Terra Antiqua

Long before I was banned today from the stodgy Terra Nova "academics' blog" by the churlish and vindictive Dan Hunter, I've been drafting this essay for some months now about the spiraling downward of what I must now call Terra Antiqua. I became more and more alarmed at the perilous state of the intellectual discourse around Second Life and other virtual worlds there, and how much critical debate was being stifled by put-downs, reprimands, and having a forum where mainly credentialed men spoke. (There was a flurry of female guest authors, some of whom tended to talk in stereotypical fashion about sex and feelings, and then it was over, and now the current guest author, a male business specialist unfamiliar with gaming, has put it back to "normal").

Sadly, the discussion in what used to be the go-to thinky watering hole for the meta-take on games and worlds has become more and more frozen and static and driven by corporate and establishment concerns, more and more an orthodoxy in support of corporate goals, more and more a decoration that is supposed to enhance very large deals in a frenzied arena that has propelled from obscurity into fame a handful of decidedly mediocre minds.

Terra Nova is a website that isn't really an academic site per se as far as I can tell, i.e. not on the webserver of a university as an official project; it was founded by academics who were in non-ludology fields who tried to make a go of making ludology itself respectable. By themselves, shorn of their games, none of these names would mean anything; even with their increasing celebrity status on major media like CNN's "Virtual Worlds Summit," most people would not find them household words.

If before, Terra Nova, whatever its "egghead status" was open enough so that people like me could drop in, and various anonymous students or business people or tekkies without an academic bent could express their comments, today, Terra Nova is trying its hardest to become a School. That is, not a Forum where a variety of ideas are debated vigorously and compellingly, but a School that is trying to create its canon and to achieve Orthodoxy. It's like Clickable Culture, which once seemed to be a very independent and critical publication welcoming robust debate about game companies and social media makers, but in time, given Tony Walsh's increasing need to make a living as a consultant, it became more of a bulletin board about the latest panels to which Tony had been invited to speak, or the latest games and technological inventions he had been invited to review, turning it more into a technology beat than a critical review. What's been sad about this corporatizing of these formerly independent and open fora is that they've been accompanied with really nasty, rancorous and vindictive debates, symbolized by the summary banning of me -- and the creation of a false moral equivalency of simultaneously banning an unhinged stalker who has used sexist and vulgar language to attack me and real-life disclosure. I suppose this is because very big interests are at stake here.

I wouldn't think that in a place devoted to free inquiry, where grown-up professors were able to sit, unblinking, at post after post of the most vulgar, disgusting, and nasty attacks on me in Mark Wallace's W-hat thread, with repeated calls on me to "post tits" and such, that back then, couldn't see its way clear to banning *those* barbarians, that I'd be banned merely because I discussed the problem of bad-faith postings, deliberately false and tendentious postings, and the moral quandary of leaving them unanswered, or dealing with them in 400 word limits.

I stand mightily behind the statement I've made before: that a statement I believe to be true is a fact until proven wrong. That's the bedrock of an open society and open debate: the right to be wrong, the right to posit even false statements, statements made on assumptions that may have been mistaken. No one is in possession of the truth; that means subjectively, each person makes their way, discovering facts that they believe to be true, and standing by them, until they can be persuaded otherwise. That's not wrongheaded; that's liberty. It's not as if "the truth" waits shining on a server somewhere accessible only to coders with arcane knowledge.

Aside from the actual side event of my banning (and the reprehensible moral equivalency created by linking that action to banning C. Sven Johnson), there have been a series of really troubling events at Terra Antiqua showing how its quality has gone downhill. When hanging around meet-ups and conferences and such, I've been surprised to hear how other people besides me have the same feeling -- that they no longer read Terra Nova, or read it and become annoyed and don't come back to it.

Perhaps that's because, as Urizenus Sklar pointedly noted, it's become like a cocktail party of only a certain "set," who want to make sure nobody says anything that isn't "nice" at their party.

But the problem is worse than that.

Remember when Aaron Delwiche went hatin' on America and Americans, even as he asked them to fund SOP IV? Until I broke the silence there and gave him a thrashing, nobody spoke. Later at Virtual Worlds 07 when I asked even some famous Metarati types whether they were going to SOP IV, they replied, "no" --isn't that the thing where the dude hit on Americans then asked them to pay for it?

To his credit, Aaron, much chastened by that debate, and also simultaneously forced into a very interesting reflection on the corporate versus academic life (he took a leave of absence from his university to go form a metaversal services company), turned it around, and revised it, and tackled it again and it appears to be on a better track now. And that's why debate -- and even very critical, robust debate is necessary. Yet it's a debate that most of the denizens of TN, unlike Aaron, have no stomach for.

Little things happen -- like Thomas Malaby chastizing me with a sullen "um" for "grading us on a course we don't offer" -- because I took his author's framing of the Shirky debate on another blog as a kind of "ownership" of a side in the debate that I thought he and his colleagues really were in a position to make more fair. He debated me mercilessly off-list in email, with such intensity, arrogance and condescension that I actually gasped. I can only conclude very high stakes are involved for these folks and they cannot let go. So much of that sort of suppression of debate -- Thomas Malaby summarily informed me that I was "no longer a valid interlocutor" (I guess I go around now with a big INVALID stamped on my forehead) -- is never seen, and takes place off the blog.

