Cores and Watches and Committees, Oh My!

by Alphaville Herald on 05/09/05 at 8:52 am

story and photo by Seldon Metropolitan

If a Feted Inner Core and a Metaverse Justice Watch weren’t enough for you, there’s now the Resident Action Committee, a new cabal formed in response to the MJW’s contentious recent meeting with Philip Linden, which looks to test the new era of Linden-lobbying that seems to be dawning on the world of Second Life.

Sunday night saw the first meeting of the RAC, which aims to be an open forum for the discussion of issues important to the residents of Second Life, and free to as great a degree as possible from favoritism, politics and moderation. Founded by original FOP* Lordfly Digeridoo, the inaugurual session of the RAC got off to an initially rocky start due to its unstructured format, but once some ground rules were in place the discussion that ensued was vigorous and full of the deep thought, colorful banter and well-placed personal attacks that are the trademark of SL society.

The meeting lasted three hours and was attended by about 45 avatars, including SL notables Aimee Weber, Hiro Pendrago, Pendari Lorentz, Schwanson Schlegel and Prok himself. Anyone with a pair of those green rubber rain boots can wade through a full transcript is of the meeting here, though Blueman Steele was kind enough to post a summary in the same thread.

According to the forum thread, discussion revolved around three main issues: the voting system recently implemented by Linden Lab for feedback on new features; various aspects of the texture and object permissions systems; and how to get a clearer and consistently enforced code of conduct out of the Lindens.

The group plans on meeting with Linden Lab staff this week to discuss the issues brought up at the assembly, and has every intent of making this two-meeting cycle a weekly event.

Additional reporting and editorializing by Walker Spaight

*Friend of Prokofy

54 Responses to “Cores and Watches and Committees, Oh My!”

Mr Fairplay

Sep 5th, 2005

All I can say is thaat I have yet due to see any direct improvements to Second Life’s policies that either the F.I.C. or the M.J.W. are directly responsible for.

The way I look at them at the moment is that they are a bunch of greedy political animals that have false hopes that some day they will become a political party of some sort. And be able to make changes for the better in SL.

I really hope they prove me wrong or someone proves me wrong in all this. It would be nice if an actual bunch of intelligent people got together and could actually represent our voices to Linden Lab. And that they aren’t just some power hungry policians wanna be’s.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 5th, 2005

Lordfly is a Friend of Prokofy? I didn’t know lol. I don’t think so. Technically I still have his card but I had him triple-negged until last night when I grudgingly put back his building pos due to the well-constructed chairs he had made we were all sitting in — the lad *is* a very talented builder and I happen to like his style.

It’s really a same those always-colourful and always-deep and always-well-placed-with-the-personal-jabs journos at the SLH weighed LF down with this FOP stuff (great fun, what? that FOP stuff lol?) What does Prokofy have to do with LF? If anything, when he came to hector and bully the MJW when I held a public Q&A, I told him to just go make his own group. And when I came to his group, I made sure to raise matters of principle and not merely keep disrupting the work, as he did for us. That’s how it has to be done.

I think LF did a credible job but note that he made himself the only officer in his group, refused to even entertain the idea of having other officers, elected or appointed or built by consensus, and declared himself as secretary — so for Hiro and others (including me) that raised the issue of whether like Stalin, under the guise of just writing up the notes, he might skew them one way or another.

I don’t think he will, but it bears watching because the particular tekkie bunch gathered in this particular group do have a tendency to stick it to the land dealing class whenever they can, and to hate ordinary players (they’ve got a lot of nerve ganging up on Anshe for her ill-advised epithet of “tourists” when they all consider Tringo players and others as blingards, etc.)

This is an elitist group. Lordfly hates telehubs, hates Tringo, hates blingtards, hates most events on the events list, hates the mass, popular culture in SL that doesn’t fit with his 20-something smart college kid outlook on life. That’s ok. He has a potentially significant constituency in SL (they already lord it over the forums and fly over the world in their scripted vehicles so he’s perfect as their leader). They’ll do well to get behind him on their issues like texture permissions or these long promised thingies like Havoc 2 or Linux or hosting your own servers.

Lordfly also managed to shimmy into the door into Anshe’s group before she slammed it shut to hold elections for officers among her filtered tenants clan and loyalists or at least non-disrupters. (You wonder what Sausage Turner might be doing on election day lol.)

Meanwhile, in other developments, the cunning, resourceful and simply snotty Jauani Wu led a gaggle of SimArtians, five-percent-forum-FIC hectorers and wreckers, and other hangers-on into MJW to harass Prokofy and Coco all afternoon with specious claims (like that I packed the group with my tenants, which I had actually refused to do, one of othe reasons I split with Anshe.)

Imagine, we now have Enabran Templar, Nolan Nash, pandastrong Fairplay and many others “fighting for justice” — it is a veritable Romper Room of forum jackals there for only one purpose, to bay at Prokofy.

Honestly, I don’t mind waiting it out, until it’s just me and that W-HAT guy and a Linden notice saying the group is going to disband because it only has 2 members ROFL. Right now it is half filled with people just confused about where they are and what’s happening.

I am going to make some kind of new group though. I’m happy to have a small group. I don’t want a player government. I don’t want to meet with the Lindens once a week because I don’t think anyone who does that is representing SL or sufficiently preparing the agenda items for them even in this IM-rich fast-paced environment. Because of their fascination with tekkie stuff, and their notion of the wonders of electronic “direct democracy” they’ll end up grafting something on to the existing voting mechanism (a very piss-poor thing as they all noted) some kind of way of vetting proposals of a broader sort possibly, not just on this or that game feature (yes, *game*).

In the RAC meeting, we raised the issue of WHO gets to edit all those morass of proposals, many of them repetitive, to start to get some coherent sense and prioritization. Of course every tekkie would be love to be scripting this wonderful redacting and filtering mechanism, pretending it is above all possibly “tyrants” even as they hard-wire into it some feature of their own elitist and contemptuous culture. Example: somebody proposes using the same automatic word-processor that Ulrika touts on the forums as the redactor for this complex process of prioritizing an entire community’s proposal list. Hey, while fool with such an inanimate and unconscious device, why not just have *Ulrika herself* do it hehe.

Why is it that nobody but me finds it *awfully scary* that Phil wants to junk thousands of years of representative government RL experience (there are reasons why people elect trusted representatives) and put in this other “thingie” that is supposedly going to direct-democracy us? In Russia, they talked about “directed democracy”. That’s what this is — maybe worse.

Some people are likely to jockey into position in these groups of Lordfly’s or Anshe’s or whoever’s just to meet with Lindens, show off, and solidify their power bases in SL. I personally want to keep a reputatable group, even if small, to keep a watch on power not only in terms of LL but in terms of the power groupings that LL choses as their partners.

A really difficult challenge is this fake democracy stuff that Phil foisted on us — swiftly removing old-fashioned representative government on the one hand, declaring that passe, and removing the notion of money or land as “stakes” (this from a guy selling sims at $1000 a pop off his auction that is a chief revenue source for his firm), but on the other very swift hand we have a three-card monte game going: the Lindens will be willing to meet with residents who organize themselves into something “representational” (which they will achieve not by that passe representative government but by “IM democracy” achieved in groups like “I Am Democracy” where there is one officer — Anshe — or Lordfly) who either hold elections in filtered, hand-picked groups and call it “representational” or hold flash-mob meetings inworld and in chat and group IM and just call this group grope the pulse of the nation.

These are really really REALLY important things to be watching because these “mechanisms for democracy” which are supposed to be the better world the Lindens think they are making are likely to stick and replicate and could be one of the really awful features of the metaverse that will have to be fought for years (that’s why I’m always yammering about it — because of what is at stake).

It took the collective and concerted power of thousands of dollars of tier to ask these Lindens to publish the same kind of code of ethics *for themselves regarding us residents* that they demand of any sociologist or journalist coming to study SL. They study us all the time — and we’re not even sure how long they keep chat logs and how they search and mine them. Please. This is very very big stuff and very hard to do. Let’s see what we get out of them — I suspect that somewhere between p. 24 of the staff manual about not engaging in sexual harassment of residents and page 36 about the dental (and we hope mental) plan for LL, there isn’t anything that can cover the Jeska-modeling issue or the Shaun-DJ issue or the other kinds of favouritism incidents that keep cropping up. We’ll see.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 6th, 2005

I agree, Mr. Fairplay. It is mainly about greed and power plays now and just fear of being left out. That will settle down and eventually some leaders will emerge as they always do. Meanwhile, you’re right we can’t see anything visible either this group or any group has gotten us (except a Pony in the WA?). It’s important to keep posing the questions tho so that the Lindens feel a sense of accountability. I can’t help thinking we’re going to see Aimee come off that web page sooner rather than later, with some more fresh rotating content, and that we’re not going to be seeing Jeska model anymore. It might be in “subtle” little things like that which they can’t concede, but they’ll see the handwriting on the wall.
montserrat

Sep 6th, 2005

please tell me exactly what is wrong with hating tringo?

thank you.
marilyn murphy

Sep 6th, 2005

i dont know any lindens. therefore i always knew i could not be categorized as fic. my approach to sl has always been rather light hearted. for a few months i would heckle every linden lady i ran across to appear in my magazine. it would have been fun, i thought. just fun.
my magazine is the only real content i produced for sl i guess. it is done for fun. the post sixx girl thing is done for the fun of it.
i have read these transcripts of the meetings with wide eyed, omigod look at that horrible car wreck, fascination. that so many, get so worked up, and view this thing so seriously, is fascinating in a sad way.
its like the basic intent is to suck the fun out of a nice environment.

in my own little way i do know people who have rl money involved in sl. so i do understand how they might want to gain some rights protecting those interests.

it does appear that few can agree on what is needed, or if they can agree on what is needed, they clash anyway just by dent of personality.

i know for sure, that i dont want a player led govt. if that is what all this lobbying the lindens and jockeying for postition is about, then i am against it. we are to diverse to be able to have a real representative govt unless we have a senator elected from each interest group. omigod, can u imagine a senate composed of a representative from the bdsm, elves,superheros,vamps,land barons,builders,scripters,furries,clothing designers,slaves,escorts, club owners,club dancers, and i know i am leaving a lot out, never start a list.

i think that, unfortunately for all these people who are gathering to wrangle over who will be officers and who will make a presentation of what issue to the lindens, most of the population does not even know or care they are out there doing this.

i would like these new justice leagues to stick to the main issue of preserving the business they need protected. i would like them to stay away from any proposal that smacks of player govt.

and please, all of you, take a deep breath, and blink now and then.
Cocoanut

Sep 6th, 2005

I’m still in MJW for pretty much all the same reasons Prok is in it.

