Prok is right. SL is a dog's breakfast. Why do people argue with this?

you have every right to be here and WITHOUT a big brother looking out for what he feels are your own best interests....after all without challenge SL is just playing dress up..

Thank'ee, Weedy.

I should touch on other things, too:

I hear all this talk of how Second Life "need [sic] to seek out new people and new ideas to get this party rolling".
I've got a frickin' GREAT idea:

How about more in-world scripting classes, in-world mentors that we can go to with our questions about scripting, more out-of-world tutorials, better example scripts, etc? Maybe then I would learn how to make a door that swings the way I want it to, or slides out of the way, or even fling an unwanted guest back by 10 meters while shouting "SOD OFF, INTRUDER!"
Scripting is just as important as building, in my eyes. Some of us just go with whatever's out there, that we can buy or pick up for free, because, hmm-gee-I-wonder, we aren't any good at building or scripting.

How about an out of world repository for basic textures, like wallpaper, house exteriors, windows, doors, and the like? Doesn't have to be the deviant/SheezyART of texture repositories. Just something - enough for us basic builders to get by on, and a quick and easy fix for people who don't happen to have The Gimp or Adobe Photoslop wrapped around their genitalia and ready to please them thirty-seven ways from Sunday.

And to top this off, how about more building classes? Not the "This is a prim. This is how to rez a prim." crap classes I keep running across.
I can rez prims quite well. I can shape things up here and there. I can put stuff together. I'm just not that creative at it. So, throw a creativity class of some sort in there. Give students a theme, and ask them to build from it; See what the heck springs up.

JM¢¢, however.

[edit]

Part of it is that we're expected to bring our own textures to the table.
Sadly, my case of amateuritis kicks in again. I'm no good at that.
I can't make clothes, wallpaper that doesn't suck, etc.

And yes, I do take this personally, when some of the ideas in this thread seem to be aimed at controlling what can and can't be built on land in a given sim. If these ideas were to suddenly be enforced, and they were enforced in my sim... Then this affects me personally.
Easier to sound off before the gun is fired at my head than after my brains are splattered against the firing squad's wall, would you not agree?

Its not up to the Lindens to provide us with textures, it's up to us. They have no idea what I need, nor do they care. Thats why they allow us uploads.

Araiya Bomazi ,

Yes, absolutely. These last few items are quite ideal.

LL could make them more feasible with better event supporting. For example, you could charge a minimum amount for direct teleportation to an event.

People would get something immediate (direct teleportation) and the amount would go to the event holder.

To keep people from scamming this, they could restrict it to linden sponsored events only.

Again, minor change (a prompt when you click teleport from the event) which could make a whole world of difference with regards to event holding.

Good point. Creativity is something that comes from 2 sources. The first source is from others, the second is from within. Now lets expand on this.

SL has a huge grid with a wide diversity of creations. By exploring, one often finds things which are impressive. Dont be shy to ask the builder how he/she was inspired by the build. They often would respond in kind, because they appreciate someone who is impressed by their work.

On the latter, be patient. Experiment, delete, link, unlink whatever. The more you try, the better you get. There is no cost to rezzing a prim and stretching or twisting it. When I started SL, I was clueless . I simply tried different things, then one day something jumps out at you. Who'd of thunk I'd be selling radios, certainly not me. With the help of some friends, innovation, PaintShop Pro and a need of a good product, I found my "niche".

Your idea is a good one. I agree that the classes have been few and far between lately.

What's highly troublesome about your response is that it illustrates you didn't read my post at all, you just reacted to the words "Community Association" and it conjured up images in your mind of communist Neighbourhood Watch Groups and Nazi Building Authorities and you shut down. You couldn't think.

Nowhere in my post did I say that CA's should have the authority to tell you what to build.

Nowhere in my post did I say that CA's should extend upwards, sideways, or downwards.

Nowhere in my post did I say that CA's should police builds as to style or content.

