Trust. Can you think of a situation where you had to Trust someone in SL?

[stenick1]

I'm generally interested in trust in Virtual Reality, anyone's experiences welcome :)

[Amethyst Jetaime]

I assume you are a student writing a paper.  You create an account today, log on to the forum and ask us questions like this.  We have students show up here all the time expecting us to do their work for them because they don't want to actually come in world and do the research.

SL is not a game as it has no goals and there is nothing to 'win'.  It is a virtual world.  There are games you can play in SL but that is just a tiny part of the SL experience.  The very fact you think of it as a virtual game shows you know nothing about it and therefore are totally unqualified to be asking anything about it yet.

The percentage of people that read and post is this forum is insignificant compared to those in SL itself and those choosing to take the time to respond here are self selecting. Last I knew these conditions don't yield statistically valid results..

The SL resident population in general is well educated and know what information  you are supposed to give to us about your research before asking us anything. So, don't expect many answers until you act more professional and even then, don't expect many.  We are not lab rats.

[Phil Deakins]

To be fair, his question is such that he wouldn't be able to find answers by experiencing SL. He could ask people in there of course, but asking in a forum is better in this case - imo

[VRprofessor]

I would add that there is a least some research that has been done on trust in virtual worlds in particular and online settings in general.  For myself I want students to look up this information and report on it with, perhaps, a supporting illustration or two from a conversation.  A paper based on whatever comments you can solicit off of a message board would result in a very low grade in my classes.

If you cannot figure out how to find the existing research information on your own, contact a reference librarian who can get you started.

 

[Porky Gorky]

I've not trusted anyone in SL since I got bent over a table and was shafted by Ginko in 2007. 

I could go into allot more detail about it but I only allow myself 5 Ginko rants on this forum per year and I ain't blowing my first one this early in the year. :matte-motes-big-grin:

[VRprofessor]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

To be fair, his question is such that he wouldn't be able to find answers by experiencing SL. He could ask people in there of course, but asking in a forum is better in this case - imo

---

 If OP's personal experiences aren't going to be informative, why should anyone else's experiences be informative?  

In general the OP is engaged in an all to common form of sloppy "research" where asking some people for personal anecdotes substitutes for knowledge gathering.  OP needs to start at the library.  A quick trip over to Amazon and I quite easily found

http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Virtual-Worlds-Digital-Formations/dp/1433109220/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1357227984&sr=8-6&keywords=ethnographic+virtual

 dealing with trust in virtual worlds.  There are also several works on conducting ethnographic research in virtual worlds. 

[stenick1]

To others, apologies for calling SL a game, that's a term I should have really checked appropriate before posting.

To Amethyst, Thank you for that incredibly cynical reply.  I’m actually interested in trust in general, it’s an interesting research area for me and something I look at regularly in non-virtual settings.

 I felt like considering some things in a virtual setting and thought a forum (an informal channel to share ideas) would  be a good place to start.

 I think it’s you that has a weak understanding of research if you really think anyone would be stupid enough to right a paper based on the responses in a forum.  You seem to have misunderstood a space for sharing ideas with firstly a space to entertain the idea of statistically valid results and then a space to attack people. 

As a regular contributor to forums for activities I am more knowledgeable on I personally enjoy responding to these sort of discussions proposed by a lay person.  I'm sure other people will eventually reply to this post happy to help me become more knowledgable, It's just a shame unhelpful sorts such as yourself insist on wasting everyones time first.

[Sephina Frostbite]

I trusted a few times but never again. In my opinion sl has a way of taking the completely optimistic and most beautiful souls and warping them into the very thing they vowed not to become. Anyone who has been here long enough has an underline bitterness about them when it comes to sl even if they are happy with sl as I am. I still have a sour taste in my mouth every time someone confesses there "love for me". Internally I shutter, stupidly I take the risk and predictably I get burned. So trust my friends yes, Love that's a fickle bytch I wont play with anymore. 

