SL must move beyond the Techi Wiki culture

I think Khamon made a good point..

.. SL is *not* ready to grow. I remember Philip once suggesting to stop letting new users join for awhile until they had things straightened out.

However, I think part of the reason SL is not ready to grow is because they keep adding new features.

It's not clear to me that's really all that super necessary. I think if they just hunkered down and fixed the bugs and stop 'feeding' the techi wiki, we could come up with the next tringo based on the current feature set.

The techi wiki or whoever does it just has to stop asking for more features because it isn't necessarily whiz bang features that will pull in the larger crowds.

Well, Khamon, it's good for a few things other than entertainment:

- disabled people can use it for interacting with people and an environment
- great predictive modelling tool for social and economic issues

I'm really getting tired of this argument. The SL population (which continues to grow at a steady rate with the economy expanding at an incredibe percentage each and every month) is already diverse with a huge conteingent of mainstream gamers who came here from There and TSO. If this theory that SL only appeals to some kind of tecnocratic elite were true SL would be in decline. These bizarre attempts at creating a cultural divide by casting creators and consumers against each other are simply not supported by the facts. Not to mention that these kinds of theories are downright insulting to the intelligence of so called "mainstream causal players." I realize that some people have made a hobby out of doom and gloom predictions but perhaps they might want to take a look around at reality and frame their conspiracy theories accordingly. A few vocal malcontents does not a culture war make.

Sounds like a recipe for market stagnation. If you don't have new features, which by the way, are for everyone, you won't have the same level of innovation, and people will become bored. It's a delicate balance - it can't be one way or the other. Bugs vs. new features is the paradox faced by most online environment designers. I remember when people would scream bloody murder in UO and EQ, "I am paying to play a beta!" - it's part of the online experience at this point. Maybe 10 years from now we may see true finished product at the time of going gold MMOEs, but that's even doubtful, there will always be bugs - there is in offline software as well.

The new features are important for a MMOE, to hold the interest of the masses you want to see in SL. People can be fickle when paying a monthly fee if something becomes old-hat. If there were no new features, the tekkies you bemoan and admonish would simply keep making their things - just to see if they can. It's all in the perspective, and expecting others to limit themselves to your perspective is not only folly, it's just plain wrong.

Now, on my point that new features are for everyone, let's take a look at some major implementations in 1.6.

- International Language Support Non-Tekkie - has been asked for since time untold.

- Video streaming Semi-Tekkie - everyone can watch a video now and everyone gets the free video player. I don't have my own server but I can play movies from archive.org and the like. My girlfriend and I watched 2 movies last nite, niether of us are versed in streaming media.

- Better frame rates through faster rendering of complex avatar attachments - Linked objects will share a single drawable instance. End Results: Attachments render faster, especially hair! Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Avatar Chat Bubbles: Optional ability to see chat shown as bubbles above avatar's heads. Non-Tekkie - actually taking a cue from There and TSO.

- Searchable Inventory Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Streaming inventory for faster startup of SL. Your inventory is no longer loaded at start of every login, it comes in as needed. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Friends: New Friend relationship is added that is separate from calling cards. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Steer your avatar more smoothly while walking by left-clicking on yourself and driving with your mouse. Non-Tekkie - benefits users who like to move about in that fashion.

- Buy without sufficient funds redirects to Second Life's Buy Currency Web Page. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users and some SL related businesses.

- Added the text "Searching..." to results window while searching to indicate that a search is in progress. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Ability to sell a piece of land with the objects that are on it. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Ability to list objects on your land by their owners, and return all objects belonging to a specific person. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users and most inworld businesses.

- Ability to track particle systems to their source objects and owners (From View->Beacons) Semi-Tekkie - benefits those who may think there are invisible or lost particle emitters, etc.

- Added 'No Fly' for estate owners. Select Estate Panel and check the box marked "Allow Fly" Non-Tekkie - benefits estate owners.

