed to the point where any point that is true, and agreed true by experts, about its economy will necessarily appear in a print book or a published paper; indeed, many of the best-known Second Life experts publish exclusively via blogs.

User:Beetstra replied that this lack of real world publication means that WP:NOTABILITY is not met, however this applies only to entire articles, not to paragraphs within them. If this standard is to be applied to sections then I would content that several of the existing sections, such as Physics Simulation and Virtual Art Gallery, are not notable on their own either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.73.146.153 (talk) 16:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

"Winners and losers"

It's incorrect to claim that Second Life does not have winners and losers, as it includes a competitive business element. I'm not arguing that SL is a game, but still, there are winners and losers there. 161.73.146.153 (talk) 12:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, there are losers. --DearPrudence (talk) 21:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It Would Be Nice If...

there could be more Second Life Screenshots. Can an adult get them? I would get the shots myself, except for the fact that I'm currently too young to log in to Second Life. And, as always Listen to your Princess, dear Wikipedians. (talk) 17:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you could login into Teen Second Life for 13-17 year olds. I used to be on TSL myself Nexii Malthus (talk) 16:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

POV tag

I'm doing tag cleanup and just happened on this article. I notice that this was nominated for featured article status but failed. It could be a variety of reasons, but I'll tell you all one thing: They won't feature an article with a POV tag (or any, for that matter). I don't see much ongoing discussion here about it, either. I'd suggest that if you all actually have a consensus, as tags are often left without real cause, then you remove them. I'm not going to touch anything here, just a word to you.Jjdon (talk) 00:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Section "Management changes"

I suggest that all content in the section "Management changes" be moved to the article Linden Lab, as, while it is relevant to that article, it's not particularly relevant to the mechanics or experience of the Second Life world. -- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 02:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

No disasters? No tragedies?

With the recent real-world disasters in Asia (typhoon and earthquake), I find it interesting that the article on SL doesn't mention the possibility of anything really bad happening at random. Is it true that in SL there is no dangerously bad weather? No accidents? No disease? No annoying relatives? Or is it all about fake identities, adventure, sex, and money? --72.70.28.70 (talk) 00:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

IMHO an odd question. SL is much like a cross between Disney World and Burning Man. Whatever you find there is there because someone put it there (and nothing can "happen" to you -- i.e. "damage" -- unless you give specific permission for it to happen to you.)

The only bad things that happen at random are annoying people, griefers, and system crashes.

"Or is it all about fake identities, adventure, sex, and money?"

- "Fake" identities? Most people use "virtual" identities, the way people playing role-playing games say, "Okay, now I'm going to be an Elf while doing this" -- just for fun.

- "Adventure". IMHO there is more "adventure" in most MMOGs or other computer games, which are specifically designed to be exciting. "Adventure" in SL comes mostly from not knowing what cool place or person what might encounter next.

- Sex gets a lot of press but I'd say isn't a huge part of what most people do in SL most of the time.

- SL has an economy that converts to the real-world economy, people are interested in economic transactions, so people are interested in the economic transactions that happen in SL. Some people are very interested, some are hardly interested at all.

Something that you don't mention that interests a lot of people are issues of "cool" and "style". People can quite easily and cheaply appear much cooler or more stylish in SL than they can in real life, so a lot of people enjoy doing "virtually" what they really can't do in reality. People can also fairly easily create quite cool clothes, items, etc., and impress their friends or sell the items at a profit.

- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 20:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Linking primitives: 31 or 255?

User:86.13.150.88 recently made a change "Complex shapes may be linked together in groups of up to 255 separate primitives." (Formerly read "31 separate primitives".) Is "255" currently correct? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 20:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Both are correct, in a way. 255 prims is the maximum for any object, however, if one wants to make that object physical (sensitive to server physics powered by Havok4) it has to be connected of 31 prims or less. In addition, it should be added that prims, when linked, must all be in a 10m parameter when linked for the linking to be successful. -Smiley Barry ^{[USER] [TALK] [SL]} 16:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. This will be interesting to try to briefly explain in an encyclopedia article intended for the general public. :-) -- Writtenonsand (talk) 17:47, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

nederlans

We are unable to complete your Second Life registration. We apologize for the inconvenience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.95.224.31 (talk) 13:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Is putting Blogger opinion right?

One small thing: it seems that when quotting the USA today article you actually quote a comment by a blogger, not a real journalist, should this be allowed on Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.72.168 (talk) 12:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Unless I've missed something, the quote comes from an article on the USA Today website, written by a USA Today employee.

The basic gist of wiki-fu seems to be that the reputation and notability of the source in question, though in most cases blogs and bloggers tend not to fall under this category, it's not always the case- see references from the official Linden Blog (a blog, but an official source), Wagner James Au (who writes for Kotaku, Gigaom, and New World Notes where he was actually Linden Lab's "embedded journalist" for a while), Massively.com (part of Weblogs, Inc., which is owned by AOL).

Wikis are another source that is generally treated with suspicion- mostly due to the facility for anonymous edits, or the use of registered accounts to create FUD/blatant lies. However, you will notice that Resident (Second Life) quotes the official Second Life Wiki, where the edit was made by the user "Robin Linden"- the setup that Linden Lab have with their MediaWiki installation is that that a Second Life Resident's in-world account is the same as their wiki username, and that only Linden Lab employees can have the surname "Linden"- so although the statement is on a Wiki (which can be edited by any Second Life Resident), the edit history shows the statement was made by a Linden Lab employee on a data source owned by Linden Lab, and can thus be viewed as an official statement.

