Comic - Webcomic Secrets

Well, lots of people have asked how the comics are done, so...

Comic - Meeting People

Enjoy :)

10K-2

We peaked on time tonight (Sunday nights, concurrent population peaks about an hour earlier than other nights of the week). At 6:50pm we peaked at 10,170.

I believe the median data will be very high for the day. It's certainly quite high for the previous day.

10K

At 5:54pm today, we passed 10,000 users inworld. Waiting to see where we peak.

On celebrity and bullies

I don't know quite when I became a celebrity. I don't actually even know why. I seem to be famous for being famous. Well-known for being well-known.

It's not exactly comfortable at times. At times my conversations are bugged by listening devices, my doings discussed on voice-chat, the things I do and the things I say subjected to interminable public discussion, analysis and debate, both inworld and outworld.

Sometimes I'm mobbed by people wanting to talk to me. Other times, I'm told that people are too scared to say hello and speak to me, and sometimes I just get plain criticised and bullied.

Bullies are a minority, but they exist in Second Life, just as anywhere else. The bully's tool, as always, is violence. Violence in actions, emotions, or words. The bully's goal is to attempt to modify your behaviour by use of this force, to make you subservient to his or her will.

On my thirteenth day in-world, I was IMed by a bully, and sent a dose of venom that all but had me quit SL on the spot. It was someone I'd never heard of, but they've been a repeated part of my Second Life ever since. I had no idea who the person was, or even really what it was all about. I was so...shocked, as a new resident to receive such a serving of viputeration – such hate.

I sat there in tears for a minute, and was reaching for CONTROL-Q, ready to abort my Second Life, when I got another random IM from someone whom I had never met, but whose name I had seen. She said some very encouraging things to me – apparently unaware of the onslaught that I'd just received...and because of that, I stayed.

That same bully has been with me ever since – I've since learned who the person is, and know more about them – and they're not alone. People look me up inworld occasionally to tell me just how much they loathe this or that thing that I may or may not have said or done – some are bullies, some are misinformed. Some are obviously both. I get more criticism about things that people think I've done that for things that I've actually done.

The lesson here, though, is not to let someone compel your behaviour by violence, in any form. Physical violence, digital violence, emotional or verbal violence. If you let others control you in this way, you cannot make your own choices, and if you cannot make your own choices, you cannot be true to yourself.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Misfiled

I think that this probably shouldn't have wound up here. :)

Pardon the dust

Sorry about the mess, and mind you don't fall over anything. Upgrading to blogger beta - and things are still a little disarrayed. Be thou not dismayed unduly.

Numbers

I keep getting asked about the population figures I keep. Well, I've got a bundle of them in a database. What can I say? I like databases.

I've exported the figures for general use.

If you're interested in the population figures for the last 24 hours ending midnight GMT, then they are here.

Or you can provide a date if you're after the figures for a specific day.

I need to generate some graphs and projected curves, still.

Weltenshauung

Nowhere do you see the Observer-Expectancy effect, the Subject-Expectancy effect or apophenia than on the internet, and when you bring diverse people into a formative culture, the signs of it become too obvious to miss.

Second Life is like a giant placebo in many respects, or a nocebo - depending entirely on your perspective.

What is Second Life? A game? Yes it is, because if you only judge it based on it's game elements (noting that most game elements in any game are imposed by the player, not the game) then it's certainly a game.

Is it a platform? Well, yes. You could primarily focus on those elements.

A sandbox? Yes.

A social experiment? Yes.

A country? Yes.

A dark conspiracy? Yes.

Deus ex machina? Yes.

Each point of view requires the exclusion or diminution of certain aspects of Second Life. That's up to you, of course, since that happens inside your head.

Reflexivity is an undeniable fact of Second Life. Well - unless you do deny it. Your own perceptions can make it cease to exist within your personal weltenshauung.

