Danton's Second Life User Guide

It's time for me to go public with my Second Life User Guide website.

I'm announcing this User Guide website even though it is still Under Construction. The site is about 50% complete with respect to what I originally thought it should cover. But it is only about 5% complete with respect to what I now realize should go into it.

So why am I jumping the gun and announcing a very-partially completed User Guide? In fact, why am I even trying to make a new Second Life User Guide?

New User Guide or new User Interface?

More than a year ago, I maintained that Linden Help needs help. I was responding to Wagner James Au's blog post Is Second Life's User Interface Cursed by Knowledge? Wagner suggested, as have many others, that the user experience might be improved by redesigning the Second Life interface.

Public opinion has generally followed Wagner Au in focusing on the User Interface. In June of 2008 Dusan Writer announced an 800,000 L Viewer Interface Contest. In July Dusan posted the designs of the contest finalists. And on August 12th he announced at a Metanomics event that the first place winner was the User Interface design submitted by Rheta Shan.

Linden Lab has also focused on the User Interface. In September 2008 M Linden announced that they would hire an interactive design firm to create a viewer that is "new user friendly." In November Tateru interviewed Benjamin Linden about the redesign being carried by the chosen firm, Big Spaceship. By June 2009 Tateru got her hands on an early build of the new viewer, and posted a Sneak Peek at the New User Interface. Tateru found this new viewer to be quite a change and called it "fascinating." But Lowell Cremorne writing for the Metaverse Journal found the changes to reflect overly "safe" choices, and even in some cases to be disappointing, such as the disappearance of the pie menus.

(Then there are the latest alternative viewers, such as Jacek's Imprudence viewer or the Meerkat viewer - but this subject would require a whole separate blog post.)

I remain sceptical about the extent to which a new viewer can improve the newbie experience. In my opinion nothing replaces an online help in text format.

Online Second Life Help

Linden Lab has made definite progress with their Second Life Support Center. More than a year ago, when I first tried to consult what was then called the "Second Life Knowledge Base," I had a hard time even finding it. Starting from their Support page I had to follow a long train of links (I think I even had to log in at some point).

The information in the Support Center has been organized into rational categories, and greatly extended. But it is still very hard to find the information you are looking for in it. You have to wade through long pages of questions, as on any FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). When you find a question that seems relevant, you open the page and browse through it. However, there may be many questions on the same topic, and you may read through them all without finding what you want.

Linden Lab now also provides a short Quick Start guide, which is a good idea, but too brief to take the newbie very far.

The secret weapon of the Second Life Support Center seems to be support videos. More precisely, the secret weapon seems to be Torley Linden himself and his long series of Second Life support videos. These videos are certainly most helpful, but they are for those who have the time and discipline to sit through the equivalent of an online course. Again, when I personally want help with some particular problem, I look for text.

Which brings us to the various online tutorials in text format that Second Life residents have already created. If you do a Google search for Second Life tutorial, you will find that they are legion. But most of them are aimed at experienced Second Life users, and concern more advanced skills such as building, creating clothing or scripting.

Some residents have created single help pages aimed at newbies, such as
Gwyneth Llewelyn's First Ever Questions or Olila's newbie tutorial (both of which, although high in the Google listings, are by now out-of-date). Some Universities have also posted good one-page introductions, such as this one from the State University on New York. But the single-page format is limited in terms of the information it can convey.

Help!

Thus I perceive a real need for something like my planned Second Life User Guide website for newbies who are struggling up the steep part of the Second Life learning curve.

The shortcomings of the newbie experience in Second Life are well known. For example, when M Linden announced in September 2009 that viewer improvements would be outsourced, he also mentioned the need to "reinvent" what is called the "first hour experience."

A good example of a disgusted newbie was given recently by Grace McDunnough. She was curious about why Jeff Jarvis had said: "Second Life is the most overhyped alleged phenom of the century, so far." Grace studied Jarvis's blog, and found at least part of the answer. Jarvis says about Second Life in one post: "John Markoff admits that he hasn’t gotten past the opening and I admit I have not either." And in another: "I tried hard but just couldn’t get into the thing or figure it out." Taking these statements at face value, the real reason for Markoff's sentiment that Second Life is "overhyped" is that he just simply couldn't get past the opening.

I first went through the newbie experience in November 2007. At that time Orientation Island was made up of a central hub, surrounded by four regions, in each of which the new user followed a path between a series of learning stations. The experience was moderately confusing. I remember standing in a stairway repeatedly clicking on a panel that said "click here" but where nothing happened. However, when I had finished the entire route (it took me more than the "first hour") I had learned quite a few skills in the comfortable presence of similar newbies.

I tried the newbie experience for the second time six months ago, when I created my first alt. I found it worse than before. There was nothing very useful at all on Orientation Island. I stood in front of a few of the large tutorial panels, which I found hard to read and even harder to capture (with a screen capture), and which covered topics such as a description of the different prims, which is hardly what the newbie first needs to know. Large signs everywhere incited me to go inworld at once, in an implicit recognition that this Orientation Island was a waste of time. The only new element that I found useful was the set of tutorial notecards. But why require newbies to download these notecards one by one, when they could just be placed in the Library?

When I went inworld, the experience was worse. I found myself in one of the new demonstration avatars, which I preceived to be very ugly, and which had a body which I was totally unable to edit, because none of the sliders worked. I struggled with this for a long time, becoming increasingly frustrated – and remember that I had already been using Second Life for more than year! I went to an information hub and found someone who was acting as a mentor, but all they could tell me was to go to a such-and-such shop and buy another avatar.

So I searched through the Second Life Support Center, reading up, and wrote this page about how to edit your avatar. If you gave a newbie the url for this page, they would at least be informed of all the options available to them, and could for example easily switch to a default avatar in order to have a first experience in the use of the sliders.

Many residents have made proposals for improving the newbie experience. For example, Prokofy Neva wrote this long post on the subject. Grace McDunnough offers her own solution which she sums up as follows: "The Second Life interface and attendant new resident churn problems can be solved using Artificial Intelligence and bots."

My own proposal is more modest. I'm ready to let Linden Lab fool around as they will with new configurations for Orientation Island, or alternative solutions, paying large sums to external consultants, and coming up with what may likely be little better than what they had before. I'd rather try to give newbies direct access to a more usable online help.

Better Early than Never

Now that I've explained why I am making a new Second Life User Guide, I'm back to the initial question. Why am I announcing this only very-partially completed User Guide?

First, I think that even in its rudimentary state, full of red links as it is, it could be of some use to newbies - and maybe even other users.

And second, I may never get much further with it. I hope to keep working on it, but I have noticed that online projects tend to grow sporadically, slipping easily into extended periods of hibernation. So I may as well try to publicise this one now, instead of waiting until it has advanced much further. The wait could be a long one. READ MORE...

Bing Fail

For my first experience with Microsoft's new search engine Bing, I decided to look for - what else? - "Danton Sideways".

(I always put quotation marks around the name, in order to find only articles where the first and last names are together. I thereby avoid articles containing sentences such as: "Danton looked sideways at Robespierre…".)

The results of my Bing search were pretty disappointing.

I look up Danton Sideways on Google from time to time, and I'm used to seeing the present blog as the first search result, up at the top of the first page of results. Which is logical, since this is my main blog, on which I've posted numerous articles over the past year and half, several of which have been widely cited in other blogs.

But when I search for Danton Sideways on Bing, the present blog fails to show up at all on the first page of results. Down in the middle of the second page of results there is a single link to one article from the blog – and nothing more thereafter.

Moreover, it is instructive to compare the simple number of search results. The Google search gives 649 results for "Danton Sideways", while the Bing search gives – a measly 153 (only about a fourth as many).

The explanation for this relative poverty of search results may have been given by one of the Mashable bloggers. On first trying Bing, this British blogger discovered that the results were exactly the same as those given by the British Live.com, just with a different presentation. (However, it appears that there were significant differences between results shown on the U.S. Bing.com as compared to the U.K. Bing.com.) Microsoft quickly redirected all traffic from Live.com to Bing.com, so the experiment could not be repeated. But this strongly suggests that all of the novelty in Bing is in the presentation, and that Microsoft is still serving up basically the same data and algorithms as was in their Live Search engine.

But there may be even more sinister reasons to explain why this blog is low in the Bing listings. Rather than allowing the algorithms to produce objective rankings, Microsoft seems to be manipulating certain search results. As TechCrunch noted recently, the Bing search results for "Linux" are suspiciously scanty:

"Using Google, you get much better results for this query, period. Google lists at least five very relevant links (Kernel.org, Debian.org, RedHat.com, LinuxJournal.com and LI.org) that you will not find in the first 15 search results on Bing. No nifty sidebars, nor any amount of spot-on similar results will help Microsoft here."

Could it be that Bing deliberately downgrades blogs that run on Blogger (such as this one), knowing that Blogger is owned and operated by Google? Or on the contrary, has Google favored my Blogger blog, in order to promote Blogger?

It occurred to me that I could put this question to a test by trying yet another search engine. So I looked up Danton Sideways on Yahoo. The present blog showed up in second place in the Yahoo results for "Danton Sideways", just after my other blog, which deals with OpenSim. (I might note in passing that Yahoo returns 831 search results for "Danton Sideways" – even more than Google.)

So there is reason to think that Bing is deliberately under-ranking Blogger blogs. This is just a supposition, but one that becomes credible in the light of everything we know about Microsoft's long-standing monopolistic practices. (Added note: this supposition would seem to be stretching things - see my Comment below.)

For a pertinent commentary on Microsoft's reputation among internet developers, see this recent post about Why Karma Matters. The author of the post notably states: "Microsoft just has so much bad karma in this industry that I cannot imagine a company like us trusting them on much of anything."

Another good example of the Microsoft approach was noted by TechCrunch: Bing automatically became the default search engine on Internet Explorer 6, whether the user wanted it or not. This was quickly explained by Microsoft as a "bug" which they claimed to have already fixed. But it is hard to believe that this was a mere accident, given that Microsoft has aggressively employed similar tactics for decades.

It may turn out that Bing is more hype than a real innovation on the search engine market. The statistics seem to show that users are unconvinced. TechCrunch reports that the flurry of media attention focused on Bing led to a sharp upward spike in use, which lasted… exactly one day. For twenty-four hours Bing shot ahead of Yahoo and captured part of Google's market share, only to fall promptly back down. Karma? Or just an offering that fails to satisfy the demand?

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CDS Chronicles Part 5

Some time ago, when I started this review of past meetings of the Representative Assembly of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS), I thought I would quickly catch up with the present. But during the past months my real-life professional responsibilities have taken up all my time, and I've been falling further and further behind. So I'm just going to finish this present post, which has been in the works for too long, and then do a fast-forward to the present.

The previous instalment took us through the RA Meeting of 26 October 2008, in which Arria's Monastery Sim was ready to be developed under the In-Theme Expansion Act. Also at that meeting mention was first made of a possible a fusion of CDS with Al Andalus, another democratically-run region in Second Life.

But the day after that meeting, on 27 October 2008, Jack Linden announced changes to the prices of the OpenSpace sims, which dealt a severe blow to Arria's project.

Jack Linden's 27 October 2008 announcement of OpenSpace price changes

I've already given an account of the OpenSpace fiasco. The OpenSpace sims, which were an upgraded form of Void Sim, had become so popular that they were undermining the Lindens' regular sim market. On 27 October 2008 Jack Linden announced on the Second Life blog that the OpenSim prices would be increased. For what followed, including the introduction by M Linden of a new product called Homestead sims, see my blog post OpenSpace Revisited.

The RA meeting of 9 November 2008

At the RA meeting of 9 November 2008 the first item of new business was Jamie Palisade's proposed swap of one of his Neufreistadt parcels, which had been used to expand the CDS information center on the Platz, for a nearby parcel that was underused as a "store for citizens." The RA members were willing to approve the swap if the prims and fees on the lots were the same. There followed a laborious search for this information, including links to the old Neufreistadt site (broken link) and to a Google spreadsheet of the CDS Parcel List. The RA finally voted to approve Jamie's land swap "subject to any fee differences to be paid." Just after the vote, Brian Livingston found the information, which showed that Jamie would pay a slight increase in fees.

The next item was a discussion of CDS policy regarding void sims and public spaces. Arria Perrault opened this topic by noting that previous sims had been added using various mixtures of public and private land, and with different fee systems. The resulting system was complicated, and Arria suggested that there was a need for calculations in order to understand the existing CDS land rental system, and for a general policy of land management.

