Month: March 2011

Master accounts

Posted on by Inara Pey

This idea is not new. Indeed, even now, I’m coming to it later than others, like Ciaran Laval, who posted at the end of last month on the subject. But it is worth repeating here.

Second Life needs Master Accounts

This idea was first put forward a good while ago, under JIRA MISC 2222. Argent Stoncutter has revamped it under JIRA SVC-6212. This idea has significant benefits for personal security, and general SL use:

  • Accounts could be gathered under a single master account, which instead of logging you directly into SL, allows you to select which avatar you wish to use under that account, as Argent explains: so for example instead of logging in as “Argent Stonecutter”, I’d log in as “Argent007” or something that isn’t actually published… and then picked my “Argent Stonecutter” alt from a pulldown.
  • This master account would be far more secure, as the account name would never be publicly seen – once an avatar name is selected, the avatar’s name is all that is visible. Thus, accounts would be better protected from hacking (at the moment hackers already effectively have your account user name (avatar name) – and so are off to a head start. It’ll also reduce the overheads needed for overall account and password management for both the user and LL.

Potentially, the benefits go a lot further than this:

  • Linden dollars could be held in terms of the Master Account, regardless of which avatar buys them – and thus available to all avatars under that account, without the need to transfer funds between them
  • Inventory could be potentially linked to the Master Account, and also made available to all avatars under that account, with content creators capable of setting permissions so that items cannot be shared between Master Accounts
  • Age and account verification are simplified: verify the master account, and all avatars under that account are “automatically” verified.

The master account could be structured in such a way that there is a limit to the number of alts that can be created under it (perhaps, as a finger-in-the-air-figure: eight alts per master account), together with a limit on the number of “free” master accounts which can be created per user.

While this would not stop those determined to create mischief on the grid (griefing and copying), it could help reduce the need  / drama around sensitive topics such as “alt outing” as exemplified by the recent RedZone farrago: LL can ban by master account, instantly banning all avatars under that account.

Indeed, this could be extended into things like estate and land tools, helping land owners ensure, again, that a parcel / sim ban against one avatar is automatically (and invisibly as far as the land owner / sim owner is concerned) applied to the avatar’s master account, thus blocking all alts associated with it.

The idea is one, as I’ve mentioned, that has been raised before, only to remain in limbo. JIRA SVC-6212, however, seems to have traction in LL, with Yoz Linden commenting:

We would dearly love to have unified account ownership, for several of the reasons already outlined. However, do bear in mind that it would require significant changes to many parts of the infrastructure, especially in the billing systems. That’s not to say it’s not going to happen; on the contrary, we’re actively trying to move in this direction. Just saying that it’s noted, we agree because we’ve wanted something like this for ages, but it’ll take a while.

Given all the recent heartache and upset that has surrounded RedZone, I would strongly urge everyone to get over to the JIRA and support (watch) SVC-6212.  It stands to benefit every single person using SL.

Media patch accepted by LL

Posted on by Inara Pey

The media patch that was developed as a result of the RedZone data harvesting tool has moved forward significantly.

First put forward for use in the Phoenix Viewer but already available with the Cool VL and Dolphin Viewers, the patch was recently submitted to the Snowstorm project for Viewer 2 development – and has been accepted and is being worked on.

Further, Oz Linden himself has put forward a JIRA (STORM-1037) that means URLs for media streams should no longer be hidden. This is significant as it means that potentially dubious / invasive media exploits (such as that used by zFire Xue for RedZone) can potentially be more easily identified if they pop-up.

This is a significant step forward and means that, with the forthcoming inclusions of the patch in both Phoenix and Firestorm, the majority of users SL users will have a greater degree of control over what happens within their Viewers, and a vastly improved means of making informed choices about what they wish the Viewer to do on their behalf.

Q Linden departs LL

Posted on by Inara Pey

Q Linden will be leaving Linden Lab tomorrow, Friday March 4th.

He has been a major force in Viewer development, and since Esbee’s departure has been acting Product / Business Lead for Project Snowstorm.

Last year Q suffered a stroke, which left him hospitalised – but he still called-in to SLCC-10 to join Esbee and Oz in announcing Viewer developments and the launch of Snowstorm itself.

Q has always been approachable and personable. He’ll be missed; I certainly wish him well for the future and with his health.

Not community spirited

Posted on by Inara Pey

Well, it’s been less that 24 hours, and already the forums in the new Community Platform are heading towards an Epic Fail.

As I noted yesterday, the new Platform fails to include a General Discussion topic area, recalling what happened by when the JIVE environment first came along.

It seems that in LL’s case, history does repeat itself: threads requesting a GD area have been closed off, with a message from Amanda Linden:

“Hey all, I wanted to address the “General Discussion” Forum question that has come up. Our goal with the Forums is to keep them as focused and constructive as possible. Although General Discussion no longer exists, we’re always happy to create new Forums when the need comes up. That’s where the Forum Feedback section is critical. We’ll be watching it closely and adding new topic-specific Forums over time.”

Yes, history does repeat itself. What’s worse, it reads as fudged censorship.

Over and above that, it has led to the forums rapidly turning into a mess of threads and discussions all over the currently assigned topic groups.

As something that is supposed to invite and encourage communications, I’d say things are off to a rough start, with many already dismissing the new Platform as little more than a means to discourage open discourse / any negativity about Linden Lab.

