SLUniverse Forums

Joshua Nightshade

There's only like three people banned from SLU for reasons other than spamming.

FlipperPA Peregrine

Oh, I agree Isablan, just being a wise ass about his former proclamations... and every forum has that, to some degree or another. Taken to an extreme, for example, I'm pretty sure the Clinton family won't be visiting the SLU politics forum to defend themselves.

There's a difference between discussing someone who voluntarily chooses not to debate, and someone banned. I think Cris's policy is a good one.

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Ryozu

Apparently, you're ignorant of the scope of the goals set out before SecondLife. Think broad adoption similar to World Wide Web, not WoW. WoW is a game, not a platform.

To be fair, Jira is not, and was not meant to be a "customer support" anything.


Jira is complex. Jira is technical.

Now tell me just how useful it is to have been told for the millionth time "building is broken" because the user wasn't nearly technical enough to actually document just what or how something was broken or a bug? In order for bug reporting to have any affect whatsoever on getting bugs fixed, you have to document more detail than just "it's not working."

All the average person needs to know how to do is Log in, and vote.

If you need customer support, well, Jira was never meant to be the place to do it. If you have opinions on policy? I'm guessing once things actually start getting off the ground, LL Policy will be irrelevant.

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Khamon

True, my typical phone calls go from "email is down" to "my computer won't print" to "it only won't print email which, by the way, I am actually getting so it's not down" to "well my brother-in-law's cousin's friend sent me a .wtf attachment and my computer won't open it so, well, obviously, won't print it" to "so how long will it take you to fix email so this will work?"

I can only imagine what an inhouse JIRA would contain after the first week.

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CaleVinson

You may well be made of sterner stuff than I, but I don't think I'd like to bet my life on knowing what "the goals set out before SecondLife" are, or at least to know what they are beyond a minute to minute appraisal.

Philip has recently posted a state of the union type address over at the official SL blog: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/2...ead/#more-1406

In it he reveals the new LL mission statement:

On that day at least, the official policy at least, was to emphasise "world", not "platform".

WarKirby Magojiro

I kinda get the feeling phil regards the two as interchangeable.

CaleVinson

Mmm, perhaps you are right, but if so I don't get it.

For me, WoW is an example of a "world", albeit a rather limited, closed one. Whereas "platforms" have far greater flexibility in their application.

I don't recall the link, but I do remember some comments from Phil in the early days of SL. He was talking about the "loneliness" of the "old" web, how you could be buying a CD at the Amazon site, completely unaware of all the other people there "around" you. And hence that one of the goals of SL was to allow you to "see" these other people, and interact with them.

Once you allow people to interact, its hard to see how social constructs will not form, and they may start to influence, and be influenced by, the underlying platform infrastructure. The oldbies will correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that SL did not start with the current $L based economics system. Rather, a demand was created by the residents (as is also reflected in the out-of-world trading that is found in the "game" MMO's like WoW), private individuals resolved to meet that demand (the "GOM" enterprise), and LL eventually took over that functionality. It seems to me that there is little platorm-specific driver for chosing an economics system, rather, we got the standard capitalist model because that's where the majority of residents live in the real world.

The feedbacks go the other way too - changing a platform feature such as the way search works will have societal impacts in the sense of their being business winners and loosers for that change. The introduction of sculpties raises the bar for entrance into certain sectors of the SL building sector, in terms of technical proficiency, and, to some extent, real-life dollar cost.

The "world" then is expressed as this combination of societal constructs, and platform infrastructure, and both are important.

Analogies are fraught with danger, but I'll try one nonethless. Forums in general, and those connected with SL in particular, have differences far greater than can be explained by differences in the forum software and databases used alone. Two forums running on exactly the same infrastructure will be very different if one enforces a "no flaming rule" and the other does not. A SL played only by people from tribes who had no concept of private property would result in a very different world to what we see in todays SL.

Ryozu

Your example with the tribes with no concept of private property is pretty dead on. The important thing to realize about SecondLife is that, unlike Blizzard's goal with World of Warcraft, Linden Lab is striving to have less and less control over the "service." In Phillip's ideal world, Linden Lab would act more as an ISP, with the only rules in place there to protect themselves from the law. As it is now, they're more like a web-hosting platform. You pay for "Webspace" more or less.

A few more examples to illustrate the difference between LL/SL and Blizzard/Wow. For example, when's the last time you had some kind of anti-cheat mechanism run in the background to keep you from "hacking" SecondLife?

The source code is open, because SL strives to be free from even Linden Lab's control.

If SecondLife were striving to be another online world like EverQuest, WoW or the myriad of other online games out there, then all those suggestions posted before about rules, regulations and closing the source would have been fine. Those are concepts meant for a controlled environment, where one company rules them all and reaps the rewards (Subscription fees.)

If LL gets this right, Opening an SL client will be as ubiquitous as running a web browser, and just as free and open as the world wide web. That idea far outweighs the benefits have LL taking absolute control over everything.

