Groups Who Want to Take Power Over Second Life

In the old days, back in 2004-2005, every group that lurched toward trying to take power in Second Life, trying to impose their culture and notions of norms on the whole, increasingly diverse community of SL, would be abruptly halted. They'd be halted either by a vicious forums or outworld hate campaign (i.e. against Anshe and the land barons who negotiated with the Lindens about the telehubs), or they'd get a serious opposition even from a lone individual like me (this at least led the Lindens for a time to try to make some things a bit more fair; they banned the crazy Marxist Ulricha Zugzwang from the forums, for example). Or there'd be riots from other groups at the thought that anyone was going to take power -- one thing I opposed vigorously -- and wasn't alone in this -- was Cabinhead, a project by oldbies to take over the new user experience on an island where they'd get to block anyone they didn't like, ejecting griefers but also not allowing in anyone else that formed any competition to them.

Mentors tried to assume more and more powers -- the Lindens ultimately disbanded them. Solutions providers became hugely oppressive for a time in 2007 and felt they could define the world, scraping everybody with a third-party search (sound familiar?), and tell the Lindens what to do. The Lindens' quality of insular geekitude sometimes worked in their favour -- exasperated, these solutions providers like the Electric Sheep had to drop away as the Lindens wouldn't do enough for them.

To be sure, people like Adam Zaius and Anshe Chung took power by having lots of money and staff and time to win the world and the market, and the Lindens rewarded them with early use of products like the homesteads (formerly known as void sims); and of course the discounts in the Atlas program. But they didn't have power over the whole world, just over certain sectors.

The awful Neualtenberg, the socialism-on-one-sim project given to one group of European and American socialists by a Linden in a contest where there was only one application disintegrated into faction fights and culminated in the expulsion of Enemy Number 1, Zugzwang. The effort to force a marriage between the Confederation of Democratic Simulators, made up largely of socialist RP sims including the split Neualtenbergs pieces, and a Caliphate RP sim (!) -- a kind of caricature of how Islam has challenged Europe -- ended in splits and tier tears and the resignation of the original caliphater.

We've got that going for us: tier and its relentless costs help keep the power-mongering aspirations of various socialists and Islamists and singularists in check.

Once something like Caledon was made, which was a kind of governance-on-a-prim run by a benevolent dictator and a kind of RP country, the yen to keep making "governments" sort of fell away. In that, Caledon (and some other historical era RP sims) played a beneficial roll. Horrible people like Ashcroft Burnham who terrorized the forums for a time basically just wanted an excuse to dress up on tophat and tails and pontificate about constitutions in SL because they were lonely and maladjusted in RL -- the RP of "government" gave them that excuse.

To be sure, there's been some tiresome types who keep forming things like "The Congress of SL" -- as if something like that could be legitimately made without any first steps like "committees of corresondence" or "political parties" or "a constitutional assembly". But they sink of their own weight. I don't think they are very active.

We used to have a section on the old forums called "Political Science" in which we'd discuss various models for governance. The problem, as always, is that you had communists -- outright socialist/communist/Marxist/collectivists types -- and then you had Randian libertarians and extreme singularists, who are in some ways like communists. They would fight over which one of them was able to denounce Prokofy more roundly. It was very hard to get people to focus on process or just doing a few things.

The era when we actually sat down with the Lindens in various groups, and discussed how to revise and redo the group tool powers and features, was a heady time of democracy in SL. We actually got to overthrow the early hippie communism of the group tools, which used to be set up so that the ONLY way you could sell group land was by having the sale fee distribute equally to every member of the group. There was a huge fight by the communists to keep this (Luskwood) but they lost. In the end, the kind of group tools that make it possible to have communism or Goreanism, Islamism or prim democracy were made, rather than one only favouring collectivism.

Then governance in SL stagnated, as endless civil wars over property began to be fought -- sim prices, copybot, VAT, homesteads, Nautilus, Red Zone.

