Virtual Jungle

The Limits of Virtual Democracy

2011-05-11T12:12:00.002-07:00

I joined the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS) in December 2007, when my Avatar was just a few weeks old. I participated actively in CDS until the failure of the merger with Al Andalus in the summer of 2010. At that point I pretty much dropped out of any involvement in CDS, though it took me a while to announce officially my withdrawal from certain functions. In August 2010 I quit CSDF, the political party (or “faction”) within CDS which I had belonged to. But I only resigned from my position on the Scientific Council (the CDS equivalent of a Supreme Court) in April 2011. However, I’m still a voting member of CDS, and my Second Life home is still on the Colonia Nova sim.

The time has come for me to assess my experience of virtual democracy in CDS. As explained above, I’m totally out of touch with what has happened there in the past 8 months. I would however be surprised if anything has drastically changed in that time.

The democratic apparatus of CDS

First, the positive points. The democratic apparatus constructed by CDS seems to me to be essentially authentic. There is clear identification of which avatars are citizens of CDS, based on the verifiable criteria of land ownership. (The only requirement for being a voting citizen is that you must own land in CDS. This is clear in principle, but in practice it can be hard to verify land ownership, as will be explained below.) Every 6 months the citizens vote for elected representatives, via an electronic voting system, on the basis of one vote per citizen. The elected Representative Assembly (RA) then meets regularly (generally every two weeks) in sessions that are open to the public. The RA discusses and votes on legislative measures, including possible constitutional amendments, in a disciplined manner and following clearly established procedures.

The elected representatives generally belong to one of the several political parties (“factions”) within CDS (although they are no longer strictly required to have any party affiliation). CDS thus functions as a true multi-party system with authentic government alternation (the process by which one party ousts another, for example in the U.S. when a Republican president replaces a democratic one, or vice-versa).

During my participation in CDS politics I’ve witnessed several government alternations. While the dominate political party has generally been CSDF, some notable overthrows were when the governmental majority passed over to NuCare in early 2008 (due it is true to the resignation of several CSDF members in protest over the behavior of their opponents) and the electoral victory of Rose Springvale’s group (which nonetheless refused to recognize itself as a "faction") in the Summer of 2009.

The power elite

Thus the democratic apparatus of CDS would seem to make it truly democratic. But I feel that there are serious short-comings in the way this community actually implements democracy. Before I go on I might observe that something similar can be said of any democratic system: democracy is an ideal which is only approximately approached in any real life situation. The question is whether a given community comes close enough to the democratic ideal to satisfy its members. In the last resort this is an individual judgement.

A common defect of supposedly democratic systems is the formation of a Power Elite. This term (coined by sociologist C.Wright Mills in his 1956 book of the same name) refers to a small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, or access to decision-making.

The Power Elite within CDS is made up of avatars who have more time to devote than others. It is said that time is money, but within communities time is above all power, because influence is exercised by maintaining an active presence. Thus an "inner core" (borrowing the term from Prokofy Neva) has gradually formed over time in CDS. This is a relatively small group of avatars who have intimate knowledge of Second Life, of CDS and of each other, and who generally manage to steer the community in the direction that they want.

One could argue that this hidden exercise of power provides CDS with needed stability. CDS is an ungated community, since any avatar in Second Life can become a citizen simply by purchasing land there. As such CDS is susceptible to being taken over by a concerted influx of new residents, which was a fear that I expressed in this post. At the time I was puzzled at how certain pillars of CDS could remain calm when the Representative Assembly fell into the hands of their worrisome enemies the NuCare group. But I gradually realized that NuCare could wreak all the havok they liked in the CDS legislation without ever really putting CDS in danger, because the power elite would always find ways to bring things back under their own control.

While it provides a form of stability, however, the unchecked sway of a power elite generally means neglect of the less active members. This is a rule that applies across all social formations. Participation by the rank-and-file never "just happens": it must be actively promoted by providing encouragement, occasions and information. The slow building of a culture of inclusion requires deliberate, focused efforts in this direction over the long run. This perspective is missing in CDS.

The opaque citizen

Another major shortcoming of CDS democracy is the weak control of citizen identity.

A basic principle in democracy is that each citizen gets one vote. In CDS one avatar gets one vote, but in virtual worlds one real-life person can create several avatars. Each Second Life resident generally has a main identity and then one or more alts. Short of implementing strict identity control, this problem will remain inherent to virtual worlds. However, there are ways to limit the extent of abuse.

The main way CDS limits the proliferation of alts is by requiring each citizen to own land in CDS. While the monthly cost of a minimal plot is low, it is a real cost, both in terms of Linden Dollars, and in terms of the effort that must be made to come inworld and visit the payment box once a month. Unfortunately, CDS allows land ownership by informal groups, and then recognizes any member of such a group as a valid citizen. Thus there is no way to directly establish the list of citizens by looking at the list of landowners: one must also contact the representatives of land-owning groups to ask which avatars they count as paying land-owners. This renders the citizen groups opaque and makes it easier to commit voter fraud.

In search of participatory democracy

The democratic system in CDS thus suffers from definite short-comings. But as I implied above, any real democratic system is going to deviate from the unattainable ideal. It is up to each individual to decide how much democracy they require. I personally have been willing to compromise up until now, in order to participate in an at least partially democratic system.

But today I’m becoming more bold in my pursuit of the ideal of participatory democracy. I’ll have to devote a separate post to explaining what I mean by participatory democracy, but I might just say here that it involves taking deliberate steps to help all members of the community to participate more fully, taking into account their personal constraints. The primary constraint holding members back is of course time. If one has unlimited time it is easy to participate in any system. With enough time one’s avatar could serve on the CDS Representative Assembly, participate in the planning and building activities of New Guild, and contribute extensively to the forum and website. But the average citizen who has time constraints finds it difficult just to keep up with CDS news. This was why I tried to offer short summaries of the RA meetings, to help less-active members keep abreast of RA decisions. But of course that project succumbed to my own personal time constraints.

I see several possible courses of action for my own pursuit of a more participatory virtual democracy. I could try to push for reform within CDS. That might mean creating a reform party and trying to convince CDS members to support better information sharing and greater participation by all members, rather than just by those who have the most available time. The reform efforts could likewise extend to improvements in the verification of citizen identity.

Or I could to try find, or help start, another virtual democracy that would function in a more truly participatory manner. (Wider sharing of power would probably be easier within a community that is at least partially gated, such as by limiting entry to candidates using some sort of reputation system.) But I doubt that I would find the time or energy for such a project. So the most feasible solution for me will probably just be to keep going on as before - now that I’ve had my say.

Danton's Real Life User Guide

2010-09-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

It seems that I've given up on my series of posts about the meetings of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. My disappointment at the failure of the merger of CDS with Al Andalus obviously has something to do with it. For the moment I've turned my attention to another project: Danton's Real Life User Guide.

In fact, Danton's Real Life User Guide has been online for a while - but until recently it contained only a single article. Before that, I used that same website, with its bizarre URL "vwiki.ouvaton.org," for various experimental projects, which I subsequently moved to other Mediawiki websites with more appropriate URLs. At the moment I'm too buzy to make another site with a better URL, so Danton's Real Life User Guide will stay at http://vwiki.ouvaton.org.

One of the previous projects developed at that URL and then moved elsewhere was Danton's Second Life User Guide. I had lots of fun fleshing out that site, but that Second Life User Guide was overly ambitious, and I stopped working on it when it was less than half-baked.

A mental toolkit

With "vwiki.ouvaton.org" standing empty, I came up with a new experiment for it. For years I've been turning over the idea of developing some sort of mental toolkit for popular consumption. As I explain on the website: "A mental toolkit is a collection of conceptual schemes which, by reflecting how the world works, help the person carry out individual and collective projects." The mental toolkit project is closely related to my interest in convivial tools - but it would take us off the track if I tried to explain that now.

The political dimension

The mental toolkit includes pages containing various practical tips on subjects that seem to me to be particularly important or useful. But it quickly became evident that there is a political dimension to this project. The very idea of disseminating a mental toolkit is rooted in a larger project of trying to distribute personal power more equally to all members of society.

So this website has also become the place where Danton explains his politics. Danton, who was more radical in his youth, now espouses moderate socialism, meaning: "limited socialism under a democratic political regime with a free market economy." This is explained in more detail on the website.

I find it a relief to be able to set out my political position, for the record. I've always been a bit of an anarchist, but at the same time some sort of socialist. In the years since the fall of communism (which I refer to as the "failure of Marxist governments"), the principal form of socialism has become social democracy. This just means a certain dose of distributive socialism within a democratic regime: all developed nations are in fact already social-democratic, including Western Europe of course, but also including the United States itself (progressive income tax, social security and welfare are "socialist" mechanisms).

This explanation of my view of socialism might also serve as a reply to John Carter McNight, who in a comment on his own blog, described "social democracy, Marxism and the US Democratic Party, all … as being sides in a war long over, products of a world that hasn’t existed since the fall of Reagan, Thatcher and the Berlin Wall." I understand his preference for a "techno-libertarian/anarcho-capitalist" viewpoint, but I think he's wrong to consider that social-democracy is a thing of the past. I would say instead that moderate socialism is the most favorable framework for the development of a techno-libertarian and anarcho-capitalist lifestyle.

Demerging

2010-08-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take a break from my series of posts about the Representative Assembly of CDS to comment on the demerging of CDS and Al Andalus.

I'm still a full year behind in writing my summaries of CDS Representative Assembly meetings. My post-before-last was about the very first meeting of the merged entity. And before I could even recapitulate that year of merger, this experiment in inter-community cooperation has ended – in failure.

How I Learned the news

The way I learned the news about the demerger was odd. It had been announced on the CDS forum, but I missed it. I was on vacation at the time. When I checked in on the forum, the announcement had already dropped too far down in the list to catch my eye.

So I only realized that something had happened when I read the Transcript of the July 24 RA Meeting. A few minutes into the meeting there was the following exchange:

[9:07] Ranma Tardis: so now what? AA has left the CDS
[9:07] Rose Springvale: smiles
[9:08] Rose Springvale: we move forward Ranma. and that's what the RA will be addressing this term, how CDS will move forward. I hope you'll stick around to see

A bit later in that meeting, Rose Springvale explained that Al Andalus had announced its withdrawal from the merger on the previous Thursday. What had happened?

There had been little warning of the possibility of such an outcome at the previous RA meeting on July 11. Consider for example this Summary of Actions posted after the July 11 RA Meeting. There is not so much as a mention of the upcoming decisions concerning the merger.

And if one digs into the detailed discussion at the July 11 RA Meeting, one gets the impression that opposition to the merger was coming mostly from the CDS side. There was notably the following exchange between Patroklus Murakami and Rose Springvale:

[9:10] Patroklus Murakami: has the RA meeting to consider the merger been set yet?
[9:10] Rose Springvale: it isn't on the agenda, but the time for it is between july 22 and july 29

When asked why he brought this up, Pat explained: "it may well be a foregone conclusion but.... we still need to hold the vote." The period indicated by Rose marked the one year anniversary of the merger, at which time either party could decide to pull out, according the merger agreement (see point 8).

Thus Patroklus, who appeared as the informal head of the CDS group opposed to the merger, was sceptical as to whether the merger could be overturned. Pat seems unaware that there was a strong possibility that Al Andalus might themselves decide to pull out. But that is what they did.

Aftermath

A few days after I learned the news, I read Rose's blog post dated July 27, entitled Sometimes, it is just time to move on. Apparently Rose herself had come to the decision to demerge, even before the Al Andalus community meetings which were held on July 21.

After I had read Rose's post I discovered that a CDS forum thread I started had become "colonized" (as Jamie Palisades put it) by a discussion of the demerger. So I took advantage of that opportunity to express my own reaction to this sad development, calling it a "fiasco."

And then I came across a post by Kaseido Quandry about The CDS as Modernist Bastion . I replied to Kaseido with a comment in which I argued that the blame is to be shared on both sides. I concluded: "there was a failure of the collective leadership of the merged entity."

So what now? Rose Springvale seems to think both entities can continue to carry on their separate business as usual. The CDS stalwarts seem to have quickly adapted to the new situation, promptly erasing all traces of Al Andalus from the CDS portal.

But what about those of us who were counting on the success of the merger? I for one went out on a limb, seeing that CDS was in the process of opening up and changing. For example, I had written this comment on an earlier post by Kaseido, in which I refer to "covert control by a self-perpetuating elite." My dreams were that CDS would initiate a whole new group of members to structured democratic process (which I prefer to the Al Andalus ad hoc consensus process), and that this new group would in turn help CDS to evolve. Now both of these dreams have simultaneously collapsed. A great opportunity has been missed. Perhaps there will be others.

RA Register Part 2

2010-06-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

I'll try to stick to the new short format in the following summaries of the Representative Assembly (RA) meetings of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS). The short format aims to present just a bare register of topics discussed and decisions taken at each meeting. I will allow myself to digress if I find it necessary to add explanations or comments, but the goal is to keep everything as short as possible, in order to try to catch up to the present. (I'm still a year behind.)

The first Representative Assembly meeting of the Fall semester of 2009 was held on 2 August 2009, as told in my previous post. This had also been the first RA meeting following the merger of CDS with Al Andalus (AA), and thus the first one with representatives from AA.

Representative Assembly meeting of 16 August 2009

The agenda for the Representative Assembly meeting of 16 August 2009 was posted here, and the transcript can be found here. During the opening discussion of administrative items, the Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA) Cindy Ecksol noted that there was not a quorum of members present, so no binding decisions could be made. Naftali Torok, who had been absent at the previous meeting, was sworn in as member of the RA.

Jamie Palisades gave a brief Chancellor's report. He mentioned that he had posted the term's civil service appointments on the forum, and reminded everyone that he planned to implement decentralized events programming, as proposed in a previous Chancellor's report. Then Joaquin Gustav, who had arrived late, was also sworn in as RA member. Carolyn Saarinen was not there to report on the in-world status board, nor was Claude Desmoulins there to present outstanding items from the Scientific Council. Some discussion of the CDS census followed (about gathering more information than just the name), and preparations for the Oktoberfest were mentioned, and the meeting adjourned.

Representative Assembly meeting of 23 August 2009

The agenda for the 23 August 2009 RA meeting was posted here and the transcript can be found here. The transcript begins with a link to a Google Docs attendance poll posted by LRA Cindy Ecksol.

The first item of business was the swearing in of RA member StuiChicanne Darkstone. (This marks the beginning of the era of Stui, who set a distinctive new tone for the RA meetings.) Then Jamie Palisades asked if a Deputy LRA had been named. Cindy Ecksol nominated her fellow faction-member Soro Dagostino as Deputy LRA (who directs the meetings when the LRA is absent). The nomination was voted on and passed unanimously. Carolyn Saarinen reported on her investigations concerning a status board to show when RA members are in-world. An off-the-shelf system could be had for L$1000. The purchase was voted on and approved.

The next item was a presentation by Jamie Palisades of the Chancellor's plans for regional event expenditures. During the previous term the events spending was well below the budget, so Jamie had proposed to set aside portions of an expanded events budget for four citizen-led volunteer panels, as follows: a cultural and arts commission (CDS-wide), an Alpine region commission (for the Neufriestadt and Alpine Meadows sims), and Andalusian region commission, and a Roman region commission (for the Colonia Nova and Locus Amoenus sims – though this latter is supposed to be Greek). The Chancellor would however require that commission members who are seeking funding abstain from any vote on their own proposals. Debate about this item went over the time allotted for it, and Jamie suggested the topic should be posted for discussion on the forums. A motion to postpone the item was presented and passed.

Naftali Torok presented a bill to change election dates, since the existing election schedule put campaigning into the middle of highly distracting periods of the year (Christmas season and summer vacations). Her simple proposal was to amend Article I, Section 2 of the CDS Constitution to read: "New RAs shall take office on 1 June and 1 December." Sonja Strom linked to a poll and discussion of this topic on the CDS forum. Discussion dragged on, and it was voted to defer this item also to the next meeting.

Under "concerns of RA members," Naftali Torok brought up the subject of new building and terraforming in the sims, mentioning that builders should keep in mind the landscape themes. Carolyn Saarinen asked about education classes (building courses organized by the Guild). Rose Springvale made a few announcements related to events, notably about the one-year anniversary of the Locus Amoenus ceremony, and floats for the Oktoberfest parade. The meeting was adjourned. (LRA Cindy Ecksol posted a summary of the 23 August meeting here.)

Representative Assembly meeting of 6 September 2009

The agenda for the 6 September 2009 RA does not seem to have been posted on the forum, but the transcript can be found here. Soro Dagostino, who served as Deputy LRA in the pre-announced absence of LRA Cindy Ecksol, began with adjustments to the agenda. He then had the modified agenda voted upon, in his usual procedural manner, and passed the floor to Jamie Palisades for the Chancellor's report.

Jamie mentioned subjects such as bringing more parcels in CN online as commercial properties, possible rent reductions, ongoing terraforming on the Monastery sim and in the joining sims between Al Andalus and Colonia Nova, the hard-to-use portal website, and a study of public buildings in CDS. Pip Torok mentioned that the 79AD exhibit by Symo Kurka in Locus Amoenus, which was intended to aid the sale of LA plots, had served its purpose and could be dismantled. Pip was also concerned about out-of-theme buildings appearing in the Roman sim. Jamie then discussed the regional cultural commissions, which he was hoping would take over event programming in the regions. Micael Khandr asked if the neighborhoods could also decide building issues (to keep buildings in-theme). StuiChicanne Darkstone observed that in AA there was no effective lower level authority to decide a building plan. Jamie replied that land covenant compliance was generally a responsibility of the Chancellor, who would attempt mediation in case of a complaint, rather than threaten land confiscation. He thought there might be an opportunity to develop more local responsibility in this process.

The next item was the change of election dates, which had been proposed by Naftali Torok at the previous RA meeting. Sonja Strom suggested holding a referendum on the subject. As this referendum proposal was in fact a new item to consider, there was a motion to defer it to the next meeting, which passed. Carolyn Saarinen made two announcements, one about an upcoming course in building, and another on her initial contacts with the maker of the online indicator system. The meeting was adjourned.

RA Register Part 1

2010-06-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'll have to try a new formula. I've been trying to bring up-to-date my summaries of meetings of the Representative Assembly of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. But instead of a "fast forward" I'm stuck as far behind as ever. I'm still reporting on what happened in CDS one year ago! Henceforth I'm only going to present a bare register of topics discussed and decisions taken.

The Representative Assembly (RA) meeting held on 28 June 2009 had been mostly devoted to discussion of the latest version of a proposed constitutional amendment concerning merger procedures, presented by Patroklus Murakami. This amendment received four "yes" votes out of the five RA members present, but two RA members had requested 7-day votes. It turns out that those two RA members voted no, and the proposal therefore failed, since a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 12 July 2009

The July 12 meeting was the last RA of the Spring semester of 2009. The agenda was ambitious. Soro Dagostino, the Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA) arrived an hour late, and on the forums the transcript is in two parts. The first part was recorded by Brian Livingston and runs up until he left the meeting, while the second part starts from when Soro arrived and runs to the end of the meeting.

The Chancellor's report was tabled, since Jamie Palisades was absent. Discussion moved to the next item, the General Master Plan (GMP). Sonja Strom reported on a workgroup formed a few months before, which had put a lot of work into making various maps. But the GMP had not yet been revised accordingly. Brian Livinston noted that the last forum thread on this topic mentioned work still to be completed regarding terrain. There followed discussion of the incorporation of Al Andalus into the GMP process. Sonja noted that AA had indicated in their merger offer acceptance letter that they chose option 2 for the position of AA, which joined the AA sim with the libraries on it to the north side of Colonia Nova. Brian moved to consult with the New Guild regarding the status of the GMP and the position of AA in the final plan, and this was approved by a vote.

Next on the agenda was CDS Economic Development, but time was running late, so the RA moved to an item which was not on the agenda, but which normally would have come under the time allotted to the Chancellor. Sonja Strom introduced Zaphod Enoch, a member of Munich in SL, who liked Neufriestadt, and who proposed that CDS and Munich-SL have a consulate exchange. The RA members were interested in this idea, but expected the Chancellor to carry it forward, and since he was absent it was tabled.

There then should have been discussion of proposals from the Scientific Council (SC), but no SC members were present, so this too was tabled. The final item was interviews with two candidates to the Scientific Council, Delia Lake and Danton Sideways. Candidates are traditionally proposed by the SC and then interviewed by the RA, who must approve them (though if the RA takes no action within a month the candidates automatically become SC members). The RA inhabitually decided to approve the two candidates without interviewing them, and the meeting was adjourned.

Elections for the Fall 2009 Representative Assembly

Thus the Spring semester of the CDS Representative Assembly came to an end, and the election period began for the Fall semester. This was a rather special election, since the pre-merger CDS voted for representatives according to its traditional procedure, while Al Andalus selected its representatives using its own procedure.

The election calendar was posted by Rose Springvale on 25 May 2009 (long before the end of the Spring RA session). Rose stated that the polls would open at noon (Second Life Time) on July 11 and close at noon on July 25, and that the new representatives would take office on August 1. Claude Desmoulins added a correction later in the thread stating that the polls would in fact close at noon on July 18. (And the first meeting of the Fall semester was in fact held on Sunday August 1.)

On June 27 Claude Desmoulins acting as Dean of Scientific Council posted the official candidate list. On July 8 Rose announced that the candidate's debate would be held on July 11. After the debate, the debate transcript was posted on the forum.

The CDS elections were held as planned from July 11 to July 18. On July 20 the Scientific Committee held a meeting to validate the election results and announce the winners. The election results were then posted on the forum. The winners were (for each of the three factions):

* SP: Cindy Ecksol (LRA), Soro Dagostino, Robert Galland
* DPU: Sonja Strom, Pip Torok
* CSDF: Arria Perreault, Gwyneth Llewelyn

The Scientific Committee also reviewed the total number of RA members, in order to determine the number of interim representatives to be named by Al Andalus. Counting the dual citizens (those declared in both the old part of CDS and in Al Andalus) twice, as foreseen by the merger bill, the total number of citizens was determined to be 131, of which 71 were counted for the old CDS. Dividing by ten and rounding down gave 7 RA members from the old CDS and 6 RA members to be named by Al Andalus.

On July 22 the sims of CDS and Al Andalus physically merged together to form one land mass.

Cindy Ecksol as new LRA announced on July 23 that the first RA meeting of the new term would be held on August 2. And on July 25 Claude Desmoulins as SC Dean called for chancellor applications (candidates for the position of Chancellor declare their intention to the SC Dean).

Representative Assembly Meeting of 2 August 2009

The Representative Assembly meeting of 2 August 2009 was the first of the Fall 2009 semester. The agenda was posted here and the transcript can be found here.