But some of it has been absolutely outrageous and very public. Who can forget the churlish Dan Hunter, blasting off a post in which he totally slam-dunks Onder Skall, who had the temerity on *his own blog* not even on the august Terra Nova (!), of coming up with three criteria he felt worked to define virtual worlds. Dan Hunter believes he and his comrades have a patent on making such definitions, and he went screeching off to salvage Terra Antiqua's partiinost' in this regard.

Or what about the really disturbing adulation Nick Yee -- the darling of the Metarati these days -- got over an unfinished and untested piece about gender behavior in SL that those of us who actually spend time there fundamentally challenged: he claimed that he could tell where avatars were "looking," when they do not turn their heads or have eyes.

Or the incendiary Bonnie Ruberg, who went off on a tear about the alleged suppression of sexual expression in SL (nothing of the sort happened for her particular chosen lifestyle of BDSM -- it was merely about those found suspect of the crime of possession of child pornography and simulated avatar pornography in Germany, where this can be a crime). I was right to ask her a simple "where were you" for all the REAL acts of suppression of political and economic ideas in Second Life on the forums and blogs and world, and the REAL act of censorship that took place on Clickable Culture -- and now Terra Nova itself -- on the issue of "ageplay" -- when C. Sven Concord had the temerity, because I disagreed with his dismissal of the sinister nature of virtualized child molestation, to accuse *me* falsely of running "Prok's Kiddieland" in SL.

Indeed: where were they all? Nowhere. Because they aren't devoted to free expression or free unimpeded intellectual discourse; they're only devoted to the untrammelled expansion of their own School. Evidently that means it can be temporarily expedient to allow a disgrace like W-hat vulgarity to flourish even while I am banned on a page where I've talked about moral bad faith in posts less than 400 words, without personal attacks, in a perfectly ordinary tone.

If you page through Terra Antiqua these days, the problem isn't only all the stories about WoW and Chinese gold-farming, which have done, rewarmed, re-served -- and done again ad nauseum. The boys *will* like their toys. It's the nasty vindictiveness that these eggheads show to Second Life for reasons that still remain inexplicable to me. It's as if they didn't get into the beta, and have beta envy? Or they will never be SLebrities so they didn't even try? Or because it's not-a-game and they'd be out of their depth?

I continue to remain deeply puzzled why Edward Castronova, author of Synthetic Worlds, has never publicly engaged with Second Life in any kind of sustained way, beyond the occasional facile soundbite for CNET. Could it be because it really is a really working but very messy and complicated synthetic economy, needing more expertise than he has? Is it more comfortable for him to sit with redundant and predictable closed game loops?

I continue to remain deeply curious about why this particular School took the side of Clay Shirky, a Web 1.0 and 2.0 guru of sorts, in his jihad against Second Life -- and it's not because of the need to debunk the fake sign-up numbers. We at the Herald debunked the sign-up numbers and a lot of the hype around SL long ago, but that doesn't mean it isn't compelling, important, and growing, and the reluctance of intellectuals who are supposed to be the expects on the Internet and games to acknowledge what it visibly a major prototype of the 3-D Internet is downright curious.

To be clear: I don't think there's anything so crass as an actual "corporate takeover," or some outright payment of grants or honoraria, or the softer blogola that comes from getting an all-expense-paid trip to a game or virtual worlds conference -- although there is some of that. Rather, when I say "corporatizing" it's more about the desire for "respectability" that can lead to lots of game/virtual world conferences and getting on panels, getting media hits, and getting the sort of visibility and "respectability" that leads to academic appointments -- and jobs. The virtual worlds craze has been kind to the contributors of Terra Antiqua -- they've gotten more media hits and more expense-paid trips and consulting gigs in the last year than they probably had in their lives up to that point.

A lucky few made the leap from academe to more lucrative and influential careers: Betsy Book, an academic who unwittingly helped get me banned from Second Life's official forums when I challenged her feting of Linden pets like Aimee Weber in a light scholarly article, is now an official of There.com, SL's leading competitor. Perhaps the way There.com sort of "took over" the State of Play sponsorship, which doesn't get the Linden interest it used to, has spilled over on to the discourse on Terra Antiqua (I view State of Play as a tremendously important interdisciplinary conference that Terra Antiqua has been the "home" for -- I wonder if I'm banned from State of Play, now, too.)

I'm sure if someone were to make a comprehensive and exhaustive academic study of all the postings and references at Terra Antiqua, they'd be able to put their finger on the trajectory of bias -- and then mediocrity and lack of interest. The problem is that the very people who are in a position to do this credibly have lost interest in it.

I'll update this post with links and some further thoughts soon.

Comments

[Syntheticist]

I'm of the feeling that you got hit with the ban-stick because you will argue until you're blue in the face (and, I would expect, stubby on the keyboard fingers!) about something trivial... and then relate it off onto some rather large overstatement.