On a positive note, You should seriously play SL so you can get an in depth look. Its really fun people here are great and good for the laughs. 

[stenick1]

Thanks for the advice, I will indeed look up some papers on the subject.  However I'm not, as another member suggested, planning on using any responses to this for a paper of my own... so low grades aren't an issue in this case!

[Phil Deakins]

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VRprofessor wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

To be fair, his question is such that he wouldn't be able to find answers by experiencing SL. He could ask people in there of course, but asking in a forum is better in this case - imo

---

 If OP's personal experiences aren't going to be informative, why should anyone else's experiences be informative? 

 

In general the OP is engaged in an all to common form of sloppy "research" where asking some people for personal anecdotes substitutes for knowledge gathering.  OP needs to start at the library.  A quick trip over to Amazon and I quite easily found

http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Virtual-Worlds-Digital-Formations/dp/1433109220/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1357227984&sr=8-6&keywords=ethnographic+virtual

 dealing with trust in virtual worlds.  There are also several works on conducting ethnographic research in virtual worlds. 

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Because it would take a long time to get experiences of what happens when you trust people in SL itself. Some people in the SL forum already have experiences, so, imo, the forum is good place for research such as this.

[stenick1]

Thanks for the response, It does sound fun.  I play a lot of online games but haven't tried a virtual realiity on the same scale as SL before, maybe I'll give it a go.

[stenick1]

Read up on the Ginko story, really interesting.  Thanks

[Tex Monday]

I generally get tired of replying to these research paper questions, but I think this might help you.

I have a Master/Sub relationship in SL with a number of different girls. Some have been around for a while (in SL time, meaning almost 8 months) and we each know a certain level about each other. I have seen pictures of my pet in RL, as well as some other girls, and I know a bit about them. I trust them and I believe they trust me. We have even exchanged email addresses. However, I do not know their RL names, and they don't know mine and I have never seen pictures of my "alpha sub" and she has not seen mine.

I guess in answer to your question, trust has many different levels,..it is very much like RL.,You will tell a person so much before it starts to get scary.

Good luck in your paper and I do hope this helps.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Really, really, i start to find really unpleasant the kind of answers that comes now really often when someone asks smthing looking like a survey. I ve known older time where everyone here was happy to help.

If someone doesnt want to answer to such question, so just dont answer. 

its still freedom to the op to ask his question. Even if question may look silly, the person has still rights to ask it. And to the persons who are likely to answer to do it. For the others ones who are annoyed by whatever op questions, so their freedom is to not even read and indeed no answer if they think the question is not relevant.. 

Also it seems to start to be really common too, that pp knows better than the OPs the OP's purposes when they ask a question. Again. Only the OP knows his/her purpose. 

Really, I apologize to the OP for being so bad welcomed in the forum. 

That said, to answer to the OP question, i m not likely to trust anyone in RL (except rare close persons) and indeed i even trust less in SL. Too much easy to hide oneself behind an avi or a screen. 

This doesnt empeach me to have really close friends in SL that i trust but it happened after really long time and evidences that these persons are trustable. 

[Perrie Juran]

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stenick1 wrote:

To others, apologies for calling SL a game, that's a term I should have really checked appropriate before posting.

To Amethyst

, 

Thank you for that incredibly cynical reply.  I’m actually interested in trust in general, it’s an interesting research area for me and something I look at regularly in non-virtual settings.

 I felt like considering some things in a virtual setting and thought a forum (an informal channel to share ideas) would  be a good place to start.

 I think it’s you that has a weak understanding of research if you really think anyone would be stupid enough to right a paper based on the responses in a forum.  You seem to have misunderstood a space for sharing ideas with firstly a space to entertain the idea of statistically valid results and then a space to attack people. 