The first item was inauguration of the new RA members. The following members were sworn in: Cindy Ecksol, Sonja Strom, Micael Khandr, Robert Galland, Pip Torok, Soro Dagostino, Carolyn Saarinen, Arria Perrault. Of these, Micael Khandr and Carolyn Saarinen were from Al Andalus. As Sonja noted on the forum, another two AA representatives, StuiChicanne Darkstone and Wasp Thor were absent. (And one can see lower down in the same thread that the remaining two AA reps would be Joaquin Gustav and Naftali Torok.)

Then, after a few administrative matters, came the election of Chancellor. The two candidates, Jamie Palisades and Zaphod Enoch, were present to make statements and answer questions. Sonja Strom and Arria Perault voted for Zaphod. Micael Khandr, Robert Galland, Pip Torok and Soro Dagostino voted for Jamie. Carolyn Saarinen abstained on grounds that she did not know the candidates well enough. (Cindy does not seem to have voted.) Thus Jamie Palisades was re-elected Chancellor for yet another term.

Sudane Erato made a presentation concerning the CDS budget. She spoke about collecting tier on the four original CDS sims. She had no experience yet with Al Andalus, but proposed to budget everything on a monthly basis, even though AA tier is paid every six months. The level of saving to reserves was still set at 25% of the available funds (after payment to Linden Lab). Sudane answered various questions, and Cindy reminded everyone that Jamie as Chancellor was responsible for preparing the budget for the upcoming semester.

Under "concerns of RA members," Carolyn Saarinn presented her ideas concerning an in-world status board that would show which CDS RA members were inworld. She also brought up the question of administrative permissions of RA members. Under "citizen concerns," Claude Desmoulins expressed the hope that a new Archivist would be named in order to ensure timely posting of legislation. Then Gwyneth Llewelyn, who had arrived late, was sworn in as RA member, and Jamie was sworn in as Chancellor. Rose Springvale announced the Inaugural Ball planned for August 9th, and the meeting was adjourned.

Fast Forward Part 6

2010-06-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

The previous meeting of the Representative Assembly (RA), held on 14 June 2009, culminated in a vote on a proposal for a constitutional amendment, which some held necessary to support the merger between CDS and Al Andalus. But the proposed constitutional amendment failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority, so another version was again presented at the Representative Assembly of 28 June 2009.

(Note as usual that minutes of these RA meetings can be found in the part of the CDS forum called Representative Assembly Announcements.)

Representative Assembly Meeting of 28 June 2009

The meeting began with a brief Chancellor's report. Jamie Palisades invited everyone to look out the window to admire the just-delivered Monastery sim. He noted that most of CDS was sold. However, the refurbishment of the former Emporia Romani space in Colonia Nova, which some guild members had been asked to do, was still awaiting completion. The Al Andalus merger transaction, barring any last-minute deterioration of the legal environment, was on course to take effect between 7 and 16 July. The first step would be to add the AA voter rolls to those of CDS, and for CDS to start collecting rents from their HIPPO system and paying their tier. Then there would be all the details to work out, such as memberships in land groups, which Jamie would write about on the forum.

Patroklus Murakami mentioned that in previous elections no one knew what size the RA would be until polling day, since the electoral system defines it as 10% of the number of citizens, rounded down. If 30 new citizens joined just before polling day, CDS could end up with a 10 member RA but only 70 citizens entitled to vote (since new citizens have a waiting period before they can vote). Soro Dagostino, the Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA), thought Pat was out of order because he was speaking to an item that would be on the agenda later, but Jamie took Pat's question to be about what happens if no constitutional amendment were passed, and thus relevant to Jamie's merger report. (Jamie's modification of Pat's constitutional amendment had been voted on at the previous RA meeting. It failed to get a two-thirds majority, but this was only confirmed after counting the "seven-day votes" requested by two absent RA members, Brian Livingston and Sonja Strom.) Jamie maintained that his own version of the constitutional amendment would have resolved the problem of double votes by CDS members participating in the selection of Al Andalus representatives.

Gwyneth Llewelyn observed that Al Andalus as a non-profit was billed every six months for tier payment to Linden Lab, and asked whether the merger would require CDS to change its legislation, which required the treasury to have funds for only 3 months of payment. Jamie replied that CDS had not yet had to deal with such a question, and would have to determine whether it would front the six months of tier while billing all citizens monthly.

Discussion then began on Pat's latest version of the constitutional amendment concerning merger procedures. This version was the shortest yet, containing only three sentences, the key one running as follows: "The RA may be supplemented with interim additional representatives, freely chosen by a community joining the CDS." Pat explained that this amendment was intended to enable the merger, by ensuring that the AA reps can join the RA, and also provided a minimal framework for future expansions. The proposal was seconded, and Pat then presented his arguments for the amendment. The CDS Constitution defines the RA as a body of democratically elected factions, with involved rules about how to conduct elections, nothing of which will apply to the AA reps joining the RA. So to accommodate the merger Pat borrowed language from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), to put into the framework for any future mergers the expectation that the RA will remain a democratic body. And Gwyneth quoted the relevant passage from article 21 of the UDHR: "Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives."

Jamie Palisades asked Pat whether the selection by AA of interim representatives in accordance with the merger bill would be constitutionally attackable without his constitutional amendment. Pat answered that he did think there would be a constitutional issue without his amendment. Jamie then asked whether, once the constitutional amendment was passed, the AA selection would still be open to challenge. Pat said he thought the amendment would reduce the likelihood that the AA representatives could be successfully challenged. Gwyneth added that some people in the future could contest the merger bill as unconstitutional, since it creates a way for RA members to be appointed outside the normal election process, and that Pat's amendment would ensure that the merger bill cannot be attacked. Pip Torok observed that "freely chosen" in the merger bill means that AA is free to choose according to their whim, and that CDS cannot say how they should choose.

Jamie made a last plea for his own constitutional amendment, which would explicitly legitimate a transaction procedure in the case of mergers with large bodies such as AA, and which itself would make the AA process for selection of interim representatives constitutional. But he also stated that since the deadline had passed for constitutional challenge of the merger bill, the completion of the merger required no constitutional amendment at all. And he suggested that Pat's amendment could be interpreted as opposition to the merger. This brought protests from both Pat and Gwyneth, who insisted they had never opposed the merger. Gwyneth acknowledged that the merger bill had passed all required review and would be implemented, but stated that she and Pat wanted to introduce the possibility of RA members being freely chosen from their communities in any FUTURE mergers, and to make that part of the Constitution.

The vote was called. Patroklus Murakami, Pip Torok, Sonja Strom and Gwyneth Llewelyn voted yes. Soro Dagostino voted no, and observed that there were two senators with seven day votes. Since a Constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority, it required one more yes vote to pass. (As can be seen on the forum, Cindy Ecksol and Brian Livingston voted no, and the proposed amendment failed.)

There was a brief discussion of when the territorial accession of the AA sims would happen (most likely between July 7th and 16th). This was left to the discretion of the Chancellor, provided that it did not fall during the upcoming election. The meeting was adjourned.

Transition to The Register

I'm losing ground. This series of summaries of CDS Representative Assembly meetings was supposed to be a "fast forward" to the present, but the last instalment was posted three months ago. I'm going to try yet another formula: a simple register of topics discussed and decisions taken. Transition to The Register Part 1.

Fast Forward Part 5

2010-04-10T12:21:00.001-07:00

The Representative Assembly (RA) of May 31 2009 had approved the merger offer which CDS extended to Al Andalus. The next RA meeting was held just one week later, on 7 June 2009. This meeting and the following one on 14 June 2009 were primarily taken up with discussion of proposed amendments to the CDS constitution, which some held to be necessary to accommodate the impending merger.

(Note as usual that minutes of these RA meetings can be found in the part of the CDS forum called Representative Assembly Announcements.)

Representative Assembly Meeting of 7 June 2009

The RA meeting of 7 June 2009 was a Special Meeting, announced at the last minute under conditions contested by Cindy Ecksol, who could not attend but who asked for a 7-day vote.

At the end of the previous RA meeting, the discussion on the latest proposal for a new Monastery sim had been postponed. To resume the discussion, Patroklus Murakami made a motion to approve this proposal, which Gwyneth Llewelyn seconded. The Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA) Soro Dagostino noted that Chancellor Jamie Palisades had posted a new note on the subject that morning (which would seem to be this note). Those present were ready to vote without further discussion, so the motion was called - and it passed! Thus after 9 months of procedures Arria Perrault was finally able to create the first homestead sim in CDS.

The next matter was a proposed Community Merger Bill, presented by Patroklus Murakami. He began by saluting the "fantastic" news that Al Andalus had agreed to the CDS merger proposal. (The previous RA meeting had approved the Al Andalus Expansion Proposal, the final text of which was posted on the forum by Cindy Ecksol. The offer was sent to the Al Andalus Estate by Chancellor Jamie Palisades, who posted the text of the offer on 2 June 2009, followed by the text of the Al Andalus acceptance on 5 June 2009.) Patroklus maintained however that the merger required changes to the CDS Constitution, notably since the Constitution refers to the RA as being made up of "democratically elected factions."

During prior discussions, Pat had proposed a first version of such a constitutional amendment, but the merger offer was voted before any discussion of Pat's proposal. Then on the morning of 7 June, Jamie Palisades had posted a much simplified alternative version of Pat's text. Soro asked Pat if he accepted Jamie's changed version. But meanwhile the RA members asked for time to read the text - and they were apparently reading Pat's original version instead of Jamie's modified version. Pip Torok suggested changing the first sentence of Section 2 from "at least a year" to "a year to 18 months." (This sentence, about how long after the merger the community joining the CDS will retain its own Estate Owner, is found in Pat's original version.) Pat accepted Pip's suggestion as a friendly amendment. Gwyneth Llewelyn observed that the approved merger offer defines a transition period of a full RA term of six months (see section 4 of the final merger proposal), while section 3 of Pat's first version suggests instead a three month transition period. Sonja Strom proposed rewording this passage to read: "These temporary seats last until the first RA term in which the new citizens participate in the election." Pat accepted that also. There followed discussion of certain words that Pat had put in brackets, meant to be alternative wordings, in particular in the following passage: "the RA will be augmented by a number of [nonvoting] representatives (equal to the number of Interim Added Seats) appointed/elected by the community joining using its own [democratic] methods…." Pat proposed to take out "nonvoting" but to leave in "democratic."

Gwyneth asked if it was clear to everyone that the Interim Added Seats expired at the next regular election. Claude Desmoulins noted that if the merger happens more than thirty days before an election, the text is clear that the interim seats will last a full term, but if the merger happens less than thirty days before, there is ambiguity as to how long the interim is. However, it would be reasonable to assume that in the latter case the interim period would also be until the end of the term, because otherwise it would not be "interim." Sonja Strom asked about the sentence in section 2 which said: "Any sims owned by the community will merge as one territory with the CDS." Pat explained that he didn't mean "one contiguous territory," but that they could remain in different places on the grid. And Gwyneth asked what about getting "half a community"? Then Soro asked if the discussion could be postponed until next week, and Pat agreed that it would be better to get things right than to rush. The meeting was adjourned.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 14 June 2009

The RA decided that the first item of business would be continuation of the discussion about the constitutional amendment to facilitate the merger. Pat moved the proposed constitutional amendment that he had circulated at the last meeting and posted on the forum. Jamie however linked to Pat's most recent draft, which was much shorter, and which was in fact what Pat was proposing. Jamie also distributed Pat's latest version on a notecard, together with Jamie's own proposed modifications thereto. (Some other notable contributions to this long forum thread were from Rose Springvale, who expressed her opposition to any amendments that were "not part of the transactions contemplated," and Claude Desmoulins of the Scientific Council, who argued that the proposed merger was unprecedented and outside the scope of anything in CDS history to that point, therefore requiring a certain amount of flexibility. Claude felt that the attempt to amend the constitution to provide a general framework for any and all future mergers could hinder future ability to negotiate each merger separately.)

Patroklus opened the discussion of his own proposal. He observed that many citizens felt that his earlier drafts were too long, and that they undid the agreement with Al Andalus. He had therefore drafted a briefer version that would provide a general framework for all such mergers, and into which he had added a role for the Scientific Committee, to validate the number of seats a new community gets in a post-merger RA. Gwyneth agreed that it was important to avoid any amendment that would change the conditions of the merger offer. However, she felt strongly that it was necessary to deal with three issues: (1) transferring citizens (CDS members declaring themselves as AA members) exercising two votes, (2) RA members getting "appointed" (by AA) instead of elected, and (3) CDS maintaining the definition of "democracy" that had served CDS so well during the past five years.

Jamie then set out four points of his own. First, he echoed the suggestion by Sonja Strom (who was absent) that any general framework for mergers should go light on specific details in order to allow flexibility in individual situations. He noted that Pat's latest short version was appropriately light. Second, he felt that the constitution should be adjusted to support the merger fully, so that there would be no room for someone to argue afterwards that the merger was unconstitutional. Third, with respect to the issue of how AA selects its transitional representatives, Pat's insistence on using the word "democracy" could lead to someone challenging the AA selection method after the fact. Jamie therefore proposed to change the wording to "any reasonable method consistent with the joining estate's past practice." Fourth, Pat's most recent text changed the approved merger offer, which included a minimum of 2 AA reps, and which excluded from the next CDS poll any CDS members who participated in selecting the AA reps, thereby resolving the problem of double voting.

Cindy Ecksol moved Jamie's note card to amend the proposal on the table, which contained the text of Jamie's latest forum post. Patroklus commented that he was glad to hear that dual citizens would not be counted twice, but would like to see that clearly expressed in writing. And he still wondered how AA intended to select its reps. Had secret ballot elections been specifically rejected within AA? Why, he asked, would AA prefer to select its official reps at an informal discussion among only 4 or 5 members. Cindy explained that AA resolves everything by consensus – they talk about each issue until eventually there is a consensus that all can live with. Anyone who is interested shows up for the Town Meeting. Gwyneth called this "adhocracy," observing that the Guild functions similarly, only with voting by those present. Jamie stated that Pat had been wise to remove from his text all detailed procedures for dealing with the dual citizen issue, since such detail did not belong in the constitution. And he warned that imposing one specific sort of democratic decision-making on the joining party would appear to be a deliberate mechanism for undoing such decisions by referring them to the Scientific Council as unconstitutional. He felt that CDS should refrain from interrogating AA as to its method of initial selection, and adopt a more fair-minded attitude instead of giving lessons.

Patroklus then argued against Jamie's latest additions to his own shorter version, on the grounds that they added too much detail, and limited the discretion of the Chancellor to find a working deal. Gwyneth agreed with Pat, asserting that Jamie's additions would void the constitution of what she held to be its fundamental principle, quoting the following passage: "The Representative Assembly (RA) is a body of democratically elected factions which represent different ideological views of its citizens." She proposed that they vote on Pat's shorter text.

Cindy Ecksol observed that the motion on the table was Jamie's amendment to Pat's text. Gwyneth made a final plea for a text which would require all decisions to be made according to the principle of representative democracy. Soro called the question, and Jamie's amendment carried by three votes to two. Then the body voted on Pat's proposal itself (as amended by Jamie's additions). This proposal also carried by three votes to two.

Jamie observed that as a constitutional amendment the proposal would require five votes to pass (five out of seven being more than two thirds). It would thus depend on the 7 day votes from Brian and Sonja. He also reminded everyone that in little more than a week, on the 25th of June, the filings of candidacies for the next CDS elections would open. Al Andalus should make their decision before then, and they might decline the merger offer if there was a negative vote on this motion. Gwyneth replied that the failure of the constitutional amendment bill would leave intact the already approved AA merger bill.

Jamie then gave a quick Chancellor's report. He announced that the Monastery sim had been bought. Also, that CDS land was almost sold out – and so was Al Andalus land. The following item on the agenda was a presentation from the Scientific Committee, but as no SC members were online, this was postponed. Rose Springvale made a few announcements. A third Grand Tour of SL communities was upcoming. Rose advised everyone to go to see the CDS stand at the 6th Second Life birthday exhibit (SLB6). She mentioned that both CDS and AA had put up kiosks in Caledon's Oxbridge Village Gateway. The meeting was adjourned.

Fast Forward Part 4

2010-03-27T05:52:00.000-07:00

The previous instalment of this review of past meetings of the Representative Assembly (RA) of CDS took us through the RA of 19 April 2009. In that meeting the discussion of the merger between CDS and Al Andalus was picking up steam. The next RA meeting seems to have been on 17 May 2009, nearly a month later. (Perhaps the meeting planned for 3 May was held but the minutes were never posted?) The last two meetings in May, summarized below, were exceptionally long and dense, reflecting the complexities of the merger issue.

Remember that the full minutes of these RA meetings can be found in the part of the CDS forum called Representative Assembly Announcements.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 17 May 2009

The proposals discussed in the previous session had been given the form of bills to be voted on, one concerning the Monastery sim expansion and the other concerning the merger with Al Andalus (AA). However, the first agenda item was the Chancellor's report. Jamie Palisades suggested that his time should be used as a Q & A session, so that he could answer the questions that RA members might have about these bills. Gwyneth Llewelyn mentioned a rumor that Port Spinoza was interested in a similar arrangement as had been drafted for AA. Jamie replied that the SL Bar Association might also be interested. (He said this had been discussed at the previous meeting, but as there seems to be no mention of it in the transcripts of 19 April, this further suggests that there may in fact have been a meeting on 3 May.) Concerning Port Spinoza, Jamie thought a possible merger would involve only that sim and its neighbour, rather than all of Cedar Island. (These latter sims were created under the impulsion of CDS member Jon Seattle.)

The next item was discussion of the General Master Plan. Jamie Palisades reported that the Guild had prepared three maps for the possible joining of CDS and AA, each having its proponents. Two RA acts would be required, since RA has jurisdiction for approving major sim map changes under one procedure, and for deciding to buy or take over a sim under other procedures. Jamie proposed that the RA should first hear Moon Adamant's presentation of the Guild maps, then approve the maps, and then debate the merger. Moon presented the three plans, explaining that since the AA void sim Al Garnata has a building of classical design, it was chosen in all three maps as the hinge by which AA is joined to CDS. A question of RA procedure then came to the fore. Cindy Ecksol suggested that RA could first approve the merger with AA, and then pick a map. Jamie agreed that these two RA acts could be taken in either order. If the maps were discussed first, the RA could approve all three, subject to subsequent approval of the merger, but with a ranking of the maps according to the RA's preference. Cindy Ecksol made a motion "that we sever the question: vote separately on the plans and then on the merger." That procedural point was voted on and passed.

Cindy then proposed that "we approve the plans for AA presented by the Guild subject to approval of the merger by RA." She thought that someone else (in other words AA) would decide which of the three plans would be implemented, although she was not sure that the RA should cede that responsibility. She also asked whether AA residents had a preference for one plan or another, to which Gwyneth Llewelyn replied that she thought they had their own set! Sonja suggested that this could be a referendum question. LRA Soro Dagostino summarized: the three plans would be generally approved, then submitted to AA for review and choice. Jamie reported that the AA residents were themselves split on the question of the maps. Moreover, AA decisions prior to the merger would be made according to their current process, which was consensus ratified by the estate owner. Jamie advised against a raucous referendum on the map selection: it's not a yes or no question. Jamie suggested that the approved maps would become part of CDS's global offer to AA. If AA accepts, the process is finished, and if not, the offer comes back to the RA for revision. Sonja Strom saw the map issue as secondary, to be discussed after AA confirms that they want to join CDS. They could join politically without joining geographically at first.

Cindy Ecksol formally moved her proposal that "we approve the plans for AA presented by Guild subject to approval of the merger by RA." It was seconded. Jamie understood the motion to mean that the RA would accept any of the three maps, if AA expressed a sole preference for one. Cindy noted that AA might also come back with something else that the RA would have to evaluate. The motion was voted on, and passed.

Cindy then moved to adopt Jamie's Al Andalus bill as posted in the forum. Brian Livingston requested discussion, and Gwyneth seconded, saying: "I would move to discuss a LOT first." Discussion began with the question posted in the forum by Patroklus Murakami, concerning the issue of double citizenship and double votes. Jamie summarized Pat's post as follows. First, the CDS constitution needs work to retrofit AA into it – though Jamie thought the minor changes implied by his bill would suffice. Second, Pat was asking how AA would choose its first RA members. Would they hold "democratic elections" within AA? Pat would prefer to hold elections for the whole of CDS+AA once the merger had taken place. Jamie reported that AA used a town-meeting consensus process for making decisions, rather than formal voting. Third, Pat expressed concern that Jamie's "converting dual citizen" device would in effect give certain citizens two votes, the one they had already cast for the current RA and another in selecting the new AA members. (A "converting dual citizen" was a former CDS citizen who chose to designate AA's sims as their primary residence within CDS.) Jamie replied that in the first draft of his bill he had proposed that AA select additional RA members now, before the merger, the number of additional RA members being based on the total number of combined CDS and AA citizens. But he changed that in the new bill because AA had replied that it was unfair for all of the dual citizens to be erased from their headcount. Pat countered that he agreed that AA should have their own RA members as a transitional measure, but that if they join the standing RA, converting citizens would in effect get two votes. This could be resolved by holding a special election for the whole of CDS and AA to elect a new combined RA for the merged unity.

Moon suggested that AA could just appoint two reps until the general election could be called, but Jamie observed that AA would trash that idea if they think their headcount deserves more than two reps. Cindy asked who in AA gets to vote on the merger, and who gets to choose the AA reps, noting that these were separate questions. She quoted from the bill: "The [additional] vacant [RA] positions will be filled by [a process designated by AA management, consistent with AA law]." (The brackets denote Jamie's changes with respect to the first version.) Jamie emphasized that "they do. not. vote. there." AA decision-making used consultative town meetings. Sonja said she would be ok with AA choosing their two representatives for the remainder of the term, to which Cindy retorted by asking Sonja what happens if the merger does not occur until after the new term starts. Would Sonja still want them to select their own reps? Sonja said that would be less ideal but still ok with her.

Gwyneth suggested that CDS could use the existing process of "special elections," which allows mid-term voting when seats are vacant that no one is able to fill. But since AA had 60 days to think about the CDS proposal anyway, everyone could simply vote together at the next regular elections. Jamie replied that a special election would either make AA candidates run against CDS candidates for the 2 seats, or force AA to run its own election (under CDS rules). The alternative would be to let AA select its representatives (by their own method), while eliminating double counting. Brian Livingston felt that each citizen's vote and influence should be the same as another's, which would be compromised by counting the votes of dual citizens. Patroklus argued for upholding the constitutional requirement that "The Representative Assembly is a body of democratically elected factions." And Gwyneth repeated her suggestion of holding unified elections at the usual time for the next term, recalculating all the seats, and giving each citizen – no matter where they have land – one vote. Jamie replied that fair law in mergers permits the creation of bridge measures (respecting both sides), and declaring that he personally finds the byzantine complications of CDS election law to be silly. Gwyneth gasped.