Right now, though, it’s just a bunch of self-appointed idiots playing around and making up lies. That’s why I stepped down as officer. Hopefully, they will get tired of it after a while.

I also joined Anshe’s new group, and Lordfly’s.

As always, I support freedom and democracy. I support dictatorships, too, in private businesses such as a gaming company, but only when they assume some basic level of fair play, which SL does not.

coco
Prokofy Neva

Sep 6th, 2005

Marilyn, the argument “we’re just here to have fun and anyone who does something different should have their head examined” for me not only feels like the kind of imposed fuck-you hedonism of the kind I so loathe in the game, it feels like fiddling while Rome burns. Sure, people are here to have fun. Me, too. But don’t whack me with your Calvinistic we-have-to-have-fun stick because I *work* in SL and *make money* like a certain percentage of other people. Get off it, already. I don’t care to be hectored about my choices to come make money in a game advertised where you can do that where they *sell land wholesale in a land auction and protect IP*. Please. Spare me with the “have fun” stuff when there is a specific advertisement on the can that says “have fun working and making money” lol.

And spare me with the hysterical claims that a small group of 10 land barons and Anshe’s tenants and so on (the first incarnation of MLW as of Sept. 2) is pretending to lead SL, install a government, or put something over on you.

Look again, please at the issues we brought up when we had our audience with King Phil, we illegimate evil land-owning class of scum and exploiters of teh ppl. We brought up ethics, the problem of lack of any process of all for framing and reviewing proposals, mitigation of conflict. The rules of the road. This “lobby” didn’t lobby for what you think it did. Please note that and stop ascribing fake things to it.

Next, this lobby, a tenuous thing at best, split up into a number of groups representing different factions and tendencies. This is normal. You don’t have to mythologize a democratic process in SL by creating chimeras of a Star Wars’ bar scene with thousands of flapping winks and beaked faces and purple hair. Most people in these kind of alternative movements govern their own private islands or mainland sims or communities without outside help or interference and aren’t interested in anything except being left alone. Nobody drags them into a galactic senate chamber. But those who do wish to find ways not only to govern the rest of the sims that suffer from lag, griefing, unequal TOS enforcement by Lindens, etc. should have an outlet without having to have some fake notion of a galactic senate put on them.

Whatever fake scriptied web thingie the Lindens throw up in our faces to serve as a barrier between us, their FIC friends who help them build and sell the platform (it’s not all of us, remember, because a lot of us are just here to have fun, remember) is not a substitute for f2f meetings. AS we’ve seen this week, the FIC is horridly afraid of not only losing their seat of power and privilege, they’ve come to realize that their power is very iffy and diffuse and they might need some more concentration of their brain trust and chats with Phil, too (which is why Lordfly went one better than Anshe and demanded WEEKLY meetings with Philip. Imagine!)

Next, I quite share your concern about player government. Who doesn’t? But we have a real slight of hand going on here. We’re being told a) that everyone hates player government that b) the chief Linden disavowed representative RL government but c) we’re supposed to make groups that “represent” SL. How? In groups that fill up with bussed tenants and griefers who shout the loudest and pull the officer recall the quickest and most frequently? And vote with the most alts? Again, please.

How do we make concerns known? By some scripty websight thingie? We see where that gets us — a Pony and hundreds of resolutions no one is prioritizing and which are skewed to game functions themselves and tekkie stuff, not the larger issues like ethics or fair play or social responsibility of businesses which are hard to codify into some yes/no prop anyway.

It’s fine to have groups that people ignore. The world ignores the ACLU too often unless some individual suddenly finds he doesn’t have free speech in a shopping mall or he’s barred from buying a property due to his race. Then he pays attention to the ACLU he might have felt was unnecessary. The ACLU wins some landmark cases, and then that benefits all. We don’t have any constitutional, court, or independent bar so having an ACLU is premature at best.

But can’t we have citizens’ watch groups? Of course we can. Can’t they be few in number and do their watching from a perch most people in SL don’t find valid or don’t care to fly to? Of course they can. Will they be effective? Who knows until you try? We can’t leave it like this, though.

FYI, the MJW group is frozen until Sept. 8 to officer recalls. I utterly condemn this form of violent fiat by anonymous, unaccountable people in a group that is made up of griefers and confused people and just somebody’s friend, not based on the issues. If the issue is “we hate Prokofy,” geez we don’t need a voice vote on that, everybody knows we’re all supposed to hate — and even freely *do* hate — Prokofy! So pandastrong will evidently flip officer recall at 12:01 Sept. 9 and we’ll see if the 120 odd people who tune in vote for or against or even figure out what those levers mean. It’s hilarious.

If you are reading this and you care about justice, group tool reform, prevention of strong-armed tactics, join MJW now, and when you get that notice consider taking part in this election and voting for me against thugs who try to hijack groups, bus in all their SimArt friends and the five-percent-forum-FIC as griefers and gawkers. I’m not bussing. I’m not even going to put in alts. Fire away. I can always make a new group.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 6th, 2005

It’s wrong to hate Tringo because it is the entry-level job for the thousands of basic members in the game who don’t wish to pay more for the game nor buy Lindens on the GOM. As long as the Lindens’ utopian scientific notion of this game is to bring in hordes of “free for life” accounts to fill up the numbers, then we’ll have Tringo as the people’s job. If you hate Tringo, script a prettier, less laggy, and more aesthetic job for teh ppl. Thank you.
Bam

Sep 6th, 2005

The sad thing is, all of this was orginally a joke.
Joe Public

Sep 7th, 2005

Yes, it is a little sad.

A priviliged tiny percentage of the worlds population masturbating and posturing about virtual “rights” in a toy world, which is actually a service delivered by a “for profit” business. (actually maksing the fact that they are manuervering for future business opportunity, if they were honest about it).

As a paying customer you can demand a certain Quality of Service, but some of you people need to step back, take a deep breath and look at the big picture.
http://www.iht.com/protected/articles/2005/09/06/opinion/edkristof.php

If you feel that strongly about it put your money where your mouth is and start your own world with an open source system…the ulitimate consumer choice decision in the marketplace is to vote with your feet/cash.

But it’s actually easier to whine (ie: beyond complaining about reasonable QOS issues) than it is to be creative and do something yourself, isn’t it?
Prokofy Neva

Sep 7th, 2005

It’s hard to imagine how the difficult job of making a group, finding likeminded people, and pressing for difficult agendas with the all-power-possessing Lindens is “good for business” and “maneuvers one for business opportunity”. There are some that are going to make the right mixture of suck-ups to Lindens and suck-ups to various constituencies in SL and get more sales, I suppose, but most people in these groups only get a black eye in the forums and harassment both inside and outside their group by the phalanxes of the aggressively obedient majority.

Joe “No Speaking for Any Public I’m A Member of” has to zoom back too and realize that these little metaverses these game companies spawn are things that people living and working and playing in them take seriously and are willing to fight for using the same principles they have in SL, i.e. freedom of assembly and speech and participation in government.

I did start my own world within a world like thousands of others in this world. We don’t have to leave this world in order to do that. That’s its beauty. That’s what it is SUPPOSED to be.

The Lindens didn’t see the very process of raising this issue as “whining” — they met with us. And they’ve worked even hard to improve communications in SL, ranging from their SLTV project to their new community round table. These are people who take this issue of a world and its rights and its residents seriously, even being autocratic government officials — far more seriously than the “Joe Publics” of the world who speak only for some tiny minority of tekkie hecklers or high-content creators who feel they have something to lose if others than themselves rule these worlds. ing
jauani

Sep 7th, 2005

haha lol! self appointed! coco you have self appointed yourself to sl mommy! wysiwyg bbq!

well how convenient for prokocoa, living in the house that anshe built.
Cocoanut

Sep 7th, 2005

Hush up, Jauani.

coco
Prokofy Neva

Sep 7th, 2005

All people in civic groups are self-appointed, Jauani, in small groups that start out with common interests and then work to articulate their message, identify the issues of concern. People are brought together and appoint themselves, yes, from below. They aren’t appointed from above by some federal government or some game company. They are able to chose to be in a group freely, and pick themselves to be in the group, that’s how it’s done. If someone has a different idea about, oh, say the 10 percent bonus for land groups, and opposes it, they can be in a *different* group with *different issues*.

Joining a group doesn’t mean you’re trying to “run society” or “be somebody’s mommy” or “take over SL”. That’s silly. I honestly wonder if they still teach civics in schools and whether people have *any* experience in what it means to just join a group to promote issues.

A snotty name like “prokocoa” mean to continue this slur that Coco is my alt or my mouthpiece does more to expose you as juvenile and frivolous, Jauani, than anything else. And living in the house that Anshe built? Um, what are you doing in it if you don’t like it? Why bring in 12 fake officers to heckler everybody in the house that Anshe built. Anshe left it, but I don’t leave groups I am among the founders for, for frivolous reasons, just because of hecklers.

It really is amazing to me how in this game, people can only behave like children and taunt, and are incapable of more serious enterprises.
Joe Public

Sep 7th, 2005

They met with you because there is this principle [you might have come across this in your journalism class] in business smart companies adhere to called “customer service”, or more accurately for the LL design model a model called customer driven development. It certainly helps if the people wishing to meet are high value customers…always hard to acquire in any business. Acquisition costs etc etc…

You really like to put down both the “high content” creators and the working stiffs [I suppose you would call them proles] who just want to have some simple fun, don’t you? People who just want to get along, live their life…not the types to run around creating a virtual bureaucracy so they can have a little title for their little meetings and make little rules for the “little” people to live little lives by cos you know best how it should be done, right?. The last thing we need is virtual politicians and virtual FUCKING sleazebag lawyers stinking up the works…but that the game is already lost in that regard.

