Category: Opinion

It seems to me…

Posted on by Inara Pey

It seems to me I’ve heard that song before
It’s from an old familiar score
I know it well, that melody
It’s funny how a theme
Recalls a favourite dream…

Well after my recent gaffe in posting prematurely, the Rosedale / Komin double-act took to the stage yesterday as promised. I didn’t get an invite to the show – shame on them! – but couldn’t have attended even if I had, as I’ve been swamped by the demands of visiting family – shame on me!

I’ve yet to find a video record of the meeting, so have had to make do with ploughing through the V2T transcription Mallory Destiny has made available on Google Documents.

Given this is Philip Rosedale, it’s hardly surprising that much of what was said at the meeting sounds so very, very familiar. So of it almost hauntingly so. Let Bob say hello. He’s been instrumental in my coming back to LL. We’ve teamed up to run the company. Bob is a super star. Philip gushes, His skills are vast.  He was the prior CFO. He’s great to work with. We are a team. We talk at the same time.

Familiar? Somewhat. [He’s] a person with the rare and unusual combination of business leadership, creativity, and passion for Second Life that we were looking for … He has been in successful and highly regarded leadership roles … was how Philip once gushed over a certain Mark “M Linden” Kingdon in a (now deleted) SL blog post, before later stating, Much of my actual Linden work has been time spent with M.  We have literally sat at the same pod, 5 feet away from each other.

Given the tailspin SL seemed to go into after Kingdon’s arrival such gushing *might* be taken one of two ways by the more cynical among us – that either Rosedale and the rest of the Board have impaired judgement when it comes to appointing CEOs (and remember, it seems that Komin may way be in line for the post), or that Komin himself better be mindful of Kingdon’s less-than-auspicious-ousting at the hands of … one P. Rosedale and the Board of Linden Research…

Beyond the gushing, we get what is – if commentators are prepared to be completely honest – pretty much a retread of All We Have Heard Before, starting with Philip’s repeat on the  Tear[ing] down walls between SL and it’s potential and more and better use. and pull back and fix basic capabilities.

There is a lot that sounds good – at least initially – in what he has to say. He talks about making SL “Fast, Fun, Easy” and about “fixing” lag and crashes and even goes so far as to admit that Viewer 2 isn’t all it is cracked up to be and that as a result, users are “frustrated”.

But is there really anything new in what he has to say? Anything really defining as a means of showing that LL are actually beginning understand all that Second Life not only can be – but already is.

Well – and bearing in mind, this is only a transcript I’m working with, and one that seems a little disjointed in places, so it *is* possible some of what was said in the meeting is missing – in my humble opinion, the answer has to be “no”.

Let’s take the issues of crashes and lag: frankly these are not new phenomena; these been around since the dawn of Second Life  – so the idea that they should be a “focus” for Linden Lab going forward isn’t new. Rather, it is a retread of things that have been said in the past; and Lord knows, Frank Ambrose (bless him) and his team have worked very hard on the overall infrastructure of SL to make the back-end much less crash-prone and unsettling. True enough, the Viewer is another issue; but the fact remains that given that Second Life is now seven plus years old, and that the Viewer is central to the user experience, “crashing” shouldn’t require some new and heavy focus in and of itself – it should be part and parcel of LL’s on-going modus operandi – seeking to ensure the any adverse impacts of code changes, etc., don’t result in such a drastic outcome.

Same for lag. It’s not new. It’s been around from day one, so again, it is something that, so far as they can, LL should be keeping an eye on, both in terms of overall grid performance and in terms of how “high-end” they try to push things in the Viewer. That Philip needs to say LL are now going to be focusing on these issues (again) is perhaps an indication of just how far they have allowed themselves to be distracted by Bright Shiny Things (while raising the question of whether they can drag themselves away from the Bright and the Shiny in order to deal with such mundane issues as lag).

He also raises the issue of texture loading and refers to the roll-out of http for texturing loading. I’m no expert in this, but I’ve read what the experts have said and I understand that not only will the use of http significantly speed-up texture loading – it is something that people have been cajoling LL about for some three or four years, their pleas and suggestions falling on corporate ears that were conveniently deaf at the time. Are they listening now?

I’m also not entirely convinced by the “Fast, Easy, Fun” slogan (and that’s what it is really, a slogan, not a strategy). As with the comments about lag and crashes, and the (albeit somewhat correct) analysis of things like Viewer 2, Philip uses the slogan to suggest that getting Second Life turned around is solely a matter of technical innovation and technical fixes.