- Private Island Deeding: Estate owners and group officers can now mark their parcels on their island as deedable. Non-Tekkie - benefits group businesses, group collaborations, landlords, etc., i.e., business.

-New Scripting functions Tekkie - benefits trickle to business and end users by way of improving scripted items, i.e, vehicles, games (like Tringo), weapons, animation machines, etc., etc.


- Editing/Building improvements. Some non-, some semi-Tekkie - benefits all builders, whether you make jewelry, cars, planes, homes, what have you. Most of the additions were to streamline the toolset and allow for integration of streaming video.

- Improved server handling of groups; Backend changes, no functional changes. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- New landmarks will reflect position changes of a simulator if it is moved. Note: Landmarks made before 1.6 will not follow simulators that have moved. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

Bug Fixes

- Fixed camera jitters on entering and exiting edit mode. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Estate rules: "banned users" now takes precedence over "allowed groups" Non-Tekkie - benefits estate holders.

- Rotations of prims are now clamped to the nearest half degree. Semi-Tekkie - again, benefits all builders.

- Fix for llRequestAgentData where it failed under certain circumstances. Tekkie - benefits all users.

- Fix for item on curser lost when an update is received from an object being edited Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

- In script editor switched 'Undo Changes' with 'Help'. Tekkie - benefits scripters or open source script editors.

- Taking an object rezzed from trash now correctly goes to Objects. Non-Tekkie - benefits all users.

Sure seems to be more features and bug fixes aimed at the general population than at tekkies.

By the way, SL is growing, whether you care to admit it or not.

This is where I keep getting hung up as well Chip.

There has not, to date, been any proof offered up. Just vague jabs in the dark and caste system mongering. No financial charts or stats, no sociological charts or stats, no surveys, no petitions, nada, not even some rough attempts. Yet a small group of folks constantly profess to speak for the masses. Why is it that we never hear from the masses? We just keep hearing the same mantra over and over by the same few self-envisioned erudite, "clairvoyant" seers.

I don't just discuss these issues on the forums, I talk to friends, acquaintances, and new players about these topics in-world as well. Interestingly enough, I don't hear the sentiments supposedly being expressed to Prokofy and crew by "100's of SLers". It must be a statistical fluke!

Exactly, Nolan. I'm sure huge portions of the SL population would be shocked to learn that they're not actually having a good time, and are in fact being oppressed

Sorry, there is no future in catering to the lowest common denominator as they've no sense of loyalty and are the ones who are the most transient customers in any business.

This thread is a perfect example of someone thinking that because *they* think it is 'right', it must be so.

Three words: Get over it.

You had me up to about here:


While the merits of "just entertaining the masses" have their benefits, blanket consumerism and entertaining the masses is only one portion of where Second Life should be.


Well, let's take this from my view on the matter. I try to target content creators - typically, folks that have a very limited knowledge of scripting. I've done my personal best to provide them better tools that give them access to things like early 3D model importing, BVH-in-a-prim, prim mirroring (which we've recently proved needed a correction), and am currently working on a way to create content out-of-world.

I see that as trickledown. More empowered content creators equals more awesome content equals more enjoyment of Second Life.

Is this wrong in some way? Would you accuse me of "ego-stroking" when the real benefit to my person is relatively small, and I work long and hard to get this stuff out there?

I really don't think you're so naive as that, blaze.

As for "what do they want (directly)," I'm also a content creator. Being what I consider a decent 3D modeller and texture artist, I also create items, and have recently enrolled in the Game Dev Competition to do precisely this - develop a killer app for the masses.

Moving away from myself, because I'm not the point here, I think the problem here is you're concerned that the "technical minority" is taking over. How? Last I checked, the majority of sales and time spent in Second Life were on impulse purchases, club gear, land sales, and Tringo. This is expressive of the "techie wiki culture having a stranglehold on society?"

Try "we could always use more people developing content for the masses, regardless."

