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Exactly, and not just one person but someone else too was asked to leave I believe as not a member, yet this was on linden land

So the essence of this Lias is that you don't accept that a group can have internal meetings?

The meeting Sunday was a ZA internal meeting and persons who were not group members were asked to leave. I think this is pretty standard for internal meetings.

Since then? You mean Friday? The ZA had a planning meeting that was inclusive of many voices for the first time today (almost twice as many that attended Blondin's meeting last week). There is now an agenda and a letter to LL being presented to Blondin tomorrow. People will feel more secure sitting back and allowing someone from the ZA talk for the collective. This move will hopefully bring more order to the Blondin meeting and he can actually hear the main concerns of the people for that week.

If not now, when Qie? When will ZA be called to task to handle such structuring? ZA needs to start 'doing it right', stumble, admit when it make a mistake and soldier on in an inclusive manner. That is all that is expected of the organization.

[2009/08/16 9:27] Devlin Davis: was there a reason why i was ejected from zindra?
[2009/08/16 9:27] Gavin Hird: you know why Lias
[2009/08/16 9:27] Devlin Davis: LOL actually i didn't but no biggie just curious.
[2009/08/16 9:28] Devlin Davis: np, just making sure
[2009/08/16 9:28] Gavin Hird: bye
[2009/08/16 9:28] Devlin Davis: see ya

Then hold it on your own land not Linden you have no riights to ask anyone to move on Linden property

Correct. It is a community group that should have a 'round table' set up. That means no bosses - all members of the community on the same level working toward goals they all agree on. Didn't you see what the Bay Alliance fellow said? No officers. And that is a working model.

It was not a internal meeting. It was a community planning meeting. Period.

And why waste your breath trying to enforce your arbitrary made-up-on-the-spot rules when you have absolutely no way of backing them up? It just makes you look like your out of touch and just making empty power plays.

As Zindra Alliance closes its ranks, kicks people for any or no reason - and I am sure start meeting on private land so non-believers cannot access them - it will loose the momentum you started today. And that is too bad.

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Gavin you cannot post people's private IMs in the forums. I just saw that - please function within the TOS.
And that Asian man is not me. I'm shocked you are boasting in the forums that you are just kicking anyone out of the Zindra Alliance group you think knows me. What kind of leader are you? I know you like the police way of doing things. Police like to keep order and protect the public from themselves. I think that is the wrong ideology for the Zindra Alliance.
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You told me you were kicking me at 1AM last night after I angered you. I was not online when you started going to every one of my parcels in every sim I own land. I logged on and asked you stop because you were creeping me out. You got insulted and angry and said you were kicking me out of Zindra Alliance. I will blog the convo if you deny it.

Please don't use the Zindra Alliance to pursue anymore personal vendettas.

I disagree because the transcription showed that meeting to be a shambles and it still does not seem to be sinking in that the ZA is not in charge of decisions it can on talk for itself

I knew when it was announced I wouldn't be able to attend yesterday's meeting so I'm trying to catch up with the transcript; it's taking me a while to work through it, but I did want to speak in favor of Ann's suggestion that voting be based on size of land ownership, not one-person-one-vote. I'm not saying here that basing it on size of land is good--in fact, it sucks--but it avoids what I think are fatal flaws with any alternative.

First, why it sucks:

1. It could bias results against smaller landowners (like me).

2. It would require that landowners be responsible for representing the interests of their tenants; that's a dicey proposition at best.

3. (kind of "1a" It would stack the deck in favor of land-flippers, if they assume large, positions on Zindra, with relatively fleeting and very specialized interests in the issues.

But, why it seems necessary:

1. It's possible to verify that somebody should have a vote. A parcel is owned by one entity, either an individual or a group, and a group can specify which owner or other representative should cast its votes. There's just no practical way to know, continent-wide, whether somebody is a non-landowning resident of Zindra. ("Yes, my 30 'sisters' and I all share this little box in the sky--cozy, don't you think?"

2. It defeats alt abuse. If votes were one-per-landowner, unweighted by amount of land, come the first vote, Zindra would be diced-up like a continent-sized adfarm, each tiny bit "owned" by an alt.

