A few of the more dynamic, entertaining, gruesome and informative sites regarding Second Life seem to have fallen into a sort of slump of late. The excellent Gwyneth Llewellyn seems to have gone into hibernation for the winter, or maybe Gwyn’s just too excited about Cristiano Ronaldo’s exploits for Portugal.
The Alphaville Herald, which was apparently big in Japan around 1984, remains largely unbalanced but has largely left the virtual world of Second Life in its reporting and seems more interested in hackers, the NSA and the rather bizarre spectacle of Pixeleen Mistral interviewing Mark McCahill, actually that’s a really good read. The Herald has always had a bit of an unfair rap because of the vicious nature of some of its posts and comments below the post, but they have also covered a lot of important issues and the NSA issues are important.
MetaReality Podcast has been on vacation but has returned this very evening with an episode full of discussion, giggles and profanity … Gianna seems to have lost the bleep machine. However quite a large chunk of the content is unrelated to Second Life and the three people involved sound a little jaded by Second Life, well Qarl has had enough after the TOS debacle but Gianna sounds pretty fed up too, even more so than before. There’s still plenty of interesting content in the podcast, but they seem to be drifting.
People move on, people grow bored, people find new ventures to occupy their time so this isn’t unusual behaviour. However it’s a shame that sources such as the above are no longer leading the discussion, they seem to have largely come out with sympathy with Linden Lab in avoiding the discussion, although to the credit of the three above sites, even with their reduced coverage of Second Life, they seem to be more active in discussions than Linden Lab are!
I really don’t understand why Linden Lab are so reluctant to engage in community discussion. What exactly are the afraid of?
I couldn’t listen to the entire podcast. There is way too much that is flat-out misleading and inaccurate relating to the ToS changes. It’s bad enough that we have the issues we have as it is without people (intentionally or otherwise) muddying the waters as demonstrated in this recording.
In some respects, this was pretty much an issue I had with Metareality before their “summer break”: far too many opinions and comments were born out of a lack of effort on the presenter’s part to actually understand what they were talking about. What’s worse, their lack of understanding was all too frequently held up as some kind of badge of honour.
It’s actually a shame in some respects. Metareality was once the podcast to listen to for informed debate and opinion. Now it has become little more than a parody of itself – and an irrelevant parody at that. With this recording, they’ve more than demonstrated they’re in no position to lead a discussion, as you suggest.
Hmm I agree with you that there’s a lack of balance in the podcast, but the show has always been this way. I think the lack of balance is due to those who participate being very distant from SL.
It would be interesting to hear a show with Drax involved, he’s very much still in SL.
It’s not the lack of balance. It’s the proclamations that are made concerning SL which all too frequently come without foundation or which are misleading in their basis, only to be shrugged off with words to the effect of, “Well, I’ve not actually looked at X, but this is how I think it works, and so it sucks, and even if I’m wrong,I don’t care. It still sucks,”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being critical where SL / LL are concerned (plenty of people are and rightly so); there’s nothing wrong with being biased in a particular direction when being critical. The key is at least taking the time to look at what you’re criticising and at understand the issues. That’s been happening less and less with Metareality, and it’s been lowering their discussion to little more than over-the-garden-fence gossip for a while (hence why my coverage of their broadcasts dried-up some time before the “summer break”). I’m disappointed that with their return, the trend appears to be set to continue.