towards a stronger sl community
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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04-20-2005 10:08
From: Jarod Godel 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. while i don't agree with the tone of this, i think the content in generally correct. sl goes where ll wants, and ll goes where philip wants. and philip isn't perfect.
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Morgaine Dinova
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Join date: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 968
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04-20-2005 10:10
From: Prokofy Neva IHaving 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. The picture you portray is one that seems almost inevitable in an effectively closed, zero-sum world like RL, where a primary concern seems to be enlarging one's slice of a fixed pice. It's not inevitable in SL. What you are advocating is universalism, some hypothetical existence that either appeals to everyone, or else appeals only to a majority and therefore disenfranchises all the minorities. There is no future in that direction, unless you're going to brainwash everyone into thinking alike. A Borg can be ruled by force or it can be ruled by democratic majority vote imposing its views coercively on the rest, but it's still a Borg either way. Humanity is very diverse, and from that stems a lot of its creativity and its high rate of progress. Supressing that in favour of a state of bliss where nobody wants out or dissenters are ignored is counterproductive. SL is not like RL, where all (easily accessible) space is taken up, and migration is costly and discouraged. If you don't agree with the policies of a community in SL, you can find like-minded individuals and create your own community, or you can find your own spot and do your own thing quite separately. Universalism is not a *required* property of existence in SL. So don't force it upon people. The title of this thread is "Towards a stronger SL community", but if that nice sentiment actually carries a hidden agenda of " single community, imposed on everyone" then the picture that comes to mind is not one of bliss, but of coercive horror. No thanks.
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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04-20-2005 10:14
From: Morgaine Dinova The title of this thread is "Towards a stronger SL community", but if that nice sentiment actually carries a hidden agenda of "single community, imposed on everyone" then the picture that comes to mind is not one of bliss, but of coercive horror. No thanks. before this thread goes down one of porky's paranoid rabbit holes... (though i supposed people will talk about what they want.) i'm not talking about a single universal community - especially not an imposed community of any type. just give people the power to build strong communities they do want be a part of (especially given the slow erosion of the tool that have been used to build community in the past).
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Prokofy Neva
Virtualtor
Join date: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 3,698
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04-20-2005 10:38
It's interesting to me that you and some others opining on the type of communities that should come into existence in SL are always busy trying to prove that my critique of the very closed society of SL is some proof of my own hidden or explicit agenda to create a closed society where I get to run everything. In fact, what I do is try to open up the society in every way I can and ensure that it can't become prey to tyrants, especially those of the type who think "we are the intelligent ones surrounded by idiots". It's hard to know where you can come up with this kind of credible charge against me, but it's based on some exaggeration or hearsay or something From: someone From: someone The picture you portray is one that seems almost inevitable in an effectively closed, zero-sum world like RL, where a primary concern seems to be enlarging one's slice of a fixed pice. It's not inevitable in SL. Given that land is a scarce and expensive commodity in SL, I think a lot of the game for some does amount to getting more land and getting more dwell on that land to get more prizes/grants from the Lindens. You and others pondering Sl in a more wonkish and thinky way tend to screen out the realities of this virtual game, that quite a few people are wrapped up in the dwell game, even if you aren't, and the Lindens encourage it. From: someone What you are advocating is universalism, some hypothetical existence that either appeals to everyone, or else appeals only to a majority and therefore disenfranchises all the minorities. I'm truly puzzled by this. I wonder where you get off thinking I'm advocating some unified field of an ideology to take over SL. What is "universalism" in your book? Universalism to me means thinks like "universal human values," which was the hallmark of the Shevardnadze ideology that helped break up the totalitarian Soviet Union and hook up those countries to the rest of the civilized world under the rule of law. "Universalism" to me means things like "the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" which has universally-recognized human rights precepts in it. "Universalism" to me means precisely some simple set of precepts that precludes all these little sects from getting a hammerlock on the servers. From: someone here is no future in that direction, unless you're going to brainwash everyone into thinking alike. A Borg can be ruled by force or it can be ruled by democratic majority vote imposing its views coercively on the rest, but it's still a Borg either way. Perhaps I'm not as up on sci-fi reading as I should be, but I don't really know what a Borg is. I gather it is something negative. I don't know why there'd be no future in the direction I suggest, which is finding universal human values, creating open societies, and having them under univerally recognized precepts of the rule of law. LL seems to be playing with democratic majoritarian voting now, at least, as democratic as you can get giving the presence of alts and vote-buying. But majoritarianism can also bring you jihadists. So people talking about societies usually preface such a notion with the word "liberal" precisely to imply tolerance and rational thinking as applied to the problems of minorities and majorities. Universal values precisely give rights to minorities, ensuring their protection from majorities. I'm all for giving rights to minorities within a system of universalism, rather than so Balkanzing the servers as to give tyrannical fiefdoms to little sects of minorities. I think that's not the way to go. From: someone Humanity is very diverse, and from that stems a lot of its creativity and its high rate of progress. Supressing that in favour of a state of bliss where nobody wants out or dissenters are ignored is counterproductive. Why is it that you think we disagree? You're lecturing me bordering on the usual hectoring tone. But you've *completely got wrong* everything I believe in. I definitely don't want some homogenized whitebreadpicket-fence existence for SL, despite the lurid caricatures of me that Ardith Mifflin brings to the table. I'm for a tolerance of both white picket fences and purple fantasy trees. I'm for pluralism, and finding ways for people to solve conflicts without one way prevailing over