Brian and Gwyneth both pointed to the clause permitting AA to dissolve the merger at the 1 year anniversary, saying that CDS should have a similar right. Gwyneth also objected to the clause in which the nonprofit "drops on us like a bomb." Article 5 of the bill foresaw the formation of a nonprofit "using two nominees from CDS and two nominees from AA as the nominal organizers, and the CDS chancellor," which Gwyneth apparently found prematurely detailed. By then the meeting had gone long over time. Against resistance, the LRA managed to postpone further discussion to the next meeting.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 31 May 2009

This meeting had trouble reaching a quorum. There were sighs of relief when Brian Livingston finally came online, making the quorum. The Chancellor's report was deferred, to see if Jamie Palisades would show up.

The first item discussed was thus the General Master Plan and accession of AA. Jamie had posted to the forum a third draft of the merger bill. Brian explained that Jamie had revised the proposal to allow CDS to dissolve the merger, and also to attempt to address the concerns over double voting. LRA Soro Dagostino moved to amend the second draft, as a way of putting the third draft on the table. Cindy Eckso requested that they begin instead by reviewing Jamie's second draft. Brian felt that while Jamie's new version allowed the RA to dissolve the merger by simple majority, it would be more appropriate to require a super majority of two-thirds, given the grave implications of such a decision. Soro wondered which version was being discussed, and Brian explained that he was going to propose a modification to the second version, rather than discuss the third version. Having carefully read the bill, Brian was less concerned about citizens of both CDS and AA counting twice in the RA, since their additional investment of time and effort in AA could reasonably deserve a separate representation. Moreover, he saw the AA method of selection of RA members to be an internal matter within their own community. He therefore proposed amending section 8 of the second version in the spirit of Jamie's third version changes to that clause, but adding the requirement of a two-thirds majority for an RA vote to dissolve the merger.

Patroklus hoped that they would instead move on to discussion of the third draft, since the second draft had several problems. He also wanted to discuss his related proposal of a detailed constitutional amendment to enable the merger to take place. Soro called on Claude Desmoulins, then head of the Scientific Council (SC), who had come to report on a recent SC meeting. The SC had examined the question of whether a constitutional amendment would be required in order to add representatives, even temporary ones, to an existing RA. Moreover, the merger could add as many as 45 new citizens to CDS, thereby raising the number of members any faction needs to be able to present candidates (which was then 10% of the total CDS population). This would mean that two of the three current factions would need to recruit very rapidly to remain legally viable, running the risk of leaving only one faction with candidates. Cindy maintained that the bill under discussion could be voted on without any constitutional amendment, since it only extended a proposal to AA, and that the constitutional issue would only arise once AA accepted and the proposal came back to the RA. She moved the second draft as amended, and Brian seconded. Jamie finally arrived just at that moment, ready to speak to the motion. Pat again raised his question about how AA would select its representatives, but Soro called the vote. The motion passed with four ayes, no nayes, and a 7 day vote still to come from Sonja.

Next item for discussion was Arria's Monastery sim, as proposed in a new draft bill posted by Jamie Palisades. Pip started things off by moving the bill as posted, and Brian seconded it. Rose Springvale noted that she had several times argued for making this a full sim instead a homestead, but that her suggestion had never been discussed. Also, she wondered whether, once CDS buys the homestead, it would get payments for the sale of the parcels. Arria replied that the Monastery holds exhibits but not events, so a homestead would suffice. On the payment question, she had committed herself to paying all the parcel fees for 4 months, with the CDS receiving this money in the usual way. Jamie confirmed that this was the procedure set out in the latest draft, adding that this sim would be an experiment in whether small lots can be attractive on a homestead sim. Rose repeated that she was opposed to using a limited homestead sim in that location, and noted that Arria's existing Monastery does hold events, having just participated in the latest Grand Tour (of community sims in SL). Patroklus retorted that the RA had just voted to add AA with its four homestead sims to the CDS. Cindy replied to Pat that the Monastery has much more going on that the AA homesteads, which are mostly one-person, one-function spaces. Cindy suggested adding a contingency to the Monastery bill that the usage of the sim be revisited after a certain time to see if the sim requires an upgrade. But formulating such an amendment would take time, so Soro steered discussion back to the proposal at hand. Rose explained that an upgrade of some of the AA homestead sims was being actively considered in relation to the planned relocation of AA next to CDS, and for the same reason (heavier traffic). Rose also stated that if the merger went through, CDS could have full sims at lower prices by using the non-profit organisation. But Arria specifically wanted a homestead sim so that the Monastery would be surrounded by low density space. Patroklus noted that Arria's whole proposal had been worked out in all its details for a homestead sim, and changing to a full sim would fundamentally alter it. Pat also felt the non-profit option was still uncertain. It was becoming clear that the Monastery proposal would require more discussion. Jamie suggested that Rose briefly describe AA's experience with the "Library" void sim, which was being considered for an upgrade. But Cindy moved to defer the vote on the Monastery until next meeting, and that passed. Arria stated that if she could not get a homestead sim in CDS, she would look for a solution outside of CDS.

Soro asked if there were still items for the Scientific Council to review, but Claude Desmoulins and Delia Lake were gone. Pip moved to postpone the SC matters. That passed, and the meeting was adjourned.

Fast Forward Part 3

2010-03-20T12:56:00.000-07:00

We continue our brief review of CDS history as seen through the prism of the Representative Assembly (RA) meetings. In this post we begin with the RA of 15 March 2009. (Full minutes of these meetings can be found in the part of the CDS forum called Representative Assembly Announcements.)

Of course we have to agree with Dianne Mechanique when she points to the "many more exciting and interesting things that happened entirely outside of the legislature." But the task of reviewing RA meetings is all that Danton can handle for the time being.

Our previous instalment went up to the end of the RA meeting of 1 March 2009. Following the discussion of the General Master Plan, the next agenda item should have been Sonja Strom's proposal for a referendum process, but that was postponed to the following meeting.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 15 March 2009

The meeting of 15 March 2009 opened among multiple crashes. LRA Symo Kurka then invited Sonja Strom to defend her bill for referendums. Sonja thought citizens should have the ability to vote on major decisions about the direction the community would take. The CDS Forum does have a poll feature, but not all citizens read the forum discussions. There followed much discussion as to how many questions could be asked per referenda, how many referenda could be held per term, or whether they would coincide with RA elections. No one contested the principle that the referenda would be merely advisory. The motion finally proposed one referendum per term, with up to five questions, to be voted along with RA ballot – and was passed.

During the referendum discussion, since he had to leave, Symo announced that he was resigning from both the Simplicity Party and the RA. He stated: "I made this choice for personal reasons so please do not ask why." Discussion about his resignation followed after the vote on Sonja's bill. The person in Simplicity Party having received the next highest number of votes in the previous election would become the new LRA, and the Simplicity Party would name a new RA member to replace Symo.

Arria asked for a report about the General Master Plan work group (formed by Cindy Ecksol and Gwyneth Llewelyn), stating that she would like to be involved in the process in order to integrate her pending proposal for the Monastery sim. Cindy replied that the work group was only reviewing the GMP process, and not the contents of the GMP. She suggested that Moon Adamant should report on the New Guild's development of the GMP content. Moon said that she was primarily sketching the basis for discussion of the technical aspects: cluster themes, orography, densities and transportation. Arria reiterated that she wanted to participate in the collection of that data. Cindy jumped back into the discussion to emphasize that the political aspects were creating problems, since no one in either the RA or the executive was responsible for moving the GMP along. Solomon Mosely asked if the Guild was currently reviewing the GMP for regular maintenance or for a specific proposed expansion. The answers that came back from various sides were contradictory, but generally indicated that both purposes were being pursued separately. The meeting was adjourned.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 29 March 2009

Cindy Ecksol announced that in light of Symo's resignation from RA, the Simpicity Party had met and appointed Brian Livingston to fill Symo's RA seat. Brian Livingston was present and was sworn in. Cindy also announced that Soro Dagostino, as the leading vote-getter for SP in the last election, should become LRA, and that Soro had agreed to take on that role. Soro mentioned that he had experience in the matter, having served in real life as certified parlementarian at the conference of delegates of the California State Bar. (Soro's subsequent behaviour as LRA was indeed crisply procedural, and would have greatly pleased Beathan Vale, who a year before had pushed for the RA to use Robert's Rules of Order.)

There followed a discussion of upcoming RA meeting times and frequencies. Then under "prior matters" Cindy brought up the outstanding flag and anthem proposals. To get discussion started she made a motion to adopt the Flag Bill. The main point of dispute was the number of stars, and whether the number would be fixed (at three or four) or changeable (such as to reflect the number of sims, for example). The final amended bill specified four stars, one for each branch of government plus another representing the people, and was passed. Gwyneth Llewelyn moved to adopt the proposed anthem, which was made up of two parts: lyrics and music. A recording was played in-world. The motion carried, and the meeting was adjourned.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 5 April 2009

The first substantial topic at this meeting was Pip Torok's suggestion concerning the "Look and Feel" within CDS sims. Pip proposed that when changes are going to be made to public lands (not private lands), the doer should put an announcement in a permanent "Look and Feel" thread on the forum a week before, stating what is to be changed (for example, choice of music or silence, advertisements) and the length of the change (indeterminate or with finish date), letting any opposed citizen express their objection to such a change. Cindy spoke against the motion because CDS already had caretakers to whom responsibility for such changes had been delegated (those planning such changes should ask the sim caretaker for prior approval). Brian agreed that this responsibility seemed to be in the realm of the executive. Rose Springvale also felt that the caretakers in CDS were responsive and dedicated, and should be trusted to approve changes without having to give public notice beforehand. Pip replied that the list of caretakers should at least be published so that citizens could know who they are. Brian linked to the list of caretakers on the Executive page of the CDS portal. Pip finally withdrew his motion.

Then came "Citizen items." Rose Springvale had mentioned earlier that the Chancellor had opened the events budget for sim-specific events to be presented by residents of the sim, and that all citizens were invited to join the events team. She added that she wanted help with organizing the anniversary of CDS. She also said she would like to see more shops on the marktplatz and less offices for factions. Finally, she requested that potential citizens be sent to her, since CDS had a lot of land to sell. On another subject, Arria Perrault requested that in future the RA agenda should be clearer, without items listed just as "TBA" (to be announced). The meeting was adjourned.

Representative Assembly Meeting of 19 April 2009

This meeting was attended by a guest, Sigmund Leominster, writer for Prim Perfect Magazine which was highlighting CDS as sim of the month.

First item discussed was the proposal concerning the possible merger of Al Andalus and CDS, as posted on the forum by Chancellor Jamie Palisades. The proposal was not yet up for vote, and what Jamie presented was more a list of bullet points than a legislative bill. Jamie noted that the two main AA sims were well occupied and broke even, although since AA operated as a nonprofit it got reduced sim costs from Linden Lab (about half the standard rate). This different in costs and status (the estate owner must be affiliated with a nonprofit, which Sudane cannot do) might be problematic. In the long term it might be possible to create a shell nonprofit for all of CDS. Moon Adamant and Gwyneth Llewelyn were worried that Jamie was suggesting that all of CDS would go under the umbrella of AA's nonprofit. Moreover, Gwyneth indicated that she would prefer as a goal to have harmonized rates. Jamie presented data about the rates in each of the CDS and AA sims, observing that CDS did not itself have harmonized rates. The AA rates were seen to be around the level of the low end of CDS rates. Arria Perrault asked whether, in the case of a nonprofit, the estate owner was the real-life organisation or an individual. Jamie replied that it was the individual (their avatar). Since Rose Springvale was the current non-profit estate owner, one possibility would be that she retain that role, but as an officer of the CDS government. Or, Gwyneth suggested, Rose could become owner of CDS as well, as a short-term solution while a longer-term solution is being sought – or alternatively Sudane could own all of both AA and CDS. Rose thought changes of ownership would cause needless costs.

Jamie continued his presentation by observing that AA had four "homestead" void sims, each with a break-even tenant. These could serve as transition sims when joining AA to CDS – the tenants were all willing work with CDS on the necessary terraforming. Moreover, AA wanted CDS to take on these sims as a condition to the deal. As to politics, it appeared that AA folks were comfortable with bringing AA into the current RA and citizen structure.

Then Moon Adamant reported on the workgroup that had been formed to review the General Master Plan. She said that the group process of considering the future AA location with respect to CDS had been rough. Jamie suggested that the Guild should take the available data and, within 30 days, suggest at least two possible positions for the AA sims. On Moon's suggestion, Rose accepted the role of officially representing AA in the GMP workgroup. LRA Soro Dagostino noted that there seemed to be consensus to move this question to the GMP workgroup.

The next item was Arria Perrault's latest proposal concerning a new homestead sim to house the Monastery. (Arria's struggle to get CDS to approve this sim was the main issue within the RA during the entire Fall 2008 term.) Arria's latest proposal took the form of a letter to the Chancellor, which Jamie posted into the RA chat log. Arria confirmed that she was ready to pay the fees on the Monastery, as well as on the 6 other plots within the homestead for 4 months following the opening of the new sim, if they found no owners within that time. Jamie suggested that CDS accept Arria's proposal, which would mean that CDS would buy the homestead sim, that Virtus (Arria's nonprofit) would do the terraforming and amenities of the sim, and that CDS would carry one month of tier without tenant rent. Rose noted that the problem with homestead sims is that they have only 1/4 the prims of a regular sim, and a 20 avatar limit, which makes it difficult to hold even minor events on them. She was of the opinion that CDS would be better served by placing the Monastery on a full sim. Arria replied that Monastery organizes few events, and that the rates were based on CDS average price-per-prim. Soro closed the discussion by observing that Jamie had suggested referring this question to Guild for review at the same time as the AA proposal, to which everyone acquiesced.

Rose announced the upcoming opening of the To Limani Greek project in Locus Amoenus, and the Queens Day celebration on April 30 in Alpine Meadows (initiated by Naftali Torok in honour of the Queen of her native Netherlands). She also announced that the last day of the Al Andalus Feria was getting under way.

Fast Forward Part 2

2010-03-13T03:22:00.000-08:00

The last instalment of this "Fast Forward" through CDS history took us up to the Representative Assembly (RA) elections of January 2009. The election results were announced on 18 January, and the first RA meeting of the new term was held on 1 February 2009.

(Remember that the RA minutes through to October 4th, 2009 can all be found on the CDS forum, in the section called Representative Assembly Announcements.)

Representative Assembly of 1 February 2009

The first order of business at this meeting was to swear in the newly-elected RA members. The meeting opened with Symo Kurka in the chair as Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA), since he was the leader of the party that received the Highest Borda score in the elections. The new RA members present swore in: Soro Dagostino, Sonja Strom, Justice Soothsayer, Pip Torok and Symo Kurka. Then Cindy Ecksol officially resigned her seat on the Scientific Council before swearing in as the additional representative named for the Simplicity Party. Symo Kurka gave the traditional LRA opening speech, and there was a round of applause.

Symo stated that the Scientific Council had proposed two new members for RA approval: Aliasi Stonebender and Delia Lake. However, the RA members wanted to hear the candidates explain their intentions, and the candidates were absent, so the item was deferred. Nominations for Chancellor were taken. Jamie Palisades was nominated, and presented his views on CDS in a long question-and-answer session, after which as sole candidate he was elected by official vote of the RA. By that time Delia had come back on line, and after making a short statement of intentions, she was approved as member of the Scientific Council.

Symo Kurka then, in a new approach, invited faction members to give their point of view on the term's priorities. Gwyneth Llewelyn (who had arrived late) readily started detailing hers until someone observed that she had not yet sworn in as RA member, so she was sworn in. Sonja Strom spoke about her own priorities, and then the discussion rambled, several members observing that each faction had also set out its views in its official platform. Symo then realized that Jamie had to be sworn in as Chancellor, so that was taken care of. The remaining unfinished business was postponed until the next meeting.

Representative Assembly of 8 February 2009

The agenda began with a discussion of whether CDS should open new sims, a decision which would require collecting data about the Second Life economy in general and the CDS economy in particular, such as vacancy rates and how long it takes for a newly vacant parcel to sell. A rational statistical system should be set up, and as a first step suggestions of data types could be posted to a forum thread.

The next item was nomination of the Deputy LRA: Cindy Ecksol was nominated and approved. The Chancellor's monthly report was postponed to the next meeting, since Jamie had to leave. There followed discussion of a draft bill to adopt the General Master Plan, which had been proposed on the forums (and heavily commented upon there). There was disagreement about whether GMP provides only guidelines, or has the force of a law. Sonja observed that GMP is produced by the New Guild which is a Non-Governmental Organisation, and there seems no need for RA to limit itself to New Guild recommendations. The RA could make other sim planning decisions on a simple majority. Symo felt that GMP should be binding on the RA. The issue was bounced back to a commission formed of Gwyneth Llewelyn and Cindy Ecksol, who would review the laws in place and perhaps prepare a new draft bill.

The agenda item called "Cooperation with other communities" in fact concerned the possible merger with Al Andalus. Justice Soothsayer noted that Jamie had said such a merger would work like a native sim addition, to which Jamie added that the RA must approve maps, land acquisitions and covenants. A motion was made for Jamie as Chancellor [and as member of both communities] to present a proposal regarding the merger within 30 days, and it passed.

The final agenda item was about CDS economic development. Justice mentioned that there was the skeleton of a Chamber of Commerce but that no one had moved forward to form one with an RA-approved charter. Patroklus Murakami, who had long ago started the CDS Traders Association, replied that an RA-sponsored Chamber of Commerce felt too corporatist. Justice added that there had also been a Commerce Commission at one point. Patroklus suggested that it might be good for CDS to have Commerce Minister, so Symo asked him to open a forum thread on this subject. The meeting was adjourned.

Representative Assembly of 15 February 2009

Symo opened the meeting with a short presentation on the Monthly Economic Observatory, a new system for monitoring the economy of SL and of CDS. Symo showed 4 slides. CDS Treasurer Sudane Erato was on hand to explain the figures. Sudane recognized that getting data on the number of parcels for sale was difficult. Another interesting number is traffic, in the sense of unique visitors each month. Sonja questioned the sustainability of such data collection if were not automatic. There was nothing to vote on, so discussion moved on to Justice's proposal concerning Rules of Procedure for the RA meetings. Building on a list originally prepared by Jamie Palisades, Justice had posted a summary of the RA rules, and he suggested adoption of his "reconciled" version. There was disagreement about restrictions such as the meeting being limited to 2 hours or each specific item being limited to 10 minutes, although it was argued that these were just "guidelines" that the LRA could overule on a case-by-case basis. Decision was postponed to the following meeting, when a redraft would be presented. Symo then mentioned the GMP, suggesting that work on this issue was ongoing, and that any "bill for approval" should be withdrawn for the moment. Under "general comments" Rose Springvale spoke of the recent Grand Tour, of the ski run, and of Solomon Mosely's build of a temporary Aphrodite temple in the old Toga space. Meeting was adjourned.

Representative Assembly of 01 March 2009

(Something strange happened to the transcripts of this meeting: in the first posted version everything said by Jamie Palisades was missing. Jamie therefore provided a separate transcript of the "missing part," in other words the part he had attended, and in which his participation was recorded.)

The nomination of Aliasi Stonebender to the Scientific Council had been communicated and posted on 28 January. The RA thus had until 27 February to act on the nomination, failing which the nomination is automatically ratified. Sonja objected to appointing Aliasi if she could not come to accept the nomination. Apparently no one had specifically asked her to come to that day's meeting. Although she was now automatically member of the SC, Symo Kurka as LRA proposed to invite her to come to another RA meeting as a courtesy. Then the new RA Rules of Procedure came up for a vote, and were approved unanimously.

Jamie Palisades gave the Chancellor's report. Some appointments of executive officers were already posted to the forum. Instead of reappointing Rose and Brian as joint Public Information Officers (PIOs), he proposed to change Brian's title to Chief Information Officer (CIO), better reflecting Brian's role as manager of the web portal. Rose's responsibilities would be broadened, including an increased role in new citizen development (but not including sim expansion, which would be a conflict of interest considering her heavy involvement in Al Andalus). This would also mean that Rose and Jamie could lift some of the burden from Sudane Erato in the management of the CDS real estate market. Jamie also suggested creation of a new executive position to help in that area, with a title like Chief Development Officer or some such. On the subject of land, Jamie noted that Locus Amoenus was (finally) almost fully sold. And the previous weekend he had launched the bid process for the several reclaimed commercial plots that had been off the market for a time, and which would be a test for the reduced-price plan to stimulate commercial activity. Jamie mentioned recent events (Inaugural ball, February Grand Tour) and the events budget (CDS spent an average of L$11000/month on events, which was only about one fourth of the budget available after setting aside the monthly reserves). Jamie recommended appointing a standing Culture and Art panel, and that each sim be given a budget for local in-theme events, with some measure of decentralized decision-making.

There were questions concerning the Chancellor's report. Pip Torok wondered if those (like himself) who were members of both CDS and Al Andalus should desist from certain discussions because of conflict of interest. Jamie replied that Rose's case was special, because she was officially the OWNER of AA, and CDS would be the buyer - although technically it is not a purchase. Soro Dagostino suggested that disclosure would be sufficient. Gwyneth Llewelyn asked what legal status the Arts Committee would have. Jamie thought it would fall under the executive, rather than being an NGO. As for the local councils, he thought the structure should be something simple, corresponding just to local event kitties, not local government.

In response to a question about the proposed merger with AA, Jamie listed five issues. Do we want to do it? Is it fiscally sound? Can AA safely merge without it's separate cultural life being swallowed up? Can they safely merge without CDS razing their community structures? Do they want to come to us? The last point would depend on the first four.

Cindy Ecksol then reported on her discussion group with Gwyneth about what additional legislation might be needed to properly maintain the General Master Plan. They found relevant statements in two items of code: 8-2 directs RA to consider the GMP when approving new sims, and 8-4 directs the Chancellor to consider the GMP when assessing proposals for private development. Both texts emphasize that the role of the Guild is advisory and non-governmental. In short, no one in RA or Executive has responsibility for developing or maintaining the GMP. Cindy and Gwyneth recommended opening public discussion on the role of GMP and of the New Guild, to see if the discussion would generate a basis for a bill.

While on the subject of GMP and the Guild, Symo took the opportunity to show off new textures prepared for Colonia Nova, and then moved to adjourn.

Fast Forward Part 1

2010-03-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

In May of 2009 I gave up reviewing long-past meetings of the Representative Assembly (RA) of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS). The five instalments of the CDS Chronicles reviewed the RA meetings from 3 August 2008 to 9 November 2008. But it soon became clear that the account was falling further and further behind instead of catching up to the present. And the fifth instalment was followed with silence.

Now another nine months later I still want to cover the missing period somehow. A possible approach would be to cover each RA as briefly as possible, at the risk of leaving out much that is important. So let us travel back in time to the point where we left off: the RA meeting of 23 November 2008.

