Category: News-Opinion

More from Rod Humble (2)

Posted on by Inara Pey

Tateru Nino has interviewed Rod Humble on behalf of the Metaverse Journal – and those of us engaged in Second Life after specifically asking us via her blog to submit questions to The Man.

The result is a mixed bag of nuts: on the one hand there appears to be a lot of ducking a weaving on the part of Mr Humble (but it’s not: the poor man has only been in office 3 weeks, so asking him to comment of events from three years ago is a bit hard); elsewhere he strongly repeats an encouraging message relating to the customer base as a whole and on the need to enable creativity; finally, without actually saying so, he demonstrates that in just three weeks, he’s identified a number of weaknesses within Linden Lab, and I’ll be very surprised if at least some branches of the tree aren’t shaken before too much longer.

At the end of the interview Rod asks for feedback. I hope people will take the time to give considered replies to his question “In 2 years time what would you most like to be doing in Second Life, and how would you like to be doing it?”

For my part, I’d like to bullet some (potentially broader thoughts) here, and I’ll be taking a leaf out of Cheatnut Rau’s book and asking if Mr. Humble would care to take a look and read.

To start with, I’d like to make an observation.

Thank you, Rod Humble, for coming into Linden Lab and refusing to use the (frankly) God-awful term “Residents” (or worse “Resis”) when referring to those of us who  use the Second Life platform, and for using the more respectful and accurate term of “customers”.

This is something I’ve personally jumped up and down over since I started blogging about Second Life three years ago, and while it may seem like sour grapes and nitpicking, stating that we, your users are not “Residents” but customers – it is actually important on three levels:

  • “Resident” is suggestive that we are part of a community in which we have a genuine voice that can influence policy; that we can have a dialogue in the decisions of leadership and representation that goes beyond lip-service. But the reality is that Second Life isn’t a community in that sense. It is a platform providing services (as the SL Terms of Service make clear) to its users and customers, managed and operated by an incorporated entity
  • While there was more of a “community” spirit between LL and the users back in the early days, this has now long gone. What is left, frankly, when the term is used by Linden Lab employees, is a sense that we, the customers, are being patronised. It’s akin to the pat on the head a child might be given before being told to “run along and play” by a well-meaning but disinterested guardian.
  • Worse than the above, given Linden Lab’s on-going track record in communicating with (at times aka “telling and not listening to”) customers over the last few years, one is left with a feeling that “Resident” has almost derogatory connotations: that by using it, people are able to overlook the fact that we are customers and that, like it or not, the company does have a degree of responsibility towards us – or simply risks losing our custom as alternatives continue to grow and mature.

So, as a first, easy tick-in-the-box for what I’d like to see come from your tenure is the clear communication to all and sundry that those of us using Second Life are precisely that: customers. Doesn’t matter if we’re Premium Account holders or not; we all contribute to the SL economy – and the LL coffers. I’m not saying LL has to listen to every single word uttered from our collective mouths; what I am saying is, let’s see the company start acting with greater foresight and maturity in dealing with us.

As to what else I’d like to see:

  • I’d like to be able to reliably search in-world for whatever I am seeking, be it land, goods, people, events, destinations – whatever. I want to be able to do so consistently and reliably, and view my results in a manner that does not require me rapidly parse through them and get to what I’m seeking. I want to be able to rest assured that as a content creator, I’m not going to bed one night wondering what the heck it is I’ll have to jiggle about with the following morning in order to simply get my products to show up on search. In short:
    • I want to see Search “fixed”.
    • I’d like to see LL do more than blithely pay lip service to concerns each and every time they are raised in response to blog posts and the likes and actually take the time to appreciate the upsets people are experiencing. Let’s face it, it is over twelve months since Search was first broken, messed with, revised – and it is still causing major headaches across the platform.
  • I’d like to be able to use SL with confidence and the knowledge that my privacy is not being compromised – directly (e.g by LL) or indirectly (e.g. due to the actions / activities of those intent on exploiting the platform). I’d like to see Linden Lab react responsibly and promptly to user concerns, particularly where they are valid, and take clear, accountable action to resolve issues. I want to be in an SL where I’m not faced with a choice of compromising my ability to keep things within Second Life (and losing SL functionality) or having them pumped out to the web in order to keep that functionality – as is the case with web Profiles currently.
  • I’d like to see a Second Life wherein LL staff respond to their customers. This not only means massively improving customer service – but also ingraining staff with additional civility towards customers, rather than allowing them to treat customers (as times) like delinquent children. I want to be in a Second Life where I know that if I suffer a drastic loss of inventory or am the victim of a server-side glitch that leaves any of my inventory inaccessible, I’m going to get it back  – and that I’m not going to get told off by LL staff for filing the wrong ticket, raising a bug report and then being made to wait eight or nine months for an “inventory fix”.
  • I want to be in Second Life where the company engages in two-way dialogue – not just through the “integrated community platform” of the web et al, but right here inside Second Life. I want to see LL taking the time to actively promote upcoming releases, features and the like and take questions on them. It’s not hard. Others do it perfectly well, and I’m not asking for fortnightly reports from LL – once a quarter would be a massive improvement over now.
  • I want to be in a Second Life where every third word uttered by Linden Lab isn’t “Facebook”. By this, I mean I want to be able to do all the social networking I want from within Second Life. I want to be able to effectively network with friends here, with other users, even being able to reach out to those I know beyond SL (and who know me and of my involvement in SL) from SL. In short, I want to be able to throw my social net as far as I like from within SL. I don’t want to be constantly told to bugger off to Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else, and I don’t want to feel like there is a Linden behind me poking my rear end with a sharp stick and muttering, “You go Feacebook! You go Facebook now!” in my ear.
  • Similarly (and conversely!), I’d like to be in an SL where the hooks to the likes of FB and other sites are available for those that wish to use them and can be presented both as opt-in (emphasis deliberate) tools and without a lost of “anti” angst from users as a result of said tools being presented as a hard-to-opt-out fait accompli.
  • I want to be in a Second Life where in-world creativity is a driving force, where users have the tools to create, script, build, animate and develop amazing content that can be supported by the use of external tools like 3D applications for creating mesh, but which are not the new “focus” of “Second Life creativity”.
  • I want to be in an SL that is affordable. Frankly, tier in SL is ridiculous and needs to be properly adjusted if it is to remain the engine of growth for the platform (and lets face it – what else is there?). Tier needs to be structured and brought to a level that stimulates in-world growth once more. The figures don’t lie: having 47% of the Mainland lying fallow to all intents and purposes, is ridiculous.
  • And on the subject of growth: I want to be in a Second Life where in-world commerce is as vibrant as anything web-based, rather than seeing everything being driven towards the web tools at the expense of in-world commerce. I want to see an environment where LL actively seek to promote in-world commerce: hosting “trade fairs” (including provisioning sims!), working with merchants in all sectors  to hold conventions or suchlike that get other customers out and shopping and discovering the wealth of merchandise available in-world.
  • I want to be in a Second Life that is more responsive to the issues of IP infringement and content ripping, where Linden Lab are seen to be moving beyond simply doing the minimum required by law and proactive working with and alongside users to help protect IP and content as far as is possible. In doing so, I’d like to see SL become a place (relatively) free from the drama and issues surrounding tools such as RedZone and Gemini CDS (and refer back to privacy vis-a-vis this as well!).
  • I want to be in a Second Life where Linden Lab understands the most valuable resource it has is its existing customer base. There is no-one better placed to act as world-wide ambassadors for your product, or better able to encourage new blood into the platform. As users we know what SL can offer our families, friends, colleagues, and we can promote and sell it far better than 10,50,100, – even a million – “likes” on the SL Facebook page. I want to be in a Second Life where LL understand this and actively work with its existing users to generate a flow of new users who not only come in to SL – but become an active part of it.