What you get out of Second Life is a bit like the double-slit experiment coupled with a heaping helping of Observer-Expectency effect. It really depends on what you put in as to what you get out, and how you view and interpret the results.

In an environment rich with subjective interpretation, apophenia abounds. In a sense, Second Life really is Your World as they say, in much the same way that a Rorshach inkblot is entirely dependent on the viewer.

A new resident comes into Second Life and they're faced with what is probably the most difficult thing they've ever done. There's a complex interface in front of them; A formative, distributed society of - well disparate and distributed societies; Complicated concepts wrapped in obscure slang; A world that is too large to see all of, and that is constantly changing; An open ended system that delivers satisfaction based solely on the resident's ability to select her own path and goals, and stick to them.

Second Life may well be the first piece of non-business software that a resident has been exposed to after minesweeper and freecell.

At best, our residents are not going to see more than a portion of what's going on in Second Life, from day to day, and they're going to see patterns. People see patterns in everything, because that's what our brains do.

More so, we see the patterns we expect to see, and our brains are adept at discarding or distorting data that does not fit.

One thing you can be sure of is that none of us see Second Life as it is. None of us can. What it is, however, is amorphous enough that our position, circumstances and point-of-view greatly affects what we see it as. There are so many diverse elements and aspects that you can focus on. Second Life might be a dull place to you - or a place full of greed and selfishness.

It doesn't have to be.

Just because these things exist, it doesn't mean you have to dwell on them in your second life any more than they deserve, any more than you might feel compelled to make prions the central fact of your first life.

Identity And Appearance, Redux, Redux

How about this, Erbo?


I use this from time to time - particularly when I'm working in certain parts of the grid. Does it change your perception of me, now that you've already had a chance to form a first impression?

Appreciation

Being that it's Liaison Appreciation Week, I wanted to send a little present on. Nothing like what you'd call special, but something to show my thanks. Most of you know that I'm big on appreciating liaisons, already.

Well, Kenny Linden was next on my list. SEARCH > PEOPLE ... Umm. What?

Turns out Kenny's gone.

Well, burning curiousity aside, I wouldn't ask - and if I did, likely nobody would tell me anyway. His business is his business.

Well - I've got a few things to say. Things I'd like to say to Kenny directly - but that's no longer possible. Superman has doffed the red-and-blue figure-hugging body-stocking, put on his tie and glasses and returned to being Clark Kent. I can only hope there's a Lois Lane or Lana Lang in it for him.

In the absence of any more direct form of communication...

Occasional disagreements and misunderstandings notwithstanding, it's been a singular pleasure working with you, and watching you ride to the rescue day after day. You will be missed, and I believe that you made a good and significant contribution to SL as Kenny Linden, and that you'll still be a positive force in your alter-ego.

I don't know if this will get to you, but I hope it does.

I think well of you, for what it's worth, and so do others - although not everyone might think to say so.

Thank you for your service to us, the community. For saving the day, time after time. For wrestling with hundreds of IM tabs. For being understanding. For putting up with one or two of my more spectacularly foolish errors.

Sunset

Don't go thinking that I'm necessarily going to be doing regular comic strips. Just if an idea hits me and I have the time, okay? Here's another one, anyway:

Reactions and Immediacy

The internet gives a certain...immediacy to people and events. Turnaround times are faster, and it comes right into our homes, places of work, purses, briefcases and pockets. We're not seeing a person on television talking about things that happened earlier. We're getting something more raw.

It's not overpolished, and it's right there. We feel more like participants or witnesses to events and actions.

That generally makes us like the characters in the seventies disaster film of your choice. We polarise to one of two extremes: Overreaction, or overinaction.

What's going on in our virtual worlds can be so immediate and so present that it can be hard to maintain any objective distance. The ease with which we can respond doesn't give you the sort of time to cool - to think about things; to take a deep breath and put it all in perspective.