To minimize the need for links in these posts, please just note that the RA minutes through to 4 October 2009 can all be found on the CDS forum, in the section called Representative Assembly Announcements. (RA minutes after that date are found in the section called Representative Assembly Discussion.)

Representative Assembly of 23 November 2008

The main business at this meeting was Jamie Palisades' Chancellor's report. The amended Commerce Bill had requested the Chancellor to pay a Second Life business consultant to develop a promotional plan for commercial activities within CDS. However, the candidates interviewed by Jamie were disappointing, and the effect on Second Life spending of the real-life economic downturn made such an investment seem rather futile. The Commerce Bill also provided that at least 15% of all unowned commercial plots in CDS be offered to CDS citizens with a 50% reduction in rent, in order to stimulate new business development. But very few such plots were available, although Jamie expected several appropriate commercial plots to become free in the near future. Jamie also noted that the "yellow map" direct sale feature adopted by CDS failed to give an overview of the prices and availability of land, which discouraged buyers. Moreover the yellow patches everywhere made CDS look half-empty. Another problem was that CDS outlaws subtenants, in order to ensure that land-owners are voting citizens - although people get around this by joining groups that hold land in the name of the group.

Justice Soothsayer asked Jamie how the land questions impact on the newly-introduced idea of merging CDS with Al Andalus. Jamie replied that he expected to have soon a rent analysis from Al Andalus showing financial feasibility of the merger. Arria Perreault asked what it means to stimulate economic activity in Second Life, saying that it is more a question of teaching citizens how to create things, than of drawing new tenants. Gwyneth Llewelyn asked how renters could be made to abide by CDS law, and suggested that renters might be allowed in provisionally, with the expectation that they would become citizens after a certain time.

Representative Assembly of 7 December 2008

Gwyneth Llewelyn proposed a motion to introduce the "LRA pro tempore" (an RA member designated to replace the Leader of the Representative Assembly automatically in case of absence) as a Constitutional change. The motion passed. The election of someone to fill the new position was postponed to the next meeting.

Moon Adamant reported from the New Guild. Jamie asked if there was a committee to review the General Master Plan (GMP). Moon replied that if a decision was taken about territorial expansion a committee could be set in motion. Arria mentioned that the RA had asked for calculations relating to land fees, and was worried about missing the possibility of buying a void sim at the current price.

Jamie brought up draft legislation concerning land sales (the yellow map) and land reclamation (method of foreclosing and taking back land when rent is not paid). Gwyneth approved the strong measures of the Land Sales Reclamation Act, but Arria objected to the concept of "provisional citizen," observing that people don't lose the right to vote because they don't pay their taxes. No decision was taken. Jamie then discussed the budget, proposing investment in a new land management system instead of paying a commercial development consultant. He would need to see proposals to evaluate the price and features of the software, which should also generate an automatic list of all landowners.

Representative Assembly of 4 January 2009

This meeting began with Moon, as New Guild leader, discussing redeployment of the Southeast corner of the city in Colonia Nova, where new lots were for sale. This led into new discussion of the issues of allowing renters in CDS and of encouraging commercial activity. Solomon Mosely proposed stalls in CN with satellite shops of existing CDS shops, with TPs to the main stores. Then Jamie as Chancellor reported on the previous month's activities, centering again on the newly available commercial lots. Jamie mentioning in passing the memorial service that had been held for our community's co-founder Kendra Bancroft

The next item was the Land Sales Reclamation Act. After addition of an amendment specifying that the CDS government would post a method whereby absent landlords could prepay rent, this bill was passed. Then the RA considered the Land Sales Listing Improvement Act, which would take the yellow map markers off of land that was up for sale. After discussion of alternatives, such as a "central listing method" and bulletin boards at the two main hubs, the motion carried.

Representative Assembly elections of January 2009

The RA meeting of 4 January 2009 was the last one of that semester. It was followed by the bi-annual RA elections. The candidate list was published on 5 January, and a candidate's debate was held on 11 January. The polls were open from 10 January to 17 January, and the Election results were announced on 18 January 2009. The Simplicity Party won 3 seats, to be filled by Symo Kurka, Soro Dagostino and an additional person to be named. The Citizen's Social Democratic Faction (CSDF) won 2 seats, to be filled by Gwyneth Llewelyn and Justice Soothsayer, and the Democratic Pragmatist Union (DPU) won 2 seats, to be filled by Sonja Strom and Pip Torok.

This seems a convenient point to end the present post. The next "Fast Forward" will begin with the first meeting of the new RA on 1 February 2009.

Danton's Second Life User Guide

2009-07-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Bing Fail

2009-06-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

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?

CDS Chronicles Part 5

2009-05-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Danton booted off Facebook for being "fake"

2009-05-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

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.

CDS Chronicles Part 4

2009-03-22T13:08:00.001-07:00

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.

CDS Chronicles Part 3

2009-03-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

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.

CDS Chronicles Part 2

2009-02-26T04:49:00.000-08:00

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.

CDS Chronicles Part 1

2009-02-17T13:16:00.000-08:00

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.

OpenSpace Revisited

2008-12-05T02:24:00.000-08:00

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?

Boom and Bust

2008-10-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

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.

The Road to Illich

2008-08-12T04:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Ideas can also be considered to be a form of tools. 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. 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.

CDS Election Update

2008-07-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Micro-Ode to Proko-Fly

2008-06-27T14:54:00.000-07:00

The other day I posted a series of messages on Twitter, in reply to a message posted by OpenSpime enthusiast David Orban.

Twitter, for anyone who has managed to avoid hearing about it, is the first, and still the foremost, micro-blogging service. Each micro-message, called a Tweet, is limited to a maximum of 140 characters, and is supposed to reply to the question "What are you doing now?" But as the following example shows, a Tweet may in fact be any sort of message at all.

My series of Tweets ran as follows.

The Tweets:

dantonsideways To @davidorban: Homer describes a certain warrior as being like a fly in perseverance, endlessly coming back to harass the enemy

dantonsideways My tweet about the fly got me thinking of another persistent gadfly: Proko-fly Neva

dantonsideways Proko-fly : a fly in the big stone soup!

dantonsideways Proko-fly : a fly in the unctuous ointment of the social software interwebz!

dantonsideways Proko-fly a hairdryer? A veritable FLAMETHROWER in the vanity feed of the l33t FIC Digerati!

dantonsideways Hey, I'm almost as much fun as Mitch Wagner! w00T!#@!

Commentary:

It is fitting that this string of Tweets should begin with a reference to Homer, the ancient Greek poet who gave us the heroic epics the Iliad and the Odyssey . Because this short series of Tweets forms in fact a micro-ode to someone I've called Proko-fly, considered here as an almost mythical hero.

Those familiar with Second Life will recognize that I am refering to the infamous Prokofy Neva. If you need to be briefed on Prokofy, you might see my blog post about Second Life Loudmouths. Prokofy is best known for his criticism of what he called the Feted Inner Core (FIC) in Second Life, which is a supposed group of privileged programmers and content creators given unfair advantages by Linden Lab. Prokofy vigorously carries out an odd one-man crusade in defense of the average Jane or Joe, and against what he calls the Bolshevism of internet communitarians, open source and the California Ideology that reigns in Silicon Valley

So why is Danton posting a micro-homage to Proko-fly, when Danton is a fan of open source and internet communitarians? Worse, Danton is a self-confessed "libertarian socialist," whereas Prokofy consistently decries techno-libertarianism and all forms of socialism. Rather than try to explain this mystery, let me at least try to explain the Tweets.

The first Tweet replies to an offhand (and for our purposes irrelevant) message posted by David Orban, about shooing a fly out of his house. Which brought to my mind that simile used by Homer, and then led my wandering thoughts to the number one gadfly in my personal blogosphere: Prokofy Neva.

The story of the stone soup is found in many cultures. Travelers arrive in a village with an empty pot, which they fill with water and place over a fire. They drop a large stone into it, and explain to the villagers that they are making "stone soup," which tastes wonderful, but just needs a bit of garnish. The curious villagers each add something, and the travelers end up with a nourishing meal.

Prokofy applies the stone soup analogy to the business models of open source and social software. He says that the idea that one can make money by giving something away for free is an illusion: creative effort must be paid for. Trying to make money by giving things away free will inevitably result in a pot that contains only hot water and a stone.

The hairdryer incident occurred on Twitter on April 28, 2008. Prokofy was engaged in a vigorous Twitter exchange with several a-list bloggers, including the renowned Robert Scoble. Scoble has over 28,000 followers on Twitter and over 5,000 friends on Facebook. Prokofy in fact likes Scoble, considering him one of the more sensible internet evangelists, but was nonetheless striving energetically to set Scoble straight about internet culture. Suddenly Scoble tweeted the following:

Scobleizer Ian Betteridge just posted on FriendFeed: "arguing with Prokofy is like arguing with a hairdryer."

The original Tweet can be seen here. Around the same time, TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington decided to shut Prokofy out of his twitter feed. As I remember, Scoble followed suit, though I'm now unable to find the links. (And somewhere Prokofy gave a detailed explanation of the different ways of shutting someone out of your twitter feed, which went over my head.)

Shortly after that, Prokofy had a similar falling-out with Steve Gillmore, as described here. All of these l33t (hacker slang for "elite") a-listers were successively shutting Prokofy out of their "vanity feed", which Prokofy defines as follows:

"His vanity feed (I learned this term just now through talking about this incident with many people) is his RSS of all the mentions of him on Twitter. Not just people he follows, not just keywords, but people who talk about him -- his name itself as a keyword, and people who type '@stevegillmor' to try to get him to hear, even if he isn't following them, in the knowledge that he might look himself up on Tweetscan, and find it interesting to see what someone wrote unsolicited."

To justify shutting Prokofy out, the a-listers generally accuse Prokofy of being a Troll. Prokofy replies that he considers "Troll" to be an outdated concept:

"'Troll' is a concept I do not recognize, do not care about, and don't follow. It is a hangover of MMORPG and The Well culture. It's got to go if we are to have a free and normal Internet. I fail to find anything remotely scientific or objective about this concept, that insider geeks use as a flag or marker to mean 'people we hate who aren't like us and won't get in our tribe'."

Trolls are also said to incite flame wars. Thus I hesitated to use the word "flamethrower" in my Micro-Ode, but it was unavoidable. Hot flame is implicit in the "hairdryer" analogy, so the heroic dimension requires letting it all hang out. Danton stands in awed admiration before the magnitude of Proko-fly's achievement. He has fused the entire a-list together in one massive block of self defense against the truths they hate to hear.

But what brings Mitch Wagner into the last Tweet? Mitch writes for Information Week and also hangs out in Second Life under the name of Ziggy Figaro. I enjoy following Mitch on Twitter because of his laid-back humour, seen for example here, here, here or here.

Also, this makes a complete cycle, going from mild-mannered David Orban, through Prok's heroic struggles with the digerati, and back again to mild-mannered Mitch Wagner. As in Auden's poem about Icarus, the ship that had "seen something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."

Danton goes Open Source

2008-06-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

About a year and half ago I embarked on a voyage of discovery through Cyberspace. I had been just another average internet user until one winter day early in 2007, when I said to myself: "I'm finally going to create that website I've been talking about."

The creation of my first website became a long saga. A friend had advised me to use a software package for dynamic websites, which turned out to be way over my head. I spent weeks struggling to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of HTML, PHP, MySQL, DNS and
web hosting, when I could have had a free hosted blog up and running in a matter of minutes. But I wanted a "real website."

I finally got a few websites running, which lead me to branch out further. I began exploring the blogosphere in greater depth. Then I created my own user page on Wikipedia, under the name of Redeyed Treefrog. And in late November of 2007 I joined Second Life. A few weeks later I created this Second Life blog, which rapidly acquired a larger audience than all of my other websites taken together.

Through my involvement in Second Life, and in particular through reading Prokofy Neva, I began to investigate social software. I would have hesitated to join most social sites using my real name, but I found it easy to sign up as Danton Sideways. Thus Danton is now present on Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, FriendFeed and several other such sites, where my "friends" are for the most part other Second Life avatars. I've become an Early Adopter. Now I'm taking what for me is the next logical step: I'm going Open Source. And I've created for the occasion a separate Open Source blog.

I've mentioned in a previous post on this blog my interest in the approaches to tools developed by counter-culture philosophers such as Ivan Illich and Stewart Brand. I've also stated that I consider free software guru Richard Stallman to be a saint, and Microsoft to be The Beast. So of course Prokofy Neva's continual diatribes against Open Source leave me unswayed. I am personally convinced that Open Source can stand up against the criticism that is directed against it on economic, legal or moral grounds. But I would prefer to leave the polemics to others. Instead of spending my time and energy arguing about Open Source, I'd rather just put Open Source to use.

I recently took a tour of several new grids that use OpenSim, which is the Open Source version of Second Life. OpenSim was created through reverse engineering of the Second Life software. At the risk of skirting the type of polemics I want to avoid, I might observe that reverse engineering is one of the grey areas of Open Source practice. In some cases it clearly involves infringement of Intellectual Property rights, but in other cases Open Source is more a matter of legitimate establishment of universal compatibility through open standards. Thus the IBM PC became the main international standard for PC computer hardware, because so many companies could easily make IBM clones. A rather different case is OpenOffice, the open source office suite released by Sun Microsystems, which provides a legitimate alternative to the detestable monopoly of Microsoft (the latter still uses every trick in the book to subvert the establishment of universal standards in this domain). And the benign, or at the least neutral, attitude of Second Life towards OpenSim has been explained as a form of enlightened self-interest: if the Second Life software becomes the basis of a new widely-used standard, this could reinforce the position of Second Life with respect to its competitors.

After taking my tour of the OpenSim grids, I wanted to learn more about the OpenSim software. I had to learn to use IRC, so that I could follow the discussions on the #opensim channel on freenode. I downloaded the IRC software program XCHAT, and on June 3d I connected to the #opensim channel as user "Danton." I got chatting with someone called "nebadon," and gave him the link to my blog post about the OpenSim grids.

That evening I learned from the #opensim channel that there was a meeting inworld on the OSGrid to discuss OpenSim. I logged into the Wright Plaza sim and found about 30 avatars standing around, talking about technical problems. Most of them appeared in the default Ruth avatar, but some had elaborate avatars, and a few were dancing wildly. Nebadon suggested I give everyone the link to my post, which several had already read and found well-written. After a few minutes the public chat went strangely silent, but the dancing avatars were still prancing madly about. I went back to the IRC chat, where I was informed that the sim had crashed. In Second Life I have had my viewer crash, but have never experienced the crash of a whole sim, so I failed to understand that the avatar dance scripts keep on going in one's viewer, long after the sim itself has crashed.

I started trying to fool around with the OpenSim software itself. I downloaded a binary version, and got it running in standalone mode on my home computer. Around that time I discovered that Ugo Trade has written a series of fascinating posts about OpenSim on her blog, including one that gives a list of OpenSim blogs, and another that introduced me to TribalNet.

As I tumbled further down the rabbit hole into the subterranean depths of OpenSim, I began to conceive of writing a series of blog posts describing what I found. But the present blog is devoted to the adventures of Danton Sideways in Second Life. I therefore reactivated an unused blog for Danton Sideways that I had created several months ago, as described here. I gave that blog a new name referring to "Open Source", and have already posted on it an article describing how I got OpenSim running in standalone mode on my PC.

News about Danton Sideways in Second Life will continue to appear here on the present blog. Henceforth, news about Danton Sideways in OpenSim will be given on Danton's Open Source Blog. How many separate lives can one little avatar have?

Alternate Second Life Viewers

2008-06-02T01:03:00.000-07:00

After finishing my last post, about the open source grids operating under OpenSim software, I started studying alternate Second Life viewers. (The viewer, also called the "client," is the part of the Second Life software that you download onto your hard disk, and that enables your computer to communicate with the distant Second Life servers.)

Most, but not all, of the alternative viewers are open source, and some are still in early stages of development. All of them work with the Second Life grid, and many also work with the open source grids. This capacity of the same viewer to communicate indifferently with the Second Life grid or with the Open Sim grids is particularly interesting, since it prefigures the "3D web." Imagine a viewer that allows you to teleport from one virtual world to the next, almost easily as we now click from one webpage to another. Such a "3D web" may be just around the corner.

The official Second Life viewer

Before looking at the alternative viewers, it may be worth saying a word or two about the official viewer. The viewer must be downloaded and installed on your hard drive before you can connect to the Second Life servers, so the newbie experience generally starts at the official viewer download page . This download page also gives a definition of the various categories of Test Viewers (Release Candidate Viewers, First Look Viewers and Beta Viewers).

The current viewer is Version Number 1.19.1.4, which is what I have on my computer. The entire list of versions is given here. It can be seen that Linden Lab is currently up to Release Candidate 1.20.8.

I will definitely avoid using the latest Release Candidate myself, because my computer is a few years old, and is already stressed out by version 1.19.1.4. I would have willingly stayed with an older version but, one day a few months ago when I tried to log on to Second Life, the system forced me to switch to the new viewer. The new viewer produced weird and undesired visual effects, in the form of shifting triangles of colored light streaming from my avatar. Using Google I found a post on the JIRA which linked this problem to my graphics card, which is an ATI Radeon X300/X550. I followed the advice someone posted on the JIRA, and installed an older version of the driver for my graphics card, since the most recent driver is incompatible with the current viewer. Using the older graphics driver solved the problem of the colored-triangles. However, to adjust to my downgraded graphics driver, Second Life automatically set my draw distance to 64 meters, so my avatar is now myopic. A great many residents seem to be having similar problems, which shows how critical viewer issues can be.

As I told in my previous post, the official Second Life viewer has gone open source. You can even try to compile it yourself, if you want to. First you download the source code, and then you follow the elaborate instructions, which start here and, for windows users, continue here. I tried to follow these instructions, as told in a post on my other blog, but I got overwhelmed by all of the other programs that I had to install to make this work, and gave up about half-way through.

Alternative open source viewers

The official Second Life wiki has a long page on alternate viewers. This list includes several open source modifications of the official viewer (such the Able, Dale Glass and Nicholaz editions), one closed source modification (Onrez), one extensively rewritten open source viewer (RealXtend), and a number of miscellaneous other viewers. A curiosity is the Marine Edition, codename "RestrainedLife," which is a viewer designed to enhance the BDSM experience, in conjunction with simple scripts to make attached objects undetachable, prevent chat and otherwise restrain one's consenting BDSM partner.

The main open source modifications of the official viewer were described by Caleb Booker in a post from September 2007. The Able Edition, made by Able Whitman, works just like the main viewer but adds visual muting, thereby blocking out ad farms and other visual annoyances. The Dale Glass Edition (see also the Dale Glass blog) adds a number experimental features for dealing with griefers. These include a proximity detector which shows the names of other avatars in the area, as well as the avatar age and whether there is any payment information on file, and a detector indicating the source of particles and sounds.

The Nicholaz viewer was built by Nicholaz Beresford with a focus on stability, usability and performance. I've heard residents say that the Nicholaz viewer helps reduce frequent crashing and similar problems with the official viewer. The Nicholaz release called EyeCandy is to be used together with version 1.19.1.4 of the official viewer. Since I am using that official viewer, I installed EyeCandy, which involves simply copying the executable (".exe") file and three small XLM files into the same program directory where your Second Life viewer is already installed. Then instead of launching the Second Life viewer you simply launch the Nicholaz executable file (I put a shortcut to this on my desktop). It is easy to launch either the official viewer, or the Nicholaz viewer, as you wish. I found the Nicholaz viewer to be pretty much the same as the official viewer, the most noticeable difference being a button that says "release keys," to use when a script has taken control of your keys.

The Kirstens viewers are compiled for high end intel based machines for best performance or to fix specific problems, and have proved very stable. The instructions say to copy the executable file into your Second Life directory, as for the Nicholaz viewer. I did not try the Kirstens viewer, but it of special interest because the OpenLife website proposes a download of a modified Kirstens viewer (see below)

The realXtend viewer

The realXtend viewer is part of an open source virtual world platform that was discretely developed during several months by two companies, Admino and Ludocraft, before they suddenly revealed it to a group of OpenSim developers that they invited to Finland in January 2008. Sakai Openlife, of the OpenLife grid, who was among the guests, describes this event as follows:

"Friday morning we all met. Firstly wow, it was great to meet most of the others from the OpenSimulator project, I don't think it had been done before, and whilst things may have started quiet it didn't take long for us all to Gel together and get talking! And then we met the guys under the banner 'RealXtend', this was interesting why had I flown more than 14,000km across the planet? Who were they and what had they been doing? Questions were flying in everyone's minds and we started to get some information. 2 Companies Admino & Ludocraft had been working furiously in the background over the past 4 months, 'extending' the function of the OpenSimulator Project, they had done this with the afforded generosity of Juha Hulkko.

So what did they want global domination? No. Were they Anti-Linden? No (actually Chris Collins from Linden Labs was there too). Did they want to take over the OpenSimulator Project? No.

They wanted to move forward, extend as the name suggests features & methods for greater user function and versatility of the code & it's application."

After the participants in the Finnish meeting returned home, floods of information about realXtend starting showing up on various blogs. The realXtend platform is made up of two parts, which are:

* realXtend viewer, an open source browser for virtual worlds,
* realXtend server, an open source server based on OpenSim.

The realXtend viewer, based on the Ogre 3D engine, allows the use of meshes in place of primitives. As explained by Ugo Trade, a prim is a solid, while a mesh is a series of triangles in 3D which can make any arbitrary surface. Prims are more compact and lower cost to render, but most 3D programs build meshes by default, in order to support proper 3D models. And since one mesh can replace many prims, the difference in computing cost between meshes and prims is smaller than one would think.

On the server side, reports Adam Frisby of OpenSim, realXtend adds features such as Python scripting support, and a new server called the ‘Avatar Server,’ which allows transporting your avatar's appearance from one OpenSim simulator to a completely different one, without any shared grid infrastructure.

I downloaded version 0.21 of the realXtend viewer from the realXtend download page, and installed it with no problem. To my surprise it worked fine for connecting to Second Life, but not for OpenLife. When I type the OpenLife URI (http://logingrid.net:8002) into the "Connect to" box, realXtend first takes a very long time to get past "Initializing World", then hangs permanently on "Connecting to Region." However, the OpenLife website offers a download of a special RealXtend Openlife Edition Viewer v0.2. That might work better for OpenLife than the standard version of realXtend, but I would have to uninstall the version I currently have, so I've left it at that. The OpenLife website also offers a download of a special OpenLife version of the Kirstens viewer (see above), but I have not yet tried that either.

The Onrez Viewer

The Onrez Viewer is a closed-source viewer originally created by the Electric Sheep Company to be used with the CSI New York Virtual Experience. The viewer's name also recalls the Onrez website which provides online shopping for Second Life items.