This essay was probably the most well-reasoned piece of text I've seen from you.

I don't think the editors are punitive or so egotistical as to not listen to a debate, but it's hard to keep the Monkey House in check when the topic is so frequently diverged from.

I think Terra Nova is finding it hard to reconcile its roots in online *gaming* with Second Life, and the extremely strong support it receives, from what is essentially a minority (in pure subscriber figures).

I personally don't think that Terra Nova is the correct forum to discuss Second Life. While living under the "Synthetic World" banner, it really is a law onto itself, and doesn't sit right with the other titles being discussed. I think SL deserves to be discussed on its on terms, in its own way, in its own place.

[Prokofy Neva]

You must have a SL name or RL name or recognizable handle from a known blog to be able to post here. So you get one warning.

I'm quite certain that Dan banned me in a fit of dyspeptic pique, and didn't consult with the other people at TN. And now they will wish to save face and even in a few might be made uncomfortable with it, they will close ranks. And that's part of what's wrong with them.

Syntheticist, you simply haven't read my writings at any depth, and there isn't any "blue-in-the-face" piece you can point to in TN, really. Can you try to cite one? Certainly none of the posts in recent weeks. For example, when Csven tried to inflame TN around his unhinged stalking jihad of me, I let it go, and he merely discredited himself.

Csven posted a ridiculous swipe at me with disclosure of my RL name which is simply vindictive and a form of griefing, and Dan reacted as much to him as anything I said -- and felt he had to make a moral equivalency out of it or he couldn't ban Csven -- who should have been reprimanded weeks ago by Tony and by TN.

SL shouldn't be sequestered and in the "special" class. People seamlessly play WoW, chat on AIM, make Facebook, have land and relationships in Second Life. The discussion has to embrace all games/worlds/social media at once.

If someone wants to have some really strict old-book "games theory" site, then they can't have Bonnie Ruberg bloviating and fulminating about the alleged "suppression" (rolls eyes) of sex in Second Life. You can't have it both ways.

[Prokofy Neva]

Wow. Can you believe this??? My eyes just about bugged out. AFTER I was banned, GregL comes on TN and *removes* the policy about "lengthy posts" that was likely inspired as a way to get rid of me in the first place. The mind boggles. I've never seen anything so underhanded -- and cowardly.

Here's what was written:

"greglas says:

This language was removed from the comment policy above.

Spamming the reading community with lengthy opinions has the effect of dominating a conversation and does not respect the right of others to speak and participate. While there may be exceptions, as a general rule, please endeavor to make your comments responsive to the opening post and fewer than 400 words or so (so that they fit on a single screen). Please do not post multiple comments in one thread consecutively. If you feel a need to comment at greater length than 400 words, please do so on your own blog or other venue and post a link to your longer thoughts in the comment field.

Posted Jun 25, 2007 2:14:08 AM"

I hope some people will step up to the plate and call them on this really outrageous perfidy.

[Ace Albion]

It's easy to see why there's a reaction against SL at Terra-Nova. You're asking cathedral architects to embrace and welcome the bazaar.

Sometimes, I can almost actually see, running through replies and comments from some of the posters there, this kind of mantra that just keeps saying "This threatens my money. This threatens my money. This threatens my money."

Replace money with "doctorate" and you can cover the counter criticism of some of the research put forward. The avatar viewing one you mention is a good example. I think the wow/voice/trust one needed a lot of work too.

It's an old boy's club. There are some people worth reading in the comments, and that's about it. It's a shame, really. I've met Ren a few times in SL, and he's always been interesting to talk with.

[Crissa]

They've always been fun to talk to... But yes, it is a boy's club with boy's rules - they get to insult, but you don't.

Honestly, Prok, I know you are in love with your monologue, and it is quite smart, but... Down to the base of it, you did just call them names.

But hey. Sometimes they need it - making games for gamers won't make them more money, and yet they make the same mistakes over and over again.

[Jellin Pico]

Funny how you only trash talk a site -after- they toss you out for stirring up shit.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, I used to criticize the High Priests of Ludology right there on their site. As they've become more tendentious and religious, filled with "smelly little orthodoxies," I've become more outspoken, I guess, although if you look at my posts, there's nothing much to them.

In fact, it's time to trash Terra Nova, precisely because they do wield some dying influence, and that's when animals become their nastiest, clawing and destroying.

[Desmond Shang]

I see you as a kind of litmus test, Prok.

You can be quite an annoyance to many, even a studied annoyance with intent.

The test is this: is a venue free enough to tolerate your sort of discourse, or not?

You aren't the only litmus test out there. Some test with incivility, others with professed lifestyle. Some tests are worth passing, others not.

* * * * *

Terra Nova is interesting, but notably, lacks true insight.

Much like the stock market news analysis after closing each day. "X has gone down Y points in a busy day of trading, due to factors A, B, and C."

O rly? One always has to wonder why a pundit with such stunning insight hasn't quit his radio job, to apply his own astute insights to become embarrassingly rich whilst keeping his mouth shut.

But the true pundits don't post there.

