Comments on: Communities and What To Do With Them http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2007/07/08/communities-and-what-to-do-with-them/ Socio-Economical Articles about the Second Life® world Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:52:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Ashcroft Burnham http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2007/07/08/communities-and-what-to-do-with-them/comment-page-1/#comment-5726 Ashcroft Burnham Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:42:23 +0000 http://gwynethllewelyn.net/article176visual1layout1.html#comment-5726 <i>You</i> might have a thousand people on your friends list, but I hardly think that that's typical! You might have a thousand people on your friends list, but I hardly think that that’s typical!

]]> By: Lem Skall http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2007/07/08/communities-and-what-to-do-with-them/comment-page-1/#comment-5694 Lem Skall Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:44:48 +0000 http://gwynethllewelyn.net/article176visual1layout1.html#comment-5694 Gwyn, I'm not sure what is your main point here but you are touching on many important points. Yes, there are many disparate communities in SL. I would add a relevant point that I think you missed. Geography is not a factor in SL. We are used to RL, where governance is usually based on representation of geographical communities. IMO, such representation and governance are unfeasible in SL (Ashcroft Burnham and the LSGS may disagree). OTOH, maybe, some day, SL will have its own organizational structure with a Business Council, a Role Playing Council, A Residents Council, etc., all having representants of their own sub-communities. So, yes, Goreans and Furries may have to learn to collaborate inside such a council, but even RL parties can do that... It would be interesting in such a structure though that we would usually belong to more than one community at the same time, as opposed to geographical communities. Yes, it is difficult to listen to all of the SL communities. IMO, at the present, the best way to do that is reading the blogs and the e-zines (SL Insider, SL Herald, SL Reports, let me know if I'm missing any, I would be interested in hearing of more). Bloggers and reporters are exactly the people you are mentioning as networking people. For now, they are the closest to being our representants. That's right, Gwyn, you are one of them, one of the "leading voices". Personally, I have an RSS feed of more than 30 blogs plus a few other sites that I follow separately from the feed (they have relatively high volume and they overwhelm the blogs in the RSS feed). And lastly, yes, it must be a difficult task for Lindens to listen to all of the communities. And I suspect that in their mind they do a pretty good job. After all, they have office hours, the official blog, JIRA, even ARs. All of these have their usefulness. However, they are not enough and the Lindens fail in having a real DIALOG with the SL residents on the main questions that are facing us: "What do we want to do in SL and what do we want SL to be?" Again and again, LL has made decisions related to these questions that greatly affect SL, without consultation with the residents. Even when the residents reacted negatively after these decisions were announced, LL failed in their response, neither changing their decisions nor justifying them well enough. Gwyn, if I understand you correctly, the main point for organizing and giving a voice to our communities is that we need a dialog with LL and also a dialog between ourselves in order to shape the future of SL. For now, blogging, conferences, commenting in public forums, attending office hours even (unfortunately, for me at least, the office hours don't usually fit my schedule) are ways for SL residents to do our part. Gwyn, I’m not sure what is your main point here but you are touching on many important points.

Yes, there are many disparate communities in SL. I would add a relevant point that I think you missed. Geography is not a factor in SL. We are used to RL, where governance is usually based on representation of geographical communities. IMO, such representation and governance are unfeasible in SL (Ashcroft Burnham and the LSGS may disagree). OTOH, maybe, some day, SL will have its own organizational structure with a Business Council, a Role Playing Council, A Residents Council, etc., all having representants of their own sub-communities. So, yes, Goreans and Furries may have to learn to collaborate inside such a council, but even RL parties can do that… It would be interesting in such a structure though that we would usually belong to more than one community at the same time, as opposed to geographical communities.

Yes, it is difficult to listen to all of the SL communities. IMO, at the present, the best way to do that is reading the blogs and the e-zines (SL Insider, SL Herald, SL Reports, let me know if I’m missing any, I would be interested in hearing of more). Bloggers and reporters are exactly the people you are mentioning as networking people. For now, they are the closest to being our representants. That’s right, Gwyn, you are one of them, one of the “leading voices”. Personally, I have an RSS feed of more than 30 blogs plus a few other sites that I follow separately from the feed (they have relatively high volume and they overwhelm the blogs in the RSS feed).

And lastly, yes, it must be a difficult task for Lindens to listen to all of the communities. And I suspect that in their mind they do a pretty good job. After all, they have office hours, the official blog, JIRA, even ARs. All of these have their usefulness. However, they are not enough and the Lindens fail in having a real DIALOG with the SL residents on the main questions that are facing us: “What do we want to do in SL and what do we want SL to be?” Again and again, LL has made decisions related to these questions that greatly affect SL, without consultation with the residents. Even when the residents reacted negatively after these decisions were announced, LL failed in their response, neither changing their decisions nor justifying them well enough.

Gwyn, if I understand you correctly, the main point for organizing and giving a voice to our communities is that we need a dialog with LL and also a dialog between ourselves in order to shape the future of SL. For now, blogging, conferences, commenting in public forums, attending office hours even (unfortunately, for me at least, the office hours don’t usually fit my schedule) are ways for SL residents to do our part.

]]> By: Laetizia Coronet http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2007/07/08/communities-and-what-to-do-with-them/comment-page-1/#comment-5692 Laetizia Coronet Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:01:01 +0000 http://gwynethllewelyn.net/article176visual1layout1.html#comment-5692 <i>"We’re thus limited to our own point of view, and to the extent of what we can observe directly and rely mostly upon what we’re told [...]. Most of our experience, however, will be always “second hand”. We’ll have to trust what people tell us and rely on their own comments to create a large picture of what’s going on in the corners of the Metaverse beyond our own little one."</i> That strikes me as an accurate description of the real world, and I'd ventrue a step further and call that the root cause of a lot of mayhem. So will we overcome barriers in the metaverse? Not likely I fear - it is ingrained in the human spirit and the fibre of our societies to look at and judge the world beyond our own from a distance, from second-hand information and on the sole basis of our personal set of values. “We’re thus limited to our own point of view, and to the extent of what we can observe directly and rely mostly upon what we’re told [...]. Most of our experience, however, will be always “second hand”. We’ll have to trust what people tell us and rely on their own comments to create a large picture of what’s going on in the corners of the Metaverse beyond our own little one.”

That strikes me as an accurate description of the real world, and I’d ventrue a step further and call that the root cause of a lot of mayhem.
So will we overcome barriers in the metaverse? Not likely I fear – it is ingrained in the human spirit and the fibre of our societies to look at and judge the world beyond our own from a distance, from second-hand information and on the sole basis of our personal set of values.

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