I could probably go on…but that’s enough for now. I’ve deliberately avoided focusing of technical issues like “lag” or “sim crossings” or “viewer features” or “stability”, not because they don’t affect me, but because getting them sorted out should be a given (and in fairness, LL are working on them). I only mention Search because – quite honestly – it is an unmitigated disaster that takes a step back for every step forward; and that’s after it took around two dozen steps backwards to start with…

I’m posting a link to this from Tateru’s interview. I really hope Rod Humble takes a peek here. Again, not for ego’s sake (I’d be asking him to leave a comment if it were *grins*), but because, as jaded as I get in-world at times, I still believe in Second Life, and I want to go on believing in it.

Communicating with your users

Posted on by Inara Pey

In the last week we’ve had the announcement of new channels of communication Linden Lab are establishing. The aim of this, according to Amanda Linden is to help Linden Lab “do a better job of listening”.

Some of this announcement was good (User Groups); some of it wasn’t so good, some of it was downright shameful – no encouragement to actually log in to Second Life, no indication that LL would be using tools within and around the platform to communicate, and that rather, we should all toddle off to Facebook to get the latest scoop on what is going on.

The blog was followed by a lengthy comments list, much of which focused on changes to the JIRA which have upset a lot of people. What was surprising here wa that, despite Amanda’s attempts to stress the changes to communications were to (to repeat the quote) help Linden Lab “do a better job of listening”, user comments relating to the JIRA issue were rebuffed by Oz and Yoz Linden in the most peremptory, almost arrogant, manner – which Oz again unfortunately further demonstrated in comments posted in JIRA VWR 24746 – that did much to undermine the launch of this new attitude towards corporate / user communications within the lab.

In responding to the announcement I again questioned why the Lab could not enter into more in-world based meetings – say on a quarterly basis. However, there is an easier solution than that when it comes to fostering communications betwixt Lab and users – as ably demonstrated by the Phoenix team and their fortnightly Office Hours over on Rezzed TV.

During these one-hour slots, Jessica Lyons and members of the Phoenix team provide information on what is going on with their projects, what users can expect – and even field questions sent in ahead of the show, or even during the broadcast.

Now granted, I don’t expect everyone at Linden Lab to suddenly start producing fortnightly machinema updates for us to digest.

But are quarterly updates really that hard? Let’s face it, the technology is there for this to be done – Torley uses it all the time. What’s more, while it may be taking people “out” of Second Life to view such recordings a) They can be broadcast via the SL website; b) they still showcase the capabilities of the platform (Voice! Machinema!); c) where appropriate, they can promote locations within Second Life to the user base. Good grief, they could even be made available for in-world streaming using the much-vaunted (but seldom used?) media-on-a-prim!

The format would take a little time to work out, but it should be too hard, and once set in motion, it would be relatively easy to keep going and would promote the sense of company / user interaction LL appear to be trying to achieve: just make sure dates are published in advance and people have the opportunity to drop-in questions either in advance, or when “on air”.

 

Improvements to Web Profiles

Posted on by Inara Pey

Q Linden has posted about Viewer 2.5 going live, and in particular brings up the subject of web-based Profiles.

The introduction of web profiles has caused a lot of consternation, not least because of the inclusion of Facebook and Twitter buttons. For myself, I actually rather like the approach in general: being able to edit my Profile from the web, rather than having to log-into SL is a useful feature. The moving Profiles to this format reduces asset server loads is also no bad thing (assuming it does).

However, privacy has been a thorny issue for some – and not just because of the aforementioned buttons. Many kicked back against the idea that their Profile, far from being nice and secluded inside Second Life, would now be viewable by anyone on the Web. Protests were written  – Linden Lab read them and listened.

Firstly, they made the Facebook and Twitter buttons optional – but only if you opt not to have your Profile searchable in-world. Not an ideal start, it seemed at the time, but a start.

Now, with Viewer 2.5, Linden Lab have extended the degree of privacy you have with regards to your Web Profile. You can now:

  • Opt not to have your Profile displayed on the web at all
  • Select whether your Groups and Picks are viewable by “everyone” – the entire Internet and by search engines, or visible only to Second Life Users logged into SL / using the SL website, or only visible to your friends
  • Select whether any Classifieds yo may have are searchable / viewable on the web as a whole, or only by Second Life residents.