It's just not there anywhere in my post. It's not a sim government idea. Uh-uh.

It is something else.

1. Dispute resolution. Granted the people all have the right to build WTF they want on their land, we concede that giant poppies winding up to the sky don't sit well with modern ski lodges.We concede the freedoms but we also concede the need for helping to get through frictions, by pointing out reasonable things (that white build could be changed to green; it doesn't come up above the road; that person has only one side of their lot affected in a sim where she has the Linden road behind and the Linden sea in front and should count her blessings) etc.

2. Overarching, vague, loose, voluntary theme of zoning which isn't really "zoning" but just "guidance": 1) residential 2) clubs 3) malls 4) experimental.

That way, you don't get bludgeoned to death by a skyscraper.

3. Not everywhere. The Lindens do a few and see if this works. Players do a few and see if they work.

4. Charging for drawing on resources. That means that party-hounds with weapons and scripts and attachments have to pay for that pleasure with a bill in their box the next morning just like bills come for tier. That is, some equitable system is conceived whereby owners taking up lots of CPU, scripted objects, run-time whatever have a billable quantity just like those taking up square meters of pixels and prims. TMOT, once they clean this up, the ability of uber-griefers to seize 2048 meters of cheap sim and lag everybody to 37 will end in a heartbeat.

Riiiight, flame the new resident, then dump on them with your rhetoric. Impressive? I think not.

You, sir, have lost anything that resembles my attention span at this point.

Let's add to it that you have to throw in stupid comments about what I may have thought, and I find myself completely retracting anything that resembles me directly agreeing with you.
I'll agree that some of the things you mentioned were an interesting read, but at this point, consider anything else you say marked as "tl;dr" in my brain.

Thank you, drive through.

Yes, Prok, you have to admit it's kinda funny that you accuse Araiya of not reading your post when he/she did actually point out that they agreed mostly with what you said.

Not everyone who plays SL wants to belong to a "community association", even if they do want to own land. Nor does every player wish to belong to a group. Some players (myself, for one) not only enjoy the freedom of the SL world, but manage to enjoy that freedom without creating problems for others.

Much of what you are proposing leaves me with the impression that you would like to see SL become a mirror image of the real world, with all its rules and regulations, neighborhood associations and city zoning departments. Perhaps many players share your vision. I do not.

I play SL to escape, for a time, some of the restrictive realities of everyday life... not to duplicate them.

Just because collaboration was more supported would not necessarily mean everyone would have to collaborate.

I don't know what that means but I'm sorry if the slam felt too personal. It was not directed at you as a person, and was not done with any awareness that you were new because I generally don't look at dates, I look at content.

My comments were directed at the automatic knee-jerk reaction so many people have to any kind of group getting together to do anything in this game.

They loathe the thought and think it means building commissions like Nazis, and you fit that bill by immediately complaining about people who would tell you what to build or discourage your newbie attempts. But no one is doing that.

The freedom that players have to buy land and do what they want is precious. And they can do that. A Community Association just provides a means to resolve disputes and coordinate joint activity. It can lie dormant and never be used. But others can grab it and run with it. That's why I like it more than a "government". It is so high-flex you are free never to pick it up. It's just a tool.

A lot of kinks have to be ironed out of groups.

I hope you won't close your mind too earlier in your forum forrays because the forums are definitely from the FUCK YOU AND THEN DIE school of board discussion as it has been classified on the Internet.

But I hope you will listen and I'm happy to listen to you and I did indeed read your thread and I responded to the problem everybody has when they hear of a community group -- they go into shutdown.

And yet disputes could be resolved there without much effort.

