Oh, dear. While everybody at Sharia Sluniverse.com is obsessing still in a griefer-laden thread about...things like...Ryokoshi's Robble Rubble's banned alt LightlyToasted Ruben (and Mr. Ruben sounds an awful lot like one of the Emeralds in the Youtubes of a few summers ago, eh?!)...oldbie extraordinaire Gwyneth Llewelyn is quietly taking over the world!
Or trying to, anyway. Her sectarian idea of a parliament (mainly a collective or collegium for a socialist sim) is always something I suspected she didn't want to keep on her own sim, FriesWithThat or whatever its new name is (the old Linden-feted Neualtenberg that self-destructed after a split with Kendra Bancroft, who later died in RL, and a return terrorist rampage from Ulricha Zugzwang). Despite the Trotskyist notion of "socialism in one country," Gwyn always aspired to Greater Things, and now she states in this typically lengthy post that she wants to spread her parliament to all of SL, and then all of the Metaverse. Sigh.
I wish the Lindens had a Grey Goo Fence that would stop other people's notions of governance of *your* land at the boundaries of *their sim* but the Lindens themselves, of course, are prone to flights of utopian fancy -- Philip Linden himself is said to be a Singularist and you would find varying forms of Technocommunism and Cyber-Libertarianism and Extropianism (Cosmic Engineering) throughout the leadership and staff.
One could go head to toe with those ridicularities at the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (with the accent on the *simulation* of democracy har har) but they self-imploded, too, after some of them became entranced with Islamism and the Caliphate and sojourned for a time in the Andulusa sims, which themselves then self-destroyed. Socialism is destroyed, need I say more. I was shocked to discover David Orban's calling card lighting up in SL today -- good Lord, I hope he's not putting spimes all over the place.
In any event, I look at the governance thing more simply. I've been through various resident-based attempts to make representative bodies, such as another ill-fated venture, the Metaverse Justice Watch, which was griefed by the old line of oldbie griefers starting with Jauani Wu. I've seen any number of consumer watch sort of groups get started, self-aggrandize, and die, along with Chambers of Commerce and Better Business Bureaus which usually involve having an elite set try to figure out how to throw the Better Business toward themselves and exonerate their own bad deeds (like putting in notorious ad-farm cutters and extortionists into their board, like that awful Chrischun Fassbinder, now gone, who created the network of 16 m2 parcels view-devaluing Mr. Lee's Hong Kong ad signs available for $9898 to "buy back the view")
You'd be surprised how many governance groups there are in SL. I stumble on them all the time as I see my tenants in them, for example. Did you know that there's an open group called Congress of SL with people you've never heard of in it like Kaipo Mokusei? They think *they* are going to run SL and maybe never heard of Gwyneth?
Usually what the kids do when they want to play government is *first* they make a police precinct and "secure the area". Then they make a president. Then they usually forget to make a parliament and a free press lol. I've seen that formula done over and over and over again.
I've often wondered if the way to govern Second Life is simply to begin. You know, like that old 19th-century bromide, "The way to begin the sublime life is to begin." That's why an avatar named Felix Frankfurter once started "16m Court" to adjudicate disputes taking place on owners of 16m of land or more. That way you didn't have to endlessly hash sandbox and copybot cases involving people with no land or payment on file -- leave it to the Lindens.
I've always thought land ownership had to be at the heart of governance: you need to have stake. Philip naturally didn't believe it, because as he frankly told him when we met him in 2005 and tried to establish something like a Magna Charta over him, he wouldn't concede that land ownership, particularly large holdings, meant anything in the world (although it meant a lot to his bottom line!) and he wanted wealth and land not to count in Second Life (Technocommunism). Er, I guess he mentioned clout by numbers of JIRA contributions or lolcubes rezzed.
I've always thought that the best way to solve the problem of the Linden entity's excessive powers is simply to start your own government without them, under Jacek Kuron's theory, "Don't burn down Party committees; build your own." This worked for Poland's Solidarity; it is all that really could work for SL. But when people make sim committees or regional committees they often didn't work for the usual reasons:
1. avatar anonymity and lack of accountability
2. alt sock puppets
3. griefing over and above land tools' ability to cope
4. amateurism and ignorance
These all end to endless squabbles. We all know the dreaded force that diploma-mill commuter-college departmental Marxists can wield in virtuality -- they can punch far above their weight even when their budgets are cut.