I suppose one could tinker with the details. For example, maybe impose a waiting period before ownership of a specific parcel qualifies for voting, the point being to reduce the disproportionate weighting for those whose interest in owning a parcel is to get somebody else to own it as fast as possible. I don't really think it's worth it, but it's a possibility.

It would be wonderful if somebody smarter than me could find a better way around the voter verification and alt abuse problems because, again, this land-weighted voting scheme sucks. I just don't know of a viable alternative.

(Well, I do know of one alternative: don't vote at all, and don't as a group try to address matters requiring representative governance, instead letting individuals speak for themselves. That's where we've been so far, but it has--obviously--raised complaints that individual meeting attendees aren't representative of all of Zindra.)

The group does not have any land and has as much right to use public land as anyone else.

There is something called courtesy. By insisting on interrupting a group event in progress, you make yourself a griefer.

Would you insist on interrupting a wedding, a picnic, a football game, a group of scouts in RL just because it was on municipal land? - I don't think so.

The person you insisted leave was not disruptive. Jargo invited her there. She owns Slapt.me. She was just an ally of ZA on Saturday. Yours is a fickle regime.Can you get on the same page with your own group owner? Ann O'toole was the most aggressive there today - but she made some good suggestions that the crowd liked.

Yes you have as much right as anyone else to hold your meeting on public land, but you are a group that tells Blondin you are representing Zindra, and that is not true, if you are secret in your meetings that is not prepresenting a commuity. All I am saying is that the people you wanted to remove were landowners and I saw nothing discourteous in the way that they acted, infact I would suggest that Constanza Amsterdam was very polite and picked up on many points that are of concern, such as use of the word demand, and the implication the group used for its note to Blondin that ZA spoke for everyone.

Gavin all you need to do to put things right is inform Blondin that you are represting the ZA and those people in it only that you cannot speak for anyone else, I am sure that Blondin is under the impression your group has much more support then it actually has.

Was Jago's partner Eddi asked to leave the meeting as well? Just wondering. I sincerly hope that Blondin gives some clarification on all of this later today as I think the ZA is trying to run before it can even walk and is being severly damaged IMHO in all of this. It would certainly be nice to see Jago's take on all of this as he is the groups founder and it would be good to see the ZA go back to what it started out as and thats a community group and it forgets the idea that it speaks for anyone on Zindra.

Just my thoughts though

What the other Zindra Landowner group is doing is not giving the voting results as much weight as ZA seems to gearing up to give it. There will be kiosks that will require everyone to verify their avatar name - so its one vote per issue. But this is 'taking the temperature' of the community. We share the results with the community and use them while discussing and deciding upon any community issues. Not so much pressure to police the voting process.

Zindra Alliance is nothing but a Special Interest Group (SIG) and as such has no authority or power over anything at all. All ZA represent is a way to bring specific issues to the table. The purported reason Blondin attends ZA meetings is the size of the group. If that is the determining factor then any group that grows beyond ZA wins and Blondin must change.

To be honest I do not see why Blondin is using his time on ZA, Blondin has an office hour. People can go to that OH.

Again "ZA" has no power. There were no elections. It is just an sl group. If Jago and Gavin have a difficult time understanding they are nothing but just another resident then my recommendation is to disband the group and be done with it.

I can start another group. So can anyone. Same goes with websites or whatever.

Currently the questions for LL are simple. Why is LL allowing private islands to circumvent the adult oriented content policy? LL needs to enforce or remove the policy. Otherwise it looks like malfeasance in which LL is trying to intentionally damage adult businesses. I do not feel this is the case. I feel LL just underestimated the entire scope of the issue and things are all askew now. LL needs to answer some questions before this goes beyond LL's sphere of control.

Gavin your double standards are becoming more apparent to everyone.

You know there is a island in Second Life that caters to non-profit agencies. Perhaps Zindra Alliance can get a representative of a RL Community Development group from this island to advise them until ZA gets on its feet. It seems as if you do not have anyone in the group that has any experience in this area.

I was never quite clear on the Estate vs. Adult Mainland issue - the transcript today helped me understand it. And I saw alot more people were educated today also. So this is great. We all know the main issue - and we all know the results that a large number of residents want to resolve this issue. We shall see how that pans out tomorrow.