Gwyneth Llewelyn asked Arria if she meant that every sim should have the same amount of public vs. private space. Arria replied that her idea was that since every sim has a certain amount of public space which is financially supported by the private space, all the sims together could pay for a void sim. Symo Kurka observed that the General Master Plan already gives an outline and figures on how to develop CDS territories. Justice Soothsayer added that the Linden's change of void sim rates probably meant that the numbers would have to be run through again.

Arria responded to Symo by noting that the GMP was not like a law. Justice noted however that the GMP was approved as guiding policy. Moon Adamant reported that the Guild was trying to make projections of the additional cost of void sims – a task complicated by the recent change in SL policy. For instance, if a water sim was to be used as a connector, but had an island with a lighthouse for one inhabitant, they could calculate how much that inhabitant would pay per square meter, and how much CDS would support. Arria repeated that she felt that calculations should be made taking the entire CDS into account.

Justice noted that fees could be graduated depending on the type of plot, for example, either giving subsidies to commercial plots to encourage business, or on the contrary charging commercial plots more, on the grounds that they take up resources. Symo used Justice's remark as the occasion to introduce a new idea: using certain public spaces to rez visual landmark-givers to advertise CDS activities. Gwyneth observed that Symo's proposal came down to paying the cost of public spaces out of the CDS marketing budget.

Arria offered to give some numbers: CDS at that moment had 43744 prims in private use. Arria stated that a slight increase in the price per prim would have little effect on resident fees but a big impact on the CDS finances.

Gwyneth interjected that the overall "price per prim" on the Second Life grid was estimated at L$2/prim. Gwyneth then turned to Sudane Erato, to ask how much CDS paid for tier at that time. Sudane said she was still working on this data at the request of the New Guild. Symo replied to Arria by noting that sims are different, each having its own density, number of residents, ratio of prims. Arria continued with her argument in favor of a global approach to CDS finances, noting that Alpine Meadows brings a lot of money to CDS that could be used elsewhere.
At that point Gwyneth produced the results of her rapid calculation. CDS paid tier fees for two sims at 195 US$/month (the older Neufreistadt and Colonia Nova cost less) and for two sims at 295 US$/month (Alpine Meadow and Locus Amoenus), making a total cost of 980 US$/month, or about 265,000 L$/month. For 45,000 prims that came to a bit less than 6 L$/prim. Arria objected that CDS income was more than 980 US$/month, so Gwyneth specified that her figure represented each citizen's contribution to pure tier costs. Moon agreed that it would be interesting to study how to make tier uniform. Arria thought the price paid by residents was about 10 L$/prim.

Gwyneth emphasized that the average cost of mainland sims is estimated at 2 L$/prim, and the new Homestead sims at 10 L$/prim – she forgot the estimated cost for OpenSpace sims, but noted that the new policy would render these fairly useless. At an average cost of 6 L$/prim for the CDS island sims, the average resident fees of 10 L$/prim bring CDS a surplus of about 200,000 L$/month.

Arria suggested that one could use the available figures to estimate the percentage of prims that would be public on each type of sim. The calculation takes into account the cost paid to LL, the revenues coming from landowners, and the number of sims in private use (since revenue is only collected for private prims).

Moon replied that the present General Master Plan prevents making such estimates for void sims, since the main sims have densities that cannot be furnished with low-end products such as void sims. The three available products were full sims (with 11,250 prims), the new Homestead sims (with 1750 prims) and the revised OpenSpace sims (with 700 prims). The absence of a middle-range product means that low-end products could only be used for the lowest density areas in the Master Plan.

Arria insisted that everyone stands to benefit by the introduction of void sims, to improve the landscape and view, and that everyone should therefore contribute. She pleaded: "we are a community and not a confederation of sims." There should be a general policy, rather than separate policies for each sim. As it is, Alpine Meadow which is full in fact pays for Locus Amoenus which is not.

Gwyneth conceded that Arria seemed to be arguing for more fairness in the way different citizens contribute to CDS development, and suggested that the Treasurer and New Guild could analyze the fee policy using spreadsheets. Arria hastened to add that she would like to participate in the calculations.

Symo was dismayed at the idea that all citizens might have their tier changed. Gwyneth concluded that although it would mean lots of work for certain people, a detailed study of the current price structure would provide greater transparency, even if it led to no changes at all.

Justice finally formulated the proposal as follows: "that the RA asks the Executive and the New Guild to propose a new pricing structure, taking into account the Masterplan, that makes each citizen contribute more fairly towards the overall public spending, and to explore the financial implications of voids versus other kinds of possible new sims."

The motion carried, and the meeting was adjourned.
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Danton booted off Facebook for being "fake"

When I tried to log into Facebook today, I was shown this message:

Account Disabled
Your account has been disabled. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.

The FAQ gave the following explanations:

Why was my account disabled?
Your account was disabled because the name it was registered under was fake. We do not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations. In addition, Facebook accounts are intended for use by single individuals, so groups, clubs, businesses, or other types of organizations are not permitted to maintain accounts.

Why doesn’t Facebook allow fake names?
Facebook is built around real world interactions. Operating under an alias detracts from the value of the system as a whole. Users who operate under fake names are also prone to abuse. We take this standard very seriously and take down fake accounts as we become aware of them.

There was more in the FAQ, but the above states it clearly: Facebook considers Danton Sideways to be a fake.

Facebook seems to be a game behind in its failure to understand the reality of virtual identities.

Facebook did leave me the possibility of sending an email of appeal. Here is what I wrote: "I use this account to communicate with my many Second Life friends, whose real names are unknown to me."

I'll post their answer in the comments.
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CDS Chronicles Part 4

The previous instalment of these CDS Chronicles took us through the Representative Assembly (RA) meeting of 28 September 2008, which included much discussion of Arria Perrault's proposal for a Monastery sim. Arria's proposal was to be the major subject of the next several RA meetings.


The RA meeting of 12 October 2008

The RA meeting of 12 October 2008 got off to a slow start, because LRA Justice Soothseeker was temporarily called away in real life to deal with a confrontation between his dogs and a skunk.

When Justice returned, discussion began on the first agenda item, which was Arria's proposal for a webmaster position with a stipend. This proposal had been discussed at the meeting of 28 September, and minor amendments had been proposed. The new discussion centered on the clause saying that the webmaster would "update the version of Content Management System as needed, after consultation with governmental users." Arria asked "who are the governmental users?" Were they only the members of governmental bodies, such as the RA, the executive and the New Guild, or did they include the stipended "civil servants," such as the Public Information Officers?

There was also some discussion of whether the RA should directly review and approve website operational issues such as choice of hosting provider, software or website design, or leave these to the discretion of the webmaster and those collaborating on the website? Flyingroc Chung observed that the proposal referred to "consultation" with government, rather than obtention of formal approval. The question was finally resolved by replacing the words "government users" with "heads of each branch of government." The amended proposal was unanimously approved. Jamie added that Alexicon Kurka had agreed to fill the position.

The next item was Arria's proposal for purchase of a "void" sim, to which the Monastery would be relocated. Arria referred to the latest version of her proposal set out on the CDS forum, which would place the new void sim between Alpine Meadow and Locus Amoenus, thereby filling the "hole" under the Alpine Meadow sim. Arria noted that the Monastery was an NGO, and that this project could be a model for other NGOs to develop, without CDS having to take a large financial risk. Justice Soothseeker asked whether the Monastery's status as NGO was really relevant, since other citizen groups could ask CDS to purchase a void sim, and then fully pay for it. Jamie noted that any group that was willing to pay could also propose to develop a new sim under the Private Development Act.

Gwyneth Llewelyn mentioned that land ownership by a chartered NGO would sidestep limitations on the quantities of CDS land that can be owned by individual citizens. Moon Adamant confirmed that that limit was 4096 m2 per sim and per avatar. But Jamie noted that there was no limit to group ownership of land, which already allowed widespread sidestepping of any theoretical ownership limits.

Jamie referred to his own forum post, which set out a way to implement Arria's proposal under the Private Development act. Jamie specified what he perceived to be three remaining points of disagreement between himself and Arria. First, instead of the Monastery being a seventh paid parcel, Arria wanted the six paid parcels to fund the void sim, with the Monastery being on public land, thus paying no rental. Second, Arria persisted in wanting the new sim to be implemented under the standard procedure, rather than under the Private Development Act. And third, while Arria agreed that the proposal must conform to the General Master Plan, she failed to explain how the sim's terrain and its parcel plan would be confirmed by the Guild and the relevant branches of government. Jamie observed that the deciding bodies usually see a map and a parcel spreadsheet before they commit to a sim purchase. However, the Private Development procedure shortcuts that by letting the developer terraform and landscape before any review.

Gwyneth and Moon, following Jamie's lead, asked Arria if she could reconcile her proposal with the Private Development Act. For example, according to that Act the Monastery NGO should pay 4 months of tier in advance. Arria replied that she would pay those 4 months in any case, and would continue paying if the six other plots failed to generate sufficient revenue. Why should she be required to pay tier in advance?

Gwyneth noted that the Private Development Act in fact provides two separate models. The first model allows the private developer to acquire the sim, while the second model allows the private developer to "donate sufficient money to the CDS estate owner to allow the CDS to acquire a sim." Gwyneth suggested that Arria seemed to want to follow the first model, but since only those who already own a full sim can buy a void sim, Arria's group would have to follow the second model. But Arria insisted that she wanted to follow the model of normal sim development (but with a void sim, and with an NGO as major occupant of public land), rather than private development. In exasperation Arria asked: "If people know so well how the law is, why don't they help me to make a good proposal?"

Gwyneth admitted that Arria's project could be seen as a regular, CDS-promoted sim, but with only 6 plots for sale in a void sim, and a Monastery on public land. Yet Gwyneth thought that the Monastery group wished to speed up the process by entering the land business themselves. Moon asked whether the Monastery was public or private? Arria replied that the Monastery had been private since its inception, but that she thought it should now become public, in light of its contribution to the CDS image and activities. To which Moon replied that if it becomes public, it must follow the public process.

Jamie tried to sum up the two main options: development under the Private Development Act, or under the standard procedure used for Alpine Meadow and Locus Amoenus. Arria's proposal would fit under Private Development, except for the four month advance, and the manner of submitting the parcels and rents for approval. Perhaps the requirement for the advance could be waived, since Arria proposed to fully rent the parcels, thereby reducing the financial risk, and perhaps the table of parcels and rents could be submitted prior to purchase, thereby permitting full review by CDS. The process would then be quite similar to that of the standard procedure, whereas the standard procedure would require more work for the Guild, and would therefore take longer to implement.

Justice suggested that Jamie as Chancellor should continue to refine the possibilities. Jamie therefore proposed to come back to a future RA meeting with details about Arria's map, showing parcel sizes, purchase prices and rental rates.

Gwyneth however suddenly suggested that this project should fall under the In-Theme Expansion Act (NL 8-2). (I found this surprising, because Gwyneth up to this point seemed to be pushing Arria to admit that her project fell under the Private Development Act. But rereading the above carefully I concluded that Gwyneth and Moon had in fact been steadily undermining the Private Development option.) Gwyneth immediately formulated her suggestion as a motion, which Pip Torok seconded.

Jamie, who had been championing a modified Private Development approach, predictably objected against taking a premature vote. "I wouldn't APPROVE before you have plans of the table," he said. And after a moment of reflection, he added wryly: "I see that if you use NL 8-2 it is the RA not the executive who decides."

Gwyneth replied that the proposal was only for the RA to approve the project on general terms. Then RA would decide on the preliminary configuration (such as a void sim south of Locus Amoenus), and would commission the NG to draft a plan to be presented to the Chancellor. The motion would thus only initiate what NL 8-2 calls the "Preparation Phase." And Arria was quite satisfied with Gwyneth's proposal, because she had all along insisted that she wanted to avoid the Private Development approach.

Jamie respectfully took his leave of "those who feel better able than himself to make such detailed legal analysis on the fly," cautioned against adopting motions with unexplored consequences, and concluded: "Please keep any approval CONTINGENT on a later approval from SOMEONE."

Justice then summed up the proposal as follows:

1) The RA supports the idea of acquiring a 5th sim, which would be a void sim next to AM.
2) The RA also supports the idea of the Monastery occupying public land on said void sim.
3) We want to see a map and detailed financials before final approval

The vote was called. Gwyneth, Pip, Arria and Justice voted "aye," and Bells Semyorka voted "nay." The motion carried, and the meeting was adjourned.