These are welcome changes, and even the defaults for Groups, Picks and Classifieds are sensible (they are set to Second Life). I’d personally prefer to see the option to have your Profile displayed on the web given precisely the same level of granularity as Groups and Picks, rather than it simply being an “on” or “off” affair – but perhaps that will come in time.

To see your profile and set your defaults, type:

https://my.secondlife.com/First.Last

into the address bar of your browser (where First.Last are your SL first name and last name). Press RETURN and your Profile page will be displayed.

You may have to log-in to the page using the link at the top right, which will take you to the log-in screen. Once you’ve logged in (SL username and password), you’ll be returned to your Profile page, which will now be editable and have a Privacy Settings link in the top right corner (see below).

Click on this link to open the Privacy option page, which is quite straightforward in its use.

Also, if you leave your Profile as viewable on the web, and are concerned about personal information, you can use the EDIT button from your profile page to re-word  / remove references to your real life – all such edits will be reflected back in your in-world Profile as well.

These moves are not perfect, but they are stepping in the right direction, and Linden Lab deserve the credit for adding this functionality to Viewer 2.5.

ADDENDUM – Feb 14th

There are times when one should look before one leaps. I’ve just had time to fiddle with Viewer 2.5, and I have to say two things:

  • Profile loading is abhorrent. I’m running a quad-core system with a newly-upgraded graphics card exceeding the recommended specification for SL, with bandwidth wide  open for SL – and the average time for a Profile to be grabbed and loaded is around 5 seconds. Hideous.
  • It appears the option to “Hide your profile” from the web means that no-one in-world can view your Profile either. This makes the ability to “hide” your profile about as useful as a chocolate shovel is for moving hot coals.

Far from deserving credit, as I originally stated, someone at LL needs a swift kick up the arse. Not everyone wants their profiles blasted across the interwebs; yet to maintain visibility in-world, that’s precisely what people have to do with Viewer 2.5, and frankly, that’s pathetic.

I sincerely hope there will be a way to correct this idiocy and give people a genuine choice.

And, having updated this post, I’m off to nibble on crow pie…

More from Rod Humble: Privacy

Posted on by Inara Pey

“Privacy is extremely important for anyone putting themselves out there, expressing themselves, or expressing a side of themselves through an avatar. People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person – or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people’s privacy

“People come to Second Life because they want a story, they want to be in a story….and we have an ethical obligation to protect that.

“I’m not so sure that the conventional wisdom makes any sense. Yes, it might be technically easy to track people and all that. But in the long-term I’m optimistic that we’ll see the pendulum swing back in the other direction towards more privacy.”

Thus speaks Rod Humble in what is quite possibly the best interview held with him since he took office at Linden Lab, and Kudos to Dusan Writer for bringing it to us.

It’s an uplifting piece on many levels. The comments about privacy, for example, are particularly relevant given both the degree to which Linden Lab seems determined to shovel users of Second Life towards Facebook and the manner in which data is being scraped and potentially used by the likes of RedZone.

For me, the interview is encouraging, as I’ve been advocating the need for Linden Lab to take what I term a more holistic view of Second Life, and to stop looking at it in terms of how it can be “compartmentalised”: focusing on individual technical issues, trying to tap into audiences, etc., and start looking at it as a complete, unified entity. In fact, I’ve already had concerns that Rod Humble is sliding into this very trap.

But no, he does seem to get it: he recognises the fact that the magic of Second Life is about the ability to create – physically and metaphorically (he talks about us being able to create “personas” in SL and imbue them with specific identities) – and he really does demonstrate he’s thought about these ideas, and is not simply peddling words.

Similarly, he recognises that Second Life can increase its relevancy in terms of real world interactions by providing n-world and supportive tools that work with the platform to empower people to interact with one another through Second Life (rather than telling them to bugger off elsewhere).