Linden Lab makes a further statement on RedZone

Posted on by Inara Pey

Soft Linden has given an official update on the zFire RedZone situation over on JIRA VWR-24746, where he states:

Hey, all. I got the go-ahead to give an update on zF Red Zone specifically. Again, thank you for the ARs with specific info about violations. These have been very helpful for letting Lindens know what’s going on.
Tuesday morning, we removed zF Red Zone from the Marketplace for a second time. We removed the in-world vendor distributing the item as well. We determined that zF Red Zone was still in violation of our Terms of Service and Community Standards.
We asked for removal by no later than today of all zF Red Zone functionality that discloses any alternate account names. That is, even if consent is asked, the service may not act on the consent. In addition, we asked for removal by no later than Friday of the interface for and any remaining implementation of the zF Red Zone consent mechanism because it does not comply with our policies. If these updates are not made, we will take appropriate steps to remedy the violations.
As before, we appreciate your help in keeping an eye on content. If you find that any merchant’s product is not in compliance with our TOS or our Community Standards, please file an abuse report about the product. Do this even if you filed against a previous version. Include a specific explanation of what you believe is a violation, and ideally select and report the in-world object at issue in case it behaves differently than what’s in the Marketplace. Before reporting, make sure you have first-hand knowledge of the issue. Support can best react if you explain specific steps to reproduce or confirm a violation.

The wheels may turn slow, but they do indeed turn.

Soft Linden has been working hard on this matter – and keeping abreast of matters over the past weekend – and deserves a lot of thanks and credit for getting things to this stage. The entire matter may not be resolved as yet (the scanners themselves are still in-world and operating & may be unaffected if zFire meets LL’s current requirements and no stand has been made on the use of the device to collect data), but the fact we now have this situation is very, very welcome.

Soft, if you get to read this – thank you for your understanding, your commitment and your effort.

Update

The RedZone device vendor has been removed from zFire Xue’s in-world store by Soft Linden after the creator apparently replaced it following the creator attempting to place it back without meeting LL’s stated requirements. Commenting on the move, Soft said on the JIRA:

Soft Linden added a comment – 02/Mar/11 3:53 PM
Thank you for the additional ARs about the vendor being replaced in-world while the consent request mechanism was still in place. We’ve removed the vendor again and made conditions for recirculation more explicit.

New Community Platform launched

Posted on by Inara Pey

The new Community Platform launched today. The layout is clean and fresh and in keeping with the rest of the revised SL website.  Torley has produced one of his ever-impressive videos to help introduce the platform:

This is needed, as some of the elements of the platform are not entire intuitive. Take adding an avatar picture for example. Once logged in, there is an option at the top of the screen called My Settings. Within this is a tab called Avatars. One would think this is the place to upload and select an avatar picture for go alongside your posts.

Wrong.

While you can indeed select an avatar from My Settings->Avatars, you in fact have to upload any image you wish to use from your profile first. Your Community Platform profile, that is. This requires that you click on your name at the top of the Community pages then click on Upload Images (/View image for, once you’ve uploaded the first time) then upload a picture then go to My Settings -> Avatars to select and use it.

And if you want to get a background for your avatar picture, it is even more confusing, as you need to play around with the Social Connect tab of My Settings.

And if you want to use a custom background (such as the one on the left) – it gets harder, as nowhere is the required size of the background given. This means that you have to fiddle about guessing the relative size of the background – and the “preview” option in Social Connect is as useful as a chocolate tea kettle as it is not representative of the background’s size when used in forum posts…

Friendly, huh? I eventually got the image on the left to work after well over 30 minutes of pissing playing around with images, and the required size appears to be 117(w) x 210(h) pixels.

None of this gets the new platform off to a user-friendly start – and this is reflected in the fact that the first questions lined up in the new Answers section of the Platform are about … setting up forum avatar pictures…

Elsewhere, LL seem to have blundered yet again. Back when the Jive-based blogrum was launched, a glaring omission was that of a General Discussion forum. This lead to people being confused as to where to chat and, well, be a community. It also lead to some pretty heavy-handed moderation on the part of Linden Labs which at times – it has to be said – was very biased in its approach: threads critical of LL were rapidly shut down by LL staff as being “inappropriate” for the forum in which they were posted, while other threads with a more positive attitude towards LL were allowed to run unhindered, despite also technically being in the “wrong” forum topic area.

Well…guess what is missing from the new forums? Yup: there is no General Discussions area. Of course, the JIVE blogrum did get a GD eventually – but you would have thought someone in LL, staff churn or not, would have remembered what happened before and learned a lesson. True, the JIVE-based GD got to be a pretty unpleasant environment  – but discussion is what makes a community, and without a GD area, the new Community Platform has a big hole in it – and it is already causing mass confusion, with GD topics turning up in both the Entertainment and Your Avatar sections.

I’m not altogether sure how I’ll like the new layout – if I use it that much, I’m now far too at home over at SLU. The general approach seems good, allowing for the obscure route you need to take to get a good-looking forum avatar sorted out;  page layouts are going to take a while to get used to. Certainly, the lack of a clear-cut GD environment is going to lead to a lot of confusion as to where people should post, and LL need to sort this out now rather than leave it – or go back to stomping on threads for being “inappropriate” for the sections they show up in.

More guidelines need to be built-into the system as well: Torley’s video is good at giving a broad overview, but really, the system could do with around two or three more.

It’s also going to be interesting to see how long LL staff remain engaged on the Platform once the sense of Shiny has worn off of it for them. In that respect, I’m rather surprised that there isn’t a section entitled “Ask a Linden” or “Ask the Lab”, or some such – together with clear and concise guidelines – that encourages two-way communications between users and LL representatives. After all, this platform is about improving communications and providing channels of communication, is it not?