The RA meeting of 26 October 2008

The RA meeting of 26 October 2008 began with discussion of meeting times for future RA meetings, taking into account upcoming real-life events such as Halloween, the US presidential elections, and Thanksgiving.

The first substantial topic was continued discussion on the proposed new sim. This discussion seemed to some to be premature, in that New Guild had not yet taken up the question. Gwyneth reminded Arria that the In-Theme Expansion Act (NL 8-2) required the RA to approve the broad guidelines for a new sim, including:

1) the rough number of plots
2) the range of sizes of plots
3) price and affordability
4) single/double prim
5) rough balance between public, private and commercial land
6) any specific public builds e.g. the amphitheatre
7) any other infrastructure that can serve the interest of the community and territory.

Arria replied that she already had most of that information. Gwyneth observed that it would be nice to have it all as a document, or in a forum post. Arria said she planned to provide such a document, but was still working on it. Jamie noted that Arria had at each stage provided everything the others had asked for, but that the RA decision to apply NL 8-2 had added new requirements. The next step was Guild review of Arria's submittals.

Jamie noted that Gywneth's point seemed to be that Arria should provide this information FIRST to the RA, and THEN to Guild. He suggested that Arria at least present a brief summary. So Arria rezzed a topo map of the new sim, and began explaining the layout. The six rental plots would be in a fishing village near the sea, at the same general elevation as Locus Amoenus. The new Monastery would be up the slope, at about the same elevation as the old Monastery on Alpine Meadows. A small cascade coming from under the monastery would feed a lake, which would in turn feed the river flowing into Locus Amoenus. There would be a total of seven plots, since Virtus would rent a small plot corresponding to the library of the Monastery.

Jamie questioned whether seaside rental plots would sell well, since CDS experience was that upland Alpine Meadows plots sold much better than lowland plots in Colonia Nova or Locus Amoenus. Rose worried that all of the proposed plans would overload the one OpenSpace (void) sim.

Arria then summarized the financial details. Each of the six rental plots would have an area of 512 m2, a prim count of 250, and would rent for 12 US$ per month. Virtus would pay 15 US$ per month for the library plot. The available prims would be allocated as follows: 40% to private land, 10% to NGO land (Virtus), and 50% to public land. The public infrastructure would include the lake (skating area in winter) and a ski slope.

Sonja Strom said that she liked the project, but it seemed to go against the Master Plan concept for this area. Arria replied that, as Symo Kurka had stated, the Master Plan is just a guideline. Justice cut the discussion short by saying that the time for this item was up, and that it was precisely the role of the impending New Guild review to determine how well the project fits with the Master Plan. The subject was tabled.

Next on the agenda was the Chancellor's report. Jamie began by announcing that Sonja had been appointed as Land Caretaker. He then noted that a small influx of new citizens had resulted from Oktoberfest and other recent events.

A major concern reported by Jamie was land sales and vacancies, which was not going well, although not catastrophic. He planned to bring proposed changes to the laws about land sales and rent payments, which could help improve the situation. He had posted about land and vacancies earlier that same day on the forum, but had not posted his other views, which he set out at the RA meeting. (This subject deserves a parenthetical note. In the referenced forum post, Jamie mentions that one proposal would be to shorten the number of months to evict non-payers, down from the current 3 month period. It seems that ThePrincess Parisi, determined to leave CDS, had set a very high sales prices on her properties, and at the same time stopped paying rent on them. This final conflict between ThePrincess and the rest of CDS fails to appear in the RA meeting minutes, because the Chancellor exercises discretion in treating personal issues, and avoids mentioning names in any forum posts. A while later ThePrincess departed from Second Life entirely.)

Jamie then noted that Alpine Meadows, which has an unusual hillside theme and small lots, sold fast, but that Locus Amoenus, which is flattish with a Roman theme, was selling poorly – though part of the reason could be poor economic conditions. He noted that due to the CDS Direct Land Sales Act anyone could see what is not sold. (Another parenthetic note: in his pre-meeting forum post about land , Jamie had written: "One can immediately see what land is for sale in CDS, because for the past year or so, we have used the "yellow map" direct sale system, and available land shows on the SL maps. Incidentally I believe that was a marketing mistake…" I tried to look up the Land Sales Act that Jamie refers to, but couldn't find it. I found an old post by Sudane Erato announcing the introduction of a new land management system. But when was it decided that plots for sale would show up as bright yellow splashes on the in-world map?)

Jamie noted that most of the recent sales were turnover in Neufreistadt: the Fachwerken and scenic places get bought fast. Arria asked whether the plots for sale in Colonia Nova (these seem to be the large plots put up for sale by ThePrincess) could be an opportunity to start the plan for economical development. But LRA Justice Soothseeker announced that he had to leave, so Jamie proposed to share his further thoughts about the new sim at the upcoming Guild meeting.

Jamie instead opened a broader discussion of expansion possibilities. The economic market for traditional rentals seemed uncertain, but Jamie identified three other alternatives for CDS expansion: 1) Arria's proposal, 2) another void or two for scenic and perhaps NGO use, and 3) potential joining with Al Andalus, another democratic community in Second Life. Concerning the third alternative, Jamie mused on the difficulty of arranging a successful merger, without CDS overwhelming Al Andalus like a colonizing conquistador. Patroklus Murakami expressed his astonishment at the announcement of this third possibility, asking: "As afar as I know, it's the first time this idea has been aired publically?"

Jamie shifted to the last, minor, item of his Chancellor's report. During the Okotoberfest he had expanded the main CDS information center in Neufreistadt by donating his own lot next door to it. He proposed that the RA at the next meeting could approve a swap, taking Jamie's plot for the information center, and giving him in exchange the underused "store for citizen's" on the other side of the Platz.

The Chancellor's report being finished, and the LRA Justice having departed, an informal discussion followed on the possible merger with Al Andalus. Jamie said that since CDS was a faction-based system, he expected to be talking to each faction about the Al Andalus question. Patroklus asked Jamie what approach he had had from Al Andalus. Jamie replied that there had only been informal chat, which had already revealed multiple possible conflicts of interest, since many CDS citizens also own land in Al Andalus.

Patroklus asked why, what was the logic of joining the two regions? Al Andalus was set up independently of CDS, and why was there suddenly talk of bringing them together? What had been discussed? (Parenthetical note: Al Andalus had been formed under the impulsion of CDS members Rose Springvale and Michel Manen. Rose continued to belong to both communities, while Michel in a huff had slammed the door on CDS and concentrated on Al Andalus. But in the fall of 2008 Michel quit the Al Andalus project - which may have been one new factor that allowed consideration of joining the two regions together.)

Jamie answered Patroklus by pointed to interests shared by the two regions : self governance, strong scenic themes, and general non-profit status. But there were also incompatibilities: the Al Andalus theme is very different from those of CDS, and the spirit there is much more communitarian and less fractious than in CDS.

Patroklus called for discussion about this idea on the forum. He saw the way the news was introduced as evidence of a lack of transparency in government. He noted: "It's clear that some have been talking about it for a while." Jamie's replied that he would not make any forum postings until there was something appropriate and conspicuous to announce, because Al Andalus members can read the CDS forums. The discussion degenerated into a heated personal confrontation between Patroklus and Jamie. Moon interrupted to say that she found the possible merger very interesting from an urbanism point of view: it would allow testing of Symo's General Master Plan notion of clusters. Gwyneth intervened to reassure Patroklus that Jamie's presentation was just an open announcement of prior discussions, rather than any kind of formal proposal.

The meeting ended with various event announcements by Rose Springvale (one of the two Public Information Officers). The first announcement concerned the deadline for the Fall Decorating Contest entry notes. (This seems to have a Halloween decorating contest, with winners announced here. Sometime later I stumbled upon macabre scenes of murder and mayhem in the Cloaca Maxima (main sewer) running beneath Colonia Nova – which seem to have been part of the Halloween "decorations".)

Rose's second announcement was that the CDS guided tour Owl was now working, as can be seen in a video by Gwyneth Llewelyn. (Note: the preceding link unfortunately reverts to Gwyneth's video about Damien Fate's Locus Pocus - you have to search for "Tour of the Confederation" in the list of videos at the right of the screen). The third announcement concerned Gwyneth's discussion series held in the Neufreistadt Kirche.

The meeting was adjourned.
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CDS Chronicles Part 3

In Part 2 of these Chronicles I went a bit too fast, and jumped directly from the RA meeting of 7 September 2008 to the CDS Birthday and Oktoberfest, which began on 20 September. But there was an RA meeting on 14 September which I forgot to cover. So we must go back and pick it up.



The RA meeting of 14 September 2008 and the final Commerce Bill

The 14 September RA meeting was a short one. It began with a motion to approve the 9th term budget which had been proposed by Chancellor Jamie Palisades in the previous meeting. The budget was voted and passed unanimously, in the blink of an eye.

The next item was the so-often-tabled discussion of the Commerce Bill. Justice Soothsayer had posted a new Commercial Development Bill, which was significantly different from the previous ones, although it included elements taken from them. The new bill set aside a budget of L$25,000 for the Chancellor to hire an experienced business consultant to develop a promotional plan for CDS commercial activity, including services as well as retail business. The bill also provided that 15% of all commercial plots would be allocated by competition among citizens who filed for new business development. Citizens winning the competition would be able to lease a plot for six months at 50% of the tier rate without having to buy it, at the end of which they could buy it if they wished. The provisions in the previous bill providing for rent surcharges were repealed.

In the same thread Jamie had commented on Justice's new bill, and suggested some revisions. Justice said he could accept Jamie's version, except for his proposed section 2, where "substantial activity" was to be measured either in terms of (a) updates installed on site, or (b) demonstration of substantial volume of transactions, or (c) SL traffic count. Both Justice and Arria Perrault felt that this section, and the idea of measuring commercial activity at all, should simply be eliminated. To support this position, Justice cited a post by Soro Dagostino who had purchased a property in the commercial zone, but had decided to pull out when he learned that the rental price would rise if his lot was short on traffic.

Arria observed that point 5 already eliminated the rent surcharge. Flyingroc Chung asked if they could add a sunset clause to say that it would go into effect after "receipt of the above consultative report." Patroklus Murakami found the bill much improved by the new sections on promotion of business activity. He also noted that there was still the problem of lots in the commercial zone used by non-profits, which are hardly "commercial." Moon Adamant added that very few citizens surveyed in connection with preparation of the General Master Plan (GMP) found high commerce traffic to be a highly important goal. Arria brought up the possibility of opening some of the commercial space for rentals rather outright sale, such as for small local outlets for some of the larger Second Life shops. (CDS property owners are currently prohibited from sub-letting their property.)

Justice passed out a revised version of the bill, incorporating his deletion and adding a sunset clause. But Arria still wanted to add that some plots could be rented to non-citizens. Flyingroc noted that the bill did state that one had to be a citizen in order to participate in the competition. Flyingroc suggested that they could just give citizenship to the winner of the contest, but Patroklus asked what would happen after 6 months if they declined to buy the plot. Bells Semyorka wanted to know whether big designers would in fact want to rent space in CDS, and expressed the opinion that citizenship was not a prize to be won.

When the vote on Justice's revised version was called, it passed 5 to 0, with 2 RA members absent. Arria stated that she voted mainly because the new bill repealed the surcharge. The meeting was adjourned.


The RA meeting of 28 September 2008 and Arria's Monastery Sim Proposal

On 20 September the CDS Birthday and Oktoberfest began, as told in CDS Chronicles Part 2.

The RA meeting of 28 September began with the monthly Chancellor's report. Jamie first took up with appointments: Sonja Strom had agreed to serve as one the land caretakers.

Jamie next addressed land sales. Locus Amoenus plots were selling at a slow speed, which seemed a combined effect of real life economics (and the crash of October was yet to come!) and Linden Lab's odd land policies (the OpenSpaces boom was in full swing). Jamie concluded that any expansion plans should be grounded in positive cash flow projections. Arria again plugged her proposal to let people rent rather than buy CDS land. Jamie also suggested the formation of a volunteer citizen recruitment team to go out and evangelise for CDS, in search of new members.

Jamie's next item was land enforcement, current policy for which was described in a post in the section of the forum on Sim and City Planning. (Who can help me locate this land enforcement post of Jamie's?)

Jamie observed that the land groups and permission were in a mess, and mentioned that he was in the process of cleaning up certain SL groups pertinent to CDS. The groups, together with who is "estate manager" on each sim, control many matters, such as who can eject or freeze intruders, remedy bad prims or backup community builds. CDS still maintained permissions for many former citizens, like a company with high turnover that never bothered to change the door keys. A related issue was covenant enforcement. The level of complaints was low, maybe one sim each month, which allows Jamie to deal with both accuser and alleged violator direction and offline. The resolution of problems (without mentioning names) is posted to the forum section entitled Executive Branch Announcements.

