Trusting Herald

Trust: noun: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone.



Saying "Be Worthy of Trust" is one thing. Fulfilling trust, keeping your word once given, fulfilling every contract, spoken or unspoken, every second of every day for everyone, is another thing.

• For strangers and foreigners, we rely on their following the rules and keeping the peace, and maybe a little manners.
• For acquaintances and clients, we rely on their manners and fulfilling contracts, and maybe a little help.
• For friends and co-workers, we rely on their promises kept and some quality of help, and maybe a little compassion.
• For family and partners, we rely on their compassion and honesty above the norm, and maybe a little sacrifice. Those that show it, we trust more.
• For our keepers and protectors, we rely on their sacrifice and continued alliance, and maybe a little forgiveness.

Those that show they can be relied upon, we trust more. When they don't, we trust less. Trust is not yes/no. Trust is a scale, perhaps limitless at each end. Every being on the planet trusts every other being on the planet, to one degree or another.

The protagonist above, scrambling to keep one promise, seems to be frantic and unreliable to his co-workers, perhaps dangerous to strangers on the street. Being worthy of trust, I imagine he soon makes his apologies and does right and regains the faith of others eventually.

So one can be honorable, but still lose actual trust. Trust me, there will be ups and downs on the way that take their toll and time to solve. Thus, actual trust fluctuates moment by moment.

Regaining trust, building trust, and helping others do so, is worth doing in Life.

Herald's Abuse Report Bug Report

Did you ever notice the SL Abuse Report drop down menu has the Big 6 Community Standards listed, except Disturbing the Peace is missing?

It also lists: Age (when you find out about an underage player), Parcel (for reporting parcel encroachment and the like), and Other

The way to suggest improvements to the interface, I'm told, is to file a Bug Report. So I did:

Bug report filed: "User Interface" 2007-01-17

Summary: "Disturbing the Peace" not an option in Abuse Reports.

Steps to reproduce the bug: Menu>help>report abuse>close>select category. see drop down menu.

Observed results: 8 choices: 5 community standards, "age", "parcel" and "other"

Expected results: the 6th Community Standard, "Disturbing the Peace" should be included for object, particle or chat spam.

Workaround: report such as "harassment" or "other".

I should suggest this on JIRA, too. I need to absorb the instructions, first.

Love, Arth

PS: What timing - Torley Linden released a video tutorial about Jira! The above is now "SVC 1204", and it looks like the first report of it.

Heralds' Estate

Land and Estate owners in Second Life have an unusual set of freedoms that most Residents in Second Life do not. Primary among them is the ability to manage the estate to allow or disallow a slew of abilities selectively and at will to everyone, to groups, or to individuals:

• Access: being on the plot at all, teleporting to or within, or establishing landmarks
• Content: building, scripting, returns, landscaping, music, voice, rating.
• Residence: Rentals, sub-purchases, plot size & locations, prim allowances
• Combat: Push, physical objects, weaponry, scripts, effects.

These freedoms of choice are not absolute, but using enough money, any Resident can have just about anything they choose in Second Life. This is perfectly sensible - tier is NOT cheap, so special rights should go with it. Taken to a logical extreme, any element of Second Life's Community Standards becomes malleable for an estate owner. It's not hard to find examples:

• Intolerance: "We don't allow SL Mentor Tags here."
• Harassment: "Try a Sex-Gen Bed here!"
• Assault: "I'm enabling push now, so watch out."
• Disclosure: "Being here means you agree to a gay sex slavery lifestyle."
• Indecency: "Yes, we were PG. Now we are Mature."
• Disturbing the Peace: "FOR SALE! FOR SALE! FOR SALE! FOR SALE!"

One could file an Abuse Report on any of these, but it is not generally done. Understandably, the Lindens wrote allowances for owners preferences into the Community Standards. What might be abuse for me is not necessarily abuse when done by the estate owner, since the owner sets the standards in his estate.

In my experience, owners rarely enter this area - they simply set their rules and play by them themselves from simple decency. Financial pressure plays a part, too. Most owners are trying to cover some or all of their expenses by renting space. This puts some consumer pressure on the owner to be consistent and predictable.

Still, estate owners have the right to exclude anyone form any part of their holdings, for any reason or no reason at all. Since just about every bit or Second Life is owned by someone, for the likes of me, it comes down to a few choices:

1. Play on your own estate, but you pay up.
2. Play on others' estates, but you play by their rules.
3. Play not at all, but that's no fun.

I'll take number 2. Best if I can find estates whose rules I like.

Love Arth -

I enjoy the Linden owned Help Islands and Orientation Islands best: great design, excellent builds, liberal permissions, low lag, interesting people, little grief and absolute predictability. It's not ideal, though: They only allow new accounts and SL Mentors there, so many friends of mine cannot go there. I encourage them become a Mentor!

O {:-{D}

Herald & California Legislature

Here is a question I posed recently to Second Life's Liaison office, through the Abuse Reporting Line [with clarification]:

"As a SL Mentor with some legal and arbitration experience, I am asked my opinon about SL TOS and CS Big Six [infractions and filing ARs] sometimes.