Since I coined the term, let me elaborate on this notion. The wiki form of culture is a kind of throwback to the "barn-raising" idea where groups of people get together and work for free to help one person accomplish something like getting his barn raised. It's a variation on the "two heads are better than one" adage. The idea is that groups of collaborators can very quickly get together (the word is said to be taken from the Hawaian "wiki wiki" for "fast" but I think it could well be taken from the Native American "wickiup" for "gathering of huts" and they can pool their knowledge and amplify and accelerate their collective wisdom, and anyone can come and put up a sticky or upload a phrase to add to the common base.

There are several features inherent in this culture that trouble me. One is the problem of self-selection -- enthusiastic wikkiests are already people who have a notion about how to solve a problem or accomplish a task but now instead of recognizing they are self-selected and predetermined, they hide behind a false notion of "democratic corrective" and "openness," i.e. that anyone can now come up and put a sticky. They usually work closed off from others, even from other wikis. There isn't always a way for the cells to talk to each other. When they accelerate and amplify and compound the wiki collective knowledge, they aren't necessarily working in the direction of openness, pluralism, diversity, tolerance merely because they've adopted a set of tools that made for their own collectivism. A wiki is a self-perpetuating machine -- it goes on raising barns whether or not anybody thinks barns are still relevant.

When you have a wiki, you have a collective. And as the Soviet Union taught us, a collective isn't always the best form of public knowledge or public wisdom. The old-fashioned old media had a different format: a respected and educated editor and editorial board, usually funded by a wealthy industrialist who had applied and obtained value from his investment, created and distributed a newspaper, which also supported itself by ad sales from others who had applied and obtained value from labour and investment. That newspaper would achieve public support or not, by the objectivity of its news-gathering, by the interest level of its story, by the timliness of its coverage and sense of the people'ls pulse. Whatever the flaws inherent in media that can become the property of "big business" in the leftist critique, the small-town newspaper in particular had the trust of the people precisely because the purveyors of information were tangible figures with accountability and visiblity of work product in their lives.

The Internet wiki makes it possible for anyone anywhere at any time to walk up and put up a sticky, regardless of their status or stature or actual knowledge or objectivity or actual experience of past work produce. On the one had, this removes the obstacles of the millenia like race or class, giving all kinds of smart people or helpful people a chance to reach others when before they were blocked. On the other hand in intrudes into the batch a lot of uninformed or unexamined "knowledge" stripped of a community's awareness of how a person took responsibility in public for applying investment and adding value. In the wiki, anything goes; on the Internet you can talk the talk without ever having to display that you can walk the walk.

Of course, the self-corrective nature of wikis -- that anyone can come up and see the tripe somebody has posted and correct it -- is something wikkists serve up as proof of the triumph of their cultural device. Robin Linden, for example, cautions everyone using the Linden wiki that it is "corrected" by an unseen hand -- the wisdom of LL. Well, in this model LL is like that small-town newspaper with the trust of the villagers -- but what if they weren't there?

Another feature of the wiki is an attitude of self-satisfied smugness. The emanation of this smugness is directly proportionate to the wikiists awareness of themselves and the flaws in their wiki tools. The wiki culture reminds me a bit of the Soviet subbotnik. Let's all voluntarily turn out on a Saturday and clean up the streets. There's a sense of gung-ho cheer that hides the fact that some people didn't want to be pressed into service to help the state on their day off. When Foolish Frost says that programmers and wikists are like a Masonic guild, he is more than right! And what goes along with that secrecy, apprenticing, hazing, and arrogance is some kind of Medici-like or king-like force that keeps the Masons all subsidized: that latter-day role is played by Linden Labs and other game companies that can persuaded hordes of talented and normally high-paid brains to come and work for them for free.

Programmers like to do what they do and find it self-evident that mathematical play is a value of its own, whether or not it "helps customers". I'm not for harnessing knowledge and content workers into a strait-jacked called "customer responsiveness". A utilitarian approach to this 10 percent of the SL population, forcing them only to "produce for the masses" gives us something worse than a subbotnik, it gives us the sharashka, or GULAG chambers where scientists are imprisoned in somewhat better conditions than the others in the labor camp, so they can be happy and productive in providing their slave labour for the state.