the other in the way it often does in SL where people who disagree usually just end up forcing one of them to move away, sometimes without ever even having the conflict come out in the open. From: someone SL is not like RL, where all (easily accessible) space is taken up, and migration is costly and discouraged. If you don't agree with the policies of a community in SL, you can find like-minded individuals and create your own community, or you can find your own spot and do your own thing quite separately. Well, that's exactly what concerns me. All of these likeminded pairing off in their little self-righteous and arrogant and smug sects ("We're the intelligent ones and we're surrounded by idiots AND we build the best and their buildings are crap"  to me, when multiplied, don't lead to a host of pluralities that equal more freedom, instead they lead to a vast faceless society made of many closed little cells that will either implode on themselves, or contain weak mechanisms for preserving civil society and become prey to tyrannical doctrines -- especially of the white-gloved cyber variety that are going to be able to dress themselves up in very fine clothing. From: someone Universalism is not a *required* property of existence in SL. So don't force it upon people. I need to understand what universalism means to you that you've developed such an allergy to it meaning universal human rights or universal human values. I think what you're about to say is that these universalities don't mean anything to you any more in the Chomskified and Dadaified broken-up modern world, and you think those things are all just dodges for ebil Western capitalism or US hegemony or something. I hope you're more sophisticated than that. So what bothers you about universality? Universality creates a plane of existence in which there are tolerances EVEN for little sects all over the grid but which also try to find some shared notions of public accessible space, guarantee and protection of rights, etc. Is experience so particularized by the seeming fake "openness" of the Internet nowadays that retreating into little fiefdoms is now being passed off as the new open society? Ack. No thanks! From: someone The title of this thread is "Towards a stronger SL community", but if that nice sentiment actually carries a hidden agenda of "single community, imposed on everyone" then the picture that comes to mind is not one of bliss, but of coercive horror. No thanks Well, this is what I worry about, when my past debates with StoneSelf consisted of him simply saying "You're wrong because I say so" when I presented to him just a few basic insights about East-West cultural clashes that occur in SL. But that's another story. This is a longer point, but I'm for rejecting the model celebrated by Lindens and older players of Taber. Taber to me is a Brigadoon or a Shambala that cannot be replicated and chasing after it only leads to creating the substrate for tyranny. Taber is merely a self-selected group of artistically- or computer-skilled people, facililtated by the old Linden tax-free subsidies for themed sims, who, by keeping out the hoi polloi, were able to bring a high concentration of talent and good building and products to what they did. They are a testimony to what 6 people having a shared sense of being on an "excellent adventure" together, subsidized by Lindens, can achieve. They involve couples, fiercely-held friendships, intense bondings, intense shared concepts of adventure. That's all great. But we can't all go on an adventure quest with 5 other really intelligent and talented people and be subsidized by the Lindens while we're at it. So I'm looking for other types of simpler models for the ordinary folk -- the "what about the people who have no talent" as that poignant thread-starter put it. What I can't stress enough Morgaine, is that all your talk, and that of Gwyn and Moon about opening up the sourcing and opening up the grid and all that is absolutely worthless if it is not accompanied by a thorough-going analysis of "open society and its enemies". An open sourcing and an open grid that contains a lot of fiefdoms and horrid little sectarian closed societies on it merely helps spread Jihad or McWorld, but it doesn't keep a society open. We live in a world where all kinds of little sects, some with really outmoded ideologies antecedent to the Age of Enlightenment, hold sway over good numbers of residents and over a good number of their hours on line. I personally don't want to give a helping hand to replicating all that over the Internet because it's not free.
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David Valentino
Nicely Wicked
Join date: 1 Jan 2004
Posts: 2,941
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04-20-2005 10:55
ALIENS OR I'M QUITTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Taggy..where are you? Come and invade me!
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
Posts: 4,177
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04-20-2005 11:48
From: Prokofy Neva This is a longer point, but I'm for rejecting the model celebrated by Lindens and older players of Taber. Taber to me is a Brigadoon or a Shambala that cannot be replicated and chasing after it only leads to creating the substrate for tyranny. Taber is merely a self-selected group of artistically- or computer-skilled people, facililtated by the old Linden tax-free subsidies for themed sims, who, by keeping out the hoi polloi, were able to bring a high concentration of talent and good building and products to what they did. They are a testimony to what 6 people having a shared sense of being on an "excellent adventure" together, subsidized by Lindens, can achieve. They involve couples, fiercely-held friendships, intense bondings, intense shared concepts of adventure. That's all great. But we can't all go on an adventure quest with 5 other really intelligent and talented people and be subsidized by the Lindens while we're at it. So I'm looking for other types of simpler models for the ordinary folk -- the "what about the people who have no talent" as that poignant thread-starter put it. Did we not have this conversation yesterday? Or are you just blantantly ignoring everything i said to clarify some of these points. Taber is owned by over a dozen people, some of which belong to one of two land holding groups. Those owners are not all tudor theme builders meaning that there is no actual "project." That non-project has never been funded or subsidized in any way by Linden Lab or Linden favouritism. In fact, oh never mind. What's the point in quoting facts. They'll just end up being rephrased as descriptions of dogmatic socialogical phenomena enhanced by intense psychological permutations of additional non-relational verbosity coupled with counterpoints that blantantly ignore the embedded facts as though they were never stated in the first place.
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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04-20-2005 11:54
From: Khamon Fate Taber is owned by over a dozen people, some of which belong to one of two land holding groups. Those owners are not all tudor theme builders meaning that there is no actual "project." [/me trying to unhijack the thread. /me whacks khamon on the head, "stop feeding the kook/troll."] taber is not a project, but it is community. how was it created? how is it maintained? how could it be strengthened? can ll do things to promote communities like taber, even if they aren't land-based?