It isn’t; and this is where LL have always fallen down: fixing SL’s “woes” never has been purely a matter of “fixing” the technical. It’s about LL taking a long, hard and objective  look at its own culture and being willing to acknowledge that it is itself responsible for the majority of the key storms that have threatened SL in the past.

As so many of us have said  – some repeatedly over the years, others very eloquently – the vast majority of people at linden Lab simply are not directly engaged in Second Life. They have no personal involvement in Second Life or on-going in-world interaction with residents (weekly Office hour meetings don’t cut it for either). Thus, there is a huge gulf between their perceptions of what Second Life is / should be about and what is actually the case. And it is this gulf, more than anything else, that has hurt both Second Life and the community’s relationship with Linden Lab far, far, far more than issues such as the premature roll-out of a new Viewer and the like.

Not only has LL been unable to accept its own actions have been much to blame for upsets, hurt and even people departing Second Life as new alternatives continue to surface – it is potentially incapable as to even recognise or accept that anything it does with the or within the platform can be anything other than beneficial for all of us. Rather, when matters start to unravel their response at best borders on the patronising, “Yes, we know it hurts now, but believe us when we say this is good for you, you just need to learn to adjust and change…”, and at worse manifests an almost gleefully malicious refusal to accept that anything really is wrong with what they are doing – as evidenced by some of the recent blog posts related to Search. Between these two extremes lies what can only be described as indifference: a corporate shrug of the shoulders indicative of a “deal with it” attitude.

Of course technical issues need to be dealt with. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that simply getting Search fixed and running in a way that is meaningful to those using Second Life (rather than just blindly adhering to web precepts that seem wholly at odds with the needs of the community) would perhaps the single biggest step to making SL Fast, Easy, Fun. BUT… LL shouldn’t simply look to the technical and expect to find the yellow brick road leading to a nirvana where everyone is happily and fully engaged in SL; because that ain’t the way to go.

If LL are to achieve anything – then they need to look inward and tear down the “walls of culture” they have built around themselves and start genuinely engaging with the platform and the community. Whether they can actually do this, however, really is the $64,000 question. If they can’t, then sadly all that Philip said in the meeting amounts to nothing that hasn’t, to a greater extent, been heard before by those who have been around more than the last couple of years; and it is going to do little to make things better in the long term.

Starting over, or papering over?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Philip Rosedale today makes his first “official” blog post as the “returning” interim CEO (I use quotes around “returning” because face it – he never really left) – and it makes interesting reading.

The positive is that we once again seem to be moving to an era where Linden Lab is at least communicating to its user base. While Mark Kingdon cannot in any way be blamed for all of the woes that have struck Second Life since 2008 (for reasons I’ve mentioned before), it cannot be denied that one major failing within the Lab under his leadership was in the matter of open communication. Direct engagement with users whether in-world or via the blogs was a rarity. Kingdon himself didn’t really directly interact, talk to and listen to users in depth until February of this year – and then only once, albeit with a broadly positive interaction. While in the blogs, Lindens would occasionally appear, blog, and comment – but they turned cherry picking posts to which they’d respond into something worthy of the best politicians – if not an art form in its own right.

Now we have what amounts to – one the surface at least – some soul-searching from Philip, starting with his SL7B address and moving on to this blog entry which includes the welcome announcement of the possible return of Town Hall meetings – the (hopefully) first of which is to be held before the end of July.

Now, whether the old Town Hall meetings actually achieved anything or not can be debated; some will say almost certainly that they did, others will say that on the whole they were little more than PR and that the issues and directions for the future had already been determined within the Lab, and so feedback from such meetings would have little overall impact on matters.

While I’ll be returning to the first part of this view in a wider context in a moment, I have to say that  – in terms of the Town Hall meetings themselves – the fact that LL may not themselves taken much away from them that altered perceptions or thinking was entirely beside the point.

What the Town Halls did – and did well – was give those attending a sense of involvement with the Lab and with the future of SL as a whole. People felt engaged and motivated. While this may not have vastly altered the plans and ideas presented at such meetings (and I don’t necessarily subscribe to the viewpoint that the impact was minimal), the fact that people came away from them feeling engaged and having had the opportunity to say their piece doubtless contributed to the overall “good vibes” they had about SL.

