Sad that popular places are turning into Experiences with no option to visit without accepting

[KanryDrago]

Experiences are something I never accept so if its required then I won't be visiting

Its not because I am particularly worried about what they can do. For me its like the rl shop experience

One shop I can go in an browse happily wandering and poking what I like

The other I have the creepy shop assistant who the moment I walks in is at your shoulder "HI can I help" then follows you round extolling the virtue of anything you glance at however briefly.

Guess which shop I walk out of and dont go back to ever again

[steeljane42]

Not a big fan of experiences myself. I rarely visit some sims where experience usage could be justified, too. In most of my experience with the experiences *coughs* it's stores that insist on them for no reason. My favorite example was one store that first wanted me to grab and wear a hud, then to accept the experience to TP between its sections. I'm still not sure what goal the store owner/creator had in mind with it. It's like 5 actions, (click to get a hud, open inventory, wear a hud, accept experience, click on desired section on the hud) vs 1 (click on the tp board with needed part of the store). I did accept it the first time and it went okay, I don't really worry about experiences or anything, but I don't need random huds in my inventory or experiences on the list, so next time I went there to test something else, I just ended up zooming up and sitting on the furniture from the landing point.

[Innula Zenovka]

@steeljane42 -- if the sequence of events is as you describe them, that's simply bad scripting.    What you describe is what the HUD needs to do if it's not using experience perms (or if the avatar declines the invitation to accept the experience).

If it were properly scripted, you'd see the one request to accept the experience and then, after you accepted it the experience a HUD would temp  attach to you (with no further dialog requests) and and then teleport you round using experience perms.     It wouldn't create an entry in your inventory and would simply detach and delete itself when you left the region or logged out.

Then on subsequent visits, assuming you hadn't  left the experience, you'd have the HUD attach when you arrived, with no dialog.

[Ipecac Burnham]

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

@steeljane42 -- if the sequence of events is as you describe them, that's simply bad scripting.    What you describe is what the HUD needs to do if it's not using experience perms (or if the avatar declines the invitation to accept the experience).

If it were properly scripted, you'd see the one request to accept the experience and then, after you accepted it the experience a HUD would temp  attach to you (with no further dialog requests) and and then teleport you round using experience perms.     It wouldn't create an entry in your inventory and would simply detach and delete itself when you left the region or logged out.

Then on subsequent visits, assuming you hadn't  left the experience, you'd have the HUD attach when you arrived, with no dialog.

With so few places in our grid left to learn LSL and the experience functions wiki articles being so woefully obscure in most cases 5~ years later... "properly scripted" doesn't mean a lot, and this may be quite common.

 

The obfuscated listen relay using Vehicle perms in my Rigged Arm warmers for persistence (note, this script is in 75% of all current clothing) that people paid USD by the hour for, yet it throws Control errors every second time I wear it means I will take all experiences with a pinch of salt.

 

Based on nothing more or less than my experience of SL, and the people calling themselves Scripters.

[Innula Zenovka]

@Ipecac Burnham  Nevertheless, there' an example in the wiki --  in the article on http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlTeleportAgent -- that shows you pretty everything you need to know to make an experience perms teleport HUD.   It's hardly very complex.    

We also quite frequently have questions about scripting for experiences in the Scripting forum here, which are generally answered by people like @Rolig Loon,   @Qie Niangao and me, who, I can assure you, do know how to write experience perms teleporters.

I don't understand how anyone with any experience of scripting LSL can mess up taking controls to ensure a script runs in no-script areas.  

default
{

	attach(key attached)
	{
		if(attached){
			llRequestPermissions(attached,PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS);
		}
	}

	run_time_permissions(integer permissions)
	{
		if(permissions & PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS){
				llTakeControls(CONTROL_FWD,TRUE,TRUE);
		}
	}
}

It's hardly rocket science.   You don't even need a control event for it to work -- just to request controls in the attach event and call llTakeControls when you receive them.    

Edited October 21, 2018 by Innula Zenovka

[Saravendi]

On 10/16/2018 at 10:15 PM, KT Kingsley said:

Make a disposable alt to test out those experiences you don't trust. You can then throw the alt away or "Forget" any undesirable experience, or you can go and join with your main if it proves innocuous.

Too much effort for me... I just pass

[Innula Zenovka]

18 minutes ago, Saravendi said:

Too much effort for me... I just pass

If I wanted to use the SL permissions system to grief people,  I would find it far easier to do it using the regular run_time_permissions you grant when someone wants to hug you using a hug/kiss HUD or when you want to use a dance ball than I would using experience perms.     You can leave an experience any time.    In contrast, if I obtain permission to animate your avatar in the run_time_permissions event, there's nothing you can do to rescind that if I don't want to release the permissions (you can temporarily stop my infernal device from animating you if you use Firestorm, but that's on a per-login basis, I think.   I'm open to correction by someone who knows more about Firestorm than do I, though, which is a lot of people).