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
Posts: 4,177
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04-20-2005 12:26
okay ow stop that.
I will not be convinced that inworld communities cannot form and decide that sharing and sacrificing are more important to them than their individual rights because the social fabric of the grid is polluted by Linden meddling but a marked lack of actual Linden support.
We come together based on a mutual interest or enemy and remain together because we share common beliefs, goals or interests. This is not rocket science. It's not even textbook sociology. It's just plain common sense and decency.
And no, the Lindens can't do anything to promote communities. Linden Lab is a software production and simulator hosting firm that mistakenly touts community building skills. The closest they can come to fostering is offering tools that communities could use to purchase, and share, inworld resources.
is that topical and toned down enough?
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Prokofy Neva
Virtualtor
Join date: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 3,698
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04-20-2005 12:57
From: someone Did we not have this conversation yesterday? Or are you just blantantly ignoring everything i said to clarify some of these points. Taber is owned by over a dozen people, some of which belong to one of two land holding groups. Those owners are not all tudor theme builders meaning that there is no actual "project." That non-project has never been funded or subsidized in any way by Linden Lab or Linden favouritism.
In fact, oh never mind. What's the point in quoting facts. They'll just end up being rephrased as descriptions of dogmatic socialogical phenomena enhanced by intense psychological permutations of additional non-relational verbosity coupled with counterpoints that blantantly ignore the embedded facts as though they were never stated in the first place.
Yep, we had it, and it was long, and it was impossible to condense it into one paragraph, especially for me. So what you can do is *have the discussion* and *raise the points* instead of trying to elbow me out of the community discussion because your friend StoneSelf just took an allergenic reaction to me. You yourself told me about the waiving of the old taxes in the old system. Am I confused? This is not about Taber? Some other sim? First it was 6. Now it is 12. A Linden told me 6. You counted 6 main holders. Now you count 12. OK, great. Even a 386-owner counts, but the reason I was interested in this is as I told you, I want to understand whether sims can be better managed and communities can come into being not just on this formula of "A Few of My Kewl Friends and Me on An Excellent Adventure". Nobody said they were Tudor theme builders. You're exaggerating and tendentiously pulling around my post. When I say "theme" I do NOT mean a visible theme like "Tudor". I mean the theme of good building, excellency in building, artist/creative building. That's the theme. I don't claim that Tudor as a theme for some builds was subsidized by the Lindens. You yourself said that the first people who came to that sim got a boost by getting the tax waived because they agreed to work in a themed community. If you are talking NOT about Taber but about Zoe, try to lift your head up long enough from your own and your little friends' experience for a second to try to get that the particulars of the name of the sim or the numbers of land owners are NOT THE POINT for this GENERIC DISCUSSION which isWHAT WORKS. You gave me an answer yesterday. What works? 1. Waiving taxes. 2. Friends with likemindedness who could form really close bonds and have a sense of being on an adventure. 3. Friends who united against what they perceived as a common enemy (as it the ending of the tax-waiver) Now honestly, Khamon, are you going to dispute these 3 things? Of course you are not. That is what I'm trying to sift out of this conversation. The generic principles for making a community. I'm trying to be rational, logical, and reasonable here and synthesize out what is tangible and take-home from your experience. You're screaming that it's this-name sim not that-name sim or this-themed Tudor build and not another theme -- but surely you realize that's not the point. We are trying to find out the ingredients that work to make a sim. From: someone They'll just end up being rephrased as descriptions of dogmatic socialogical phenomena enhanced by intense psychological permutations of additional non-relational verbosity coupled with counterpoints that blantantly ignore the embedded facts as though they were never stated in the first place
Um, could you stop this crap, Khamon? It's all crap. I am not imposing any permutations or verbosity on you. In fact, I kept to a short, one-paragraph summary of our discussion which was mercifully short, but all you are doing now is finding fault with it on this or that factlet, i.e. taking literally that I claimed that "the Lindens funded the Tudor village" when that was NOT what I said. Could you zoom out a bit and realize that you don't need to insult me, you don't need to hack and slash at me, and try to prove me as "verbose" or "psychotic" or WTF, you need to work to explain what enables your community to succeed, and what enables it to fail. If you don't do that, I'm going to posit that you are in a sectarian, closed, secretive, exclusive world that cannot explain itself, cannot share knowledge with others, and cannot reveal its successes and failures without pouncing on others and slamming them with name calling.
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Morgaine Dinova
Active Carbon Unit
Join date: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 968
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Disecting alleged tolerance in SL communities.