Then you have problems like the aggressively under-educated sex-bed king Stroker Serpentine, and the maliciously socially-maladjusted gopher-creator and early Internet nerd Pixleen Mistral. These represent people who either want to play real-life cards like "ligitation" or refuse to concede the validity of virtuality for anything but nihilist and cynical griefing.
I could talk a lot about what is needed for such a vast and diverse (but actually more homogenous than people admit) world but it's late, so let me suggest my concept of governance. I think until you have the rough equivalent of Committees of Correspondence and a Constituent Assembly and a Constitutional drafting committee and so on, you can't have a parliament. Parliaments should only consist of landowners, as archaic as that may feel because stake is too hard to pin down otherwise. JIRA-obsessive sandboxers, beta-testing furries and day-old griefers are always welcome to make their own parties and fight for suffrage and seats in the parliament but that would mean too much organization for those chaos-inciters.
Rodvik Linden represents a hope of a better Second Life to many. Not to me, given that among the first things he did was remove the vote from the JIRA. This most definitely has to be put back in, and a "no" vote has to be devised even if it means dumping Atlassian software itself if they won't cooperate. Rodvik is British, and perhaps that explains why he joined Sluniverse.com, which other Lindens tend not to do, especially the chief ones -- as one denizen of Sharia-Slun explained, it is noteworthy for its "British mindfucking humour" -- and that about sizes it up. Slun is filled with nasty Brits of the left or extreme licentious type who are impossible to reason with (Lucifer Barphomet and some of the others showing up in these endless JLU threads). The British haters of Americans and under-the-wire British anti-semites, the kinky lifestylers and vicious BDSM queens and identity-politicking victimologists from the LGBT set -- these are all in full display at Slun and make it a horrid atmosphere -- it's a hive mind with a conscious hive mind honcho, Cristiano Midnight. While it has hundreds of viewers at any one time and thousands of regular visitors, it's only one old aspect of SL and not representative of many constituencies especially non-English speaking.
Rodvik may have demonstratively joined this group-think set for the British mindfuckery which may have felt like home to him, I dunno - or just because it's a large group of residents and he felt that he had to get down with the people, as he does on Twitter. But it sends a signal, and not the best one -- Linden feting of the Feted Inner Core, if you will.
1. In my view, the first rule of these Lindens should be that they not play favourites and not join resident groups or forums or have fan groups. If the Lindens would end this practice of obvious favouritism, it would at least fix the optics that are so badly askew.
2. The second thing Lindens should do is close all the public sandboxes. They've set the stage for this with the creation of the Premium sandbox -- a brilliant idea that Philip would have hated. For the first time you can go to clean, non-laggy, *nice* sandboxes to do your chores like fix pesky big rezzed houses, or create things in peace. I visited Goguen and Ahern and some of the others to compare, and I couldn't even move in one it was so griefed and lagged out with scripted crap. I struggled to put out a house and even though there appeared to be space, I was beset by zombie scripted walking newbies with juvenile hover texts like "stick it up my pooper shooter". Ugliness, stupidity and weapons-toting furries reign in these places, and make them impossible to be in or even be on the same sim with (like Columbia, where I struggle to run rentals next to Bryan Ruxton, ugh -- several times a month I need to get the sim reset due to his sandbox idiocy.)
There might be some socialist screaming about shutting down the public sandboxes, but if you type "sandbox" into search, the Linden sandboxes aren't first. There are numerous privately-run sandboxes like Fermi and people can go there. They are run better than the Linden boxes because people can eject and ban in real time without being summoned, usually. Even some pro-Anonymous goon runs a sandbox with advertising and rules -- the furries can all go to these establishments and stop plugging up the AR system with Linden v. sandboxers ARs. The Lindens also fuss and fume about people putting things out for sale in sandboxes, which is stupid in a game where you are supposed to be able to make and sell stuff, and what better place than a sandbox where everybody is gathered to see what each other are making. So -- end the Linden socialism around this and the players' socialism demanding public resources endlessly be provided for NPIOF accounts and let the charitable private sector take it up if needed.
