Responding to some feedback

Earlier today, one of our Observers privately shared some feedback with me. I wanted to share the gist of it (without attribution) and respond to it. This person also provided me some Notecards, but I'm reluctant to share them with you without his/her consent.

If anyone who prefers not to post here or for whatever reason is unable to post here wants me to share their thoughts here, please drop me a notecard in world with the legend "please post in the forum" and whether you want attribution or anonymity. Unless it is contrary to the moderation guidelines, I'll be happy to post it here.

Part of the feedback was that I had displayed bias towards Neualtenburg by writing a summary analysis of its polity and suggesting it as a model of one possible format for self-organization.

I chose Neualtenburg because I had to start somewhere, and I was able to find information about its organization, governance and accounting. I've not found as much information about any other in-game organization, but I'm just one avatar.

The value of having 30 Observers is that they can all pick an organization and share the key points of their structure with us. So, please do.

Also, anyone is free to comment on my analysis, and I hope they do. That's the whole point of styling my observation as including a "Request for Comment" or "RFC." If you see some flaws or challenges with the structure Neualtenburg is using, by all means, share it in a civil way in keeping with the moderation guidelines.

Its also been said that I've been siding with one Observer or another. I have shared my opinions when I found that I agreed with some comments here, in the hopes of fostering discussion in the earlier stages of the Law Society. If I have in any way stifled discussion instead of encouraging it, I sincerely apologize for that is the opposite of my intention.

In order to have a dedicated Group Forum, LL required me to designate a second moderator, and I chose an individual who in my humble opinion had contributed comments in the forum that were grounded in information as well as opinion and were stated in a civil, moderate fashion. Clearly, that second moderator was not alone in showing that character, and designating that individual was not intended to be a slur on anyone else.

Another suggestion was to have in-game meetings as well as discussions in the forums. I encourage that, but my personal schedule is such that I cannot count on being in-world during the "prime time" hours after 5 PM Eastern US time and into the night.

Also, my personal experience with chat/forum discussions over 10 years of using them for personal and professional purposes is that the forum format offers a superior venue for considered discussions and responses. The short message length of chat and the "overlap" inherent in conversations makes equitable participation by all difficult.

Finally, in-world meetings always suffer from the disparate schedules of participants, so inevitably not all can participate. But that's just my experience, and I hope those who wish to meet in-world do so.

There are other points that were made to me that I'm still absorbing. But the bottom line is that this is your group, though I'm its creator and "wrangler." If you have a better idea, by all means, let's hear it or see it.

Others' thoughts on these points?

Choosing Neualtenburg for the first study in no way shows 'favoritism". Some organization had to be first, and given the amount of material you were able to collect in a short period of time, I think it was an excellent choice.

I support your view as to the very limited value of ingame discussion meetings. We should work to document as much as possible, and this discussion group is the best method to share comments and ask questions. It is very structured, and easy to compile a record of exchanges. For all the reasons you mention, ingame meetings would not be a good way to share knowledge, and would tend more toward the social than the analytical.

Maybe it's because you guys are lawyers, but this is the second long post I have seen from you on Neualtenburgs "polity" and I still don't see any content or anything to comment on. Did you ever get beyond the summary you posted earlier? I can't find it any more.

Also, I am interested in whether you are studying Neualtenburg from a political or from a legal point of view. It seems like the latter, but I don't see how you can do that without first talking about the former.

One of the things that always comes up in Neualtenburg discussions about legal issues for instance is the fact that we are in fact bound by the Linden TOS and to a lesser degree, the laws of California state.

In that light, any Neualtenburg legal structures have to be subsets of those legal frameworks (they aren't always) to be valid, and for that reason any talk of legal issues within Second Life is kind of specious isn't it?

I mean I have to assume that even though you are a legal society, what you are really studying here is the government structure itself, i.e.- politics, not law.

The Neualtenburg thread is at /246/13/76833/1.html. It is in the Group Forum for the Law Society, and probably survives in the Neualtenburg forum in an earlier draft. I've deliberately decided to allow 7 days for others to comment before I chime in about it.

In the start I made, I've tried to focus on the legal structure, avoiding its politics. The legal structure of an organization can be adapted in multiple ways and can be separated from its political direction. What I tried to do initially is summarize the elements of the organization. If that seems accurate, the next step would seem to me to be to start commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of that structure in various contexts. Comments like that are what I requested in the thread pointed to above.

If we can channel comments about Neualtenburg to that thread, we can avoid confusion. I mentioned it here only as the source of one of several criticisms to which I wanted to respond.

Okay, thanks for the reply.
From this I get:

"early stages yet"

It will be interesting to see what your analysis comes up with and how it progresses.

Let me start with the disclaimer that I'm a Neualtenburg citizen.

I don't think anyone has mentioned what I believe was the best reason to do an RFC on Neualtenburg -- its transparency. Consider that Neualtenburg:

1. Posts transcripts of public meetings in its forum - viewable by any SL resident.

2. Has a public web site, the contents of which include:

Governance Documents

Foundational Documents (Constitution, Covenants, etc.)

The identities and roles of all members of the government

Financial Documents

Monthly balance sheet and statement of income and expenses

the identities of all land holders, descriptions of their parcels(including most recent sales price), and amount of their monthly land fee

I can think of no other project which provides anything like this amout of information. In a typical situation, learning about governance of a themed build would go something like this----

1. Visit build
2. Look for largest land parcel
3. Mouse over to find land owner
4. IM this person and hope he/she is willing to answer questions

OK, so it's an overgeneralization. Certainly some project leaders are very willing to share governance information, although rarely financials.

In this respect I do think Neualtenburg is a model (in the sense of something others ought to emulate). The key to building confidence in SL and particularly its economy is to put everything meticulously above board. Neualtenburg doesn't have all the answers in this area, but I firmly believe it's farther along than most in asking the right questions.

Claude, your comments are thoughtful and valuable.

They would be especially pertinent placed in the thread dedicated to the discussion of the Neualtenburg analysis, "Case Study of Neualtenburg and RFC" at:
/246/13/76833/1.html

In the non-group forums we sometimes see poster comments like: 'wrong forum' and moderator comments such as: 'moved to Classifieds'. Sometimes I visualize the original poster frowning when reading these things, even if the post really should be in Classifieds.

I agree that the comments from Claude and Dianne are appropriate for "Case Study of Neualtenburg and RPC", and I'm glad to see that one of these posters has copied his text from this somewhat peripheral thread to a new post in that core thread. I didn't feel like moving those posts, because of the vague negative associations mentioned above. Perhaps Frank feels the same way. A laissez-faire moderator style is the best. So far we have an incredibly civilized forum here.

This civil tone is all the more remarkable when considered in contrast to the forum controversies that have sometimes been attached to Neualtenburg. Looks like every contributor here shares an underlying respect for the work that has been done on the Nburg system, and the criticisms are handled in a manner analogous to the occasional critique between two architects who happen to be friends.

For example --