Still, I'm for a lot of the tekkiest to become more aware of their customers, given that they in fact do sell a lot of their items. This has always been my plea with the FIC: stop this condescending, smug attitude because the people you are targeting with this attitude are your potential customers. Stop telling everybody their computer problems are "client-side" when everybody can see obvious bugs that come and go with the change of patches, not with the customer's computer model.

I'm highly confident that my critique of the tekkie wiki culture is valid because I'm constantly finding new affirmation of this in posts by players like Caliandris. They're annoyed at the anti-business, pastoralist, utopianist culture that comes from tekkies on their off hours from their industrial, hierarchical workplaces like giant telecoms. Pressed into service with their knowledge already in RL, working long hours, having bosses from hell, they prefer to have SL be their playground and vacation spot where they retreat with ancient pastoralist and fantasist ideologies. Let them. But remove their clutches from the pipeline of information and feedback about our world, so that their allergy to commerce or revulsion about Tringo listings doesn't get the ear and the hands of the "federal government," the Lindens.

Feedback is a huge problem for the tekkie wiki culture -- surprisingly as it may seem by an institution that prides itself on creating endless opportunities for stickies and correctives -- because the feedback on the wiki's original proposition, much less the wiki structure tiself as a knowledge-gathering-and-amplification device is never questioned.

Example: wikiists address the issue of huge numbers of annoyed players who hate bounce scripts. Victims of bounce scripts have a simple solution: ban them, remove at least a few strategic ones to make a point, and discourage their use. Tekkies, however, given their predisposition to support scripterati as the coders of our world, simply cannot entertain any solution that involves removal of something they view as an essential building block to their world. No amount of stickies and correctives saying "but just remove them" will sway their wiki. Their wiki is off and running, don't confuse it with the facts! Instead, they have already pre-decided that the job is to just make a better bouncer script, or make sliders to install anti-push functions on avs, or whatever script-based solution rather than script-removal based solution they can find. They wll beaver away in their wiki, confident that they are open, sharing, and pluralistic, and come up with the best, most elegant anti-push script or feature request they can muster, remaining utterly heedless, and even angrily hostile, to the hordes of people simply requesting that bounce scripts be removed, because they have a different building block in their world: player comfort and ease in their playing of house, not scripts/programming in the tekkie funhouse.

The tekkie wiki accomplishes what it accomplishes. Sometimes it accomplishes a lot! Chip's point has some merit that skinmakers or Bedazzle and Neverland or pick-a-wiki already entertain the masses and already have their adulation and already those masses don't think they are oppressed! But that is a literal and shallow reading of the tekkie wiki proposition. This critique doesn't say that the FICists and wikkists are in a cruel conspiracy and already suppressing the masses. It says the wikkists are smug, arrogant, impressed with themselves, resistant to criticisim, resistant to change, resting on their laurels, over-confidence in their reading of the masses and a thousand other features of an insular, self-replicating loop. And it says that the "masses" -- including a lot of computers and IT people who aren't "connected" to the FIC!!!! -- are actualy more critical than they are willing to admit. And that's the problem of the wiki. It might be an open loop, that is anybody can see and add to the loop, but it's a loop nonetheless. If someone comes along and wants to stop the loop from playing its same self-celebratory song, they'll have a very hard time.

No. Please. Don't. You are a curse upon every topic you touch. If there is ANY chance whatsoever of there being productive discussion, your presence destroys it. Wake up and smell the reality, Prokovy -- you're the worst thing to happen to anything you claim you want to see happen in this game. If you really want to see those things, do yourself a favor and shut the hell up.

Oh wait. Silly me. That's the dirty little secret, isn't it? Gee, hope no one noticed.

Loop. Loop. Loop.