04-20-2005 13:00
I liked your reply, Prokofy, and not for any underhand reason. I actually agree with most of what you probably have in mind. The only trouble is that, every now and then, you use phrases which immediately trigger my coercion alarms. I think you do so with all the best intentions in the world ... yet it fails to pass my freedom test. Some of your references were superb by the way --- I really felt like dusting off some of the philosophy and social sciences books on my shelf, but it would have detracted from this thread. Perhaps join us in one of the Thinkers group Discussion sessions, I think it could be excellent! Now back on topic ... let me answer some of your points. From: Prokofy Neva Given that land is a scarce and expensive commodity in SL, ... First of all, let me preface everything with a big disclaimer: I view SL as merely an early precursor to an open metaverse, so nothing specific to the current SL actually concerns me much, except in the sense that a better SL would be a better stepping stone. So, to contradict your premise here, virtual land is only a scarce and expensive commodity in SL because SL is implemented poorly at a technical level --- I've written numerous items on why SL needs to migrate to a dynamic virtualized grid very soon indeed if customer numbers keep rising, before it hits an inevitable events-scalability bottleneck. I won't repeat that here. Suffice to say, land scarcity in SL is an infrastructure design bug, and it needs to be fixed. From: someone I think a lot of the game for some does amount to getting more land and getting more dwell on that land to get more prizes/grants from the Lindens. You and others pondering Sl in a more wonkish and thinky way tend to screen out the realities of this virtual game, that quite a few people are wrapped up in the dwell game, even if you aren't, and the Lindens encourage it. You are 100% right. It's sad in many ways, how people bring the constraints they've got used to in RL into SL, and seem happy with it. Well, dwell is a zero sum game. You're quite right, I have no time for such straightjackets. From: someone I... I don't really know what a Borg is. I gather it is something negative. I don't know why there'd be no future in the direction I suggest, which is finding universal human values, ... Let's start with the big problems now. Statements like the above presuppose that there *are* universal human values. This is a pretty odd subject. Almost everyone would tend to agree initially with that proposition ... until the moment that they try to decide what those universal human values actually are, and that's when people start going to war. Sadly (sad if I were a utopian that is), the concept is just not a useful one in practice. It leads to disagreements immediately, and bloodshed ultimately. From: someone creating open societies, and having them under univerally recognized precepts of the rule of law. There are no univerally recognized precepts of human values, and hence there are no univerally agreed value judgements, and hence there cannot be any univerally recognized precepts of the rule of law. And that is why the rule of law *always* entails coercion of minorities who do not fit into the worldview of those who drafted the alleged "universally agreed precepts of law". From: someone LL seems to be playing with democratic majoritarian voting now Well, SL residents certainly are, yes. Fortunately LL might put a spanner in the works of the do gooders who can't see beyond the horizon of their own opinion. I certainly hope that the Linden's general expression of support for voluntary association and against coercion stands the test of time. From: someone So people talking about societies usually preface such a notion with the word "liberal" precisely to imply tolerance and rational thinking as applied to the problems of minorities and majorities. There is little enough tolerance anywhere in RL, and rational thinking seems to be almost a crime punishable by death. Phrases like you quote are just platitudes in RL, spouted by politicians while electioneering and immediately forgotten once in power. There is absolutely no reason to believe that people within their own communities in SL will behave any differently than in RL with respect to others in their midst who think differently from them ... and that's the whole point of my first post, The only real freedom can come from escape, because space is inherently more liberal and tolerant than people ever are, or by precedent, ever can be. From: someone Universal values precisely give rights to minorities, ensuring their protection from majorities. Universal values don't exist (since it is not possible to agree on them), so they do not give any rights to anyone, least of all to minorities. And in any case, if there are such things as inherent rights (and that's been debated for millennia), then they certainly don't need to be granted by any group of people --- they either already exist or they don't. And nobody with any knowledge of history would trust people to assign them. From: someone I'm all for giving rights to minorities within a system of universalism, rather than so Balkanzing the servers as to give tyrannical fiefdoms to little sects of minorities. I think that's not the way to go. I won't repeat the issues re universalism and "giving" rights, but let me take you up on "Balkanising the servers". You need to think out of the box on this one. Who said that in a virtual world, all the plots of a virtual nation have to coexist geographically? And who said that all the plots within a geographic location have to visibily appear as embedded within a given community space? And for that matter, who said that plots cannot themselves move to suit their owner's current associations? Now about a particularly nasty little issue ... Please reread your little phrase above, " give tyrannical fiefdoms to little sects of minorities". That phrase so admirably illustrates the horrors I wish to see avoided: well-intentioned "community builders" being so inherently opposed to anything beyond their control, that they paint minorities in evil red blood-drenched emotive language ... "tyrannical feedoms", "sects" ... gosh, how unlike us those people are, how they must suffer their terrible ways. Erm .... no. That's merely how intolerant political agitators talk. It sounds to me like that mention of "tolerance" really was just a platitude. How about describing them instead as "voluntary associations upholding their own principles and organized by whatever methods they choose"? Or is the freedom that that entails too abhorrent to contemplate? Much of the rest went along similar lines, with of course the ever-present reference to universal values and the constant THREAT (yes, threat) of enshrining majority-voted values in law and hence coercing even those who do not hold those values to adopt them. I won't belabour the point further. One shoe definitely doesn't fit all, but it sounded like you wanted it to. SL actually has the potential to hold more than one shoe, and that's the direction in which I would prefer to head.
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
Posts: 4,177
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04-20-2005 13:25
Prokofy, I won't waste any more of your time trying to clarify points for you. Here's what works: From: Khamon Fate We come together based on a mutual interest or enemy and remain together because we share common beliefs, goals or interests. This is not rocket science. It's not even textbook sociology. It's just plain common sense and decency.
And no, the Lindens can't do anything to promote communities. Linden Lab is a software production and simulator hosting firm that mistakenly touts community building skills. The closest they can come to fostering is offering tools that communities could use to purchase, and share, inworld resources. It has nothing to do with favouritism, fics, groups tools, Lindens, suppliments, tax breaks or themes. If you collect a group of people with an attitude of supporting each other through individual sacrifice, you have a fifty/fifty chance that they'll coalesce into a viable community. If you form a group based on any other formula, you don't stand a chance in Hell.
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Morgaine Dinova
Active Carbon Unit
Join date: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 968
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04-20-2005 13:38
From: Khamon Fate It has nothing to do with favouritism, fics, groups tools, Lindens, suppliments, tax breaks or themes. If you collect a group of people with an attitude of supporting each other through individual sacrifice, you have a fifty/fifty chance that they'll coalesce into a viable community. If you form a group based on any other formula, you don't stand a chance in hell. I agree Khamon, especially in your use of the word coalesce. Communities are emergent phenomena. Try to plan them, or even to restrict or constrain or strongly direct them, and what you get is not what you wanted. Instead, you get dissent, and eventually, something much worse. And that is why I have on various occasions suggested that LL should implement only mechanism, not policy. The policies will be chosen and implemented by many disparate communities, and they will not be universal.
