Second Question: In your opinion, what have been the greatest SUCCESSES in the 15-year history of Second Life?

[Vanity Fair]

I have another question for you:

In your opinion, what have been the biggest successes in the 15-year history of SL? Things that we should celebrate, that were accomplished either by Linden Lab or by the users?

Thanks in advance! ? 

[Phil Deakins]

Imo, the greatest successes were, and still are that some people have been able to make their RL livelihoods from SL. Others have been able to improve their RL living by making money in SL.

I'm not into converting SL relationships into RL relationships, but I'd guess that some of those have been major successes for some people, but, for me, it's the improvement in RL livelihoods that some people have managed.

 

P.S. Are you going to ask the 3rd question - greatest SL disasters?

Edited August 15, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Firestorm

[Vanity Fair]

Yes, Firestorm definitely ranks right up there as a success. Good answer!

[Love Zhaoying]

1. Sculpties

2. Mesh

3. Increased LI / prims

4. Reduced Tier fees

5. LL Marketplace (no more “magic boxes required)

[Bree Giffen]

It was constantly being mentioned by the media on television, radio and newspapers around the world. New users would flood in at every new report.

[ChinRey]

The three by far greatest successes in SL's history:

• The development of Second Life - fronted by the programming genius Cory Ondrejka
• Selling Second Life to investors and users - fronted by the makreting genius Philip Rosedale
• Commercialising Second Life - fronted by another marketing genius, Anse Chung

Whether we like it or not, in terms of sheer magnitude, nothing anybody else have done here compares to what those three people managed to do.

Edited August 15, 2018 by ChinRey

[sirhc DeSantis]

I will echo Phil, Love and ChinRey and add keeping me around for 11 + years.

Also amazing opportunities to generate material for blog posts.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   Lasting for 15 years, with continual improvement and in the face of negativity, both from outsiders and parts of its own user base.

[ellestones]

Ingrid’s Prefabs

 

Edited August 16, 2018 by ellestones

[Conifer Dada]

I think music / dance clubs are the enduring success of SL.  While casinos, business corporations, educational institutions and other organisations have been and gone, virtual clubbing has thrived.  Individual clubs also come and go, but the concept has survived.  While it's not difficult to find clubs with bad music, bad DJs and bad decor, I think most are good, even if they're not to my personal taste.  Virtual clubs are one thing that SL can do really well.  Even if they're a bit laggy, it's no worse than being trapped by overcrowding in an RL club.  And you can chat more easily in an SL club too.  Plus it's a lot cheaper.  Not a complete substitute for the RL version, maybe, but how many people can go clubbing every evening in a different club in RL?

Edited August 16, 2018 by Conifer Dada

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Conifer Dada said:

I think music / dance clubs are the enduring success of SL. 

I agree completely!

[Qie Niangao]

1. Defeat of adfarming
2. Removal of RedZone and priority of avatar / alt / account privacy
3. Removal of Emerald viewer and creation of Third Party Viewer policy
4. Advances in script features, in particular:

• Mono
• Functions for "efficient scripting" such as single-script centralization with llSetLinkPrimitiveParametersFast() and other *Link* functions
• Key-Value Pair (KVP) Experience persistent store (to become more broadly useful with grid-scope Experiences, Real Soon Now)
• llCastRay (usually)
• Keyframed Motion (KFM) (usually)

[Love Zhaoying]

How about, when new Physics engine was added? I forget its name. Havoc!

[Vanity Fair]

I have written up the first version of my blogpost which is here:

https://ryanschultz.com/2018/08/16/the-top-18-success-stories-in-the-15-year-history-of-second-life/

But I will update it as new ideas come in. Thank you all! ?

 

[Blush Bravin]

-increasing prim size to 64 (along with being able to set to convex hull to take advantage of lowering land impact values)

-setting parcel privacy so others cannot see inside the parcel

-moving adult activity to its own area

These three things greatly increased my enjoyment in SL. I agree with most of those already mentioned though, especially the music connection.