Prok, re: your analogy to old-school journalism versus blog/wiki: Isn't there room for both? They keep each other on their toes. The old journalistic format leads to as much arrogance if not much more so ("I know better than the masses", "my subjective interpretations become truth/fact", etc). And likewise, within SL, there is room for all sorts -- and I believe there currently ARE all sorts. There are people who just want to play around with the tools and share their creations and insight with others they designate as worthy, there are those who play but then sell, and there are those who are approaching this entirely from a business plan/ROI perspective...


Blaze, I agree with you that more entertainment needs to be created before SL hits prime time, but like others I really don't think the time is right:
1. the customer base is not ready in terms of their computing power
2. SL is not technically advanced enough yet either in terms of stability or feature set (which drive users to be solo creators right now, with a few notable exceptions)

As a bit of a tangent, you might find this interesting, Forseti:

http://www.broom.org/epic/

On second thought, this is surprisingly apropos. It was written in 2004, so beyond that is all conjecture - much like reading 1984.

You would think there would be room for both, Forseti, but the new media enthusiasts brook no dissent

My favorite new-media scene: dozens of indymedia.org self-style "reporters" covering a "welfare rights demonstration" in which they weave in and out of the ranks of "the poor" interchangeably, utterly unaware that with thousands of dollars of cameras, sound booms, watches, cell phones, and high-end sneakers on their person, they seem utterly ridiculous as poster-boys of the "welfare rights" cause.

The "my subjective interpretations become truth" are the bloggest culture, but they really can't be said to be the norm for newspapers of record that try to answer the five Ws and interview all the sides of an issue and present them fairly.

The problem with the "people who just want to play around with the tools" is that they never have gotten over their sense of self-congratulation over their involvement in the early stages of this world, they are still regularly consulted by the Lindens as private sounding boards without public scrutiny of their answers, they have ample access to the "media" of the forums or the SLH, etc. and they in fact aren't just "playing around with tools" but often have very, very big ideas about social engineering, i.e. they hatred of the excessive Tringo listings.

You couldn't have summed up better that "others who play around with creations and give to others they designate as worthy" mentality better! That's exactly what I mean by the medieval guild ethic. The problem is again, these people aren't just off doing that, they're doing that AND getting on the forums to slam those who are not worthy AND slamming tringo AND slamming a ton of other things.

So my point is that these supposedly self-segregated groups that you think none of us have to worry about because they just do their thing in fact are constantly spilling out of their wikis or their high-end boutiques and imposing decidedly small-minded and hobbling notions on the rest of us, i.e. like the bar on second-hand resale.

int a;
...
a= 1;
while (a==1)
{
statements;
}
OR
while (1)
{
statements;
}

The very fact that Prok and Blaze are in SL undermines their argument.

Their 'game' is one of personal politics and forum domination, and they seem to be enjoying themselves.

I dub them 'ascii-politicalWHINERati'.

Wow, making up labels *is* fun!

You are apparaently unfamiliar with the concept of a two-way street. It amuses me greatly that you're constantly going off on your anti-communist tirades, yet if you had your way you'd make all content creators slaves to the collective. You can't have it both ways. In the economy forum you're railing against the (admittedly ridiculous) notion of redistribution of wealth from the successful to the "disadvantaged" and yet you feel some sense of entitlement to profit off the work of others (second-hand resale). You're so self contradictory it's a wonder your head doesn't split in half.

In other words, "we" prefer to fix a problem rather than eliminate the symptoms and punish people who do stuff we don't like. We prefer long term solutions that will enable a healthy balance of utility and common sense without imposing undue restrictions that will handicap a platform still in its infancy for years to come. We refuse to accept a knee-jerk BAN BAN BAN, RESTRICT RESTRICT RESTRICT rule system, enforced upon an entire popuation when it's not needed to solve the problem. We refuse to accept that draconian punishments for percieved crimes to make people 'feel better' when it doesn't address the problem.

We like to do something usefull, not just make ourselves feel good.

Thank you for putting that so well, PN.