As a regular contributor to forums for activities I am more knowledgeable on I personally enjoy responding to these sort of discussions proposed by a lay person.  I'm sure other people will eventually reply to this post happy to help me become more knowledgable, It's just a shame unhelpful sorts such as yourself insist on wasting everyones time first.

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Well, actually my position is very similar to Amethyst's.

You might have been wiser if you had asked yourself the question, why would Amethyst think this way rather than just accusing her of being cynical.

If you had taken some time to browse through these boards you might have discovered we sometimes get inundated with poorly conceived surveys from students as well as other researchers, some of whom have questionable credentials.

Actually, you gave us no reason to TRUST you.

The subject of trust, especially as it relates to Second Life and Virtual Worlds, has been discussed many times on these boards.

We love discussion here and are more than glad to discuss just about any topic the Terms of Service allows. And really generally speaking we more than gladly welcome new comers to the Forum.  What we don't like is being looked at as guinea pigs.

Your question was overly broad, sounded like another clueless researcher, and showed no depth of thought before asking.  So you did nothing to garner our trust.

[Czari Zenovka]

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stenick1 wrote:

I'm generally interested in trust in Virtual Games, anyone's experiences welcome

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Now here's a different approach.  Someone who has likely guessed that the forumites have tired of "I'm writing a paper on..."

2 points for originality

[Czari Zenovka]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

I assume you are a student writing a paper.  You create an account today, log on to the forum and ask us questions like this.  We have students show up here all the time expecting us to do their work for them because they don't want to actually come in world and do the research.

SL is not a game as it has no goals and there is nothing to 'win'.  It is a virtual world.  There are games you can play in SL but that is just a tiny part of the SL experience.  The very fact you think of it as a virtual game shows you know nothing about it and therefore are totally unqualified to be asking anything about it yet.

The percentage of people that read and post is this forum is insignificant compared to those in SL itself and those choosing to take the time to respond here are self selecting. Last I knew these conditions don't yield statistically valid results..

The SL resident population in general is well educated and know what information  you are supposed to give to us about your research before asking us anything. So, don't expect many answers until you act more professional and even then, don't expect many.  We are not lab rats.

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I vote that this gets stickied and all further requests for "research info" gets referred to it.

[Czari Zenovka]

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stenick1 wrote:

 

To Amethyst

, 

Thank you for that incredibly cynical reply.  I’m actually interested in trust in general, it’s an interesting research area for me and something I look at regularly in non-virtual settings.

 

---

*Sighs*

Deducts the former 2 points.  Back to zero.

[Tex Monday]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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stenick1 wrote:

 

To Amethyst

, 

Thank you for that incredibly cynical reply.  I’m actually interested in trust in general, it’s an interesting research area for me and something I look at regularly in non-virtual settings.

 

---

*Sighs*

Deducts the former 2 points.  Back to zero.

---

*laughs hysterically!!*

I vote the next person gets tarred and feathered and sent to a Gorean Trader!!! :matte-motes-sunglasses-2:

[Czari Zenovka]

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Tex Monday wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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stenick1 wrote:

 

To Amethyst

, 

Thank you for that incredibly cynical reply.  I’m actually interested in trust in general, it’s an interesting research area for me and something I look at regularly in non-virtual settings.

 

---

*Sighs*

Deducts the former 2 points.  Back to zero.

---

*laughs hysterically!!*

I vote the next person gets tarred and feathered and sent to a Gorean Trader!!! :matte-motes-sunglasses-2:

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Ooooooooo...that would definitely cut down on the number of "researchers" coming to the forums if that gets out.   

*Wipes Pepsi off monitor*

@Trinity - I do agree that mean forum posts are generally uncalled for and I probably should have just passed this one up; however, I do have personal insight into this particular area.

While I was in grad. school and assigned a psychology-related research paper in one of my classes, the subject matter would have been a bit "dangerous" to research "live" - ie. participating in or interviewing people involved in the subject matter of my paper, thus I did my research online.  SL didn't exist back then, but I spent a lot of time on IRC (a text-based chat program) and used it to conduct my research.  I found a channel that participated in my subject matter activity and spent the next three months joining and becoming a part of that online community.  I never asked to interview someone; I became an "imbedded researcher" of sorts and drew my conclusions from active participation.

