Radiks Family--Are You A College Class?

the other thing is that the forums are a very small fraction of the sl populace. if people want to say something about sl in general, they need to do leg work in sl, not the forums.

is this the purpose of the community last names? So LL can bring in large groups easily (like classes) and have them organized in a manner that a professor or etc can track? Not that I mind, I think SL is a great place to study sociology...and if disclosed properly, I'd have no problem helping students, etc. out.

SL Marriage/Partnership??
"I'm new to SL and I am in a class that investigates the in-world life. I was wondering if anyone had any insight/links that would provide me with information about SL marriages and relationships. Thanks for any help."

I just wanted to point out a thread that DID say that we were in a class, check it out. Thank you to everyone for your responses and interviews. I have LOVED exploring and understanding the in-world experience and appreciate the willingness of the help that I received along the way.

Last day in-world,
Trinity Radiks

don't take stuff in the forums too personally. not everyone pays attention to everything.

if i recall correctly, there is someone that has been doing that kind of research in sl for a quite a while now. if i remember the av's name i'll try to see if they'll speak with you.

Oh, I'm not meaning to take anything personally, just trying to ease some nerves. I feel badly that people are upset about our studies.

Karuna, I have completed my research on that study but thank you for your willingness.

Trinity

I am not familiar with these Brigadoon or Live2Give off the top of my head.

I can state, however, that my students will not be psting any of their work to the public internet. In addition, in order for a resident to be quoted in a paper, the resident must be notifed that the student is doing so. And even then, it's only for ME to read.

Now, as I mentioned in another post on this thread, we did have some interest to possibly post snippets from some student essays to a popular SL blog, and the students had to go get written permission from the quoted residents in order to be able to even submit their essays to be read by the editor of that blog for POSSIBLE inclusion. (Obviously we didn't send essays without the residents permissions, based on the policy I described above.)

We're trying over here! A privacy policy was defined, and we're trying to exist within it. I think the students are being very conscientious. I am very proud of their work.

-megan

Megan,

You can send some of your kids over to question me if they want.... I don't know what people are so uptight about. If I'm allowed to not answer what I don't want to answer, then you can ask what you want. I'd be glad to help.

-Mike Zidane

Just curious, any of you students planning on sticking around in SL after your class is over?

I can't believe how vastly different the forums are from the in game world of second life. If I had come to the forums first, I would have never even bothered with the one time fee of 9.95 for life. I REALLY hope your students are spending more time in world than they are in these forums, or they will have a bad taste for SL, and I can't really blame them.

Jess

It's a good thing to disclose that the Radiks are a class on assignment because Catherine Linden was right; the forum posters are a rough tough crowd. Perhaps with the dislosure the Radiks will be given some breathing room.

Regarding time spent in-world, versus on the forums.

The first several assignments required students to spend many hours in world. The students were not encouraged to visit the forums until homework #4. Even then, in-world interviews were encouraged as well. We have "played" Second Life each and every day since the second day of class for hours at a time. The students have learned so much from this experience.

I should point out that one of the things we study in this class is the VARIETY of virtual communities that are "out there". Students are encouraged to seek out the best and worst in each, and to compare them to one another: wikis, message board/forum, virtual "games" or "worlds" like Second Life, chat, IRC, Muds, moos, even collaborative communities such as distributed proofreaders, social networking services, etc etc etc

And since this drama erupted today, we've actually spent some class time discussing the technical and rhetorical characteristics of a message board (forum) that make it so appealing for these kinds of (occasionally negative and usually lengthy) exchanges. We've compared the exchanges seen on this forum to the exchanges in-world. We've discussed the possible reasons for each type of exchange.

-megan

Professor Megan! <--- that name is the dope shiznit

I hope some constructive discussion comes out of this controversy so that we can all learn something. *smiles bigtime*

And... oh... on your MetaVerse course studies site, I notice that you've found the story of Jadey and I to be of interest to you. Well, thanks!

Wow, thats great! Why are the forums so different than inside the world? My theory is that on the forums it is easy to lose sight of the fact that there are people behind each post.... a post is much less 'humanizing' than an avatar. With an avatar as your representation you look more.... I guess the word is 'real.' It serves as a reminder that there is a real person behind the avatar. When it's just a post of yours, people lose sight of the fact that there are real people behind those posts. Thats my theory, can you discuss some of the reasons that the class came up with? I would be REALLY interested in hearing that!