I suspect if you had your way we’d all be burning virtual witches at the virtual stake while doing a merry dance (ooo…fun!) around the maypole at sunday virtual bible study class. Good clean jolly virtual fun…none of that mucking around with fancy scripted contraptions, you young un’s!

The one bright light on the horizon is that open source projects may be the saviour of the metaverse concept for those of us who don’t want to deal with busy body fuckwits and greedy businessdrones.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 7th, 2005

I think the reason they met with us is really much more simple: we composed a letter, we put a dozen issues outlined in it, and we asked. We asked! Robin Linden pointed out that few people ever do that. Most people just IM their little Linden buddies or even find them in RL. They go and hang out at Ambleside or even have Lindens in their groups. They lassoo them into Thinker’s or Ouranos or SL Education Senate meetings and have them all to their very selves. We just did something more straightforward: we got together, we formed a group with a purpose, we tried to pick likeminded officers (turns out they were not so likeminded lol!) and pushed a slate of issues.

If they looked at the tier schedule and our names, that might have concentrated their minds wonderfully, but you know what, your friend King Philip, in this meeting, blandly stated — cutting off a speaker — that he did not consider money or land to be stake. Imagine! This fellow who himself has leased servers and has an office and money in the bank in a game corporation doesn’t consider money or land as stake. Imagine if Philip Rosedale told the ebay guy that his $8 million invested in Linden Lab was “not considered stake”. Pretty funny, huh. His money was good enough.

But as one disgruntled land baron put it, thousands of dollars of tier — and you can’t even get customer service to spend two minutes answering one email or phone call about one simple issue, like when a sim will arrive or why a purchase of a sim didn’t appear to go through on the auction or just some simple mechanical thing like that. They don’t care. They dont “do” for land barons, trust me on this. They look at them blandly as people who spent a lot of money on this giant pet rock in the sky, and they say “next”. They *let* them spend the money on the giant pet rock in the sky, but they really, honestly don’t care about them that much.

That’s why I think this group joined into a group to lobby the Lindens, and not on things like “telehub compensation” ( a fake issue given that Anshe and Blue sold off a lot of their telehubs, for example) but on the very rules of the road, the very question of EQUALITY and as Anshe somewhat touchingly naively puts it, “protection of minorities”. (By that she does not mean minorities of the racial type, or minorities like GLBT or something, but the relatively tiny number of people in the vast SL population that pay large sums of tier).

And why not? Why can’t you have land barons be EQUAL TO these special feted content creators — who get all kinds of attention and recognition and contests and bids and nods and winks in the IRC channel.

So I don’t “put down” the high-end content makers or SL elite in the FIC, I ask for equal opportunities to be created for all so that they do not soley rule the roost. Currently, a simple fucking thing like rotating the fucking website seems to pose some kind of huge insurmountable challenge to these Lindens who can stream a 3-D world on 1000 servers but can’t change the goddamn jpegs of Aimee on every other page. Their lame-ass excuses on this are simple astounding. I really have to view this as a profoundingly political and power-fraught issue for them at this point that they can’t see their way clear to doing the really obvious right thing and rotating *even their own goddamn FIC* in the website. It’s just truly amazing. That’s the kind of thing I mean, I don’t need or want to be on the website, but there are hundreds of content creators even who’d like to be on there, including, as it has been pointed out, just other forum-five-percent-FICs who have begun to grumble a bit on the forums.

Put-down to proles? Huh? Where? I have no putdowns to any proles. If you mean Anshe’s ill-conceived “tourist” stuff, well, *shrugs* that’s her saying that, not me. She has a right to say that, given the extraordinary amount of time and money she personally put in the game, and given that her clients tend to be people ready to pay $25 a month for 4096 and live and work in the game for extended hours of time, not just log on here and there with a trial or a basic when there true heart is in WOW or something. That’s how I understood it.

The ordinary people are all my customers. I have the greatest respect for them and wait on them hours and hours a day. You simply have no idea. I don’t even know where to begin to explain all that. I really think you’ve created a straw man here and you’re just whacking at it out of the general sense of vitriol and hatred you harbour in your soul.

I certainly don’t envision burnings at the stake, dancing around the maypole, or Bible reading classes — but thanks, I think you’ve summed up what happens on the SL forums very vividly and astoundingly accurately. Witch-hunts, burnings, victory dances, and hectoring and lecturing from prescribed texts and rigid belief systems and ideologies are the hallmark of the SL forums.

I also tend to think that “busy body fuckwit” might more accurately describe Joe Public with your constant badgering and constant nasties in response to anything I write. In fact, I think merely somebody somewhere decided that they must methodically answer my every post to prevent me from *cough* taking power in SL ROFL. Have fun! As for greedy businessdrones, I dunno, if they don’t succeed, they go out of business, so why worry?

I guess I have to take a page from Anshe’s technique in this very difficult meeting we had with the FIC the first time around when Lordfly was just going on and on endlessly with hateful jabs and suspicious hostile questions: what are you afraid of, Joe Public? What is it that you value in SL that you fear is at risk because some groups got started to press for attention to issues they care about? What do you think you will lose? I think the only way to derail this constant barrage of assholery of yours is to try to get you to sincerely answer this question.
montserrat

Sep 7th, 2005

joe public i find myself agreeing with you.

i think it is very easy to lose track of the reality
that second life is in fact a corporate project.
it is there to make money. it is there
to get people jacked up to donate whatever
they can in the way of intellectual property
and energy. the very idea of “user built world”
suggests to me the idea that the idea of
“working on the come”, so dear to the
dot-bombers of 1998-2000 has, in the case
of second life, gotten brand new shoes.

you think about it some: you got the FIC
and the metaverse justice whatevers (and
please guys, you REALLY REALLY sound like
you need superman suits or something with
THAT name). and what are they? they are
people who are working on the come, but
they are working on the come for social contact
points, not for real money.

if second life management was HONEST if they
were straightforward they would acknowledge that
“user built world” = “work on the come” AND
they would start handing out stock options to
people like aimee weber.

the second life “user built world” idea is not really
different than the idea that was floating around
a while back, where you’d get people really excited
about contributing content to message boards so
that you could build “knowledge bases” about your
product. these knowledge bases were used to
elicit requirements for product enhancements,
to identify bugs etc. these knowledge bases
have a tangible financial value that you can put
in a ledger but the people contributing their intellectual
property to the knowledge base get zip.

ok. so philip is smarter than his ancestors in the
electroncally-mediated-communication business.
he says to people: come here! you have control!
this is a great temptation to those with the
life-of=quiet-desperation disease. he says:
can’t marry your honey in RL? come to SL!
can’t be rich in RL? be rich in SL! come to SL,
be who you can’t be in real life. all we ask is
that you build our world for us.

that’s really the proposition for SL.

SL has serious design flaws. lag etc.
parts of SL suck. but people EAT IT WITH A SPOON
because of the emotional hook. having
the emotional hook, however, does not relieve
philip of the responsibility to provide appropriate
financial incentive to those individuals responsible
for making his world WORK, that is the aimee webers
etc of SL.

he owes people like aimee weber, yadni monde,
etc stock in his company. SL ought not to try
to leverage against GOM. when SL goes against
GOM it is really being a banana republic nationalizing
private industry.

people don’t see this because lots of them
are too busy playing with poseballs to notice.
Joe Public

Sep 8th, 2005

Q)”Put-down to proles? Huh? Where? I have no putdowns to any proles.” ..”The ordinary people are all my customers. I have the greatest respect for them and wait on them hours and hours a day.”

A)”Marilyn, the argument “we’re just here to have fun and anyone who does something different should have their head examined” for me not only feels like the kind of imposed fuck-you hedonism of the kind I so loathe in the game”

Q)”So I don’t “put down” the high-end content makers”
A) I can’t be bothered trawling through all your diatribes to provide examples of this, but I’m sure everyone reading this just laughed out loud at your brazeness in making such a statement.

Q)”I also tend to think that “busy body fuckwit” might more accurately describe Joe Public with your constant badgering and constant nasties in response to anything I write.”
A) Payback is a biatch, no? Call it Karmic law…

Q)”What is it that you value in SL that you fear is at risk because some groups got started to press for attention to issues they care about? What do you think you will lose?”
A) er…nothing? Honest truth, cross my pagan heart.

Q)”I think the only way to derail this constant barrage of assholery of yours is to try to get you to sincerely answer this question.”
A) Not likely. I’m unbreakable.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 8th, 2005

Mont, I’m not sure where you’re saying you agree with Joe Public. But your points about the Lindens asking people to come work on spec and pro bono or for Monopoly money in exchange for reputation enhancement are spot on. This is a 3-D game dev junior resume list, a 3-D Craig’s list or monster.com. You can make stuff and show it off to prospective employers. It’s for prototyping. And while the quiet-desperation people and the 20-something smug and arroganted entitlement-happy kids are prototyping all their kewl vehicles and stuff in the sandbox, the Lindens let in the blingtards so that the 3-D resume people have test audiences, test focus groups, “the masses,” and “instant rent-a-crowds”. It’s hideous thinking about it, actually.

That’s why both Lindens and FIC get so shirty when you challenge this set up as cronymism and unjust because they think it ought to be self-evident what the social contract is and you ought to just shut up if you aren’t talented and kewl enough to ‘get it’.

The thing I wonder about tho is whether when *real* businesses start to come in SL (and well all know the Lindens are planning to be as supremely indifferent to them as they are currently to big land barons, and not give them any special advertising deals — they’ll be merely welcome to advertise on the sims they buy thank you very much) — how that *real* business will start to blow the Aimees and the Cubies out of the water. Those people are all amateurs. They are skillful and creative amateurs but in many cases they have their lives-of-quiet-desperation or merely mediocrity as the substrate of the second lives, they aren’t in RL what they are in SL. People who *are* in RL what they could be even better at in SL will come along. They’ll look at this set-up. And they’ll say: who are you? And who are these Lindens? Are skills are demonstrable in RL. Yours aren’t. Who are you?

