This is the 16th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I bumped into Olmia while I was doing some photography at the ABC Island sandbox tower. She was fun to talk to, and I was able to talk her into telling us a bit more about herself.

This is the second in a series of largely demographic interviews that will be conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.

I've run into Nightbird Glineux a few times lately, she's been coming to my office-hours inworld. She's thoughtful and self-effacing, and still sees herself as very junior, despite having joined Second Life in November.

I had the chance to meet Marshall Kirkpatrick, of Splashcast, back in March at SXSW. We had a long talk about the service that they offer and how it could possibly help Second Lifers. Hamlet Au, of New World Notes, actually created a Second Life Machinima channel back in January that was featured on the site. I see a lot of potential here as a way to show off our work without taking up a lot of space.

What is Splashcast? It's a different way to share media. You can display pictures from Flickr, audio, and even videos from YouTube. You can also upload your own media. It is then turned into a slideshow of sorts that you can widely distribute with the click of a button.

I've been meaning to re-upload the old Grid Review Machinimas that I made ages ago, so this was the perfect opportunity. After a grueling four hour upload process to YouTube, I was able to load all of the links into Splashcast to make a show. Now I'm able to bring them to you in all of their glory! Have you made a show or channel? Share the link in a comment!

The Community Standards say: "Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M)." (My emphasis)

Robin Linden, on what is appropriate to be flagged as adult content which was still to be permitted in Second Life: "adult content is that which is overtly, graphically, or explicitly sexual in nature or intensely violent." (May 10)

Daniel Linden, on what is forbidden content: "Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors; real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life." (May 31)

In an email interview with Hamlet Au, Daniel Linden says: "There is no new policy in yesterday's blog posting-- our Community Standards have always prohibited broadly offensive behavior." (June 1)

Except that's not what they say, Daniel. What they do expressly prohibit is intolerance.

Tell me, gentle readers. Do you feel that Linden Lab has changed stance? Or do you agree with Daniel Linden that Linden Lab's position remains unchanged. If the latter, do you think Linden Lab's position was never adequately communicated in the first place?

South by Southwest, or SXSW for short, is rapidly approaching. Scheduled for March 9th-18th in Austin, Texas, it is an annual festival that celebrates music, movies, and web development. Attended by over 10,000 people from all over the world, it is a staple of Austin tourism. It is known for giving bands their big break and panelists major credibility.

Some of our very own Second Life residents will be speaking on panels there, including Spin Martin, Aren Mandala, Hamlet Au, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, Zero Grace, SnoopyBrown Zamboni, Reuben Tapioca/MillionsofUs, qDot Bunnyhug, Walker Spaight, RC Mars, and Jade Lily. The topics they are covering vary wildly, such as Your Video Blog Can Save the World, Terraforming the Internet: When 3d Models Meet Business Models, Avatar-Based Marketing in Synthetic Worlds, On the Edge of Independant User-Creation in Gamespace, Sex and Computational Technology, Web 2.0 to Web 3D, Gamers Games: Microcontent and User Creation, and American Cancer Society: Applying Technology for the Nonprofit Sector. Other residents rumored to be attending are Max Case, Jeremy Neumann, Glitchy Gumshoe, and myself.

There is a group in Second Life, appropriately named "SXSW'ers". If you are interested in attending and would like to hear about meetups, join that group. For now, I'm just askin' if you're going! Well ... are you?

I hadn't been in-world all day today, so this completely escaped my notice, but sharp-eyed Sushi Bligh sends this image in, which I have darkened and sharpened to make evident.

What would the great man think of Second Life? I'm with Hamlet Au in today's New World Notes: it's true that racial issues seem to be a non-consideration, given that residents may choose to appear however they want to. However, is that true equality? Is submerging RL ethnicity behind an avatar the same thing as being open about one's color? I'm reminded of a past NWN article, and wonder if this is a new world we've made for ourselves, or just the same one we've always had.

