towards a stronger sl community

over the past few months there have been several changes that have affected the mechanisms that build community in sl:

1. event support was reduced and then went away
   
2. the cost of ratings went up
   
3. the number of events that could be posted per plot of land went down
   

given that these mechanisms were flawed, i'm not specifically annoyed that they went away.

however, the problem that i have is that as flawed as they were, they did support community building efforts, and when they went away nothing was put in their place towards building up or supporting a second life community.

while ll is a business, and needs tangible evidence of success (i.e. $$$), there are also intangible indicators of success, such as word of mouth, community, and happiness. these intangibles support the tangibles.

while big institutions like the voting mechanisms, the dicussions forums, and sl mega businesses do their part to support community. there is an intuition (that is backed up with some empirical evidence) that community begins at smaller scales than that; community begins when people know each other and interact with each other on a persona and repeated fashion.

events and rating were an often poor excuses for people to interact at a personal level, but they were better than no excuse. now as excuses they are weaker than ever.

another mechanism for community is the neighborhood one lives in or the groups one belongs two. but both these mechanisms have been neglected. it is very hard to find a good neighborhood/sim where one's friends can move in with you. it took my group months to gain enough land in a sim to feel we could together live mostly comfortably (e.g. no laggy builds, no ugly eyesores, not an endless laggy party, space enough to build). and the number of groups one can belong to is limited in number so that one can barely express all one's interests through group membership.

also, money/resources does seem to be a limiting factor when doing group activities (e.g. land ownership), holding events (i.e. the more land you have the more evens you can have), and holding contiguous plots of land (i.e. for prims and event space). while a few people can afford to carry all that themselves, there are many more groups what would like to carry that kind of load, but are unable to pool their resources into large resouce blocks comparable to the resource blocks the richest sl residents have.

i think that ll should:

1. make events and ratings more accessible than they currently are
   
2. make it easier for groups to pool their resources (land, events, money, tier, buy private sims)
   
3. remove the cap to the number of groups one can belong to
   
4. and generally support the intangible benefits of community
   

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, even though you don't like me.

One problem I have is your really, really restrictive notion of community:

it took my group months to gain enough land in a sim to feel we could together live mostly comfortably (e.g. no laggy builds, no ugly eyesores, not an endless laggy party, space enough to build)

I just find this so typical of the insular, arrogant, overly-aesthetic, prissy approach to sims and community. I mean, what's a laggy build, anyway? And if we can't tolerate eyesores, how can people practice? And geez, can't we have a block party even once a week without being accused of laggy parties?

What, we're all supposed to arrange ourselves primly around our prims, preferably without scripts or attachments, and, I dunno, listen to you pontificate?

I think you just have to have a much more rough and ready approach to sim building. You can't just think haughtily of "my group" but figure out how to get along with lots of different people. Now I know you might think I"m the last person to instruct others on this, since I'm a cranky insulting asshole. But honestly, I do think about this a lot and what obstacles there are to it.


make events and ratings more accessible than they currently are

I think we shouldn't ask for anything here but get the Lindens to undo their damage with the events listing. But since the caved to the pressury FIC on this, let's walk around the robots.

What I do to make events and ratings more accessible is to make a group, keep having events, discussions, activities, and then keep using that group to announce new events and issues. I try not to overly spam those groups but they are useful.



How? People are nasty fucktards. They don't want to share. You give than an opportunity to come and pay 512 tier donation into your group and get a nice piece of land, they are terified that you are cheating them, they are confused as to what tier even is, or they've listened to some other fucktard that has told them not to do it because "it's a scam". LOL. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but just telling you my experience.

The way to make it easier is to have less punishment when it fails. Get rid of officer recall, have notifications of 24 hours on tier withdrawals (this will bork up land baron swapping among groups to make purchases or whatever but it might be a good exchange to lose that flexibility in order to have protection from tier-pullers.