This is marvellously encouraging. Of course, there is a degree of hyperbole that strays dangerously close to Rosedale Country; after making very valid points about the relevancy in having multiple personas in life (which we all do), and these personas / identities being an integral part of our being (a marked difference from Zuckerberg over at FB, who views  multiple identities as demonstrating a “lack of integrity”), Rod does unfortunately slip into Pipspeak:

“I don’t want to get all geeky about it, but I sort of see this day coming when there’s a formalization of identity that happens. We haven’t had the tools before to formalize our broken up bits of identity…We can increasingly go deep on each element of identity and they become more valuable and I can’t help thinking that if we formalize the structures around those identities and have the tools to do that it might actually change us – it might change the person.”

Shades of Transhumanism lurking there – but not enough to shake one’s feeling that here, finally, Linden lab have struck gold. Rod Humble not only gets Second Life technically, he gets it visually, socially, personally, and metaphorically. In short, he appears to understand it holistically.

Lets hope that understanding translates itself into policies and action that allow us all to look back in 12 months or so, and we”ll all be “talking about all the new kinds of content and creations and categories of creation…and say ‘Wow, it’s amazing, look how far we’ve come in having ways to make stuff‘.” And that we’re all secure and confident in the levels of privacy and security Second Life affords us.

RedZone – security, scam, or scraping?

Posted on by Inara Pey

A while back I wrote about so-called Client Detection Systems and their potentially odious nature, as well as the potential for such tools to lead to a raising of “hostilities” within the Second Life Community.

Just why such “tools” are actually pointless in the “war” on Copybotters has been excellently reviewed by Janck Antonelli – and I strongly urge anyone considering any such system to go read her commentary before parting with their cash. It could mean more than saving pennies. That Copybotters can circumvent CDS tools so easily tend to point to such tools being both a placebo for store owners, lulling them into a false sense of security whilst also being fairly regarded as a scam: money is changing hands on the basis of an easily circumvented promise.

One of these CDS system in particular has become the subject of intense debate on the official forums – as just one thread on the subject shows. Redzone not only has the word FAIL stamped across it in terms of Copybotting “protection” for the self-same reasons Janck raises – it is actually an exceptionally odious tool because it steps well beyond the realm of attempting to “stop” Copybotters and move well into the realms of possible stalking  /griefing.

Why do I say this? Well, for a number of reasons. The one that is causing the most concern is the fact that RedZone attempts to connect avatar information with IP addresses. The creator justifies this as a mean to help “identify” “copybotters”. However, both the gather of IP address and the creator’s justification are unpleasant on a number of levels:

  • It makes the highly inaccurate assumption that because two avatars have the same IP, they must be alts of one another – failing to take into consideration factors such as dynamic IP addresses (such that the IP address your ISP assigns you today could be assigned to Joe Schmoe’s – someone you have never met or associated with anywhere – tomorrow)
  • It fails to take into consideration that some buildings (colleges, offices, apartment buildings, Internet cafes) may have an homogenized IP address – thus everyone logging in from such locations will all appear to be “alts” of one another
  • Thus, through these assumptions, it promotes guilt through association: if A is on IP address Y, and flags as a “copybotter”, then if B shows up with the same IP – then even if B is not an alt, they are still a Copybotter, and thus should be banned.

Worse, by scraping this level of information and making it available, RedZone is presenting the unscrupulous the ability to grief and / or stalk – and potentially bring the stalking into the real world. The risk here is that while the majority of us are protected to a degree by dynamic IP addressing, such addresses are not totally random;  they have a degree of regional relevancy. This is particularly true for people using local (“homegrown”) ISPs to connect to the web, as is often the case in large countries like the United States, where and ISP may reach no further than the county or city in which it is based.  Thus, those who access this information, if they are so-minded, could use it to focus down on another individual’s area of residence or work. True, no actual RL information is captured per se, but t6hat is no reason to completely dismiss the concerns surrounding RedZone’s ability to collate avatar / IP information and make it available to whoever is willing to pay $17 USD for it.

While RL stalking may appear to be a worst case scenario, the matter of in-world stalking /griefing is not: it’s a very immediate risk. Redzone apparently has some 8 million records (according to RedZone’s rcreator) of avatar movements across the grid stored within it, logged by, among other things, avatar name and location scanned. In other words, sufficient information for someone to monitor and even track the movements of any number of residents were they so minded.