3. Return voting in groups. Just because this wasn't used much doesn't mean it was a bad idea. There was no objective reason to remove it. It had various annoyances but could be improved.
4. Make it possible to ban people from groups even if the group remains open. This is an often-requested boon that really could make a difference. There are persistent griefers who always exploit this feature which is an advantage many kinds of groups don't want to turn off for all kinds of reasons. I'm all for open society and open groups, and a way to handle crime through banning individuals. Geez, if you can *mute* an individual person within a group or not give them chat rights, why can't you ban or freeze their *membership* as a whole? *So that they cannot set prims*.
5. Make it possible to ban groups from land. Often griefers tell you this is pointless because they will "just make another group". They're not the ones to listen to about this. Trust me on this, griefers are fiercely loyal to their groups and HATE changing them. Do you think The Wrong Hands griefers would shrug if their beloved branded TWH went down tomorrow or was banned and they'd "just make another one"? They don't. They stick to *that* one. By banning by group, you erode their ability to go on pretending the old "guilt by association" fallacy applies and enables you to end the "grief by association" actuality.
6. Rodvik is likely to think putting in "make that person's prims invisible" like some of the TPVs have as the great governance boon winning back the view on the Mainland. But it's not a solution. You would still bump into those prims. You would still have to constantly get each new set of tenants or visitors to join you in that "remove the view". Tools are not a substitute for organic policy.
7. Speaking of organic policy, many people want Rodvik to denounce the JLU or ban the JLU or announce something about an end to police groups. Well, that better be balanced by an equally forceful denunciation of Woodbury/PN/The Wrong Hands. Knowing of his deep EA.com culture in which the game gods never mentioned groups by name and even forbid criticism of groups on the TSO forums (a grave mistake) we're not likely to see this from Rodvik, who has never really made a policy/philosophical post at all (as Philip used to do -- Philip's early posts would talk about big ideas like theories of the corporation from 1937 and that sort of thing.) I suspect Rodvik will say nothing. But what he could do is say that to end the endless cycle of griefing and vigilantes, henceforth Lindens will no longer accept massive ARs and ARs about situations not on your own land. Hey, that will take the wind out of their sails pretty quick.
Lindens encourage mass AR parties and people have become completely acculturated to the idea that you need 20 different people to report a situation to get their attention. Ostensibly this is because they can't pick out serious situations in the stream of thousands of reports. But you wouldn't need that if the stream was radically reduced by being *unable to be made unless you own land or have estate manager permissions*.
What to do about sandboxes? Well, those are closed by now, remember? And if you have a complaint, you either go to your landlord or to the sim owner of where you are. If that is Governor Linden, you go to the Gov Linden appeals page and get in line. Buy a premium account and land if you want to move ahead of the queue. It has to be that way. Governance has to originate in land ownership so as to be rooted in accountability and stake.
Shorn of their ability to massively AR other people on land that isn't theirs, not only the JLU but the Woodburies, who frequently launch ARs on each other or on people like me exposing them, would all be put out of business. I'm all for the JLU making a *public* wiki. What are needed aren't ARs, but public reports *naming names and locations*.
8. I've long proposed that the Police Blotter be brought back, but not only in its old highly selective form that again, consisted mainly of sandboxes and obscure estate sims with murky dealings. There should be NAMES or every *successfully completed* disciplinary action (not allegation in a report, but completed action) which should include a) the name of the Linden prosecuting the case b) the name of the abuse reporter c) the name of the abuser.
Please don't start whining about retaliation. If the Lindens can't control their sims enough to prevent retaliation against people reporting legitimate griefing episodes, then they shouldn't be in business. If you don't want your name publicized with you allegations, hey, don't make them. Like real life, you know?
This would do wonders also to cut the huge flow of reports -- with the ability to report ONLY on your own land about incidents you are directly involved in; with an end to AR parties; with the *publication of your name* if your claim is successful, the huge firehose of ARs will be reduced to quite manageable proportions.
As an alternative, the Lindens could have an option of either public ARs, where your name will go on the record, or anonymous tips or private ARs -- where the queue will be a lot longer.