I would come along periodically and say, what about starting something more modest, like a set of sims in which everyone agrees not to build anything more than two stories tall so that the view isn't ruined -- and everyone agrees not to build smack on the border of any parcel. Just those two things! Oh, and no spinning crap in the sky. Let's just go with those three things, and then we'll see how it goes. Make a convenant just on that.

So filled with hatred were people at the thought that any one group might use these sorts of things to take power that they sabotaged them actively (there were several people viciously attacking the effort to form some kind of agreement with the Lindens, to get them to stop using invisible accounts to monitor people secretly and get them to create a code of ethics for their staff that would include a removal of conflict of interests, i.e. no more letting Jeska Linden pose for ads to help promote SL Boutique, FlipperPA's business, no more Lindens DJing for their special friends' clubs; etc.

Today, the groups grabbing for power usually do this through SL-related and RL media.

So you get Gianna Bognine, Reed Steamroller (apt name for what he's doing with mesh), and Draxtor Despres getting on a podcast or making machinima or filling up blogs with the call for "the community to come together".

Or you get Toxic Menges hawking some machinima. Or you get Chestnut Rau/Dale Innis-Dale Chess and that gang making cultural pronouncements, or Bettina Tizzy (sigh).

That there isn't a community; that they aren't it; that it doesn't need to come together as they insist -- these are all factors lost on them.

Others do that too -- Grace McDunnough will make a bid for cultural uniformity and policies that she and her friends get to decide with Lindens "for the community"; educators or whoever will decide this or that "must" be done (the educators, which really amounted to a handful of Marxist professors flogging opensource idiocy and demanding the copyability of all content on to their opensource sims outside of SL -- including anyone else's content, not just their own -- actually spectacularly lost.

Of course we have to add to all this the people who belong to RL groups like the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, or Open Government groups -- which is a code word for the "progressive" or leftist opensource software politics Trojan-horse into the U.S. government.

These people usually don't aspire to run the platform, but they have ways of in fact demanding certain things secretly, using their solution provider connections, and getting their way -- and not having a lot of transparency on what they are doing. For example, that somebody named TigroSpottyStripes can get 1500 votes on the JIRA for some obscure joint feature for furries is a testimony to JIRA-gerrymandering and the way that people who "help" the Lindens by cleaning up and closing JIRA and "run" the JIRA essentially shape the JIRAs and get the votes, as surely as if they had drawn new borders on a district.

Those people with the word "government" in their groups don't seem to be making much of a dent in taking over policy and practices -- thank God -- but they certainly bear watching as some of them are power-mongerers. Some overlap with various power centers like AWGroupies -- the open sourcerers' nest which isn't as active as it once was.

One could argue that groups that get 1500 votes on JIRA are groups who want to take power; of course Sluniverse.com believes it is a group ALREADY in power and ALREADY substantially influencing Linden Lab -- and they are victory-dancing and basking in that sense of having power. But of course, many people don't know them, don't read them, and there are entire swathes of the grid caught up in other issues besides the divas' issues there of privacy.

I have an alt everyone knows named "Dear Leader" (as a joke) who I have holding the group Free Tibet (as you need multiple accounts to hold land groups, there aren't enough spaces on your main avatar to develop all the themed groups you want, and large groups just don't load so you start having to break up your rentals into groups).

Today, Dear Leader gets an IM from somebody named Marcella Rivera born in 2007 whom I never met asking if he is in any government groups. He says, no, and he doesn't want her to come to power in SL lol.

Looking at her groups was an interesting slice of the whole RP/RL/SL government "space" if you will, so I list them here:

Here's Marcella's slogan on her profile:

~Those who do not seek power, Don't Know what to do with it~

Many of these groups have people who haven't logged in since 2006, 2007, 2008 -- 2010 might be the latest, with only a few in 2011.

Even so, you'd be surprised at how huge these groups are; how they contain nobody you've ever heard of; how people might mispell in their profiles and sound stupid, but had the capacity to get 100 people to join them in their seemingly naive and fruitless endeavour.

