child avatars - where to report.

Reisuki and Little Ceera need to find a PikoPiko Hammer. *grins*

A Piko and a LM has been dropped on ya inworld.

Mari

SL is basically a "chat site" because all those things are socially motivated.

Meh... I see it as so much more. To me, saying that is like saying an art museum is just another coffee house. I'm sure people would consider comparing the Musée du Louvre to a Starbucks a bit troublesome. (=_=)

Remember, almost EVERYTHING in SL is user created. So all those malls, parks, houses, cool dance halls, and just about everything else are part of someone's desire to express their creativity. I'm quite amazed by it all. (@.@)

And... I just left a freebie box with the PikoPiko hammer in between the gift packages at the clubhouse if anyone else wants it. (^_^) Lemmee know if it autoreturns or if I should delete it. (^_^)y

SL at its core is IRC with a GUI interface. *shrugs*

As for the custom content other game clients have the same ability, one of the biggest is Neverwinter nights 1 and 2. It has a built in toolset to create items, lands or entire worlds. Does that make it more then a glorified multi-user chat room at its center? Not really.

Oh, sure, there is a lot of amazing stuff out in SL! But what I'm saying is that it's still social. If the Louvre doesn't get any visitors it has to change its displays until it does and if Starbucks doesn't get any customers it has to change its coffee. And this is just the same on SL - you're right, people want to express their creativity, but the only reason to do that on SL (as opposed to just using Blender or GIMP or something like that) is so other people can see it, but if the other people don't want to come that point is missing.

That's what I'm essentially saying, that whether you are chatting, or building, or hitting people with a shoujo mallet , you have to "fit in" or you'll just be ignored or even ARed and although technically you are free to carry on alone, I suspect most people would not find it rational to do so. I mean, you sort of say it yourself - malls, parks, houses, dance halls, are all social venues. How do you know the people who created them wouldn't rather have created something else but just adapted to what would be popular?

Although it has a lot of extra features, SL is primarily a social venue and community, and can fairly be judged and treated in those terms.

T'ank yew, Marianne!

comparing Sl to a chat room is like comparing roller skates to a BMW... sure they both have wheels and take from point a to point b, but if it's just a chat room to you you're missing a whole hell of alot...

and assuming it IS just a chat room to you, why be here where there are stability issues grid outages, etc, instead on on AIM, Yahoo, or MSN ?

it's like saying a 4 star hotel is the same as a outhouse, or that computers are just glorified CD players....

You bet, Ceera!

Mari

OMG! I always wanted one of those! If you don't mind, keep it there so we can all get one and have a hammer party at the hangout!

Stop. Hammer time.

(What is it with old songs in the forums lately?)

Mari

At the lowest level SL _is_ just a chatroom, as is any service which depends on interaction between humans for the majority of its appeal. In order to not be a chatroom it would have to define entirely new methods of interaction, either solitary or organised so much that normal social protocol would be overridden. And honestly, I'd far rather SL was basically a chatroom than that it was basically WoW, which is the alternative.

Why use SL instead of AIM etc? Because the people are nicer and there's more neat extras!

I read about WOW... It's just a chat room with fighting and no chance for creativity. (^_^)

You're right about "no chance for creativity", but the difference with WoW is that it has an underlying game at the core which you can always play even if everyone else decides to give you the cold shoulder for some reason. SL doesn't - if for some reason everyone ignores you (and ok, probably they wouldn't do that on purpose, but it could happen as a result of a bad combination of circumstances) then you can't do that. You can build, but there's no advantage to building on SL as opposed to starting up Blender if no-one on SL is going to look at what you've made. And you can explore, but 90% of what you'll find is private venues, social venues (which do nothing if you have no-one to socialise with), shops for avatar add-ons (why spend money on your avatar if no-one is there to see it?) and shops for prefabs and build components (why spend money on a build if no-one will come to it?)

Now there's nothing at all wrong with a social world, it's very good in some ways, but it does impose some limits. After all, quite a lot of the limits we face in real life and that we might want to escape in a Second Life are the limits that are created by the need to live with other humans. A friend came up with the "theme pub rule" for SL, which is basically, you can't adopt any imaginary role on SL (builder, scripter, etc. are not imaginary roles) unless it would work in RL as a theme pub!

That's why I made my Museum reference. (^_^) And I agree, SL is a social world. I just feel like it limits the scope by calling it merely a chat room. (^_^) But also, like I said... The majority of my time really is spent in chat. (^_^)y I'm just constantly seeing way more creative people scripting, building, learning, exploring, dancing, filming, photographing..... Woah.... That is a long list... (^_^) Things to do that don't exist simply in chat. (^_^)

:hakes head:: someone is missing out... and it's not me, I build, I script, I sell, I buy, I play games, I create new things to be seen, used, and played with.... there's just so much more than chatting... don't get me wrong it's in there too, but for the most part it's just a convenience for me to coordinate all the other things I do most of the time. nevermind things like voice, virtual performances and dj'ing. I'm not denying it's in there, and a big draw for most people, but if that's all they were after they'd be on forums or chat clients....