Edited October 21, 2018 by Innula Zenovka

[Klytyna]

6 hours ago, Ipecac Burnham said:

With so few places in our grid left to learn LSL and the experience functions wiki articles being so woefully obscure in most cases 5~ years later... "properly scripted" doesn't mean a lot, and this may be quite common.

One of the reasons most SL scripters don't really do that well at Experience coding is... It's hard to practice and experiment with stuff you can't actually compile, because you are NOT an Entitlement Club member, with your own Experience key...

Makes it a lot harder to play with the stuff...

That's why Experiences are used nowhere near as often as LL probably hoped they would be.
 

[Ipecac Burnham]

18 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

One of the reasons most SL scripters don't really do that well at Experience coding is... It's hard to practice and experiment with stuff you can't actually compile, because you are NOT an Entitlement Club member, with your own Experience key...

Makes it a lot harder to play with the stuff...

That's why Experiences are used nowhere near as often as LL probably hoped they would be.
 

I mostly gave up on them due to a sheer lack of information.

 

This, however makes me wonder if this is true for collaboration?

 

Can anyone with a key add anyone without a key as a contributing writer for the experience?

 

It's not touched on at all in the wiki, or the KB article @

 

5 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

It's hardly rocket science.   You don't even need a control event for it to work -- just to request controls in the attach event and call llTakeControls when you receive them.  

This is my point.

 

How can I trust an experience when my clothing is doing odd stuff that's considered "Properly Scripted" so much that it's being charged for, because Professional Scripter A decided their HUD's and closed perms scripts in everything have a right to run in regions where the region owner said no, they don't?.

 

Do my Arm warmers need to tell a server the region name I just entered?

 

Does Store X really need all my perms to TP me to Kitchenware...

 

Not everyone follows good practices, clearly, and when going into a decision blind I will be apprehensive.

[Qie Niangao]

37 minutes ago, Ipecac Burnham said:

How can I trust an experience when my clothing is doing odd stuff that's considered "Properly Scripted" so much that it's being charged for, because Professional Scripter A decided their HUD's and closed perms scripts in everything have a right to run in regions where the region owner said no, they don't?.

There are all sorts of reasons why scripting may be difficult for folks who don't have a programming background -- and another bunch of reasons why it's hard even for folks who do. (For example, how many experienced programmers would expect that [1, 2, 3] == ["Jupiter", "Saturn", "Neptune"] is TRUE in LSL? How many lurking bugs has that caused?)

But SL offers plenty of ways non-scripters can be confused, too. It's not surprising that region owners can get the false impression that they can determine whether visitor's attached scripts should be allowed to run. It's simply not up to them and never has been, despite a user interface that leads them to believe otherwise.

[Ipecac Burnham]

6 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's not surprising that region owners can get the false impression that they can determine whether visitor's attached scripts should be allowed to run. It's simply not up to them and never has been, despite a user interface that leads them to believe otherwise.

Then we clearly have bigger things to worry about.

[Qie Niangao]

15 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

One shop I can go in an browse happily wandering and poking what I like

The other I have the creepy shop assistant who the moment I walks in is at your shoulder "HI can I help" then follows you round extolling the virtue of anything you glance at however briefly.

This seems quite valid. People have different expectations of what they'll enjoy in SL, and there's a tiny bit of "commitment" involved in enabling some Experiences (but by no means all) that may simply be more than some folks want to invest in their SL hobby.

I feel much the same about voice. I simply won't use it; I can't be bothered to hook up a mic and debug my PC's audio inputs for the gazillionth time. (For that matter, I almost always have sound turned off at the Windows level, unless I'm debugging something that makes noise. Hence, DJs aren't a big part of my SL.)

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

This seems quite valid. People have different expectations of what they'll enjoy in SL, and there's a tiny bit of "commitment" involved in enabling some Experiences (but by no means all) that may simply be more than some folks want to invest in their SL hobby.

SL is not much different from RL in that regard.  We face risk from the moment we step out of bed in the morning, often without thinking about it, and we trust objects and people in our environment not to trip us up with unseen hazards. Most of us manage to get through the day without dissolving into a quivering puddle of fear and indecision, mostly because we face the same predictable risks every day.  We become hypervigilant only when a new risk appears.  As Innula points out, we are vulnerable to griefer exploits every time we click a dance ball or sit on a chair. Indeed, even walking quietly down the street we can bump into collision-triggered booby traps.  We learn where these things are most likely to happen and which warning signs will alert us before we trip them.  And we remember that (1) these exploits are really not as frequent as we fear and (2) we can be scared out of our wits and very annoyed but not physically harmed in SL.  We're safer here than in RL. 