SL is filled with kids who like to make groups and play police for a few weeks - they almost never enjoy playing parliament. It's SO much more fun to play police and eject and ban and attack other people than play parliament and sit around negotiating policy. MUCH more fun, right?

But some kids ARE busy playing parliament -- and are deadly serious about it. They could easily take over parts of SL just by having money or strategic JIRA successes or Linden loving -- and they wouldn't even have to go on the forums.

Don't forget how easily about two dozen people came out of the woodwork, some attached to the gambling empires that were being rolled up, and created stock markets and banks and flushed thousands of dollars out of unsuspecting SL avatars for a time.

Of course the people who want to take over SL on the forums are visible -- Suspiria Finecune and such. Those people may be very much in your face, but they are unlikely to get much of a following -- they are too hated and too obnoxious.

Like me : )  I'm not interested in "taking power" in SL because I'm too poor in RL and too preoccupied with RL jobs to run large continents like Desmond Shang; I don't have the patience to log on and sit on sims in meetings "to caliphate or not to caliphate" or ramming through Ashcroftian constitutional proposals which are really just troikas in disguise like Gwyneth Llewelyn; I know I'm definitely not going to spend my remaining years trying to debate people who are not only stupid enough to join communist parties in RL; they try to spread them in SL, as well (like Scylla).

No, I want more short-term goals like "let's keep the vote" or "let's try to make the forums more fair" to try to accommodate the diversity of SL and keep it diverse. I guess my hope is in its diversity and not its homogenization. If someone like Gianna Borgnine runs "the commmuuuuuunity" it would be homogenized for sure.

Except she will never succeed because hundreds of thousands of people don't know her, don't care about her, and do their SL thing without her -- and want to keep it that way. That saves us all.

Groups:

Roses of Whitehall

SL-Economic Economic Development Alliance

The SL Economic Development Alliance (SLEDA) is a public/private partnership serving the SL citizens who are interested in creating economic opportunities in the SL environment. Our vision is to establish a strong economic alliance between SL entrepreneurial citizens interested in making lucrative investments in the SL. Members can share ideas for growing your businesses, attracting capital and creating quality consumer products for the competitive,

Ladies of the Court

Academy of London

Antiquiy-1800s/Victorian Community

Colonial Freedom Party - To continue to campaign for free elections in the Fleet and by a true democratic process, allow the people to select their Government.

Congress of SL -- This is a group only for the congress of Second Life government. We are of the people, by the people, and for the people of SL and base our laws and own constitution upon that of the United States of America. Our goal is to bring all of the SL governments together to form under one flag as a Decmocracy. This group is for those who are Democrats, Republicans, Labours, goverment officials of any Sim and for those of the poeople who wish to start making a difference in SL or any other party not mentioned.

Democratic Party of Second Life - The purpose of DPSL is to advance the goals of the United States Democratic Party  through public policy and political issue analysis, discussions, social events, education, fund-raising, recruitment, coordination with other Democratic and progressive groups, and other activities to benefit the Party.

Economic Education

First Caledon Army

Hellas Royal Family

Imperial Navy of Caledon

Kingdom of Great Britain

Local government study group (founded by the infamous Ashcroft)

Open Government This group aggregates news and information in the Open Government Directive.

Federal staffers can join the Open and Innovative Government Community as a part of the MAX Federal Community, which will soon be open to all.

Presidential Cabinet

Royal Court of Austrian Netherlands

Royal Court of Sardinia 1773

Royal Court of Sweden

SLDM -- http://sldemocraticmovement.org/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/slDM
To build a broad platform to work for user emancipation in Second Life.  (Communist front group)

GoV Project

Government of SL -- The SL Government will consist of elected representatives of the residents of Second Life. These Representatives will be called SL Senators. The Government will liaise with Linden Labs to negotiate problems and situations that residents may want dealt with. The Government has the upmost responsibility to represent the views and opinions of the residents of Second Life. SL Senators will then be elected in leading Positions of the Government. These Leaders will then direct the affaird of the SL Government.