So to go back to the tribe example. The end goal of SL is to allow just that. Not only that however, but much more. Your tribe could have their no private property concept grid while anyone else could run a sim or grid with a totally different social structure.

Cocoanut Koala

Well, who decided that analogies are bad, anyway? The same person who decided that emotions are bad?

(That emotion one – that’s as old as the hills. It’s just plain old male chauvinism, wrapped now in computer geek-think.)

Of course SL is a world. And naturally Philip can think of it as a world and a platform at the same time.

The word ”platform” in computer science was born as an ANALOGY. Computer types started using it as a word to describe something in their field of expertise:

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Computer Science The basic technology of a computer system's hardware and software that defines how a computer is operated and determines what other kinds of software can be used.

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So far so good, but some also think it has to be the ONLY word to describe SL.

Which is obviously, patently, on the face of it, wrong. That would be like describing a city as only its buildings.

Now why would a whole bunch of people be adamantly determined that a thing can ONLY be its buildings? Or a television set can be only the physical object you see in front of you? And all the broadcasting stations and the FCC and everything else is ONLY a television set, plus broadcasting equipment?

I don't know, but I have some theories.

And there is no either/or required. WOW can be a world but not a platform. SL can be both a world AND a platform. (And a game. And an MMOG.)

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a world! It’s a platform! It’s a TOASTER OVEN!

coco

Mordos Yering

Maybe it's actually Peasankuu, then.

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CaleVinson

Many thanks for your well thought-out reply Ryozu, its much appreciated.

This is my fault for not being clear in my first post. I see about as big a gulf between open (SL) and closed worlds (WoW), as I do between worlds in general and platforms.

Well, to revert to my natural pedantic self for a moment , the server code is not OS yet.

That last sentence is what we in the Ministry of World Defence like to refer to as "a brave statement". I am absolutely sure that it is true for some people, and would probably take little convincing that it was true for the majority. What I'm uncomfortable with is the idea that its an obviously true statement that applies to (almost) all people. (More below)

OK, that is cool. But all I'm arguing is that this is not something we get necessarily "for free", but in fact comes with likely damage to the one current SL world that we already have. I'd like to see this damage acknowledged because:

a) I'm pedantic ,
b) Its a very real sense of loss for some people,
c) (Most importantly) If we can acknowledge such damage in the first place, we may at least be able to ameliorate it somewhat, or possibly use this knowledge when we sit down to design the world of Vinsonia.

Travis Lambert

I guess I just dont see it as all that complicated. Is Second Life a "world" or is it a "platform"? Its both, depending on what you're talking about. Its sort of like asking if an orange is a citrus or a fruit

Today, there are at least three "Worlds" that make up Second Life: The main grid, the teen grid, and the test grid. These are seperate 'worlds' because the people that interact in those seperate worlds can't directly interact with each other. Honestly, a better term would be "Universe" (as in parallel universe). Within our context, the "World" is the grid.

Then there's also the 'Platform', which is still being developed as we speak. The 'Platform' is the physical software everything runs on - a layer of abstraction away from what goes on within the universe/world.

The Platform isn't a world - its software that allows you to create new worlds/universes. Open Sim is an example of using the platform to create a new World.

Here's where it gets interesting: Phillip, and Linden Labs are sending up signals that they want to be in the platform-building buisness. (Creating tools to create worlds).

They want us to be in the World-creating buisness. What's confusing, is that at least today, Linden has their hands in both the only viable worlds (Main Grid & Teen Grid), AND also are shepherds of the Platform.

Only when Open Sim becomes more mature - and other viable 'grids' (worlds) emerge, will it become clearer that Linden's place in all of this is in the Platform buisness.

Ok.... maybe it is indeed complicated after all

Khamon

/me mops up exploded brain

FlipperPA Peregrine

Travis, that's about the best explanation I've heard of the difference, and no, I don't think it could be any more simple.

CaleVinson

Great post Travis.

Myself, I'd modify the above slightly. I'm about as cynical about mission statements and the like as one can be, but I think they can be viewed as a "signal", and Philip's new one (see above), doesn't seem to me to be platform-centric. So, I'd suggest that LL are sending out mixed signals at this point.

At this point Warkirby may be pulling his hair out at what could be seen as a derailment of the OP. But I think the world/platform intersection has bearing on the JIRA discussion. When it comes to tracking down, for example, a client memory-leak, that is an example of a "pure" platform issue, and the current JIRA arrangements work perfectly well. Issues of representativeness arise once you start to move into world issues. Some would argue that this never happens on the JIRA, I've presented some arguments as to why it might happen naturally, and an example (the llGetObjectDetails / Privacy debate) above.

Perhaps the best solution is to reserve the JIRA for platform issues alone, to enable it to continue to function effectively and without distraction on the elimination of bugs, etc. The world-type considerations that occured in the llGetObjectDetails thread should be deferred to an outside process, which seeks to be as broadly-based as possible (for all its strengths, I don't think the JIRA software encourages broad participation). And at this point, if you strip away about 10,000 layers of vindictiveness, rhetoric and foolishness, you arive at what I think might be the kernel of Prok's argument.