Where is Anshe's insight? You won't find it. Where is Neverdie of Project Entropia? Granted, they have Julian Dibbell, who can speak with personal authority especially of the early days. But where are the guild clan leaders? Where are the metaverse coolhunters (the real ones - the ones that are accurate)?

Generally, such people - the Carnegies and the Rockefellers or even the Che Guevaras of the metaverse are talked *about* but aren't the ones doing the talking. And they are the ones who understand the real economic and social dynamics in the metaverse.

I had often wondered why there wasn't dire warning and scathing controversy *ahead* of There.com's Black Friday at Terra Nova, not so many years ago. Many of us saw it coming like a noisy freight train. There.com has never really recovered. Or why wasn't Second Life's explosive rise to prominence in 4 Q 2006 heralded by the pundits?

I'm not talking in terms of allusory one-liners - everyone can dig up one of those. I'm talking in terms of which pundits saw explosive growth coming and cashed in.

That's the relevancy, Prok. As crazy as you might get sometimes, you still deal with a lot of people in realtime *now*, not back in 1995 or whenever, and have been able to capitalise on your insight.

You aren't a "MillionsOfUs" but by the same token, I saw how fast Nike, Levi's and Wells Fargo fled, back in the day. Corporate size lately is usually synonymous with lack of insight, and I have yet to see one major corporate entity other than perhaps MTV truly 'engage' the metaverse - they seem to collapse into pretty, but largely forgotten regions.

Terra Nova just banned one of the few industry captains of metaverse industry it had, regardless of whatever other opinions you might hold, or how obnoxious you might be. Doh.

[Prokofy Neva]

Desmond, a key problem of being "multi-banned" -- sounds like some resistant strain of TB! -- is that people form deep prejudices in their minds based on nothing.

Go and read my posts at Terra Nova. I think you'd be shocked at how there is nothing "obnoxious" about them. They are normal and thoughtful.

So I don't get in line to bow before Nick Yee and pump him for being on CNN. So? It's not as if I've personally attacked him or used any rude words. I simply ask this person, influential beyond his abilities and for reasons that are opaque to me, why he had to dis suburbanites in virtual worlds.

His words were heard by millions and influenced numerous people. Being on CNN's website in print and in person on the air has huge worldwide influence. What, I can't challenge this elitist snob who disses suburbanites? Hello? I can't point out that the faux Lloydjapanmodese build that he no doubt admires in SL is just as much of a stereotype and probably even more replicated and with less skill than the suburban homes?

When he makes a statement like that, he's trying to rally his fellow elites and class cohorts across the land to turn new media into that same bastion of privileged class and taste as old. So sorry, but if new media is about empowerment, I'm going to resist that sort of elitism.

He gets to stand up in front of millions and dis a whole class of people, make a snarky comment, and that's considered by the elites as "cool" and "fun". If *I* had used such air time to be negative and dis a whole class of people, boy, you'd sure be hearing about it, eh?

Or not, because I'm banned.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Eh. I would be more outraged if I actually read Terra Nova regularly (that was a particularly petulant ban, certainly) but to be honest, I find that, with a few exceptions, it is people writing the same pieces they or others wrote about MUSHes ten years ago. They seem never to quite get over the shock that "games" can be "serious", and just poke around the same edges repeatedly. I was impressed when I first came across it but that was over a year ago.

Clearly there is a place for academic study of virtual worlds, but I don't believe that unchallenging what-happened-to-me-last-night-in-WoW-makes-you-think-doesn't-it entries are part of that.

Incidentally, if anyone is _actually_ worried about a particular sub-discussion in the comment section of a blog entry taking over due to length and post frequency, there is this amazing new invention called "threaded comments", allowing not only it to be made clear who is being responded to, but also for people who are not interested in that sub-discussion to not have to read about it. It's only been on Livejournal for, what, a decade or so? Let alone Usenet....

[Rhys Hutton]

Banned from another venue...

How many is that now Prokofy?

Yet it's always someone else's fault...

Uh huh.

[Prokofy Neva]

Yes, it is their fault. And the record shows it, and some day I'll be vindicated, I have no doubt.

In ever single one of the venues from which I've banned, my speech has hardly been the worst; there are always scores of others who were actually obscene, vulgar, libelous, tendentious, and even with higher word-counts. But they aren't banned (except Csven who is banned merely to create false moral equivalency) because they don't challenge the powers that be as I do.

It's important to speak truth to power, and that's what I do.

I wouldn't change a thing; I regret nothing. It's very important to speak about about the issues or the Metaverse will be taken over by totalitarian-minded geeks and their supine sympathizers. I won't let that happen standing idly by.

[Rhys Hutton]

LOL ok Mr. Quixote.

[Prokofy Neva]

Seriously, Rhys, I challenge you to do a simple thing. Go to Terra Nova. Read my posts. Even in this last thread only, or go to many of the last ones. I challenge you to find a single one of the following:

o personal attack
o vulgarity
o nastiness
o off-topic
o more than 400 words

Ok, write when you get work!