We know full well that the Aimees and the Cubies fear that moment. They fear it profoundly. That’s why collectively, on the forums they a) kick out anybody who points out that the Emperor may not have any clothes (or at least not professionally, RL recognizable clothes) b) railes against business and commerce and people who “don’t know how to have fun” blah blah.

There’s nothing to stop the RL Preen from a) suing Aimee Weber for trade-mark infringement
http://www.widemedia.com/fashionuk/fashion/catwalk-archive/lfw-aw01/pr.html

(some not-so-brave souls sometimes write to me thinking I’m going to get involved in this cowardly game of trying to get the RL Preen to come and see what the SL Preen is doing with it’s name, but I don’t play that game).

They may not succeed, being in the UK and Aimee being in the US (and I hope they don’t, because of the precedent problem that creates) but let’s say they not only do that aggressively, but they have this huge capacity to buy up a dozen sims, hire the best architects on the LL Developers’ Directory, make a fashion show runway and hire models and pay them RL money for doing double RL and SL fashion shows — and the RL ones won’t lag — and use the SL for a kind of 3-D online window into their own order pages, especially when there are things like web-on-a-prim to help them. They could script and devise try-before-you-buy kind of animations and options in the SL world and I’ll bet you there will be so many people logging on to do this cool thing (I wonder why no one has thought of it already) the Lindens will have log-on pile-ups.

Where will Aimee and her panties be then? Right now, Aimee can tell drooling journos wishing to touch her panties that she is “thinking about” “starting a RL line” and drop some vague reference to some RL job vaguely related to design. But the real Preen from the UK, with all its expertise, will be able to roar past all that an *really* do it. Despite what people think of me, I don’t wish Aimee that fate. I’m for an immersive world created by the creators really as a truly authentic second life — not the secondary staging area of a primary RL business that just exploits the space.

It’s this fear of RL business coming in and taking over their play-pen that the FIC fear most of all, and why they cling to their position so fiercely. I can’t blame them. It’s just they’ve myopically missed entirely all the routes to making a more independent and immersive world that would create some protection from this phenom of RL business override.

Whatever your notions of the superhero caricature of the Justice League assocated with Justice Watch here, the processes and protections we advocated for the Lindens to put in to mitigate LL and resident businesss, to create equal opportunities for businesses, to have some transparency regarding favouritism, etc. — these would all benefit the FIC as much as anyone.

Because the businessees coming in will demand lots of the Lindens time, just like even the non-profits such as ACS or the secret bank did. The Lindens will be forced to chose.
Cocoanut

Sep 8th, 2005

Handing out stock options to people like Aimee Weber?

On what basis would such decisions be made? Which contributions would be taken into consideration?

Total Lindens in sales?

Total sales in items?

Total number of events held?

Total number of residents attending events?

Top dwell?

Length of time providing land and rental services? Total amount of land offered for rent, lease, or sale?

Amount of land bought from LL?

Total number of people referred to SL?

Total number of scripts coded?

Total number of major events organized, such as the Touchstone Fair?

Total amount of currency exchanged on exchange systems?

Total number of items listed on a content sales and purchase site? Total number of such items actually sold?

Largest exchange system provided? Largest shopping system provided?

Total amount of land offered for rent to residents?

Total number of sex balls created?

Largest and most active groups created?

Total number of educational events offered?

Best educational building and materials offered?

Total number of newbies helped?

Total number of times avatar appears on web site? Or total number of times LL recommends a resident to the media?

Or – just being “people like Aimee Weber?”

coco
Joe Public

Sep 8th, 2005

Montserrat,
“working on the come” – have not heard it put that way before:-), but yep, that pretty much be the name of the korporate game. Some marketing dweeb’s brilliant idea…”let’s get the users to create the content for nothing and pay them shite”…and it works!!!
Good for them!

Get all those rapid Early Adopters fired up to spend their own $, time, and energy developing the platform for peanuts….all on the promise of a “special relationship” with the company.

What’s that you say? Bend over and spread those cheeks, baby?
“Thanks for that great idea, btw, and fuck you very much.”

If KingPhildo really did say “in this meeting, blandly stated – cutting off a speaker – that he did not consider money or land to be stake.” then he’s spot on in terms of focusing on the people who will really make the metaverse an exciting place…creatives, not accountants. I feel a little of the Land Barons pain as it’s apparent that LL is a little deficient in their CRM, but really, as virtual slum lords who, in general, do little more than skim on tier…well, fuck them all. Land Barons are imo the virtual equivlant of real estate agents and slum lords, all rolled into one….two of the worst traits humanity has produced so far.

The only decent projects are/will be collaborative, well balanced, groups who can self organise and develop things on a project basis. Not an easy trick, but a worthwhile objective if it can happen. Nothing lasts forever anyway, so being able to enjoy the ride for what it is a worthwhile thing to keep in mind.

The key point to remember is that this is VERY early days in terms of technology infrastructure…as I’m sure a few people, including me, have found out after having swallowed too much marketing spin.

Business ethics and codes of conduct are a key area, but ultimately it needs to be driven from within the company as a core value. Having to be reminded of these responsibilities by paying customers is a sad indictment that something in the company is seriously lacking at a fundamental level. But perusing a few of the spin doctors CV’s who work for LL you can see their deep experience of the Dot Bomb era…probably where they get their new shoes from.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 8th, 2005

Oh, ok, you’re incapable of being sincere. And trawl through my posts please and back up your statements with some facts.
Joe Public

Sep 8th, 2005

whatever! lol. rofl. duh. huh?
Prokofy Neva

Sep 8th, 2005

Not a single one of the whole-sims for sale now on the auction since the changes in June have gone to projects. There is a widespread utopian pastoral tekkie myth that there are these “collaborative, self-organized groups that can develop things” in the game. There are like 2. Or maybe 3. One of them is NewOldSameOldSameOldThingBurg with the fake democracy and the crony socialism a la Ulrika. They place a limit on how much land anyone can own — so much for encouraging projects. Projects don’t come together and function as you imagine, by people equally distributing wealth and thoughtfully donning their grannie dresses and Birkenstock’s and munching their granola as they all collaborate and redistribute money and justice. Bleh.

It’s ok to sell land. It’s actually hard work. People need to buy it. They do. Landlords add value in renting by trying to control the view and the rules about ugly builds and griefing, and land sellers add value by being just in time with the market price when you want to buy, and just in time with the liquidation price when you are forced to sell, to avoid publicking land.

You have this harsh, socialist, irritable allergy to commerce and people making a profit which is all too common among the small but determined tekkie/FIC/etc core. The Lindens themselves don’t suffer to such an extent from this mind meme that commerce is suspect until proven innocent.

You’ve falsely pitted land business (or other kinds of services) against creators — and note it is YOU who have started this hatred of a class and a civil war, not us in this sector. We are not slumlords or sharks, but people who provide a service *the Lindens want us to provide and legitimize by selling wholesale only now*. Duh.

I’ll tell you among the worst trait of humanity is — you’re exemplifying it — hectoring, busy-body, arrogant smug know-it-alls who clamp down on others freedom to own land and engage in business — and hypocritally you do it in the name of some hypothetical “public good” which you never really identiy or deliver with your socialism.
jauani

Sep 8th, 2005

prok,
why didn’t you establish a concise mission statement before recruiting ONE HUNDRED members? because the original intention was to create a group, and determine the mission statement democratically.

in more breaking news, the prokocoa faction initiates an officer recall to squash desent, the futility of which is clear, since prokofy is the lone heretic officer in the group.

you tried to coerce me to start my own group? well i suggest you take your advice!
jauani

Sep 8th, 2005

>>>They are skillful and creative amateurs but in many cases they have their lives-of-quiet-desperation or merely mediocrity as the substrate of the second lives, they aren’t in RL what they are in SL. People who *are* in RL what they could be even better at in SL will come along. They’ll look at this set-up. And they’ll say: who are you? And who are these Lindens? Are skills are demonstrable in RL. Yours aren’t. Who are you?<<<

wow! just wow!
it seams your own quiet desperation and bitterness makes you oblivious to the fact that the skills aimee and cubey use ARE rl skills. 3d modelling and photoshop is the same in sl or in doom 3. why don’t you get a clue. just like you are roleplaying a hack dissident, they are role playing industrialites and fashion designers.

anyway, mediocrity is something you should aspire to rise up to if you have trouble rezzing a plywood cube. your energy would be better spent asking why you spent 8 hours a day of every day without a break on how everyone chooses to play sl instead of playing your own game! nobody complains about your ravenglass tier donation scam.
Cocoanut

Sep 8th, 2005

1. First off, let me object STRONGLY to Jauni saying I did a recall effort on him. I logged on to find that recall already started, and I was happy to vote to recall him, but I have no idea who did it, and nobody is fessing up.

I DESPISE Jauani’s habit of presenting bald-faced lies as if they were fact.

I can’t TELL you how unethical I consider that to be, and how completely antithetical it is to my idea of what a human should be.

HOW could anyone say anything like that? How? Why?

2. Secondly, Jauani has also rewritten the history of what happened in MJW this weekend, and repeats his own version of it anywhere and everywhere, endlessly, despite the fact that he wasn’t around and has no idea what went on (except, he says, some messages to him from Anshe), and despite the fact that there is ample evidence and dozens of witnesses to show that it did NOT happen that way.

For my own report of what happened this weekend, see the General Forum on the SL Forums for my post entitled, “My Statement on the MJW Thing.” Or ask Anshe. I’ve joined Anshe’s new group, still share her concerns, and strongly support both Anshe and her new group.

Remember – that post is my statement, not Anshe’s or Prok’s or anyone else’s – it is my full recounting of events to the fullest of my knowledge. Unlike Jauani, I WAS there for the weekend, talking with Anshe, and working with Anshe to get notices out to the members. For the full (and true) story, see that thread.

Jauani continuously states to all who will listen that Prok “pushed” Anshe out of the group this weekend, which – if you read my statement – you will see is nothing near what happened. It is nothing but a bald-faced lie. Anshe was the one, in fact, who acted rashly, and without input of the other officers, because she didn’t want to work with Prok a minute longer. Prok wouldn’t quit, so she did. The end. Any mistakes she made trying to achieve that end she is not repeating in the new group she founded.