SL Society of Political Science -- Astrophysicist McCallister (J. Skyler McKinley in RL), who ran the Alaskan Sen. Mike Gravel's campaign in SL. He's a former Democratic senator known for his antiwar positions.

This last group was filled with people you'd never have heard of. I talked with Astro a few times and found him to be the typical arrogant young bore you get in those kind of jobs -- for a while he had his hands on the SL Congress sims which were later folded.

The political wave in SL of 2007-2008 passed with the big business wave -- indeed, it was big business paying for some of it (Sun Microsystems had something to do with paying for the Capitol sims through a metaversal SP.)

Even so, there are remnants of this wave of people, some with RL political causes (like Daily Kos) who aspire to use SL for political greatness in RL.

I find as a rule of thumb the more people use SL for RL lefty causes, the left they get involved in the political issues of the platform.

That's because their leftist politics drives them to side with the open source socialist perspective usually, and they don't get involved in the business issues that drive all the mass social movements of SL, such as they are, on VAT, or copybot, or Red Zone or homesteads. These are people whose sims are paid for by governments or foundations or friends and they don't care about the war for private property and privacy on the Internet -- they think it's a war that is lost and which they won already.

What I'm going to posit as a certain theory is that the people relentlessly making historical-era RP sims, various armies and courts and such; the people in the RL government parties and offices -- these people are practicing to take over the Metaverse. You may not want power and you may not want them in power; but they do, and they will get in power unless we all figure out how to make a more fair platform that can accommodate diverse groups fairly and keep freedom for all under the law.

Comments

[Darrius Gothly]

And not a single mention of my "Technocommunist Plot to Overthrow the Land Market" (or whatever the heck it was you called it).

Daggone it Prok, you just hate too many people to give us all equal time. You really ought to consider pruning some .. y'know .. so you can properly trash us all.

[marcius7777@yahoo.com]

After spending a brief time looking over your blog site, I wonder.. have you made more negative comments about SL than everyone else combined?

[Desmond Shang]

"too poor in RL and too preoccupied with RL jobs to run large continents like Desmond Shang"

Heh, well.

Technically I am employed ~ self employed ~ but yes, it's the sort of self employment that allows me to sleep in, work from home nowadays (I closed the business park office in September) and so forth.

And yes, on paper it "looks good" ~ but you might in fact find yourself far better off than I am, Prok. College tuition such as it is for the young ones, I'm reduced to pretty much just gas and coffee money these days.

There is little mercy for a Californian who plays by the rules, pays taxes and believes in higher education. UC demands 30,000 USD before taxes annually, or, in raw pre~tax income closer to 45k cold hard cash.

* * * * *

As for governance, I think it's good that people experiment with governance here. Whilst my experiments are 95% parody and 5% real (I do the best I can to support avatar rights, that's the 5%)~ at least here, there's a chance for people to mess up and not harm too much.

It's good to experiment with governance at a much lower level of stakes than say, that of an entire real town or city.

If only there were some simulation of California's governance, we could have seen what a mess it leads to. It's literally easier to amend our constitution than get a responsible state budget passed.

[Danton Sideways]

What does that say that nobody seems to be trying to take over SL, or democratize it, or whatever, any more?

[Phoenix Psaltery]

It's spelled Ulrika, and a lot of us miss her.

[Amanda Dallin]

I'm rather disdainful of people trying to form a government for SL or the metaverse. SL is too diverse for a government to form and anyway is the property of a private corporation. If the metaverse grows and extends beyond SL one day then RL govt. will find a way to control it. What I don't see is how any of this applies to historical role play sims and groups.

Most of the "people relentlessly making historical-era RP sims, various armies and courts and such" who I know do it because they enjoy it. The sims are generally paid for with rentals or donations. I don't know of any historical role play group who is out to take over the metaverse.

The groups you list is a combination of historical role play and more serious (at least in their minds) political groups. A person being in both types of groups does not mean the groups are related. I'm involved in historical role play. It's fun. That's all.