9. Now that G-team and concierge are all really merged, the Lindens should drop this silly idea that concierge can't respond to ARs about griefing. Of course they can. If there are grief-prims on a no-show neighbour on mainland, concierge should deal rather than me waiting four months to get a Torley Friendly Greetings grief prim removed from a sim where its driven everyone batty because sound isn't restricted to the no-show's parcel.
All of these things I'm describing don't address the sorts of thing Gwyn likes to play with -- socialist systems that she endlessly chases despite having come to the baffling awareness in RL that she earns enough money from her various jobs -- if only she doesn't have to count taxes. Due to taxes, she is forced to work even extra jobs!
Governance in SL will do better when it's a verb, not a noun. What is needed isn't a parliament, a resident body that the Lindens fete somehow, or self-appointed busy-bodies who want to run *your* land. What's needed is functionality -- the ability to minimize grief in groups and get better traction on mainland complaints revolving around neighbours' and Governor Linden land.
10. The Lindens should drop the notion of "defamation of individuals and groups". They erode the very meaning of the word even in lawsuit-happy Great Britain by implying that any criticism on an avatar profile or a forum post gets to be called "defamation," defined only by the target. Without the ability to criticize, you can't have justice. You can't have civil society when there is no free press that can openly discuss the wrongs in society. In SL, that means open discussion of griefing and privacy disruption and open discussion of land scams and shoddy merchandise and poor service. Unless someone brings a judge's order from a successful libel case, they should be allowed to make allegations as needed and others can always counter them.
Except for the "missing comrades" Stalin-type of solution for griefing ("no person, no problem") as a tool in the viewer, I don't think Rodvik will do a single one of these things I've outlined.
Yet anyone of us can start to live as if they all apply and thus strengthen the ability to govern the metaverse to keep its freedoms from destruction by its enemies.
This is way too long and nonsensical to read but LighlyToasted Ruben was Robble's account not mine!
Even the JLU know that!
Posted by: Ryokashi | September 16, 2011 at 08:13 AM
Oops, silly me! I mixed up my RR griefers *again*! Fixed!
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | September 16, 2011 at 10:37 AM
Problems with this post duplicated and its remarks getting lost.
Fleep left a comment saying she has blogged about this here:
http://www.fleeptuque.com/blog/2011/09/whats-missing-from-governance-in-second-life/
For some reason her link didn't take, but links are allowed here, not sure of the issue.
So let me also cross-post here the comment I left on her blog which I urge you all to read, she has vast experience in Mainland community organizing.
Fleep, I think you bring some great perspectives to this issue. You don't have to have unwieldly confederations, you don't have to have top-heavy legislatures sitting to govern in SL.
But I hasten to say precisely because you unabashedly describe yourself as a "progressive" (I most definitely *don't* like that term and describe myself as "liberal but not progressive" for that reason) that I don't think this informal system is viable for real life. That is, I don't think we need something "new" or "special" because it's "the 21st century" that involves basically a lot of geeks running things by fiat from their smart phones bypassing elected representatives.
There are a lot of groups like moveon.org that would love if life ran that way, where they could just buy a CREDO phone and fast-track their policy into notions. But no thank you. You're not elected.
You have only to study what happened to the obscene-Twitterer Anthony Weinstein, a Democrat, who lost his seat to a Republican, to understand the people change, issues change, certain forces come to the fore, life goes on, and you need responsible and *elected* politicians for government, not just people with smart phones.
By suggesting governance in *Second Life* should be "a verb not a noun" I'm trying to solve the problem of an illegitimate power in the first place.
That is, sure, a private company that put their own money in gets to decide what it wants to do -- on my sim level, that works for me, too, as Ravenglass. (Gwyn used to call me a "tyrant" merely because I ran *a company* instead of a "parliament" and because I had "customers" instead of "constituents". That was ridiculous because I set the goals as limited -- you pay, you abide by a notecard of rules, then you refund if you don't like it any more.)
Government by notecard and refund works great for me, and I've often said you only need two scripts to run things really in SL -- "give notecard" and "take notecard" -- if you have consensus to start with.