Honestly, Stoneself, why don't you come to one of my groups and donate and try to do this? Answer: because I'm not in your little swank group of friends who are "just so" and have "just the right type of build". LOL.

Could it be that the fault, dear StoneSelf, lies not in our Lindens, but in ourselves, that we are underlings?

My own plan to get these things going more is to have more events in the game that are discussions like the forums where people won't flame as much because they will be p2p.



You can do a lot with 15, and I think make 15 work really well before you clamour on the Lindens to do more coding.

When you can articulate the intangible benefits of community better, the Lindens could maybe figure out how to support it better.

My main propopsal to them is to review the dwelloper stuff to see why it punishes groups. I don't get why you don't get chits somehwere for forming a big group that sticks together and donates tier. Why would only one tier-donor, who may be nothing by contrast to such wealthy mafia don in the list as a singleton, be eligible for dwellopers?'

THe entire group should be eligible as a group, and the award should distribute to all.

what do you mean by "make events more accessible than they currently are?"

there are socialogically sound reasons for limiting our group affiliations. removing the caps will backfire in two ways. thousands of people will join hundreds of groups that in which they will not participate time while those indexes are being maintained by the database. also, the social fabric will also be stretched and ripped by such things as people belonging to groups and complaining about spam; individuals not having time to meet all of their groups' expectations; subgroups "misusing" large groups against their stated purposes et cetera.

as far as pooling goes, i have a notecard i contributed to a linden group discussion a few months ago. It's a little long, but i'll post the middle of here for your criticism:

Most of the things that Linden Lab can do to foster the formation and continued existence of Second Life communities fall in the category of revising the group code. Communities very simply need tools to share resources and enforce their internal policies. The group forums and property deeding features currently offer quite a bit of information and resource sharing ability. However, there are a few group related ideas that the residents insist will greatly facilitate the building and management of productive second life communities. Two feature sets always dominate the bulk of the conversations:

1)
We need the ability to manage group land options in more than two tiers. An ideal solution is the ability for the offiers to assign land rights to group folders that contain members names. This allows any number of permission sets per group. Assuming that members can be assigned to multiple folders, the results can become quite confusing and create noticible overhead for the database. A reasonably simple alternative will be to increase the number of group membership tiers to a static number such as five. Only allow a member to exist in one tier; but give each tier full land configuration rights that can be managed by the officers.

As a side note, Linden tree creation should be a build option, not a land editing option. It's an understandable oversight; but it's obvious enough that it needs to be quickly repaired.

2)
There has been a lot of talk concerning the distribution of group funds. Most of the people I've talked to go so far as to want a seperation of dwell and commercial monies. Concensus seems to be that the officers need the option of distributing all, or either set of, monies equally among the members, or in individual percentages. Large communities will likely divide monies evenly or among a few people. Smaller groups will have the luxury of regularly tweaking the numbers per member.

Three other less discussed, yet important to the survival of larger communities, features have been introduced into several conversations:

1)
It would be most helpful to have a common inventory storage area. On joining a group, a member's inventory will automatically have added a group folder that functions much like the Linden Library folder. Any group member can add items to the folder and all members can copy items from the folder. Members will no longer have to pass around items and worry about making sure that everyone has the latest updates. This will also help the asset system, to some degree, although members will have to copy items into their personal inventory folders in order to edit them. There is some concern over any member being albe to delete items from the group folder. In my opinion, it should be a free for all common workspace for the entire group to use. Let the officers manage any trouble that ensues.

2)
Items belonging to group members are currently returned if the autoreturn feature is active on group land and the items are not set to that specific group. To a person, everyone agrees that items on autoreturning group land should only be returned to nongroup members regardless of the items' group affiliation. Granted the current system works and is not too demanding in terms of being sure that you have the correct group activated when you build et cetera, people involved in complex, large scale projects are constantly complaining about this.