For those of you living under a rock as far as Second Life news is concerned, there's a new media firestorm about Second Life: Resident numbers. The smoking gun starts a grass fire as journalists scramble to acquire credibility by jumping onto the bandwagon of questioning numbers. Everyone loves a good scandal.

This begs the real question, though. The media circus is obfuscating a more important issue with the numbers.

The debate rages. Clay Shirky, Wagner James Au and others going backwards and forwards about what all the numbers mean. Signups, active residents, paying accounts, free accounts, verified accounts, unverified accounts and alts.

And why all the big running around with numbers like one million? Two million? Are those arbitrary and essentially meaningless milestones, or do they actually have some particular meaning?

Yes. To both. That's not as confusing as it might seem, if you think it through a little ...

Internet analyst Clay Shirky recently wrote a piece on inflated press hype that caused some controversy, and New World Notes' Hamlet Au has responded with a mighty rebuff. For completeness' sake, here's Hamlet's post on the piece.

It's a lengthy piece that applauds Shirky's initial point (that the media needs to carefully check its facts and figures before running off with a sensational story about SL's resident retention rates and overall population numbers), while at the same time taking him to task for a number of supporting statements. The article is chock-full of links to past NWN articles (well worth reading in any case), and also features a graph by Our Tateru (who Hamlet calls his 'demographitrix') that supports his thesis: Clay is correct in the broad sense, yet diffuse in the details.

Although Shirky does make a comment after the piece, we've yet to see a full rebuttal of Hamlet's article. I hope it's forthcoming; this is something that needs to be talked about, and LL sure ain't doing too much of it.

[UPDATE: Added missing attribution] Judge Richard Posner, author of Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, will be discussing his thoughts on the Constitution and signing virtual copies of his book on December 7th, between 6 - 8 PM, SL Time at the Kula Center Auditorium. New World Notes scribe Hamlet Au will be doing his interview, which is hosted by the Creative Commons group. For more information, go check out the article at NWN.

This should be good, and I hope Prokofy attends this, as Judge Posner takes some fairly hard-line stances in his book about the expansion of goverment power in this new era of increased terrorism.

I'm also interested in who contacted him to request his presence in SL. Great idea, and bravo for him to agree to do it.

(Via OUPblog)

Aimee posted about this before, and it looks like it's that much closer to being a reality. Michael Rymaszewski, along with Wagner James Au (that's Hamlet Au to you), Mark Wallace, Catherine Winters, Cory Ondrejka, and Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham have written the Official Guide to SL. This is available on Amazon for $23.09, and the " ... CD includes special animations, character templates, and textures created by Linden Lab exclusively for this book. The disc also guides new users through the installation and includes a code that grants a special object the first time they enter the metaverse."

This is mighty intriguing ... special object? I'm dying to get my paws on a copy of this book, and I congratulate the authors on its completion, though I notice that its actual publication date seems to vary between websites that offer it for sale. Wiley.com ($34.99) offers a date of December 2006, and bookpool.com ($18.95) says November. Perhaps the printers are experiencing update issues?

Bastion of free-thinking gamers everywhere, Joystiq has posted an article about racial harmony in MMOs, and it got me thinking. It's not just gender that residents play with in SL, is it? Unless there's a RL photo attached to someone's profile, we don't know who's driving that avatar. Sometimes not even then. It's a given that men sometimes play women and women men, but how often does someone play a different ethnicity than their own?

Hamlet Au on the inimitable New World Notes once wrote a piece peripherally about this. I've heard direct, racially derogatory comments toward others in the Shelter. Let's not forget the continuing remarks Furries receive regularly. Race is still an issue, even in a world where one can look like anything one can imagine. I'd have hoped that, as a society, we'd have grown beyond this by this time, or at least have put this behind us when creating our utopias, but I've been wrong about many things.

If anyone'd like to comment on their experiences with racism, consider this your forum to do so.

(Via Joystiq)