SL Certification

You're entitled to your opinion, but that isn't typical for certification, either in this case or in similar cases in industry. And it's not the stated intent for LL's certification process.

You should read the proposal before making assumptions. LSL is just one area. They're also covering building, weapons, and all manner of other content-creating activities.

OK, here's my feedback. If you want to improve script quality in SL, do the most important thing first, and document LSL.

Seriously: have you looked at LL's documentation for LSL? It's ridiculous. Pathetic.

Their tutorial is nice. The rest is barely adequate. The Wiki is great but depends on the results of testing rather than intended behavior.

There is no point certifying scripters without underlying language documentation. And you won't get this feedback from the testing organizations, because they're in business to get business and make money: they'll help produce tests and run the process whether it makes sense or not. Only the end customers (LL and SL residents) are responsible for the certification process to be meaningful and useful.

It's a bit of a shame they're conflating LSL with other things for certification, because LSL has the potential for things like safety certification, when those issues don't come up with other things.

It would be nice to have a certificate, for example, saying that you're familiar with how money events work and can be trusted to have debit granted to your objects. Also included would be an exercise where you have to take 2 scripts and merge their functionality into 1 - so that we don't get cases such as, for example, a fairly simple "cage" object I saw which contained 15 seperate scripts (!) because the author either did not know how to, or could not be bothered to, merge their events.

But making the certification apply to for example building as well kind of implies that this issue won't be raised - instead it'll be a general competence test.

So...glancing through this I see the 2 points of this certification is to:

A) Vouch for your skills in case someone wants to hire you -
I only work for myself or my group...most creators I've met/know are the same.

B) Compare your work to a standard or measure your accomplishments -
Ok..this is the one that gets me. There is no standard way of doing anything, and in content creation there is no "best" way to do something. It's all based on individual preferences.

As someone who specializes in vehicles, I have an ever-widening range of ships just to try and meet more of these desires for people.

Like prim usage. I make my ships physical, so I've learned to do some crazy things with 30 prims or less if I want additional passengers.

I also have a few newer ships that are high in prims, but use attachments to remain physical. I could've done the basic ship in 30 or less, but I chose to do it this way instead.

Why? Because it's what I wanted to do.

That's the whole point of Second Life...create or do what you want to do.

The only hinderances are supposed to be in the area of how it affects other people, and I really advocate against allowing people to benefit over others because someone agrees with the way they like to do things.

It's like if I were to compare Reyo Nuetra's Enterprise 1701-A to mine it wouldn't really be a fair comparison because we both went it about it differently. Mine is more detailed, but her's is less prims.

That's just comparing the building...if you go down into the scripting it encompasses a whole lot more and I really don't think there's any fair way to judge any of it.

Learjeff, thanks for pointing this out. I'll pass on your concern.

Cale, i'm working on your questions now. This is in process, and we need your help to hammer out these tough questions. I'll have a reply to you shortly.

Tiarnalalon, interesting comments on point b). I'm not sure though why this is an argument against Certification. Are you saying that two boats constructed by two different Residents are entirely different and that there is no base commonality in the structure of the build?

Keep it coming!

Well, aside from scripting, and obeying the 31 prim limit (in the case of physical vehicles)...What makes one car, boat, house, statue, gun, etc.. better than another?

Building is an entirely "ARTISTIC" excercise in SL. there is no gravity, no materials strength, no wind, no weather. A house without a roof is no more subject to the elements as one with a roof. thick walls will not protect you from trees or particle weather any more than paper-thin walls, A floor "made" of cheese is as durable and "up to code" as one made of bricks, cement, or steel. There is no plumbing, no electricity, and no worries about fires or building collapses.

You can certify a drafter in RL. you can certify an architect, and builder, a plumber, a house painter.... but you can't "certify" an artist.

WHo is to say that an utterly realistic, split level home with an accessable attic, true-to-life textures, scripted lighting that deactivates when you leave a room, and a camera-friendly ceilling height... is any better than a garish hot-pink-and-black, shiny, box with an animating dancefloor texture for it's interior walls?

What separates yours average sandboxer, from Starax?

Frankly, I don't see much value in attempting to certify builders. Since it's more or less a kindergarten course. "what is a prim?" "how do you unlink one prim from a linkset?".. okay a couple of those many people may not KNOW.. but the resulting certification is valueless IMO. Kind of like passing a "Computer Literacy" course at a community college. Big Woop.

Now, LSL is a technical matter. And while there is a certain "art" to it, it's not *AS* subjective as "quality of a build". you CAN test an LSL script for processor time, memory used, length.. you can test for basic competency in using it. And competency in a technical area, is worth certifying.

Competency in an artistic area.. is useless.

How do you determine a competent cartoonist? a competent writer? a competent poet? a competent photographer?