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Liberty Tesla
Perpetual Newbie
Join date: 1 Sep 2003
Posts: 173
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04-20-2005 13:39
From: Oz Spade ... 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. Also: - Allow people to lend tier to other avatars without creating a group to do it. - Create "mailing lists" as a feature separate from groups, with no property or monetary features, and no upper limit on the number of lists you can join. With those changes, I could pare down to less than ten groups, easily.
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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04-20-2005 19:14
From: Khamon Fate The closest they can come to fostering is offering tools that communities could use to purchase, and share, inworld resources. think it would be worthwhile for them to do this? for them? or the residents?
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
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04-20-2005 20:04
From: StoneSelf Karuna think it would be worthwhile for them to do this? for them? or the residents? Don't you have final exam material to study? Inworld resource sharing is something that they have to do because it's server permission based. We couldn't afford ourselves the ability to group manage land options across mulitple member tiers with an entirely open source client complete with a plethora of libraries. That kind of thing has to be built into the server mechanism. It would be worth it for them to do primarily because it would make a large percentage of their customer base happy. I'm told that the ancients were asking for most of the items listed in my previous posting during Beta. I know they've been repeatedly asked for, both in forums and town hall meetings, since November of 2003 (v1.1). For us, it would be convenient. But I will stand firm on my argument that communities can form and be successful in Second Life today even without these features. Does that sound like a copout? Match it against other features that residents have claimed to "need" over the past several months. Who is using custom animations for anything practical. Who is using streaming audio on their parcel for anything other than playing music? Who is using the whiteboard feature for anything educational? Oh, I'm ahead of myself. Yes, I would rather say that we don't need no stinkin' group code revisions before saying that they're mandatory for communities to form on the grid. Communities use the tools they have. They don't rely on them for sustenance. They simply use them.
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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04-20-2005 21:10
From: Khamon Fate communities can form and be successful in Second Life today even without these features. still i don't think it would hurt to make it easier.
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
Posts: 4,177
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04-20-2005 21:18
It won't hurt. In fact, it'll be quite nice for those of us that want better group-related features and tools. It's the very least, and the very most, LL can do to support communities that form and thrive in Second Life.
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Prokofy Neva
Virtualtor
Join date: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 3,698
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04-20-2005 21:38
From: someone Let's start with the big problems now. Statements like the above presuppose that there *are* universal human values. This is a pretty odd subject. Almost everyone would tend to agree initially with that proposition ... until the moment that they try to decide what those universal human values actually are, and that's when people start going to war. Sadly (sad if I were a utopian that is), the concept is just not a useful one in practice. It leads to disagreements immediately, and bloodshed ultimately.
Quote: creating open societies, and having them under univerally recognized precepts of the rule of law.
There are no univerally recognized precepts of human values, and hence there are no univerally agreed value judgements, and hence there cannot be any univerally recognized precepts of the rule of law. And that is why the rule of law *always* entails coercion of minorities who do not fit into the worldview of those who drafted the alleged "universally agreed precepts of law". There are many points to deal with here, but let's grab right hold of this really flawed one first, because this is key. This is like Dostoyevsky's "If there is no God, anything goes." Or, if there is no absolute absolute, then there are a million ways, everything is relative, and then any one accidental thing, or any one strongest thing can make everyone else unfree with its accidental or powerful nature. Blah. Who needs that? If you leave us with a million subjectivities and relativities, you give us a world of fuck-you hedonism, from which we have no recourse or appeal. You leave us with Plastic Duck. And George Bush on the 16M for $1600. Your certainty that you are right and are on to some "absolutism" is of terrible concern to me because your ideology then is an unfree one, that will create unfree worlds. If you can't even agree that there are some basic human values in the real world, and in SL at least in terms of TOS precepts, than we have a horribly unfree world where your notions are going to prevail and no tolerance or respect can grow. The idea that the rule of law hurts minorities has to be some sick college-campus meme you've picked up somewhere. I can't imagine where it could come from, even from Chomsky! Rule of law and courts and rights are what protect minorities. If you are for creating such an extremist multi-culti "rights of minorities" to extend over and against "rights-of-majorities" then you have introduced tyranny of the minority, and set up situations where minorities can endlessly seek their rights as artificially understood and cripple rights for all. We ought not to confuse secessionist issues, and the conditions for a minority to break away and create a separate state, with the protection of minorities under the rule of law in one state. You are just the latest manifestation of the "logical positivism" that thinkers like Karl Popper and C.S. Lewis had to battle in their day, You're so sure that everything that isn't scientific is unverifiable and the unverifiable isn't knowable that you're willing to throw the baby out with the bath water and conclude that nothing is certain and everything is relative and therefore...I'm left completely unprotected against whatever crackpot ideology you come up with in the name of your freedom. You're willing to introduce PC multi-culti stuff into your world making it sound like we can't agree on any basic human values because if we do, it will mean teh Amerikan imperialism blah blah. And I reject that utterly. And you need to realize that you have an ideology, even as you pretend not to have one. It's actually historically a very old story. Are you not aware that you are merely adopting a position in a debate hundreds of years old, and not "setting me straight" as "the latest enemy of your freedom"? I hope you have that awareness. Your political grandfathers on this issue are not going to be of sterling character. You say that human rights aren't universal and it's all fake and people go to wars, etc. Well, this is a defeatist and maximalist position, and there are some basic workarounds. I like what Kofi Annan says about this. He says even the most uneducated, unsophisticated, simple African woman, who knows nothing about the UN or human rights or the rule of law in some Western educated sense, knows exactly what it means when her son is tortured. She can tell what torture is when it happens to her son. And she can tell she is not for that, and accept that it is a human value not to be tortured, and that it is a violation of a right if a son is tortured. This is pretty basic stuff. No need to get all Chomsky on us here. There are some basic truths, and while there are different approaches to them, we don't need to get into such a fractured fairy table that we can't even agree on the basics (as a group of us already did over in SL Poly-Sci): that when a Purple Cube of Venom building sheds its purple light out of its cube on to the lots surrounding it, such as to turn their houses a different colour with its hue, it has Gone Too Far. This is the right-to-swing-your-arm thing in SL terms. You want to so fracture that understanding that I'm to endlessly find art in venomous purple cubes, and I'm to endlessly advocate extending purple-cube-entitlements everywhere, when most people have a pretty basic sense that purple light shedding off my property on to yours and colouring your house isn't a very considerate thing to do. You're willing to erode even that nice majority rule about purple light in the name of some hypothetical eventuality. You know, I find the Thinkers meetings to be horribly dominated by these tekkie types who really have no appreciation whatsoever of the "open society and its enemies" problems. They make flat absolutist statements that there is no absolutism ROFLM. The few meetings I've been to have been interesting, but I see dominance by a few of those types who are unable to reflect on the presence of their own prejudices and horrid tropism towards Science and this historical "logical positivist" type of thinking.