And that's really the issue, identifying the initial group of consensus. Chilbo works as you yourself explain because it is like-minded people on a like-minded task. You have the tekkie-wiki edu-punk open-source technocommies in a huddle, and they get along.
But I don't endorse their politics or prescriptions, i.e. over-reliance on freebies, etc. etc. So the "noun" of Chilbo is not something I want to support, belong to, or confederate with, even though some of the "verbs" of Chilbo, like the idea to be able to remove "grief prims" is an interesting thesis.
I've discussed it many times -- can the Lindens give us estate-manager powers on Governor Linden land, since it's all basically in a few groups? There should be no reason why they can't. If I've paid tier for 7 years, can't the Lindens deputize me to remove screaming particle spewers from either Linden Land or no-show land or ban people from infohubs?
But these are all acts that seem straightforward, until griefers begin to fret and Fisk and edge-case them and demand equal rights and harry the Lindens to death, on the one hand, or until just the ordinary person wonders if any of these land barons are going to get too heavy handed in the welcome areas if they have that power. (And I still think welcome areas should be policed by clearly-marked circuit-riding Lindens only).
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | September 16, 2011 at 10:54 AM
The whole industry of games/VRs do not believe in Democracy.
So it only follows that none of these games/VRs have democracies.
To enforce a democracy in these areas would mean strong, central governments to create standards in the creation of these VRs. That is something we no longer have, since we are in the midst of crony capitalism which is eating away at many governments.
Posted by: melponeme_k | September 16, 2011 at 12:02 PM
games are art-commerce- craft-- and should be treated as such.. all delusions that they are more are from both sides/makers/viewsers// dangerous.
and using the Seinfeld Universe, without being a "master of your domain" all else is BS, and you'll end up in a second life for another decade....
one day, reality will overcome virtuality again, usually due to a flood.
back up whats important.:)
noah cube.;)
Posted by: cube inada | September 16, 2011 at 01:06 PM
i went to one of the new premium sandboxes..almost wanted to build something- i havent in sl in 2 years...
taxes.. nothing wrong with them when moeny used for public voted good. etc..
end all the "free" crap mentaltiy of SL..then you can at least get a working buisness that not a rigged game for the makers/FIC alone.
i dont need a government, i need a fair platform for commerce.. entertainment and communications/distribution.
but google+/facebook/ Second life. or any of these systems are not designed for that, they are only designed for the 5 year suck of peoples time/ money/ and eventually souls.
Posted by: cube inada | September 16, 2011 at 01:17 PM
I like Gwyn, her blog posts are great but i had to leave a comment on her latest beating of the dead horse post...the one about democracy in SL.
I never subscribed to the whole "FIC" thing, although some of it is true, the REALLY OLD oldbies looking at SL and seeing the once small community explode into the massive world it is now. The problem with folks like Gywn is they really are totally out of touch with whats going on in the real world of SL. The fact that the adult community comprising BDSM, Goreans and so forth is the money making oil that makes the cogs of LL spin round. Sure, theres folks like Anshe Chung who own vast swathes of land, but the real income is from the spenders, the big spenders.
You only need to look at the donation totals for Relay for Life to realise that the Gor's and the BDSM'ers and the adult community are BIG spenders, the gor's alone raised millions of lindens in the last RFL event.
Can you imagine if Gwyn's dream came true? If there was an election, if there was a "parliament" of 50 or so big names...
Now, take that image and then throw in 2 or 3 big Gorean community leaders. Into that mix throw in about 3 or 4 BDSM community leaders. Ontop of that throw in a representative who believed in freedom of womens rights...then sit back, and watch as a bloodbath ensues between them all.
The simple fact is, democracy in SL is a lie.
Posted by: Victor1st Mornington | September 16, 2011 at 01:32 PM
The only type of government that works in Second Life is benevolent dictatorships. Democracies only work in real life because the people have a shared stake in the result of the decisions.
Those JLU threads at SLU are an excellent example of what a SL parliament looks like; the entire conversation monopolized by the loudest winners and nothing done.
Posted by: Emperor Norton | September 16, 2011 at 05:06 PM
@Emperor Norton
Because GLE is a coward who ran away to a lesser known forum, and Kalel's such a baby and a coward he can't and wont defend his own actions outside his own psyop "blog".