Thank you so much,

Jessica

You guys know what might be an even more fascinating study of human behavior online than Second Life? The actions, reactions, overreaction, sniping, sarcasm, and general pissiness that are the Second Life Forums...or *any* meassage board forum, for that matter. You could even start a thread on the subject. Inveitably someone will chime in on how offended they are by you even bringing up whatever subject you're talking about. Then someone will post how it was wrong to even create the thread.

Oh, and 5 people should post that they like pie. Random acts of chaos are quite predictable around here. It's all very Zen.

So true Liona.

Yet another RRL = Really Redundant Loop.

"I've seen this train before... and this time I'm going to step aside."

Professor, I think that people are getting a bit too uptight about some of the privacy issues; particularly with regards to the Forum. Since this forum is publicly accessible and no one is forced to PUBLICLY post in here, since the posters are ALREADY identity-protected with pseudonyms, since you and your students are presumably paid members of SL the same as anyone else, and since you and your students are entitled to invoke copyright exclusions because yours is an educational endeavor, you all should be OK with quoting residents from here. I would only worry about protecting privacy with regards to in-world conversations, and using a clearly defined process of informed consent for those interviews.

Please don't at all feel that you or your students are limited to "interviews" in SL, though, as it's an experience that is best...well.....experienced. Jump in. Learn to build or go to events. Muck around and get dirty, and experience some of what SL has to offer.

The forums are perhaps the best medium for collecting topic information, as no one has to post here if they don't want to be subject material.

I think it's great that you're all using the same last-name, so that you are clearly identifyable and can be avoided if certain residents don't wish to be "studied" as such. This is a good start towards informed consent. That being said, there are a few things that you could improve on.

Rather than arguing or yelling about whether it's OK for you to be in MY world, and oh-my-god-you'd-better-fill-out-these-forms-in-triplicate-before-you-approach-me-in-world, I'll offer some constructive suggestions:

-A lot of your students' questions have been addressed before here in the forums. Matter of fact, many of them get brought up a nearly weekly basis, in one guise or another. It's not necessarily a problem that these ideas get chewed on so often, this is part of SL. To see all of these questions come up at once, however, during the first week of classes, from people who are brand-new, with no history of interaction with them, and no introduction even.....well, this is what it sounds like to many residents: "Hi im new here could u give me 3 diff in postmodern deconstruct between Michel Foucault and Tom Arnold kthxbye". Introduce yourselves. Say "Hi, I'm a student in a class studying virtual worlds, and I have an assignment to examine the.....Would anyone offer some of their perspectives, or help me with a link to a good thread where this has already been discussed?" Not those exact words, but something like it.

-Make an announcement BEFORE your students flood into SL. Come into the forums, say "Hi", and just give us a heads-up what the Radiks crew is about.

-SL needs to be experienced, not just interviewed. Since your students should be encouraged to explore the world as people, not just students, create a Group, and have your students wear their group title when they are in "Interview/Studying the Rabbits" mode, and take it off when they're just exploring and absorbing, playing. Don't know how to make a group? Are your students so new that they don't know how to activate/deactivate it? Can they rezz a prim, or do they even know what rezz or prim means? If your class is hampered by newbie-ishness and needs a quickstart class, let me know. I'm not a Mentor, but schedule permitting, I'd be happy to walk them through some of the basics on how to get the most out of their user interface, perhaps even some simple building tips.

-The forums are only a snapshot of our world. They represent a small overall percentage of the total users in SL, and they only reflect what is going on or being heatedly debated at the moment. Your students are, unfortunately, on a schedule, and glancing at the front page of the General Forums aren't going to help them get a much of a feel for the larger picture. Also, the Front Page of the forums also won't reflect ideas or debates that were hashed around REALLY well perhaps 2 months ago, but not lately. Fortunately, there are several notable websites that you can point your students to to get a feel for the bigger picture of Second Life; or more accurately, many more small slices of Second Life from different angles at different times. I would recommend Hamlet Linden's New World Notes,, Urizenus Sklar's Second Life Herald, and Cristiano Midnight's SLUniverse. Each of these has links to multiple other SL-related pages, blogs, etc, and most of them keep relatively well-organized archives so that your students can peruse through back stories. You'll find that not only will you give your students a better chance of hitting the ground running, you'll also find that different archived news-stories will be of more interest to particular students. The Second Jessie War? Angel Leviathan's Big Apology? Grimmy Moonflower? A Teen Grid in Second Life? Business and Commerce? Marriage from virtual to physical? You'll be suprised and amazed at what your students come back with.

