Expansion of SL: Vertical or Horizontal!!!

SL Viewer is just one window of looking into the SL World. TSL community forum, blogs and related websites are other windows of seeing the world. wish to try it investigate it through different windows/platforms. Thanks for your advice anyway.

diegetically ?

Is that related to diagesis, as described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diegesis , or is that a typo for digitally?

Linden owned sandboxes are places where you can build and run scripts without owning land.

Thus, when you start out, with no land and no idea of how to build or script, you can go to a Linden operated sandbox and learn by doing.

Some users use the freedom provided by the Linden operated sandboxes to annoy other users for their own joy of bothering other people in a manner that has little chance of serious repercussion.

Thus the Linden sandboxes can be good places to learn how to deal with the troublemakers. The sandboxes don't provide much or anything special to faciliate the learning, but the troublemakers provide the motive.

Aside from beginners and troublemakers, folks who've already learned to build and script can use the sandbox areas to build things they don't have the land to build - big constructions that require a bigger parcel than the creator owns.

I have no idea what you mean by "How linden owned public sandbox areas mediate residents’ activities ".

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Not to pick at nits, but I just did a search and couldn't find a single resident with the first name "Sandbox".

As far as Torley's use of "landbox" I think he was coining a term for something quite different from a sandbox.

In virtually all sandboxes, you can't terraform. Only the owners of the land can do that.

Torley set up something particular and unique, where someone who doesn't own land can terraform.

The Ivory Tower of Primitives used to have a little area where anyone could terraform.

Hi Gora - I'm curious.....

Have you had a chance to immerse yourself into the SL community a bit? Have you been shopping, and attended some live music events, and visited some new friends? have you been exploring some islands? Have you been dancing yet?

I haven’t attended any live musical event as yet in SL. I have engaged in all the activities that you have mentioned above. I have few friends and they are quite helpful....

You've really got yourself all mixed up, Gora. I can tell by what you say that you think "skybox" means something completely different from what it truly means. The words skybox and sandbox are not related, even though they both end in "box." There is no term "landbox" unless one person making up a word qualifies it, in your mind, as being a common term.

There used to be a terraforming sandbox, as I recall, way back before the Ivory Tower moved, so it may've been the same one (and the IToP just moved closer).

Oh-kayyyy then. Bet ya five lindens you won't find any other example for this word being used.



Right. A six page text that has 8 lines in it referring to SL and those are likely to make every SL resident go "Huh? WTF is he talking about?". And inside of SL, the term sandbox is not used in this hypothetical mumbo-jumbo way. As I said, there is only one clear meaning for it inworld.



Oh, what a load of rubbish! The SL viewer IS the SL world. If you are only browsing forums, you are not even remotely inside SL. You're just reading up stuff about it.

I stand by my observation, you have no grasp of what SL really is.

That's awesome! You can go to your home page on here, and scan down to the bottom of the page for Upcoming Events - be sure to set the category to appeal to you, but the live music events are worth checking out!

How did you find your first couple hours of orientation into SL? Did you have to find your own way - or did a friend help you when you arrived? Did you know where to go, and what to do.....or did it take you some time to figure it all out?

Ick

The typical 512 plot right now is 16x32x4076 - and I think a lot of us very much like it that way.

Yes, I do vertical builds, but I would never want someone else owning the space above or below me.

Maybe it's because I'm still an undergraduate, but I still do my own research.

OK, so, sounds like an arts-based paper. Not sure where you are going with the "diegetic/non-diegetic" thing. I did have to look the term up. It's to do with narrative and narrative contexts if I understand correctly?

I'd agree with Novis's definition of sandbox, but (largely) disagree with her conclusion that SL is not a huge sandbox. I think lots of residents do treat SL as a place to try things out without permanent and real effects. You can build whatever you like (within the ToS) and then simply delete it and start again. Many also use it as a bit of a social and relationship "sandbox" as well, which frequently causes conflict with those who don't view it that way. One thing you could look at is how real life laws affect what residents can do inworld (everything from tax and VAT to obscenity laws), so how RL laws stop it being as much of a sandbox as it could otherwise be.