3. Thirdly, I object to the horrid and insulting way Jauani implies or flat-out states – over and over – that I am a mindless puppet of Prok. It only reflects poorly on his own intelligence when he does that. (And if he insists on inventing something as idiotic as the “Prokcoa faction,” I should at least get first billing. “CocoProk” trips off the tongue much more easily.) I think he lives to make people angry, by any means possible.

4. Fourthly, if Jauani is unaware of the consise mission statement – work-in-progress document that it is – which was ALREADY formulated by the group, which was the entire reason I joined the group (agreeing with most of what was on it), and which was presented to Philip Linden the group’s meeting with him – it is only because he never bothered to READ it and possibly didn’t even know there WAS one.

He apparently never read my post about what happened that weekend either. I don’t think he ever bothers to read or find out ANYTHING. Apparently he just lobs whatever lie he likes to tell and hope it sticks against the wall.

5. Today, Jauani sent out a proposal to the entire group stating that Prok and I had instituted his officer recall. Well, I did not, and Prok says he didn’t either (he’s very much against officer recalls, so that is no doubt true).

Jauani used his officer position to smear my name to some 100 other people by telling a flat-out lie.

He responded to this officer recall – started by who knows who, maybe himself! – by quitting his officer post before he could be recalled.

Yet he took it upon himself to LIE to EVERY MEMBER OF THE GROUP.

6. No group can function with an individual like this in it, who is there only to listen to himself try to be clever, to harrass other group members (not to mention slander them), and to try to derail the entire group. And who lies constantly as he does.

This lying – I can honestly say I have NEVER run across anyone in my whole life who lies with such total impunity, and apparently feels no guilt about it at all.

If you ask me, I don’t see how anybody ever trusts him with anything. Maybe no one ever does.

coco
Antje

Sep 8th, 2005

“You’ve falsely pitted land business (or other kinds of services) against creators – and note it is YOU who have started this hatred of a class and a civil war, not us in this sector.”

Yeah right.

It has been your goal since arriving in SL, to incubate, and then exacerbate class war. People aren’t blind, you know. You’re the one with an obvious agenda against content creators and scripters.

Either you’re a gross prevaricator, or your head is so far up your own ass that your brain is starving for oxygen.

I really don’t care which, as you aren’t worth the gob I spit on the sidewalk this morning.
Joe Public

Sep 8th, 2005

“Projects don’t come together and function as you imagine, by people equally distributing wealth and thoughtfully donning their grannie dresses and Birkenstock’s and munching their granola as they all collaborate and redistribute money and justice.”

Actually they do…I’ve done a number so far in SL which have come together on the fly, formed, done the deed, and moved on. Who said anything about needing a whole sim for a project? And as for your “utopian” putdown, well, it’s obvious you have never collaborated on anything. People collaborate for two reasons: 1) What can I get out of this 2) What can I do to help this project if rule 1 is not my primary motivator.

“You have this harsh, socialist, irritable allergy to commerce and people making a profit which is all too common among the small but determined tekkie/FIC/etc core.”

And where did I say anything about being against commerce? As per usual to twist words and make gross assumptions.
I’m for natural capitalism…which is about FOR profit socially responsible ethically driven business…not a tekkie wiccan dream but the next evolution in business culture in RL.
http://www.natcap.org/

“You’ve falsely pitted land business (or other kinds of services) against creators ”

Noooooo, nothing about other kinds of services…..What I did say is I think land barons (ie: rl real estate slum lord cloners) are , in general, low life scumbags. [tho I personally know a couple of ethically and socially responsible ones]

Why?

Go and do your RL homework on the damage to society as a whole that the prevailing mindset of “It’s ok to sell land. It’s actually hard work. People need to buy it. They do.” does. Of course they do, it’s a basic element in the economic and social equation which, under the core economic law of supply and demand it’s so easy to exploit.

Real estate bubbles exist all through the western world atm, fuelled by developers,low interest, cc debt, and “greed is good” wealth seminars. These bubbles have been teetering on the brink for some time and are about to burst. Young people can’t afford to buy houses now…and this is waaay different from past situations if you wish to historically compare salaries vs asset prices. The vultures have now moved on to Cosa Rica and the new under-developed areas.
Soon, as is the cyclic nature of markets driven by fear and greed, the popping will begin all over again (ie: US, Spain, UK Australia …) and blood will start flowing.
And what do we have in the virtual world…a complete clone of the same mentality. Ain’t life grand! Meteverse utopia…gotta love it.

“hectoring, busy-body, arrogant smug know-it-alls who clamp down on others freedom to own land and engage in business”

Master, I’m just following your lead:-)

Of course land needs to be developed, both in RL and SL, but a lot more work needs to be done in developing equitable systems and methods for doing this.

I don’t see that happening at all. All I see is a bunch of Wiley. E . Riche Pigge’s pushing the trough closer to LL.

Where is the land barons code of ethics and conduct?
Where is the movement to push for this?

hmmmmmm….it’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens springs to mind….
Prokofy Neva

Sep 8th, 2005

Jauani, I didn’t recruit 100 members? We merely made the group open because had we closed it, we would have been hammered forever and ever on the forums for being secretive and closed. I didn’t invite any officers except Cocoanut who seemed very interested and committed because I was not interesting in politicking, building up constituencies, shaking down my tenants, collering friends, etc. to get them into a group whose purpose and plans were unknown, riven by contentions and splitting, without even a simple charter or statement of purpose in front of them.

First Anshe began packing the group with tenants and cronies, then YOU did. I didn’t play that game. If there are a few tenants in there, they just came, not arm-wrestled and not part of the usual goofy Barnes-Ingrid-Toast etc. posse plus the worst of the forum FIC that always gangs into any funny theaterical charade.

1) I don’t seek media attention or leadership within SL or claims to be a FIC type, so I am not *required* to demonstrate, for example, my “RL real estate” skills to have an SL rentals business. That’s the difference.

2) People claimed in MJW tonight that in order to lead in SL, or speak to the media, you MUST disclosure your RL identity, but that’s absurd, and Aimee herself said she didn’t give a reporter her RL identity becuse crazed obsess people might RL stalk her. (IF she thinks that I’m such a person, she really is a hopeless case; let her go back to her friend Nolan and find out what real stalking is before she lays that fake accusation at my door with her usual plausible deniability.)

3) I don’t view myself as a loan heretic officer, I think the thing is a farce. When you’re tired of it, you’ll leave. That might take awhile. Meanwhile, I hope to just work in smaller groups or just participate now and then in what is out there, whether Lordfly’s meetings or the Linden’s community things.

Why did you suffer officer recall, Jauani? And why did you use the known workaround to leave the group to stop the vote, and get yourself invited back in by your crony officers who can do that? What, afraid to stand up and have the votes counted in the recall?

I view recall in general as a illegitimate and destructive, but such exercises can be instructive in a zoo-y situation like this : )
Prokofy Neva

Sep 8th, 2005

And, BTW, in terms of “concise mission statements” why don’t you draft one? Are you capable of doing a single positive thing in your life or do you only whine and snipe at others?

In the heat of the moment, when 10 or so of us first got this together to protest everything being done by Philip to the GOM and everything else, we had to face the issue of simply having him say, oh, we’re having a town hall on that subject, so just come to that. I really think we have to end the era of the town hall as the sole means of communication of concerns in SL. It’s quaint, it’s fun, it’s scripted, though. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with groups getting together with significant stakeholders and asking for an audience. It’s done all the time. He can develop his own protocol for dealing with these conflicting lobbies tugging at him. If he wants to role-play a king in a country in his off-hours when he’s not doing his high-tech streaming game company RL stuff, fine. Let him figure out how to do that.

So in between the first day when the group was formed and started merly to discuss before any action was taken, and the second day the letter was drafted and readied for Phil but still getting signatures, and the third day when he held the townhall and we regrouped and sent the letter anyway, and then met with him a day later, there wasn’t time for doing more than drafting the talking points, ideas, proposals that are already passed out in notecards and are very sketchy and which Juro and others have marked up acting like they are editors-in-chief taking pen to a project they can smack down. Let them. Every input is valuable. But ought to realize that the point of this group, once gain, was to show the Lindens that they cannot make tough decisions without more input from those affected by them.

They more than readily seem to concede that point, unlike most of their drooling jackal forum friends.
jauani

Sep 9th, 2005

coconuts,
like your boss, your posts are too long so i will respond briefly because i read very little. i know second hand from anshe and shaun that your story is wrong. i give more weight to their word. they are doers. you are a talker. they have a clear stake to benefit sl. you have no stake and are an attention seeker. your rhetoric on ethics is lost on me because as usual because it makes no sense at all.

prokoky,
i won’t suffer your stupid recall antics. all group activities will happen through proper votes for great justice. am i capabale of doing something? yes – i can see an undeserving mooch outstaying his welcome in MJW. media attention? – you have an entire blog of narcissism.

if you aren’t attacking peoples hard earned accomplishments or getting expelled from cummunity meetings, you are defending tier donation scams etc. clearly i cannot in good concience allow you to manage a group dedicated to justice.

fundamentally MJW was supposed to be a business and customer service lobby. somewehre between last wednesday and labour day, players with very limited holds on their RLs confused the metaphors and started fighting for the huddled masses. and then justice suffered gently but surely. not for long.

well i’ve heard prokofy is already planning his exit strategy and new group. i will wish him well.
Aimee Weber

Sep 9th, 2005

Prok in the chat last night, YOU said I didn’t give WWD my real identity. I corrected you by saying I did INDEED give her my RL identity AND I gave her permission to print it. I simply mentioned that my preference was that she not print it because of stalkers (to which she replied that they wouldn’t be able to print the article without my RL name). It was actually a surprise to me when the article was published without my RL name.

Did anybody save the transcript?