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David Cartier
Registered User
Join date: 8 Jun 2003
Posts: 1,018
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04-20-2005 22:12
From: Khamon Fate okay ow stop that.
I will not be convinced that inworld communities cannot form and decide that sharing and sacrificing are more important to them than their individual rights because the social fabric of the grid is polluted by Linden meddling but a marked lack of actual Linden support.
We come together based on a mutual interest or enemy and remain together because we share common beliefs, goals or interests. This is not rocket science. It's not even textbook sociology. It's just plain common sense and decency.
And no, the Lindens can't do anything to promote communities. Linden Lab is a software production and simulator hosting firm that mistakenly touts community building skills. The closest they can come to fostering is offering tools that communities could use to purchase, and share, inworld resources.
is that topical and toned down enough? In my experience inworld communities can form and thrive, but Linden Lab could provide more tools to enforce the social compacts that are made and agreed upon by the selfsame members of the community. You can take a group of the most disparate types and give them a common theme and a few basic guidelines and have a very harmonious community, even if it's look and feeling are chaotic, rather than groomed and Elizabethan in appearance, but all it takes is one person acting divisively or going against the theme and you can quickly wind up with everybody at each other's throats. I don't need to get into such mundane and overly bourgeois subjects such as community standards and property values, but these are valid component considerations of any community, and the fact that there is currently no way to rid a community of troublemakers is the number one reason that there are few successful examples inworld. I'm not at all certain that a community with this power would be a good thing; I would just as soon not have it, myself, but it does explain why people in SL tend to form strong affiliations only with people that they know and trust will be valued members of the community. The residents of Taber have known each other for years, in most cases, true, and are all very talented, but to characterize them as cliquish or "driving out the hoi-polloi" is just dead wrong. I sometimes think that Prokofy must be a college professor, since, even though he is obviously very learned, he still insists on pontificating over subjects in which he lacks complete knowledge or experience. The Taberites are several of them the remnants of an even older community, the Americana theme, and are all of them very helpful and friendly and welcoming to newcomers. I was myself welcomed into Americana when I'd only been in SL a matter of days - as were many others I could name. That I didn't stay is more a matter of differing visions, than differing goals.
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Prokofy Neva
Virtualtor
Join date: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 3,698
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04-20-2005 22:29
From: someone Originally Posted by Khamon Fate We come together based on a mutual interest or enemy and remain together because we share common beliefs, goals or interests. This is not rocket science. It's not even textbook sociology. It's just plain common sense and decency.
And no, the Lindens can't do anything to promote communities. Linden Lab is a software production and simulator hosting firm that mistakenly touts community building skills. The closest they can come to fostering is offering tools that communities could use to purchase, and share, inworld resources.
It has nothing to do with favouritism, fics, groups tools, Lindens, suppliments, tax breaks or themes. If you collect a group of people with an attitude of supporting each other through individual sacrifice, you have a fifty/fifty chance that they'll coalesce into a viable community. If you form a group based on any other formula, you don't stand a chance in Hell. __________________ Khamon, I read that, but I didn't agree with it. You're confusing my not agreeing with it with my not having read it LOL. mutual interest or enemy and remain together because we share common beliefs, goals or interestsThis all sounds happy like Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood. But is it? No. Because what are you common beliefs? Well, they might be that there are no universal human values and no real universal human rights, as brought to us by Morgaine. Then I'm going to worry about your sanctioning of torture in a blase laissez-faire manner which might work for your little group but I really don't want that to spread across the grid. Common together because of a common enemy? What is this, Sparta? Only a common enemy can bring you together, and not a common good, or something *higher than yourselves*. It is that inability even to devise, let along recognize *something higher than yourselves* that troubles me. Linden Lab is a software production and simulator hosting firm that mistakenly touts community building skillsWell, I tend to agree that these people do too much social engineering. I don't need some officious nanny state reaching in and grabbing my Tringo and saying I can't have my Tringo 4 times a day in my location of choice, instead of 3 times a day in her set-up. From: someone It has nothing to do with favouritism, fics, groups tools, Lindens, suppliments, tax breaks or themes. If you collect a group of people with an attitude of supporting each other through individual sacrifice, you have a fifty/fifty chance that they'll coalesce into a viable community. If you form a group based on any other formula, you don't stand a chance in Hell. Well, as I told you yesterday, and you conveniently forgot, I actually don't agree with you. I don't think we all have to have the Excellent Quest Adventure together and make vague "sacrifices" (to what higher good when it was only our "common beliefs" and no overarching belief that brought us together?). I have something much simpler in mind, which is people who like residential areas free of clubs get together on a sim and share some extra prims, end of story. They don't need to be intelligent, technically proficient, or believers in the same belief even, they just have to have a shared sense of a higher thing involving basic governance, which is: I try to build with my neighbor's lot in mind, not intruding and ruining his experience. I try to solve conflicts. I try to set a good example. And so on. Pretty basic stuff. Of course, the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments and ever other such precept was thrown out the door by your ideologies. I worry about all these little grouplets brought together by same-believing, self-sacrificing, self-referential entities. I think they're going to be making for some pretty smug, arrogant, and difficult neighbours.