When the Onrez viewer was introduced in October 2007, Hamlet Au noted that its main innovation was to allow in-world web browsing (supporting html, but not plugins such as Flash). I installed the Onrez viewer easily, and when I connected to Second Life I found a special window open in the middle of the Second Life view, displaying a website called The Loop . At first there was no browser line in this window, so I was stuck on that page, but I closed the special window and then opened it up again by clicking on the button saying "The Loop," at top right of the screen, , and the browser line appeared.

What I disliked about the Onrez viewer was that the menu layout is rather different from that of the official viewer, and is thus hard to find one's way around in. Also, every time I log out the viewer crashes and my system gives me an error message.

Lite viewers

In July 2007 a UK teen student called Katharine Berry announced on her blog that she was developing an ajax-based client for Second Life, which she called Ajaxlife. The story was picked up by Hamlet Au, who got the tip from Gwyneth Llewelyn.

This client only permits a limited set of functions, such as local chat, instant messages and a basic map, and thus removes the need for a powerful graphics card. But as noted by Hamlet, Ajaxlife also allows you to connect to Second Life without even downloading and installing the viewer. The user instead logs on to the Ajaxlife website, which in turn logs the user into Second Life. This allows users to get past corporate or academic firewalls, which may block access to heavily interactive websites. Hamlet reported that Katharine was thinking of making a version that can run on the user's own machine, but in that case the firewall problem remains.

As Katharine explained to Hamlet Au, Ajaxlife uses JavaScript to handle the User Interface. The connection to Second Life is handled by a C# program running on Katharine's server, which uses libsecondlife to deal with SL connections. AjaxLife handles maps with an entirely separate system: once a day a libsecondlife bot of Katherine's logs into Second Life, downloads all the map images, and saves a copy to her server, so that they can be called up as needed.

Katharine at first announced that Ajaxlife would be open source, but there are no currently available downloads of the source code. In March 2008 she released a version that added the ability to delete inventory items, which Hamlet Au called the Ajaxlife Killer Application. A few weeks ago, on May 18th, Katharine announced on the Ajaxlife blog implementation of version 0.3.3.

I tried AjaxLife for the first time a few weeks ago, as way to connect to Second Life using my newly-purchased Asus eee, which is a tiny, low-cost netbook, with a low-performance graphics card. Logging on to Ajaxlife, I was able to use IM, to open inventory directories, and to edit saved notecards, but the group functions only allowed me to IM the entire group, without giving me the list of members. I was also able to log on with no problem through my firewall at work. But the last few times I tried to log in, I got error messages.

In October 2008, a few months after Katharine's initial announcement, a Japanese company called 3Di introduced the MovableLife website, which likewise promised access to Second Life "using only a web browser." I logged in to MovableLife and tried to IM a friend, but while the friend could read everything I wrote (as I learned later), all I could see was their first reply repeating endlessly. My reaction, besides finding the site useless, was to think "OMG I've just entered my Second Life password onto this site." The MovableLife page says somewhere in small print: "We do not store your Second Life account information on our servers, it is transferred directly to the Second Life servers." I sure hope that is true.

Web-based access through a third party site remains an interesting solution for those who want to connect to Second Life through firewalls. But in order to overcome the worry about password theft, the easiest solution would be for Linden Lab to provide such an interface themselves.

Similar in many ways to Ajaxlife is the Sleek viewer, which was released in July 2007, just after Katharine Berry's initial announcement. According to a comment by Oz Spade, Sleek had actually been around since 2006, and was developed using libsecondlife not by a company, but by one person.

The Sleek viewer is a light-weight viewer that allows access to Second Life for a reduced set of functions such as sending IMs. Reasons for using it include having a low-power graphics card or wanting to multi-task on older machines, as mentioned by this user, who compares it to an old-fashioned multi-user dungeon.

The Sleek download is a zip file, from which you extract 12 files into one directory. To launch the viewer you just click on the executable file. After logging in to Second Life, I was able to see which of my friends were online, send IMs and see resident profiles. I was even able to use search to find residents by name. However, the inventory function did nothing more than show me inventory directories: when I tried to open them they appeared empty. And when I tried to use Sleek at work, the firewall blocked it.

On April 1st 2008 the Sleek blog announced that Sleek had been bought by Microsoft, but the date would make one somewhat skeptical of that announcement.

Touring the Open Source Grids

2008-05-26T01:13:00.000-07:00

After about 6 months in Second Life I mustered the courage to try one of the alternative open source grids. Having seen the term OpenSim on various Second Life blogs, I Googled that, and found the OpenSim website. At the top of the page was a link to the Grid List, which names a surprising number of public grids, listed in order of their initial appearance. The oldest was DeepGrid, which began operations in June 2007, followed by Open Source Grid (OSGrid) which began in July 2007, and OpenLife which began in October 2007.

I decided to start with OpenLife. I connected to the OpenLife website, and after a bit of searching found the OpenLife Wiki and a page that tells how to get started.

The wiki says that you can use either the RealXtend Viewer or the SecondLife Viewer, but the RealXtend Viewer failed to start for me. So I followed the instructions on how to create a shortcut to OpenLife for the SecondLife Viewer. I opened an account with the avatar name Danton Sideways, and launched the viewer.

I found myself on a rather barren island, in the default female avatar called "Ruth." I tried to edit my appearance, but nothing happened. I looked into my inventory, and found it to be completely empty. I then flew over a few adjoining sims, which were vast stretches of terraformed land with nothing on them. I also tried to use Search to find people, but the Search function gave no results whatsoever. My initial reaction was: "Is this a joke?"

I came away from that initial OpenSim experience thinking that all I could do was fly over an empty terraformed wasteland in the Ruth avatar, looking for other avatars who were not there. On the next try, however, things got better. But before I go on with my story, let us take a glance backwards, to survey the origins of the open source alternatives to Second Life.

How Second Life went Open Source

Back in 2005 Gwyneth Llewelyn presented in her blog post on Expanding Second Life an early vision of how Second Life could be spread across a system of decentralized servers. Gwyneth suggested that Linden Lab could set up a system whereby anyone could run their own sim with their own asset server (which implied making the software open source), but would need to pay Linden Lab for an encrypted certificate in order to connect to the main grid. Gwyneth envisaged a system with many sim operators, each having their own users, as follows:

"When 'your' user logs in at your own sim, the UUID which is generated is encrypted with a key which has been provided by LL. If you don’t use that key, well, you may register with an 'isolated sim' and have your fun there. But you won’t be able to access any content on the main grid, nor be able to export your content there."

Gwyneth thus proposed a way for Linden Labs to go open source but still remain profitable by using encrypted keys. Linden Labs was slow to respond to this challenge. Meanwhile, a low-profile group of non-Linden programmers had already begun reverse engineering the Second Life protocol.

On May 12, 2006 John Hurliman registered, on the Gna! free software development platform, a new open source project called libsecondlife. The registration post defined libsecondlife as "an open source library to allow software to access the Second Life world." Hurliman announced that "we have a complete protocol description", and explained:

"Our goal is to create a multi-threaded, object-oriented library to write a Second Life client of any complexity. We currently do not have any source code, as it's still in the design and planning phase."

Libsecondlife has been described as "a BSD open source library for creating custom clients that could connect to Second Life". A technical description of the libsecondlife project is given on the Second Life Wikia. Development of libsecondlife is still ongoing, as can be seen on the libsecondlife wiki, where most of the articles are signed by Baba Yamamoto.

Libsecondlife however soon generated a major scandal with its derivative CopyBot programme. CopyBot was originally created as a debugging tool by the libsecondlife development team, who had in mind using it to be able to backup one's own created content on one's own hard drive, or to be able to export one's own intellectual property to other environments. But since it was open source, CopyBot was quickly modified by unscrupulous hackers who recompiled it as a tool to replicate objects and avatar appearances without permission. Angry Second Life residents met with Linden Lab on November 13, 2006 to discuss the Copybot problem, and then organized a series of virtual protests, as described by Reuters and Hamlet Au. The outcry led Linden Lab on 14 November 2007 to declare that the use of CopyBot was a TOS violation.

Less than two months after the CopyBot scandal, on 8 January 2007, Phoenix Linden announced on the official Second Life Blog that the source code would be released for the Second Life viewer. It thus seems that libsecondlife and CopyBot were the catalysts for prompting Linden Lab to go open source themselves, in order to maintain control over a development which appeared inevitable.

However, in January 2007 Linden Lab only released the source code for the Second Life viewer, also called the "client," which is the software that the user installs on their own computer in order to access Second Life. There remained the software that runs Second Life itself on the Linden Lab servers, storing and retrieving all of the data about the sims and the users' assets, and implementing the virtual world in real time.

Various attempts had already been made to create an open source virtual world server, but had floundered in face of the massive task of writing both the server and the client at the same time. It was now no longer necessary to write the client, since Linden Lab had released the source code for the official Second Life viewer, and the libsecondlife library was available for creating other custom clients that could connect to Second Life. So in that same month of January 2007, Darren Guard (also known as MV) founded the OpenSim project, to concentrate on developing on open source virtual world server that the Second Life client could connect to. As explained in the Wikipedia OpenSim article, OpenSim uses libsecondlife to handle communication between the client and the server.

Then in April 2007 Linden Lab announced that they planned to release the Second Life server source code (or at least parts of it). But while Linden Lab was still just thinking of releasing parts of the server source code, the first public open source grids, based on OpenSim, started operating. DeepGrid began in June 2007, followed by OSGrid in July. One of the participants gives this description of the first day of DeepGrid:

"There was a sim, its name was "Mortville" and a half-dozen crazed programmers were jumping around on a little island, flying into the ground, all chat was showing up twice, IM crashed the sim, all objects were phantom, no trees, no nothing, but it was wondrous. Within a couple of weeks there were a dozen sims on Deepgrid."

Linden Lab struggled to keep up. On 13 September 2007, as explained in a page on the Second Life Grid website, Linden Lab kicked off a public planning process for "designing protocols for virtual world software interoperability," which led to the formation of the Architecture Working Group (AWG). One of the stated goals of the AWG is to "enable third parties to run servers that connect to the Second Life Grid platform." In other words, since the development of open source grids is inevitable, Linden Lab wants to enable third parties to connect their own sims to Second Life, for a fee. Which is pretty much what Gwyneth Llewelyn was talking about back in 2005.

The latest development in this direction is an announced plan for IBM to hold Second Life grid servers on their private corporate network, behind the firewall, but with enough network access to communicate with the central services on the Second Life grid. This project is further described on the blog of Zha Ewry (David Levine) of IBM. Zha Ewry is also the head of the Linden-sponsored Architecture Working Group, and IBM runs its own private sims using OpenSim software. One of these is the Shengri La sim, built by Shenlei Winkler of the Fashion Research Institute, as can be seen here.

My Further Adventures on the Open Source Grids

As I've told above, my initial experience in OpenLife was a total disappointment. I did nothing but fly over barren terraformed sims in the Ruth avatar, with no inventory and no search function. So I decided to try CentralGrid to see if that was any better.

On the CentralGrid website I found a link to the CentralGrid forum, with a page that tells how to log on. Following these instructions, I created a shortcut to the Second Life viewer, in exactly the same way as for OpenLife. Once logged in, I found myself in an identical Ruth avatar with an identically empty inventory. The only difference was that the entry sim was somewhat more built up, with a few blocks of empty streets and wide-spaced, sterile buildings all in the same modern style. And my feet didn't sink a few inches into the earth, as they tended to do in OpenLife. But the search function was equally unusable. What I understood later is that all of these open source grids are just picking up the latest version of the OpenSim software, and tweaking it, so they can only offer the functions which have already been developed for OpenSim.

In both OpenLife and CentralGrid, the main activity seems to be selling entire sims. Some of the open source grids allow users to connect their own servers, but these two seem to require you to rent the servers from them. There is no official way to rent just a plot of land (though one could always rent a plot by making a private deal with a sim owner). Few of the grids have any plans to create an in-world currency, though CentralGrid is reportedly working on it. People buy these sims knowing that the software is still under development, and that there is no in-world economy, thus no possible return-on-investment, so of course the prices are lower than for sims on Second Life.

Some days later I decided to try again. I went back to the OpenLife website and logged onto the chatroom. One nifty feature of OpenLife is this chatroom, which can be joined easily by anyone, without having to know how to use IRC channels. There is nearly always someone on line to whom you can ask questions. I found online Sakai OpenLife himself, the founder of OpenLife, and asked why I was unable to edit my appearance. He replied that it was explained on the wiki. So I went back to the wiki and found that there was indeed a page about editing appearance. You must go into your inventory, click on Body Parts, right click to get "create new," and then wear the new object to edit it. I thus created and edited four body parts (body, skin, hair, eyes) and three pieces of clothing (shirt, trousers and shoes). I tried to get the same look as for Danton Sideways in Second Life, but the result was rather far from the mark. And I was unable to grow a beard, because while my chin puffed out into a beard shape, I had no appropriate texture colour to add, so I reverted to a clean-shaven look.

Remaining in-world on the dreary welcome island, I changed windows to go to the chat room, and asked where I might find a more lively sim. Someone suggested I try Electron, which is the sim of Gobi Greenwood (correction: Electron is actually owned by Gumby Roffo). Electron is rather nicely built up, including a stage and screen that streams a video clip. On my next visit I went to Quartz, another of Gobi's sims, where he is setting up a freebie store. It is a several story building which for the moment is totally empty. I also went to the Renegade sim, where I met Josh Noonan inside a fancy temple build. He proposed to rent me a plot via an external payment using paypall. I said I was interested, but I have to go back to discuss this further.

I then returned to CentralGrid. I set the destination sim to CentralGrid Home, but had a problem logging in. The error message said something about waiting for a handshake, and the forum instructions for dealing with this were rather complicated. So I just tried a different destination (Central Grid Sandbox), and that worked. I edited my avatar exactly as on OpenLife – the underlying OpenSim software is identical – but the result was again disappointing. You would have trouble recognizing that it is supposed to the same Danton Sideways as is in Second Life.

I tried teleporting in CentralGrid, and arrived in the Moonbeam sim, where I was surprised to actually see another avatar on line, hanging in the air. Then I crashed. When I logged back in I was Ruth again, and had to open my inventory and put on all of my edited body parts and clothing items one by one. When I was dressed I looked for the avatar I had seen, and found Happi Homewood, working on his multi-story shopping center in the Moonbeam sim. He explained that he was getting ready for when CentralGrid would implement an in-world currency. I sent him a friend request, so that I could find him easily in-world, and he accepted it. That was my last act so far in CentralGrid.

And last but not least, I made one in-world visit to the Open Source Grid. I found the OS Grid website, and a link on the site to the OS Grid forum, which is obviously used by a fairly large and active community. Creating as usual a new shortcut for the Second Life viewer, I logged in as Danton Sideways, and landed in Wright Plaza. I took a moment to quickly run through the habitual OpenSim avatar editing process, putting on my standard 4 body parts and 3 pieces of clothing, and then explored the sim

I was pleased to find a fairly intricate, colorful build, with lots of vegetation, typical of what one finds in Second Life. And there were several avatars roaming around in just that one sim. I went up to a certain Paulie Femto, and chatted a while. He said I could use the sandbox if I wanted to on his Cameo Beach sim, which is actually run from his home computer, connected to OS Grid. He said he tried to keep it operating 24/7. He also told me about the freenode IRC channel for OS Grid. That definitely got my interest. After all these years of hearing about them, I've never actually had the occasion to use an IRC channel. This may be my big chance!

Yet Another Business Model

2008-04-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Prokofy Neva wrote a blog post about the relationship between IBM and Second Life, entitled I Be Am. This fascinating post was followed by a series of equaling interesting comments, including notably a few statements by Adam "Frisbee" Zaius about the OpenSim project. The ensuing debate between Prokofy Neva and Adam Zaius focused on the general subject of the role of capitalism in virtual worlds, and on the particular subject of why OpenSim is being implemented without data encryption to protect intellectual property, and without payment protocols to support an in-world currency.

Reflecting on this debate led me to formulate a mixed-economy business model for a new virtual world. I described this business model in a late comment on Prokofy's post. The short exchange of comments between myself and Prokofy on this subject is reproduced below. (A few irrelevant sentences about the configuration of Prokofy's blog have been deleted from this otherwise verbatim transcript.)

Danton Sideways:

I finally read "The California Ideology" as you suggested, and probably agree with it even more than you do. Because the solution proposed by the authors is a *mixed economy* for digital development, with state funding to help the disadvantaged participate in the internet revolution. For example, that the state should help provide every citizen with a computer and cheap broadband access - which is of course socialistic.

As an advocate of mixed solutions, I see interesting possibilities for combining open source with protection of intellectual property. I may write a post on my blog about this, but to sum up, one possibility would be to organize a virtual world as a consumer cooperative. All residents would pay a fee to be members of the cooperative, and the cooperative then hires a management team to run the hardware and software, including data encryption to protect IP. And the software could be developed on the basis of the OpenSim platform, but as a forked private system incorporating Paypal and other modules. Structuring the company as a consumer coop would permit running it as a representative democracy both in-world AND in real life.

Prokofy Neva:

Whenever I hear the words "co-op" I think of my many years in Toronto or Rochester joining various food co-ops or living in communes or whatever, and eating millet loaves and all that kind of organic stuff. Co-ops are good for certain small things among like-minded people. They are terrible ideas for how to organize entire societies.

That's what's wrong with all this opensim stuff -- it's constantly predicating its model on an assumed and often unconscious belief that a sturdy foundation of capitalism will underpin its notions, ready to pay lots of money that it has gained from proprietary code lol. I find it hilarious at how unconscious all
this is.

Capitalist free markets are more efficient and serve more people.

Socialism doesn't work.

Danton Sideways:

I agree with you that a society that leans too far towards socialism will fail, as did soviet communism. But so will a society that leans too far towards unregulated capitalism, which is why Keynes introduced national economic regulation and the welfare state. All really-existing national economies are mixed systems.

As for cooperatives, either of producers or consumers, they *do* work on a large scale. Large examples of the former are farmer's cooperatives, and an example of the latter is my bank, the Credit Mutuel, which is one of the largest banks in France. Any cooperative must however be managed in a sufficiently professional way.

In the virtual world business model that I propose, the "nation" would be set up as a a democracy of paying citizens (consider the payments to be the equivalent of taxes), and the "government" would be the corporate structure to which implementation is delegated. Note that some or even the major part of the implementation could be outsourced, such as in the form of a management contract, to a separate company which would be required to meet specific performance criteria. The outsourcing could even be done with an open competitive bidding process.

This model could provide a way to mix together social cooperation and market capitalism for successful implementation of a virtual world.

Prokofy Neva:

[At the time of first posting of this article, the above dialogue is still on-going on Prokofy's blog. Prokofy's expected reply will therefore be inserted here.]

[Note added on July 3rd 2008: the dialogue on Prokofy's blog in fact ended there. And this post went pretty much unnoticed until today, when RightasRain made the comment shown below.]

On Strike

2008-04-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

Danton supports the Second Life blog strike.

See:

http://rhetasworld.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/strike

(And ignore the following "Read More" prompt which I must learn how to get rid of when it's not needed.)

Swept Away

2008-04-14T06:36:00.000-07:00

Help! I've been sucked into the maelstrom of brutal politics within the Confederation of Democratic Sims (CDS).

A few short months ago I discovered what seemed to be the sleepy little virtual democracy of CDS, and took up residence in a corner of the Colonia Nova sim. I was attracted to CDS because it is a democratically-run region, which appeals to my leftist leanings towards all things cooperative. I promptly joined the moderate leftist party within CDS, which is called the Citizen's Social Democratic Faction (CSDF), and settled in for what I expected to be a gentle game of virtual democracy. In fact, I was hoping that others would do most of the democratizing for me, because my main interest was in promoting Ivan Illich's philosophy of convivial tools.

Alas, fate has decided otherwise. At first I watched from the sidelines as the political climate within CDS deteriorated. Then I found myself getting pulled into the conflicts as a participant. And now I find myself in the position of single-handedly trying to create a new political party within CDS. How did this all come about?

The first sign I saw of the troubles to come appeared on Christmas Day of 2007. I logged in to find a number of buildings missing in Colonia Nova. I ran across a small group of CDS residents standing on a bare patch of snow, discussing the sudden departure from CDS of Michel Manen, who had deleted all of his builds. I found some explanation for this behaviour only some days later, reading a thread on the CDS forum, which contained a rather bitter debate between Michel, founder of the CARE faction, and certain members of CSDF. In the middle of the thread, Michel posted the following comment, dated December 25th:

"On second thought, who really needs this?! Y'all have fun! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and best of luck with your project."

Following his departure, Michel's group was re-organized as NuCARE, under the leadership of ThePrincess Parisi. The elections for the new term of the Representative Assembly were carried out during the week of January 14th to 21st, 2008. The CSDF faction received the most votes, followed by NuCARE, but the CDS electoral system is set up such that candidates were elected from all of the four participating parties. The new Representative Assembly was sworn in on February 3rd, as I've told on one of my blog posts. Patroklus Murakami, as leader of the faction having received the most votes, automatically took the role of Leader of the Representative Assembly (LRA).

The first meeting of the RA on February 3rd was good-humoured and consensual, but things began to go sour at the very next meeting. The conflict centred around procedural questions. In order to understand the positions of both sides, one must know something about the way the CDS political system was initially set up. The voting system tends to favour small parties, which means that the party that gains the most votes will generally have only a minority of representatives. To compensate for this, the LRA is given the authority to set the agenda for the RA meetings. The idea was that the majority party sets the agenda, but the other parties can easily vote down any motion they dislike.

In the new assembly, however, members of the minority parties, lead by ThePrincess Parisi of NuCARE and Beathan Vale of the Simplicity Party, immediately began challenging this traditional role of the LRA, and proposing procedural changes. In addition, ThePrincess spiced up these procedural debates with a liberal dose of name-calling and personal attacks on the LRA, Patroklus Murakami.

To make a long story short, Patroklus decided that an appropriate response to the minority party attacks would be for the CSDF representatives to resign from the Representative Assembly in protest. This drastic step was debated at a meeting of the CSDF faction on March 5th. I was present at this meeting and voted against the resignations, though I understood Pat's point of view. He announced the resignations the next day on the CDS forum, giving the following explanation:

"It has become clear since the recent elections that there's a minority in the RA that is determined to prevent me from chairing meetings as LRA. I have not always responded well to the challenges of chairing meetings under these circumstances and I apologise to the CDS community for my faults in this regard."

The withdrawal of the CSDF representatives from the RA had two immediate consequences. One was to give the voting majority to the alliance between NuCARE lead by ThePrincess and the Simplicity Party lead by Beathan (Brian Livingston, the leading candidate of the Simplicity Party, unexpectedly resigned from the RA himself, shortly after Pat did). The second consequence was to provoke an interim by-election to replace the CSDF representatives. CSDF has decided to present candidates for this by-election, with the hopes of gaining back one of the two seats they had given up.