He's been asked and given the opportunity but he wont and continues to bury his head, so get your facts straight idiot sock puppet.
Posted by: Roger Blackhawk | September 17, 2011 at 05:01 AM
There is governance all over the grid. Moderated and tempered by the ability for people to move, or leave, if they want to.
On larger estates, it's even more subtle than such a brutal thing as "like it or leave" ~ people can make their wishes known before it gets to that point, and land barons are directly, financially motivated to listen.
The only place governance is somewhat lacking is on the mainland. There actually is governance there, but it's a distant sort of thing. And clearly not terribly effective. How many land barons would have allowed a paying resident to be harassed continually for five years? Not many. But it happens on the mainland.
As for gridwide parliaments or whatnot, I reject these utterly. Caledon is over 8000 dollars a month, exists only by the honest happiness of the people therein.
Any outsiders seeking dominion over our land, or seeking to constrain the format of gridwide discussion, is going to face stern resistance from us. With all options on the table, not just courtly political wrangling in a farcical, backstabbing parliament.
Certain personalities thrive in such a political intrigue, and may actually enjoy it. Others of us simply tire quickly of argument and have no use for it, let alone interminable meetings, power~seeking personalities and all the disfunctionality that goes with it.
* * * * *
Incidentally, we declared an end to slavery ages ago, it's in our covenant. Gor or BDSM concepts will *never* hold sway with us at a gridwide, public or political level.
Though I might make an exception just once, and outright purchase any Senator suggesting otherwise, box him up and gift him to FurNation as a present from friendly Caledon.
Desmond Shang, Guvnah
Independent State of Caledon
Posted by: Desmond Shang | September 17, 2011 at 05:40 PM
$8000 a month for Caledon? How much would that be at Inworldz? Maybe you should put it to a vote eh?
Posted by: Ann Otoole InSL | September 17, 2011 at 07:07 PM
I keep all options on the table at all times, Ann; if it made sense to move I would.
It doesn't make sense on a number of levels societal, financial and technical; quite a lot of us simply do not want to go there, and of those who do, they already have their own lands.
Most importantly, with the incredibly low margins there, I'm not willing to spend four hours a day dealing with resident issues, on average, for pennies. I'm very honest and up front about that.
If anyone has issue with it, they can work quite hard for a few months for say, two dollars an hour, to fully appreciate why I won't value my time so cheaply.
Posted by: Desmond Shang | September 18, 2011 at 07:39 PM
"Disinformation (a translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya) is false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately with intentions of turning genuine information useless". From the Wikipedia.
A proper reply to this would take a whole post, so I guess I shall restrict myself to some topics:
1) Calling people "socialists" because one doesn't agree with them is as silly as McCarthyism. AFAIK, promoting representative democracy, a system shown to work on almost all *capitalist* systems is not being a "socialist". It's arguable if representative democracy works under a "socialist" system. But then again, I guess that all depends on the definition of the word "socialist". For me, reading about a long list of your "governance tools" under which residents will have to submit, but where they cannot participate to decide how those should be implemented, is the worst form of authoritarian collectivism; for you, allowing all people to freely elect their representatives to talk with Linden Lab, and subject them to public scrutiny (as opposed to the current "Star Chamber" approach) is "socialism". That's definitely stretching the definition of the word, but that's ok. I'll stick to the definition of "representative democracy" to describe the system in place in the vast majority of free countries of the world as well as on most organisations (even a Board of Directors, elected by a company's shareholders, is nothing less than representative democracy).
2) The whole purpose of my post was exactly to show how no single resident — and much less Linden Lab — is in touch with *all* groups and organisations in Second Life. SL is way too big. Lindens have to work on the *assumption* of what they *think* that some groups think. They certainly are in touch with a few, but not with all. Representative democracy allows that gap to be bridged, by freely electing, from *all* groups — and not just a selected few — who is supposed to speak for them at LL's policy meetings. I'm not saying that there aren't other models for accomplishing the same purposes; I'm just defending representative democracy as a valid and well-tried and known model to accomplish that in fairness.