Skyboxes are not really related at all - I think trying to relate the two will lead you up a blind alley. Sky platforms, on the other hand, may be relevant: Many prefer to build in the sky as they are less likely to be disturbed.

Privately owned and public Linden sandboxes serve the same function so the term is not really being used differently. The main difference is in how they are managed (Linden sandboxes are not "managed" at all, really, which is why they are such a popular griefers' playground).

Turning to your main question ... ‘How linden owned public sandbox areas mediate residents’ activities and influence their understandings of SL space?’ ... the first thing which occurs to me is that the majority of residents who use them do not have their own land. For landowners (and renters), SPACE=PRIMS, and this is the basis of LL's business model. Many people don't really "get" this until they have land of their own. For example, I once met a guy in a sandbox who proudly showed me a window he had made. It was beautifully modelled, down to the very last hinge and screw (this was before the days of sculpties) and the guy was quite scathing of other windows he had seen which seemed to be "just flat textures". The window was indeed beautiful but unfortunately it was 60 prims. It took me quite a while to get him to understand that not many people would be able to afford his windows, even if he gave them away for free (consider that on a 512 plot of land - the most common size of starter plot - you only have 117 prims in total to play with).

The other big obvious thing is that SANDBOXES=BUILDING. Many would say that the ability of any resident to go to a sandbox and build whatever they want, from their first day inworld, is more than anything what makes SL unique. WHAT are people building, and HOW are they building it? WHO is building and WHY? How do the inworld building tools affect this? (they are very different from most 3D modelling tools).

Other thoughts off the top of my head ... some people who do own land still like to build in sandboxes because it's a more sociable experience ... sandboxes serve an educational function - this is best seen at privately managed ones such as NCI, but even the Linden ones have tutorial boards dotted around. Education can be formal (classes) or informal (residents helping each other) ... "unfair use of sandbox resources" is against ToS and is a specific category for Abuse Reports ... "tragedy of the Commons"? ... griefing - that's already been mentioned ... different sandboxes for different uses - weapons, vehicles, no-script ... sandbox etiquette - personal space, cleaning up ... sandboxes tend to be flat - how does this affect the builds people produce? ... public sandboxes are one of the first venues new residents come across - there's one attached to most infohubs and help island - what does this say about the importance of building in SL? ... use of sandboxes for things other than building (hanging out, unpacking shopping, putting up a changing room, sex ...) ...

Compare and contrast ... public Vs. private ... space Vs. place (and non-place) ... permanence Vs. impermanence ...

More than anything, get inworld and spend time at the places you are researching. Talk to people. Not just public sandbox users, but those who use privately run ones (NCI, Skidz) ... talk to the owners and managers of the private ones - why do they do it? How are their sandboxes used (and abused)?, what rules do they stipulate and how are these enforced? ... talk to land-owners too - what prompts them to get their own land instead of just building in sandboxes? ...

Forums are another way of learning about Second Life but exercise caution here: only a tiny subset of residents ever come here (or to other forums) and, I would argue, it's not a representative subset. My impression (and I have no figures to back this up) is that here you will find a much higher percentage of land-owners and content-creators (by which I mean those who sell content) than inworld.

Even more than more than anything, be respectful. Mari usually does this bit, but I'll do her usual quote here:



A couple of must-reads ...

Wagner James Au - The Making of Second Life (have a look at his concept of "bebop reality" in particular)

Tom Boellstorff - Coming of Age in Second Life (ethnographic study. He argues that SL is a society of "techne", rather than episteme - i.e. it's not what you know, it's what you can make).

Good luck!

(can I have my Master's Degree now, please? )

What discipline did you say you were studying?

spatial planning and communication

The OP completely missed including Spaceboxes, Seaboxes and Treeboxes

Actually, it's got a good point - one that's easy to be missed by someone in the extensionist camp.