On the subject of land management, Arria suggested that the rental fees are poorly indicated in the covenant in the "About Land" window. Jamie admitted that the law that permits resetting of the fees creates a certain vagueness, and suggested that Sudane should be consulted on this question.

Jamie then addressed events, starting with the ongoing Oktoberfest, which was half-over. Rose mentioned that she was taking down the parade floats the same day, and encouraged everyone who'd not seen them to do so. The next event mentioned was Burning Life, where CDS had an unofficial camp.

The next item on the agenda was the carry-over of the discussion on Claude Desmoulin's Flag Bill. There had been discussion of modifying the CDS flag by adding a new star each time a sim was added, but Claude suggested stopping at three stars, to represent the three branches of CDS government (representative, philosophic, and executive). The flag issue seemed to require further reflection, so the discussion moved on to the next agenda item, which Arria's webmaster proposal.

Arria's proposal outlined the webmaster's tasks, including: to own the domain name on behalf of CDS, to be contractor for the hosting, to update the Content Management System (CMS), to implement the design template and to manage the users (accounts and permissions). Rubaiyat Shatner added that the webmaster should also be responsible for making regular backups of the portal (and the old websites that it replaces). Justice asked Arria and Jamie to post a draft bill on the forum for discussion, and the matter was tabled.

Discussion then began on Arria's other proposal, which was to move the Monastery to a void sim (or more exactly, to an OpenSpace sim). The Monastery, situated on the Alpine Meadows sim, was managed by an NGO called Virtus. Arria wanted to move it to a void sim, and to surround it with 6 small plots with cottages and a few prims, which would be rented out to owners who would share the Monastery for their personal projects. Since a void sim could only be bought by the owner of a regular sim, Arria wanted CDS to buy the void sim for the Monastery project, which would thus remain within CDS.

Jamie replied that there seemed to be within the CDS legal framework four ways of adding new sims, as he had set out unofficially in a forum post on how sim expansion decisions work in CDS.

Jamie's four ways of adding sims were:

1) The traditional sim expansion process, used for Colonia Nova and Alpine Meadow, under which open contests were held for the design of a new "theme".

2) The In-Theme Expansion Act, which allows the New Guild to pilot the development of a new sim on an existing theme, under the CDS Master Plan. This process was used for Locus Amoenus, which extended the roman theme of Colonia Nova.

3) Private Expansion under Beathan Vale's Private Development Bill. In the first two expansion methods CDS takes the entire financial risk and the New Guild controls the design. Under Beathan's proposal a private party submits a plan to the Chancellor and takes the financial risk of developing a sim which federates with CDS.

4) Any other way the RA decides.

Jamie suggested that Arria's project was an instance of Beathan's Private Development route, since her group would be bringing their own sim to CDS. However, it was private development with a twist, since to buy a void you must own a sim already, which Arria's group did not, and CDS would have to support the risk of the new sim failing to pay. Under Beathan's bill, the CDS was never to take the title of the sim, which would remain with the developers.

Gwyneth observed that if CDS owned the Monastery from the beginning, it would logically rent it to Arria's group, in the sense of giving a deed. Only there would be no public announcement of available plots. Rubaiyat agreed that the problem could probably be solved by making some sort of sub-letting contract. Jamie replied that in this case Beathan's bill failed to apply, since no independent developer was taking the risk. Jamie added that the project would in any case require coordination with the Guild and approval by the RA, which makes it more like traditional CDS sim expansion.

There seemed to be general agreement that Arria's proposal would present less risk that the traditional CDS sim expansion, because the cost for both acquisition and tier were much lower for a void sim. But there was a question of whether the land rents from the 6 tenants would be split between Virtus and CDS. Arria replied that there were two possibilities: (1) Monastery tenants would pay directly to CDS and become citizens, or (2) Virtus pays as a group and rents to tenants who remain non-citizens. Cindy Ecksol observed that this would pose the problem of how members of the Monastery group would relate to CDS.

Gwyneth preferred the first solution, in which all members of the Monastery group were CDS citizens, and Cindy agreed. Justice noted that they were out of time, and that an in-world soccer game was waiting, so the meeting was adjourned.
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CDS Chronicles Part 2

The first installment of these CDS Chronicles ended with the Locus Amoenus Opening Ceremony on Friday 28 August 2008.

At the last RA meeting prior to the Locus Amoenus Ceremony, held on 17 August, the discussion of the Commerce Commission was tabled. This discussion was picked up again at the following RA meeting – but only towards the end of the session.



The RA Meeting of 31 August 2008 and MT's Candidacy for the Scientific Council

At the beginning of the RA meeting of 31 August, Pip Torok was sworn in as additional RA member for the DPU faction.

Jamie Palisades then reported on the first meeting of the Commission on Corporate Structure which was held on 26 July. The general concern at this well-attended commission meeting was whether a formal legal structure for control of CDS was needed, or whether the underlying issues of stability and continuity of ownership could be better addressed in other ways.

Moon Adamant, reporting for the Guild, announced that the new Locus Amoenus sim was completed and ready for inspection. Jamie explained that as Chancellor he was responsible for inspecting and accepting the roads and other amenities on the sim. However, he planned to seek input from the Building Advisory Committee, which was being constituted following the adoption by the RA of a revised Guild Charter.

Gwyneth Llewelyn briefly reported on the three Electoral Commission meetings which had been held (out of an estimated seven), each on a single topic. The transcripts of these poorly-attended and generally consensual meetings were posted on the forum, so Gwyneth merely mentioned that the Electoral Commission planned to present a document by October.

Next came the major issue at this meeting, which was the nomination of MT Lundquist as member of the Scientific Council, the CDS equivalent of a Supreme Court. Several RA members wanted to ask MT questions about his vision of the role of the Scientific Council, as was the tradition, but MT had failed to show up. Second Life residents tend to have high tolerance for failure to come to meetings, since a resident's first life generally takes precedence over the second. LRA Justice Soothsayer thus suggested that questions for MT could be posted on the forum.

Jamie spoke up to endorse MT's nomination in the name of diversity of opinion, noting that MT had been a productive RA member and successful business owner in CDS. Claude Desmoulins, the head of the Scientific Council, showed up to answer questions about how and why MT had been nominated. Those present spoke either for or against MT's nomination, those opposed generally citing bias and temperament as reasons for their opposition. A vote was then hastily called on whether to confirm MT as member of the Scientific Council, and his candidacy was rejected with four nays (mostly CSDF members), two ayes and one abstention. However, this precipitous decision would be reviewed at the next RA meeting, this time with MT in attendance.

The meeting finally got back to the Commerce Bill. Justice moved Jamie's proposed substitute bill,which was a compromise in that it required the Chamber of Commerce to operate under an NGO charter approved by the RA, but appointed MT Lundquist to take citizen input and formulate the charter. Jamie's bill also required the Chancellor to provide a map of all CDS parcels to be zoned "commercial," and delayed any imposition of penalty rents until the map had been approved by the RA.

However, there was no second to Justice's motion, so the discussion reverted to Jon Seattle's Commerce Clarification Bill. Jon noted that he had posted a change to the forum, in response to comments by Flyingroc Chung. The change was that any action taken by the organization in violation of its charter would not be considered an official act. In other words, the Chamber of Commerce could act outside of its charter if it pleased, but only unofficially. Discussion then turned to Jamie's objections to Jon's bill, which seem to have been that the RA should allow the Chamber of Commerce to act as an NGO without a governmental charter (as do real-life Chambers of Commerce). Jamie had started a forum thread about how NGO's work in CDS, noting that the legislation seems to leave this question wide open.

Jon repeated his position, which was that this particular NGO was to be given the eminently governmental ability to recommend that a citizen's rent be quadrupled. (This suggests that the bill did in fact foresee repeat doublings of the rent of unvisited lots, month after month.)

Further discussion was once again tabled to the next meeting. Jon noted that since the previous version of the Commerce Bill was still in effect, the Chancellor would be obliged to go ahead with implementing it. But Jamie reminded everyone that he had amended the bill so that fines could only be levied after concerned property had been marked as commercial in its metadata. He ensured the RA that he would hold this in abeyance until the current bill was resolved. The meeting adjourned.


The RA Meeting of 7 September 2008 and MT's Final Bid for the Scientific Committee

The 7 September RA meeting began with the monthly report from the Chancellor, Jamie Palisades. He first mentioned that executive branch appointments were systematically announced on the forum, in the section entitled "Executive Branch Announcements". In addition to the 6 authorized funded positions, he was planning to ask for approval of a seventh, which would be a second Public Information Officer (PIO). Arria Perault mentioned that she was hoping that webmaster for the new portal would be a funded position. (It could be noted in passing that these positions are remunerated with a stipend of typical Linden Dollar dimensions, pitifully low compared to the time input, and that what counts is the title rather than the payment.) Arria observed that content and system are separate aspects of website management, and that Brian Livingston as one of the PIOs was responsible for the content of the website, while the webmaster would be responsible for the system.

Jamie then reported on preparations for the upcoming CDS anniversary and Oktoberfest, which would begin on September 20.

The third item of the Chancellor's report was land expansion. He referred to his forum post on how sim expansion decisions work in CDS. Jamie proposed to run CDS operating expenses from current income, leaving the reserve kitty for investments in expansion. (The kitty was at that time reported to be about 4500 USD.) Jamie also suggested that there were other investments that could make CDS grow. In passing, Jamie expressed the opinion that CDS had missed out on market expansion that had been captured by other communities, in response to which Gwyneth Llewelyn said she was interested in any data Jamie had to support this claim. Jamie also noted that a proposal for expansion had already been received from Arria. (This was the first mention of Arria's Monastery sim project, which would be a subject of discussion during the rest of 2008.)

The last item in Jamie's report was the CDS budget. He referred to his forum post on the subject. Justice and Gwyneth expressed the opinion that the budget should be a voting item. Jamie replied that CDS had often functioned without a budget, and that approving the budget could be a bill if CDS Law so required, which at that time it did not. Gwyneth explained that when the Old Guild was phased out, they forgot to update the Constitution to say that the RA must approve the budget proposed by the Executive. Jamie said he would be happy to discuss whether the RA wants to take back day-to-day management decisions such as the budget, but that since these were currently left to the Chancellor, he would exercise this authority until vetoed.

That said, Jamie referred to the presentation on CDS finances that Sudane had made during the previous semester. (Can anyone provide the link? All I can find is Sudane's Financial Reports, such as the Financial Report for August 2008.) Sudane had suggested that CDS should routinely save 25% of the rent income each month, and spend the rest. Jamie calculated that these 25% savings would put an additional 58 USD per month into the kitty for future investments. After deduction of 10 USD to the ISP for the portal, this would leave about 175 USD per month for operating expenses, which is much more than is actually spent. Jamie noted that some citizens felt the surplus should be taken up by lowering some or all of the rental fees.

As a concrete measure, Jamie suggested spending 44 USD per month on events. A decision was rapidly taken to approve the creation of a second PIO stipend position, but further discussion of the budget was tabled until the next meeting.

The next agenda item was reconsideration of MT's nomination to the Scientific Council. Reconsideration was necessary because MT had stated on record that he would be unavailable until 7 September, so the RA should have waited until that date before making a decision. Justice noted that MT had replied to the various questions posted on the forum. Both MT and ThePrincess had showed up for the discussion – although as it turned out MT did all the talking, while ThePrincess merely watched.

In addition to relatively routine responses to questions about the role of the Scientific Committee, MT's arguments centered on two questions: whether he had a level head, and whether he had acted reasonably in contesting the CDS election methods. On the first point, he noted that in real life he is a senior manager in government service, managing over 100 staff running complex IT infrastructure for an organization of 18,000 staff. On the second point, he reviewed the reasons for his request for a new election following the announcement of the July 2008 Election Results.

MT claimed that there was a question over the type of count used, and confusion from people involved as to how the count should be made, and that a new election should thus be held only after clarification of the counting method. Even if the election results turned out the same, the method of getting to them would thus be beyond reproach. (This point seems in fact to have first been raised by Bromo Ivory.)

Rubaiyat asked whether this issue of the election had been resolved, and how. MT replied that it had been resolved because the SC had finally ruled on it and that he accepted their arbitration, even though they ruled against him.

