SL must move beyond the Techi Wiki culture

"Mirab, with sails unfurled".

Darmok and Jallad on the ocean. Gilgamesh on the ocean.

My bad, it's "Shaka."

Sukat, his eyes open

Picard and Dathon at El Adrel.

She runs up into the light, surprised,
her arms are open - her mind's eye
Is seeing things from a better place than most can dream of
A clearer road I feel
Oh you could say she's safe.
From whatever tears at her, whatevever holds her down
And if nothing can be done
She'll make the best of whats around.

When a Linden comes on the forums with a content-rich opinion post, i.e. out-of-character, you have to really watch out. And the thunderous applause from the usual suspects is another indication of trouble.

I'll leave aside that any number of posters in this thread got to name my name, attack my viciously, call me hugely nasty names and impugn my mental health, etc. I imagine they won't even get so much as a warning.




Well, you'll be hearing more of it as time wears on, and not only from me. I'm not one of these peacocks looking to impress game devs and asking for them to discuss my ideas in their board meetings five seconds after I've articulated them.

Your reluctance to grapple with the arguments blaze laid out originally, the counterarguments and his and others' response to them, and you willingness to simply jettison the problem of the over-geekification of this game is a shocking illustration of *the very core of the problem of the tekkie wiki*.

The tekkie wiki-ist thinks all he need do is show up and do his thing, and whatever difficulties ensue in mediating his thing to the rest of the world then becomes a "client-side" problem. THAT is the issue. I'm so grateful to you, Andrew, for providing a *stellar example* of *the very thing I talk about*.

If Linden Labs is going to become something more than a laboratory with scientists, and become a world, it will have to recognize that the scientists are insufficient for this world, that other kinds of people and activities are needed, and that the scientists' insistence that they know it all and can do it all (whether invent a Tringo game or invent a rocket) is one of the grave obstacles to the world.

The premise of the tekkie wiki is that there is a smug, insular, self-referential group of people who believe they don't need to listen to others' concerns. They are at the core of the game who are feted and subsidized and have been for a long time and who significantly hold back the game by:

a) prescribing "scientific" or technical solutions to a whole variety of problems that require other kinds of fields, whether philosophy, psychology, literature, etc.

a) harbouring an unreasonable and vicious hatred of commerce or commercialization of the game -- or in one mutation, a hatred of any commerce *except their own* especially if it involves land sales and second-hand resells -- along with this comes the pastoral utopias and hatreds of malls, telehubs, etc.

b) excessively depending on the skills of scripting, animation, and building and the creation of the physical properties of the world to drive the economy, and refusing to realize that other gradations of activity and value need to appear in the game to enrich the society and make it viable for others, particularly starting with the building block of any society: land ownership rights and their protection.

c) excessively rewarding and highlighting the technical accomplishments through website coverage, nods at Town Meetings, endorsements, steerages, networking, product placement, etc. etc.



There's the problem, Andrew. It CANNOT grow with that kind of attitude: on the one hand, a celebrated, elitist, early-pioneer group that gets to create the basic content package and valuation system, especially with all their free 4096s, etc. and then....just consumers. Mindless consumers. People who can't do anything but consume. People who can't find any other niches in this society to do meaningful work exept to be sex slaves or play Tringo. You've completely left out land ownership and everything related to land sales, rentals, management, community building, job creations, event planning, and scores of other levesl of activity.

You've unwittingly perhaps confirmed my worst fear: that the reason our world has such a harsh dichotomy of content kings and lowly rightless consumers is because *it was planned that way*. I'd like to think it just *evolved that way* like any Third World economy because it was *developing*. Your post here confirms my worst suspicions -- that it was intentional. That proves to me that it really is a deliberate obstruction because of a mindset -- a mindset that says this Second Life is about a bunch of kewl content creators who somewhat filled out the ranks of the early pioneers who just get together and sell stuff to each other and everybody else, with droves and droves of consumers.

And you and Robin complain about too many Tringo entries on the events calendar!!! What else is there for them to do???



So how is that going to work...EVERYBODY is going to be a content-creator? A nation of shop-keepers but in the modern variant of a nation of Photoshoppers? What about other kinds of services and activities and valuation besides just the content creation and the consuming of the content?



Well, this is a disconcerting statement indeed. I've never heard of a game company that has to "throttle" new accounts? To state they'd like to see a million people come, and invite them, and have trial accounts...and then tell them as they start to pour in "If you aren't content creators and tekkies, go away, we're filtering out today, we're not ready to grow the game". That's really scary! If it just a server capacity problem, I suppose I could see why you'd need to scale back advertising or handing out trials. But...what game doesn't have a trial?

How are you going to get rid of all those extra people who come? Will you start having to invoke "any reason or no reason"?



Bingo. Thanks for sharing.

I now understand why you are hobbling Anshe after she made a huge investment by denying her use of the land sale list in-game to get buyers for her communities; I now understand why you messed up the events calendar so that clubs and Tringo can flourish and provide some alternative jobs and sources of income than the privileged activity of content-creation (even while you tout Tringo as a technical accomplishment that people used your game platform to create for RL); I now understand why you don't enforce the TOS on some very key questions; I now understand why you all have such indifference to the horrid problem of pernicious use of officer-recall and other big flaws in the group land tools; I now see these aren't accidents, these are deliberate policies, and they are: to make sure that the game only grows in a social-engineering direction that privileges one group over another and reduces many to second-class citizens.