Things wouldn’t be so bad if the creators of the tool limited themselves to recording only the information relating to “positive” scans by their tool – i.e. Viewers that indicate they are potentially malicious, and that data relating to negative scans is discarded without ever being stored. But this isn’t the case. RedZone retains information on every single avatar scanned. This is gross overkill, and no reasoning on Earth can justify it as being purely in the interests of stopping Copybotters.

Assuming, of course, we can take the creator at his word, and this isn’t all hype. While one can accept 8 million records of user movements (after all, these will be individual avatars logged time and again over possibly dozens of sim over a period of some 18 months), other statistics published by the tool’s creator are somewhat more questionable. Take for example, the fact that out of those 8 million scans, the tool has only ever recorded 2,000 hits on Viewers classified as “Copybotters” – but that as a result, over 63,000 avatars have been recorded on the RedZone banlist; put these together, and it would appear that each of the 2,000 “positive” scans is running 31.5 avatars! This is suggestive of one of three things:

  • Guilt by association is the mainstay of this tool, rather than any “accurate” identification of Copybotters, or
  • The figures confirm avatar / IP matching is a complete FAIL, leading to thousands of inaccurate bans, thus damaging the businesses the tool is supposedly protecting by denying them customers, or
  • The figures are wildly exaggerated, enhancing the potential that the tool is little more than a scam with some unpleasant “benefits” for the less-than-scrupulous.

Beyond all this, is the unshakable feeling that this tool is about stalking and griefing: the creator, in advertising it, makes it clear that it can be used to “identify” alts, and lto list functions that griefers would find very welcome: the ability to attack (cage, etc.), users outside of the area “protected” by the tool; the boast that the tool can eject users and crash their Viewer in the process, etc.

It’s also hard to dismiss the tool as an enabler of stalking / griefing when “pro RedZone” users post to the forums boast they can use the tool as an attachment and “come after” those speaking out against it (to say nothing of the ability – if true – for them to set out “sim hopping” and gathering data on avatars which can then be perused in the hope of “outing” alts and creating further grief).

Theia Magic provides advice on how to help reduce the risk of RedZone grabbing your own information and provides a list of stores / sims running RedZone, should you wish to avoid them. In her notes, she references the GreenZone HUD; note that this will not actually prevent you from being scanned by RedZone, but it nevertheless useful in two ways:

  • It warns you if a location you have teleported is running RedZone. While have, in turn, already been scanned by RedZone, this nevetheless helps you to note and avoid such locations in future (and remember, if you have media streaming disabled when scanned, RedZone will not capture your information)
  • It helps to confirm the location you are in is “RedZone free”, thus allowing you to enable, say, music streaming – particularly useful if you are visiting a club and wich to hear the music (just remember to disable media once more before teleporting elsewhere!).

Thus, while limited in scope, GreenZone is a useful freebie to have.

Blocking communications with the RedZone website is more effective – but relies on the RedZone creators using the same domain for their information-gathering, or ensuring you are updated should the domain change. However, there are concise instructions for doing this on both Windows machines and Macs and for Linux machines.

There are JIRAs open on the matter – not specific to RedZone itself, but aimed at stopping the kind of behaviour used by such tools – and these are certainly worth voting on (before voting on JIRAs goes away) or – God help us – watching).

In raising concerns about such tools via the JIRAs, we should possibly focus on the in-world impact of such tools, rather than linking back to IP logging etc. While the latter is a worry, it is not one that particularly concerns Linden Lab, as evidenced be statements from the likes of Samuel Linden (Feb 2010) who, when responding to concerns about IP logging and Viewer 2.x, said: We do not consider IP gathering to be  an actionable security exploit. This has been possible for quite some  time with 1.23 and earlier viewers. Obviously, there is a world of difference between clicking on a shared media prim that links to an external website  – which amounts to “volunteering” your IP address, etc., – and someone deploying a tool thank actively harvests such information without your knowledge and making it available to others are vastly different concepts. Sadly, I tend to think it’s going to be hard to get Linden Lab to acknowledge them as such.

Hence why emphasis on the in-world problems / risks / threats presented by such tools would potentially be preferable – particularly where issues can be directly linked back to ToS / CS violations. They would in theory be a lot harder for LL to justify ignoring.