"Please clarify SL TOS. [Second Life Terms of Service]

"In 4.1 (vii) & (x): some terms are written in quotes, indicating a special defintion is being used.
["junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," "stalk"]

"TOS section 7.1 suggests California Law governs the TOS definintions.

"I note that "spam" and "stalking" are defined in [California Law] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html but "junk mail" is not.

"Section (vii) says L[inden] Labs decides the abuses, but (x) does not.

"Is the intention in using those quote marks to refer the user to California law, or is there another preferred reference?

"Thank you."

We'll see what/if they say.

Herald in Genius

Dear Savannah & Dirk:

All the best to you both - you've made a neat introduction area in Orientation Station and I wish you all success with it! "Orientation Station," along with the other private portals to SL have been on my radar for a few months, and it came up again. Please use this data as you see fit.

While Mentoring in HIP 2 and three shopping areas, I had several contacts with new residents who were having trouble with appearance and knew nothing about IM or chat history. As an SL Mentor, I thought this a bit unusual, but I taught them what they needed to know. In chatting, I learned they each came through "Orientation Station" (I had them map to "home"). I visited it to see how this private orientation sim works now.

Summary/Overview

There are five sims arranged in a + shape: center is a regular sim with lots of advertising, the four ends are "void sims" (low prim, low traffic) orientation courses when new players follow the path and signs and learn what they learn. Lag quite good in all of them. There were only a few new residents and the occasional MetaVerse Mentor to guide things along. The design is open and inviting. There is some inventive presentation, but there are some holes in the training.

Details (Notes taken during the visit):

Typical rez point: 􀀌 (Look up "Genius" sim. I'll post a SLURL later)

• Walk instructions embedded in floor and a poster. You can't see them clearly from the first arrival, so you have to know how to walk to learn how to walk.
• There are a set of flags on boxes with no content, saying "coming soon" and "Choose your language" - but no functionality. No instructionn on point/click nearby: who will know how to use them? ummm. Everybody: point/click is universal for any web-users.
• Verbal/voice/sound in first area indicates streaming sound, but no stream audible. How do I know I'm set up right.
• Training stations: eye catching purple and white signs on the walls guide you through the area.
• station 1-3: Move by arrow - duplicate instruction . (Good!)
• Surprise water splash in an easy obstacle course. Nice.
• YAY: two unusual move methods introduced: mouse-av-arrow & shift-arrow.
• Voice instruction looks fine Stations 4-7 but no one to talk to, how can you test?
• Buying things. #8-9 station graphics too small - a newbie can't zoom yet, so can't read it.
• 10-13 graphics okay
• Nice freebie boxes, but some broken: orb box. little black outfit. 300 avatar.
• I can open a box, but not take or return it yet. - 10 minute auto return solves that.
• Station 15 is "step 2" and is on the left of step one (?) #16
• #18 Mouse look error: if chat is on, "m" doesn't work.
• 20-27 okay, but movie doesn't play. Graphics and text small. but I know zoom now.
• 28-31 how do you open a chat box? The chat hat didn't work for me. O:(
• A quick flight (nice bit of story telling , there) and we're in the center area.

"Clever" Sim 􀀉􀀋and two other "newbie sims" are very similar:
Layout and instructions identical. Dressing is a little different (e.g.: Scholar has some ivy)

Center area:

• Four "entraces" from four orientation sims,
• two horse arenas, nice freebie AKK horse & horse area with sculpties.
• two build stations, with "prim rezzer" tool: nice object􀀈 but complex for a beginner - and newbie still doesn't know how to do chat history.
• a lot of "free item" signs (mostly an interesting batch of LMs to stores)
• Central arena with nice ampitheatre dead center (rez point underwater there?)

Time spent 4 hours over three days. Time with a mentor on sim: 20 mins.

A Metaverse Mentor, DanOfWA Flanagan, was polite, and helpful to the new citizens there. But Dan says I can't wear SL Mentor tags here or help the newbies as a visitor. "Don't want to confuse the new folk." Awwww. Not a nice policy IMHO. I complied, but had several problems with this ~

• ~ I was embarassed not to have known it already.
• ~ MVM's are somewhat rare.
• ~ No notice is available in world that this is so - how will SL mentors know?
• ~ (Perhaps a notice in "about Land" or the group attached to the land?)
• ~ I've never been in a SIM where any "legal" tag was not tolerated before.
• ~ (Especially not a SL Mentor Tag.)

Metaverse Mentors is run by Dirk Talamasca and Savannah Glimmer. Prominent SL Mentors Doctor Gascoigne and SoulLDK Simpson are members of the group.

Summary:
Some great design and structure. Education is direct and flows well. The training lineup missed some very important SL tools:

• IM, chat: no instruction anywhere. No chat history.
• how to buy (illegible instructions),
• nothing on inventory control.
• appearance: not a lot of detail. (missing movie)
• nothing about friends or snapshot.

Thanks for making this nice place. I hope you can do a few tweaks.

Arth