So when you claim I said the opposite of what I actually said…is that a “lie” or is it “aimee being too literal” ?
Cocoanut

Sep 9th, 2005

Jauani:

Let Shaun and Anshe tell me then that my story was wrong. So far they have not. Not in person, and not on the Forum, where I made my statement, laid out in detail, for anyone to add to or refute who desired to do so.

That you read very little is already obvious.

Prok is not my boss, my overlord, my mentor, my poppet-master, or anything else. He’s a friend of mine and an equal for two-three years now; apparently you just can’t grasp such a concept.

Your contention that I have no stake in SL is both assinine and elitist. Not to mention HUGELY arrogant. I have a stake in that I play and care about the game. I have a stake beyond that in that I create and sell content. This nonsense about how I make nothing and do nothing is a lie that really can’t stand inspection, since anyone can easily access my products.

My remarks on ethics are lost on you because you don’t have any.

I’M an attention seeker? I was in this group to work with Anshe and Prok and Shaun and the others to achieve the goals on the note card. Now I’m also in her new group to achieve same. What are YOU in the group for? You didn’t even READ the notecard. But you definitely have managed to get my attention; I’ll give you that.

A business and customer service lobby? Who ever said that? By the time I joined MJW, that notecard about the goals had already been written (it was why I joined). What Anshe presented to Philip WAS that notecard. So whatever you are harking back to, it was no longer the only issue by the time Anshe and group met Philip and presented what was on that notecard.

“Coconuts” is one of the nicknames my friends use fondly. So you aren’t going to get very far trying to use it as a pejorative.

In fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t throw the term “nuts” around so loosely, considering you don’t have any. If you did – if you were a man – you would have apologized for lying to the group about me instituting officer recall when I asked you to.

coco
Prokofy Neva

Sep 9th, 2005

The full transcript of our MJW meeting is up on my blog at http://secondthoughts.typepad.com And I stand by what I said and yes, you are always too literal and always trying to squirm out of the rational and real meaning of things to play “gotcha” — absolutely.

I said you did not give your RL identity to the reporter because *it wasn’t in the article*. How am I supposed to know the back story? That’s not possible. When I said that in our group chat, you attempted to “correct” me and “set me straight” as you are doing now, by saying: you gave a PREFERENCE and asked her NOT TO which is, in my book, telling a reporter NOT TO USE YOUR IDENTITY. I know when someone asks me to not use their identity as a preference I DON’T. DUH. THAT’S ASKING THEM NOT TO USE YOUR IDENTITY AND THEY DON’T.

The WWD lady merely did due diligence to get a RL name just so that if her editor or something asked if this person really existed and could be called, etc. she’d have the backup. Indeed, journalists are often required to put in a RL name but sometimes they seem to get away without doing it. So don’t try to squirm out of this one, Aimee. You asked them not to –expressing a preference *is indeed asking them not to.*

You’re merely trying to spin it that if you gave a “preference” and not a “demand” that you are off the hook. You’re not. I didn’t say anything incorrect. Your identity wasn’t in the piece.

If you claim this is surprise to you, after all your vast media experience when you’ve been interviewed and quoted dozens of times by reporters, I guess you take us for fools.

I don’ t know WHAT possessed you to agree to give your RL name and even your income (however garbled you claim that got in the story) but I guess it was the thrill and heady success of talking not to some gonzo gamer journo and some gamer Internet site like The Escapist or even the Circuits section of the Times or whatever, but a RL fashion industry trend-setter.

Then you began your palaver about stalkers. Like I’m going to stalk you? Huh? Go talk to your friend Nolan Nash if you want to find out what real stalking is, don’t ascribe that evil to me. I have absolutely no interest in tracking you or your real life.

So once again, I did not “lie,” Aimee and yes, indeed, you are being too narrowly literal and merely playing a bad-faith game of “gotcha”. You asked not to be named. You weren’t. I said you *did not give WWD your real identity* and I was absolutely right — you did not give them full-throated permission to use your real identity *and they didn’t*.

Your need to posture and bully me about a thing like this is amazing, Aimee. Your sure to have the tenacity peculiar only to the supremely self-involved or insecure (or both). You’re being called on it, so desist. You’re not the Prom Queen of SL.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 9th, 2005

Jauani, you persist, despite all evidence to the contrary and copious explanations, and even denials that you are doing this, to accuse me of some ill-conceived notion of a “tier donation scam”. Could you back that up, please? I’d be happy to give you a detailed notecard inworld that explains this program and how the tier donation LL US dollars paid at levels of 512 (free) or 1024 ($5) are *less than or no different at that level* than their cash equivalent in LL even with a lower GOM rate. For levels of about 2560, then it doesn’t make any sense because a tenant could pay less in lindens than in their US dollars to LL. But some people have reasons for wanting to pay anything — rarely, but it does happy. I don’t think any of the dozens of people who have donated tier to our groups in lieu of rent have the slightest concern about being “scammed”. I can give you a list of names to check with them if you like. Everyone knows this is just a slanderous and tendentious claim of yours based on some kind of wierd jealousy over my business or some desire just to heckle someone on what you believe to be a “weak spot”.

Your bandying around cynically of rhetorical flourishes like “proper votes for greater justice” show how much bad faith you have in this exercise and how you view it as a prank within a game. I don’t.

This persistent harassment of Cocoanut about the

First of all, let me note and interesting thing that happened in the group when you and your slew of FIC nasties bombed into the group. The record of the date and time of the proposals in the group for meetings was expunged — just deleted. Usually the proposals are archived. That record, which kept up reminders for several days for those logging on, shows the times scheduled of meetings in good faith first with officers, then with larger groups, in order to discuss the very format, structure, and rationale of elections.

Instead, what happened, is Anshe blew past all that because she wanted to move fast to cut off the radical flank, feed my cut-off head to the FIC, fold them into her own grouplet where she is the ONLY officer, close her group, bus in tenants on invitation-only, then hold “elections” and tell Robin Linden that she “represents a cross-section of SL”. Baloney. These are Bolshevik tactics. Anybody logging on and watching the groups for 3 days could see it.

I won’t embarass my one-time and still-current colleagues in these groups by publishing the entire transcript of all meetings, public and private, on August 31. Trust me, it’s all there. In smaller meetings the officers debated even having elections and most understood that they were not on the table and premature when there was not even a process to draft a proper statement of purpose and simple by-laws. Anshe muscled past the usual SL disarray of people AFK, on vacation, busy in RL, busy with customers in SL, and cobbled together and election plan with a trusted pal. The meeting that was supposed to be about even just discussing elections then suddenly got transformed to the elections themselves.

I know. Because Anshe herself told me in no uncertain terms to come in on the plot with her by bussing in my tenants. She told me to hurry up and get my tenants n the group because we’d have to close it. I said no, I don’t manipulate people like that. And I also had that day before written an email telling her: a) no secret sub-groups and plots and meetings without all officers present and b) a meeting to discuss the very charter/statement of purpose first before all else (to determine likemindedness and program).

People aren’t likeminded. So they go in different groups. The purpose of the MJW originally, as I understood it, was to frame a set of simple issues of “rule of the road” like the Linden ethics issue and the conflict of interests issue and the abuse of the abuse report system issue. We don’t agree on these issues in MJW as it stands. When there is that kind of fundamental split over major, major issues, we don’t need to — and indeed should not be — in the same group.

Even Verbena Pennyfeather, attempting to moderate among warring factions and portraying herself then as a moderate and moderator, in fact is not at all on the same page as Anshe Chung, me, or other original founders who did not agree with Verbena’s (and others on the forum) premise that no group can lobby SL for any changes in the world unless they represent a cross section of all SL groups.

I utterly disavow that concept. Special interest and single issue groups have the right to form and lobby. Linden Lab is grown up and can ignore them and let them cancel each other out. In fact, they’ve gone pretty far to accommodate them and even have a round table process (which in no way attempts to represent all of SL either, by the way).

I believe that groups should be small, that officers should invite each other and work together and trust each other first, and should make a statement of beliefs first in a group of 20 or 30 or so first before doing things like seeking mass membership and electing *from among their own number of original officers* the officers needed to perform functions like chairing meetings or recording minutes.

Verbena has now formed yet another group and you all joined in it — work in that one? You’re the one who discredited the founder of MJW, Anshe Chung, and screamed at Cocoanut for “living in the house that Anshe built”.

I’m still pondering this issue of the “house that Anshe built”. I’d like to take Anshe on good faith, despite her machinations of the last week, because I think she basically means well, but just comes from a culture of strong-arm tactics unacceptable in the free world.

Her original impulse was to take whatever power and prestige available to be organized inworld, and offer the hand of dialogue and partnership to LL rather than griefing and direct-action opposition. I think that was the right impulse, however discredited it became later — and discredited by those who suck up to the Lindens even worse.
pandastrong

Sep 9th, 2005

Aimee, Prok is also confusing the plural and singular again.

“People claimed in MJW tonight that in order to lead in SL, or speak to the media, you MUST disclosure your RL identity…”

Actually, Prok, it was ONE PERSON who stated this opinion. You did this in the meeting last night. You ascribe the actions of one person to a multitude.

Is this the same way that “us people” put a picture of a steak into the group icon field? As far as I know, only ONE PERSON can change the picture at a time. I didn’t realize that that type of colaboration was possible with the group tools.

ONE PERSON
ONE PERSON
ONE PERSON
ONE PERSON

kthxbye!
moi

Sep 9th, 2005

Here are the relevant comments from last night (see the transcript for context):

Prokofy Neva: OH, so then you feel the WWD mentioning Aimee, who didn’t give her RL name for the story, is um “desperate” of that writer? Thanks.
Aimee Weber: what?
Aimee Weber: i gave her my RL name
Prokofy Neva: but not for publication in the story because she made a point of putting in the story the bit about protecting avatar privacy
Aimee Weber: but i told her that there are some rather derranged people who have an unhealthy fixation on me, and that if she could avoid using it, i would prefer it for my safety
Prokofy Neva: or was that for Torrid? anyway it’s in there go look
Aimee Weber: she had my permission but also had my preference

Despite being corrected, you boldly stated here in SLHerald shortly after:

“Aimee herself said she didn’t give a reporter her RL identity because crazed obsess people might RL stalk her.”