You can test to see if they know how to operate the tools.. (photography is a good example)... you can check to see if they can load film into a camera, test them on how fstops work, how to use a light meter, how to process their own film, and how to develop prints.

but certification won't determine skill level. And all the Photographer Certifications you can get, won't keep you from cutting off people's heads, getting your thumb in the shot, or doing "batman" camera angles.

in a Photo class, a photo well developed that shows goos contrast, deep black and bright whites, without losing definition... can be a beautiful photo of a swan on a lake, or a dead mouse in your basement.

You can't certify artistic ability.

the only requirement in SL for "a building" is prims. The only requirement in SL for a weapon is prims, and a script. The same can be said for vehicles, or really much of anything. Someone mentioned wanting to see Certification extended to texture artists... What would a texture certification prove?

"this person knows the required file formats and sizes used by SL, knows how to successfully generate an alpha channel, and can upload an image."

Once again I say.. "big woop". Doesn't mean that their textures won't suck.

Just like "understanding how the money event works" doesn't ensure that the person with that certification isn't unscrupulous. (frankly, the crooks have to understand how the money event works, in order to steal all your money).

The longer this discussion goes on, the less value I see in any form of SL certification.

In reading Winter's post...I'm gonna have to agree wholeheartedly with everything said.

I mean, I have my own qualifications for what I feel is quality in a build (do the textures align without break, are they properly sized throughout, are there visible 'seams' between prims, did someone just 'waste' prims where prim-torture or creative texturing would have saved against prim-usage (I am a firm believe that more prims != better build), etc)...

...not only are all of my estimations of the quality of a build my own opinion (though the opinion may be shared by many), they are not easily measurable through a certification course.

I guess a building certification course could work through basic math functions:

"If I have a 10 x 10 x 1 floor prim at <89.232, 33.491, 26.103> and want to place a 0.5 x 10 x 5 wall prim centered along the most positive Y edge of the floor with a smooth edge, where--exactly--would I place the wall prim?"

The result would be an indication that one has the knowledge to use math in their building structures and could create seamless large structures...

...however, when I build weaponry, I often find that small prims don't necessarily perfectly line-up if you just go 'by the numbers'. There is often some "wiggle-room" between 30.001 and 30.002 that isn't registered mathematically by the build edit window.

And LSL certification would be slightly more viable, as there are definitely best practices that involve memory and CPU optimization, but the documentation on what exactly works and what exactly doesn't is--as mentioned several times already by LearJeff Innis--documented only by trial and error testing and is not always 100% accurate.

I DO think that a method of determining quality from crap is a bonus that many who strive to build quality would welcome in SL--but it most definitely needs a lot of careful thought and may not be best served by a certification process. The question of bias comes up in any other solution, however, so I'm at a loss for offering a better route.

Winter - you have a way of putting the issues that I am forced to completely agree with As they put it else where - "What they said"

I think Winter brought the point across that I was trying to convey a lot clearer than I did. Pains of posting at work.

Even rating scripts based on the amount of pressure they put on a sim would be hard to do in my opinion since there's a lot of areas where it just isn't clear as to what method for doing a particular thing is better than another sim-wise.

I would love to see a similar project used to collaborate methods for doing things to actually give hard results in efficiency, but otherwise I don't see a benefit for this.

I mean, a vehicle or weapon scripter may be more talented in LSL than a house scripter, but in the end they could still produce the best results in their respective field.

If you were to ask me to code a gun that could do X and Y, and give it a round that does Z, I would just go cross-eyed trying to figure it out. However, if you asked me to present a highly functional menu or flying craft parameters, then I would drop something on you in a few minutes.

I mean, if someone were to look for an item...and in the searching they see one produced by someone who is a certified builder and scripter next to someone else who specializes in that one type of item, they would probably overlook the specialist and go for the version made by someone who just knows enough all around to pass those tests that may cover something the specialist has no idea how to do since it doesn't apply to what they make.

Very good point. However, we should still try to identify who at least knows how to use the basic SL tools. That's the aim of certification.

Why? SL has survived this long without the need to know who can build/script/texture. What has changed to make this a requirement?

Isnt leaving Welcome island meant to be a self certification as to competency with the basic's?
(Waits for the laughter to stop)

May be every resident should be made to sit an entrance exam next time they login?
We all get put into 10 x 10 x 10 boxes that we can only leave by building a 20 prim teleport in the shape of your choice.
Mind you I'd set up home and enjoy the peace and quiet.

"basic SL Tools"
Thats an interesting question in itself. Does LSL really count as being a basic tool?

If it's basic tool usage that is being certified, chances are you wouldn't even have a working item without knowing the basics.
Someone selling non-working items, or taking the money and running is not something that can be prevented by certification. Anyone willing to do that for a quick buck will be willing to buy certification by having someone else sit their exam.