3) Desmond's (and not only Desmond's...) fears are unjustified in the model I proposed. I'm not suggesting a system to "rule the world", as so many have carelessly suggested in this comment thread. I'm suggesting a transparent *advisory board*, where we all know who the members are (because we voted for them!) and can subject them to public scrutiny. The purpose of that advisory board is just to give *representative* feedback on what people actually think about LL's proposed or current policies. Not feedback from "some" people whom we don't know why they were "selected" or "hand-picked" by the Lindens. Not a form of adhocracy like some left-wing Americans tend to favour — the notion that one opens a discussion to the public, and decisions are taken by anyone who happens to be able to participate. Just look at the Linden Office Hours. They're great! But... we don't know the agenda before the meeting, and transcripts are sporadic — and also a pain to read to keep in touch with the hundreds or meetings — and, if they lead to results, these are never published. LL does not even refer to "decisions" made on Office Hours to "justify" their "policy decisions". This is the total opposite of what I'm proposing — a model where everyone knows who is going to talk to the Lindens, where the agendas are known in advance and publicly discussed, where meetings are openly transcribed, and where minutes are taken to publicly display what has been discussed and/or agreed with.
Then it's up to LL to make a decision to implement those recommendations or not. But at least if they say "no" they know very well that they're going against public opinion.
4) To make it clear — I'm not *against* any of your governance measures!! In fact, I think (as far as I understood each and every one of them) that I'm in favour of *all* of them. They're excellent proposals, and were excellent the first time you suggested them publicly — some of them years ago. The *only* suggestion I'm *adding* (and not suggesting as an *alternative*) is that each of those proposals is publicly discussed in a forum with the Lindens that is democratically elected and subject to the residents' public scrutiny.
5) Everyone is against "favouritism" (including Linden Lab, who have so often used that argument to avoid implementing one or another issue, even if it made a lot of sense...). But *my* point is that today (as in the last 8 years...) we still don't know who the "favourites" are and why they're "selected" — and how their "opinions" shape LL's policies. By contrast, there are no "Linden favourites" if the "advisory council" (or however one wants to call it) is simply elected out of all residents.
Any other distortion of my words or putting words in my mouth is simply disinformation — a good strategy used by the KGB and similar communist organisations to distort the opinions of naive idealists like me who just happen to think that representative democracy is the fairest model of governance ever invented by the human mind :)
And for the sake of completion, in the last elections on my country, I voted for the right-wing conservatives :) I dislike their puritanism and hypocritical morality, but they are strong believers in transparency, honesty, and public accountability of elected representatives.
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | September 19, 2011 at 09:26 AM
1. Some socialists shy away from being branded as such because they fear that it will reduce their popularity and attractiveness. But I'm not calling people "socialists" because I "don't agree with them"; I don't agree with them because they *are* socialists. State planning, control of commerce, lack of separation of powers -- these are three features of socialism that are all features of *your government* Gwyn, so I don't see why you deny this. Your "Confederation of Democratic Simulators" is also overrun with self-avowed socialists. It's silly to invoke McCarthyism when *accurate* and *legitimate* labelling -- and criticism -- is made of your model. If these sims were open to any one who wanted to rent a store and start a business in an open market, free enterprise model, gosh, you could have fooled me. In fact, from my observation, it was always *heavily* controlled with various clearances, permits, schemes. Your "Scientific Council" or whatever you called it was a socialist planning body. You would natter on and on about how even democratic congresses in free-enterprise countries like the US have parliamentary planning committees. But your council was nothing like that, and again, limited to the like-minded safe comrades.
2. Your sim wasn't representative democracy. It didn't represent the population of SL. As some have pointed out, given the slave-owning Goreans and torture-condoning BDSMers, you'd have to reason whether allowing the illiberal in to representative liberal democracy wouldn't kill it off, sort of like Algeria. It's a problem in a virtual world. But you really should cease calling yourself "representative democracy". A group of left-leaning like-minded friends got together and formed a commune. Let's not call that democracy in SL. It's just a group of pals doing their thing.