Wise or not, the reason is that Jack told him to have such an hour-long meeting dedicated to Zindra matters,* distinct from Blondin's regular office hour where his other responsibilities--notably, infohub maintenance--are the prime topics. The intent is to have a Linden representative hold a meeting at each major zoned area (Bay and Nautilus Cities, at least) and possibly the unzoned continents, eventually.

The exact role of the Alliance in these meetings is murky now, but it was certainly not to be chair, originally, and I'll be very surprised if it ever comes to that. The group was and remains useful for getting the word out that the meeting is about to start, and it's useful that one individual (Jago, so far) provides what little order there has been to the meetings from the resident side.

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*Constanza mentioned this at the Sunday meeting; she's correct.

Eddi is a member of the group - he rejoined after Lias was kicked.

Jago teleported Constanza Amsterdam to the meeting as he did not know she had left the group ( I am not sure exactly when that happened.)

Zindra Alliance has never claimed to speak for everyone in Zindra. We are a group on line with the Bay City Alliance group - an opt-in interest group.

We have, like BCA, invited Blondin to meet with us on a weekly basis in a meeting we have facilitated on municipal land where everyone could participate on egual standing and voice their opinion regardless of membership in ZA or not.

It is mainly Lias who has been shouting for ZA to become a community group representing everyone in Zindra (a construct which I personally think is a fallacy; to do that you need a much more structured approached based on true democratic process and representation based on the one-vote-per-person principle. I dont see how that can be easily achieved in SL right now.)

* Lias has stirred up a shit storm asking for process where the group (ZA) should discuss their standing on issues before the meeting with Blondin.
* She got process!
* The meeting yesterday was a group-internal part of that process.
*She also is excluded from the group so she is now standing on the outside of that process pissing up another storm.

Don't let yourself be deceived by her cross postings in this forum by her alts.

If you read the posting on Lias' expulsion, you would see it was not written by me. Jago, Brie and I are in total agreement it was a required action. Brie was not consulted as the note was written, but it was discussed at length between the 3 of us in a meeting the day before it happened.

This.

Community groups open to the public, as in the public who buy, rent, play, etc are best left as forums for the exchange of ideas and discussion. In groups like this, there are always competing interests. Very rarely, if ever, does a consensus emerge. And a vote simply means that the minority are often disenfranchised by the majority.

IMO, groups like ZA are kinda doomed from the outset, simply because they aspire to be more than they ever can be. Too democratic, too noble even. Great idea and all that, but little if anything ever comes from them, other than as a place to meet and kick around ideas.

If one wants to achieve anything then I think its far better for a group of like-minded individuals to come together and form an advocacy group, albeit on a vested interest basis. Like what USS did, as opposed to the OS collective group thingy that kinda went nowhere in the end.

Is no reason why there can't be more than one advocacy group on Zindra. Its a big place and intended to get bigger. Those groups, while having competing interests in many areas of business, will find common ground in others and can present a united front on those to Linden Research.

When those groups present differing opinions to LR on any subject (as they surely will at times) then whatever decisions LR do make, will at least be made after considering well-researched (if opinionated) positions.

And it isn't about the number of people in the respective advocacy groups, it never is really. Its about the argumentation and the dollars that the respective advocates back that up with. At least in business circles anyways.

I don't think there's a chance in hell that LL will relabel Zindra sims as Mature. It would be an obvious step backwards for their Adult Content initiative, and I can't see them admitting that a step backwards is necessary.

Not everyone understands why the failure to make viewer 1.23 mandatory is a problem. And in fact it wouldn't be, except that they're talking about stripping Adult Content (especially Search results) from 1.22 and earlier viewers, mid-September.

Now, I thought this was hugely unfair and an enormous problem. I know a lot of folks who tried 1.23 and said "screw this crap" and reverted to 1.22. Having tried various versions of Snowglobe, I'm pretty sure it will get even slower adoption. And SL09/2.0 appears to much delayed--I very much doubt we'll see it this year in anything but a closed beta.

However, some folks who apparently do understand what is now slated to happen in September nonetheless seem fine with it. I started a thread on SLU about the effects on Estates (because I know at least Stroker reads there), but there didn't seem to be much concern about it. So maybe I'm just wrong about how big a deal this is.