[Lucia Nightfire]

7 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

-increasing prim size to 64 (along with being able to set to convex hull to take advantage of lowering land impact values)

-setting parcel privacy so others cannot see inside the parcel

-moving adult activity to its own area

-Land owners should have been allowed to increase any axis > 64m for prims over their land. This ability has been needed more so since the inception of mesh. Maybe it will be a Premium perk someday.

-Parcel privacy only works if you add someone to the banlist. LL has refused to give this bug any priority. Many new land owners are oblivious the bug even exists and are living in a false sense of security. I see many parcels with privacy set, but no one on the banlist.

-Child avatars are allowed in Adult regions because LL is too lazy to enforce a TOS that prohibits it. Even if LL implemented an "X" region rating at an additional cost to sim owners, they would still not update their TOS to prohibit child or child-like avatars from visiting them.

[Phil Deakins]

4 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

-Parcel privacy only works if you add someone to the banlist. LL has refused to give this bug any priority. Many new land owners are oblivious the bug even exists and are living in a false sense of security. I see many parcels with privacy set, but no one on the banlist.

That's wrong. I've never use that feature but, very recently, I noticed that one of my bots had disappeared from sight. It had actually wandered into the parcel on the next sim. So I checked it with 2 avatars logged in with viewers, and, sure enough, no avatar on that parcel could be seen from my parcel.

I've also recently found that it's impossible to see avatars in some other parcels when camming from the outside.

 

5 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

-Child avatars are allowed in Adult regions because LL is too lazy to enforce a TOS that prohibits it. Even if LL implemented an "X" region rating at an additional cost to sim owners, they would still not update their TOS to prohibit child or child-like avatars from visiting them.

That's not an uncommon misconception. Child avatars are allowed in adult sims. It's not against the ToS. However, what is against the ToS is child avatars in close proximity to sexual activity.

[Phil Deakins]

The marketplace belongs in the Controversies blog, but definitely not in the Successes. It's been an unmitigated disaster for SL because it fundamentally changed the SL world. SL used to have shops to shop in. Now there are hardly any, and SL is no longer a complete world. I know that many people prefer to shop 'online', and that they prefer the marketplace to stores, but, imo, the marketplace radically changed SL for the worse. It's not as bad as shifting the creation of things out of SL though. That's a much worse change because it pretty much prevents almost all users from the very thing that SLL was about - creating stuff. But shifting shopping to the outside was still extremely bad imo.

Incidentally, LL didn't do it for the users' benefit. That's never been their objective. They did it to get a bigger share of all the sales that were being made. They already got a share from cashing out, and from the land that stores occupied, but they wanted more.

The marketplace was definitely NOT a success for SL, imo.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Qie Niangao]

25 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

5 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

-Parcel privacy only works if you add someone to the banlist. LL has refused to give this bug any priority. Many new land owners are oblivious the bug even exists and are living in a false sense of security. I see many parcels with privacy set, but no one on the banlist..

That's wrong. I've never use that feature but, very recently, I noticed that one of my bots had disappeared from sight. It had actually wandered into the parcel on the next sim. So I checked it with 2 avatars logged in with viewers, and, sure enough, no avatar on that parcel could be seen from my parcel.

I've also recently found that it's impossible to see avatars in some other parcels when camming from the outside.

That jira's title is "Parcel privacy only works as expected when at least one agent is on the parcel ban list". I'd emphasize "as expected", where that expectation is to block visibility within the parcel borders between ground level and the volume higher than 50m above ground level.

As best I can tell from the jira description, the feature does block visibility between the parcel and areas outside it -- which was all I ever knew it was supposed to do, but now I can understand that the "expected" within-parcel isolation would be a useful feature for those willing to set whitelist banlines, obviating the need for scripted security to isolate the ground level. (I can't imagine setting whitelist banlines myself, but some folks obviously do. The bug report describes adding an avatar to the parcel's blacklist; it's not quite clear to me whether merely adding a whitelist restriction results in the desired behavior. If it does, though, this wouldn't seem like a bug at all.)