I realize that some subject matters, such as trust, are very subjective so the type of participatory research I did won't work in every case.  The issue with this OP, and so many others I've seen come through the forums in the past 5 1/2 years, is that instead of spending some time in SL, learning how it works, meeting some people, going to a class, a social event, whatever and *then* asking for input, many "students" want to take the easy route and have others provide their research.  As VR said from an instructor's perspective, that is sloppy work.

Of all the requests of SL forumites to participate in research, I have participated in two; the most recent was brilliantly executed in its professionalism and the approach to asking for participants, found here.  That is, imo, how to go about requesting research participants in a virtual world. 

Sidenote:  The research paper I wrote using IRC as my methodology turned into my Masters Thesis.  I also enjoyed the community that I discovered for the purpose of my initial paper that I ended up being an active member for 15 years which eventually resulted in my group migrating to SL.

Edit: It's IRC, not IIRC :matte-motes-bashful-cute:

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

i understand what you mean Czari, but where dit the op said he was looking answer for a study work (or i m maybe missing smht) ? Couldnt it be someone who just want to talk about the subject with no special purpose except sharing throught about the topic ? 

And even if its about a survey or any studient work. The fact their method is wrong belong to them. When they will give back their work to their teacher, i guess this one will be more able to tell him is wrong than us. I dont think we are here to judge any students on their method bec we dont know what have been asked to them. If they are wrong its their problem not ours. Nevertheless we can give some opinions or advices but why should we do it in a rude way ?. As far as i know an advice has almost always the purpose to help someone. Is it helping someone to answer someone like this has been done in this thread ?.. 

The Op question didnt hurted anyone, some answers he recieved are hurting. Here is the point. If someone has a pb with such kind of OP, well noone has never forced this someone to answer, neither to read... Why not let those who are not annoyed by such OPs just answer and those who wants to give real helping advices do it too ?.... but why treat someone like this just bec he dared to ask a question ?... i really dont get the point since noone has never to be forced to read or answer here....

This kind of reactions are happening really often now and really really i find this really shame...All lot of us deplore often the forum is not used by a big ammount of SLers and acting like this wont fix the pb on the contrary.

[Perrie Juran]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

i understand what you mean Czari, but where dit the op said he was looking answer for a study work (or i m maybe missing smht) ? Couldnt it be someone who just want to talk about the subject with no special purpose except sharing throught about the topic ?

This kind of reactions are happening really often now and really really i find this really shame...All lot of us deplore often the forum is not used by a big ammount of SLers and acting like this wont fix the pb on the contrary.

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I agree with you that sometimes our reactions our strong.

In the case of this OP, the reaction is based on a three fold thing.  The subject, the language used and the OP's SL age (joined today).

As I stated in my post above, we love good discussion here.  But please ask me something intelligent in an intelligent way.

It is just like people who come here for help and act insulted when we ask them for the simplest of information saying for instance, "I know I have a good Internet connection" when they have never even run a ping test.  It doesn't fly.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

i understand what you mean Czari, but where dit the op said he was looking answer for a study work (or i m maybe missing smht) ? Couldnt it be someone who just want to talk about the subject with no special purpose except sharing throught about the topic ? 

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He didn't, which is why my first post jokingly said this was a different approach to the "I'm writing a paper on <xyz>..." and gave him points for originality.  However, the OP's question did sound more like "I'm interested in the issue of trust in virtual *games*" for the purpose of a school project than general interest.  An OP that would start a thread on the subject of trust (which I have seen several times) is generally someone who has experienced something negative in world and wishes to discuss it.