3. The governance tools that identify as *process* and as the "verb not the noun" are all things that any group would benefit, like the group tools. Everybody running an open group would love to be able not merely mute people but ban certain ones from the group -- period. This is constantly raised by all kinds of businesses and RP groups and such. If you want to be a hippie type you don't *have* to use that tool. It's an on/off option the way mute is. I can't imagine making a group and then muting the people in it. I don't use mute in any of my groups -- I don't have to because I use organic notecard policy -- I ask people not to attempt to contact managers via the group, but write them directly. That reduces 50 percent of the chatter right there. People do that technique to reach people they can't see online because the Lindens have never enabled a simple "I'm online" system in the client the way every other client with communications has. It means people have to contact 10 officers in a group or chat in the group. I encourage them to write directly and tell them matter-of-factly that messages in fact DO NOT cap if you LINK THEM TO YOUR e-mail -- I get all my messages in an email connected to the account.
These are simple house-keeping governance tools that don't contain within them the authoritarian monstrosities that you're pretending, as you've always pretended that people running companies like rental companies are -- you always seem to forget the refund button. Do you have a refund button in your socialist paradise, Gwyn?
4. When all the resources for the servers and code are originally put out by LL, you can't exactly ask them to submit themselves to democratic election by every passing sandboxing furry without a dime and ever humper-bunker cybersexer with $25 a month, just essentially draining resources. So *in this setting* that's why I look for tools that enable people to create their own more free set-ups with their own resources, while recognizing that the entire context is an unfree one.
5. Who says "residents cannot participate"? I've said that you can't have governments until you first have committees of correspondence and constituent assemblies. Those were the building blocks preceding the US constitution and congress as it broke away from the King. And the same would apply to SL. These basics aren't there.
6. Yes, SL is big and diverse. But I don't buy this idea that it is therefore futile to begin governance or that in fact governance doesn't exist, or that you can't possibly making anything representative. Just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do something. The way to begin the ideal life is to begin. You obviously think you get to do that on your sims, and you even demand that your constrictive model be spread to everybody else by means that are pretty hazy, but evidently involve overthrowing the executives of SL and convincing them to take your model. Geez, that's worse than McCarthyism, that's *Stalinism*, Gwyn. Stop it.
7. Desmond is absolutely right to fear foreign powers off his shores who want to do things on his land, that he and his tenants pay for. Full stop. I'm with Desmond on this one.
8. Transparent advisory boards, my ass. There are no such things in SL. Who is Ashcroft, who invaded your sims and rammed through a "judicial program" that was breath-takingly authoritarian, and hidden under complexities? Who voted for Ashcroft, whoever he is? You guys?
9. I really, really oppose the "tyranny of who shows up," popular among the code-as-law open-source autocrats. I utterly reject it. Governance has to be broadly open and asynchronous and not depend on who "has no life" and can sit online in silly committees all day. This notion of hyper-transparency is just a fiction behind which one group rams through their policy under a welter of chatlogs and blog posts that substitute for real democracy which, at the end of the day, is about power-sharing. The Lindens have never shared power. They won't even share the ability to return non-group prims. When you can persuade them to yield on a restrictive basis the ability to return non-group prims, then you might begin the long journey of the Magna Charta.
10. I absolutely, totally reject the idea that some sort of "democratically elected" organ could appear now in SL and "be authorized to negotiate with the Lindens". That's because those initial steps of committees of correspondence, constituent assemblies, and constitutional drafting -- leading to separation of powers! -- have all been skipped in that sort of silly "direct democracy online". You cannot have democracy until FIRST you share power -- otherwise, it's just a gaggle of fanboyz clinging to office hours and pretending they represent something. There is no mass media in or even around SL except what the Lindens run -- it would be impossible to conduct a free and fair election without a free mass media. There are no formed and identifiable parties. And so on -- hundreds of elements that don't exist and can't exist until first, the fundamental premise is raised about sharing power.
11. Um, there isn't any "KGB" or "disinformation" involved in calling out your fake claims of "representative democracy". You and a bunch of your friends and your Linden-designated favourites get together and say now there is "representation"? Bullshit.
12. As for your vote for the right wing in your country, this often happens with geeky leftists who have socialist ideas and notions of big government, they wind up with conservative forces who are actually for big government as well.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | September 19, 2011 at 10:41 AM