[Rhys Hutton]

I have, and I have read your words on many other blogs and forums. You are always acerbic. You cannot resist the urge to employ ad hominem. :)

You always have to try to set up some sort of pecking order, usually by trying to smear someone by belittling what you assume to be their RL situation (just as you did with me in that highly ironic post ending above). :)

You are not perfect. :)

The longer you antagonise these sites, the smaller your voice becomes. Soon you'll be relegated to this blog and the Herald. :)

You are your own worst enemy, thankfully. Your endless and snarky homilies and platitudes are a quickly sinking hot air balloon filled with the densest form of hypocrisy. You're on the fast track to irrelevancy, enjoy the ride! :)

I have work. Plenty. Thanks for your concern, Oh Brave Epitome of All That is Righteous. :)

[Prokofy Neva]

>I have, and I have read your words on many other blogs and forums. You are always acerbic. You cannot resist the urge to employ ad hominem. :)

Being ascerbic is a good thing! It's very necessary in this world of sugar-coated stuff we live in.

I'd challenge you to find an actual ad hominem attack on TN. Thanks in advance!

>always have to try to set up some sort of pecking order, usually by trying to smear someone by belittling what you assume to be their RL situation (just as you did with me in that highly ironic post ending above). :)

Uh, I fail to see any belittling, or reference to your real life? Huh? Did you realize that "write when you get work" is an idiomatic American expression used in the 30s and 40s said all the time to family members who had to leave in search of a job during the Depression or the War? And it basically means, well, write when you can say you've done something, even though the situation is hopeless. It's not about "you" -- it's just an expression?

>You are not perfect. :)

But I don't need to be, to criticize others who are far from perfect, too. It's needed.

>The longer you antagonise these sites, the smaller your voice becomes. Soon you'll be relegated to this blog and the Herald. :)

That's fine. Their worlds are the smaller for it, not mine : )

>You are your own worst enemy, thankfully. Your endless and snarky homilies and platitudes are a quickly sinking hot air balloon filled with the densest form of hypocrisy.

I can't imagine why you'd be bothering to read my posts then if you feel that way.

>You're on the fast track to irrelevancy, enjoy the ride! :)

That's fine, I'm not doing what I do to be "relevant".

>I have work. Plenty. Thanks for your concern, Oh Brave Epitome of All That is Righteous. :)

Ok, well, um, write when you get some more then!

[Scott Jennings]

Despite my being one of the "tekkie gamer developers" Prokofy dislikes so much, he is perfectly welcome to chime in on my blog whenever he feels the need to. Walls of text are easily scrolled past if they are offensive.

Perhaps it comes from working on MMOs, but there are degrees of disruption, and Prokofy's contentiousness, although I've seen it derail conversations dead, is far less toxic than I've seen elsewhere.

I do think, though, that requiring any commentator on virtual worlds to be a full-time member of Second Life is somewhat silly, as I've said in the past. Castronova's bona fides on studying the economic impact of virtual worlds is beyond repute (and no, not every virtual world is SL), as is Yee's work on their sociology.

[Prokofy Neva]

I'll look for your blog and comment on it soon, Scott.

I don't agree with you about Castronova. I think he did a very important book, Synthetic Worlds. It's a classic. He could do nothing else and have earned his place in history. But since he is young, and funded, I think more can be expected of him. And he doesn't have to hang around SL and be a full-time member to engage 100 percent more than he does, given that he engages negative -50 percent. Seriously, his absence is conspicious. Not one serious comment or thought about things like whether it's a good idea or a bad one to print Lindens on the Lindex; whether land should be printed as much as it is; whether zoning could help or hurt and how doable it really is -- whether telehubs should have been removed -- the economy is a rich, vibrant, fascinating thing with loads of statistics that the Lindens churn out, largely unattended. Most people don't even bother to follow their already rich mother lode of stuff, and instead merely snipe at them for this or that little thing. Did you know they are trying a project to tag stuff to follow things like rentals or home sales better? I mean, it's just endless, what can be done -- and where is this number one virtual worlds economic guru? Nowhere. Just nowhere. As if he signed some NDA not to talk or something.

I think Nick Yee is simply incomprehensible. Avatars do not look, do not have a gaze, do not even turn when they talk. Their proximity to each other can be affected by a huge host of variables and his claims of scientific precise means to measure yaw and such is absurd. He is used to his 30,000 interviews in a controlled world situation, and can't look up and see this is open ended and just mechanically even works differently.

I mean, avatars don't gaze. To be claiming to measure a thing that doesn't exist is just friggin' absurd. And stating this obvious thing is one of the reasons I was banned from TN.

Go and read the Herald thread on Yee's work, you'll find it more rigorously critiqued -- and that's a good thing.

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/02/eavesdropping_i.html

Really, this is truly a matter of being outside the magic circle, and just seeing that some of these emperors have no clothes.

Finally, while everybody likes to play nice and be obsequious (even Uri caved on this) at a time when there should be all kinds of social rituals and bowing and scraping when somebody like Yee gets on CNN, not me. Not when somebody is influencing the millions, and creating a situation where all kinds of superior elites can begin to take up a posture whereby their view the rest of us in virtual worlds as crass mediocrities with mass taste merely because we have a lawn and a ranch house.