Amethyst identified the OP as someone who just started this avatar today so unless it is an alt, in which case I would refer back to my first paragraph, someone who is brand new would generally not be opening a topic on trust based on personal experience, which then assumes the "research angle." 

The patience level on this particular question is wearing thin with regular forumites; thus some of the responses.  No, we don't have to answer them, but by the same right anyone has to ask a question, anyone has the right to answer.

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

 

And even if its about a survey or any studient work. The fact their method is wrong belong to them. When they will give back their work to their teacher, i guess this one will be more able to tell him is wrong than us. I dont think we are here to judge any students on their method bec we dont know what have been asked to them. If they are wrong its their problem not ours. Nevertheless we can give some opinions or advices but why should we do it in a rude way ?. As far as i know an advice has almost always the purpose to help someone. Is it helping someone to answer someone like this has been done in this thread ?.. 

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The majority of the time I respond to these "research" posts I offer advice on a better way to approach the asking for participation and/or how to conduct the research in world based on personal experience.  As someone who has spent a long time in academia, both as a student and instructor, this issue is one about which I am passionate.

 

 

Is it helping someone to answer as in this thread?  In my opinion, Amethyst's answer was spot on.  She explained that SL is not a "game,"  that the number of people who post on these forums vs the number of residents is very small, thus the OP would have more people to interview there as well as going in world to get first hand info before asking questions on the forum.  She also explained why many of us become frustrated with these questions.  VRprofessor gave some excellent input from an instructor's point of view.  As was also pointed out, the OP's question was extremely broad and open-ended so trying to answer constructively to the point would be difficult.

The OP then gave a snarky response to Amethyst's, imo, excellent response.  That's when I decided the OP wasn't worth dealing with and posted my next response. 

Having said that, I do agree with your overall point.  All of us have an off day now and then.

Edit: Grammar

[Porky Gorky]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

Sidenote:  The research paper I wrote using IRC as my methodology turned into my Masters Thesis.  I also enjoyed the community that I discovered for the purpose of my initial paper that I ended up being an active member for 15 years which eventually resulted in my group migrating to SL.

Edit: It's IRC, not IIRC :matte-motes-bashful-cute:

 

---

I love IRC and still log in nearly every day and have been doing so for 20 years now, mainly on DALNET. Allot of the regular people on my channel I have known longer than most of my RL friends. We built up a great little community that only consists of people we like so everyone just keeps coming back to this ancient platform year on year despite the technological development of the online world around us.

I've noticed over the past year that the user numbers have really started to go up again on some servers, I am guessing because governments are cracking down allot harder on illegal file sharing and blocking torrent sites. People are turning to IRC as a viable alternative, it's allot less trackable if your IP is masked and it's the only place that you can download files without uploading in return or paying any subscription fees like with news groups.

For decades the pirates have sat on IRC servers uninterrupted, leeching (nowadays) 100's of GB's worth of files per day. Aside from the newsgroups IRC was one of the first places that Illegal files could be downloaded. In that time we have seen filesharing explode and evolve on the net, from MP3.com to the early P2P clients like Napster and Audiogalaxy through to the numerous bit torrent sites and clients that are available today. P2P / bit torrent is doomed and as governments take a much harder stand against illegal file sharing as is happening now in the US and the UK, I think IRC is going to see a real resurgence in popularity as the leechers look for a safer haven to download.

This is all completely off topic But that is OK. In SL terms, I have now reached old age so this now gives me the prerogative to  waffle on and talk nonsense in any thread I want. :matte-motes-big-grin:

[Tamara Artis]

I bought hands and needed to adjust the skin tone.. not happening! So my friend logged on my account and did it for me. I trust her.

I have managers with land and group rights, because I can't do all on my own, and I need to trust them.

I hire photographers and let them do photos for my friends and clients, because I trust their skills.

I think if I treat people right they will act same. 

Sometimes I make a bad judgement, but nothing that can't be fixed. And its all happening in SL.

happy New Year!