I get that you don't enjoy this kind of historical role play and that's fine. Making historical role play into some kind of conspiracy to take over the metaverse is just bizarre.

[Darien Caldwell]

I don't think it's surprising. I think everyone has a yearning to control the world around them, even if it's no more than to prevent others from doing so. Second Life does provide a prime ecosystem for doing this, you don't need an army and a millitary budget to take over your territory, just a checkbook to buy a sim.

The thing to keep in mind is, all of these things you see going on in SL, go on in RL too. But some groups are already very entrenched, and the stakes are much, much higher. So is the cost of doing business, so to speak.

[Prokofy Neva]

Amanda,

Many people who RP historical periods *like* the notions of those historical periods. When men were superior to women; when entire classes of people were made slaves; when very rigid behaviour codes were used to define classes and property, etc. etc.

So practicing a Roman or Victorian or Caliphate government isn't just amusing; it's part of recreating civilizations on line that some people admire because they give them more power over other people.

When you find a character like this Marcella Rivera born in 2007, about whom I have no knowledge, you can gain insights into this process by looking at the groups.

The same person interested in all that Caledon and royal court of this or that is interested in RL Gov groups and various efforts to turn SL into a congress or some kind of government with certain groups in it deciding things.

You don't write this on your profile if you merely enjoy flourishing swords in a period-style uniform:

"~Those who do not seek power, Don't Know what to do with it~"

History is replete with examples of mediocrities who didn't seem much and about whom nobody had heard of coming to power -- that rather untalented artist Hitler; that man who made it his business to always do the chore of keeping the minutes who was described as "rude", Stalin; the colourless KGB agent Putin, etc.

Whoever heard of the community-organizer and provincial law professor Obama, for that matter?

People willing to RP governants and sit through the meetings and churn through the various models can win a situation where nobody wants power over them, but everybody wants some good, like "privacy".

Land ownership and group rules would seem to prevent any one group from taking power over whole continents.

But given how continents can merge; given how groups can merge; given how easy it can be to muscle people even out of land they paid for, it's a weak system.

[Prokofy Neva]

Phoenix, "a lot of us" means your little clique on Second "Citizen" or Sharia Sluniverse.

She was what enabled your little group to hold power on the old forums and she could be a stalking horse attacking viciously people you didn't like -- like me -- with utter impunity because the Lindens had given her a free sim to do a socialist government experiment that they completely were in love with ideologically and politically.

That's all.

[Victor1st Mornington]

Ya cant form a government in SL. Just imagine if ya did.

Senator A: Representing the Democratic Party.

Senator B: Representing the Gorean Party

Senator C: Representing the Furry Party

Senator D: Representing the National Hunting Party

Senator A would stand up and speak about equal rights, Senator B would then TP over to Senator A and stab him with a spear for inciting his slave women to uprise and fight against the men.

Senator C would stand up and start talking, Senator D would load his double barrle shotgun and start shooting at Senator C cause he looked like a rabbit and Senator D was hungry...

...yeah...wont work...

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, sounds laughable, but you've put your finger on it, Victor.

The question would have to be this at the get-go: what world are we trying to have a parliament about?

The internal virtual world of SL, that sort of emerges as a collective fiction or an interactive collaborative projected notion, or however you want to describe it? The world that becomes preoccupied with things like prims and privacy and AnnMarie Otoole's unmanned bot cars caroming along the King's highways?

Or the real world which has things like exploding nuclear reactors in Japan to worry about?

The lefty groups like the Daily Kos ignore the fiction of the former and just use SL like they'd use Facebook as just one more thing (and not a particularly successful and growth-promoting area).

The groups inside SL worrying about privacy or homestead performance or AnnMarie Otool's cars may or may not be members of the Democratic or Republican or Social Democratic parties or whatever.

Most people say they don't want RL politics to intrude on their SL because they want it to be a place of escape.