Let me explain: When you're in a sandbox in-world, you are generally free to experiment, to try out the building features and, in a few cases, the terraforming features. In short, you build stuff to see how it comes out, and when you're done, you clean up your things and leave. There are no commitments, you don't need to pay tier for your own land, and you don't have to risk screwing up your own land with an experiment gone awry.

Second Life itself is, for all intents and purposes, a big sandbox. You can conduct experiments in-world that you are either too afraid to, or simply incapable of, doing in real life. A sandbox also does not have set, pre-defined goals or "rules" telling you what you should build and how you should do it. A sandbox is free-form. The world of Second Life is the same way. You are essentially free to experiment on concepts without the physical, social, or even gender constraints of the real world. And when you're done, you can just clean up and leave; or, if your experiment, whatever it may be, goes wrong, you can just clean up and start over.

It's a good metaphor, at least on paper. In reality though - even Second reality - it's not that easy. Friends are made, social connections are established, and - even for immersionists - simply arbitrarily unplugging oneself from this world is fraught with social implications. Whether you consider it an alternate reality or an extension of reality, it is still a reality nonetheless.

I'm not having a go, but am wondering if this thread topic is even for real. A grad student who writes barely intelligible posts?

"Virtual sandbox" means a place where you can create your reality. Sometimes (such as in certain video games: "sandbox mode" it also can mean freedom to play unfettered. (There seems to be a conservative backlash in world currently against this notion.)

"Sandbox" means a parcel someone owns but lets the public use, to build on, usually for limited (return) times.

You really MUST go in world if you plan to study the place. You cannot understand this (well) by osmosis.

Okay. Rule number 1 of communication: Don't alienate your audience. It is one thing to solicit people's input as part of your research; but when you approach your audience as if they were subjects of some sort of science experiment, then you're going to turn a lot of people against you. So far, your approach to your research of Second Life appears to be just simply gathering cold data without attempting to understand the background that gives your data relevance. You don't appear willing to really immerse yourself into SL to get a real feel for it. Instead, you only seem willing to "get your hands dirty" to only the extent absolutely necessary to "get what you need and get out". Numerous past "researchers" have made this mistake, and in a few cases has brought considerable harm to the platform and this community.

Think really hard about what it is you're doing, why it is you're doing it, and your approach to doing it. We are not a bunch of lab rats waiting to be experimented on.

As a fairly recent earner of a PhD degree, I can congratulate you on making your topic narrow enough. (That is a lesson that many graduate-degree candidates take a long time to learn.)

But I have to tell you that the quotation 'SL world functions like a huge digital sandbox' does NOT imply that anything like a majority of SL users (Residents) think of SL as a sandbox or actually use sandboxes---either literally, or as metaphor.

Moreover, the question of virtual space in SL is another concept that would interest only a tiny minority of SL users.

The quotation refers to the fact that Linden Lab made it possible for users to both create objects and own their creations. This differs from the situation in most other virtual-world platforms.

But from the point of view of a thesis based on that quotation, the problem is that only a minority of SL users are content creators.

If your thesis is based on the idea that sandboxes, or a hypothetical metaphor represented by the term Sandbox, or virtual space, are of any interest at all to most users of SL, then you are going to be running into nothing but brick walls.

I don't understand the use of the word mediate. Here's some quickly obtained definitions:


I get the impression the OP is possibly a non-native English speaker whose communication skills have been slightly impaired due to excess exposure to and use of academic jargon.

I'd also like to bring up the word shoebox, in case it has been overlooked. One does find shoeboxes in SL. Also hatboxes. In our search for understanding of SL, we must leave no box word unopened.

If the shoebox fits, wear it...

I believe I didn’t write or mean anything that made you come into the above conclusion.

Many of you have found some discrepancy about the way the term ‘sandbox’ is being defined in world and the way I have reflected the term. This discrepancy might lead to an understanding that I am devoid of in world reality and trying to exploit the forum. I can reassure you that I never have no such intention. I admit that I don’t have extensive in world experience as many of you do but I have been trying to acquire sufficient experiences to carry on with the research topic.

And in doing that I tried to be critical about the way the term ‘sandbox’ has been defined and made use by Linden lab.

Thanks for the postings....