However – and there is always an “however” – note that I did use the term “communication to” rather than “communicating with” users. The distinction here is important. Again, many of those who place blame for their woes squarely on the shoulders of Mark Kingdon should take heed: prioritised targets in Philip’s new strategy are – wait for it – the New User Experience (TM) and Viewer 2.1.

Yes, folks – Mark Kingdon may have gone, but his so-called “big mistakes” will roll forward regardless of anything you may say, think, feel or emote. The strategy around these was set a long time ago, and not by Mark Kingdon – but by Philip and the rest of the Board. While we may see some tinkering here and there and the odd shift in emphasis, rest assured neither is going to go away and nor is the Lab going to be swayed very far from the course it has set for itself.

And why should they, with regards to either of these things? Considerable time, effort and money have been invested in both. Frankly, LL would do itself far more damage by abandoning either than in sticking to their guns and trying to get both to work. and while they may have struck their collective thumb with a very heavy hammer in pushing Viewer 2 to far to fast – the fact that Philip has acknowledged this and is committing to rectifying matters is positive.

So, like it or lump it, Viewer 2 is here to stay. Now the important thing is to make sure that whatever voice we have is used to ensure genuine issues and concerns – Search and the rest – are heard clearly by Philip and LL and put towards the promised improvements.

Beyond this, Philip also identifies grid concerns as a major area of focus. While welcome news, this is not actually anything new. Frank Ambrose (F Linden) and the team have been hard at work on this issue throughout 2009/10 – and it has to be said that overall, the results have been significant. Yes there are still issues relating to smooth sim boundary crossings, some people still experience issues around Tping due to Mono attachments and the like – but on the whole, the grid is subject to far fewer outages, downtime and other glitches than ever before, and most of us – when push comes to shove – are enjoying a much better overall experience.

That said, there are still core issues that need looking at – even if they are much harder to address – as the recent series of server roll-outs / roll-backs from 1.36 through to 1.40.2 have more than demonstrated. And this is what I would hope Philip is referring to in identifying stability and performance as major points in the “new” strategy (simply because ensuring the grid is stable shouldn’t so much be a part of “new” strategies as it should be a part of “standard operating procedures”). It be sure, ensuring that every new release isn’t going to have some adverse effect on the main grid is a difficult thing to achieve: the beta grid is, after all, much smaller than the main grid and doubtless less impacted by things such as massive script usage, all-out combat scenarios, etc., – so missing potentially damaging flaws in new releases is a complex issue. But LL do have a habit of bundling comprehensive bug fixes together with new releases, so one cannot help but wonder if it would not be better to take a more cautious approach – as Philip seems to indicate, and reserve bug fix releases simply for that purpose and keep “big” features (such as Havoc 7) reserved for their own dedicated release – and then focusing interim releases primarily on fixing problems the new release has created incrementally.

The other major comment Philip makes is around the issue of XStreet / the SL Marketplace. This is interesting because the latter has come under much fire – and it has to be said that Grant Linden has been making a stupendous effort to engage with those with a huge spread of issues (many genuine, some perceived, a few down to simple confusion) and ensure that the appropriate feedback is given. Taken together with his actions, Philip’s comment should do much to reassure all of us that – again while LL are not going to abandon SLM as some of the wilder demands are insisting – the Lab is going to make every effort to ensure the new Marketplace is up to meeting its intended use and will be seen to be an overall improvement on XSL.

Taken as a whole, the blog post is broadly positive and encouraging. It indicates that while LL may not be moving away from its chosen path to any significant degree, some inside the organisation are willing to hold up a hand and state mea culpa and admit that the company needs to rescale its plans to a size that matches its actual capabilities and that whether they like it or not, at some point they are going to have to start, at least in some measure, back to engaging with the “pesky kids” (i.e. you and me) who run around their grid creating mischief.

I’ll be looking towards Philip’s planned Town Hall (or whatever he is going to now call it) in the expectation that what we’re seeing here is something of a genuine “back to basics” rather than another attempt to paper over the cracks which have now reached a size where even those in the lofty heights at LL can no longer ignore.

More on the Marketplace

Posted on by Inara Pey

The discussion thread relating to the new Marketplace is growing apace. What is most refreshing is the fact that (until the weekend arrived) Grant Linden was staying fully engaged with those posting comments – and addressing the good and the bad, rather than going about the usual cherry-picking we’ve tended to see in Linden responses.