3)
Finally, it's my considered opinion that Linden Lab can afford to offer Private Estate owners an offset to their monthly fee when their island is associated with a group that provides enough tier to cover half, or more, of the land. This request does not involve any adjustment in the tier system; it only allows an estate owner to pay a regular tier fee to compensate for any allocation not covered by other group members. The group allocation will necessarily have to cover at least half of the land before the owner's cost will be reduced. Linden Lab will actually make more money when group members, including the estate owner, are contributing lesser allocation through higher priced (less discounted) tierage. Of course the owner will always be liable for the full tier any time the group allocation doesn't muster. It's not even necessary to grant the standard week long grace period; we're talking about a feature to aid groups of people dedicated to long term, large scale projects.

I think the best thing LL could do to encourage community building would be to stop selling tiny, misaligned parcels.
I liked their idea of showing planned expansion areas on the map and allowing groups to form that would purchase a whole sim.
They should make content migration a lot easier, so that we can organize ourselves into large themed regions.
They should allow islands to join and separate at NO FEE, preferrably through the UI, without Linden intervention.
The concepts of region and theme should be instantly accessible through the interface, so that a noob who just arrived in SL would be exposed to these and seriously consider joining one of them instead of plopping down some random prefab on hir plot of "first land".
Sim owners could join regions, which would be groups of sims, and their borders would be seen on the map like the borders of a country.
Imagine if everyone who's into medieval stuff could move their land to a given place, away from all the modern crap, without dealing with the hassles of selling and buying.

If these ideas were doable, they sound pretty cool. However, enforcement on themes would be the issue. Who would do the enforcing? If Joe Blow suddenly plops down a Quicki-Mart in the middle of the medieval themed area, on land he owns, who gets to make him remove it? I'm sure the Lindens don't want that job, and giving another player the power to do so opens up a giant can of nasty worms, as many themes are pretty subjective, and the person paid for their land.

If you mean just renting plots to folks on sims you own, there is nothing stopping you from doing so now.

I love the thought of different countries (themed areas) in Second Life, but the enforcement issue in a land that prides itself on freedom of creativity would be the biggest hurdle.

no, Khamon, if they did this I would be like *so* feted and I am never for any system that would fete me.

I still think an SL-wide natural disaster, or alien invasion, would go a long ways towards bringing the community together. Rare events that would bring folks together in fun and excitement, as well as problem solving and helping your neighbor-type activities.

Seriously:

The entire grid damage enabled for a limited period of time, from an hour or two all the way up to a week long event.

Possible real damage to property/builds (mainly terrain, but possible physics damage to structures).

A streamed news /military radio station that folks can tune into and stream to their parcel.

Invasion force (aliens being a good one), or damage/death causing disasters. Aliens could be played by Lindens and player volunteers, equipped with advanced weaponry, including possible capture devices. Disasters could be anything from sudden and violent volcanic activity, to hurricane force winds, to tidal waves sweeping in on coastal areas, or even earthquakes, though I'm not sure how you could make the entire grid shake. Tornados might be doable.

Just imagine you and a few neighbors holed up in the neighborhood bar/club trying to defend against the danger. Seeing who would be helpful and useful, and who would scream "it's the end of the world" and go on a homicidal rampage.

Sure, alot of roleplaying would have to be involved, but would sure be fun.

And yes, I know, it would mean alot of work, and some folks would scream bloody murder. But with fair warning, those not wishing to participate could travel to some "safe sims" to wait it out..

^ Hahaha OMG David that's grrreat. I love the sound of that, and maybe that should be a special thing to mark come 2.0? My theory right now is that the expansive draw distance of those SL 2.0 preview renders makes the gridverse look somethin' akin to... SimCity. I grew up playing SimCity 2000 and the natural disasters were a big part of the fun, especially if you saved your game beforehand and went about unleashing a kajillion fires, floods, earthquakes, riots, and even ALIENS.

LOL... something that threatens the SL community on the whole is bound to make some of us come together. Not saying it should be done, but like Grand Moff Tarkin once said:

"Fear will keep the local systems in line."