While I appreciate the vision of Tringo and the work put into it, it's true that you certainly don't require SL to do it. An average cel phone contains enough technology.

What people overall need to think in terms of isn't more "Joe Average", but "Joe Average in the Metaverse". Remember that joe average often builds stairs and elevators in a world where everybody can fly, installs bathrooms in a world where nobody dumps, and so forth.

I'd be very interested to see what an "ordinary Joe" would actually be like, or do, in a place where what is "familiar" and "comfortable" are the oridinary things that we can do in SL.

It could be equally argued (I'm not saying I feel this way) that Tringo set SL back 1.5 years when everybody was concerned with nothing else but Bingo. In general, regarding content in SL itself, I'm most impressed with games and events that require Second Life, as in, they are not possible anywhere else because they take advantage of what makes SL different.

The first original creation with the popular appeal of Tringo that absolutely requires SL to implement (unless you were to write something like SL itself) would be the landmark. To date, there has not been a single one with the pop game appeal of Bingo and Tringo.

* hums the song Starfuckers, Inc. *

Now that you have added Prokofy to your list of people you are a mouthpiece for like some kind or ersatz parrot / hand puppet, you have inherited Prok's lack of any sort of logic and his hypocrisy.

You say that LL needs to stop adding features that the cool kids can use, the ones made just for them. Take a look at some added features - animations, streaming music, inventory management, improved attachment handling, new particle system,improved vehicles, XML RPC, unicode support, video, url integration, the list is quite long. Some of the things, like animations and streaming music have changed SL fundamentally. Each improvement adds new possibilities. Only in the paranoid,uninspired mind of Prokofy (and his parrot *squawk *) is this a bad thing. Grow SL by not improving it - ok, makes sense if you're high, I suppose.

These features benefit the exact group you are lamenting as unrepresented. They are dancing in clubs with custom animations to streaming music, wearing prim hair that no longer brings a sim to its knees, wearing shoes with sexy walks, wearing skirts made with the skirt mesh, using Nextel phones, playing tringo, wearing bling, shopping (and getting a folder with their items in it thanks to Sell Contents), checking out private sims, getting busy on sex balls, slow dancing and cuddling with loved ones, buying and renting places to live and sell things, it goes on and on. All things made possible by new features added through requests from the community.

Do you honestly think the cool kids are oblivious to what people want, the poor uncool masses (as you paint them). Hmm, last time I checked, skins, hair, animations, dance machines,shoes, bling, et al are the hottest things in SL. My sales certainly reflect that - they more than cover a $292 tier. Nothing you have put forth has any basis in fact.

The only people out of touch with what SL is, and what it needs, would be the perpetually unimpressed (and unimpressive) Prokofy, and his trusty new parrot * squawk techi wkki squawk bad squawk content barons bad squawk feted inner core bad squawk malicious tree griefing squawk * .

I don't wan't a Barbie doll included in my erector set at the expence of the tools I need to put it together.

RL LOL!!!!!!!! So happy someone finally said that.

Briana Dawson

Being honest here. I think your posts are too long. Seriously, no one wants to read all that. Give us the Cliffs notes.

Very good points, Cristiano, and well stated.

I'd also like to point out that this week's trend villians, the eeeeeeeeeevil scriptors and creators, are what enable Little Susie Hoochie to play Tringo and other games, to dance in clubs, to bling like the sun, and to dance or hump away her nights in clubs. Without these scriptors and creators, she'd be standing around in her buttercup yellow sweatsuit, with her boring hair, doing default function-key dances, and rezzing invisible sex cubes to simulate the beast with two backs. Do you really think she'd enjoy that as much? I doubt it.

And also, why shouldn't the tech crowd also be allowed to have fun? If they enjoy writing scripts just for the hell of it, why is that any less valid than playing Tringo just for the hell of it? I don't see why you'd want it to be mutually exclusive, because the two groups you're trying to seperate rely heavily on each other. The creators and the consumers/users. Without one, there would be no point for the other.