Sometimes I wish we could take the top of Second Life, the Big Top, and see inside, and when people saw the race and class divisions that go with the cultural antagonisms they have over things like suburbia, they'd be chastened, as they'd see themselves to be racist and classist more than anything else, just like Danah Boyd is saying.

I will not sit still while the pampered expensively educated Silicon Valley gang decides the world for the rest of us.

[Ace Albion]

Sorry, Scott, but Prokofy is absolutely right about Nick Yee's avatar gazing study in Second Life.

Unfortunately, due to few of the TN Illuminati having Richard Bartle's grim tenacity to level his WoW characters to 70 to give him "chops" with the wow-kids, they don't seem able to critique the research because they don't understand the platform either. It could have been any virtual world. Nick chose SL, and nobody else there knows enough about it to call him on the massive flaws in his research. Nobody except noisy malcontents and interlopers, of course.

[Robert Bloomfield]

As the “male business specialist unfamiliar with gaming [who] has put [Terra Nova] back to "normal",” I thought I might chime in on the "trajectory" of TN, from the view of a long-time academic (PhD in 1992) who is new to both TN and virtual worlds.

First, let me say that I was sorry to see that you were banned by Terra Nova. Aside from one fisking match with C.Sven and a clear desire to have the last word, I found little to object to in your posts, and much that was constructive.

You say that “Terra Nova is a website that isn’t really an academic site per se.” In one important sense, TN is the most academic of the VW blogs that I was able to find—it is where the academics are. Many, if not most, of the people listed as authors are academics. That is why I became interested in TN: because I am looking to join forces with research faculty around the world to use virtual worlds as research tools. In contrast, most other sites discussing virtual worlds have authors who are journalists, developers, or personal bloggers.

Another sense in which TN seems academic is crucial to understanding its trajectory: As you put it, TN is becoming “not a Forum where a variety of ideas are debated vigorously and compellingly, but a School that is trying to create its canon and to achieve Orthodoxy….[these attempts] have been accompanied with really nasty, rancorous and vindictive debates.”

This sounds like academia to me! And not necessarily a bad thing. Open forum and debate has its benefits, but the real benefits of academia lie in creating a set of rules for what is assumed, the grounds on which work can be critiqued, and the questions that can be answered. This orthodoxy stifles some debates, because it is designed to advance its followers’ understanding of the particular questions they seek to address.

Some evidence of the orthodoxy lies in comments to my posts on TN, in which readers take me to task for deviating from the terminology to use in discussing virtual worlds, and from the questions they feel are interesting. (Many believe that my interest in using virtual worlds to study real-world business issues lies outside the appropriate bounds of discussion). If I stick with their orthodoxy, rather than going my own way, I can contribute to the debates the orthodoxy is designed to address, and the “School” moves forward.

So, while “vulgar, disgusting and nasty attacks” can be a very serious concern, I think the development of an orthodoxy is the bigger issue for the trajectory of TN. I see two reasons to be critical of TN: for choosing an orthodoxy focusing on questions that bore you, or for developing answering those questions poorly, either because the orthodoxy is lame or because they are using it poorly. I sense some of the former in your comment that they are ignoring Second Life, and I sense some of the latter in your criticisms of Nick Yee.

My own view is that they haven't developed the orthodoxy fully enough--they need to focus debate even more, if they are to make serious, focused progress.

[Brask Mumei]

I fear I must disagree with Scott on his analysis. There are a variety of personality types that cause community disruption. Most spammers, trolls, and rabble rousers are easily identified.

The real danger for a community aren't these easily identified enemies. It is those who defy easy classification. Unfortunately, you (Prokofy) are just such an example. Your posts can be very well written and contain very interesting and insightful comments. Even when acerbic, they can often provide a useful counter point from traditional group think. One would think this would make you a welcome addition to any community.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, your posts never stop. Every discussion gets derailed into the same points. One author becomes responsible for a majority of posts, counting by posts or by word length. The community then faces a harsh decision - to get "work" done, one must suppress the divisive element. However, unlike the case of a spammer or troublemaker, there is no clear offense you can point to. I certainly believe your (Profoky's) claim to have broken no rule. I, however, still see nothing wrong with such a ban.

A good advice I have seen about dealing with children is to look for the phrase "How many times do I have to tell you?" When one says this, one should stop and realize that the answer should be "once". The child heard you the first time. Excessively repeating the point is a waste of breath.

Likewise, if you (Profoky), were to take this idea to heart, you may find communities more receptive to your presence. Make your point once. Then move on. Have faith in your ideas and posts to be able to stand on their own without needing constant buttressing. Allow people to misconstrue or misunderstand in peace.

As for the topic at hand, I've personally found myself not following Terra Nova anymore. I think you might have a point about it becoming too institutionalized. When I do look at it, it seems to be self-referential conference announcements more than interesting ideas. I'm not sure I'd characterize this sort of transformation as "wrong", however, so much as "inevitable". All things change as they age, and it is natural for communities to mature into more effective niches.