OOOOOH! I want an alien invasion!!!! I want to be taken hostage! I want an anal . . . no wait a minute.

But I DO want an alien invasion!

coco

I can tell you right now the majority of SL wouldn't go for it. They would scream and scream and scream.

People don't like their "second lives" being disrupted in any way; as evidence, look how many posters fill up the hotline forum with "OMFG CANT LOG IN FIX OR I QUIT" messages.

People want their second life their way, to hell with everyone else.

LF

I happen to like the new ratings system. A LOT. Spending more $L makes people consider what they are doing.

For example: Imagine there is a club where you are an unknown, but everyone else there is a regular. At this club is a dj spreading false information. You call him on it in private message. Since he is the DJ, he whines to all his cliquish friends on air about it (when they shouldn't even be involved) and starts calling you a liar on air. So you neg rate him. Once. And make your way toward the exit in exasperation.

All hell breaks loose on his end. He tells all his cliquish friends on the air what a rotten person you are and then they tell all their cliquish friends and so on.

"OMG, did u hear wut Reno Raines did to Bobby Sixkiller. OMG, rilly? Bobby he is so kewl. im gonna tell all my friends to neg rate Reno Raines too."

Sure, if you are a social butterfly and dialed in and all that then you like the old system.

I say leave the current, costly rating system as it is.

I didn't read all of these posts, because they're mostly longer than my hand, and well, I don't read those.

The first two I don't disagree with. And 4 either, although I don't quite get how that can be done or what that means.

but 3, I'm not so sure about. While I hate the cap as well, I think a better thing would be to improve group functionality so that there can be less need for many groups. That may not help any though. I think theres alot of groups, that are just kinda pointless.

So I'd:

1. Allow users to set custom titles without groups (again, this is just stupid and has been a request since forever)

2. Improve group functionality using something like I think it was Nexus Nash who outlined a good idea that would eliminate need for some double groups that exist.

Then see if the group cap is still such an issue or not.

make it easier to post useful events? i'm not entirely sure.

i don't think the cost corresponds to any meaningful social interaction. maybe if there were a more meaningful reward than l$.

i endorse this product.

^^^^ All.as usual,based on the premise that a community is a group of people who all like the same things and who all live in the same place which,in fact, it isnt.

I'm a cop,I'm a Liverpool FC fan and the guy who lives next door to me is a Joiner and A Machester Untited fan - and whats worse HE likes rock music,dam! I'll have to move

Some of my best friends in SL are Goths & I cant stand Goth music - sorry but there's much more to community than plots of land.

that isn't the premise, but having the option to do those things can increase community.

proximity does help with desired interaction, and interaction helps build community.

Maybe not Stone, but thats how it comes across.

I'm actually wondering why this is still called Second Life to be honest. I liked your original post immensly because you made a point that most people seem to be missing in as much as Linden Labs keep taking away community based features and offering nothing in their place.

I've seen people say in these forums hundreds of times 'it's not Linden Labs job to entertain you'.No? then what are we paying for?

Since the owner of E-Bay invested in Second Life its just gotten worse,is that a coincidence or are Linden Labs actually aiming for something other than a Second Life now?

I've seen Phillip Linden quoted as saying 'Im building a world not a game' and that got me wondering because he's not actually building it is he,surely we are? I've been involved in many online communities and I have to be honest and say I've played very few games where the player-base are asked so much for their opinion and listened to so little.

Someone is fooling thierselves around here, building a world? I'm sorry but in a world you can be voted out as president,in a world you can actually find a job no matter how unskilled you may be,in a world you are not limited to what you can do on your own property,in a world you cant persecute people with your bombs and guns just because they remove you from their property.......etc etc etc.