Patroklus then reminded MT that Cindy Ecksol had posted several well-reasoned explanations of why MT's call for new elections was unnecessary, and asked why he had persisted. MT replied that he felt there had remained sufficient confusion to justify bringing the issue to the SC; since the rules had never been fully specified. Bells Semyorka observed that in response to MT's challenge the RA had voted to use the Borda count in the future, which implies that the issue did need clarifying. Jon Seattle noted that if the SC had agreed with MT that would have reversed the basis for every election that CDS had held up until that point. MT replied that historical elections could not be changed even if the method was flawed, but that on principle the rules should be known ahead of the election. Gwyneth replied to Bells that the RA had only voted on this issue in order to reinforce the decision of the SC. Gwyneth reproved MT for persisting in his opposition even after the SC had reviewed the matter, and said that this showed his failure to respect the constitutional authority of the SC. (Can someone give a link showing that MT persisted after the SC ruling on 22 July? His call for an Election Reform Bill following SC refusal to examine the case seems to have been posted before the SC ruling.)

The vote was called. MT's nomination to the Scientific Council was again defeated, by 4 votes to 2, with one absence. The final curtain thus fell on the effective role of MT and ThePrincess in CDS politics.

The meeting had gone over time, and remaining business was tabled until the next session. And this blog post is also dragging on, so let us table the review of the subsequent RA meeting, held on 28 September, and finish with a glance at the Oktoberfest.


The CDS Fourth Birthday Celebration and the Oktoberfest

I missed the 2008 edition of the CDS Oktoberfest because I was offline for an extended period. The CDS Oktoberfest began on Saturday, September 20, coinciding with the official opening of Oktoberfest in Germany, and ran two weeks, to October 5.

As told in the SL History Wiki article about Ulrika Zugzwang, the first Oktoberfest in 2004 roughly coincided with the beginning of what ultimately became CDS. Ulrika's Neualtenburg project was approved by the Lindens on 12 September 2004, and construction of Neualtenburg city (later transformed into Neufreistadt) began in the sim of Anzere. In line with the city's medieval Bavarian theme, Ulrika and Kendra Bancroft organized an Oktoberfest, for which they created several of the city's signature items, including the Neualtenburg Bier Stein and the Neualtenburg Chicken Hat. At that first Oktoberfest members of the city and guests including Torley Torgeson danced under a tent on the Marktplatz, the only existing city structure at that time.

The fourth Oktoberfest and CDS anniversary celebration was announced on the CDS portal, with last minute modifications to the schedule posted on the forum.

The CDS Anniversary Celebration began on September 20 with a triathalon, followed by a flag ceremony. The street market and carnival, which continued throughout the two-week festival, opened with streamed Polka music. The opening day finished with a music event in the evening.

The next day started with a parade through all four sims to the Marketplatz, followed by the first soccer game, out of a total of three during the festival. Numerous music events were scheduled throughout the two-week period, including several open mics organised by Naftali Torok. The second soccer game was held on Sunday September 28, and the final on Saturday Oct 4.

Pictures of the Oktoberfest can be seen at Lilith Ivory's flickr stream and at Sudane Erato's Picasa page.
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CDS Chronicles Part 1

When I took a long break from the Internet last fall, I became out of touch with events in my virtual homeland, the Confederation of Democratic Sims (CDS). I missed the highpoint of the CDS year, the OktoberFest (see the photos here), which I sorely regret. I also remained oblivious to the ongoing political and personal conflicts that continued to wrack the small democracy - the missing of which I regret less.

As I ease back online, I need to catch up on the past half-year of activity within CDS. In writing this post about that period, perhaps I will help other less active CDS citizens to catch up as well.


Going through the Representative Assembly Transcripts

I've tried to learn about recent events in CDS by talking to participants, but the results are hit and miss. I could try to read all of the relevant posts on the CDS forum, with their voluminous comment threads, but experience has taught me that this is a never-ending task.

The best way to catch up on past CDS activity is to read the transcripts of the Representative Assembly (RA) meetings, which are posted for public consultation on the CDS forum, under the heading Representative Assembly Announcements.

So I dug in for a bout of reading the chat logs of the RA meetings, supplemented by an occasional glance at relevant forum posts or related blogs and websites. But I quickly got bogged down in tracing back the antecedents of the RA discussions. In short, I should begin by trying to summarize past political struggles within CDS.


Background on CDS Politics

CDS has often been racked by conflicts. This is normal, because democratic government brings with it liberty of expression and the airing of differences. In dictatorial or totalitarian systems, the population seems to be in unanimous agreement with the government, simply because no one is free to disagree. Vigorous conflict is the litmus test of a healthy political system.

I personally arrived in CDS only about a year ago, in December of 2007. Fascinated by the experiment, I studied such CDS history as I could find on a few specialized websites. My perception is that in the four years since the founding of Neualtenberg there have been three or four major cycles of conflict within the realm, depending on how you count them.

The first major conflict was the split between the elected majority of Neualtenberg and the founder of the community, Ulrika Zugzwang. This split began in late 2005. During the first half of 2006 it degenerated into a bitter battle complete with destruction of online content, forum closure and avatar banning. It ended with the departure of Ulrika from Second Life, and the transformation of Neualternberg into Neufreistadt. I briefly recapitulated that story in one of my first posts on this blog.

The second major conflict in CDS arose with the group that formed around Ashcroft Burnham, who cooked up an ambitious scheme for bringing a judiciary system to Second Life, starting with Neufreistadt. Ashcroft's Local Government Study Group (LGSG) wanted to create a professional judiciary in Neufreistadt. More generally, it proposed legal "tools" for use by any local governments within Second Life. These included mechanisms to enforce contracts by taking away land as a punishment for offenses.

The conflict between Ashcroft's group and the rest of CDS, who preferred to keep the local government simple, came to a head in mid-2007. It ended with the departure of Ashcroft and friends to form Metaverse Republic. I gave a brief summary of Ashcroft's trajectory on my blog post about Building a Country, under the heading "Enter the Lawyers."

The third major conflict was between the Citizens’ Alliance for Rights and Equality (CARE), the faction driven by Michel Manen, and the left-leaning Citizen's Social Democratic Faction (CSDF). The reasons for this conflict are rather less clear to me. They seem to have hinged on Manen's vision of a strong presidential regime following the US model, as opposed to the more European set-up of CDS, and on Manen's call for CDS to pursue aggressive expansion and commercial development. Since CSDF also supports expansion and commercial development, the conflict may have been caused more by Manen's strong personality than by actual differences of principle. At any rate, the virulence of the dispute can be seen in this thread on the CDS forums, towards the end of which Manen announced his departure from CDS on December 25th, 2007. He then concentrated his energy on the Al Andalus sims , another Second Life experiment in virtual democracy.

After Michel Manen's departure, the CARE faction was reconfigured as NuCare under the leadership of ThePrincess Parisis. The NuCare faction lead by ThePrincess vigorously carried on the conflict with CSDF during the first half of 2008. Should this period be considered as a continuation of the third conflict initiated by Michel Manen, or as a separate fourth conflict? To the extent that the conflicts of Michel and ThePrincess seem to have originated more in their personalities and heavy-handed approaches than in their principles, the period dominated by the presence of ThePrincess could be seen as a separate major conflict, making it the fourth main cycle of dispute in CDS history.

ThePrincess tended to reduce politics to the level of personal antagonism. Her harassment drove CSDF representative Patroklus Murakami to resign from his position as Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA), leaving leadership of the RA to ThePrincess and her allies. CDS was polarized into two warring camps. I've told my version of this story in my blog posts Swept Away and CDS Election Update. The reign of ThePrincess ended with her getting ejected from her own faction in early July 2008, which disqualified her from running for the second semester elections. This leadership crisis within NuCare gave CSDF an easy victory in the 2008 mid-year elections, but the conflict with ThePrincess continued in another form.


The July 2008 Elections and the first Representative Assembly of 3 August 2008

The mid-year CDS elections were held during the week that began on Saturday July 12th 2008. The election results posted to the forum were as follows:

*The CSDF faction had a Borda score of 61 and was awarded 3 seats, filled by Justice Soothsayer, Arria Perreault and one more representative "to be named"
*The DPU faction received a Borda score of 54 and was awarded 3 seats, filled by Rubaiyat Shatner and two more representatives "to be named"
*The NuCARE faction received a Borda score of 29 and was awarded 1 seat, filled by Bells Semyorka

The CDS election results are calculated using the complicated Borda count, which is supposed to be more consensual that a purely majoritarian election. Also, in CDS a faction may apparently win more seats than the number of candidates it has presented, in which case the additional RA representatives for that faction are "to be named" as soon as possible.

The first RA meeting of the new semester was held on 3 August 2008. The meeting was chaired by Justice Soothsayer, who had received the most votes among the candidates of the winning party (CSDF), and thus automatically became the Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA). The elected representatives were sworn in, as were additional representatives newly named by their parties: Gwyneth Llewelyn for CSDF and Flyingroc Chung for DPU. Another additional DPU representative, Pip Torok, was sworn in at the next meeting.

Jamie Palisades, who had served as LRA during the latter part of the previous semester, was selected by the Representative Assembly for the position of Chancellor, head of the CDS administration.

A few items of business were dispatched at this first meeting. Moon Adamant announced that the new CDS sim Locus Amoenus had been purchased and was already adjoining the CDS territory. The terraforming was done, and road building was in progress. Publius Crabgrass was named as RA archivist. Gwyneth Llewelyn was named head of the Electoral Commission that had been set up during the previous semester. Arria Perrault reported on the progress in setting up a new CDS web portal, and in migrating the legal archives to it.

In the absence of the ThePrincess the new RA thus started off in a mood of general consensus. This was quite relaxing compared to the fireworks of the previous RA – and almost a little boring.


The Representative Assembly of 17 August 2008 and the Commerce Bill

The main issue at the RA meeting of 17 August was the Commerce Bill. This was a controversial issue left over from the previous semester.

The Commerce Commission was in fact first proposed by Patroklus Murakami in a post on the CDS forum dated February 12th 2008. Pat's proposal provided for the formation of a Chamber of Commerce, made up of volunteer members holding commercial land in CDS, with the aim of "revitalizing the shopping areas of our sims." The Chamber of Commerce would "consider how non-functioning or empty office and shops in commercial areas can be prevented from continually occupying space where new commercial initiatives could prosper instead."

MT Lundquist, RA member and online husband of ThePrincess, volunteered to chair the Commerce Commission. The RA officially named him to this role. MT posted his proposals for a Commerce Commission Bill on the CDS forum on April 10th 2008. MT proposed that commercial lot owners whose property failed to draw a minimum traffic of 3 visitors per week be required to sell the lot back to the CDS government for market rate.

MT's proposal provoked public outcry, including an overly-excited reaction from Danton Sideways, who owned two properties in Colonia Nova, including a shop near the plaza. My shop was starkly empty, but I had definite future plans for it - which I have still failed to implement. In Second Life time and projects follow their own logic, which can be far different from that of real life.

I use my other property near the Colonia Nova plaza as my SL home. I had the mistaken impression that this lot was within the commercial property zone. In fact, the commercial zone covers only part of the plaza area, and my house was outside of it. But my misunderstanding led me to fear that even my house would be taken away. This is an example of how any system, and CDS is no exception, tends to develop hierarchies of knowledge which leave ordinary citizens in a state of relative ignorance. Insider groups coalesce among those who have the time to follow the legislation, the committees and the social events. Knowledge is power. I'll come back to this in later posts. For the moment let me just note that this question of citizen knowledge is related to Ivan Illich's philosophy of conviviality: the average citizen needs greater access to information. A free press is one of the "tools" that provide such information, and the present blog article can be seen as a contribution to greater public knowledge in CDS.

But let us return to the Commerce Commission Bill. Under public pressure MT posted
modified recommendations on the forum on May 31st. The new recommendations were: "That following one month of non commercial activity, commercial 'rents' paid to the CDS should have a rent surcharge of 100% beyond the otherwise applicable rent." In other words, the owner of an inactive commercial plot, instead of losing the plot, would have the rent doubled, which is still a quite heavy penalty.

This version of the Commerce Commission Bill, with a few minor amendments, was approved by the RA on June 28th. The four "aye" votes were from MT Lundquist, ThePrincess Parisi, Sonja Strom and Jamie Palisades. There were no "nay" votes and no abstentions. In short, the supporters of the bill profited from the absence of any opponents to force through a controversial piece of legislation. Jamie seems to voted aye only after having obtained amendments which delayed the bill's effectiveness until after the elections – at which point the new RA could always overturn it.