It was Pat's resignation that caused me to become involved in the disputes. First, I got to thinking about how it was that this region, which had been so painstakingly built up by the voluntary contributions of one group, could now so easily be taken over by a new hostile group. This lead me to start a forum thread called Collective Property vs Un-Gated Community, in which I argued that having collective property in an un-gated community inevitably leads to the tragedy of the commons. And secondly, I was irritated to see ThePrincess, whose attacks had caused my friend Pat to withdraw from his seat on the RA, crowing about how rosy the situation was in CDS. So I said as much on the thread she had started, and that she had called WHATS UP WITH CDS? I'LL TELL YOU WHAT!.

The conflict escalated. Profiting from the absence of CSDF, the new majority passed a series of highly controversial measures, as Patroklus describes on his blog, in a post entitled Virtual Zimbabwe. Patroklus also opened a thread on the CDS forum, called Catalogue of Abuse, in which he reminded everyone that the main factor that had prompted his resignation was the treatment he had received from ThePrincess. I found Pat to be far too mild in his own defence, so I jumped into the fray. I wrote a comment on this thread saying that in my opinion the behaviour of ThePrincess is that of a troll and a griefer. And when all of her associates jumped up to defend her, I replied that those who defend a notorious griefer become griefers themselves. And to think that only a few months ago I posted a cheerful account of the in-world marriage of ThePrincess and MT.

I found myself suddenly in the very thick of the fray. And I realized that I had forgotten to check with anyone from CSDF about my outburst on the forum. But I had for some time been toying with the possibility of creating a new leftist faction within CDS, one that might be less bound by the weight of tradition than CSDF, which is made up of many of the historical pillars of CDS. So I announced in a post on the CDS forum my plans to create a new faction. My announcement received one reply, from Dnate Mars, who said only: "I wish you the best of luck!"

Since I perceive Dnate to be closer to the alliance between ThePrincess and Beathan, than to CSDF, I get the impression that his comment may have been a bit sardonic. But I replied good-naturedly: "Thanks. I'll need it!"

So here I am condemned to try to build a new political party within CDS. My other Second Life projects, such as the promotion of Ivan Illich's philosophy, or the organisation of a Second Life Parliament, are pushed to the back burners.

I've begun to make the rounds of all of the various "progressive" regions of Second Life, such as Commonwealth Island, Better World Island, Cedar Island, and so on, in search of possible new members for my new party. I'll tell more about that on my next post. But one little piece of information will give you a foretaste of how my search is going. How many possible new members have I found so far, you may ask? The answer is quite simple: zero.

Rabble Dousing

2008-03-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

In my last blog post Fixing Second Life I formulated a proposal concerning a Second Life Parliament.

I wanted to know Prokofy Neva's opinion about it, so I sent an email to the address given on his blog. Prokofy replied, and we exchanged views on the subject, from 16th to the 18th of March. Prokofy has given me permission to post the text of these emails. What follows is a verbatim transcript of the discussion.

Danton Sideways:

Prokofy -

If you get a chance I'd like to know what you think of two proposals I put in my latest blog post:

http://dantonsideways.blogspot.com/2008/03/fixing-second-life.html

One proposal takes your Magna Carta idea further by envisaging a Second Life Parliament. I'm serious! The other takes off from my recent proposal to CDS that they should privatise at least part of their collective property, and imagines using a similar contractual scheme (binding in-world only) for group rehabilitation of patches of mainland.

Just for the fun. - Danton

Prokofy Neva:

The only reasonable parliament in SL is a parliament of land-owners -- tier-payers. Socialists can't stomach that idea, so you can't have a parliament with them. But it is the only reasonable beginning in that synthetic setting.

Prokofy

Danton Sideways:

Prokofy Neva, renowned advocate of democracy and avatar rights, says that only land barons should have democratic representation in any SL parliament. Do you want to go on record with that?

Any geographically-based scheme would already give landlords crushing over-representation, since they could simply *appoint* the delegates for their sims. That should be enough of an advantage, I would think. Your view makes the landlords into a sort of aristocracy (thus you go for the Magna Carta, but no further), and all the other avatars into a "third estate."

Abbé Sièyes:
1° What is the third estate ? Everything.
2° What has it been until now in the political system ? Nothing.
3° What is it asking for ? To be something.

Prokofy Neva:

Absolutely. It's the only way to fairly get started, letting those who pay to tier land have a say in how that land is governed.

It's far from a perfect society; it's from from anything remotely like human rights and democracy. But unfortunately, it's a historical phase in a society without freedom and a constitution that you cannot skip. You cannot skip it in real life; you can't skip it here.

Try to distinguish between what's an idealistic fantasy, and what is reasonable and pragmatic.

I'm not obliged to allow no-payment-on-file anonymous alts to decide how my land is governed. No country automatically accords full civil and political -- and economic and social rights -- to a day-old immigrant -- especially illegal immigrant.

Most top creators with a stake in the world pay tier.

Tier-payers need not be disenfranchised by larger land-barons, the tools accord them ample opportunity to unite across sims as small-holders.

People who don't pay tier but are "creative" -- the people who whine the largest about any scheme that allows land-holders to decide...about how *their land* will be disposed -- are usually progammers, scripters, sandboxers, etc. So, yeah, they're the class enemy, given that they are a fifth column for the Overlord, the Lindens.

If some set of sandboxers wants to unite and put up a candidate, and they have some significant showing and stake in SL, they may get a seat in parliament. It would be proportionate to their actual ability to organize and their power.

The first task is to overthrow the Lindens, or co-opt them

The second task is to have land owners form a parliament and decide some basic rules among themselves of governance across sims of *their land* that *they pay for* -- they make up 80 percent or more of the revenue.

The third task is to decide what to do with script-kiddies in sandboxes, and see if there is anything other than a criminal code as a means of addressing the problems they create :)

You're welcome to go on playing socialism on one sim, if you like, sounds like a fun game. Grown-ups who pay tier and run businesses needs something more practical.

Prokofy

Danton Sideways:

Excuse me, Prokofy, actually I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying only *big* landowners (whole sims) could be represented. I fully agree that only avatars who own or rent land should have voting rights. That is how it works in CDS by the way.

But this brings up the point, as you note, that all of the landless avatars will howl. To calm them down, to circumvent their protests, how about a system with several "colleges" or "houses" (whatever you want to call them, the French called them Estates)? One would be for the big landowners, one for the small landowners and renters, and one for all of the landless rabble - recognizing that this could include all sorts of alts and rubbish. The goal is just to get people talking, so it really matters little how things are set up. You just have to set it up such that everyone will accept it.

- Danton

Prokofy Neva:

You're typical of all socialists who imagine that land owning is evil, and only big land owners counter.

I don't care of people scream. Let them. They don't pay the bills. They use the resources -- FPS, attention, programming of Lindens -- to make a profit out of their own content creation, or they suck it down for free. So, let them organize into Script Kiddies United and lobby to get into parliament. Let them organize guerilla warfare and try to shoot their way to power, let the central government squash them, and let UN peace negotiators urge that they be given a seat in parliament. Do whatever. But don't give people without land a seat in the initial parliament. They do not pay for this place.

>Excuse me, Prokofy, actually I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying only *big* landowners (whole sims) could be represented. I fully agree that only avatars who own or rent land should have voting rights. That is how it works in CDS by the way.

The French estates, like Russian estates, are a form of corporativism, and that leads to German fascism and French and Russian Bolshevism. No thank you. No chattering classes, please. People who pay.

Renters can opt to form blocs with their landlords, or lobby against them, but maybe risk losing their rent.

I'm not for creator blocs. Anshe tried this stunt before, first bussing in all her tenants as her "voting bloc" and then trying to buy out some of the content creators to vote for her in the Metaverse Justice Watch, which was the first attempt at a civic movement and rudimentary elections. I'm not for tenants being automatically bussed (signed up) to the polls. So there really is a problem of saying renters are voters. Renters are bussed landlord PACs.

Look, you folks on these silly government sims spend years what people already found out in SL with a few meetings among land barons 2 years ago. It cannot be done because people don't care enough to put in the time, or they are essentially beholden/loyal to the Lindens. Anyone attempting democracy would be screeched down in the forums or on blogs now as a populist, a Hitler, blah blah. That leaves the vacuum to unhinged types like Duranske or worse, Ashcroft, who is a horror.

Having land OWNERS is clean, simple, normal. Let it make a senate, and let it not come up with Ashcroftian schemes like "give me all your land and I'll provide justice". It will be about cooperation and collaboration, not dependency. And I'm not for putting in renters/deeded island parcel holders because they will be bussed. Have a constituent assembly, have that debate, and people will conclude the same thing: land owners only, because others will be bussed.

I really don't care about people screaming. You can't. People will always scream. Let them form their own party/parliament/whatever. The point is to get started with a rudimentary assembly that takes up one or three key issues to address to the Lindens to wrest power from them, and one or three issues to make life on the grid more orderly (pacts, agreements, whatever -- a symbol that signifies that all landowners abide by some basic agreement: no ad farms, no spinning signs, no clubs or whatever is of value in reality to people.

The problem with things like the CDS is that they become horribly bogged down in abstractions mixing RL and SL and posturing for political office and playing at the trappings of democracy. One grid-wide agreement among land-owners not to ad farm is worth a million CDS experiments in terms of people power, value, forming a hedge against the Lindens.

Prokofy

Danton Sideways:

Prokofy - Okay, you think that we should set up one single assembly, with voting rights for land owners only, and deny voting rights to those who only rent, as well as to all the "nomads." Then let them scream murder and disrupt the assembly with their protests.

I personally can accept restricting the vote to landowners. But for this Parliament really to happen, compromises would be appropriate. I see good arguments for a three-chambered parliament, as follows:

* house of the big landowners (having the equivalent of one sim or more) - they have special needs and deserve to sit in their own separate assembly
* house of the small landowners - this is like the house of commons
* house of the non landowners - this is a political concession to "everybody else," giving them some sort of representation to buy them off, but maintaining them in a sort of "quarantine" so they cannot disrupt the serious work of the other two houses

What about that? - Danton

Prokofy Neva:

No, I don't like your houses idea, it's unnecessary. And stop worrying about screamers. Ban them, you are landowners. The first constituent assembly and parliament has to sort out landowners, and after that decide if they wish others who don't own land to have a say in its disposition. It's pretty easy stuff. The screechy sandboxers can make their own parliament and rule over, oh, autoreturn times in sandboxes and put it on the JIRA.

Seriously, I don't have much time for screaming, and that's why I don't play government in SL.

You should put all of this conversation on a public blog and let people scream there, you'll see, few will. Most won't bother.

Prokofy

Fixing Second Life

2008-03-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Is Second Life broken? If it is, can we as residents do anything to fix it? If we can, should we bother?

At the recent Game Developer's Conference held in February 2008, Jane McGonigal made the following surprising statement (as reported by Terra Nova and blogged about by Prokofy Neva):

"Reality is broken, and we're not fixing it…"

She goes on to explain: "If reality is broken, why aren't game designers trying to fix it?" Let us withhold for a moment any judgement about this statement (the judgement follows just after the fold). Consider instead the following hypotheses. Assume that reality is, as stated, "broken," and that Second Life is a mirror of reality. In that case, could trying to fix Second Life teach us anything about how to "fix" reality?

McGonigal's idea is of course preposterous. Reality is not "broken," it is simply whatever it is. In everyday usage, reality means "the state of things as they actually exist." Who ever promised us a rose garden? (Karl Marx did propose a "scientific" method for making a rose garden, and other less dangerous thinkers have envisaged a variety of utopias, but they've all gone out of fashion.) Following Voltaire, however, we have all hoped that increased knowledge - "enlightenment" - might make the world a better place. But there will always be tragedies. Even if the extropians succeed in making everyone live forever (and that might be the ultimate tragedy), there will always be cases of "A loves B but B loves C," and similar heart-rending imbroglios. Growing children even *need* a good dose of frustration in order to develop, so that they can create themselves in the struggle against the "resistance" that life (or parents) can put up. So reality will always be hard to take.

But let us be charitable towards McGonigal, and assume that she just means that we should try to improve the world, rather than to "fix" it (this recalls something one does to cats). At the same Game Developer's Conference, Raph Koster delivered a similar message, saying: "Why do we build theme parks instead of parks?" In other words, why are we spending time building theme parks in virtual worlds, such as in Second Life, instead of building real parks in the physical world? (Added note: Raph actually meant something different. See his comment below.)

Are these game developers suffering from spasms of rich white "game-god" guilt, as Prokofy Neva would have it? Whatever their motivation, they are trying to bridge what is perceived as a gap between the virtual world and the real world. More than that, they seem to think that games can somehow help us to find real-world solutions. Thus the question: can Second Life help us to develop solutions to real-world problems?

Of course, as a platform Second Life can be used for organising and educating around real-world problems, but so can any internet program or platform. The question is more whether Second Life, as a virtual world, can teach us about solving real-world problems, due to the way it *models* the real world. (Added note: someone will probably object that virtual reality is a new part of reality, with its own characteristics and validity, rather than just a "model" of something else.)

At the risk of writing another of those long posts that no one reads all the way through (unless they are written by Prokofy Neva or Gwyneth Llewelyn), I propose to investigate the questions set out at the beginning of this post: is Second Life broken, can we fix it, should we bother? But I'm going to take them up, rather illogically, in reverse order. Before looking at whether there is a problem, or whether we can do anything about it, I'm going to ask whether we should even bother.

Why Bother about Second Life?

Part of the hypothesis stated above is that Second Life could help us to solve real-world problems. But if the goal is to improve real life, why take a time-consuming detour through the nether-realm of virtual worlds? Just roll up your sleeves, and deal with real life directly.

This is the message coming at me from my real-world environment. My wife hates to see me on the computer - she thinks I'm totally wasting my time. She would rather see me reading books, or better yet, writing them. I explain that I'm reading and writing things on the Internet. But to her, it is all just stupid geek stuff. And my shrink suggests that I should limit the number of hours per day that I spend on the computer. (I started seeing him a few years back when I had serious workplace problems, all of which disappeared the day I moved to another company - but the habit of seeing the shrink remained.) He seems afraid that I've become "addicted" to Second Life, to which I reply that I in fact spend most of my online time reading blogs. Are those around me just expressing an old-fashioned bias against digital culture, or is it true that I'm fleeing from real life?

Between real-world demands on my time, and the social pressure to stay off the computer, the time I can devote to Second Life is rather limited. I would be part of the group that Prokofy snidely suggests forming, called "Too Busy in Real Life" (added note: Prokofy apparently *has* created this group):

"There ought to be a group, like Not Possible in Real Life called Too Busy in Real Life with a very lite SL browser and readers' digests of blogs and rapid-fire tours of interesting sims that they take only 15 minutes a day to consume."

In all fairness to my wife, children, shrink and others around me who find I spend too much time on the computer, I *have* been totally absorbed in Internet for over a year now. This is new. Up until the end of 2006, I was just a casual user of Google, like everyone else. What sent me over the edge was my desire to create my own website. I'd wanted for years to make a real website, rather than a blog, but I kept getting hung up on the initial difficulties. I finally decided to make a big push no matter how much time it took – and disappeared down the rabbit hole.

After figuring out how to use the space I had rented on a distant server, I went through successive stages of learning about: FTP, domain names, HTML, PHP, MySQL databases and various software packages. Then I settled down to creating content for my new sites. But I discovered with horror that most of my pages weren't even getting picked up by Google. So I dove into learning about Search Engine Optimization (before finally deciding that it was pretty much a waste of time). My increased involvement on Internet also led me to activities such as reading blogs, contributing to Wikipedia, and – signing on to Second Life. And I'm only getting started: I have yet to use RSS feeds, Digg, Facebook or Twitter.

But here is the point: the personal returns are spectacular. After years of suffering from an inability to communicate about the ideas that interest me most, I'm suddenly sharing them with the entire cybersphere. A classical exercise when using any new software program is to try to print out "Hello World." I feel I've managed to put a big "Hello World" out on the Internet – and the world is talking back!

Which is why I conclude that it is worth bothering about Second Life. Those around me fail to understand that Internet has become the new agora. Online communication is now as valid a means of expression as going to a meeting, writing an article or talking on the radio. When I participate in a meeting in Second Life, I exchange ideas about significant topics with real human beings, even though to casual observers I may just seem to be sitting alone in front of a screen. The other participants in the Second Life meeting take for granted what has been said above, but many of us have to deal with resistance from our real world environments. And that resistance limits how much time we can put in. We might find that improving Second Life is worth it, and yet be Too Busy in Real Life to do much about it.

If it is worth the bother, what then can we do to improve Second Life? I recognise the limits of my own first-hand knowledge, due to my newbie status, and to my being Too Busy in Real Life. But I've gleaned some information reading the blogs, and I'd like to throw out a few informal ideas. The following are just random reflexions, rather than systematic study.

The Political Dimension

In my recent post Back to Building a Country I presented a brief overview of the history of Second Life politics. There seem to be two basic attitudes among residents. The "platformers" hold that Linden Lab just provides the platform, and should intervene as little as possible in what residents do with it. The
"interventionists" hold that Linden Lab should regulate the in-world society.

In my post I payed considerable attention to Prokofy Neva's advocacy of interventionism. (This may be why he has graced me with a place on his list of smart Second Life blogs!) It should be obvious that I personally think Prokofy is on the right track in his long struggle to get the Lindens to regulate abuse such as griefing and ad-farms. But just at a time when the Lindens have finally begun intervening as never before, as told by Hamlet Au, Prokofy declares that he is "done with the Lindens". It is not just that they are always doing "too little too late," it is also that their way of implementing the new Department of Public Works resembles the worst of their favouritism towards what Prokofy has called the Feted Inner Core.

Recent events confirm that the Lindens are basically platformers. They did intervene massively at the beginning of Second Life, in order to ensure its success, as Gwyneth Llewelyn has described. But now that Second Life has grown beyond what anyone expected, intervention is expensive, and the Lindens try to avoid it, for economic reasons if nothing else. They recently introduced new regulatory measures which they felt to be strictly necessary, but the enforcement turns out to be weak, and their attention is clearly turned elsewhere. So Prokofy says he's "through" with them.

Yet Prokofy was the foremost advocate of government by the Lindens, by "King Philip" as he called Philip Rosedale. Prokofy repeatedly said that the residents should ask King Philip for a Magna Carta to establish a government and rule of law throughout Second Life. However, in 2004 Robin Linden did ask if residents wanted self-government (as I mentioned in my last post) and the answer on the forums was a resounding "no." And Prokofy himself has been opposed to various proposals for a resident-based government, such as those made by Ashcroft Burnham.

Let us step back from this puzzle a bit, and try to put the pieces together. Apparently nobody wants the Lindens to initiate resident self-government. Prokofy no longer has much hope in asking King Linden for a Magna Carta. And there is widespread hostility to Ashcroft Burnham's scheme, because Ashcroft picked up the question at the wrong end. He started with the idea of enforcing the law, and thus asked residents to turn over their land to a central authority, which would have the power to confiscate the land as punishment for breaking the law. But no one wants to turn over their land to a central authority which would have the power to confiscate it, and understandably so!

The Magna Carta would immediately make one think of the English Parliament, which the Magna Carta helped to institutionalize. But living in France, I thought instead of the Estates-General, and of their role in the French revolution. Both the English Parliaments and the French Estates-General were called by the King, generally to get consent to impose new taxes. In a few instances, such bodies turned upon their Kings, and cut off their heads (Charles 1 of England, Louis XVI of France). But such an outcome was rare, and King Linden - or his successor - should be able to keep his throne in a Constitutional Monarchy.

What is important to note is that these bodies were only called together for *discussion*. The participants were bound by no other obligation than that of verbally representing their constituencies. Thus Ashcroft's land-donation scheme is totally unnecessary. Before going to Metaverse Republic, Ashcroft operated within the Confederation of Democratic Sims (CDS), which may be where he got the idea of collective land holdings. And as a current participant in CDS, I have postulated that the holding of collective property is the basic cause of some of the repeated conflicts within that small realm. Thus neither CDS nor Ashcroft has the proper model for Second Life democracy.

A Second Life Parliament should begin just as a place to talk, nothing more. (I use the word "begin" because there may a wider range of alternatives to be considered in the future.) It should also begin as a totally voluntary exercise. And it should probably also be geographically-based, as are all real-life representative democracies.

All we have to do is to define a procedure for representation of each sim (or group of sims, since there are 16,000 of them) by a locally-elected (or even locally-appointed) delegate. Then set the time and place for the big meeting, establish the procedures for the discussion, and issue a call for participation. Those who want to send delegates will; the others are free to abstain. Is anyone interested in forming a group to get this rolling? I'm tempted to offer my services, and to participate, as did my namesake Georges Danton in France. But I'll probably be Too Busy in Real Life.

The Economic Dimension

The economic aspects of Second Life are complicated. One undeniable success of Second Life is its amazing in-world economy. I made an initial study of it for my Funny Money post, in which I concluded that Second Life has something less than a real economy, since the currency lacks strict exchangeability. I may have been wrong. Since then I've read a paper by Cory Ondrejka, in which he suggests that even playing at business in Second Life is true economic activity, based on exchange between real individuals linked into networks.

By and large, the Second Life economy seems to work, despite problems such as fraud and Intellectual Property theft. One major worry was fraudulent banking schemes, which Linden Lab removed by banning unregulated in-world banking, although that also removes potential resources for in-world economic growth. Since the economy generally works, I will leave most of the in-world economic issues to specialists, and will focus on one particular economic problem: land use planning.

The problem of land use planning, or rather the lack therefore in Second Life, has often been discussed, as in a post from 2005 by Gwyneth Llewelyn. This problem seems to be directly related to the Linden Lab business model. I've seen it said on the blogs that the Lindens depend on the auction of new sims as a major source of revenue. Someone stated recently, for instance, that the Lindens introduced ad-farm restrictions only after seeing Umnik Hax devalue a set of brand new sims by putting an ad-farm right at the corner where four of them met.

It therefore seems that their business model requires the Lindens to keeping cranking out new sims, like sausage for the masses, as Sleazy Writer put it. To impose restrictions on what people can do with their land would be unpopular. Prokofy has repeatedly denounced the prevalent attitude of "I will do what the fuck I want on my land." But above all, to impose such restrictions might slow down sales.

And sales have been good: there are now some 16,000 sims! I've explored only a tiny percentage of the existing regions, but as I fly around I ask myself in wonder: "Who the hell MADE all of this stuff?" This is certainly a prime example of the power of massively distributed collaboration. But on the mainland these creators are all stepping on each others' toes, doing the exact opposite of what their neighbours are setting up, destroying whatever "ambiance" the next guy has made. Many of the islands of course are well planned, which is why Anshe Chung and other "land barons" have made fortunes. But the mainland is just one solid mess.