If we're measuring script performance as a basis, whoever ends up running the show would need to own a completely blank island, with nothing on it, where they can test the scripts one by one. This would limit the amount of certificates they can issue and cost a lot of money employing testers to utilise the island 24/7 so they aren't wasting money. Even then, it comes down to how various LL machines are feeling on the day.

Perhaps a better use of time would be to set up a site (LL or 3rd party) where examples of work can be listed, with ratings from customers. Yes, ratings were fairly useless in SL as they were, but a system where only customers can leave ratings would have more value.

you don't need to certify basic ability... you need to teach it.

You certify advanced competency of complex, technical processes.

Linden Labs has gone out of it's way to devalue any form of practical education in SL. They are unwilling to compensate the skilled to share their knowledge, and are unwilling to subsidize or support their operations in ANY WAY.. even in ways that don't actually COST LL anything.

The only reason that Colleges offer "Computer Literacy" courses, is so that English teachers can assign papers and demand that they be word processed on a computer. That way, they can say "you passed the literacy exam, so I know that you can at least find the word processor and start typing."

That's great in terms of education. Prerequisites are part of the game there.. but here's a challenge for you....

You want to certify "basic knowledge of building tools"
What application does that have in the "real" world of SL?

"Gee, I'm a multi million dollar corporation.. I want to hire the best designer I can find, to build my corporation's online presence. Well according to this list, all of these people have some knowledge of linking prims together"

Yeah that's great. The only use for a "Basic SL Tools" certification, is if you LOCK ALL THE PEOPLE UP ON HELP ISLAND, WHO CAN'T PASS!!! Every day, retailers in SL have to answer the most inane questions, often in the most rudimentary english... from some noob who can't open a box. Or who can't attach an item.

I can't think of any reason, outside of "educational", as to why people would need to know that a given person had passed "Basic SL Tools 101".

Now, if you want to TEACH a course in "Basic SL Tools 101" I can think of several hundred(thousand?) people a day who should be talking to you.

But in terms of building a huge third party organization to hand out and track "certification"... don't bother. There's no one who will care if they passed or failed.




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On a side note, if you're determined to let third parties "certify" skill sets that the community is NOT asking for proof of... you know that tab on the profile.. where it says interests and all that? why not change that to a Battlefield II style "Merit Badge" system. Create a system of schools in SL and pay the operations, to teach and test people for certain skills. Work X hours as a greeter earn the "greeter" badge....

I don't see terribly much value in doing it, but at least the Girlscout/Boyscout "Merit Badge" concept is well known... and does seem to motivate people. I'd be working constantly to earn my skull and crossbones "privateer" badge.

Better yet.... let anyone create a school, and determine their own icon (32x32?).. and determine their own criteria for who earns it and who doesn't. Then you've got vanity badges, and whatnot.. but you can also have community run schools.. the cream will float to the top without assistance.. and the valuable and meaningful tests and schools will quickly become obvious.

Clicking an icon in someone's profile would get a brief description of the certification, and double clicking it would open the info of the School issuing the badge. (think of a similar system to how Groups are now. You pay XL$ to start a group, need a minimum number of people to keep it alive, etc. Groups could be schools, or groups and schools could be separate entities. Schools (if separate) could have multiple "ranks" and therefore multiple badges.

LL could give it's blessing to certain schools.. and still allow vanity schools and RP based schools as well. Accredited SL schools could focus on SL-approved topics, and have their course scope and testing evaluated periodically to ensure that the accreditation was still justified.

I realize it's a pipe dream.. but hear me out, perhaps schools, if separate from Groups... could also be allowed to own land. and SL accredited schools could be awarded free land. Maintaining accreditation therefore would be important, but not impossible to survive without, since a premium member could contribute tier to the schools of their choice.

I wanna merit badge!!!

Actually...in all seriousness...I think Winter just came up with a solution that is MUCH more viable than certification and gave quite a few good reasons for it.

I wanna put my full support behind the schools/merit badge idea and very seriously encourage Linden Labs to change directions in that line...and drop the idea of certification.

Oh! And I'm DEFINITELY all for locking people up on Welcome Island too!

If I had a penny for each INCREDIBLY stupid question I've been asked--and when I say incredibly stupid...I mean that one guy actually asked and then thanked me for fixing the SecondLife Asset Server at one point! :x --, I'd have more money than Bill Gates.

(and yes, I know locking them up is a 'joke'...but...oh man...wouldn't it be nice to have the peace and quiet?)

I like Winter's idea as well, and I would add one thing to it:

Encourage the schools to give out honorary "certifications" to folks who have already proven themselves of value to others and the community.

I don't think making Strife, Ordinal, Keknehv, Timeless (well, OK, not Timeless, until he removes the spam advert from MultiSpammer ), et cetera pay for and go through what amounts to a physics elective course to Stephen Hawking is fair.