And "Escape" is what the label on the can now says at secondlife.com

It used to say "Your World, Your Imagination" and that helped people like Ulrika think that it was a canvas for them to paint their socialist and Marxist aspirations for power over other people (she was always trying to think of ways to stick it to the land barons).

I continue to think that the way to work toward better governance is not to try to divide up powers and pies first, although no parliament can ever exist if the problem of power is not solved first.

The reason is simple -- we don't own the servers and can be ejected at any time.

So I continue to think that we have to behave something like Solidarity in Poland or Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia or Charter 97 in Belarus today, creating alternative civil society connections and activities for the day when in fact the servers won't all be owned by the authoritarian power.

So I think that means building up consensus by debate and voting on specific issues that matter to people, i.e. voting itself, Red Zone, group chat, whatever.

So that's my little contribution to this that I'd like to start.

[c3]

The new middle east...

fast fun and farsi.

and other delusions of MIPS....;)

[Amanda Dallin]

Anyone trying to repress woman or ethnic/racial groups in the 18th century role play I'm involved in would find themselves very lonely. Those attitude would not be accepted. It's not historically accurate but then the point is to have fun not to be accurate. I'm sure there are group like you describe but they are not the mainstream role play groups.

Judging historical people and societies by modern western standards often gives a skewed view of those societies. The ancient Greeks repressed women, held slaves, and viewed non-greeks as inferior. They also created the concepts and forms for democracy which is the basis of Western Civilization. The Romans were imperialist, repressed women, and held slaves. They also set the foundations for republican government used in most Western Civilization. You can make similar analogies in the east with nations such as ancient China, Japan, India, Persia, etc. Not to mention the Islamic nations. Historical civilizations and people should be viewed against their own times not ours.

[Amanda Dallin]

"So I continue to think that we have to behave something like Solidarity in Poland or Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia or Charter 97 in Belarus today, creating alternative civil society connections and activities for the day when in fact the servers won't all be owned by the authoritarian power."

This sounds interesting and I'd like to hear more. Can you explain how this is different from all those Governments of SL people form? It would seem to me that one person cannot have the moral authority for this. You would need a very wide ranging diverse group such as the Charter 77 signers.

[Prokofy Neva]

No one person is claiming authority, Amanda, but nice try trying to villify me and accuse me of stealth-power-taking such as I am critiquing here. That *is* your goal, as it is in every post, to try to discredit me using my own values, so *do* keep trying, maybe you'll strike gold if you try hard enough.

Various people have tried "open letters" such as the famous one run by Sluniverse some years ago which was about a variety of issues from copyright theft to high prices (I should look it up as an example of all the things they wanted that in fact Red Zone provided but which they denounced merely because they couldn't control Red Zone).

I've made a petition about voting, but less than 50 people signed it -- people don't value due process and rights as much as you think.

I don't care. I don't look for mass legitimacy or thousands of signatories to a petition to do what I think is right.

[Breezy Carver]

*grins* @ Victor You are priceless ..
How fitting this post is to read on the first day of spring !

Reminds me of a little ditty ..
ahem .. *begins to sing*
"If I ruled the world... everyday would be the first day of Spring,
everyone would have a new song to sing...."
Point ..If the entire world, could simply start with the basics
"Do un to others as you would like done unto you" ie the Golden Rule ..
*sigh* soo simple yet ...(continues to ponder)
Why on earth in any world is it just so hard for Most .. to do ??

[brinda allen]

We do have a *Ruling Class*. They're called Linden Lab, or as I call them "The Benevolent Monarchy". Mostly adsentee rulers, but rulers never the less.
There was one area that did benefit from having at least some one listening to what was said.
The Help Islands.
Actually having seen some of what went on on the old Help Islands for a few years, having someone or group "in charge" there was better than allowing free access.
Several times I found people creating and account in order to remain on the islands and to scam new residents out of money or perceived sexual favors.
Yes, I did witness a rare few of the old SL Mentors practising questional behavior. The key word there is rare. An occaisional word to other mentors or a Linden stopped that.

