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Lack of documentation regarding SL


Rydon3
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It seems to me that for a virtual world that has been in existence for 13 years, there is a shocking lack of documentation to assist future historians in assessing SL's true cultural impact.

There are many blogs scattered around but few of these are comprehensive. Whole chapters of significant SL events, sims, builds, fashions/styles, locations and groups are at risk of being lost to history, unchronicled. We have already seen many, many such examples disappear - both inworld and from the wider internet.

Should we be concerned that there is no exhaustive database which one can examine to catalogue the SL user experience, culture and history?

Or is the lack of necessary documentation tacit psychic admission that SL is rubbish and barely worth preserving in memory?

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Rydon3 wrote:

Or is the lack of necessary documentation tacit psychic admission that SL is rubbish and barely worth preserving in memory?

No, it just means that LL has never been very big on this documentation thingy ;)

You can actually find out a lot about SL through critical analyzis of the various internet sources and of course, the official user documentation is historically important, outdated as it is.

Fashion/styles? Lots of items from all time pøeriods still found everywhere in SL.

Events, sims and builds? Which ones are the important ones? Ask ten SL users and you get 20 different answers.

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Rydon3 wrote:

It seems to me that for a virtual world that has been in existence for 13 years, there is a shocking lack of documentation to assist future historians in assessing SL's true cultural impact.

There are many blogs scattered around but few of these are comprehensive. Whole chapters of significant SL events, sims, builds, fashions/styles, locations and groups are at risk of being lost to history, unchronicled. We have already seen many, many such examples disappear - both inworld and from the wider internet.

Should we be concerned that there is no exhaustive database which one can examine to catalogue the SL user experience, culture and history?

Or is the lack of necessary documentation tacit psychic admission that SL is rubbish and barely worth preserving in memory?

Tch tch....I don't think SL is rubbish and "barely worth preserving" - it just needs a good historian. Perhaps when the Wiki is again editable some long-term residents might like to publish their personal stories.

I, too, am frustrated when I try to research SL's history. Why did Virtual Christine say that what we now know as Satori was at one time going to be called "Corsica"*? What was the purpose of the Tiny Isles Quest Hub on Redoubtable? What is the second easter egg?

I guess some things will remain mysteries.

*I asked Virtual Christine and she said she read it somewhere, but apparently that blog has disappeared.

 

 

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The wikia is a noble effort in this direction, IMHO. (Assuming this post isn't auto-poofed for linking to the dreaded interwebs.)

Also, lately I've seen the difference between historians and archivists. True historians tend to be quite selective about what specimens they judge worthy of preserving, whereas true archivists would keep it all and let future generations sort through the chaff.

In our time of digital plenty, I'd tend to side with the archivists and long for a Second Life Wayback Machine that could restore all those pixels now lost to memory.

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I guess you have never seen my blog, which is highly comprehensive and goes back 12 years.

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts

In real life, if a country or population group doesn't have a history written, you don't "blame the government" because the government isn't required to write history and when it does, can write it with bias.

You look to other institutions like universities, think tanks, folklore societies and the like to gather history. Real historians understand they have to go to many different places to gather eyewitness testimony, oral histories, written documents, etc. 

If you feel something is at risk to being lost, you can't ask the government (Linden Lab) to take care of it. You have to do it yourself or get others in the private sector or educational world to do this.

Unfortunately, the educators who have been in SL have generally been supremely indifferent and even hostile to the world of residents itself and their affairs. They only wanted to use the platform and their islands for their own education of RL affairs. And in fairness, few of them would be able to land a grant to chronicle the history of a virtual world, although at one point, at around 2005-2007 or even in 2009, in the early days of the Obama Administration, and in the Blair administration, as one developer told me, it wasn't a question of WHETHER you would get a grant, it was merely an issue of showing up at the right window with your hand outstretched, as there was tons of money around for virtual stuff -- as there is again, btw.

The SL Wiki, which people are mourning now because it is suspended (I'm not among them given its bias) has something of what you are asking for, but certainly not all of it. Wikipedia has some of it. Google is your best friend.

And sorry, the fact that "the government" or "somebody else who did the work and paid for it" didn't make a database of all the cultural events in Second Life (!!!) doesn't at all mean that SL is rubbish. Although it might mean that your theory is.

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There were bits and pieces that were funny though. Like people coming in and asking where the white rabbit was after the CSI:NY episode that had machinima in it that really had very little to do with how SL really worked. There is a section of the mainland named after the characters from MASH..which looks like it's near the Blake sea, so is the Blake Sea named after Henry Blake? Inquiring minds want to know. 

You just missed the art instillation that was done that chronicled the history of changes in SL that was done recently. 

Just because there isn't documentation readily available, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Oh, and take Prok's blog with a grain of salt. Prok is the resident curmudgeon...the old man that sits on the porch complaining about the young whipersnappers.....smiles

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Lack of Documentation? 

If you Google "Second Life" it returns 57,600,000 results.  If you search YouTube for "Second Life" you get 22,300,000 results.

This does not include all the research and papers that have been done about SL in universities all over the world.  Now that school has started again you'll regularly see students and other academic researchers show up in this forum asking people to fill out surveys or participate in studies.  

I joined SL in 2006 because of an article about it in  my local newspaper, one of many.  Those are all archived in the newspaper's archive and that is just one local publication in a sea of articles written over the years about SL in probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of newspapers, magazines, books and other print publications that also have archives.

Future historians have a wealth of material available should any be interested.

There isn't one comprehensive database, history book, or other resource that records everything about the United States, let alone any RL country of the past or present.  Why do you expect that here?

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Rydon3 wrote:

It seems to me that for a virtual world that has been in existence for 13 years, there is a shocking lack of documentation to assist future historians in assessing SL's true cultural impact.

There are many blogs scattered around but few of these are comprehensive. Whole chapters of significant SL events, sims, builds, fashions/styles, locations and groups are at risk of being lost to history, unchronicled. We have already seen many, many such examples disappear - both inworld and from the wider internet.

Should we be concerned that there is no exhaustive database which one can examine to catalogue the SL user experience, culture and history?

Or is the lack of necessary documentation tacit psychic admission that SL is rubbish and barely worth preserving in memory?

The thesis is flawed from the start and throughout.  Simply stating that there is a shocking lack of documentation does not make it so. It is merely offering up an unsubstantiated opinion. How much documentation should there be? In what format? How much is there in relation to other such... whatever it is you are comparing it to.

What areas of history, sociology, anthropology, communications... or any other number of areas that were failed to be specified, are lacking in documentation? The OP only mentions online information. Guess what, there were books written about the early days.

An exhaustive database of.... what? No true historian would think a mere cataloging of isolated events equals history.

"Tacit psychic admission" is a nonsense phrase. This whole post is bluster without substance. It sounds like someone wanted an easy homework topic to research without having to use the brain or typing fingers overly much. 

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ChinRey wrote:


Bobbie Faulds wrote:

Oh, as for fashion styles in SL, they usually mimic real world fashions.

What? Is two stamps and a short string the latest fashion in RL too? Not where I live - we'd freeze to death here.

thats bc you never discovered yet how useful multiple zillion megawatt facelights can be in a snowstorm

 

eta just in case:

jejejejee (:

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