Are there solutions? Prokofy Neva has set himself up as a one-man urban renewal committee for the mainland. His answer to Sleazy's complaints was:

"No. If you don't like the weather, change it. In SL, you can do that. Buy land, fix it up. Or, support others who buy land and fix it up -- which I know you do with our SL Public Land preserve."

Prokofy's Ravenglass Rentals is a small empire of residential and commercial rentals scattered across mainland territory. In managing his rentals Prokofy simultaneously tries to upgrade the value of the mainland environment, which is one reason for his struggle against ad-farms. And this is part of why Prokofy is so exasperated with the Lindens' ludicrous attempt to improve the mainland with their new Department of Public Works. Fixing a few roads and adding a bit of other infrastructure will hardly put a dent in the land use chaos.

A real solution would be for Linden Lab to institute land use planning and zoning on the mainland, as is done in any real-life urban or sub-urban area. But we will probably have to wait a long time before they do so. Another solution would be to follow Prokofy's lead, and to do something like what he has undertaken as a rugged (grins) individualist, but in groups.

There is again something to be learned here from the Confederation of Democratic Sims (CDS). As I pointed out in a recent thread on the CDS forum, the CDS community is currently set up both as a political democracy, and as an *economic* democracy, because all CDS is essentially collectively owned. Since Linden Lab recognizes only one official owner for an island sim, each of the three CDS sims is currently owned by one person acting as caretaker for the group. Individual members "buy" plots, as on any island, but such individual ownership remains as much a fiction as in the case of a sim owned by a land baron. The real owner is the CDS group as a whole. And this is a curse, because CDS is un-gated, meaning that anyone can join. A cooperative business can work if it is gated, with a selective recruitment process. But collective property in an un-gated environment belongs to everyone, and hence to no one. As per the principle known as the tragedy of the commons, such a situation easily leads to collective disasters such as those seen under soviet communism.

I have therefore proposed that, in order to remain un-gated without provoking endless conflict, CDS should transform most of its collective property into private property. This drew puzzled comments from CDS members who thought that the property was already private, since each member "buys" one or more plots. But to understand the real situation it suffices to look at the cash reserves, which steadily accumulate because rental payments from members outstrip the tier payments, and which are clearly the *collective* property of the entire CDS group.

In order for the property to be private, in other words clearly divided up among the members, some sort of contract is required, spelling out exactly who owns what. There is of course the risk that members will default on the contract, but if the group is large enough, this risk is shared and thus reduced. And this brings us back to the possibility of forming economic groups to develop the mainland.

This could work as follows. A group forms with the goal of rehabilitating some part of the mainland. They should do this for the fun or for public service, because the profits accruing to each member would most likely be insignificant. The different members of the group would then buy adjacent individual plots, and set up a *contractual relationship* between themselves to develop the region in a harmonious way, and to divide up any possible profits according to the some predefined scheme. The CDS experience suggests that this last point is crucial. Even if in the end there are no profits at all, the contractual relationship must still define how to divide up any *possible* accumulated wealth, for example on the basis of the initial investment, plus some measure of each individual's contribution (for example, m2 of build). Some such scheme might evolve into a successful model whereby resident groups could rehabilitate portions of the mainland. Any takers?

Other Dimensions

There are many other dimensions to consider when talking of improving Second Life. But this post is already long, and I lack expertise, so I'll just list a few of the better-known dimensions and issues:

*Technical Dimension: libsecondlife, Copybot, User Interface, rolling restarts
*Service Dimension: customer service, online help
*Social Dimension: griefing, ad-farms, bot-farms, newbie experience, avatar rights

I could have linked each of the above issues to some blog post or other, but that would have been a lot of work. And what important dimensions or issues have I forgotten?

I've failed to address one of the key questions above, which was: how we can learn from Second Life as a *model* of reality. Perhaps that will be the subject of a future post. But it is time to move along...

Is Second Life Broken?

Now for the very first question of all, which I have deliberately left for the last. Is Second Life "broken"?

Of course not. Second Life is no more broken than "reality is broken." As long as we are able to log on, to find our avatar, inventory and sims, to use the software, and so on, Second Life works. But we could always make Second Life better – and we could always do the same for reality.

Back to Building a Country

2008-02-27T01:54:00.000-08:00

The most famous of all of Philip Linden's pronouncements about Second Life is: "I'm not making a game, I'm building a country." This citation, which has been endlessly commented upon, in fact contains two separate parts.

The first part of the statement says that Second Life is not a game. While most 3D virtual worlds are combat games, Second Life is a simulation of the type of day-to-day activities we carry out in the real world, such as producing objects, selling them and socializing. There seems to be general acceptance of the truth of this statement that Second Life is not a game, at least not in the usual sense.

The second part of the statement says that Linden Lab is building a country. How this is to be interpreted - or whether it is valid at all - seems to be at the center of many of the past and present conflicts within the Second Life community.

Being new to Second Life, and ignorant of its history, I set out to review the evolution of this question of "building a country." Using Google I found so much relevant information on the blogs and forums that it made my head spin. But curiously I was unable to discover precisely when, where and why Philip Rosedale made the original declaration.

When did Philip Linden say he was "building a country"?

Gwyneth Llewelyn in a post from November 2005 says that Philip had repeatedly made the famous statement "early last year," which seems to mean early 2004, although with this wording she might have meant early 2005.

Prokofy Neva in a post from July 2005, mentioning Philip's vision of our "world-that's-not-supposed-to-be-a-game," refers back to the SL Herald's June 2004 interview with Philip Linden . In that interview Urizenus Sklar said to Philip: "It sounds like you aren't thinking of SL as a game at all but rather as a platform for different kinds of collaborative projects." But during the interview neither Urizenus nor Philip mentioned the word "country," which would be odd if Philip had already made the famous statement. This might suggest that the quote dates from early 2005, instead of early 2004. So the available evidence leaves the question open. It is strange that Google fails to turn up any precise information on the date and the circumstances of Philip's original declaration.

Robin Linden inspires Ulrika Zugzwang's Neualtenburg Democracy

However, in that June 2004 interview Philip did state the following:

"Also, I think that various structures for governance, etc can be tested here quite well. I think it is possible that as SL grows, we will learn better how future societies might best be governed."

Philip was therefore definitely thinking of "structures for governance" in June 2004. This obviously has something to do with the question that Robin Linden put to residents a short while later. In August 2004, when Ulrika Zugzwang and Darwin Appleby were competing for the title of "President of Second Life" in a mock forum-based election, Robin Linden asked publically if residents were interested in self-rule. The idea appealed to Ulrika Zugzwang, who promptly created the Social Democratic Faction (SDF), Second Life's first political organization. But the suggestion caused a near revolt among the general populace. As Hamlet Linden reported in a post from August 18, 2004 called Missing Conventions, the Second Life forums were flooded with debates on the desirability of representative self-governance in the world. While Ulrika did have supporters, the overwhelming response was opposition to any in-world government. A new group called Anarchism, which quickly gained over 240 members, stated in its charter: "We believe in maintaining freedom from all forms of resident governance … and a promotion of individual rights. Let those that wish to be governed, achieve this through Group membership-- we will walk our own path."

Hamlet Linden's post from that time gives links to Robin Linden's original statement and to some of the forum discussion threads. Unfortunately, all of the forum archives from this period now seem inaccessible, even to residents who are logged onto the forums.

Gwyneth Llewelyn shortly thereafter presented her analysis of the resident reactions. Gwyneth reported that an overwhelming majority of residents conceived of SL to be a sort of Utopia where they could "be whatever they want to be, without any interference," and where "no one has power over anyone else." In general, residents refused to trust their fellow Second Lifers with the exercise any kind of "authority" (they also tended to distrust all real-world governments), and preferred to let the Lindens manage their Utopia for them, which most felt the Lindens did pretty well most of the time.

So the idea of systematic in-world self-government was rejected by the residents. Ulrika Zugzwang however went ahead and initiated a small experiment in local democracy, her Neualtenburg Projekt (described in my Second Life Loudmouths post). On November 15th 2004 Ulrika opened a forum thread announcing "Government comes to SL." The forum thread, which is still accessible, begins as follows:

"On Sunday the 14th of November 2004 the city of Neualtenburg instituted a provisional government based on its first-draft constitution. That's right. Government has come to SL. It's time to dust off that 'no government' T-Shirt."

Ulrika's small local Neualternburg democracy took root and grew, surviving a painful transition about a year and a half later, which lead to the departure of Ulrika herself. Relocated and renamed Neufreistadt, and more recently expanded into the Confederation of Democratic Sims, this small democracy has hosted a succession of competing projects concerning in-world government. But let us return to the chronology.

Aimee Weber's Two-Axis Graph

More than a year after Robin Linden had raised the big self-government question, by late 2005 political discussion among Second Lifers had advanced to the point where Aimee Weber could produce her useful two-axis graph, charting the political tendencies that she observed in Second Life at that time. One axis ran from "SL is a country" to "SL is a company," and the other ran from "Less intervention" to "More intervention." Aimee Weber identified four separate parties, which she avoided distributing precisely to the four corners of her graph, the better to chart their relative positions. But for easy comprehension it will help to simplify the picture by placing one party in each of the four corners of the square, as follows:

* See SL as a company, want less intervention: Platform Party.
Believe that Second Life is a software platform privately owned by Linden Lab. The Lindens should intervene only to maintain order, not to influence economic conditions.

* See SL as a country, want less intervention: Freedom Party. Believe that Second Life should be a country, but with as little government as possible. The Lindens should stick to writing software and leave the community to us.

* See SL as a company, want more intervention: Gamer Party.
Believe that Linden Lab is a gaming company. The Lindens should exert any influence needed to make SL fun for all users, not just the high achievers.

* See SL as a country, want more intervention: Nation Party.
Believe that Second Life is a country and that Linden Lab is its government. The Lindens should intervene both to maintain order and to favor democratic economic conditions.

This four way split can be further simplified by collapsing it into a simple bipolar conflict. On one side, the "platformers" hold that SL just provides the platform, and should intervene as little as possible in what residents do with it. On the other side, those we might call "interventionists" hold that Linden Lab should intervene to regulate the in-world society.

Aimee Weber named Lordfly Digeridoo and Cubey Terra as example members of the Platform Party, and Ulrika Zugzwang and Prokofy Neva as example members of the Nation Party. Prokofy Neva had made a name for himself in mid-2005 with his denunciation of the Feted Inner Core, by which he denoted the Linden practice of giving business to an insider-group of favored content creators. Prokofy, who calls the platformers "tekki libertarians," has repeatedly called for Linden intervention to foster fair economic competition, to fight against griefing, to ban ad-farms and so on.

Within the Nation Party

In late 2005 the "interventionists" fought a losing battle to keep the telehubs, which were nodes which teleporting avatars were forced to land in. Linden Lab had introduced the telehubs in October 2003 under Version 1.1 of Second Life, as a constraint which aimed to structure the landscape (see my post about Funny Money for more details). Prokofy Neva thought that removing the telehubs would bring the Closing of an Open Society, and Gwyneth Llewelyn likewise suggested it would bring the demise of the It’s a Country epoch. Everyone soon got used to Point to Point Teleporting, but urban planning - or rather the lack thereof - remains a critical issue in Second Life.

In early 2006 the Neualtenberg democracy was racked by a conflict between founder Ulrika Zugzwang and a new majority. The upstarts accused Ulrika of being a cyber-terrorist, because she deleted Neualtenberg buildings which she now claimed to be her own intellectual property. The two groups split, the new democratically-elected majority creating Neufreistadt, and Ulrika going her own way, first to Port Neualtenberg, and then leaving Second Life for good.

Around the same time, Prokofy Neva published a curious post entitled King Philip Abandons Throne; Betrays Motherland, reacting to statements made by Philip Linden in a podcast. Prokofy begins his defense of the "Country" interpretation of Second Life by invoking the support that he might have expected to receive – but didn't - from the crowd in Neualtenberg:

"If Justice Soothsayer were a Righteous Man, he would issue a warrant for the arrest of this failed King on charges of treason; yet Democracy Island is silent, its traffic fallen to the lower double digits."

Prokofy seems to have been upset because Philip suggested that the laws that will regulate Second Life will be those of the various groups in Second Life, rather than uniform rules clearly established by the Lindens. Philip notably said in the podcast that Second Life would probably become:

"A place with a lot of different countries in it. The web kind of identity but mostly a big set of differing communities. Not like a country but a place that has its own laws. …its character and its law will be driven more by the groups that are in it than we as the creator of the country could do."

Note that Philip explicitly said "not like a country." Prokofy, in top form, concludes: "The King, the Sovereign, abdicates his responsibility, ceding all power to … various FlashMobs, SmartMobs, and just plain LynchMobs."

Enter the Lawyers

Shortly thereafter, the legal experts come upon the stage. There had already been, in late 2005, a short-lived legal experiment called the Second Life Supreme Court (SLSC). An article in the SL Herald described this as follows:

"The idea is that residents may take disputes to the court to be settled according to The SL Community Standards, Ralph Koster's 'Declaration of the Rights of Avatars', and general 'real world' principles of law and dispute resolution (e.g. international law, trademark law, international decisions that involve gaming, etc). What we especially like is that residents may also bring suit against Lindens!"

This proposal, which fizzled, was lightweight compared to Ashcroft Burnham's ambitious scheme. Ashcroft was part of a group that wanted to enhance the legal system of the Neufreistadt democracy. But Neufreistadt being a tiny backwater, Ashcroft soon set his sights wider. In November 2006 he started a thread called Bringing law to SecondLife. (Why is this thread found on Second Life Home Page, rather than on the official SL forum?) Ashcroft's thread begins:

"Last Saturday, in a quaint little medieval Bavarian-themed island sim somewhere in the West of the grid, a group of people met to discuss, and then agreed upon, a proposal. It had been discussed and debated for the previous two months, and, although had caused some controversy, had garnered considerable support. It was a proposal which many hope will revolutionise parts of SecondLife, and bring law to a hitherto unruly world. The place was Neufreistadt (formally Neualtenburg), and the proposal was the creation of a professional judiciary, and, separately, a means of bringing that judiciary to the wider echelons of SecondLife."

This proposal immediately drew volleys of hostile criticism, worsened by the maladroit presentation of the project. For example, the original post sounds like a job announcement: "We will soon be accepting applications from landowners, or those who wish to become landowners, on the mainland and other private islands to join our Confederation." And an extract from the detailed proposal document (for which the link is unfortunately broken) seems to suggest that landowners joining the group would be putting themselves under *someone else's* jurisdiction:

"People who hold land on the mainland would put their land under the jurisdiction of our government and then have title to that land granted to them by our government."

Ashcroft's proposal was thus vigorously rejected on the forum. The very first resident to add a comment to Ashcroft's thread was Prokofy Neva, who stated: "This is one landowner who will definitely not be joining this strong-armed fake 'democracy'".

Prokofy's position was that the Lindens should provide the missing Second Life government. Around that time, in late 2006, Prokofy wrote a SL Herald article called Resident Government?, reacting to an announcement on the Official Linden Blog, about a planned overhaul of the Abuse Report system. Prokofy noted that rather than adding staff to review the 2,000 abuse reports coming in per day, the Lindens proposed to devolve responsibility for policing the world and adjudicating disputes to residents themselves. Up until then, Linden Lab's main response to griefing had been to add to the menu of grief-fighting tools, such as refining bans by name or payment status, enabling individual responses such as prevention of object creation, muting of unwanted sights and ejection of trespassing avatars, and enabling avatars to hide their online status. Since these technical solutions proved insufficient to stop the griefing, the Lindens again brought up the idea of resident self-management, to deal with the problem. Prokofy noted: "Responses have predictably expressed fears of a resident government coming down the pike." Prokofy obviously shared these fears.

Resident government advanced in the form of Ashcroft Burnham's Local Government Study Group (LGSG). Prokofy Neva attended one of the early LGSG meetings, held on February 17, 2007 in Neufreistadt. Prokofy, who posted the transcript on his blog, noted that the meeting was run by Ashcroft, with the help of "his sidekick Michel Manen, about who I think we have to begin worrying, too." Poor Ashcroft tried to keep the meeting on track despite endless interruptions from a hostile day-old alt, an anarchist who jumped onto the meeting table to hold a demonstration, and a particle attack half-way through. Ashcroft explained that his project was to develop a set of "tools" that could be used by various in-world governments, which might have a range of different configurations. Everyone at the meeting was very concerned about democracy, many objecting to the suggestion that only land-owners in certain governments would be able to vote. As a lawyer Ashcroft brought up the question of how to enforce contracts, proposing that land could be taken away as a punishment for offenses. Prokofy stated that they should all start instead by asking the Lindens for a Magna Carta and a federal government which would establish rule of law throughout Second Life. Prokofy however seemed primarily interested in repeatedly accusing Ashcroft of proceeding in an undemocratic manner. This tried Ashcroft's patience to the point where he threatened to mute Prokofy. But when the meeting finally got to the discussion of naming officers for the group, no one present actually volunteered for the job, showing just how isolated Ashcroft actually was.

Most trying of all for Ashcroft's group was that they even failed to sell their ideas to their own Neufreistadt community. The majority of the elected local government found the proposed legal system entirely too complicated for the little Neufreistadt city-state, the active membership of which hardly surpassed more than a few dozen avatars. So Ashcroft packed his bags and founded instead the Metaverse Republic group, which is still trying to establish an independent virtual-world legal system "with real powers of enforcement originating in user-created tools, and a democratic parliament."

The Full Circle

Meanwhile, what kind of government were the Lindens providing? Up until mid-2007 the general tendency was a long-term evolution towards *less intervention* than they had exercised in the early days. This was well described by Gwyneth Llewelyn in her post From Welfare State To Laissez-Faire Capitalism, written in June 2007. When Gwyneth joined Second Life in 2004, Linden Lab had a policy of subsidizing content. After the introduction of the Linden Dollar and the establishment of the Second Life economy, to promote more content Linden Lab introduced weekly stipends, subsidies for hosting events, and "ratings" whereby stipends were increased for parcels that attracted crowds. These practices were eventually abused and had to be stopped, but they were symptomatic of what Gwyneth calls the "welfare state" approach to stimulating the economy. This approach remained feasible even in the period of the telehubs, when Second Life still felt like one large community.

But Second Life continued to grow, and the extraordinary growth in the number of sims and avatars lead to "balkanisation": the single community split into a multitude of different communities. The "welfare state" approach became infeasible, and Linden Lab abandoned most "regulatory" activities, backing away from any role of intervening in Second Life. Technical support was "tiered," giving only paying customers access to privileged support, which is expensive to maintain. An attempt was made to transfer responsibility for Abuse Reports to the "local authorities" (owners of private islands), who would deal with abuse locally, and to have adult content flagged by residents themselves.

As the population and economy developed, so did cases of fraud. In Second Life business had always been unregulated: there were no central regulatory authorities or abuse reports for fraud. With the growth of Second Life, the frequency and gravity of cases of fraud became alarming. The frequency and gravity of griefing attacks grew at the same pace. Just at the time when Linden Lab was withdrawing from "governmental" intervention, the need for such intervention was becoming more and more obvious. So eventually the balance began to swing back the other way, towards greater intervention.

The past year has seen a steady stream of new measures implemented by Linden Lab to regulate in-world activities. These different measures were recently summed up by Hamlet Au in a blog post entitled Lindens Limit Libertarianism. The first step was a ban on age play (avatars simulating pedophilic sex) and other "broadly offensive" behavior, in May 2007. Then in July 2007 gambling was prohibited (this was primarily for legal reasons, since Linden Lab is located in California, where such gambling is illegal). The biggest step in terms of economic intervention was the banning of unregulated banks in January of this year, in response to widespread fraud related to pyramid schemes with unsustainable interest rates. Then on February 8th of this year Jack Linden announced the creation of a Department of Public Works, aimed at "improving the experience for residents living on or visiting the Linden mainland." This constituted a public admission that the lack of zoning has created ugly urban blight throughout the continental land masses. And on February 13th, in response to an energetic campaign of protest on the part of Ordinal Malaprop, Prokofy Neva and others, the Lindens issued a measure banning flagrant ad farms.

Echoing Gwyneth's analysis, Hamlet proffers: "The Lindens are restructuring the mainland into a communitarian society it once was in 2003." And he predicts that more prohibitions will go into effect soon, such as measures concerning bot farms or camping chairs.

Linden Lab thus seems to have come full circle. After an early period of deliberate invention to stimulate and to structure the Second Life economy, in the spirit of Philip Linden's "building a country," they gradually pulled back from in-world intervention, as the number of avatars and sims exploded beyond their ability to cope. But the spectacular growth in Second Life was accompanied by a corresponding growth in fraud, griefing and other forms of abuse. So Linden Lab has been obliged to resuscitate the policy of active intervention - including in areas where they have never intervened before.

The Lindens seem to have finally realised that they are indeed "building a country."

Blogger Beatitude

2008-02-15T07:38:00.001-08:00

Following a recent problem I had with Blogger, I had planned to move this blog over to my usual web hosting service. I had already installed the WordPress software, and was just getting ready to configure it, when my website server suffered a massive service outage. I use a small French web service called Ouvaton, which is supposed to be cool because it is a cooperative. But when one of the hard disks in their RAID burned out, they screwed up the replacement process so badly that the service was out for more than 24 hours. Small is beautiful, but imposing an accidental Denial of Service on several hundred customers is ugly. Is it utopian to wish that cooperative endeavours could also actually be effective and efficient?

That outage made me reconsider my decision. At least I can count on Google to maintain Blogger in a permanent state of adequate service. And they fixed the bug that caused my firewall to give me intrusion messages each time I looked at my blog. So if they can manage to avoid getting into conflicts with my anti-virus software, I think I can put up with a small amount of snooping about my consumer behaviour patterns. I've suddenly transitioned from Blogger Blowout to Blogger Beatitude. In the rest of this post I think I'll leave aside the big issues for a while, and just tell about what I've been doing in Second Life lately.

I've been going in-world rather infrequently, and for relatively short periods. I did however manage to attend the first meeting of the recently-elected new Representative Assembly of the Confederation of Democratic Sims, held on February 3rd. The meeting room in Neufreistadt was packed with a large crowd of observers. The session began with the new RA members taking oath to serve the CDS, its Constitutions and Laws. The RA members taking the oath (with their party affiliations) were as follows:

* Patroklus Murakami (CSDF)
* ThePrincess Parisi (NuCARE)
* Brian Livingston (SP)
* Sonja Strom (DPU)
* Bjerkel Eerie (CSDF)
* MT Lundquist (NuCARE)
* Beathan Vale (SP)

The first task of the new RA members was then to select the next CDS Chancellor. The two candidates for this position, Alexicon Kurka and Jamie Palisades, each briefly presented their reasons for wanting to fill the function. The RA members then stated in turn their preferences. The votes were three for each, and the hinge vote was left to ThePrincess Parisi. She dramatically built up the suspense, chopping her announcement into slowly-posted chat fragments, as follows:

*The next Chancellor of CDS ....
*On behalf of the members of New United CARE I proudly
*cast my vote for
*Alexicon Kurka

So Alexicon became the new Chancellor of CSDF, and the meeting broke up. The avatars hurried off, some actually walking downstairs to fly somewhere, the majority just teleporting away or logging off. I teleported to my house in Colonia Nova, and found myself in a woman's body, and with only half of my hair. The condition seemed to last, so I finally just logged off.