Conversely, many (most?) people confronted with something unexpected will freeze. There's no practised response to the unexpected. No rehearsed plan. That often leads us down the path of completely inappropriate behaviour.

We fall back on habit - perhaps this might be considered a truer expression of self, perhaps not; answers on a postcard - and ultimately commence a behaviour that is well-remembered, familiar and probably wrong. Our news media and fiction are full of examples of these.

Either the course of action we choose in response to the unexpected avoids addressing the problem, or meets the problem with an exaggerated response that similarly fails partially or completely to address what is going on.

You can see examples of this everywhere. Not a single one of us is immune to this particular safety mechanism that nature has provided for us. We can - and do - overcome it, but imperfectly, and not necessarily all that frequently.

Examples are everywhere. Think about them.

New Citizens Inc

At approximately 7pm SLT, a resident with officer permissions invited several other people to the New Citizens Inc group, and proceeded to eject all non-member residents in the group, and change the group insignia to an inappropriate image - presumably for the sake of a couple of cheap laughs. The resident had not been invited into NCI as an officer, but joined using a group invite exploit several weeks ago.

Linden Lab stepped in quickly to correct matters, and the rogue residents were handled swiftly and professionally. At no time were NCI's funds or land assets in any jeopardy.

If you have been ejected as a member of the group, please do not take it personally. 655 residents were ejected from the group, and this was not - apparently a discriminatory process. Every non-officer member was ejected. We invite you to rejoin. NCI is an open enrollement group; you may rejoin anytime by using SEARCH > GROUPS > NEW CITIZENS INC > (SEARCH) and selecting JOIN NOW.

We do not anticipate any further problems with the group, and I apologise on behalf of the group officers for any inconvenience, disturbance or distress that this incident may have caused you.

Guest strip

I did a guest strip for Plywood yesterday. Had the creative Spark, and had to use it.

Playing Secret Santa

At last it chaunced this proud Sarazin
To meete me wandring, who perforce me led
With him away, but yet could neuer win
The Fort, that Ladies hold in soueraigne dread.
There lies he now with foule dishonour dead,
Who whiles he liu'de, was called proud Sans foy,
The eldest of three brethren, all three bred
Of one bad sire, whose youngest is Sans ioy,
And twixt them both was borne the bloudy bold Sans loy.

It's not hard to have fun in SL, day after day. Get to know some people, maybe connect with a peer group. Get comfy with the basics. Find out what's where. And keep a relatively moderate attitude. I've yet to be hit on the head with a piece of sky, after all.

Getting to that point – aye, there's the rub.

Assume you don't have a lot of time to spend inworld. You want to bounce in, have a bit of fun, and see a couple really cool things. What do you do, Philip? That's right. You ask someone :)

Until we form our own monkeyspheres, our time in SL is a series of encounters – a bit like Spenser's The Faerie Queene. (Even after, but our monkeyspheres help cushion us from the effects of the poorer ones)

Retention in SL is like Secret Santa (we call it Kris Kringle, where I come from) – you know the office thing where people draw names out of a hat and get them gifts? Well, it's like that.

In the short-term, retention predicates on a series of random encounters, and their cost, benefit and the perceived risk of the next encounter. An encounter may be good (benefit) or bad (cost) or both. The human mind will look for patterns to predict the next encounter to determine risk. When the predicted risk/reward ratio falls off, the resident leaves SL – perhaps for a time. Perhaps forever.

There's the person-to-person interaction. There's also person-to-environment. The environment is all that stuff that you don't know or have a chance of getting wrong or have a chance of misunderstanding. Costs involve getting a box stuck on your head. Making a fool of yourself. Feeling like you made a fool of yourself, even if that isn't so. Smacking into the side of a building. Jumping instead of talking. Benefits are...well, benefits are results that please you :)

We can reasonably assume that a resident's early person-to-environment interaction will be poor. There's a lot to learn, and every block of unit-time that they spend trying to learn, or relearn without corresponding benefits is a downside.