While at times he seems to be little more than a gofer – charging back and forth between the thread and the “Marketplace team” to get answers – his contribution shouldn’t be diminished. XStreet, for all its faults has been a major means for merchants to gain revenue, and given the manner in which other aspects – most notably in-world search – are currently borked up, it is essential merchants aren’t panicked by either a rushed implementation of the Marketplace or a feeling that the Lab is responding (with apologies to Dr. Frasier Crane) “We’re not listening…”

I gave initial feedback from fiddling with the Marketplace the other day. Admittedly, I’m not “big-time” merchant my listing (or store) doesn’t top 50 items, and I don’t consider myself in any way shape or size an “entrepreneur”. I build because it is fun, I sell to off-set tier. Ergo, I’m not as deeply into the mechanics of XSL as other may be, and so I missed the fact that features critical to some businesses aren’t so much missing in the Beta, as potentially ignored as not being vital at this time.

This has caused a lot of angst among merchants. It’s also (as with Search and Viewer 2) brought the WannabeA Linden mob out in force. Some of the angst from the former is expressed in unnecessary dramatic expressions of disgust (some of which are vented without actually indicating precisely why the new system is a “pile of crap” which don’t actually help drive the discussion forward in any way). Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the scale we have people sanctimoniously posting as to why merchants shouldn’t be upset as this is, after all a “beta”, before launching into a pious sermon on what “beta” means and how people lack the common sense to appreciate it as such.

Shame on both sides.

Between the two, however lies a wealth of concerns that are valid – some of which are also very worrying, despite Grant’s best efforts to calm matters. An examples of this is distributed payments. Many items on Xstreet (and indeed in-world) are made by more than one individual (or more than one avatar). As such, both Xstreet and most in-world vending systems provide a means for the payment received for a sold item to be distributed to the various individuals/avatars concerned in its creation. Yet this functionality appears to have been treated as a “nice to have” rather than a “must be in place” feature by those responsible for creating SLM, with Grant only able to confirm it will be added “in the future”.

Similarly, how listings on SLM are synched with their corresponding XStreet listings has been a source of concern inasmuch as all information on SLM is currently drawn from “prepared” listings on XSL – only even when merchants have followed the rule and prepared their XSL listings, what is arriving in SLM needs a lot of additional work to make it both attractive and usable (as I can personally attest). Yet it remained wholly unclear for several days at to whether a re-synch of data between XSL and SLM would overwrite the latter – thus undoing the Merchant’s hard work in “fixing” things on SLM (which now appears to be the case), while it remains (at the time of writing) unclear as to whether the synching will also “undo” the new features unique to SLM that merchants can now employ in their listings. As the synching is an “all or nothing” approach (you either have it turned on, and everything is re-synched, whether it is a new item just added to XStreet or items you’ve slaved over so they “look right” on SLM; or you simply don’t get anything updated), it tends to undermine people’s preparedness to test things.

Both of these two issues are pretty fundamental and demonstrate something of a lack of forethought on the part of those behind the SLM roll-out – particularly given that while this “Beta” is supposedly for the benefit of Merchants, LL are nevertheless trying to get merchants to push customer traffic into the new Marketplace in order to “test” the customer side of things. While such testing is clearly needed, it runs the risk of damaging the reputation of at least some merchants for a raft of reasons.

Given the list of current issues within SLM: language defaults, inconsistency of image displays, synching concerns, confusion (and lack of information) on tags and tagging, large gaps in required functionality (i.e. the aforementioned distribution of payments), and so on, it is very clear that SLM has a very long way to go before it is ready to replace XSL. As such it is good to read Grant’s repeated assurances that SLM will not be rushed to prime time.

Nevertheless, given the SLM was the subject of extended discussions with some merchants (via the roundtable, etc.), and even some of those posting in the forum thread give the impression (which granted might be little more than hot air) that they were privy to the inside track on matters, the volume of issues with SLM is surprising. At the end of the day, this is not a new product.

The basics were there in XSL – yet they somehow appear to have been ignored in the drive to make the Marketplace “web standard”. And while it is all very nice for Grant to paint a picture whereby SLM will allow merchant’s products to be openly googled from the web, I’m not altogether convinced this is a necessary benefit or even close to a vital requirement. Not when the majority of shoppers for Second Life related items are going to be one of two places: either in-world or on SLM. So is Google-oriented visibility really that much of a vital driving force? It’s a nice-to-have, for sure for merchants – but I hardly think it is going to encourage the heaving masses to rush to Second Life any more than closer links to Facebook will bring hordes of new users screaming to the gates of Second Life.