SL is at it's core, fantasy realized visually and audably, which sometimes includes chat, but it's far from the only, or even the key element

You're tacitly assuming that all there is in a chatroom is chat, and that isn't true - well, it _might_ be true, for many chatrooms, but there are some where people will create art to present to the community or take roles in the same way they do in SL. I mean, some forums are like this too, like the Yak Yak forum which has supported the creation of entire games, or (I'm reluctant to mention this, but..) the Something Awful forum, which for all of its various nasty attacks on SL, does have an awful lot of creativity in it, even if it is often misdirected.

That's what makes SL what it is, the community - the fact that it has integrated tools for creativity is a big thing, but if the community was wrong they'd have laid unused, and with the right community they'll be brought in or developed if they aren't already there (witness Avimator, Rokuro, SculptyPaint).

But communities do have limits, it's wrong to say "fantasy realized visually" because you can't have every possible fantasy in SL. You can't really have antisocial fantasies like you can in a lot of computer games and virtual worlds (and many fantasies are antisocial, that's why they stay as fantasies), and there is an aspect of natural selection - and thus a risk you'll be the one who doesn't get selected.

So SL is a chatroom in the sense that it's a technology that brings a community together and that community then defines everything else. The community has defined a number of extremely wonderful things but nothing so huge as to change the fact that the point of SL is to participate in that community, which has many great benefits but some limitations too.

Perhaps not everyone realizes it, but all of RL is a sewing circle, too. One might erroneously assume that sewing circles involve sewing--and some do, but others encourage members to bring biscuits to share.

It's confusing.

(OoO) ... No wonder I don't fit in!! I hate sewing!! (>.< Okay... I've done some leather work... But I really don't like sewing... Bleagh!!! (+_+)

Sewing is an activity apart from just being involved with the others in the circle, though.

actually I think you just made my point for me, by illustrating that a program is what it's designed to function as, which in this case includes, but is surely not limited to chat.


you seem to equate community with chat, and while language is the vehicle of choice for connecting a community, it's not necessarily it's reason for being. Those are as varied as stars in the sky.

now maybe a majority of users focus on the functionality of chat within SL, but it's certainly not the only functionality. communication is required for almost all group endevours, but having skype on you computer doesn't turn it into a phone... it's still a computer, that now has phone functionality. just like multiplayer cooperative games require communications, doesn't make them glorified chat clients. communication supports the function of playing the game cooperatively. the key is in the purposes that it's dedicated to.... for SL that's a several things.

but in the end, SL is what each person uses it for, and taken on a grande scale, All of those uses are valid, majority or otherwise.

Well that's true, but there are many chatrooms whose communities are not there just because they can chat - there are artists' chatrooms and gamers' chatrooms and... I mean, take this very forum as an example, are all of us here just "to post forum messages"? No, that's just a tool we use for a wider purpose, not our main motivation, and people have all kinds of main motivations.



Well I suppose this depends how you are comparing things. Obviously the functionality of SL is much greater than a chatroom client, but what I'm thinking more about is the _experience_ - what the user sees or hears and feels or does. I mean, imagine a chatroom where people can easily upload and swap 3D rendered images and .obj files and where new users can install Blender or another 3D tool in a single click if they want to join in. I would say in that case, that the chatroom has "enabled" people to do 3D modelling in the same way Second Life can, and that the fact that the program code of Blender is not part of the same executable file as the chatroom client doesn't change that, because the experience is so similar.

The point is that all chatrooms and communities share some common traits simply as a result of human nature and SL shares those whereas many virtual worlds don't because they use "tricks" to disable them, such as -



Ah, but it's not quite as simple as that because often the game has been designed to break or subvert the normal rules of communication.



But that isn't actually saying anything, because for anyone to get to the stage of actually using SL for something, that use must have been valid. The people who tried invalid usages never managed to use SL for them - they couldn't because the use was invalid.

Somehow I feel good that the child AV issue is so moot that all we can debate is wether or not SL is a chat site. (^_^) Silly (^_^)y

Well it's sort of relevant, because they're linked. The reason why I say SL is like a chatroom is because, at the core level, the only thing you can really do is to "fit in". And the child avatar issue is really a similar one because it's about whether those avatars fit in or not, and how much they need to fit in in order to meaningfully be kids on SL.

You know. You're right.

I've been playing an SL child for a little over a year now and honestly, this stuff is just gone. And good riddances! I remember a year ago wanting to take a nice bubble bath after going to most of the kids malls. You'd just see stuff that was. Well. Ick. And explore by searching for "kids" or "child"? That was a edumacation. 0.o I just never run into any of this stuff anymore. The ban worked and it's gone. Yay!

Now we kids can be kids!