I really don’t care what you think Prok. I just want readers to know where you are coming from when you make a something that sounds like a statement of fact. I can only correct the things you say about ME, But lord knows the story behind the many other “prokfacts” that come out of your mouth.
jauani

Sep 9th, 2005

“living in the house that anshe built”:
anshe, through hard work and the reputation and inteegrity she has displayed, created a group of one hundred members. then prokoky and her allies forced out anshe and her vision and took control of an undeserved agency that the group allowed.

cocopants, i did read your idiot history, some of them anyway. you don’t need to keep rewriting it unless your aim is to repeat it ad infinitum in hopes to convince everyone. people aren’t as stupid as you believe. in the end truth and justice will prevail.

forget the notecard. even prok says forget the notecard. we all read it on day one and in the forum. and it was a loose draft. now here is what i have to say about your sincerity:

yesterday we had a long chat moderated by verb, because once again you two clowns can’t get your act together in the most unfunny way. (verb for president!). we opened the discussion with discussing linden policy in regards to abuse reports and scrying – invisible avs and chat log reviews. should we be informed of it? or should we simply have assurances that only qualified upper level lindens can sanction this activity. this was important discussion.

quickly you two degenerated the discussion into the studid aimee aimee waah waah and jeska on a billboard! get a clue! there are more important issues affecting SL players than LL’s limited marketing strategy. this self centered platform that you have and a you bitterness towards other peoples succes is clouding your reasoning and your ability to help the player community. until you are ably to look past your own noses you will not get my support and i will refuse to give up the fight, for great justice.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 9th, 2005

Readers may check the veracity of Jauani’s statements (patently false) by simply reading the transcript of yesterday’s meeting. He and his fellow clowns just jeered and postured and politicked until finally they caved and started talking a little bit of sense under our pressure *shrugs*. Like I said, Verbena may have taken upon herself (unasked) the function of “mod,” but she is not any kind of valid intermediary because she herself believes that lobbying groups don’t have the right to seek change in SL unless they have what I view as a utopian and fake consensus of representative strata of SL. I don’t believe this. So we are not on the same page, and have very, very differentnotions of what lobbying is, and what the issues are. Trust me, the group I envision is a small group, with probably a decidedly minority opinion in it.

The business of the invisible Lindens and should we be informed of their activity remains a very opaque issue for me. It’s like the famous push scripts and Aimee and her anti-push sliders. If the scripts are meant to push, then an anti-push slider meant to allow some or all to foil it will simply lead to scripters surmounting it. If Lindens are meant to be invisible, then they are not going to ever tell you when they were deployed. I don’t get how we are supposed to deal with this problem by asking them to un-invisible themselves. We can ask them to provide us with some kind of reasonable policy about deployment. But this hasn’t been stated in those terms even now.

Anshe didn’t do any hard work to get the original set of members, she just sent out lots of invitations to her tenants. As we can see from past transcripts, a lot of them just clicked yes because it was their landlord and they thought it might be interesting or cool. A lot of day-trippers and gawkers poured in too. FIC types like Lordfly and Aimee came over to see if this was where the action was — nothing more. They’re in all the groups they think might be “where it’s at” to jockey for influence.

I’m going to keep right on the Jeska modeling issue like white on rice. It’s an emblematic issue and the more we discuss it and hear all the ramifications and complexities of it the more I realize I’m right to raise it. We don’t have a clear, unambiguous response from any of the parties involved that they recognize this was unfair and a conflict of interest and the boosting of one business versus others. It’s wrong. Most people — even all I dare say — in our original group said it was wrong. We didn’t have to argue about it — we all knew it was wrong. That consensus has broken down because there is an attempt by Jauani and his other wreckers and splitters to dilute and confuse the group. Under these conditions, it’s very important to stick the original notion that this is wrong, and that’s it, and there needs to be guidelines that say Lindens should not endorse residents’ busineses inworld.

As to the LL marketing strategy, we can’t stop LL the company form marketing whatever little residents they fete and love and want to promote. Indeed, that’s the implicit arrangement, no? You come and work your ass off for nothing or $4.00 US an hour, and we fete you to give you a kewl resume. This is the grand social contract of SL, and those of us that came along and said this is unfair to those giving the free labour and not getting enough protection of their creations, and those who aren’t getting the feting despite their own $4.00/hr type labour (or less! or for free!) have also been shafted.

The distinction comes between LL the company and its employees, and the LL creation SL which is called “a country”.

They just need to rotate the damn website.

Efforts to dismiss the Jeska issue or similar issues and not draw up strict policy proposals based on them are indicative of the dilution of the group with FIC issues. Sorry, but I’m for purity of doctrine on this very vital issue and not for compromising.

Every political situation has its plantados, people who stand firmly and won’t compromise on some fundamental issue. So split off, Jauani, and make your own movement, party, or group. I personally want to continue to try to take a stand for the soul of the group, and frankly for the soul of Anshe, who I believe at root to be someone not just selfishly seeking power, but genuinely trying to help provide a service to this world. I don’t chose to work with her because I don’t like her methods and her culture and her ideas of how groups work, but I can only watch and hope her own efforts to make groups succeed in reflecting the interests of her, her tenants, and whatever cronies she can muster.

You, however, Jauani, are a fraud. You have no intention of doing anything sincere, you are merely destructive and attempt to malign and belittle me and smear me with this ridiculous charge of “pyramid scheming”. For shame!
Prokofy Neva

Sep 9th, 2005

I haven’t been corrected at anything, moi. I’m truly puzzled at how you can print a transcript that I myself published, and claim you’ve gotten a “gotcha” on me, that old FIC sport. You haven’t. Aimee asked the reporter not to reveal her identity. She didn’t. I said she didn’t give her RL name. Aimee, the tekkie literalist trying to play gotcha, makes it out to mean in some infinitely narrow construction that if she literally gave her name to the lady but then told her not to use it, that is still “giving her name.”

But I’m here to tell you that is literal tekkie sophistry and it really isn’t giving your name, duh. When you give your name to a reporter, it is implicit that you mean it FOR USE. To give it on BACKGROUND ONLY is not giving it FOR USE. Therefore it is not GIVING PERMISSION FOR IT. That is how it is understood. Aimee is just trying to tap-dance her way around this by protesting “I did so gave her my name” — as if that counts!!!! — when I’m pointing out that she did NOT GIVE HER NAME FOR PUBLICATION SO IT DOESN’T COUNT DUH.

I don’t CARE if she didn’t. But she doesn’t get credit for giving a name without ALSO giving the permission to publish it. Jeez. That ought to be abundantly obvious.

There’s a Russian expression for this kind of phenom: “sitting on a boner and eating a fish and then saying you won’t choke on a bone” (it rhymes in Russian and it’s a crude way of saying “having your cake and eating it too.”

If I had said this in the haste of writing a group IM: “Aimee said herself she didn’t give a reporter PERMISSION TO USE her RL identity because crazed obsessed people might stalk her” Aimee, that little sophist, wouldn’t be able to even post her nonsense. But I submit that even without that phrase in bold PERMISSION TO USE it’s clear, it’s obvious, and she’s tap-dancing.

Heimlich maneuver?
Cocoanut

Sep 9th, 2005

“anshe, through hard work and the reputation and inteegrity she has displayed, created a group of one hundred members. then prokoky and her allies forced out anshe and her vision and took control of an undeserved agency that the group allowed.”

A total and unmitigated lie. What else can I say. Rave on. There is really nothing I or anyone else can do about a pathological chronic liar constantly spouting off just to admire his own outrageous words. I guess it’s how you keep yourself entertained.

I don’t CARE if “even” Prok says forget the notecard. Does it matter to me if Prok says that, if he did? No. I’ve presented the fact that I joined the group because of that notecard, and that notecard was what was presented to Philip Linden.

We had NO chat moderated by Verbena. Verbena moderated not a thing. Verbena CONTRIBUTED to said chat, once she joined it. Just like everyone else in the group channel did.

Now hear this, everyone: Verbena did not moderate any chat.

All you exist to do in that group is cause its disruption and make it as ineffective as you can, and you know it. You want simply to grief it, and to cause me grief as well, and you know it. And anyone else you don’t like. And I strongly suspect that includes Anshe as well.

From now on, I will simply refer people to my original post.

coco
Prokofy Neva

Sep 10th, 2005

I don’t believe I said “forget the notecard,” and if I did, I certainly didn’t mean “forget the draft principles with which we first began this group. That’s silly. I most certainly do not. I was merely trying to get people to see that their continued circulation of notecards draft under very rushed and incomplete situation, or any sense that they had “missed out” by not seeing some notecard of 2 weeks ago, was misplaced.

I stand by every single word we first drafted and sent to Philip, and the next notecard, which were talking points readied for Philip. But these are not a statement of principles — it’s just an email to a game king and just a draft of talking points readied very hastily in a group of 10 people that dependend on who was online, who was on first, etc. etc. It can’t really be used to try to gather support or clarity in this group. That’s all. A real statement of principles and program of action etc needs to be drafted normally by a group of likeminded people sitting down and doing that work and getting the draft and compromise and consensus they need — not by pitching everything in inventory drags and voice-voting it in this nonce “group” of gawkers and griefers.

As for Verbena, I think she did, in the nonce group with the chance onliners, try to moderate between what she saw as “opposing strong egos” or whatever she saw from her own sense of her superior vantage point.” And the FIC types (and I’m going to put Jauani in that group) loved that because they thought she was “not one of their own” but “going to obtain legitimacy” because she was going to be the “voice of reason”.

This kind of no-nonsense busy-body approach, with its implicit sense of superiority and arrogance, doesn’t work for me as legitimacy. I’ll add that having considerable RL status and clout by being a First Responder and getting deployed to Iraq and so on is also to me not a way in my book that you take over a group in a virtual world, whatever your merits in the real world. In fact, it’s just that use of RL credentials in the virtual world that the virtual world is supposedly supposed to mitigate with its virtuality. It rarely succeeds at that enterprise, but that’s no reason why anyone who comes along and decides to reveal their RL credentials as “currency in the virtual realm” should “take over” and “chair meetings from my sense of being superior and surrounded by idiots”. Some of us just don’t chose to reveal and promote our RL identities and credentials and that’s how it is supposed to be IMHO.

