Virtual Worlds – Page 204

March 21, 2013

Incident Reports Almost Make A Comeback

For a brief, all too brief, period of time it looked as if the incident report/Police Blotter had made a stunning return to Second Life. There were reports on both the official forum as well as a thread over at SLUniverse. Indeed not only were incident reports back, they were back with names!

Now you may be wondering what the bloody hell the incident reports/Police Blotter is, well quite simply, it listed bad behaviours and punishment. Tyche Shepherd still has them available over at GridSurvey.com. Alarmingly the last report shows an incident in LindenWorld A, for: Harassment : Defaming individuals or groups This is regarding your picks page for: “EPITHET AND SYNONYM” Your local LUNATIC ASYLUM. A warning was issued for that! That’s most worrisome!

This got me delving into the wayback machine, where you can see the old Second Life site and get all nostalgic, it’s also interesting to see what got people in trouble back in the day, for example if we go back to June 2006 we can see that the following would get you a warning:

Blocking acccess to another parcel on all four sides.
Quoting from chat logs in profile.
Posting mature classified thread in forums
Using registered trademarks on items in SL.
Nude avatar picture in profile.
Offensive and annoying remarks.
Providing fake casino script device for fraudulent use.

There are a few violations there that still come up today, but does anyone get a warning? Then there were the more serious issues

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March 17, 2013March 17, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Mainland Census March 2013

Tyche Shepherd has published the results of her mainland survey for the first quarter of 2013 over at SLUniverse : Mainland Census For 2013. The results reveal that three mainland sims have disappeared from the grid, all homesteads and all bordering The Blake Sea.

Unlike private region surveys, mainland doesn’t change much in shape or size unless Linden Lab launch something like Linden Homes or they auction off new sims, which doesn’t really happen these days, so the figures don’t change much in terms of the number of sims. There are currently 6,726 mainland sims on the grid, in December 2011 there were 6,723 so not much change over the last year or so. Tyche’s census also doesn’t include around 360 sims which are made up of help islands or Linden Realms.

Where the mainland census does see changes is with regard to things such as the total number of parcels, the number of owners and the amount of abandoned land. This survey reveals:

Number of Parcels – 14,5238 (Down 2.2%)
Unique Owners – 67,405 (Down 1.8%)
Abandoned Land – Between 51,388,816Sqm and 55,615,680Sqm or 11.7% to 12.6% (Up from 10.6% – 11.6%)

Abandoned Land has increased by somewhere around 66 to 70 full regions since last quarter’s census, giving an overall total of 784 to 840 full regions. Abandoned Land has been on the increase since September 2011.

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March 14, 2013

LL Offer Tier Discounts To The Select Few Educators And Non Profits

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has broken a very interesting story regarding Linden Lab offering discounts to selected educational and non profit customers: Linden Lab Quietly Offering 50% Discounts to Select Non-Profit & Educational Groups Who’ve Given Up Their SL Sims.

Inara Pey has excellent additional coverage: LL offer discounted regions to educational and non-profit organisations on the QT.

I have a deep and passionate interest in education, both professionally and recreationally. This is not a good way to go about encouraging educational institutions to come back to Second Life, but I suspect Linden Lab know how badly they dropped the ball when they removed those discounts and that many wouldn’t come back even if hell froze over. The reason it’s not a good way of enticing educational institutions back is due to how vague the qualifying criteria for educational discounts is, indeed the criteria is almost non-existent, this isn’t how business planning works and at this stage of the year, many educational institutions are deep into business planning for the next academic year.

I suspect this is why Linden Lab are apparently targetting the recently departed, rather than the long departed, the recently departed are more likely to be able to make a business planning argument for keeping a Second Life sim if the costs are reduced by 50% or not being increased by 50%. However for the longer departed, they will look at such news with scorn and it’s hardly likely to improve their mood over the tier change Linden Lab made.

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March 13, 2013

Bring Inworld Items To The Marketplace

I’ve largely been supportive of Linden Lab’s efforts to bring advertising to their website. One area where I remain unconvinced is with regards to the dashboard, which I feel should remain unhindered. Another area where I’m not convinced it’s a good idea is the SL Marketplace.

One reason why I’m not convinced the SL Marketplace is a good fit is because people are already paying to advertise their wares there. However I do welcome Linden Lab’s blog post wherby they announce their intention to allow Second Life residents to be able to buy advertising space on their properties, Second Life related adverts are a good fit for any of their pages really. The devil will of course be in the detail, but the concept has potential. Inara Pey has a good blog post about LL’s announcement: Linden Lab Comments On New Advertising Moves.

However I often read people suggesting they use the SL Marketplace like a catalogue and teleport inworld to buy items. I think there’s potential here for extending the marketplace to have a catalogue section, such as an inworld items category, whereby a merchant would pay a listing fee for a limited time inclusion in this category.

Now you may wonder why they wouldn’t just list said item on the marketplace in the first place, well, when it comes to no copy items, they’re problematic, Direct Delivery doesn’t support them for a start, you’re better off buying the no copy item inworld and picking it up really, which is how sales of breedables often work.

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March 11, 2013

Open University Events For The Rest Of March

I don’t work for The Open University, I have studied with them in the past but no longer do due to fee increases for coures. However I do still think they are a very worthy organisation. Therefore I am quite happy to promote their events. The following is from a mailing list I’m on, Tori Landau is the contact:

Below are the rest of the events confirmed for March, there might be another event but currently due to RL the person can’t confirm. Hope to see you there and please feel free to pass this on to anyone you think would be interested.

Wed 13th

Drop-in at 2.15pm slt / 9.15pm GMT

Come along to the friendship circle at the Welcome area for 30 mins of support and chat.

Slurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Deep%20Think%20East/224/38/32

Mon 18th

Monday Meet at 2pm slt / 9pm GMT

Speaker: Doctor Zeritonga (real life: Chris Hardy)

Chris will be talking about Designing for Navigation and Wayfinding in 3D Virtual Learning Spaces which was the topic of his MSc research for The Open University’s Master of Science Degree in Computing for Commerce and Industry. Chris presented his findings along with his supervisor Dr Shailey Minocha at VWBPE in 2011 and a paper written along with Dr Minocha received the Gitte Lindgaard Award for the best paper at the OZCHI 2011 conference (http://www.ozchi.org/). This talk will be in local chat with optional voice transcription.

Location is inside the communal room on Deep Think West.

SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Deep%20Think%20West/73/45/24

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