I've seen so much bullshit written about this game in these forums its just not true,this is an online community - nothing more and nothing less - 99% of the people I know are here because of another person and NOT because you can make your own buttplugs.People rattle on about the 'ecomomy' and its just drivvle,Second Life is no different from a 100 other MMORPG's where if your broke IN GAME you can go out of world and make yourself a millionaire in seconds by buying L$, you dont stand or fall by what you do here,thats just hyperbole bullshit.

But its this very thing that Linden Labs continue to ignore,Phillip Linden continuously caters to the minority to the detrement of his 'world'.If your happy using a magnifying glass on your pc screen to spend hours perfecting that wall then your gonna be happy here but if you actually log in to interact with other people then your options are shrinking FAST.

The changes you pointed out Stone have made absoloutly NO DIFFERENCE to this game at all beyond the fact that it put hundreds of event hosts out of work - none. They didnt improve anything,in fact it made things a hell of a lot worse.

Maybe a good new name for this world would be Economic Life?

In the thread called SL WAY (who are you) someone wrote this.

My SL time is limited and tends to constrain me
I'm not a mover, or a shaker
I really do just like to play...

however....

It's not really a game to me
It's more of a conscious dream, in good company
And I love it here

PHillip Linden take note.

I think Sox Rampal has made one of the best posts I've ever seen here. It is truly eloquent. I'm saving it to cross post elsewhere in places where so often people don't get it about *the other people in the game besides themselves and what they want*.

SL might be called "War of the Worlds". Because you're absolutely right, Philip is building HIS world, and all that bunkum about just building scaffolding is just a dodge and a ruse. It's so clear, each time a patch comes in: we're building one world (or worlds collectively) and they are building another one that is at cross purposes.

Some people's idea of a community-building event is to have random accidents and disasters happen around the grid to "make people come together".

Oh. Now I get what Linden Labs is doing by crashing first one sim, then another, then have somebody's prims disappear completely...not to mention something from their inventory...I guess this is supposed to "bring the community together"?

I realize it is the fantasy of some young people in particular to have huge destructive violent forces do things in the game (they have this in the Sims too) but not everybody wants to play that game, and they should have the freedom to opt in or out.

Sox is eloquently describing, in simple terms, what numerous people feel in the game. It seems like what he is saying that LL made something that fit their world vision, but an accidental by-product of it was that it created a world that others wanted to fashion into their world.

And he is right to ask with puzzlement: but aren't they a game company? They're always a game company trying to become a real boy, but yes, you're right, they are basically a game company, and all those things they put in like dwell and event grants are kinda like organizing the fun at Club Med. Then they got tired of paying for that, but they haven't created enough freedoms in the game yet for others to replace them.

i too endorse this notion. i also give the ll management enough credit that i believe they've known this for a long time. they should've always sold entire sims, even if those were 16ksm sims running four on a machine. of course that would've required flexible sim sizes which they didn't write the software to accomodate.

i think they even realize that the linden sponsored contiguous continent is the worst decision they ever made. imagine if they'd begun with detached 16ksm sims on a grid that we could manage as estates with full fledged rental features and group code to help support the cost. add the ability to link borders via reference, rather than proximity, and we're working with a grassroots 3D web.

now i can answer morgaines question.

I disagree. I think the open space more like RL with its challenges is more interesting.

Having a world where little grouplets and sects go off on their own little private estates to do their things and then only self-select likeminded is going to replicate into a fascistic state and either become networks of warring principalities or have very weak civil society and be prey to being overtaken by tyrants.

I think if we can't build an open society and rid ourselves of open society's enemies on an open grid, we are merely replicating the Dark Ages. Honestly, I think it's time to read Karl Popper again.

That's why I am committed to open communities on the open grid. They have horrible challenges. But I'd rather face them and try to figure out solutions to them.

You're suggesting that little sects of 6 likeminded can find other little sects of 6 likeminded and hook up in a 3-D fashion with teleporting and not contiguous lots like the real world. That's great. But how will those 6 people even find themselves.

The role of the open grid still remains as a space for initial wanderings and findings of other little avatars for your little sect.