For myself, I’ve actually battled over posting on this subject for the last several days. To be sure, I don’t like RedZone, but I’m aware that these matters can become so highly charged they can spiral out of control into a flame fest. However, having witnessed the attitude of those attempting to defend RedZone, I’ve been moved to publish and be damned; there is simply no genuine justification for a tool as extreme as this being in-world – and I’m certainly less than sanguine about ending up on its malodorous database.

It is because of this latter risk – winding up on someone’s dirty little database – that I’ve largely disabled media screaming on my Viewers ever since Gemini CDS reared its own ugly head (although for a time I *did* keep media enabled while on my home sim – possibly unwisely given the Onyx bot farrago that accompanied Gemini). Given the RedZone situation, I now also use GreenZone and I restrict myself to the in-world browser and keeping cookie acceptance turned off in the Viewer. I appreciate that these precautions are by no means foolproof, but they do help limit my exposure to RedZone and (with the exclusion of GreenZone) to other similar tools that might be floating around out there. And Like Theia and others, I will be dropping any store that I have frequented in the past which sprouts a RedZone device with a note politely noting why they have lost my custom.

And I’d urge you to do the same – protect as far as you can, and write.

I’d also like to address any potential user of RedZone on the matter of the tool they are using: if RedZone’s creators are collating information on SL users based on a scripted device you are deploying on your land – how much more information might they be gathering on you each and every time you log into their website?

Further Information

Website investigating RedZone (Forceme Silverspar)

Theia’s notes on disabling media

Instructions for blocking the RedZone website communication with your computer*:

* Will only work for the current RedZone domain. Keep an eye on Forceme’s website for any possible moves made by the RedZone creator.

GreenZone HUD on SL Marketplace (free).

Location for testing your IP is hidden from tools using the media exploit (Surl).

Store Lists:

JIRAs on the subject of privacy:

SLU discussion on the subject (warning: lengthy, but worth-while reading)

Note: post revised after the initial publication, due to the fact that in a blonde moment, I hit PUBLISH rather than SAVE DRAFT.

ADDENDUM – Feb 15th.

Concerns have been raised that GreenZone may itself be compiling a database of its own (see comments below). While initially cynical of this – the conclusion seemed drawn on the misunderstanding of an IM exchange posted on SLU in which the term “list” is used; I have nevertheless contacted GreenZone’s creator, Fart Admiral to request clarification.

Fart has confirmed that, indeed, a static list is maintained of all locations running RedZone. Essentially, the GreenZone HUD scans for RZ objects and if it identifies one, the location of the object is recorded, together with the Ownerkey and sent out to the GreenZone server. Separately to this, the GreenZone HUD triggers an alarm.

Fart assures me that absolutely no information relating to the GreenZone user is transmitted or stored.

Obviously, even what is transmitted may be objectionable, and could be construed as putting GreenZone into the same basket as RedZone. That is not my call to make publicly, but rather for anyone reading this article and considering GreenZone to weigh for themselves before making their decision.

Who is gaming what?

Posted on by Inara Pey

The debate is getting heated. Following Amanda Linden’s blog on the new communications channels, people are making their feelings clear on one item in particular: the removal of voting from the JIRA.

Prokofy Neva has posted a constructive essay on the matter, and it is clear that people are getting very upset about things – and equally clear that, despite claims that the new channels are to help Linden Lab do a better job of listening and that as customers, your satisfaction and input is critical to the success of Second Life (quotes from Amanda’s post), it is abundantly clear that in the issue of JIRAs, the Lab has set its face on things and will not listen.

I have to admit, in my initial post on the new channels, I was somewhat flippant on the subject of JIRA voting being removed, which may have given the impression that I don’t care. Actually, I do. At the end of the day, it matters not whether votes are tallied and acted upon by Linden Lab, they are whichever way you look at it, a measure of gauging customer satisfaction – no matter how “small” a segment of the community they may appear to represent. What’s more, whether Linden Lab like it or not, they tend to represent the views of those who are the most passionate and caring when it comes to Second Life, and who want to see it succeed.