Other than that, I've been spending time teleporting around Second Life to see other regions. After reading Sleazy Writer's guest post on my blog, about what he calls "Sausage Land," I went to check out the Southern Continent. I can only agree with what Tony Walsh said, about the continents looking like God swallowed a yard sale, a Goth castle, a suburban mall, and a carnival, and barfed it all back up (as quoted by Prokofy). For comparison, I went to visit some Island regions reputed for better zoning, such as Anshe Chung's Dreamland and Adam Zaius' Azure Islands. Curiously, I found these to be rather barren stretches of boring "paradise." But perhaps I need to explore them a bit longer to discover their charm.

Then I read Prokofy's Tiny Reporters post, about Julian Dibbell's in-world interview with Prokofy, when Julian was researching his now-infamous Article on Griefing for Wired magazine. Prokofy starts by taking Julian to see the famous giant Refrigerator that mars the landscape in Ravenglass, facing the huge Celtic tower built by Foolish Frost. So I went over there, and found everything that Prokofy describes, including the Tatoo Parlour at the foot of the Celtic Tower.

I also read Prokofy's On Being Done With the Lindens post, in which he describes an extortionist "ad farm" put up by Umnik Hax in Highcastle, which contains a winking Happy Face with a Star of David for an eye. Prokofy maintains that this use of a Star of David is racist, in that it seeks to arouse anti-Semitic feelings. I wanted to go see that too, but when I tried to use Search to find Highcastle, Search told me there was nothing that corresponded! I've since been told that there is another way to search for sims, using the map, but I have yet to do that. In the meanwhile the Lindens have announced their new anti-ad-farm policy, so when I finally do get to Highcastle, the Unmik Hax horror may be gone.

And so it goes. Between a bit of touring in-world, and a lot of reading of Second Life blogs, I'm getting familiar with the place, with its populace and its particular culture. I imagined that one day I might proudly remind my children that I was an early pioneer of virtual worlds. But when I tested this idea out with them, their reaction was disappointing. They think I'm just a misguided fart making a fool of himself playing at a children's game.

Blogger Blowout

2008-02-10T06:46:00.001-08:00

I created this blog one day last December, on a whim. I had noticed several Second Life blogs that use Blogger, so I thought I'd try it out. I created the blog in about ten minutes, and was pleased with the result.

Blogger is blog software created by Pyra Labs, and bought by Google in 2003. The software runs on a free web hosting service, which is also provided by Google. Thus both the software and the web hosting are totally free. You just create an account, configure the blog, spread your wings, and fly.

By and large I've been satisfied with Blogger. The software is easy to use, the default page format is simple and elegant, and the support systems are pretty good. But lately, when I try to look at the blog, my anti-virus program warns me that Blogger is trying to suck confidential information out of my computer. So it's time to move on.

Chalk up another freebie that was just too good to be true. Prokofy Neva would exult over this, and use it to prove once again that anything given freely is just NOT SUSTAINABLE. One might have hoped that Google was maintaining the huge Blogger service merely to build up its own good name in the cybersphere. Wishful thinking. Apparently they can't resist using it as an additional way to spy on us, and to load their databases with sellable information.

So it is time to implement plan B. I've been fooling around with creating my own websites for more than a year now. Thus I know how to purchase a domain name, how to rent server space from a web hosting service, and how to connect a dynamic website to a MySQL database on the web server. I have a rudimentary knowledge of HTML, and as for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), well, at least I know what they are. The big remaining question is: what blog software will I use?

In the first place, I want to use a free software package with open-source code. I know that Prokofy Neva thinks that open source is communistic, because it seems to go against capitalistic principles. But in Danton's world view, Richard Stallman is a saint, and Microsoft is the Beast. To quote Saint Richard, the philosophy behind free software implies: "free as in free speech, not as in free beer."

Open source is one of those divisive subjects that it would be best to avoid arguing about. People like Prokofy Neva will go on confusing open source with the theft of copyright, and insisting that free software is unsustainable. In the meanwhile, free and open source software will just keep developing. One day Linux will outstrip Microsoft Windows, and some open source simulator or other will evolve into a new standard for virtual worlds. Also, by the way, Linden Lab will be overtaken by competitors who provide better customer service, rational land-use planning and effective in-world government. In real life, free-market capitalism will continue to flourish within the framework of some kind of welfare-state socialism. The earth will keep turning. Next question.

To select my new blog software, I started by looking at the list of free and open source packages listed in the Wikipedia article about blog software. I also did a bit of searching on Google, using key-words like "best blog software." My choice narrowed down to a duel between Movable Type and WordPress. I read the following in the Wikipedia article on WordPress:

"In 2004 the licensing terms for the competing Movable Type package was changed by Six Apart, and many of its users migrated to WordPress – causing a marked, and continuing, growth in WordPress's popularity."

In addition, I notice that Gwyneth Llewelyn uses WordPress for her blog. So WordPress it will be.

It will take me a while to implement the necessary steps. I have to purchase a domain name, create the directory on my web hosting service, create the database on the web server, install the software, configure the site, and transfer the blog contents. This is all going to take me a while.

In the meantime, whenever I connect to this blog from my home computer, I get distressing messages from my anti-virus firewall. I "authorize" the connection - and Blogger spies on me. Yuck.

____
Note added on February 12, 2008:
Blogger seems to have corrected the problem. I'm not getting messages from my firewall any more. But it's too late, the process of changing to WordPress is already underway....

Linden Help Needs Help

2008-02-02T04:49:00.000-08:00

Second Life journalist Wagner James Au recently wrote a blog post asking: Is Second Life's User Interface Cursed by Knowledge? He was referring to an inevitable Curse of Knowledge which affects experts in any field, preventing them from imagining what it is like to be a newcomer to that field. Wagner James Au suggests that the main reason Second Life loses so many new users is that the user interface is overly complex and confusing. But he doubts that either Linden Labs, or any developers working for them, will be able to improve the interface, because the curse of knowledge prevents them from understanding why the interface is hard for beginners to use.

As a beginner in Second Life, my initial reaction was somewhat different from what Wagner James Au describes. The interface struck me as being on a par with most software interfaces, neither better nor worse. What intimidated me more was to find myself suddenly immersed in a new public space, inhabited by other avatars, before I knew how to use the interface. I found Orientation Island poorly conceived, and struggled much longer than necessary "to get even minimally proficient," as Au puts it. But by far the greatest obstacle that I experienced had nothing to do with either the user interface or Orientation Island. What horrified me the most was to discover how useless the official Second Life tutorials and support systems are.

Consider the typical path a beginner might take in searching for written help. The natural place to start is the Second Life website. At the top of the main page are five headings, one of which is "support." The beginner thus clicks on "support" to open the Support Page.

This link takes a long time to open. When the support page finally comes up, one finds a central heading called "Locations for Support Information," under which is a promising link called "Knowledge Base and Solution Finder." Clicking on this link merely expands a paragraph that begins "We've created an extensive (and frequently updated) set of articles about Second Life," and ends with "You can log into this system by visiting the login form at the bottom of this page."

Wipe-out! Nothing drives a web surfer away like the requirement to login before you can read a page. Most surfers have to really, really want to read a page before they will take the time to fill out a login form. So you've lost most of them already.

Let us suppose that the user is sufficiently motivated to fill out this login form. Submitting the form opens a page which contains a number of links, including one called "Knowledge Base." Clicking on "Knowledge Base" opens a new window which is a marvel of poor design. I had to study this window for a long time before I discovered the drop-down menu hiding at the far left of the screen. When I finally got the knowledge base open, I found a sub-heading called "Controls and Getting Around," which seems aimed at beginners. Opening this sub-heading gives a three-page list of questions, of which the first ten questions are:

*Animation Guide
*Are you with CSI?
*Assorted Tips & Tricks - Video Tutorial
*How can I find a combat region?
*How do I change the time of day to something like sundown? It's a little too bright.
*How do I fly higher? I want to see what's on top of this building.
*How do I get the Near Me tab in the Communicate window to reappear if I delete it accidentally?
*How do I look at something from a different angle?
*How do I make it brighter? It's so dark I can't see anything.
*How do I open the Client (or Server) menu?

This is just a disorganized grab-bag of miscellaneous questions assembled in a haphazard fashion. I glanced at a few of them, and decided I was wasting my time. I moved off of the page in disgust, in search of something that might resemble a real tutorial.

Let's go back to the Second Life main page. At the bottom of this page there are numerous additional links. Those which seem possibly helpful to a beginner include: "FAQ," "Second Life Wiki," and "Tutorials." The FAQ are too short, and the Tutorials link goes to a set of videos. These videos may be of interest, but I skipped them as too time consuming. I'm looking for text I can navigate through quickly. So I went to the wiki.

The Main Page of the Official Second Life Wiki says nothing about tutorials. In boxes on the right-hand side of the page, however, the following two links caught my eye:

*LSL Portal - A (soon-to-be) complete reference guide to the LSL language.
*Creation Portal - Information about building and designing in Second Life.

It was too early for me to start building and designing: I just wanted basic information on using the interface. So I tried clicking on the LSL Portal. Fortunately I already knew that LSL means Linden Scripting Language - the LSL Portal page nowhere says what LSL means! The second paragraph on the LSL Portal page says:

"Want to learn LSL? Try one of the LSL Tutorials."

On the off-chance that I might find a beginner's guide there, I clicked on the link to open the LSL Tutorials page. On this page, at the top of the list of LSL tutorials, I finally found what seems to be a tutorial for beginning Second Life users, called Getting Ready to learn LSL. However, a quick glance reveals how inadequate this strange document is. Consider for example the text of section 3, "Learn how to really move around," which goes as follows:

"Learn how to really move around. We next learned how to 'walk', to 'sit', to 'stand up', to 'fly'. We learned how to 'search' for 'places' and how to 'teleport'. That was learning enough to begin exploring. We also learned how to use vehicles and drive around."

The above paragraph apparently describes the training that the new avatar goes through on Orientation Island. It thus makes no pretence to serve as an actual tutorial.

Let's go back once more to the Main Page of the Second Life Website. Looking again at the links at the top of the page, this time we will select the link called "Community." On the Community Page, in the vertical menu running down the left side of the page, is a link to the forum. The beginner clicks on the link to open the forum page, and finds this message: "You must log in to view the Second Life forums."

You must log in just to read the forums! Why is this? I can understand having to log in to contribute to the forums. But what sensitive confidential information do the forums contain that must be hidden from the public eye?

Oh well, the beginner says, let me log in so I can read the forums. But when I logged in to Second Life, and tried again to look at the forums, I still got the page with the following message:

"If you receive this error after successfully logging in to other parts of the Second Life website, please make sure that:
*You have logged in to Second Life at least once with your account.
*You have valid payment info on file for your account, if your account was created after August 20, 2006. You can update your payment information here. You don't need to have a Premium account."

In fact, to get permission to look at the forum, I had to send an email to the support team. I received from them a special password to open my access. A few days after launching the request, I was finally able to search the forums. But a forum is probably the least efficient of all possible ways to find a useful response to a specific question. People search through forums when all else has failed, because sometimes, after great expenditure of time and effort, you may finally find what you were looking for. But anyone who has ever searched for help on a forum knows that a forum is no substitute for a tutorial or an on-line help.

There remains In-World Help. The user interface includes a drop-down Help menu. The first item on this menu, "Second Life Help/F1," only sends you to the support website mentioned above. The second item, "In-World Help," opens a little window that says "For instant help on dozens of topics, simply press the F1 key!" It also suggests visiting Orientation Island and Help Island. But whenever you touch the F1 key, you just get sent back to the hopeless support website.

There is however a nifty feature in the In-World Help window. If you click on the "Home" button, you get - Google in an in-world window! I was thrilled to discover this way of consulting internet from within Second Life. But by sending us to Google, the Linden Labs Help function seems to be admitting that, to find help with Second Life, the best bet is - to look elsewhere.

Fools for Tools

2008-01-30T02:21:00.000-08:00

What project will Danton Sideways develop in Second Life? I thought I might go into business, or get involved in CDS politics. But a bit of soul searching has revealed that the Real Danton is above all interested in putting into practice Ivan Illich's theory of convivial tools.

In Tekki-Wiki Social Club I touched briefly on the subject of tools, in a discussion about wikis, drawing a pertinent comment from Prokofy Neva. Prokofy has presented his own take on the use of the word "tools" by Linden Labs in his Life Among the Lindens post, as follows:

"Tools! My God, I should have realized long ago that they picked up this rhetoric from Stewart Brand *slaps head* -- the old Whole Earth Catalogue had tools for living, as they called it, and we used to spend hours poring over its pages, reading about old-fashioned ice picks that were actually the perfect thing to use on stubborn weeds in your garden - or whatever. It was even more dorky than the LL Bean Catalogue. It was always about drying and grinding millet seeds and making millet loafs (whenever I think of that era of the 1960s and all that Whole Earth stuff, I think of millet loafs, and how goddamn hard they were to eat, with like 92 different grains and raw vegetables in them, and how we used to force them down anyway; in fact, what they did was make food taste like a tool...)"

Good old Prok – always ready to pop your balloon for you. Prokofy's role, as I see it, is to challenge our habitual ways of thinking, to act as a gadfly to force us to reflect more deeply. Prokofy is the sort of opponent who, if properly listened to, teaches you more than your friends ever will.

Because of course the Whole Earth Catalog was mother's milk to Danton Sideways. The Whole Earth Catalog came first, and Ivan Illich only became important to me later, in the nineteen-eighties, when I learned how Illich's theory of convivial tools had influenced personal computer pioneer Lee Felsenstein.

Why do I now refer to Ivan Illich more than to Stewart Brand? One reason is that Illich provides a specific theory about tools, while Brand has always focused on practice (albeit a practice of spreading new theories). But there are also basic differences between the approach theorized by Illich, and the approach put into practice by Brand. I will try to show that these two approaches are complementary.

The key difference is that Brandian practice is implicitly elitist, while Illichian theory is explicitly anti-elitist. The Brandian approach has always relied on a new Promethean elite, supposedly wiser than the traditional unenlightened elite, which is to bring "alternative" tools to the citizen. Thus the Whole Earth Catalog was produced by a team of specialists (and even those who contributed simply by writing letters to the editor formed a sort of elite), the CoEvolution Quarterly presented articles written by experts, the participants at the first Hackers Conference were hand-picked, and the Global Business Network assembles a stellar cast.

Illich, on the contrary, persistently criticized professional elites. The recurring theme throughout his books is that the professionalization of knowledge tends to disempower the average citizen. In Deschooling Society he demonstrates how professional teachers can prevent learning, in Tools for Conviviality he demonstrates how professional technologists can prevent community appropriation of tools, and in Medical Nemesis he demonstrates how professional doctors can prevent self-healing. The basic thrust of Illich's thought is to encourage individuals and communities to take back the control of knowledge which has been monopolized by professionals.

Thus, with respect to tools, Illich's proposed solution is community appropriation of technology. Stewart Brand has of course always been concerned with community. But Brand tends to see the tools coming to the community from the outside. The right tools are supposed to empower the citizen, without there being a need for citizens themselves to be involved in tool development. For Illich, the community only really appropriates the tool when the community itself participates in developing the tool.

A case study of the Illichian model of community tool development is found in the history of the personal computer. In the early nineteen-seventies Lee Felsenstein was working in San Francisco as chief engineer for the non-profit organisation Resource One, which had obtained the donation of an obsolete XDS 940 time-sharing computer. At a time when the Internet was no more than a research network linking a handful of campuses, Resource One set up a few public terminals at community gathering places around the SF Bay Area, to serve as electronic bulletin boards. In 1974 they installed a showcase connection at the Whole Earth Access store on Shattuck Avenue, using a fancy Hazeltine 1500 CRT terminal, which they leased with a service contract. One day the service technician working on it dropped the circuit board for the keyboard, breaking the ceramic pack on one of the chips. That experience started Felsenstein thinking about how to make such a system survive in a public access environment.

Felsenstein had just read Ivan Illich’s book "Tools for Conviviality," and was impressed by Illich's description of how radios were repaired in the jungles of Central America. The radio technology was sufficiently accessible to peasant users and brought out their inherent tendencies to learn. If you tried to fool with a radio, the tube might overheat, but it would survive and give you some warning that you had done something wrong. The radio could thus be used in the jungle environment because it "grew up" a cohort of people around it who knew how to maintain it.

To transpose such a model to computers, which require perfect reliability at every clock cycle, was particularly challenging. Felsenstein nonetheless convened a discussion group around the concept of a convivial computer, on the hypothesis that a new type of computer could only survive if it grew a computer club around itself. Among the subjects discussed by the small group (which soon fizzled out) was Don Lancaster's article in Radio Electronics magazine, telling how to build a "TV Typewriter," which did nothing more than print characters on a home TV screen. Felsenstein was interested in this possibility of constructing a little box, for about a hundred dollars worth of parts, which you could connect to a TV set to make a rudimentary terminal. He worked on developing an improved version that used random access memory chips. Felsenstein realised that if you installed the random access memory in a simple computer, you could then use that same memory to run the terminal. He therefore defined a terminal that used a three card set: a memory card, a card to put data into the memory, and a card to get information out of the memory and put it to the screen. To connect the three cards he defined a 44-pin bus structure that used cheap Vector connectors. He has suggested that this was the genesis of the architecture of the personal computer.

But to carry our story forward, a few months later, in January 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 hobby kit was advertised in Popular Electronics magazine. That advertisement catalyzed a meeting of computer enthusiasts grouped around the People’s Computer Center in Menlo Park. The meeting was attended by Lee Felsenstein, Steve Wozniak and many others who went on to play key roles in the development of the personal computer. The Altair is considered to have been the first "microcomputer," but it was in fact little more than a microcomputer chip inside a box. Those at the meeting soon realized that they, as a group, probably possessed more computer knowledge than the team that had thrown together the Altair. This group, which later called itself the Homebrew Computer Club, met regularly over the next year or so to carry on informal discussions of how to construct personal computing devices, in a collegial atmosphere of shared enthusiasm, rather than commercial interest. The very name suggests the extent to which this group embodied Felsenstein's original Illichian idea of a "computer club" to "grow up" a new type of computer – which is precisely what the Homebrew group did.

The Homebrew Computer Club was in fact a cross between the Brandian Promethean approach and the Illichian participatory approach, since it brought together an elite, but working on a participatory model. This is one way that the two approaches can be complementary. Another way is for a Promethean elite to bring new tools to a community, and for the community to then appropriate the tools and participate in their further development. This is essentially how things happen with free and open source software. Highly specialised programmers develop a software package, and then turn the source code over to a community of users, who participate in further development by finding bugs and adding new functionalities. Going a step further, when the Promethean elite deliberately sets out to design tools that can be easily modified and appropriated by the users, the two approaches fuse together into a new paradigm.

Another of Illich's key contributions is his use of the word "tool" to refer to all sorts of human constructs, rather than just physical instruments. The Whole Earth Catalog had already used the word "tool" in a very wide sense – more than half of the items in the Catalog were in fact books. But Illich makes this extension of meaning explicit, building on a tradition exemplified by the French philosopher Jacques Ellul, who in the early nineteen-fifties used the word "technique" to include all of the various administrative methods used by modern state bureaucracies. Illich for example specifically calls legal mechanisms "tools." Certain other thinkers even refer to ideas as a type of tools: see for example Daniel Dennett's paper on Making Tools for Thinking.

Which brings us back to Prokofy Neva. If the word "tool" referred only to physical instruments, it would be hard to refute this argument from his Life Among the Lindens post:

"The tool thing is loosely based on that old idea of 'give a man a fish, and you have fed him for one day; teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime'. The problem with this facile adage of Western do-goodism is that people in civil war in Africa have a different problem. My God, they know how to fish, if they even have fish (a lot of them are in the desert). The problem is their kleptocratic governments steal their poles or poison the waters or chase them off their land with fratricidal wars. A man in Darfur needs a fish, not a pole, and somebody should attend to the larger problem of all the well-poisoning and cattle-slaughtering and compensate the villages for that destruction."

Prokofy's point is conclusive if by tools we mean only physical instruments such as fishing poles. The first need of poor people in many countries is not for material tools, but to be liberated from the corruption and repression of their own governments. But the question is how to achieve that. The international community can play a role, on the Promethean model of bringing help from without. But it remains critically important for such communities to develop their own internal capacity to struggle for democracy. Thus the pertinence of the Illichian model of development by the community of its own "tools" in the largest sense, including the types of associations, organisations and thought-models that can enhance empowerment in the local context.

How does all of this apply to Second Life? For more on that, tune in next week, same time, same URL…

Sausage of Unity

2008-01-27T12:27:00.000-08:00

by Sleazy Writer

Danton has invited fellow CDS resident Sleazy Writer to write a guest post. Sleazy addresses one of his favorite subjects: sausage. It might also be noted that during the recent CDS election debate, while the candidates were warming up for their speeches, Sleazy amused the crowd by flying around the Colonia arena disguised as a hot dog.

One of the most basic and defining aspects that makes SL a world is its geography. And the geography of the 'mainland' continents is what this short article is about. Apparently, the new SL technology was initially used to show off and apply its versatility. Flexible simulators could be shaped into anything, small lakes and seas were attached. Rivers, waterfalls, rapids, peninsulas, mountain ridges, coastline and even geographical puns or logos were added to the small but growing world that SL was. A volcano towered over exotic Hawaiian lands. Forested northern lands and great lakes appeared and a breathtaking snow region full of possibilities grew to the first continent. A strange but original atoll was discovered -- coral reefs rising from the sea, changing into grassland and into mountains. It could be travelled by railroad like the continent before it could be explored by rivers or by road. A cool experience for immersionist users and many others.

But then it was over with the fun. Someone decided, probably with good reason, that it was time to make some money. And money was made by churning out thousands of boring, identical [insert unflattering adjective] grassy lumps of Lebensraum (3, 4, 5 and 6 at the left), a truckload of McSausages to be consumed by the masses.

SausageLand, the last time I checked, comprises four continents, about two-thirds of the main landmass of virtual Eden that the company has created for us. Plot after plot used as sandbox and then abandoned as a slum of plywood. The geography algorithm that was used is nice but also useless to the experience since there are no distinguishing features on the sim level. The unpaved roads it generated do not encourage exploration but are a road through a hell of twirling ads, strippers, Giulianis and unsolicited biblical advice (A bit like that good old Klingon initiation rite involving pain sticks). It's understandable and it's fine. But isn't this a sad state for a new world that is shaped by imagination?