But, all that said, it’s good to see that, following Philip’s address at SL7B, the Lab appear to be taking the time to listen to issues and address them. They need to keep this up – not just within SLM, but across the board. And the next time they fire-up an initiative that is liable to impact the lives of a sizeable portion of their user community, one hopes they’ll put their new listening skills to good use up front.

Did he jump, was he pushed or was someone up to no good?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Mark Kingdon is gone. Philip Rosedale is “back” (although as Chairman of the Board, he never really left).

While I still hold the opinion that those expecting PS to now Messianic-ally resurrect  Second Life from its perceived “death” are in for not a little disappointment, I’m also really curious as to what really went on this week. And while the truth may never be known, I can’t help but indulge in a little idle speculation.

First off – was Mark Kingdon going to leave LL? Yes, I tend to believe he was. It is not uncommon for the head honcho to go when a company divests itself of a goodly portion of its workforce, and if Hamlet and others are right about the depth of disaffection within the Board following the apparent “failure” of Viewer 2, then it seems hardly likely that Kingdon would escape the fray. After all, he was pretty much brought in to drive the company the direction it has taken over the last few years – and which or not the likes of Kapor shame the blame for this direction in the first place – the fact remains that Kingdon is (or rather was) the most expendable.

Indeed,this might be one of the very reasons PR himself may have supported the contracting-in of a new CEO; while he may / may not have been a standard-bearer for the push towards bigger revenues faster, I suspect he was canny enough to surmise what might happen were the push to fail with him occupying the hot seat. Again, witness the clever wording of PR’s blog post: “Returning to the lab…”  – suggestive that he’s been away all this time and that he is “innocent” of all that has transpired…

But this aside, assuming that MK’s days were numbered  – whether because he was being set-up as the fall guy or because (and let’s not dismiss this) he was holding up a hand and saying, “mea maxima culpa” or whether a natural end of his tenure had been reached (“OK guys, I’ll take this on for two years, but after that, I’d like the freedom to move on if I’m not 100% happy…”) – one cannot deny the sheer timing of what has occurred to be a little – well, curious.

SL7B is supposed to be a time of celebration, of Lindens and residents together marking another year in SL’s life and growth. Coming on top of all the recent upsets and uncertainty – especially in the wake of the layoffs, with people far and wide speculating on the financial stability of LL, worries over what the layoffs would mean for SL (up to and including people pointing to a complete sell-off of the business) – one would have expected this week to be something of a show of solidarity within LL and towards Second Life as a whole, if only to give weight to PR’s assurance that we’re safe, the world is safe.

But no; instead we have a gathering at which MK is due to speak, at which PR himself is present, and suddenly MK is “called away” on an “emergency”, and shortly thereafter Hamlet issues his “breaking news” story.

Now, I could be reading this all wrong, but it does suggest to me that LL again got caught hopping around with underwear around collective ankles.

Did someone accidentally let slip what was going to happen in, say a week or two’s time? Or could it be that someone recently released from SL and who had been privy to plans decided to crank up the rumour-mill in the hope of wrong-footing the Lab into making changes far earlier than expected – and succeeded?

The whole change-over smacks a little of panic. *IF* MK was due to leave in time, the most obvious course of action would be to recruit a replacement. Then either once this had been done, or during the process itself, make a controlled announcement as to what is about to happen. Make clear the what and the why. That way you control the spin, and you limit potential damage.

Yet that hasn’t happened. Now it could be that more Machiavellian machinations were at work within LL, and MK opted to jump ship before the knife arrived somewhere between his shoulder blades. But again, this doesn’t seem credible.

For a start, such machinations would not reflect well on the members of the SL Board; MK may not have been around a long time, but he also probably knows where not a few skeletons are closeted, so a sudden Board-driven ousting could backfire badly. Which is not to say they don’t happen.

But there is another reason why I don’t think such a view is credible. And it is simply because it suggests that the Board are panicking. And a panicked Board isn’t good for the company’s image, not when, again, “stability” needs to be the watchword.

Similarly, MK himself isn’t going to want to unduly rock the boat himself. He has the rest of his career to consider, and is going to want to part company with LL on as good a set of terms as possible and with his resume unblemished.