One major problem with this whole certificatoin issue is that it will cost real world money for something that has no real world value and damn little SL value. Another problem as has been pointed out is that with no reliable documentation, no set "best practices" and no set metrics of performance there is noting to test for in determining who gets certified.

Testing the most basic of building skills is pretty much useless, almost every n00b seems to know how to rez a plywood cube, I know this from the number of them I find littering the landscape. As to the more advanced torturing of prims, most of that is purely trial and error to get the effect you want, when you can change a parameter, reshape a prim and then change that parameter back and not undo what was just done there is nothing you can test to a certifiable standard.

And don't even get me started on LSL. With an almost unlimited number of ways of acomplishing any particular task and no information to determine which way is actually any better than another you once more have no standard to certify to. If you want certifications then give us tools that are worthy of being certified in.

Ah but you cant have any merit badges until you pass merit badge making 101

I don't mean to be sceptical.. buttt. Ok, they put in place a certification system with "merit badges"... add this new info to our profiles so it shows our "rating" based on what we have completed. Sounds interesting...

Till a bunch of ppl work hard to get all this and the "profile server" is taxed keeping track of it all and gets booted like the "other rating" system we had.

You know, I just dont think its worth it. There may have been a valid reason to remove the existing rating system, im sure the lindens would agree. It will be the same with this. We will all work hard to get merit badges/certifications and then it will be found it taxes something somewhere... and poof it will go away along with our money we spent achieving them.

Not sour grapes here... I know the ppl that help me and know the ppl I help... i feel this certification will be a waste of money, time, effort and really NOT SHOW who knows what.

Johnii

As much as one may want to strip away every feature that calls to the SL servers.. there's no move afoot to reduce the number of advertisements, place listings, or picks one can add to their profile.

Schools could also be charged a service fee for each time they award the badge.. which they of course could pass down to the awardee as part of the course requirements (accredited schools could be exempt from this fee).

Let's say it cost 1000L to start a school, and 50L a month to keep it open. That fee could be deferred among "the staff", or among the membership of the school, or limited directly to the Owner/Founder. (I'm really seeing this as a very similar system to Groups). Let's say that there was a one-time 10L service fee for every badge awarded. (to cover the actual upload cost of the image, and to help offset the costs of the "assigning" action).

Corporate or other real-world entities could "Sponsor" schools. Granting their schools land, paying the fees, etc.

Entities could set their own standards for sponsorship. Actual RL schools could use SL as an online educational alternative, and "as a perk" could offer badges based on their courses. Applying for LL accredidation could also cost a fee. Therefore, maintaining one's accredidation becomes ever-more-valuable.. as reapplying would have it's own built-in consequences.

Stupid idea of the morning : measure the time a user spend editing, or the number of lines he writes. You get an idea of how good he is at scripting. I've found it takes about 6 monthes to be really good at LSL. The sometimes heard "it's C-like" is wrong. Only the syntax is C-like. I know a lot of languages and i've seen nothing like LSL. You have to think event driven (and forget interrupt driven for the real-time folks), fall-through handlers rather than sequential, message passing instead of modules. However, on the seventh month you begin to think you may spend too much time walking around LSL limitations and platform bugs.

I've signed-up for certification and still asking why. This is a professional approach to an activity which, in my mind, can't be professional. Every coder knows he will earn 10 to 100x (rather 100) in real life for the same effort. Usual methods to assess code quality, manage versions, modularize and re-use code, fail here. Worst, forced use of global variables, sequential-flow breaking by the dataserver leads to "dirty", usually forbidden programming practices and bad code readability.

no comment not intrested in this.

I'm going to agree with what Jeff Kelley said. "Jobs" programming in SL are often about as hard (and as fun, which is why I do them) as exercises in computer-programming courses. You get $5-10 US dollar equivalent for ten minutes - 2 hours of work (you may have little idea which it'll be till you start) and learn something from the process. And the customer gets to avoid having to learn it themselves.

A company willing to pay real level of fees for LSL scripting (at least $30 US / hour, let's say, at the low end of real world consultants) would do better in almost all circumstances to hire someone face to face in a normal interview process and have them work in SL in an office in an official company Resident account that - if they quit - can be passed on to the next employee. Even if they choose to hire someone from inside second life (which they may well do so as not to be paying for the learning curve ramp up), they should seriously find a person who is willing to fly out to an interview and work from a home office with a real world contract, not a second life one.

They are looking to farm players of manifest competence to their corporate customers is my guess.

Wouldn't you want LL to be your employment agent? Or maybe they'll just try to bring you on as a contractor and pay you in L$. Or, given their historic business model, they'll ask you to create corporate content because you love working for others for free.

This "certification" is too asinine to lack ulterior motive.