This works to magnify the bad-experiences risk when we go to person-to-person.

If you're frustrated with an unfamiliar interface, perhaps artificially high expectations and suffering poor machine performance due – perhaps – to overoptimistic default settings, it's only going to take one or two poor experiences to make you think that Second Life is not for you.

One bad experience with a volunteer. Another with an SL resident, and risk vs reward would be pretty low. Add any technical difficulties, and you've jumped the shark for your new resident.

In my last community gig, someone at the table would now be saying something like “So, how can we maximise the subjectively-assessed customer-valued monkeysphere opportunities?”

A bit of unnecessarily dense piece of corporate newspeak, but the point is there.

Philip? You go the Secret Santa route when you're looking to kick back in your limited time on the grid. You ask someone. And you've got enough experience to assess whether you've been steered well, or been handed a dud.

At the outset our new residents are likely too proud or too shy or both to necessarily do that asking, and too lacking in any basis for comparison to tell what is a fine example of what SL has to offer, and what isn't.

Secret Santa works better for the experienced – and we can always fall back on our monkeyspheres.

How does the new resident find what is (necessarily) subjectively enjoyable and cool?

How does the new resident expand their monkeysphere before the risk/reward ratio bottoms out? How to increase the odds of a positive experience?

How do we use the strengths of SL to help us with the answers?

Some of the solutions are technical, others are social - and none of it gets improved overnight.

Back on deck

Upright again. Over the worst of the influenza and I'm now into pneumonia.

Actually, it's something of a relief. Admittedly, everything feels achey, or raw, inside and out, and it hurts to breath...but I swear, it's an improvement over how I was feeling over the weekend.

Plus, I can sit at my desk and type.

Taking it easy. Doing well.

Just finished a new art project. Something done inworld for display outworld.

Wait and see!

Febrile Thoughts II

Sick. Too ill to talk. Too feverish and shaky to really type more than a word a minute, or to sit up for long.

Hopefully I will be over this, soon.

Luck. Nobody sell the grid.

EDIT: after retyping it a couple times it comes out in english

Not with a whimper...

Well, the forums are on the way out, it seems.

It also appears that the rules are pretty much out the window now. People who were already disinclined to follow the forum guidelines have realised they've no longer got much of anything to lose by breaking them.

It's like watching rioting looters, crossed with catwalk models.

There's probably some good people in that welter trying to have some worthwhile discussions. Pity they've been so few and far between lately.

So, it looks like the rough-and-tumble of the forums is going out with a bang - only barely anyone will actually notice.

Many of you are only becoming aware of the existance of the forums now from the blog entries about it's impending closure. There's an irony there. Most SL Residents will probably never find out.

It's not pretty in there right now, but if you've wondered why they're being closed, there's probably no better time to get a clear picture. Just mind what you step in.

The dance of numbers

Okay, 401,841 - but does does that number have a particular significance?

And yes, I'm being terse today. Got one of those nasty influenzas. I think they're planning to raze me for urban renewal.

GIGO

Okay, scratch the numerical analyses to-date. They're based on bad data. Not the the data itself is actually lousy. It's just not what it purported to be.

Lesson: However meticulous, detailed and well thought out your reasoning might be, "If your facts aren't all correct, the reasoning ain't worth spit. You're just making stuff up, and worse, promoting lies that appear to be truths." as my daddy used to say.

We'll see how we go when we have better data to work with.

Purple Hearts

Mera Pixel sat down with me and interviewed me, on the premise that my first year in Second Life has been somehow atypical of the first year experience of many other residents. I can't say I disagree with her on that assessment.

It took a while and I got asked a lot of very interesting questions.

Read it all here.

Happy Rezday

I've been in SL one year today.

What a ride it's been so far :)

Thankyou, almost everyone, for being yourselves.

I couldn't ask for a finer gift, I think.

What would you like to see LL implement in SL?