In the tentative final text of the Commerce Bill posted by Jamie Palisades on September 1st, there is the following additional clause, about the next steps after the rent has been doubled: "Thereafter in each subsequent month, the rents shall be doubled until such time as the land is returned to commercial use, at which point it reverts to the standard land rental for the plot." It is unclear to me when and how this clause was added, since it was absent from the bill that was voted on June 28th. On first reading I thought this clause meant that rents would be doubled exponentially from month to month, but on reflection I conclude that this is just a problem of wording.

As could be expected, the Commerce Bill became a hot topic following the election of the new RA. On August 14th Jon Seattle posted a comment noting that unlike the New Guild and other "NGOs" with an official function, the charter of the Chamber of Commerce had not been approved by the RA. Jon was also worried that membership, which at that time had to be requested from either MT or ThePrincess, was limited to "commercial vendors" in the sense of retail shops, and seemed to exclude service businesses and any non-profit enterprises.

The following day, on August 15th, two days before the before the RA meeting of August 17th, Jon Seattle posted a proposed Commerce Clarification Bill . Jon's new bill suggested that the Chamber of Commerce should be required to follow a charter approved by the RA, and that it should provide voting rights to all CDS citizens who maintain business offices or non-profit organizations in CDS. Jamie reacted strongly to Jon's proposal, suggesting that the new CSDF-dominated RA was trying to take the Chamber of Commerce away from MT, whose hard work had earned him a legitimate position as its leader. As usual on the CDS forum this discussion blew up into the type of long intricate thread which few citizens have time to read to the end.

At the RA meeting, MT commented in detail on Jon's proposal. He stated that for the RA to rule over a commercial organisation seemed to him like a communist system where the state rules all activities. He also maintained that "commerce" under the original bill had a very wide definition, and that no one would be discriminated against. Finally, he claimed that the part of the bill dealing with penalties was supposed to be administered by the Chancellor's office, not by the RA.

The discussion of the Chamber of Commerce dragged on, and there was no quorum to vote anyhow, so this item was tabled. This blog post is also dragging on, and getting longer than I intended. I'll adjourn my account of further RA meetings to the next blog post, which will be called "CDS Chronicles Part 2". I've only covered two RA meetings so far, but then I had to spend time setting the stage. Still, I wonder how many parts this serial post will require before I catch up to the present.


The Locus Amoenus Opening Ceremony

The next RA meeting would be held on August 31st. Before that, on Friday August 28th, the CDS community held an Opening Ceremony for Locus Amoenus, the fourth CDS sim. The rather elaborate ceremony was held in the Naval Theater constructed in the exact center of the Locus Amoenus sim. The ceremony consisted of letting each citizen put an offering inside a large upturned hemisphere, as shown in Lilith Ivory's bird's eye photo. The downturned top half of the hemisphere was then lowered onto the bottom half, sealing the offerings within a hollow globe. The citizens presented offerings representing their real life countries. However, Danton put into it the pinwheel he was given at WWF Island, which to me represented the global environment rather than any one country.

After the ceremony, which was complete with the sacrifice of sacred cows and the release of a flock of doves, the citizen's danced on a nearby lawn, as shown in a video posted by Gwyneth Llewelyn. Events like these cement the community together, and temporarily put the petty squabbles into the background.
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OpenSpace Revisited

I'm coming back online a bit cautiously, following my Boom and Bust blowout, which had me disconnected from the Internet for a few months, because it had become an obsession.

The rupture served its purpose: my Internet activity is now more reasonable. For instance, instead of compulsively trying to keep up with Twitter and Plurk, I just log in and read a few pages from time and time. It feels weird knowing that I'm missing most of the content of the streams. But of course we all miss most of what happens on the Internet, because it is so huge.

One thing I missed while I was away from Second Life was the eruption of the conflict about the OpenSpace Sims (otherwise known as void sims). So what better way to resume my Second Life blogging, than to write a retrospective review of the OpenSpace fiasco.

The Void Sims get an Upgrade

It all began rather innocently, back on March 7th, 2008, when Jack Linden announced changes to the OpenSpace sims. The announced changes can be summed up as follows:

• OpenSpace sims no longer had to be purchased in sets of four at a time, as they had been so far, but could be bought singly


• To purchase an OpenSpace sim you still needed to own a normal island, but instead of having to anchor your OpenSpace to that region, it could be placed wherever you would normally be able to place an island


• The prim count for OpenSpaces would be increased to exactly a quarter of the normal 15000 prim limit for a region, which is 3750 (up from 1875 prims previously)


• The cost would be a setup fee of USD$415, followed by a fee of USD$75 per month (up very slightly from USD$73.75 previously)

According to Tateru Nino's history of openspace, low-prim sims were originally used exclusively by Linden Lab, to pad empty areas on the mainland and to provide coastlines. The Lindens called them quad simulators, because four of these sims shared a single server, whereas a normal sim had its own dedicated server.

Prokofy Neva remembers that early in 2006 the Lindens allowed Adam Zaius to use the void sims to add open sea in and around his rentals continent of Azure Islands. Anshe Chung noticed that Adam had these, and demanded that the Lindens let her have them too.

In late 2006, under public pressure, Linden Lab packaged void simulators into a product, called OpenSpaces. They were sold as adjacent groups of four, for a setup fee of USD$1250 and a rental fee of USD$195/month. Tateru says that demand for this product was modest at that time. In late 2007, void simulator groups of four became decoupled. Instead of being clustered together on the same server, they might wind up all over the data center, which caused major problems with border transfers between the void simulators. Then in March 2008 Jack Linden announced the major changes to the OpenSpace product. Why?

A New Use for Old Servers?

Why did Linden Lab decide in March 2008 to encourage increased use of void simulators? Gwyneth Lewellyn suggests that Linden Lab might have wanted to maximize their profit from old, obsolete servers that were leased, together with the necessary bandwidth, under a long-term agreement (if there were no ongoing lease to keep paying for, they would have just thrown the obsolete servers away). Gwyneth is unsure of the dates, but she thinks Linden Lab first started using void sims just after upgrading to Class 3 servers, which meant they had a lot of old servers lying around. Some of the old servers were moved to the Beta Preview Grid or to the many internal grids, but some could be used for low-traffic sims.

The original void sim product required purchase of 4 void sims at a time, in order to use a full server, and was available only to owners of regular sims, to prevent anyone from purchasing them in place of a regular sim. LL in fact earned as much from 4 void sims, using old hardware, as from one regular sim on new hardware.

But as Gwyneth explains, the technology kept improving. From Class 3 servers, which could handle at the most two sims at a time, LL progressed to Class 4 and then Class 5, and will soon migrate to Class 6. At some stage LL started buying quad-core servers, which can handle four regular sims at the same time. This meant that they had more obsolete servers than ever, still under lease. The obvious business solution was to sell as many of those old servers as possible, while making sure they remained a low quality product. Gwyneth suggests that this is reason for the March 2008 announcement. And she mentions an additional feature which is only indirectly implied in the announcement: the new openspace policy allowed parcels to be sold and announced on the available parcel list.

The OpenSpace Product Takes Off

The new product aroused interest on the part of resident landowners (you still had to own an island already in order to purchase an openspace sim).

A typical response was that of Sarah Nerd. In a post on the Your2dPlace website, the day following Jack Linden's announcement, she wrote: "Personally I like this new option. It will allow me to expand my holdings quicker and be able to offer full free standing open space sims to renters that allow for a lot of freedom at a lower price." Landowners were clearly interested from the start in buying OpenSpace sims in order to rent them out. And many landowners began to buy OpenSpace sims.

On June 2008, Linden Lab announced that they were suspending the auctions of new mainland simulators. Tateru states that this dearth of new mainland sims made void simulators a preferred choice for landowners. However, the Linden announcement suggests that the mainland freeze was a result of the popularity of the openspace product, rather than a cause. The Lindens shut off the supply of mainland sims because the price per square meter fell too low, and they cite as a cause of the price fall: "the large number of OpenSpace regions sold through the new Land Store." Moreover, they mention that the price per square meter "rose a little as we reached March of this year before falling consistently since then." The logical conclusion is that mainland prices were falling because landowners were instead buying OpenSpace sims.

There is of course an additional possible cause for the drop in prices of mainland sims. The first half of 2008 saw the growth of several new grids using OpenSim, the open source derivative of the Second Life software. OpenSim grids such as OpenLife began selling sims for far less than the LL prices. Of course, as my own experience shows, the OpenSim alternatives offer far fewer functions than Second Life. But they do offer enough functions to be interesting as a cheaper, low-end alternative. Competition from the cheaper OpenSim grids may even have been one motive for the development of the new OpenSpace product – as Gwyneth also seems to suggest.

On July 8th Zee Linden posted the second Quarter results for Second Life which showed that total land mass grew over 44% in the second quarter of 2008. The post expressly stated: "Our growth was due to the popularity of our newly launched 'Openspace' land product along with a change in pricing to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers."

OpenSpace becomes a Linden Nightmare

The use of Openspace sims soared far beyond LL expectations. Gwyneth reports that by fall 2008 there were an estimated 13,000 OpenSpace sims on the grid, out of 32,000 sims in all. On September 18th, RightAsRain Rimbaud noted that LL had reported more than 2700 new islands on the grid since the 1st of August, which would be more than a 10% increase in land mass on the grid in 6 weeks. RightAsRain asked whether this was a real statistic, or just the conversion of full sims to void sims, since there was no corresponding growth in the number of avatars. He also noted that the new sims appeared to be mostly academic islands (which pay lower rates than businesses – even in the case of void sims).

This growth was favored by a new tendency towards larger plots with less residents. The OpenSpace sims were restricted to lower prim counts, but people actually wanted sims that were less dense. Many landowners were buying OpenSpace sims in place of regular sims. As Gwyneth puts it: "the openspace sim, as a product, was undermining LL’s own income."

Also, certain unethical landowners began selling parcels on OpenSpace sims without saying that they were not regular sims, and complaints began to flood in. This was bad for the Linden image, and overloaded the support services.

More recently, Gwyneth has also suggested that the bandwidth cost of the OpenSpace sims was becoming a problem. While hardware use increases linearly with the number of sims, bandwidth use increases exponentially, since each new sim needs to be connected to its 4 neighbours (it is unnecessary to connect each sim directly to its 8 neighbours), with all the resources needed to keep the networking pipes flowing, such as memory buffers at all stages. A given number of OpenSpace sims consume the same bandwidth as the same number of regular sims, but they earn LL far less income.

Jack Linden Pulls the Plug

The Lindens decided to put an end to the Openspaces disaster as quickly as possible. The bad news came to residents on October 27th, 2008, in the form of a new announcement by Jack Linden. The announced changes in OpenSpace pricing and policy can be summarized as follows:

• The monthly maintenance fee will go from USD$75 to USD$125 per month


• The upfront fee for new Openspaces will go from USD$250 to USD$375


• No more educational or non-profit discount for new Openspaces


• The Owner of an Openspace can no longer be changed to be a different resident than the Payor (this doesn’t affect parcel rentals, just whole region rental of Openspaces)

Jack justified these changes by explaining that most of the OpenSpaces were being used for much more than the expected "light" use. Rather than being employed as open areas with little content and traffic, most were being rented out to other residents, causing overloading and performance fluctuations.

But as Gwyneth put it: "Nobody truly believes that no one at Linden Lab wasn’t aware of what was going on." And the "ridiculous" price raise was a clear signal that LL was simply trying to drop the product.

Yet Another Revolution

Jack's announcement set off Yet Another Revolution in Second Life (to use one of Prokofy's favorite constructions, as when he called me Yet Another Leftist on the Internet).

Revolts of all sorts are common on the grid. Even in my short Second Life (my first rezzday recently came and went without my noticing it) I've seen at least two major protests, one after the other last spring. The first was a blog strike prompted by the Linden decision to initiate a new branding policy, which required all bloggers to add the trademark symbol after the words "Second Life." The second was a protest in response to a mandatory upgrade of the official SL viewer which suddenly deprived thousands of older computers of access to the grid.

But the OpenSpaces uprising was particularly virulent. On October 28th, the day after Jack's announcement, Wagner (Hamlet) Au covered an in-world protest outside the Linden Estate Services office, with angry avatars waving protest signs, and at least one case of self-immolation. The SL blogosphere broiled with indignation. Major landowner Lillie Yifu announced on her blog that she was leaving Second Life. A petition was started on the JIRA, the official SL issue tracker, and votes against the price rise began flooding in. Crap Mariner created an
Openspace Flickr stream to show the Openspace sims threaten by the price increase.