[Onder Skall]

Ah well, Terra Nova is now dead to me. Blogged about them for the last time: http://www.calebbooker.com/blog/2007/06/26/the-quest-for-braincells

[Sutro]

I thought you were banned for taking a personal argument with CSven and spanning it over multiple comment threads and collectively hundreds of words, having nothing to do with the commentary at hand, and derailing productive, linear discussion with it.

Not because you disagree.

For my own part, I feel the banning was acceptable because stuff like the above simply doesn't have a place on a comment-threaded blog-style discussion. On forums it's more acceptable because it's easier to winnow the wheat from the chaff, but not in comments.

At least the gold farmer comment spam is usually only three lines.

And for my own part, I find most of your posts functionally dense and unneedingly verbose. But I agree that you're a contrarian voice who is necessary. I just think that if you'd cut down on the size and tone of your posts, you'd probably get more contrarian stuff accomplished.

It's unfortunate that you can't resolve your ongoing dispute with CSven, because I foresee that if you continue, it will continue to put you on the fringe where you don't deservedly need to be.

-Sutro

[Prokofy Neva]

Robert, I'm glad you have a Ph.D., I'm happy for you, but I have life credits and life experience about which you have absolutely no concept, and I'm proud of it. And among those life credits are my nearly 3 years in SL, with vast knowledge of how the place works that is really priceless. I won't pretend to be a "captain of industry" like Desmond, but I certainly am a seasoned first mate.

Now, you're confusing the need for rigorous academic standards with orthodoxy. Academe doesn't require only a single orthodoxy; competing schools obviously exist in one university or in one field. You're confusing the need to have some peer review and quality control with forcing an orthodoxy.

If you mean that it's time to make this collection of semi-losers from fields that aren't exactly about "ludology" who just like to play games and spout anecdotal game stories into a *real* field with some sort of real intellectual rigour, great, I'm all for that -- it's missing. There are far, far too many stories like the fellow who did the paper on "voice being better for collaboration" who was completely zealous and dense about seeing how this doesn't work once you get beyond the WoW battlefield into a setting like SL (and it doesn't even work for WoW! Hello?!). After only 2 days of Voice in SL, I can definitely confirm that. Voice works when you have very limited tasks to perform with people (and not very well), or else when you have likemindedness and a comfort level already. It will not work and will jar this virtual setting constantly, and override its good otherwise. A whole new discussion needs to be opened up on this.

I can see why ludologists have insisted on their terminology to keep some sort of ideological purity, and not sully it with RL connotations, but it wouldn't hurt for them to do more contrasting and comparing -- and that's why I fault Castronova for no serious study -- and pronouncement upon -- Second Life. Applied ludology, if you will.

I still believe that your own determination only to stay with fixed game settings for this business model project is wrongheaded. But you'll come to that on your own. Just because you need to prototype doesn't mean you should have such a stilted and limited setting.

When I say "nasty and vindictive," I mean posts like the W-hat awfulness or Dan Hunter knocking Onder Skall or Bonnie going off on a jihad -- a fake jihad because her precious sexual expression hasn't been curtailed in Second Life, all that's happened is her blog buddies have banned me for pointing that out *cough*.

Brask, you sound like a Church Lady. It's not "unfortunate" that I "defy description" -- that's a good thing. This entire ridiculous culture of Internet forums with their personality types and rules like "don't feed the trolls" blah blah is really backward and unproductive. People need to be breaking out of these straitjackets all the time. They are merely clutchy categories that fearful people devised as they adapted to new technology used with strangers on the Internet.

I'm not a child, and any parent that finds themselves yelling "How many times do I have to tell you" hasn't found a good way to tell it the first time, rather than necessarily facing a child who didn't listen. There's a reason for the not-listening usually. But, I'm not a believer in these treacly warmed-over 70s theories about child-centric education. There's nothing wrong with a child doing what he is told and that may take repetition.

I think that stultifying "communities" that imagine they can "get work done" if only they "get rid of just this one person" are sadly mistaken. They can't get work done *already* and that's why someone like me is repeatedly challenging them.

As for the idea that what I say is a "neurosis" or some kind of "religious ideology" (as posters are saying on there) or in your words, some kind of repetitiveness, it's really all in your own precious set of ideological favourites. Obviously Bonnie stridenly ranting on about sexual expression time and again doesn't bother you. Dan being an asshole doesn't bother you. Richard Bartle lobbying over anti-American grenades and the scurrying to say he's anti-Australian, too, doesn't bother you -- and many other repetitive behaviours on that board, I can go list them.

Banning is wrong. It's the result of poor moderation, not the onset at last of good moderation.

The moderation had to start with something bad like Dan Hunter. His own peers should have taken him to task, and made him apologize, or reprimanded him. It's simply unacceptable. That's where a board really goes wrong. If the moderator can behave like an asshole, then people fight back.

