Tag: Real life

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Curious omission

I’m eager to see the amazing builds in The Garden of NPIRL Delights | Rezzable. But I found a curious omission on the website describing the project. There is a page devoted to intellectual property rights, with specific suggestions for how to treat screen shots/photographs taken in the Garden of NPIRL Delights—but the website does not credit a source for the image of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights used on the website, the original of which is in Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid.

I’ve never understood the arcana of how an owner can control images of a piece of art that is itself in the public domain—and then there’s the twist that in the US, as I understand it, a faithful reproduction of a piece of two-dimensional art does not itself possess the element of originality necessary for copyright, but in the UK it does.

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Social norms, privacy, and community

There’s a thought-provoking post about social norms and privacy at Grace McDunnough’s blog, Phasing Grace: Upholding Social Norms

Reflecting upon my early Second Life social experiences and those today I see dramatic changes, especially related to social privacy. For example, part of the subtle but consistent reinforcement from the early community was that the separation between one’s Second Life (SL) and real life (RL) was assumed, and the merger of those two was the decision of each individual to be exposed, discussed, etc. at their discretion and without prompting and if shared, certainly held in the utmost of confidence.

I’ve left a comment with a few of my perceptions as a resident of Caledon, a Quaker and Unitarian Universalist, and a middle-aged avatar (since November 2006, when we had already passed our first million residents).

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Social change opportunity

If you are engaged in using virtual worlds to create real-life social change, check out Second Life and the Public Good.

We are currently accepting proposals from groups, organizations, or individuals for projects that show how Second Life can enhance, develop, or sustain the public good. The best submissions will be selected based on how well they demonstrate the significance of virtual worlds for making an impact on society or culture.

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An amazing resource

The Old Bailey Online has not only “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913,” but also extensive background materials.

A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.

There are essays on “Community histories”:

  • Black Communities
  • Gypsies and Travellers
  • Homosexuality
  • Irish London
  • Jewish Communities
  • Huguenot and French London
  • Chinese Communities

“London and its hinterlands”:

  • 1674-1715
  • 1715-1760
  • 1760-1815
  • 1800-1913
  • A Population History
  • Material London
  • London’s Rural Hinterlands
  • Currency, Coinage, Cost of Living
  • Transport

As well as “Gender in the proceedings,” “Crime, Justice, and Punishment,” and “The Old Bailey Courthouse.”

(via The Cat’s Meat Shop.)

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Relay for Life

The 2008 Relay for Life in our favorite virtual world effort was launched today. I encourage you to participate in events and to give generously to the fight against cancer. This year 20% of the donations will be going to non-U.S. destinations. (The SLRFL is associated with the American Cancer Society and there’s a real-life Relay for Life.)

I created a low-key team to bring together friends who want to quietly support RFL. Team Elizabeth Blackwell is named in honor of the first woman to receive an M.D. degree from an American medical school, in 1849.

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Size and social cohesion

Fascinating blog post at Phasing Grace: Dunbar’s Number – Groups in [our favorite virtual world]. (Dunbar’s Number is a theoretical ceiling to the number of stable social relationships an individual can maintain, often casually said to be 150.)

From a modern world perspective and using social network analysis, Chris Allen hypothesizes that that different group sizes impact a group’s behavior and their choice of processes and tools. Based on empirical data from MMOG and online communities, he suggests that for non-survival groups, the equivalent Dunbar number falls somewhere between 60-90.

Grace makes a fascinating comment that seems apropos to Caledon:

Allen argues that group dynamics have more than just the Dunbar number as a break point; three group size nodes emerge and Allen provides some insight into the group construct as it relates to size. Groups with too few people suffer from insufficient critical mass, experience group think, are unable to sustain conversation and the infamous ‘Echo Chamber’ effect is evident. Read some of Eric Rice’s ‘Echo Chamber’ analysis regarding the failings of artificially small groups, aka elites. Overly large groups have far much too noise and cannot sustain an equal and unstructured trust. Cliques and inappropriate politics emerge and social contracts start to break down. From a [virtual world] perspective, an example of this might be the recent [ordinal number following First] Citizen forum meltdown. Note that it’s the group size that creates the breakdown of the cohesive bonds, not the ‘newbs’. When group sizes grow beyond these normalized sizes, even the most senior members of the group can suffer the ill effects.

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One year of blog analytics

Just over a year ago, I installed Google analytics code here, and the other day I took a look at a year of statistics. (Tenth Life is, make no mistake, a low-traffic site, but I love numbers anyway.) I’m always pleased to be reminded of the international scope of [our favorite virtual world], even though I’ve made no particular effort to take advantage of the opportunities that presents, beyond being pleased that my friends in Caledon come from so many places. The popularity of the post summarizing the first few of Torley Linden’s video tutorials was a pleasant surprise. I am grateful, as always, that the prodigiously helpful Natalia has a link to me. And I do wonder who lives in Lille.

A year of statistics

  • 3,640 visitors
  • 8,663 pageviews
  • 71% of visitors visited only once
  • 13 people (two of whom are undoubtedly me, once from home, once from work) have visited 101-200 times
  • 46% Firefox
  • 42% Internet Explorer
  • 6% Safari
  • 79% Windows
  • 18% Macintosh
  • 2% Linux

top posts:

  1. Torley’s tips toned down
  2. Caledon titles
  3. Beautiful places
  4. 100 people in a void sim
  5. Broadly offensive
  6. Wyre Warming Day
  7. SL statistics as percentage of country population

top referring sites:

  1. secondlife.com
  2. slnatalia.blogspot.com (now mermaiddiaries.com)
  3. blog.secondlife.com (that’s Torley’s tips, no doubt)
  4. del.icio.us
  5. caledonforums.com

81 Countries

  1. United States (every state except South Dakota and Delaware)
  2. United Kingdom
  3. Canada
  4. France (half the visits are from Lille)
  5. Germany
  6. Australia
  7. Netherlands
  8. Japan
  9. Spain
  10. Italy

8 visits from Africa: Egypt (2), South Africa (2), Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritius, Tanzania

1,285 cities

  1. London
  2. Pittsburgh
  3. Rochester
  4. New York
  5. Lille
  6. Malden
  7. San Francisco
  8. Los Angeles
  9. Melbourne
  10. Seattle

(Boston and Somerville were excluded from the list.)