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Prokofy Neva
Virtualtor
Join date: 28 Sep 2004
Posts: 3,698
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04-20-2005 22:44
From: someone In my experience inworld communities can form and thrive, but Linden Lab could provide more tools to enforce the social compacts that are made and agreed upon by the selfsame members of the community. You can take a group of the most disparate types and give them a common theme and a few basic guidelines and have a very harmonious community, even if it's look and feeling are chaotic, rather than groomed and Elizabethan in appearance, but all it takes is one person acting divisively or going against the theme and you can quickly wind up with everybody at each other's throats. I don't need to get into such mundane and overly bourgeois subjects such as community standards and property values, but these are valid component considerations of any community, and the fact that there is currently no way to rid a community of troublemakers is the number one reason that there are few successful examples inworld. This is very well said. I particularly endorse the "not groomed and Elizabethan" stuff because it's that mixture of freedom and regulation that you can get in a voluntary zoned community if you're willing not to be fascistic (or even just Elizabethan) about its appearance. You're right that one asshole with a bounce script who can't listen to reason is all it takes. I've been in screaming fights with bounce scripters. They should be banned and Linden needs to take an unequivocal position on this. They do ruin the community for others. But even this severe jar to the community condominium does not destroy it because in fact, those "overly bourgeois" notions of property values are what keeps people sticking. I am definitely for making the land rights and the ownership of land a central core of this world.' From: someone I'm not at all certain that a community with this power would be a good thing; I would just as soon not have it, myself, but it does explain why people in SL tend to form strong affiliations only with people that they know and trust will be valued members of the community. Absolutely. From: someone The residents of Taber have known each other for years, in most cases, true, and are all very talented, but to characterize them as cliquish or "driving out the hoi-polloi" is just dead wrong. I sometimes think that Prokofy must be a college professor, since, even though he is obviously very learned, he still insists on pontificating over subjects in which he lacks complete knowledge or experience. The Taberites are several of them the remnants of an even older community, the Americana theme, and are all of them very helpful and friendly and welcoming to newcomers. I was myself welcomed into Americana when I'd only been in SL a matter of days - as were many others I could name. That I didn't stay is more a matter of differing visions, than differing goals. I don't have to know much about Taber, I can fly over it, study the buildings and realize this: these are people who did not leave out land to right-click and sell to anybody. So therefore they aren't of interest to me terribly in how to get communities -- groups of unrelated accidental people who buy on sims. In the real world, you have no control over who your neighbours are. And that actually mitigates against any fascistic ideology that can take hold by zealous bands of likeminded us-against-them types of people. But on the Internet, you can find your little tiny affinity niche and declare everyone else to be damned. YOu have no incentive or need for tolerance because you can close your doors or your draw distances or lock your whole sim out of accidental traffic. This is troublesome to me. This means the 3-d Virtual worlds fill up with all these pockets of closed societies. Americana, I'm told are the ones who got the tax holiday? And then they rebelled and that gave them their sense of a common enemy and their cohesion? This is *so* 1960s. What you fail to see is that I don't buy that this community was open to just anybody. I'm willing to bet there was a suble if not-so-subtle screening system to filter out those who didn't fit. Was the land available to right-click and buy by anyone? Yes or no. Or was it a passing along of friends through this connection that connection, and then sure, the lovely folks of Taber "welomed you". But they "welcomed you"...not by letting you come in when you felt like it and right-clicking on the land and buying it. Or...maybe the DID welcome in anyone when the setups were different (different ways of counting prims or selling land or whatever) but as you yourself just said...you left because of "different visions". Well, that's precisely my point. You didn't fit. The community door closed on you. They had a vision, you didn't. That's what I mean. Millions of those little closed-doors, slamming on all the people with the "different" or even "the wrong" vision. It's ghastly to think of. I want to go over this carefully: tell me that anybody could join Taber, any time, at any time in its life, including today. And the answer is: No, they can't. So while "keeping out hoi polloi" may sound extreme to you, maybe it is accurate? And could we please refrain from arguments that work like this: "Oh, but the lovely Pituca...oh but the lovely Tudor buildings...oh but they are such nice people...oh, but you are such a dick...oh but you are so uninformed." Try to extrapolate from the experience of Taber and articulate it in such a way that others can decide if it can be replicated or not. Stop holding it for me to genuflect to, and explain why I'm suppose to genuflect. I'm not genuflecting. Because I think it's just another example of a glorified clique, and therefore a closed society.