By the evening of October 28th, Tateru was comparing the protest to the Second Life Revolution of 2003, a tax revolt modeled on the tea party of 1776.

The reasons for the anger are well explained by Hotspur O'Toole, who argued that the price hike would do particular damage to "sims that rely heavily on open spaces for not just an aesthetic, but their day to day activities. Sims like the Second Life Sailing Confederation, or the Wild West sims, or Caledon, or Antiquity, all of which have significant open sims that are being used as an essential aesthetic for community activities."

In other words, the end result of the Linden maneuvering is that the void sims, which had long served a useful special purpose at a low cost, had suddenly become unreasonably expensive.

Prokofy's interpretation was that the Lindens were trying their usual method: "let's bomb them with a really harsh announcement, then see where the 'pain points' are, and solve accordingly." That brings to mind the way the Linden's introduced the new branding policy last spring – only they never gave an inch on that one.

Exodus to OpenLife?

As reported by Bettina Tizzy, within 24 hours of Jack Linden's price rise announcement, over 800 new users signed up on the OpenLife grid, more than 16 times the average number in a 24 hour period. On October 29th even Prokofy Neva, unrelenting foe of open source software, logged on to OpenLife, ironically calling it ClosedLife because of its lack of user-friendliness.

Bettina was obliged to report that OpenLife was not ready for most Second Life users. Prokofy, after a few more tries, dismissed it as NotWorkingLife and NotReadyForRentalsLife. I myself had first looked into OpenSim thinking it could serve as the basis of an alternative business model for virtual worlds. But I concluded that it seems more appropriate to use OpenSim to create entirely open source worlds, and to leave the virtual monetary systems to proprietary developers like Second Life – if only they could do it properly.

Damage Control

Gwyneth Llewelyn recognizes Jack Linden's efforts to respond in an appropriate manner. He launched the discussion on the forums (there were more than 3,000 replies) and he organized several in-world meetings. On October 29th he posted an update on the OpenSpaces announcement, thanking everyone for taking time to give feedback, assuring residents that Linden Lab was listening to them, and acknowledging that some OpenSpace sims were being used as they were intended.

The turmoil continued. On November 4th Jack Linden announced that the next day M Linden, the Linden Lab CEO, would post details about how LL would proceed regarding OpenSpaces. Comments were closed on this blog post, as they would be on M Linden's announcement. If you click on Find out why the explanation seems to be that: "some posts — like service status updates — are simply for informational purposes." Feedback on M's post was instead directed to the Forum.

On November 5th M Linden posted A Letter to Second Life Residents. After a few paragraphs of justifications and rationalizations, he presented the new policies, which can be summarized thus:

• The Openspaces product will be kept at its original rate of US$75 per month, but with greater technical limitations, at first limits to avatars and prims, and eventually limits to events, classifieds and scripts


• Non-compliant Openspaces will be transformed into a new product called Homesteads, offered for low density rentals. The maintenance fees will go to $95 per month on January 5th, 2009, and to $125 per month in July 2009. Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually scripts. Educational discounts will be available for the Homestead product.

The same day, Tateru Nino offered the additional information that the modified OpenSpaces product would have its object limits slashed to 750 prims, as compared to 1875 prims in the old void sims, and occupancy limits slashed to 10.

Landowner Disappointment and Deflation of the Land Mass

The response to M Linden's announcement was summed up in the title of Gwyneth Llewelyn's post: Wrong Answer Mr. M Linden. As she notes: "the cost-per-prim in the new 'Homestead' sims will be about 500% more expensive than on regular sims." And two severely limited Homestead sims will cost as much as a full sim on the mainland without any unusual limitations. So nobody is going to want these Homestead sims.

Moreover, informed users know that the technology has advanced to the point where even the old servers can handle much higher levels of prims and traffic, so the arguments about overloading seem to be outright doublespeak. (Although as mentioned above there may be more credible bandwidth arguments.) The real reasons appear to be purely economic. But is it good economics? Gwyneth quickly calculated that if most of the 13,000 OpenSpace sims are dropped by their owners, which seems a likely outcome, at US$75/month this will mean a one million dollar per month drop in LL income!

A week after M Linden's Letter, Tateru Nino reported that the Second Life land mass had shrunk for the first time on record, with a net loss of 24.05 million square metres. However, this net loss amounted to only 2.8% of the total OpenSpaces product on the Second Life grid. Many OpenSpace owners apparently intended to hang on to them until the January 5th, 2009 price change, and dump them then.

Looking through the blogs, however, it appears that some OpenSpace owners are leaving Second Life for good.

On November 18th Tateru reported that the decline of Second Life land mass was accelerating, and had reached a net loss of 52.1 million square metres (or 795 simulators) by midnight of 16 November. This represented more than 6% of the total Openspaces simulators at the time of M Linden's letter.

Thus it seems likely there will be a sudden drastic drop in land mass around January 5th. To prevent this, Gwyneth Llewelyn has proposed an interesting solution: upgrade the mainland sims, keeping the price at US$195, and allow OpenSpace owners to transfer their sims to the mainland without setup fees. The proposed upgrade would include introducing on the new mainland sims the Estate Tools and avatar limits (100) currently available only on private islands. Many of the OpenSpace owners would probably gladly transfer their sims to the mainland, and pay the higher price, to obtain all of these advantages.

Back to Business as Usual

That brings us up to today. The clamor seems to have died down, other than a mention by the Second Life Herald that one group of residents is forming a virtual organization to raise funds for legal action against Linden Lab, to try to recover monetary damages suffered due to the OpenSpace sim price increases.

The sailing and dog-fighting blogs have gone back to business as usual, which seems to mean that they can live with 750 prim OpenSpaces – all they need is water or air, basically.

Second Life may have lost a few paying customers, but most of the rest will stay, because there is really no alternative.

But for anyone who is interested in democracy, on-line communities and user rights, this latest series of blunders by the game gods should serve as a reminder. If the system you adhere to fails to define your rights in an official text, then you have none. No amount of "listening to the forums" can replace an explicit recognition of your right to representation, participation and redress. Of course there is no legal obligation for the game gods to provide such rights, but nothing prevents them from doing so either. And if you had a real choice between a virtual world that provided them, and another that did not, which would you choose?
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Boom and Bust

Over the past year and a half my Internet activity has followed the same general cycle as the stock market. Both rose progressively to greater and greater heights, finally reaching an unsustainable peak - and then rapidly dropped down to a fraction of their former levels.

The collapse of my personal investment of time in the Internet only took a few weeks, whereas the stock market has been plunging steadily since January 2008. The loss of stock value did accelerate in the month of October, but it now seems to have levelled off.

Despite minor differences, these two boom-and-bust cycles share a common principle: there comes a point at which accumulated value must be destroyed in order to allow new growth.


My Internet Boom

My cycle of intense internet activity began in early 2007, when I firmly decided to create my own website. By late Spring I had installed about 3 or 4 sites, only to discover that no one looked at any of them.

So I began studying Search Engine Optimization, in an unsuccessful attempt to draw visitors. In the Autumn of 2007 I realized that I could reach a far larger audience by editing articles on Wikipedia. But I soon got bogged down in Wikipedia edit wars.

Then in late November of 2007 I discovered Second Life, and Danton Sideways was born. In December I joined the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS), which was my first true Internet community. I started the present blog, where I recorded my progressive discovery of the virtual world of Second Life. I began attending meetings of the Citizen's Social Democratic Faction, which is one of the CDS political parties, and I also sat in on the weekly meetings of the CDS Representative Assembly.

By early 2008 the Internet was taking up vast portions of my time. I started following several Second Life bloggers, including notably Prokofy Neva, who writes very long daily posts. Through Prokofy I discovered Twitter, which consumed additional large daily chunks of time. Through other Twitter users I discovered
Plurk, which is still more time-consuming than Twitter. Meanwhile I began to get involved in OpenSim, and even started my own OpenSim blog.

My Internet Bust

By the beginning of Summer 2008 my situation had become unmanageable. I was spending every free minute I had in front of the computer, and it was still not enough. In late July I took my family on vacation in Italy, where I stayed online thanks to my Asus 3e netbook. But once back home I realized that I was completely overextended, and needed to cut back.

So I started pulling out of my various Internet activities, gradually at first, and then with increasing speed. At the top of my cycle I had at one point stumbled on a video about screen addiction, starring a cartoon character who comes up for air in "real life." That is what it felt like. It was as if I came back among the living.

I posted my last article on this blog (before the present post) on August 11th. I made my last Plurk on August 24th. On September 8th I sent an email to my friends in CSDF, announcing that I was reducing my time in Second Life. I made my last tweet on Twitter on September 18th.

From there on, my activity on the Internet (other than a bit of normal googling and emailing) dropped to virtually zero.

The Great Stock Market Bust of 2008

As chance would have it, my personal Internet bust coincided closely with the great stock market crash of October 2008. The stock market drop of 2008 is in reality no greater than that of 2002-2003, as can be seen by a glance at a historical chart of the Dow Jones average. But October 2008 saw something much worse: a worldwide financial crisis, following the huge U.S. housing price crash. Alan Greenspan calls it a "once in a century credit tsunami."

After having studied this crash on the Internet for a few weeks, I'm convinced that it is the equivalent of that of 1929, and that we are entering a period of extended deflation which will be the equivalent of the Great Depression. I expressed this opinion, for example, in a comment on one of the blogs devoted to the Kondratieff Cycle.

New Growth

That we may be on the verge of a new Great Depression is just a hypothesis. What remains true is that periods of reduced activity serve a very important function: they permit new healthy growth to begin. Thus the economist Schumpeter talked of creative destruction, in the sense that accumulated value must be cleared away in order that new value may be produced.

In my own case, much of my Internet activity had carried me far from my original aims, and had become an end in itself. By severely cutting back, I gained space to reflect upon what I really want to do, which is (as always) to promote the development of convivial tools.

So I am coming back online, timidly and cautiously, to work on my personal projects. At the rate of maybe a few hours per week - instead of 24 hours per day.

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The Road to Illich

During the past two weeks I was on vacation in Italy with my wife and daughters. We spent a few days in Naples, and then went to the Amalfi Coast, where medieval towns with tourist-packed beaches sit nestled between cliffs soaring above the blue Mediterranean.

Before leaving France we took the risk of reserving an apartment by Internet. Arriving in Amalfi we discovered that our lodgings were several kilometers out of town and perched high above the sea, with no less than 700 steps to walk down to get to the beach – and to climb back up again. We learned to take the local bus to get around, and enjoyed the majestic view from our villa.

I brought along my Asus 3e computer, which belongs to the genus subnotebook and the species netbook. The cluster of apartments was equipped with wifi, but it took me a while to figure out how to get the Internet connection. So I had a few days of down-time in which to reflect on my main internet project, which involves making technology more accessible to everyone.

I've been long searching for a way to promote the ideas that Ivan Illich set out in his book Tools for Conviviality. I once began discussing lllich in an earlier post on this blog, titled Fools for Tools, but then I got sidetracked into Second Life obsessions such as CDS politics and OpenSim.

A Digression about Social Justice

I finally got back to Illich during the journey in Southern Italy. As I mentioned above, the first stage of our trip was a few days in Naples, a city which most tourists flee, stopping there only long enough to visit the archeological museum with its collection of ancient relics. But I had my own particular motives for wanting to spend a bit of time there. I'm fond of Baroque architecture, and Naples is full of run-down examples thereof. Also, my leftist sympathies for the downtrodden masses drew me to this bustling southern port, teaming with poor workers, street peddlers and immigrants. And then Naples was the home of one of my favorite authors, Giambattista Vico, an eighteenth-century philologist who revolutionized the study of history and initiated modern hermaneutics.

Through meticulous analysis of ancient texts, Vico showed that most Greek and Roman myths were thinly-disguised allegories of class struggle. For example, he wrote that the western dragon generally represents the laboured earth, the dragon’s scales being rocks in the fields, and the fiery breath an allusion to the agricultural practice of using fire to clear land. By extension, the dragon also represents the peasant class that labours the earth, and the Herculean hero or medieval knight that kills the dragon represents a leader of aristocratic land-owners who crushes a peasant revolt.

In the modern industrial welfare-state, popular myths take other forms, such as glamorous stories of stars, champions and popular idols, but the basic theme is the same. Our myths still generally celebrate the victory of the strong over the weak, and thereby justify the monopolization of wealth and power by an elite minority.