[Penny Patton]

Honestly, just the fact that Second Life has enjoyed what success it has and lasted this long, despite the fact that it is an incredibly flawed and underdeveloped product. That right there tells me there's a real market for virtual world sandboxes the likes of which Second Life has come closest to realizing. (Other attempts such as There.com, Blue Mars, Google Places, and even Sansar may improve over SL in some respects, but fall short in other, critical aspects that SL managed to get right.)  I think a lot of SL users overlook that. They look at Second Life and assume "this is as good as it gets" in terms of both what virtual worlds can be like, and in terms of success.

If SL with all of it's problems can do this well, just imagine how successful a Second Life like virtual world, one with everything people love about SL but without the lag, the unwieldy interface and ugly presentation, where it's easier to connect with people and communities, easier to create fun, engaging content, could be.

 And SL itself could be that more successful virtual world if Linden Lab manages to get their act together enough to recognize the problems and see the solutions. They might already be be doing that if some of the 15th anniversary announcements are any indication. It's a long road ahead for them if this is the case and I don't want to get my hopes up too much until they start delivering, but I'd love to see it.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Blush Bravin]

9 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

-Parcel privacy only works if you add someone to the banlist. LL has refused to give this bug any priority. Many new land owners are oblivious the bug even exists and are living in a false sense of security. I see many parcels with privacy set, but no one on the banlist.

-Child avatars are allowed in Adult regions because LL is too lazy to enforce a TOS that prohibits it. Even if LL implemented an "X" region rating at an additional cost to sim owners, they would still not update their TOS to prohibit child or child-like avatars from visiting them.

This feature works with or without having someone in the banlist. I use it all the time and have since its inception. 

My reason for liking that adult content was contained has nothing to do with child avatars. As someone who wants my friends to come to SL knowing where it's safe or not safe in regard to having adult rated content come into view has been helpful. I have many friends who were turned off by all the pixel-sex-in-your-face content found in SL. 

[Phil Deakins]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

That jira's title is "Parcel privacy only works as expected when at least one agent is on the parcel ban list". I'd emphasize "as expected", where that expectation is to block visibility within the parcel borders between ground level and the volume higher than 50m above ground level.

As best I can tell from the jira description, the feature does block visibility between the parcel and areas outside it -- which was all I ever knew it was supposed to do, but now I can understand that the "expected" within-parcel isolation would be a useful feature for those willing to set whitelist banlines, obviating the need for scripted security to isolate the ground level. (I can't imagine setting whitelist banlines myself, but some folks obviously do. The bug report describes adding an avatar to the parcel's blacklist; it's not quite clear to me whether merely adding a whitelist restriction results in the desired behavior. If it does, though, this wouldn't seem like a bug at all.)

That surprised me, Qie. It's something I've never checked because I've never had use for it, and the link in Lucia's post was unclickable at the time. It's ok now though, so I looked at the Jira. Anyway...

I just had to see it for myself - of course   - and this is what I've just found. I have 2 adjacent parcels, neither of which has any names in either the 'always allowed' or 'always banned' list. No names in either list. So I unchecked the 'can see and chat with other avatars on this parcel' option on one of the parcels, and logged another avatar in. When the test avatar walks into the 'can't see' parcel, it disappears. It reappears when it comes out. So it does work as I expected. It was done on the ground. I didn't do any test at 50m+. Perhaps it has been fixed since the Jira was posted in 2016.

What surprised me was that as well as outside avatars not being able see avatars inside, inside avatars can't see avatars that are outside. I didn't expect that. So I'm off to do the same test but high in the sky. I'll get back to you.

ETA: Yep. It works as I expected at 3700m, so the height above ground isn't a problem.

ETA2: I've just had a closer look at Whirly's jira, and it's specifically about seeing and not seeing avatars when one is below ground+50m and the other above ground+ 50m. I haven't checked that. Perhaps I will.

ETA3: I checked the 50+ variation and it still works as I expected. Neither avatar could see each other when one was on the ground in the protected parcel, and the other was at 96m right next to the parcel. When the 96m avatar moved horizontally onto the parcel, both could see each other.

It all seems to work fine without the need for any name in either of the access lists.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

When the test avatar walks into the 'can't see' parcel, it disappears.

The avatar disappears, or the parcel disappears? Because you said "it", I assume you meant the parcel.

[Phil Deakins]

lol. The avatar.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Phil Deakins