Most sims are people who have formed tight little sects that amount to an ideology of "It's us against the world" and "We are the intelligent ones surrounded by idiots." They don't make for a better world.

You can't disagree with me Prokofy. I might cry.


Compared to what? The state of today's world?


I apologize for not expounding the entire vision of user created search tools that will plug into user created clients that access the protocol. I was thinking that the 3D web reference sufficiently implied those concepts.


This is true. It's also the way that functional communities form and grow.

Excellent!

They really ought to be selling MORE small parcels, with caps on how much any individual can buy and/or other controls to shut out speculators and profiteers, in select areas.

AND elsewhere there should be more medium/large parcels buffered with public "green space", designed with groups and planned communities in mind.

AND elsewhere there should be urban grids, with pre-placed streets and sidewalks, parks and plazas in between lots.

The current "sell in bulk" system accomplishes little for community development, as the majority of resellers do nothing more taxing than reparcel and triple the price. Instead of investing in one or two alternatives, implement a whole range of systems and see what the players choose with their feet rather than their theories.

Wow, that's so wrong I'm having a hard time formulating a reply. Seriously, this sentence implies such a different world view that I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the means to disagree with this and still sound rational. So, I'm not going to try and sound rational; these are the forums, where "teh drama" runs rampant. I can get away with a boisterous and emotional reply.

Have you ever been on the Internet? I have, and let me tell you about my "sects [that] go off on their own" and "do their things." I frequent comic book forums, programming forums, Power Rangers forums, etc. All of these are insular groups filled with like-minded people who allow in those they like and either ban or ridicule those they don't. There's no "warring principalities" waiting to be "overtaken by tyrants." When tyrants or, as we call them online, trolls arise, they're either ignored, run off, or worked around.

You're arguments are based around a society rife with scarcity: land scarcity, resource scarcity, etc. Out on the Internet, there is (ironically) little scarcity. Free ad-sponsored, online hosting allows everyone to have a webpage. Message forums run by communities (or hosted by friends) allow communities to form. P2P software, email, and DCC-via-IRC allow like-minded people to share and share and share.

And here's the kicker: because it's all adhoc and open and distributed, these like-minded groups can overlap. They don't war between each other, because a lot of times they share members. They are immune to tyrants, because they are flexible and evolvable. We already have a world where like-minded grouplets go off on their own, it's called Internet.

Google, mailing lists, word of mouth, friend of a friend, television ads, e-zine ads, instant message, over hearing an address given on City of Heroes, seen in a message forum, sent in an email spam, posted on a flyer, dropped from a helicopter, listed in a wiki... The list goes on. How did you find Second Life? How did Steve Jobs find Steve Wozniack? I found Second Life because I posted in a video game design forum about LEGOs, and I ultimately joined Second Life because some was talking about their 7-day trial on their LiveJournal.

It's called "fate" and "fate" can be a powerful ally.

Have you tried buying land in Second Life these days? Do you know how hard and expensive it is just to grab up a little piece of land? If you don't have that kind of cut-throat mentality, land barons will walk all over you.

On the other hand, you can't give bandwidth away fast enough to keep up with online communities. Yahoo!Groups allows mailing lists to flourish and interact. Webhosting is so available and dirt cheap, a 500mb account that my friends use for hosting their sites costs me $19 a month -- compared to the $40 I paid a month to hold land in Zoe while the Codas and I engaged in an "us against the world" campaign to buy land.

It takes a cut-throat, hate-filled mentality to grab enough resources in an "open grid" to do anything worth a damn. All it takes online is friendship and a dirt-cheap hosting account, and you can grow a six friend clique into a community of dozens.

You and Philip's "open grid" is proof You Just Don't Get It. It's proof that the Second Life is doomed to failure because it's an inflexible system started and run -- not over taken, started and run -- by tyrants. Facist states get started when small-minded people control a population. Second Life is a facist state because its run by Linden Lab.