The moderation has to start with something like Csven repeatedly printing libelous falsehoods and rants about me and tying in my RL name, which is not my will. The moderator should have removed such a post, as there should simply be a policy that RL disclosure is not acceptable -- and libelous statements either. There are hundreds of people who sign that board with names like "reality" or "syntheticist" who do not wish their identities revealed. They get their way. If someone else is well known and someone forcibly links their name against their will, their will is not respected unlike the "realities" and the "syntheticists". That's a double standard.

I'm not required to adjust my behaviour in some fashion to fit people who can't even maintain basic decency. If they can't intervene to stop a group of barbarians from screaming that I should "post tits," if they can't intervene with that truly outrageous crap from Csven Concord (which was likely a deliberate plot, for which he had connivance from some people), then they can't be surprised when people fight back.

What's really appalling is that in fact I *didn't* fight back with Csven's idiocy, having in fact already made the point on my own blog. I referenced my own blog -- just like the rules state.

And yet I'm accused of "comment-fisking". It shows what a hall of mirrors people enter when they take sides on a forums. Please provide evidence of any "comment fisking" -- upon a careful re-read, you will surprised to find there isn't any.

I don't see this as "inevitable". I mounted a really valid challenge to TN. They will have to do some soul-searching. They know in their hearts they are lame and retarded and mean, and have to change. Some of the smarter ones will get to work doing that. Dan Hunter banning two of us in a fit of pique is simply unseemly and unmanly, and his colleagues know that, and they will behave accordingly.

I'm still waiting for all you Ph.D.'s to make even a weak protest against the concept of arbitrary application of law we've seen from these "lawyers". First they make a policy, 400 words or less. Then they debate it, and then back off a bit and say it's a soft requirement. Then AFTER I am banned, minutes later, they remove it. Now is that hypocritical and lame or WHAT?

[Prokofy Neva]

> thought you were banned for taking a personal argument with CSven and spanning it over multiple comment threads and collectively hundreds of words, having nothing to do with the commentary at hand, and derailing productive, linear discussion with it.

>Not because you disagree.

I did not such thing. You're in that hall of mirrors I'm talking about. Go back and read the threads. Csven did that, going on for hundreds of words and paragraph after paragraph of line-by-line "comment fisking". I didn't. I linked to my lengthy blog rebuttal.

I noted that Csven persisted with this falsehood a few times in self defense, in a couple threads. I did not engage in some kind of lengthy diatribe. He did. Go back and read it. Get out of the hall of mirrors. You're biased. Re-read it, and see the problem -- his doing that has obliterated the fact that I did not. People hastily wish to retreat to "moral equivalency" rather than do the honest work of admitting the truth: I didn't engage in any length diatribe or rebuttals, and referred to my blog. I can reprint the entire thing if you can't be bothered to look. But you're wrong in your perception -- you're a victim of group psyhosis, which happens at times like this.

Csven started this idiocy on Clickable Culture, where I took him on, but then even there, simply took it back to my own blog, in part because Tony's site stopped working. I even emailed Tony several days before I was banned, urging him to remove the libelous material and the RL disclosure. He didn't. He's such a free speechnik *cough*. So I rebutted it. That's my right. If no one else will moderate and restrain someone like Csven, I'll fight back.

Don't forget what the debate is about: Csven thinks virtual child molestation is fine, and not criminal, and does not lead to criminality. I disagree. His method of debating that turns to vicious and mendacious posts, false claims that I run a child brothel in SL, claims that I failed to report a RL crime of child pornography -- blah, blah blah. I've rebutted it at length -- he's unhinged, and has some backing evidently for his jihad.

It's helpful to see how Csven behaves with other people with whom he disagrees, including even Tony Walsh, who was also exasperated by him. I stand up to bullies. Csven is a techno-bully of the worst kind, making diatribes and then circling around and acting like the cat with the canary, pretending that a picture he posted of my property labeled "Prok's Kiddieland" is merely "some picture" that is "on the Internet" and "not an accusation" -- specious and tendentious bullshit.

I think Urizenus actually supplied a good rationale for the length and dense post from a figure I really do not like -- Chomsky. It takes time to lay out the facts and rebut the sacred, closely-held "truths".

I'm not interested in debating Csven. I've laid out my rebuttals on my blog earlier here, they can be read there. I will definitely refer to him as a trouble-maker when I see him crop up on other blogs. He's definitely out on the fringe, willing to shoot himself in the foot, but no one will stand up to him, and you can't let stuff like that lie.

Csven is now busy going around to blogs trying to post innocuous or tekkie things to rehabilitate himself and make it seem as if he nobly fell on his sword to take me down from 2 prominent blogs. But his appearance on those blogs is a form of psychosis, and the refusal of the moderators to address that sickness early on is their weakness. I only fight it because it's important to establish the limits and to expose bad faith.

You don't "resolve" a dispute with someone as maniacal and unhinged as Csven, prepared to get himself banned from blogs and drag himself and me into the mud to fight for his notion of virtuality as exempt from criminality.

Virtuality is not exempt from criminality. Crime in virtual worlds is still crime, though it differs in scale, magnitude, and remedy.

Crimnality in virtuality is a serious issue, one that will become addressed more seriously as people cease to be intimidated in their liberal sensibilities by maniacs like Csven.