I find irony blaze, in the fact that you are complaining about a "dog's breakfast" in this thread and that you have, in other threads stated that the "fic" wont be the ones to aid progress in SL, all while complaining about the "entertainment" slant in SL. I wonder if you realize that the first organized, zoned sims were done by "fic"? I wonder if you realize that this trend toward tringo and dancing didn't start until about a year ago? In other words, it seems that newer residents have brought these conditions into SL. I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Not that it bothers me in the least that entertainment is a big part of SL, it's supposed to be a 3d immersive version of the web and the web is dominated by entertainment as well.

It really doesn't matter to me what other people do in SL or what they do with their land, so long as it is not abusive. Nor do I think the demise of SL is near. No, it's not profitable yet, but it is moving in that direction. It is the nature of an MMOE of this size, especially one that started with just a small handful of employees and players. They have survived on VC thus far, so let's not try to prognosticate without actual facts.

I guess it boils down to a few choices, live with SL as is, find another MMOE more to your liking, or continually lament that LL is stupid and SL will fail because they won't follow your advice. Advice that in my opinion is cynical and misguided. In other words, they aren't going to heed your advice, no matter how right you think you are. That is because they built this world and they know where they want it to go. if your views are incompatible with that of LL's, I just don't know what to tell you other than you are wasting your time.

I think I'll pick my option.

Be open and willing to admit that I'm wrong and happily enage in debate and discussion with those who find SL a fascinating subject for rational and polite discourse.

When you start a thread with an inflammatory and insulting subject line, as you did with this one, you give up the right to expect a "rational and polite discourse."

Thanks for addressing my questions.

You are a master subject changer.

Rational? you are not very rational blaze. You have been here a few months and you think you have it all figured out. I still don't and I am going on 2 years. If you were rational about this you would research the fact that SL once teetered on the edge of failure. It survived despite the irrational alarmists then too.

It never ceases to amaze me Pol, that Prokofy and blaze cry so much about negative reactions that they in effect are soliciting by pouring their derision on supposed boogeymen that are "impeding the progress of SL".

Honey or dogshit? I think prokofy and blaze's choices are quite clear.

So, your premise is that if we point out facts about SecondLife which are not pleasant we should expect to be insulted and personally attacked?

That's an interesting theory.

Pol, I'm not attacking you personally. I'm not attacking anyone personally, for that matter (well, except perhaps Philip, but that's what you get for being the Man.)

I think that if you insult others in endless threads based on conjecture and hyperbole, you should not whine when the globs of shit you throw are thrown back at you.

My point is that you chose your words to provoke. You wanted to piss people off, and you did. Don't complain about about personal sniping when you fired the first volley.

Well, SL is full of amateur content was a bit awkward and didn't seem much more polite.

Perhaps I could have been softer in my original post, but again, I wasn't specifically directing my attention at anyone in particular.

And hey, nobody is perfect.

But, hey, I re-editted my original post to make it a bit more polite. I'll try to do better next time.

That's actually very cool of you, blaze. Do you get my point? When I read that SL was a dog's breakfast, I couldn't help but take it personally. I admit that I (like many others, I'm certain) have some emotional investment in this game, and it felt like you were trying to take advantage of that.

And this is a subject I wouldn't mind discussing, but the thread title drew the worst kind of unpleasant and tediously flamebaiting posts. I honestly couldn't bring myself to post until tonight.

Oh, absolutely. I don't think that's why I get attacked personally, but you're right it doesn't help matters.

And now since you did us the courtesy of modifying your original post, I will reply to the issue it raises.


Obviously there is nothing factually wrong about this statement. I do find it worrying as it seem to be an anti-education stance. Of course SL is filled with amateur content. How many of us have designed 3D structures professionally? How many of us code professionally? I hazard to guess that both groups are in the minority here. So what about the rest of us? Do we wait for a professional to build things for us, to code scripts for us? Or do we take advantage of the opportunity that SL offers us, the opportunity to actively learn how to "do" SL better?

Have some patience. How old is SL? Three years? Let's see how things look in ten years after today's amateurs have spent some time making "crappy" stuff and learning. Rome wasn't built in a yadda yadda yadda.