That's about it, but some of these may help you with smoother sailing during this semester, or indeed next semester if you're still teaching the same course with a new batch of students.

And, in case I forgot, welcome. All of you.

Ok--

Since some of you have issues with the Radiks family, why not come see us TODAY?

I (and probably some others) will be in world from 5-6pm EST. So, come on in and ask us ANYTHING you want about what we are doing and why we are here!

This way we can clear the air on the whole issue. The flaming posts in these forums are getting a little out of control.

So, come on in and say hi!

Our campus is located in ALICE. It has a great big fence around it...kinda hard to miss. Near the river. I would post the coordinates, but Im not at my SL computer right now.

OR drop me (tluskie radiks) an IM. Or if you run in to any other Radiks, Im sure they would love to chat.

See you there.

(PS - Nothing will be posted or taken out of SL without your knowledge)

Our group is called Kourier (after the Radiks Kouriers in Snow Crash). I didn't think about asking them to take off and put on their group titles depending on what mode they were in. I didn't foresee the need to do that, but it is a good idea.



Our class built chairs. The chairs are located in our campus, which is in the Alice sim. The chairs are in a circle right now. The students enjoyed building very much. Many residents were able to help them, and they also used the Ivory Tower buiding tutorial to help them learn how to make the chairs.



I sent students to specific blog-oriented postings to get backstory on many of these issues. My blog posting on this subject is here: http://trumpy.cs.elon.edu/metaverse/2005/01/some-links-to-help-with-hw-4.html

-megan

That's a pretty good collection of material, Prof. Okee then, nice one.

At least two posters above have praised the fact that groups studying SL have distinctive surnames, so that we all know.

We certainly DONT all know.

I would not have known had I not stumbled on this thread.

It is inferred there are other similar groups - but what are they?

I have carried out a first search of the SL website, and found no obvious reference to the Radiks, let alone others.

I don't find this satisfactory at all.

It is not enough to rely on forum threads - many people never come to forum at all.

I would like to suggest to any reading Linden, that this should be clearly and prominently described on the website, with all such surnames, and together with the purposes of the group (and any guidelines for students).

I am also not happy that Professor Radik baldly declines a request to post for us the Guidelines given to his class, simply because the drafter has not given his permission. Get his permission. Dont subordinate the privacy rights of thousands of SLers to those of some single person who could not possibly have any valid reason to object. How else can we know if students are overstepping the line in their dealings with us?

I cant help being slightly dubious about the Radiks enthusiasm for up-front disclosure, when I see so many Radik postings asking questions with no disclosure whatever, until after this topic has been raised critically here. Relying on some other posting tucked away in another thread is quite inadequate.

Sorry to sound a bit negative, but I want to KNOW if I am interacting with someone sent here by a professor to analyse and report on his/her experience, including his interaction with me.

I am not happy to have found this out accidentally in forum.

I would really prefer a mention of these special surnames in the induction course, and a permanent prominent Noticeboart in the Welcome Area, updated as new classes are introduced.. In addition to the website.

Am I alone in this ? Am I the only grump ?

I'm sure I don't even need to ask if all these students are over 18 ?

No, you are not alone, Barmovic.

hmmmm lets see


Did you read the complete TOS before clicking connect?

Did you really search the whole website looking for this information?

I see you want a lot though. All the information you seek is readily available and the kind professor has given more than enough info including what the Lindens laid down as Law to them

Your privacy has not been usurped and you have no claim that it will be.

Now I want to know what your purpose is here?

Who do you talk to?

what do you do with that info?

Dude this is a class and they are merely here learning...if you don't like it don't participate....but don't say there was no information on this becauise there is CLEAR information on this several places on this website.

I don't understand why people view this as a problem. If you don't want to be "studied" then don't post in the threads created by these students. If you don't want your conversations used in an academic paper, then say so up front. If you've never even spoken with a Radiks, then you've got absolutely no right to be indignant, as the university course hasn't inconvenienced or harmed you in any way.

SL is currently one of the best environments there is for examining human interaction and the effect which the internet is having on this. To paranoiacally react against this innocent examination is bogus in the extreme. These students are not reaping any financial profit from the study. Their only dividend is an enrichment of the mind.

Yeah, and besides, Barmovic, if you have a problem with these students, why didn't you complain when it was announced that LL had acquired an $8 million contract from the government to allow the FBI to test out its successor to the Carnivore program, to see if the new program is better at picking up on suspicious communications and behaviour?