When I was younger I embraced the goal of an egalitarian society. I've since become convinced that strict social equality is a totalitarian ideal. I now prefer the liberal philosophy of John Rawls, who developed a more subtle Theory of Justice which takes into account the economic need to reward personal initiative. Rawls' theory says that we should accept inequality as long as the gains of the wealthy bring benefits for the least-advantaged members of society.

Musings about Convivial Tools

But let me get back to Illich. In Amalfi when I finally got hold of the wifi code and tried to connect to the Internet, my Asus kept giving me failure messages. I eventually figured out that it takes the Asus about ten minutes to establish the wifi connection, and I wasn't waiting long enough. Now each time I encounter some such technical failure, I think of Illich and his theory of convivial tools, because I believe we could design a new type of tools that would minimise the occurrence of user helplessness. A "convivial" tool empowers the user, by providing a friendly interface and a useful help function, but also by allowing the user to tinker with its inner workings, and thus fix – or at least clearly identify – what is broken. The wifi function of the Asus 3e failed on these counts, despite the fact that my Asus has a Linux operating system.

Way back in the early nineteen-seventies, Ivan Illich described a process whereby tools would be developed by a community of users. Such a participative process can nowadays be seen at work in open source software development. But few people realize that the first personal computers were also created through a process of community tool development. Illich's vision of a community of do-it-yourself tool developers was taken up by pc pioneer Lee Felsenstein, and provided the explicit model for the Homebrew Computer Club, whose members made the first functional personal computers, including the first Apple computer.

The thirty years that separate us from the invention of the personal computer have brought exponential growth in all aspects of computing: capacity of chips and storage, the web, search engines, high bandwidth, collaborative sites including wikis and social software, and open source software. The type of collaborative tool envisaged by Illich has become so widespread that Illich himself might now seem irrelevant.

But as the tools and systems become more complex, the need to render the tools more accessible to the average user becomes all the more pressing. (Note also the direct connection between the theory of social justice mentioned above, which aims to help the less advantaged members of society, and the convivial approach to technology, which seeks to help the average user, rather than experts and power users – who can take care of themselves.)

My personal concern is less with ensuring user participation in tool development, than with ensuring that the user has easy access to the inner workings of tools, and can tinker with and fix them. For software tools, such access is best provided by making programs open source. For other types of tools, access to the inner workings can be provided by designing the tools such that the user can easily disassemble and reassemble them. I'll wait for another occasion to explain why it is revolutionary to design tools that can be easily disassembled. For the moment, let me describe how I plan to use Second Life to promote convivial tools.

Danton’s Tools House

I'm currently setting up shop in a small street going North from the main plaza of the Colonia Nova sim. However, the shop, which I've called Danton's Tools House, is still rather empty. In the eight months since I discovered Second Life, I've been too busy with Second Life blogs, CDS, Twitter, Plurk and OpenSim to learn well the rudiments of building, let alone scripting, baking textures, or making animations. So far I’ve made a wall with a doorway in it, at the entrance to my shop, and an upper floor that serves as Danton's Workshop - which is the closest thing I've got to a sandbox. My goal is to fill this non-profit storefront with exhibits related to in-world tools, but so far I've little to show.

The Tools House Website

The shop is also supposed to present a sign with a link to the Danton's Tools House Website. I installed the Joomla website package on a hosted server, but I must learn to use Joomla before I can announce the link to the site. At present I'm trying to figure out how to put an image into the default Joomla page header. There is a new version of Joomla that makes this easier, but I want to learn how to use the older version, so that I will understand how the Joomla pages are constructed.

The initial idea for the Tools House Website was to present tools and other resources for residents of Second Life. This would include tutorials, lists of useful links, recommended places to visit, and so on. Such sites already exist, and would be linked to, but the Tools House site would aim to be a showcase for a specifically Illichian approach to providing open source access to Second Life tools and resources. The problem of course is how I will find the time to assemble all that information.

Tools and More Tools

I would ultimately want to go beyond tools for Second Life, and present information on the website about all sorts of other tools. I might assemble hints and useful links about using social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and so on. Then there is the idea of providing help and information about using the main open source software packages. You can download the software from sites such as Sourceforge, and find detailed information about the programs on Wikipedia, specialized sites or, in the last resort, on various forums. But Wikipedia strives for objectivity and exhaustiveness, which prevents subjective presentation of useful, targeted advice. And the specialized sites for specific software packages tend to be oriented to users who are already experts. So there is still a need for general resource sites aimed at the average software user.

Going still further abroad in the realm of tools, beyond software and the Internet, there is the vast domain of physical tools and machines. I've long dreamed of promoting a selection of easy-to-repair household appliances. These appliances would be designed to last as long as possible, with a guaranteed supply of spare parts easily ordered by Internet. They would also be designed for easy disassembly by the user, for easy repair by the user during the machine's useful life, and for recycling of the components at the end of the life cycle. Such appliances would probably cost more than the disposable type, but should appeal to a minority of do-it-yourself and environmentally conscious consumers, like myself.

The promotion of a convivial, Illichian approach to physical tools was in fact the subject of my first website, which was supposed to be a Convivial Tools Encyclopedia. On that site I tried to list and define the characteristics of convivial tools, but I never finished the task. I ended up abandoning development of that website, since it failed to get an adequate number of hits on Google. I subsequently started a few other websites on the same theme, but with equally little success. I’m still looking for the right formula.

Another of my projects was to promote the design of "open-source idea systems," assemblies of concepts that could be adapted and maintained in the same manner as other convivial tools. That ideas can be considered to be a form of tools was the subject of this post on the abandoned website. The personal vision that lies behind this particular project is hard to explain, but it is another application of the general idea of conviviality.

Doing My Thing

As noted above, these various ambitious projects far surpass my individual capacities. An appropriate format for these projects might seem to be a collaborative website such as a wiki. But a wiki implies a group, and at present I am still alone. Moreover, wikis are susceptible to a variety of problems, such as weak editorial direction, spamming, trolling and self-serving promotion of products or websites. It thus seems preferable to find some other format, collaborative if possible, which would permit the development of a clear editorial line oriented towards Illichian conviviality.

What I am really looking for is some way to work with others. But as Billy Holiday sang: "God bless the child that's got his own." Balanced collaboration results when each participant has their own garden to cultivate. So I'll keep on doing my own thing, hoping that someday I can find a way to do it with a group. READ MORE...

CDS Election Update

The next round of elections for the government of the Confederation of Democratic Sims (CDS) are almost upon us: the polls open on July 12th.

Between my adventures in OpenSim and my ongoing discussions with Prokofy Neva, I've left CDS somewhat in the background. Yet only a few posts back I announced that I was forming a new political party within CDS. Whatever happened to that?

Basically, it fizzled. I spent a few months scouting around in the various progressive communities on Second Life, trying to find recruits for a new party in CDS. I met a number of interesting residents, but they were all too busy developing their own projects. And I realized that I myself was branching out in too many directions at once. So I've decided to return into the fold of the Citizen's Social Democratic Faction (CSDF), which is the existing "moderate-left" party within CDS.


A brief look back

The Confederation of Democratic Sims was the first democratically-run region in Second Life. I've given a brief history of CDS in one of my blog posts, from its founding by Ulrika Zugzwang, to the latter's abrupt departure. In another post I went over that history in somewhat more detail, including a look at the involvement of Ashcroft Burnham, who left to create the Metaverse Republic group.

I myself found CDS in the first week after I joined Second Life. I immediately took up residence in Colonia Nova, which is one of the three (soon to be four) sims making up CDS. I was thus on hand for the Representative Assembly elections held in January of 2008, and for the first meeting of the new Representative Assembly held on February 3rd, which is described here.

The Representative Assembly of the first half of 2008 turned out to be catastrophic. CDS has had turbulent politics throughout its short history, but this semester has been one of the high-water marks. Following the departure of Michel Manen, who left to concentrate on yet another experiment in in-world democracy, called Al-Andalus, his party CARE was transformed into NuCare, under the leadership of sulphurous ThePrincess Parisi. The subsequent conflicts are told in my blog post Swept Away. In protest over the continual personal attacks which ThePrincess directed at Patroklus Murakami, the elected Leader of the Representative Assembly, the two CSDF representatives resigned from their posts. This provoked a mid-term by-election to replace them.


Recent Events in CDS

It was in this context that I decided to create a new leftist party within CDS. I announced my intentions in a post on the CDS blog, dated April 10, 2008. My reasons were multiple, but one main concern was that I had been expressing opinions on the forum without seeking the approval of the party I belonged to. The Citizen's Social Democratic Faction (CSDF) proudly announces itself as "moderate left," whereas I've always been something of a radical, and felt the need to have a free hand. I envisaged creating a broad coalition to try to pull together all those who feel in some way or another to the left of CSDF, but I recognize that this is like trying to square the circle, since minor leftist tendencies usually put most of their energy into fighting each other.

Meanwhile, the special mid-term elections to replace the two CSDF representatives were getting under way. CSDF decided to present candidates for the two seats that they themselves had given up. The CSDF candidates were Gwyneth Llewelyn and Justice Soothsaker, two long-time stalwarts of the Confederation of Democratic Sims. When the election results were announced on Sunday April 27th, the two new representatives were found to be Gwyneth Llewelyn of CSDF and Flyingroc Chung of the Democratic Pragmatist Union.

At the following meeting of the Representative Assembly, the role of Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA) was again given to Jamie Palisades, who vigorously helped the still-warring factions to focus on issues instead of personal disputes. The NuCare faction, led by ThePrincess Parisi and MT Lundquist, continued to criticise CSDF, in particular for a supposed conflict of interest of their candidates, who had been members of the Scientific Council (a body with authority to judge electoral matters) before standing for election. These criticisms were supported by Beathan Vale, a Representative of the Simplicity Party, who sometimes allied with NuCare, and sometimes took his own track. Numerous new laws were proposed, such as one designed to forestall the aforesaid conflicts of interest, as well as others that implied constitutional changes.

In this general ferment, one law was passed which directly affected my project. It was decided that a faction must have a membership of at least 10% of the CDS population in order to present candidates in the elections. Since the population of eligible CDS landowners is something like 80 souls, this means that a party needs at least 8 members to present candidates. Someone has suggested to me in private that NuCare pushed this law through in order to prevent me from forming a new party, but that rumour would give my small efforts unreasonable importance. At any rate, this measure later backfired on NuCare, since their membership has dropped to a level that may make it difficult for THEM to be eligible to present candidates.

Another major focus of activity in CDS has been the preparation of a fourth sim. The CDS New Guild, under the tireless leadership of Moon Adamant, updated the CDS Master Plan and finalized the plans for a new sim, to be called Locus Amoenus, which means "Agreeable Place." (I still say it sounds like "Locust Amoebas"). Originally it was ThePrincess who pushed hard for a new sim with small low-rent plots, apparently so that she could easily recruit new members for NuCare, but this also fit in nicely with my plans, because it would make it easier for me to recruit members for my new party.

But I was failing to get anywhere. I managed to organise one real meeting, held in the Colonia Praetorium on a Sunday in late May, with a few potentially interested Second Life residents. But a week later the participation was already dwindling. A candidate in whom I had high hopes balked upon learning that one has to buy property in CDS in order to be able to vote, saying: "Property possesses you. I do only squatting. Peace to the hutz, fire to the palace."

Another candidate who WAS interested in buying one of my two properties (I was ready to sell my own workshop since nothing else was available), failed to show up on the appointed day. According to CDS law, a new member must buy land 30 days or more before the elections open, in order to be eligible to vote. Since the polls open on July 12th, the transaction had to happen before June 12th. That date came and went, without my having recruited a single new person. So I drew the inevitable conclusions, and humbly went back to being a member of CSDF.

But other parties are also having membership problems. Following an obscure dispute about a bath house or hot tub (depending on who tells the story), which may or may not have violated the Colonia Nova zoning regulations, NuCare ejected Cindy Ecksol, one of its own Representatives. Then as the elections approached, NuCare leader ThePrincess considered joining the Democratic Pragmatist Union, perhaps as a hedge against NuCare falling short of the number of members required for presenting candidates. In reaction, other NuCare members led by Bromo Ivory and Mizou Vavoom decided to eject the Princess from NuCare.

Behind her façade of pomp and fury, ThePrincess is actually a comic character. She reminds me of the Baron Charlus in Proust, who seems imposing and terrible, but who turns out to be a sort of running joke. Still, while you are all smiling at her antics, remember anyhow to get out the vote. READ MORE...