It seems all of us require rules... therefore some one has to enforce those rules.
"Where there is no authority... there is no law"
"Qua illic est haud auctorita. illic est haud lex"

[Prokofy Neva]

I collected many more incidents of Mentors misbehaving than you did, brinda. And I think it's because a) I travelled to all the infohubs regularly for a time to see how they functioned and found numerous cases of them hijacking newbies and selling them stuff etc b) some famous ones among them went out of their way to harass me and my tenants because they didn't like my critique of their influence and power on the forums, so they would go out of their way to make trouble.

I'll never forget once attempting to get a tenant to remove extra prims on his land, and him threatening me that his Mentor friend would "get me," and that Mentor tping into the scene to make good on the threat.

I will never forget a Mentor attached to the Woodburies (Shawn) harassing me for weeks on end with a fake rental that was only engineered to harass me, bellowing on his blog that I had robbed him because I ejected him and refused to return his rent, because for a year he had a huge ugly glowing build up next to my rentals in Refugio, with ban lines up everywhere, making it impossible to rent. or other griefscapades he and his little boy friend waged on me endlessly. So yeah, Mentors. The Mentor title remained on his profile for ages, past many, many ARs and bannings for long periods, well past his stock market shenanigans.

Or how about the Mentor and even Life Helper that flew up to me out of the blue when I was a newbie and told me that my land sale price was too high. He was furious that a land market had started in SL, and $7/meter on the mainland for waterfront was making him go into a rage. Dead Disservice is what I called that assholery, that was harming the ability of SL to become like RL -- there was a decidedly anti-commerce and anti-capitalist bunch among the early adapters who loathed land sales and businesses and wanted everyone to march to sandboxes and "create" and then apprentice themselves to oldbies.

I won't forget the Mentors I caught with their folders of BDSM clubs they slung at newbies -- I know because I was one of them on a new account I made to hold a grop.

Or the Mentor Pendari who told me that there was a certain way the oldbies did things around here, and they didn't take kindly to people like me criticizing any one of their own (over the statue in the water in Carlisle).

Or the mentors that hovered around the Lindens like bees, currying favour, and making it their business to AR people they thought deserving of ARs.

So I just don't see it as you do. I see it quite differently. I documented the cases over the years. The Lindens themselves were forced to disband these people because they were out of control.

What's important about authority is that it have authority. Linden Lab is generally preferable to me as an authority than a group of vigilantes like the Mentors. But that's not saying much, as the Lindens aren't fair.

[Amanda Dallin]

I've never tried to discredit you. I do sometimes ask questions and occasionally disagree.

You brought up Solidarity, Charter 77 and Charter 97. I was asking what you meant. These were and are not movements of one person fighting for what they consider right. They were and are diverse groups fighting against authoritarian government. Fighting the good fight alone is admirable but not the same thing as these movements you mentioned.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, Amanda. You're just being spiteful as useful, in a sort of elaborate troll. You always do this, try to discredit me, show me up, call me out as somehow hypocritical -- it's a sport. Just because you do it with more sophistication than others doesn't mean you don't do it.

Each one of those groups was once started by one person. Who found another. Who found 10 more. I don't worry about whether something is big or small. Mass movements do not get started easily in SL -- they only result when a few people take leadership and when a certain critical mass begins to form. One person was required who stepped up to post their first concern about Red Zone on Sluniverse, and they could have just as likely been shouted down by the mob there as have been heeded.

It's really just sophistry to claim that because I propose doing something that only about 50 people are willing even to check a box on a petition for that somehow, I am "not like those movements" or "am not sufficiently diverse" or "not the same thing". So what? It's the right thing to do. Fighting for keeping the vote isn't something that people sufficiently value. When it disappears and people who weren't informed about it learn of this, we'll hear some more. Then maybe it will die down. But so what? Even if I am the only person complaining about it and everyone else says it's wrong, I will persist.

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

such groups get started with one person.