Signpostmarv (talk) 10:24, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Patriotic Nigras Section

Shouldn't we have a section on the Patriotic Nigras? They've gotten quite large and active as of late, so I don't see a reason why not.
Of course, if people are worried that his may cause some gigantic vandalism/flaming/insulting/whatever war, then we shouldn't make the section. GikoGarcia (talk) 00:01, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Too Long

Don't you think? Bflorsheim (talk) 20:01, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh yes, absolutely. dogman15 (talk) 04:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

I am currently shuffling sections and rewriting the article. The glossary section is out of place or too in-depth for this article. Perhaps tit could specifically be salvaged as a supplemental article.

Common terms and abbreviations

Abbreviation	Description
Adfarm	Land parcel containing deliberately ugly advertising images, placed deliberately to spoil the view of nearby landowners and encourage them to buy the parcel at an inflated price. Now, after years of resident activism, considered a TOS violation (see TOS below).
Alt	Abbreviation for alternate account, an avatar created by a single user beyond his or her original (primary) avatar.
Anim	An animation; a small program, executable in-world, that allows an avatar to move or adopt a pose.
AO	Animation override; a scripted attachment sold in-world that substitutes more lifelike movements and poses for the default animations that come with the basic avatar.
AR	Abuse Report - the standard way of reporting TOS violations via the game interface.
av, avi, avie, or ava	Abbreviations for "avatar."
FIC	Feted Inner Core - SL resident Catherine Fitzpatrick's term for a supposed "clique" of successful residents on SL, seen as having been granted special favors (by Linden Lab, landowners or other influential organizations) that maintain its success.
FL	First Life (i.e., Real Life).
Grid	Shorthand for the entire SL world, e.g., "They're way across the grid." Also refers to the technological underpinnings of Second Life, as when the grid goes down temporarily for maintenance.
Griefer	A Resident who is harassing other Residents by using any of offensive language, bumping, or generating garbage objects to leave on land, or any number of other activities that significantly disrupt another resident's in-world experience.
Group	Groups are used to network with other users for a specific purpose, e.g., networking. Users can create groups and invite other users to join their group.
HI (HIP)	Help Island Public - the second of the two "tutorial" areas, distinct from Orientation Island (OI). Help Island is social, allows activities to be chosen freely, and is not mandatory. Due to pressure of usage, there are now two identical adjacent Help Islands.
IM	Instant Message - a private, one-to-one text chat between two or more avies.
IM Hell	When an avatar is flooded with so many IMs that others in contact with him or her might think s/he's away from the keyboard because s/he can't respond quick enough.
L$	Linden dollars, the basic currency of Second Life, also often referred to simply as "L".
Lag	Term used when the simulator or client are running slower than expected, causing jumpy animations, juddery movement and sometimes delay in transactions.
LL	Linden Lab
Lindens	Can refer either to L$ (above) or to the staff of Linden Lab, all of whom have avatars with the family name "Linden" in-world, e.g., "I had a meeting with Jeska Linden yesterday" or "Torley is my favorite Linden."
LM	Landmark - a geographic location in Second Life which gives a location by simulation, latitude, longitude, and altitude. As in a Bookmark in an Internet browser.
Log	Used to indicate both "logging on" and "logging off" Second Life; e.g., "When did you log today?" and "I need to log in a minute." Also "relog" - closing and restarting Second Life, usually as a way to improve the program's performance.
LSL	Linden Scripting Language, the programming language used in-world.
MDC	Metaverse Development Company - a real-world business that creates Second Life content for other real-world businesses.
Mentor	A user with more than six months of Second Life experience who volunteers with Linden Lab to help answer questions of any nature about Second Life as well as teach new skills to those who seek them.
OI (OIP)	Orientation Island Public - the "tutorial" area in which all new Second Life users begin. Unlike HI (above), OI is more formally directed, mandatory, and can be completed individually.
Orbit	Use of a weapon or LSL script to fling an avatar high into the air. While this can be fun among friends, it can be considered griefing (see griefer) if done without consent.
PM	Private Message (Same as IM).
PNs	Abbreviation for "Patriotic Nigras," the name of a particular group of dedicated griefers.
Prim	Abbreviation for primitive object. Prims are the basic building blocks of any in-world creation in Second Life.
Rez	Refers to creating or spawning an object (or sometimes, an avatar) in-world. Also used colloquially to refer to the sharpening of the visual field necessary when arriving at a new location. For example, "I rezzed my boat and went sailing," or "I'm still rezzing, can't see you yet." Taken from the movie Tron.
Rezday	An avatar's "birthday," the day a Resident first created that avatar.
RP	Role-play.
RL (IRL)	Real life; in real life.
Sim	A Second Life simulator: the area hosted by a single server CPU. (Also called a region or - rarely on SL but commonly on other online games - a zone). These are independent Second Life simulators, each with their own characteristics, rules, ratings (PG or Mature), and themes.
SL/MG	Second Life; main grid.
SLT	Second Life Time (based on Pacific Standard Time, which is the real-world time zone of Linden Lab in California)
Tag	A 'Group Title' When you join a group (see above) a group title will appear above your 'name tag'; e.g., a mentor (see above) will have the tag 'Second Life Mentor.' The purpose of these is to help readily identify members of that group, but are used for advertising purposes in some cases.
TG/TSL	Teen Second Life; Teen Grid.
TM	The Matrix, to refer to Second Life itself
TOS/CS	Terms Of Service and Community Standards - the standard statements of the "laws" of Second Life.
TP	Teleport - instantaneous travel between one point on the grid and another.
Voice	Second Life's third party service, used for talking instead of the traditional typing.
WA	Welcome Area - one of several designated locations in the main grid that new users are sent to after passing through OI and HI (above).

External Link avatar24.ro

What has this link got to do with SL? Probably just someone advertising their site, huh? LunarEffect (talk) 22:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I saw no point in it being there, so I removed it. LunarEffect (talk) 03:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)