Anyway, what I'd suggest is that we not ask Blondin to *do* something, but rather to *not* do something. (Generally, LL is better equipped for not doing things.) Specifically, I'd want LL to not turn off Adult Content to pre-1.23 viewers until they have statistics to show that at least 90% of user-hours are from 1.23 (or other known, adult-content-capable) viewers.

Ideally, I'd prefer that they turn on Adult search results for all pre-1.23 viewers as default; upgrade if you want to filter out Adult results. The problem is that this would be a change (an easy one, but still a change), and--as with relabeling Zindra to Mature--appears to regress their progress on the Adult Content initiative, so I don't think they'll go for it.

Eddie was not in the group during the meeting today - that was confirmed by members that checked, Gavin. And you just keep on trying to cloud the issue by demonizing me. Eddie said to me he had logged on to drop the ZA group because he was sick of people complaining to him. Many people wanted to know why his personal magazine was being advertised in the ZA Group. So he quit. If he is back as an officer I do not know why.
Jago was the one that told you leave her alone and continue the meeting.
Bay City Alliance group founder already said his group is not like yours - because they do not kick anyone. I founded several open enrollment groups - and there are disagreements - but I stop what I am doing, talk to the parties involved and address their issues. I started the open enrollment Zindra Adult Event Announcement Group because I assumed we had to have a adult content group to announce events using those adult words. People join and venue owners and managers ask for the manager tag to send announcements. No one has abused the group at all. ZA is a special case completely.
No. Inclusive of all its members when making decisions. Take some responsibility Gavin. And 'taking responsibility' does not mean deciding what is best for the membership. It means admitting that you needed to make this inclusive meeting happen a long time ago.
Gavin I am not excluded from any process, That meeting was on public land. I could have attended if I had wanted to and you could not have done anything about it. There you go flexing your muscles again with nothing to back it up.

Gavin your posting about issues in a PUBLIC forum. We were having these conversations and will continue to do so. Yes, I stirred your shitty little mess and it stank to high heaven. Glad to see your cleaning it up. But focus on your development and not me. Your just engaging in a forum spat. If it is for your entertainment value - then by all means keep it up. I have a very thick skin.

As far as I am concerned I will await clarification from Blondin as to the ZA status as I feel now it has over stepped its mark from its initial inception.

As Qie, me and others have stated Blondin holds a Zindra office hours for all Zindra land owners not just those in the Zindra Alliance all Blondins OH transcripts are on the slapt.me wiki so as soon as I have some time I will try and find the details on them as stated in the begining.

All I see now is what was once a group with the potential of becoming a good community run group, now sinking into a mire and thats a shame. We will at slapt.me continue to support community efforts on Zindra and will continue to encourage Zindra land owners to attend Blondins Office Hour on Zindra as individuals and will resist all attempts of yourself to make the ZA an exclusive group only to control what is discussed at these office hours.

I would respectfully suggest that you step down as officer of the ZA and let it be run as a community group rather than one to serve your own agenda before the group loses most of its members to a true community run group.

The moment a so-called community group begins kicking people out who have a charter reason to be there (owns land) then that group has fallen into the null and void bucket.

The only zindra group that will be valid is one with no land and all members are owners.

Since such a group is untenable then "government" in SL is a futile exercise.

In addition, as to the "one vote per person" suggestion, that is garbage. Votes are proxied based on land ownership. One vote per the smallest owned parcel size is the only way you will get there. So if the smallest LL cut parcel is 1024 then there is 1 vote per 1024 owned. This gets murky with full regions so for full regions it is divided in half to be equitable. Or we can go by prim count. One vote per prim?

The point being someone that owns a ton of land in the continent has more voting power than one person with one 1024 parcel. If this is not acceptable then there is simply no government possible. This is because the people that pay the most to LL will have the most power anyway because they can lobby LL direct and get more attention. *They will win*.

I.e.; Wake up. This thing is not a government. In addition one well articulated person can hold much more power than any group of inarticulate people because the articulate one can play the politics game better. That is life.

Have I convinced you that you don't want a government yet?

http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Office_Hours_Transcript_-_Jack_Linden:_07-16-2009



Where does he say ZA is the mouthpiece for these meetings? they are OH not private meetings

I don't want that. I said I think it is a fallacy. Today, yesterday, a week ago, next month.