No. I can’t see Machiavellian machinations or panic being the underpinning cause. CEO departures rarely just “happen”  – they are planned for. Even when one is falling on one’s sword as a result of poor corporate performance or for layoffs or for simply Getting It Wrong. It is an exercise in damage limitation to ensure the best face is put on things, that there is a “smooth transition”, etc., and that the business world retains its faith in your ability to do business – or the value of your business.

Which brings me back to a slipped word or an act of mischief.

We’ll probably never know the entire truth. There could well be a myriad of other reasons behind the extraordinary events of the last 24 hours. But that doesn’t mean we should speculate…just a little…

Marking time…

Posted on by Inara Pey

So Hamlet was right. Mark Kingdon is departing and Philip Rosedale will be back as CEO, at least on an interim basis.

Doubtless there will be much partying in the streets at the news, as Mark Kingdon has long been seen as the Big Bad Boogieman responsible for all of SL’s woes. Lord knows, I’ve questioned him enough over the last couple of years!

But what does this really signify?

The manner and direction in which Kingdon drove the company did not spring afresh from his head; nor did it exist in a vacuum. Yes, things seemed to teeter from crisis to crisis, yes some ghastly policy changes were enforced (OpenSpace / Homesteads) and others were royally messed up in their execution (Adult Changes) – and yes, Viewer 2 didn’t go down as well as expected.

But to hold Kingdon singularly responsible for these woes would be – in all honesty – wrong. He has to report to a Board, a Board that has in so many ways sought to influence and direct the future of Second Life. In this respect, Mitch Kapor (as I’m constantly pointing out) carries a portion of the blame. It was his SL5B speech which really set the tone for all that has transpired within Second Life over the last 24+ months. And if we look at the history of SL and LL as a whole, it has been racked by periods of turmoil, poor decision-making and what have you – as much under Rosedale’s leadership as Kingdon’s.

And leave us not forget that Philip Rosedale himself is a member of the Board – although one could argue that he was perhaps cajoled into towing the party line, rather than being a standard-bearer. While it is undoubtedly true that Rosedale’s SL7B presentation struck a much-needed note of contrition and suggests that there will be much in the way of navel-gazing and fluff weeding going on at LL – the hard truth is that much of the overall mindset that has been in play for the last two years will still be in play once the desks have been shuffled and the names on the pods changed.

I do find it amusing that the achievements that Kingdon has presided over during his tenure  – and they do exist – such as the investment in the underpinning network infrastructure, the investment in new hardware, the massively improved overall stability of the platform, the efforts to finally improve the asset database servers, etc., are being so erstwhile dismissed within the forum as “not being due to Kingdon” because the likes of Frank Ambrose ran point on the efforts.

Yet the very people who refuse to acknowledge Kingdon’s overall leadership in these achievements are quick to blame all the woes SL has suffered directly on his shoulders – when one could argue that just has he is “undeserving” of credit for the former achievements as he didn’t “lead” them, so to is he undeserving of the blame for any “failures” for much the same reason: Adult Changes were led” by Jack and Cyn Linden, for example; The OpenSpace fiasco was “led” by Jack as well…

While I don’t doubt that Philip Rosedale’s introspection at SL7B was genuine – at least to a point – I would still caution those busy putting on their Rose(dale) tinted glasses and loudly applauding Kingdon’s departure would do well to remember:

  • This is an interim move, pending the appointment of a new CEO
  • Philip’s introspection, in many ways, also isn’t new. He’s done so in the past – but the train has steamed on
  • as stated, Philip himself was at the helm during many of SL’s other crises: the tax revolt, et al – and he was technically still at the helm alongside Kingdon during the OpenSpace debacle.

As such, while I personally do – in all honesty – view the change over with some optimism – I’m not going out and joining the others in looking for M Linden’s “grave” so I can dance a little jig.

Philip has a potentially tough time ahead of him. While he may well come the closest of the Linden Board and management team to grokking SL’s user base, he’s going to have a hard time finding a balance between pleasing those same users and demonstrating to his fellow Board members that – despite all that has “gone wrong”  – Second Life is still capable of “making money” and has a broader appeal than currently appears to be the case despite the “failure” of Viewer 2.

That said, I will say this: Welcome back to a direct, hands-on role Philip – and thank you for stepping into the breach. We know times are hard, but you’ve also delivered what will be taken by many as a set of promises within your SL7B presentation. Further, others have (for the time being) opted to take a selective memory approach to LL’s history and management of SL over the years. So it might be said that you have a window of opportunity to “make good” on both the perceived promises and what people consider to be “wrong” with Second Life as a whole.