While voting shouldn’t be the single criteria for action on any given JIRA, that the people who live, breath and work Second Life take the time and effort to raise issues, track issues, and vote for them frankly, should account for something.

And this is where I find the excuses LL roll out around the concept of voting laughable: “voting can be gamed”; adding a “vote against” option alongside the current “vote for” won’t work because they will still be “unrepresentative” of the “larger population”; “watching” is easier because people will be more willing to register an interest than take a vote.

Taking the latter points first: Linden Lab has a long history of “listening” to minorities in order to justify an action. Most recent case in point: the changes to the Adult Policy and creation of Zindra. LL stated this was because “residents” wanted the change. I’m sure some did – but compared to the massive outcry against the move, those that were in favour had to have been in a minority.

The same to, with the case for establishing a G-rated continent. LL set their face against it, because it was “not what residents” wanted, when again, there was overwhelming support from all sectors of the community.

And as to the idea that the JIRA is gamed – one has to ask precisely who has been doing the gaming? Lets face it, JIRA voting has been absolutely fine and dandy with LL when it has suited their agenda. They’ve actively encouraged people to go vote on this, that and the other regardless of how many / few have lined up and voted – and often trumpeted it afterwards.

Yet when it is something they are unwilling to face – again, the Adult Changes – then a high vote count doesn’t matter because of the relative insignificance of even high vote counts compared to the size of the user base overall [Yoz Linden]. In short, it is easy to come to the conclusion that LL are themselves guilty of gaming the system as much as anyone else.

Watching is supposedly the preferable means of gauging interest – but the problem here is that Watching inevitably leads to a veritable snowstorm of e-mails. This was a major cause of angst when the JIRA system first came in, and nothing has been done to solve it – and Oz Linden himself admits people are liable to be inundated.

This being the case, it is hard to see how “Watching” is going to be a better measure, because a lot of the people who are aware of the e-mail problem aren’t going to sign-up, because they are not going to want to have to face the influx, even with spam filters running. The same goes for many who come to the JIRA for the first time: they’ll register with one or two cases, get hit by the flood and think, “Sod this for a game of soldiers!”

So Watching, in and of itself, is hardly a more “telling” means of weighing the relative merits of JIRA X against JIRA Y and voting for one or the other…or both…

I also don’t hold this Oz’s view that watching is more valid that voting because people get to read comments. So what? The chances of getting more people engaged in the discussion as a result are slim; so again, it’s hard to understand the logic / justification here. Certainly, I don’t follow that abolishing voting in favour of watching will  put a premium on thoughtful commentary as Oz asserts – because I don’t have to comment in order to watch. Period.

A further argument against Watching over voting is that watching doesn’t imply support for. I’m deeply interested in politics. During the run-up to the General Election, I watch all of the major parties at both a national and local level. I receive their bumpf I even read it. But that doesn’t mean I necessarily support any or all of them. That doesn’t happen until I actually come to vote. And its the same with JIRAs: I may watch, but that’s not indicating anything beyond (potentially mild) curiosity – but when I vote on a JIRA, I’m making a clear statement.

Given JIRA voting does account for so little in the LL scheme of things, I fail to see why the system – as Ciaran Laval suggests – remain, but with “vote for” being replaced by “show interest”. It would achieve the same result, it would encourage participation, and it would avoid the headache of spam.

And anyway, is abolishing voting in favour of watching really making things more relevant? All it is actually doing is moving people listed in Column A into Column B and nothing more. So whether you call it “voting” or “watching”, the more cynical among us might say that a high count on any JIRA is still meaningless because of the relative insignificance of even high counts compared to the size of the user base overall – to paraphrase Yoz somewhat.

Thus, the whole thing comes down to a game of semantics and little more.

As it stands, it is more than a little ironic that in a blog post that is supposedly aimed towards ensuring Linden Lab does a better job of listening, and to provide a means by which we can all have a more productive dialogue there is very little evidence of any form of dialogue coming from LL on this matter, other than “this is the way it’s going to be, so there!” And that is hardly an encouraging start to things.