Olmy's Town Hall Question

The question is posted here.

I've heard this asked a hundred times a dozen ways but never so clearly and in a way that accomodates every possible answer. What are those answers? We have the same content mangement goal and have now combined dwell with ... to achieve it; we have a different goal and have combined dwell with ... to achieve it; we abandoned the idea of regulating content but kept dwell because ... ; or we hold daily rat races in the office to decide what to do.

This question will either be answered intelligently early in the discussion, or we'll know that the answer is rat races.

Khamon,

I'm glad he's asking the question, but it is obscure, and replete with obscure references, and doesn't clarify really what he means or wants.

I went and read the paper. Making a gratuitous and suck-uppy sort of reference to a Philip Linden paper doesn't guarantee you a hearing in Town Hall, unfortunately for you.

I read the paper. It's the usual breathless tekkie stuff: "Oh, wow, we made something kewl and shiny! And oh, wow, it streams!"

Strip all that away -- and there's a lot of it. You are left with just this:

"We're hoping that content that doesn't get the dwell will go away."

Well that about sums it up. In their social-engineering wisdom LOL, they imagined a world that would be filled with all kinds of earnest types in horn-rimmed glasses wearing Birkenstock sandals and eating granola. And they pictured these beings as having, oh, scripting clases, or making Taj Mahal replicas.

And lo and behold, they were wrong, because all these partiers, clubbers, av decorators, etc. -- people playing club and house -- came in the game. So then they built huge club boxes that got all the dwell. And they built huge Tringo game barns that got all the dwell.

Now the Lindens -- and maybe Khamon and Olmy too -- wish all those bad ugly builds and ideas and culturally low-brow thingies would just *go away* in the way that Philip stated explicityly that "bad builds should just go away".

He forgot that he is not the only arbiter of what is "bad" even tho he invented the game.

Really, I"d invite Olmy to rephrase and consolidate his question, without the reference to Philip's paper, which is mainly just about a lot of streaming crap and how you house it on servers, and not really about the Big Questions of Society like you might be misled to believe if you go click on that link.

What I'd like to propose is a more democratic and more participatory dwell dollar in the possession, and on the feet, of every player. I'd like it to work as a draw-down account. Everyone signs on, and has X amount to use. They dwell and they give it out, and are conscious of what they are doing. This way, cartels of dwellopers can be broken by new people and those determined to have non-profit projects.

What Philip forget in his formula is what to do about those things that are good in a society, and are of the public interest, but which the public might not vote for. Example: a script library might be in the public interest, but people won't dwell there or pay for it. Or an Iraqi War Memorial. Or any number of things that some people might deem "good" -- i.e. the use of Second Life as a forum to help battered partners of abusers, or whatever. People aren't going to dwell and support that per se -- it isn't a mass activity like a club or mall -- but a few people might go and spend all their dwell dollars on it in order to recognize its need for any society.

Could this be gamed? Hell, yes. But gaming requires social skills, networks, activity, entrepreneurial skills too.

I think the obscure formulas used for the current dwell system, the low numbers of points, etc. just don't translate into any meaningful activity. I'd rather see the Lindens plough the RL dollars they spend on dwelloper awards back into the game to have ordinary players be able to really vote with their feet.

Just because you are ignorant of something doesn't make it obscure. (Anyone who has done even minimal reading on economics is familiar with the concept of the invisible hand.) And my question was quite clear. It may not be the question you would ask, but I am actually interested in hearing an answer to what I asked.



My reference was not gratuitous or suck-uppy. It was the whole foundation for my line of questions. I don't really care if my name gets mentioned in the town hall or not, but I am curious about this issue. I also don't worry much about good vs. bad builds. We elitist snobs have our own islands and don't care what the hoi polloi do on the mainland.

You're one of those Chritian Creationists who don't believe in evolution, aren't you! Go hug a tree, Bible thumper.

Well... If there is an "intelligent designer", he ain't that bright if he designed Prokofy!



- Ace

So Olmy is either stupid or intentionally trying to mislead me.


And this means that Philip and Cory are too stupid to be misleading?


I gotcha. We're all wrong.


You, on the other hand, are right and everyone should do as you say.

I don't think it's "evolution" if due to the dwell system, which can eminently be gamed, that some good lots, that have a lot to contribute to the game, but just don't have the visitors, are somehow "punished".



Actually, I'm totally versed on the invisible hand. And that article isn't really *about* the invisible hand. It's an article that consists 75 percent of the story of how they got stuff to stream and store and merge on servers. It's not really a thorough-going economic or sociological or philosophical article at all. It's a tekkie article about streaming stuff which has about 4 sentences tops about the invisible hand idea -- and not a very fleshed-out concept at that.

Is that how tekkies have to take their economics and philosophy, served up as one-liners sugar-coated in an article mainly about shiney stuff?

Go and look at it, you'll see what I mean.

I'm not ignorant about the ideas in it, or even about the tekkie stuff in it-- any idiot can read it and follow it. My point is that it is an unnecessarily obscure and unhelpful reference,
and the article is nowhere near the cogent treatise that you've led us to believe by referencing it.




Yeah, I'm aware of that. And you got your question -- at least some question -- in the town hall. Happy now?

Jarod Godel: What do the Lindens think of the "techie/wiki" community? Or the Feted/Fetid Inner Core?
Robin Linden: I think it's an interesting myth.

Yes, and in fact I read the paper for the tech stuff primarily. The bit about the role of dwell happened to jump out at me, and thus my question.



I said nothing about the paper being a cogent treatise. I said I found it fascinating and that it prompted a question. Why do you have to put words into my mouth in order to invent a disagreement where none exists?

As usual, you have taken a thread about a topic and turned it into a thread about the discussion of the topic. If you can't stick to the topic, can you at least refrain from sniping at people who are trying to actually discuss it?

Olmy, what was your question again? You packaged it in so much stuff, that it wasn't clear. Could you just ask it, without a lot of guff?

My question was asked in a brief (and acceptable) form in the town hall, and received an answer. Weren't you paying attention, or do you need it dumbed down more than that?

Hell has now officially frozen over.

Here's the answer in as few bytes as possible: "The original intent was to reward content that other residents found interesting enough that they spent time with it. There has been a good deal of debate about how effective they are as a tool, and like many other things will need updating as the world changes. Next?"

As far as I can tell, that translates to rat races. Things such as developer incentives and dwell work just like any other socialist giveaway program. They generally meet a need for a few rounds, then become just another stupidly funded crutch with no actual purpose to fulfill. Things like this don't need to be updated as the world changes. Things like this need to be implemented with a clear goal and terminated either when that goal is achieved, or it becomes evident that the program no longer meets the goal.

The debate and planning should occur before implementation. If fact, that should all be ironed out and documented for everybody, liasons included. This is textbook stuff. Governments don't follow this type of policy for obvious reasons. Businesses do because it's important to their bottom lines and employees' job security.