I was reading Prok’s blog earlier today and noticed a post where he announced he was moving his content to a different address. The part of the post that struck a chord with me was:
“I think my blog is an important resource not only on the history of Second Life but the history of the larger issues of the Internet, of which Second Life is a microcosm. And I may make a “Best of” e-book of some of it if I can find time.”
Now it’s the history side of matters that really strikes the chord because I’ve been patchy about moving my Your2ndPlace content here. The only access to said content that I have is via The Wayback Machine and it’s painful moving the content across and then of course links are dead etc.
However, the Your2ndPlace archives tell a story and I’m a fan of stories. Some of the content now strikes me as overly dramatic, unfairly critical of Linden Lab and in a style that I try to avoid these days. However, warts and all, it is what it is and it is probably better that I move my content across. I also told Konner McDonnell that I’d move his content across, I have moved a handful of Konner’s posts across but I need to get back to it.
Your2ndPlace was a multi blogger platform, kindly provided by Nobody Fugazi who paid the bills. Although not all of the bloggers blogged regular, some of those involved were: Alan Bamboo, Arthur Fermi, Ash Wade, Cadence Juran, Jezebel Bailey, Konner McDonnell, Marx Dudek, Nobody Fugazi, Sando Haller and Sarah Nerd.
Whereas I’d love to move everyone’s content somewhere, I don’t have permission to do so. They haven’t refused me permission, I haven’t asked them, but as I said earlier, it’s quite painful moving content across from The Wayback Machine. Jezebel Bailey of course, has been known to blog here.
The beauty of taking, even a brief look at the old Your2ndPlace posts though is that you can clearly see a different virtual world situation. There was a lot of talk of busniess ventures, IPO’s, Stock Exchanges, banks, issues that pretty much aren’t relevant today due to a combination of Linden Lab and government policies making some of those ventures unacceptable.
The land issues with price fluctuations will seem odd to people today who see mainland going for a token fee in many cases. Bots, Ad farms, the LDPW, Jack Linden Office hours and being asked for Free Dildos are all things of the past in the main, well except maybe the dildos…. and the bots.
However these old posts, badly written by me or not, do tell a story and really I need to gather mine up and put them somewhere, initially that will be here but I’m also tempted to move them somewhere else, somewhere that may have a bit more permanence.
However what we also see with these old posts is an issue with the Internet in general. Over the years old references disappear, so links go nowhere, images vanish, so only part of the story is kept, but personally I think that keeping even part of the story is worthwhile, which is why I’m such a fan of The Wayback Machine in general.
So on with things I guess, I better go and gather up some of those old posts, I’m sure I’ll quickly get bored again!