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Morgaine Dinova
Active Carbon Unit
Join date: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 968
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04-21-2005 02:54
Hahahahaha, Prokofy. Since there is not a single logical statement (as opposed to empty debating statements) in your entire reply, all I can do is to offer a response using your approved methodology: " Bollocks". My reply is more honest at least, since it doesn't seek to adorn its illogic in countless appeals to authority and other pointless decorations. From: Prokofy Neva The idea that the rule of law hurts minorities has to be some sick college-campus meme you've picked up somewhere. <sigh> No, repeating memes is your area, I prefer to use straight logic. Just in case there is any shred of logical thought left in you whatsoever, I'll try to explain. Laws are either natural and inherent (ie. don't need to be stated nor even defended because they are obvious, evident and manifest to all), or else they are creations (and thus fabrications) of mankind. The latter type unavoidably reflect the prejudices of their creators --- that's inescapable from the simple fact that natural and inherent laws are excluded from this category by definition, and therefore what's left is entirely a matter of value judgement. Judgements differ, widely. I hope that doesn't need further elaboration. Even in those few examples where the creators of human laws have been incredibly all-embracing and liberal, the implementation of their laws results in countless deviations from their original intentions in ways that implement the ever narrowing prejudices of the enforcers and politicians of the day. The situtation in the US illustrates that admirably. For the most part though, human laws don't start off good and get bad, but they start off bad and get worse. The reason for this is simple. In elective systems, laws are created by vocal opinion leaders either from their publicized personal agendas or from the agendas of the majority of their supporters. This inherently minimizes the importance of minority views to those popular leaders, in particular when the views of minorities and majorities are in opposition to each other. Furthermore, this creates a self-reinforcing vicious circle because leaders in majority-vote systems cannot buck the majorities and still remain leaders. The system acts against any possibility of universal support, even if some hypothetical pan-leader were to try to seek it. (And we'll see pigs fly before any such person appears anyway.) Anyway, I've now run out of patience to argue further with wannabe demagogs. This is where it's at: you're either coercive at heart or you aren't. If you wish to mold everyone to your own preferred image by creating manmade laws that apply even to those who did not accept to be bound by them, then you're coercive. Bye bye. People who are truly free in themselves always understand that their freedom stems from not trying to coerce others to their view. You then become free to interact with everyone limited only by short-term mutual consent, instead of entering an institutionally constrained community imprisoned by its rules of law. We are no threat to you, except possibly through existing and hence showing you for what you truly are. In contrast, you do pose a threat to us through your continuous attempts at legal universalism since law is always coercive, and so we're not having any of it. Sorry. The nice thing about virtual worlds is that we can escape all that bollocks. It's still fun to taunt the dinosaurs who think that the universe ends at the limits of their personal horizons though. 
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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04-21-2005 03:15
A lot of this is why I keep embracing contradictions, because we, in all our simple complexity and complex simplicity, are such paradoxes and a wonder to behold. 
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Sox Rampal
Slinky Vagabond
Join date: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 338
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04-21-2005 03:42
Morgaine - what you've built is a comune not a community.A community is open to all people of all persuasions and not just those interested in a tudor lifestyle.
Secondly laws are not created by individual needs they are created by societies needs so get off the freedom soapbox please.
But once again your missing the point by 10,000 miles - what if,say tomorrow,Linden Labs decided that sims could not be group owned or that sims could only be owned by one person,what would happen to all you've built then?
Prokofy is not the one playing god here, Linden Labs are...........
Originally Posted by Prokofy Neva The idea that the rule of law hurts minorities has to be some sick college-campus meme you've picked up somewhere.
I could'nt agree more.It's all well and good to keep raging about law and gods but you already live in a Second Life that is controlled by one man,where the laws are made by one man - Phillip Linden.
And if Phillip decides tomorrow that he doesnt like people with green hair then green hair will be gone from Second Life - catching on yet?
To see nine months work pissed away on the whim of someone else was truely disheartening.Nobody warned us beforehand of these changes so we had no chance to adapt and it utterly ruined Second Life for me.If your so blind you cant see that all Linden Labs polls and questionaires are just hyperbole then I'm wasting my time talking to you.
I dont profess to be a god,and I know nothing of the devil other than he resides somewhere in the mind the guy who thinks up some of Linden Labs policies.There was a basic function supplied by events in Second Life - they brought people together,most of the players I know took their first tentative steps in Second Life by attending events and you became part of other communities through someone you met at an event.
All your working life is geared towards just one basic motivation - comfort & relaxation.I respectfully suggest that Second Life is becoming all work and no play, and thats NOT a second life, thats too much like real life for this little fantasist.
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Morgaine Dinova
Active Carbon Unit
Join date: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 968
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04-21-2005 04:34
From: Sox Rampal Morgaine - what you've built is a comune not a community.A community is open to all people of all persuasions and not just those interested in a tudor lifestyle. If you're using the word "comune" in the usual debating style of throwing around words that have acquired emotive connotations as ammo, I'm afraid I'm not rising to the bait. A community is a community regardless of how it is organized. It never ceases to amaze me how people with certain preferences always think that their preferences are right and those held by others are wrong. It may well be right, *FOR YOU*, but that doesn't somehow make your preference universal. Back on topic though, it's quite funny to hear attacks on individual freedom coming from all sides in the debate. It just reinforces the simple observation that you can always understand the true nature of a person by looking at their stance on coercion. So often it places the two main rival contenders in a debate on the same side ... and hence clearly identifies how limited the options on offer really are. Step outside the box. Otherwise you'll be inside it.
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