I'm shuddering at your vision of the world you said you were NOT creating, the world you said you were just creating the scaffolding for, while ostensibly letting "we the players" create. When *will* Linden Labs and the content-creation and tekkie wiki class it has spawed *let go*? And I'm drawing the only conclusion that can be drawn from these statements: that it is pointless to be buying on your land auction.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass, 'k? Thanks!

I have absolutely no intention of leaving. What gave you that idea lol?

"The river Temoc, in winter!"

Why am I not surprised that you managed to completely miss the point and instead twist it to bolster your paranoid theories, Prokofy. SL is growing at a steady rate as the early adopters and content creators add more and more content to appeal to more casual mainstream participants... exactly as it was planned. You insist on imagining problems where none actually exist, and go out of your way to create them. If there's not enough here to interest you yet, and not enough people of your mindset, why not leave and come back in a couple of years?

Why because he's going to single-handedly convert us all, of course... -rolling eyes-

You have to love the notion of telling someone who comes to say point blank that you're smoking crack how wrong they are.... dude is shite for brains, but he has balls, don't he?

Annnyway... now that there's a Linden on record pretty much saying what a crock all this mewling is, I'm more than happy to leave the fool gibbering in his favorite corner, crayons firmly gripped by his toes. Personally, I think every village needs an idiot or a jester and think how lucky we are to have them both in one person.

I wanna job as a mall groundskeeper. Never mind that nothing ever needs watering, the signs don't rust and the windows don't get dirty. Damnit! I deserve a job in SL, even if we have to reverse workplace progress & efficiency by inventing jobs, because I deserve to get $L above my stipend by simply existing. It doesn't matter that my "job" adds nothing to the community, god damn it, I deserve something for not being able to manage a slider!

Now who are the "socialists" again?

When I went to TSO, I expected the founders to take care of me and provide me with a job, no matter my abilities, attitude or work ethic! (Not)

Shaka, when the walls fell.

Let me explain what the job of mall groundskeeper involves. It doesn't involve watering anything literally, but here's your job description:

1. Delete stray prims that fall on the property
2. Remove griefing prims especially those in the sky set to the group by non-paying customers
3. Return extra prims of customers beyond those they paid for after notification
4. Help new customers set up and join groups and learn how to count prims.
5. Explain even what prims are to new people.
6. Provide tips on how to get sales and customers, i.e. by putting their store in "picks"
7. Negotiate any disputes between tenants
8. Clear some paths in the mall that tenants may put things out in.
9. Schedule events in the events space
10. Update commercial listings for the mall owner

Well that's just 10 things I can think of. But I currently can't give you this job, or at leat, only parts of it, as helpful as it actually is, because if I gave you all those functions, you could sell my land out from under me at any time while I'm offline, even if you paid not a cent in upfront purchase price or tier. That's due to the flaws in the group land tools.

Prok-- I mean... Sukat, his face black, his eyes red!

I corrected myself already

That episode of ST:TNG wins my award for best mainstream Science Fiction episode... EVAR!

Prokofy... he wins nothing.

Please go away. Please? Just... go away. What crime have we all committed to deserve your torrent of ceaseless, vitriolic verbosity?

Go away, man. I'm saying it nicely.

Chip, I gather you're in the content-baron class, not the tekkie wiki class, so why does this thread bother you? And yeah, it's ok to make categories, analyze, figure out where people go in them to provide some conceptual thinking about this world. It isn't all just about "you and your fierce loyalties to my tribe" and shut up if I'm not in your tribe.

I'm thrilled that content creators continue to be subsidized and feted and to add to their ranks and that more and more consumers have been added and many of them seem to be happy with their hoochie hair, bling, and kewl vehicles, weapons, and pernicious bounce scripts. May they live and prosper.

But...we do hear a fair amount of unhappiness or at least troubled pondering about implications among the ranks of the consumers, especially when you get to new and thoughtful players like Cocoanut or Caliendris.

I've got plenty of interest, plenty to do, and I need no help from anyone. That's why I feel perfectly obliged to engage in really needed and legitimate critizism of this skewed world.

If you kept it like this, if there were no other aspects developing, then it won't even be something the ebay guy can invest in...and God knows *why* he invests in it, given that the core idea is to have *second hand sales* which is only viewed as *theft* by people like you LOL. Honestly, Chip, you aren't seeing it.

OH! You mean Mall Manager! Hopefully the pay is commensurate with the title... I mean what's a groundskeeper make anyway?

How the heck can I figure out all thet tekkie-wiki mumbo jumbo about returning prims, scheduling events, and the like? That's a lot of mouseclicks and buttons, especially when I can't even work a slider.

Every time I see "TSO," I think "TSR."

Hey! Who invited you to the trekkie wakki party?

Hrrmmph!

Blame Ardith for name-checking.

"Don't open your mouth unless you know what the shot is." "Why don't you give me a pack of gum and I'll show you how to chew it."