A Verbena type of person (I hardnly know her and don’t intend to single her out as an individual for any slam) can win legitimacy with me in a virtual world when I can see what she does virtually in it, that I can measure by my own measuring stick in that virtual world, which has to do with hard work, long hours, commitment, service, etc. Using the virtual world as a 3-D resume showcase to enhance yourself both in RL and SL, to do reputation-enhancement activities around hurricane relief, etc. to me isn’t what the world is about — although I do recognize for many that is what they’d like it to be and what it will be for them.

I think we’ll going to see lots of people jockeying to pitch to the media or to the Lindens their visions of what this virtual world can be. For some, it’s a game or a social space and the idea that you can find online love partners and try them out virtually first will be very attractive — they will probably make up the mass of users given everyone’s need to find love and play house. For others, the idea of a world-creation space where you can be a game dev junior and make clothing or vehicles or infrastructure like third-party shopping sites will seem very attractive, so that they make up the feted inner core with the game company, while keeping a rather superior, and often sarcastic attitude toward those in the first category who see it as a relationship vehicle and a householding game. For yet others, it will be a tool or platform that enables them to do things like help disabled or mentally ill patients, or troubled youth, or plan scenarios like first-responding in a hurricane. They may find those first two world types as really getting in the way of their purpose, but they’re likely to put themselves on secret sims anyway — or else jockey for position to impress the Lindens as being “the serious customers” that make those householders and prefab designers “a little less serious”.

The Lindens, faced with all these competing agendas and seeing them more fully than any of us, will retain their sense of superiority morally and intellectually just as much as financially or proprietarily, but that’s going to bear watching because they aren’t the only people or the only company to create the metaverse.

I think this situation is a reason why a variety of different interest groups must arise and pursue the identification and lobbying of their interests.
Joe Public

Sep 10th, 2005

“This kind of no-nonsense busy-body approach, with its implicit sense of superiority and arrogance, doesn’t work for me as legitimacy.”

Hah…another priceless profokyism!
jauani

Sep 11th, 2005

wow! now, after almost 8 months, i have been labelled fic? so now we have the true definition… fic means disagreeing with prokofy! LOL! ROFLMAO! ABC 123 DOREME! FASOLATI!

the notecard talked nothing about the jeska billboards or aimee aimee waah waah. but now it’s a central issue? the notecard did talk about lindens’ ability to invade players privacy, but that is not a central issue? no wonder nobody takes you seriously. you are trying to stand without any legs!

Prok, instead of trying to run me out to run your self centred and hateful campaign under the MJW, i suggest you start your own group. that trick you pulled on anshe won’t work on me.

cocopants, as it so happens, anshe and i have been inworld associates for over a year and i think she is swell. so while it’s funny for me to have you call me a liar in your efforts to maintain your dillusions, i really resent that you are trying to tarnish my friendship with anshe. i didn’t think you were such a low life. i guess you have had some bad influences in your second life
jauani

Sep 11th, 2005

on the one hand, aimee’s rl credentials seem to be central to prokofy’s obsession. on the other hand, verbena’s rl credentials seem to be irrelevant.

prok, perhaps you should offer some rl credentials yourself. so far your sl credentials don’t seem to be earning much respect in the group or sl at large
Cocoanut

Sep 12th, 2005

Then Jauani, you should try not to keep making me repeat the events that occured that weekend. It was all in the heat of the moment, and, though not acceptable and recognized as too rushed, even by the one rushing, is a one-time thing and doesn’t need to be repeated every time you spread the false version.

I really don’t feel like dragging those things over the coals much longer, and if what you say is true, you really shouldn’t want me to.

coco
Prokofy Neva

Sep 12th, 2005

Jauani, my point is that people are illegimitate using RL credentials in a realm where a) privacy is guaranteed and supposed to be heeded, b) many people don’t wish to bandy about their RL credentials and c) we have no way of really checking what any shadowy Internet avatar person says about any RL credentials.

So someone who brandishes RL credentials to get people in SL to pay attention is overstepping the bounds of the world for many. Further, people can’t trust that it is true without a lot more violation of that person’s privacy. I find the whole effort to brandish RL credentials to be a false one in bad faith at the get-go. The whole point of Second Life is to be a second life. There’s a funny combination of people with no RL credentials obtaining SL credentials and visa versa, or both. It’s hard to draw the line. But one can for the sake of integrity keep pointing out that people who attempt to one up themselves over others using RL credentials are bouncing a check nobody can cash.

I hardly see what on earth you could mean about “my obesssion with Aimee’s RL credentials”. People often claim I’m “obsessed” with Aimee (ugh) merely because I stand up to her shenanigans. I point out the obvious .She doesn’t have RL credentials as a clothes designers. She makes websites for a living and has some technical and graphical capability that she has transferred to this game. Ok, so what? That’s great. She was able to become a big deal in a game without any RL credentials…but it is a game, and others with real RL credentials will no doubt come along to supercede her. Plus, there are plenty of others in the game who have the same type of SL credentials and they are passed over or not feted. And sooner or later, as more and more people come in the game and ask more and more questions about the unfairness of the Lindens touting some at the expense of others, certain designers of equal or greater merit will come to the fore, this is just nature. It’s just about rotating the goddamn website. I don’t get why that is so goddamned difficult.

I’m not at all required to provide any RL credentials, and I don’t rise to such bait by such low-lifes as Jauani Wu. Futhermore, your claim that my “SL credentials” such as they are “don’t seem to be earning much respect in the group or SL at large” is false — and you’re hardly an authority on this anyway. For the life of me, I’ve never understood why a little clique from SimArts with their adopted mascot J-Wu think they can try to ruin my SL in all sorts of ways, publishing RL info, harassing and heckling me, mocking me on forums and making false accusations. Don’t you have lives?

I have a certain amount of respect in SL and even among some in this group you’re trying to hijack. But it isn’t a game of dissing and gathering points, like some ghetto gang warfare. Grow up, Jauani. Find something to do either in RL or in SL that keeps you busy and keeps you occupied so that you don’t have to feel such a need to come and snipe at others.

You are FIC, yes, Jauani, you’ve decided to throw in your lot with them and gang them into the group. It’s pretty transparent. I guess you’re finally playing that game that Cienna Samiam and others played so pathetically, which is to be a wannabee FIC and gain your FIC credentials by slamming me. So glad I can serve the purpose of serving as your springboard, loser.

Duh, the notecard of talking points for Phil didn’t talk about specific cases like Jeska because it would have sounded really picayune to spend a meeting with such an important person on the actions of one staff member. Rather, we were able to unify these concerns into overarching themes, Jauani. I know these intellectual feats are beyond you, but if you look closely, you’ll find that the overarching theme of ethics and promotion of businesses at the expense of others is indeed the overall header under which a singleton incident like Jeska modeling fits. So trust me, not only did it go in there, it was raised again forcefully per se as an incident in the community meeting with Robin et. al. (and got a rather lame answer I might add but that’s the topic of a separate post).

The invisible Linden thing was something Anshe put on there from the beginning and hyped. I don’t recally anyone else in this first edition of MJW caring about it so much. Again, how can you prove you are the target of an invisible Linden watching over you? And more to the point, if the point of invisible Lindens is to pursue some legitimate LL goal of monitoring grief, etc. how can we as players ask them to then inform us each time they invisibly watch us? That kinda defeats the purpose, no?

So again, Jauani, this was the subject of the overarching concept of ethics, ethical guidlines and policies that would serve as the guide for such activities as invisible monitoring. When we see what these are, we can peruse it with an eye to how they might structure their actions when doing invisible monitoring.

I have absolutely no intention of starting another group. I joined a group with a certain purpose and understanding, and I don’t get why I have to be forced out of it by forum fuckwits ganged into it by Jauani Wu, who has some obscure grudge or jealousy or something against me and keeps yammering nonsense.

You’re the low-life Jauani for making false accusations against Coco and now raising some crap about her allegedly tarnishing
your relationship with Anshe. Huh? I wonder if you are at all aware of all your own statements. You’re the one that berated Coco for “staying in the house that Anshe built” as if this was some kind of taint or crime. So please, spare me.

Jauani, you are a fraud.
jauani

Sep 12th, 2005

so FIC status comes from disagreeing with or slamming prok. does that mean that there was no FIC when prok first started her campaign against it? Is prok the initial seed of the FIC? did proks hatred create the FIC? This is like a strange star trek paradox episode.

prok i can assure you i have no jealousy or grudge with you. had you not tried to co-opt a group i was in with your evil machinations, i would have continued to ignore and avoid you. you have sparked this animosity by first trying to push me out of the group as you did to anshe, then attacking my character on your blog, corrupting the groups goals to fit your personal ambitions, and then raising an insincere player like cocao to officer status to grief the group.

it has come out inworld that you have already started your secret meetings with your new group. why don’t you just focus your energies there and leave the rest of us alone? thank you.
Prokofy Neva

Sep 12th, 2005

No, there has always been a FIC and I merely identified it. Your FIC status comes from adopting all the techniques used by the FIC like bullying, lying, defrauding, etc. in a jockeying for power, and your willing to curry favour with some of the worst of the forum FIC for your unspecified selfish ends.

I didn’t try to “push you out of the group,” I merely exposed your bad behaviour. You’ve consistently lied and misrepresented what happened in the initial round of the group, and bullied and hectoried and taunted Cocoanut. She’s utterly sincere, by contrast with your conniving insincerity, and she began as officer in the group, duh, and left in protest against your shenanigans, then I promoted her back because she shouldn’t be bulled out in that way.

You’re the griefer, Jauani, along with your FIC friends, as the record shows.

And one of the reason your reputation has so deteriorated in people’s eyes is that you’re willing to write some crap about me supposedly “starting secret meetings with my new group”. Huh? What new group? What secret meetings? Where do you get off putting out outright lies like that, Jauani? I challenge you to come up with any evidence of this false charge.

I’m willing to wait for you to tire of this latest plaything and move on to your next sandbox. Why not get a job or build a house or something.