Use it wisely, because as you know, and Mark Kingdon likely rues, we SL users are a fickle crowd, and we’ll turn and bite the hand that feeds us as readily as we’ll roll over and let it tickle our collective belly.

Dem’s de rules….or is dey?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Feathers continue to be ruffled over the removal of pictures from the SL7B because of its depiction of nudity.

Those that object – including British film director Peter Greenaway – seem to think that the removal of a single item of art is someone an attack on the bastions of all art in SL. Others see it as petty pedalling on LL’s part, while others point to the rules laid out prior to SL7B opening, and specifically the “no nudity” clause.

For my part, I find it hard to side with the “art for art’s sake” lobby, as lead by Scylla Rhiadya, who first stirred the pot on June 19th. I will admit that I’m driven in part by the fact that it has been my observation that Scylla rarely starts a forum discussion of her own without some underpinning agenda, which leaves me feeling that there is more to her cry of “art for art’s sake” than meets the eye. But the main reason I cannot subscribe to the cries of “let it be” is simply because – as the majority state: dem’s de rules.

It is not as if LL slipped the “no nudity” rule in after the fact, or blanketed it under other clauses. It was there right from the start. As such, the inclusion of such a piece – however “unsexual” or “mild” or whatever, was in breach of said rules and subject to removal.

All other arguments in favour of its inclusion are thus, simply put, null and void. Particularly those that attempt – as Scylla does – to claim that the removal of this piece (or indeed two pieces it now seems), is a stormy foreboding of possible censorship from the upcoming Linden Endowment for the Arts amounts to nothing less than mischief-making.

At this point in time, parallels between SL7B – which has traditionally been a “PG-only” event, and the LEA are purely speculative; we have no idea if LEA will be “PG-only” or a mix of all the major content ratings within SL, and pushing this particular panic button at this point in time is little more than a false flag exercise – and Scylla is intelligent enough to know this.

Nor is the removal of one or two pictures from SL7B an assault on art, again as Scylla implies in her plethora of posts on the subject. An “assault” would be more along the lines of all such art vanishing from across the grid.

No, the rule was clearly stated and fairly acted upon. One can argue all they like about the picture being “stylised” or “non-sexual”, etc., etc., all they want and demand it should be allowed under the banner of “art” – but I wonder if Syclla and her supporters are familiar with the term the “thin end of the wedge”?

Allow a “stylised” version of nudity into the proceedings, then why not allow a stylised picture of “BDSM”? Let’s say the same nude, this time with her arms bound and an image approximating to a whip hanging in the air alongside her.  Again, non-sexual. Again stylised. However, despite her claims otherwise, I suspect Scylla would not have gone out of her way to create a thread decrying the removal of such an image, or participate in other threads against its removal – simply because of her own slanted view of BDSM would dictate that to her the work is no longer art, but an image of violence against women. Thus it would have no place in SL7B and should rightfully be “censored”.

Even without the “BDSM” element above, the fact remains that once you start sliding the bar on “no nudity” around, you enter the murky waters of censorship in a very ugly way – as no matter where you set the bar, it is going to cause outrage and outcry elsewhere. Ergo, the simplest rule is often the best, if not necessarily the fairest.

The flipside of this is, of course, the fact that LL themselves have a track record of decidedly wonky thinking where “nudity”and “art” and what might be considered “offensive” are concerned, and what measures as “acceptable” displays in PG-rated environments. The Second Life birthday celebrations are themselves no stranger to such wonky thinking, as Tateru Nino amusingly pointed out a few years ago.

Double standards were similarly shown around this time last year, at the SL Land Expo. This was again PG-rated, and saw a ban on “adult material” and “nudity”, but a “stylised” model of a man hacked in two and trailing entrails was perfectly OK. Personally, I’ll take a couple of bare nipples over that latter any day in terms of “public acceptability”.

However, the subject of what constitutes a “good rule” or “sound policy” is somewhat different to simply fanning the flames of controversy – which, at the end of the day, is really what both the “banned” pictures and the subsequent hue and cry are all about. There are better platforms from which to try to engage with Linden Lab on matter of policy than to simply break rules and then attempt to browbeat or throw out speculative rumours.

The latter approach may well serve SL7B well in terms of stirring-up much need publicity (and even then, it doesn’t really encourage one to go visit). It certainly doesn’t really benefit anything else, though.