Akela Talamasca asked me that question. Here's a fuller answer, focused on technical items.

• Better interobject communications. Right now, the best, most reliable method is llEmail(). Reliable instant messaging for objects, from objects.
• Talking to your own objects only: /num speaks on a channel. How about \num to speak on a channel, but only objects owned by you can hear it?
• Revoke permissions! Let me pop up a list of objects that have successfully requested permissions from me, let me see which objects, where they are and what permissions. Allow me to revoke those permissions.
• A Stop Animations button!
  
• LSL hooks into the IM system. I don't really care to have scripts that can access the content of IMs. But I wouldn't mind seeing a hook that fired when a new IM session opened, or an existing one closed. That would at least give me the option to fire off customised busy messages when I had more than 20, 30, 50 IM tabs running.
• Finer-grained permissions. Most of the permissions at the moment allow everyone or only me. llAllowInventoryDrop(), as an example, is of extraordinarily limited use.
• Variable chat distance. Either an option to confine chat to a parcel, and/or an estate setting to modify the range of chat. Perhaps more than 20m. Perhaps less. This would need to be indicated somewhere obvious on the chat bar. Imagine a virtual office, built in SL to allow people to collaborate. Imagine two meetings going on in that little office building - with chat ranges at 20m. Plus a discussion or two outside. The crosstalk would be hellish.
• Scripted avatars. This would really need a window as a sort of a task manager and a Stop all Avatar Scripts button. Let me script my speech, gestures, movement, and rezzing objects from inventory, if need be. Let me cancel all of that at the touch of a button if it gets out of hand.
• Find my objects! Where did it go? Where did I drop it? Did I accidentally send that object across the sim? Into the air? Into the ground? If I lost it on my own land, I've got virtually no way to retrieve it. If it's spamming me from some other sim, I've got no way to find it. There's a relational database cluster under the hood. Even if my L$ account is billed for the cost of a fat query.
• A Help button on the UI - The Help menu has 13 options right now, in categories that are not obvious to the user. Either present a few of the most common (Basic Help, Knowledge Base, Live Help) linked off a single Help button (in addition to the menu, of course) or present a window with the help options groups, and explained, so the user can easily find and select the sort of help that they feel they actually need.
• Collaborative communication is difficult. Allow each Role in the new group tools to have an optional IM channel. Some roles won't need one. In other cases, more targetted IM channels will help reach the right people, without bothering the rest.
• Persistent data storage! Even if it's limited to (say) one string, one integer, one key, and one float per script or object. Or limited in size to (say) 1K.
  

I could go on and on. I probably will later.

Is it a game?

There's always a lot of talk that goes "SL is a game!" and places the onus on those who think otherwise to provide evidence to the contrary.

Let's put the boot on the other foot for a moment. Here's something to think about.

For the purposes of this piece of thinking we shall assume that RL is not a game.

What is a game - what characteristics separate a game from a non-game?

Which of these defining elements does SL have that RL does not?

Interview with the Werewolf

Akela Talamasca interviewed me this week, and posted that to Second Life Insider. It was very pleasant spending time with you, Akela. Thankyou.

Back to the cages

Cage-guns seem to be back on the menu.

Sure, push-weapons and orbiters have been the gizmo of choice for griefers and louts for a while now. Pretty much because of such a good cost/benefit ratio. Minimum effort for maximum annoyance.

Since push-restrictions became available, a pretty large chunk of the grid has gone the no-push route, destroying the usefulness of push-weapons and orbiters (though you'll still find one or two hopeful push-snipers hanging around push-enabled parcels waiting to orbit the first person to venture onto or over the unsafe land).

Suddenly the cage-gun is back, becoming the tool of choice for the lazy inconsiderate griefer.

It'd be interesting to see if there's any significant evolution in griefertech, but honestly - it's not hugely likely, unless the cost of griefing with existing tools becomes too high.