Scripters have always been able to design ways to fool people in SL, usually to delight them or at least create conveniences to help them move around, buy things, and open the front door. We trust that most scripters will not turn to the dark side and create things to disturb our SL experience, and we understand that scripters -- being mostly amateurs and not constrained by quality control -- will make mistakes. We factor that into the way we assess risks.  It's understandable that we get nervous when scripters get a new toy to build with, because we don't yet know what risks it may bring. Still, each new function in the scripting toolbox has added to the things we can do in SL and most scripters are not looking for ways to turn them against us.

[Whirly Fizzle]

2 hours ago, Ipecac Burnham said:

Can anyone with a key add anyone without a key as a contributing writer for the experience?

Yes.

There are even open join groups that give the Everyone role the "Experience Admin" & "Experience Contributor" abilities for an experience set to that group.
This means that anyone in the group can compile scripts with that experience.

The owner of that experience is taking a big risk though.  If anyone does anything nasty with that experience it can be abuse reported & it's the experience owner who will be slapped by LL & very likely they will lose their experience.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

53 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Still, each new function in the scripting toolbox has added to the things we can do in SL and most scripters are not looking for ways to turn them against us.

Yes, of course, you're correct.

But I want to re-orient this a bit, and think about it not in terms of "risk" and "safety," but rather as an issue of empowerment and control, because I think it lies at the heart of the objections many people have raised here to Experiences. 

You have emphasized, I think, the powerful immersive quality of Second Life: that this is a huge part of its appeal is undeniable, But the other side of SL's power is the degree to which it promises us control. "Your Life, Your Imagination," the now-hoary old PR jingle used to go, and that element of personal choice, and personal empowerment, is enormously important to me, and to anyone who has come here because they wanted to exercise their choice -- to experiment with sexuality or gender, for instance, or to engage in particular kinds of experience that are not, for whatever reason, available to them in RL. Immersiveness is one of the things that makes those choices "work," and makes them important, but ultimately it is a means to the real end, which is to allow us to be, and do, what we want. Immersion works best when it is coupled with an experience that we have chosen, rather than pre--programmed one compelled upon us -- most often, with the best intentions -- by a scripter.

It's absolutely true that we must exercise trust everyday in RL, and SL. But sometimes its not even about that, but rather about finding ourselves in positions where, without anyone being really culpable, we experience, or even (as avatars compliant to one script or another) do things we did not choose. A simple example which is probably common to most women in SL (I think it's mostly a gendered thing, unfortunately) is when we are dancing with someone to an animation with which we are not familiar. Everything is going well, when suddenly we find ourselves wanting to shout "Whoa! I didn't tell you that you could put your hands there!" In RL, I could swat the invasive hands away, or simply articulate my discomfort in a way that will probably prevent its repetition: in SL, because this is preprogrammed, my choices are only to end the animation entirely, or (if I'm in a position to do so) choose another dance. The key to this experience is the lack of choice available to, probably, all parties. The animator didn't know what personal context these wandering hands would intrude into, my dance partner may not have realized that his hands were going to be compelled to do this, and I similarly didn't realize what I was getting into when I accepted the animation.

Ok, this is a deliberately trivial example, but it can be not unimportant in terms of our own sense of safety and well-being (even though it is so easily remedied, and no real physical threat exists). And key is that this is probably not about trust at all: no blame can be accrued by anyone for where a script or animation suddenly and unexpectedly takes us.

So, when people complain about experience that compel them to tour a store in a particular way, or experience an installation according to the dictates of the artist/scripter, I think what they are really objecting to is less being subjected to possible "harm," and far more about losing, if even in trivial ways, what brought us here in the first place: the element of choice.

[Innula Zenovka]

4 hours ago, Ipecac Burnham said:

Can anyone with a key add anyone without a key as a contributing writer for the experience?

It's not touched on at all in the wiki, or the KB article @

Ahem.   From the KB article to which you linked:

 

Quote

 

Experience collaboration

To enable others besides the experience owner to create scripts for the experience, the owner can set a group in the experience profile. Anyone in that group with the Experience Contributor power can then create scripts for the experience. Additionally, anyone with the Experience Admin power can update the profile (with the exception of the group). Use caution when assigning a group to an experience as anyone who can assign powers to members effectively has the ability to control who can contribute to the experience.

 

 

4 hours ago, Ipecac Burnham said:

Do my Arm warmers need to tell a server the region name I just entered?

No, certainly not.   The only reason for which I can imagine having them tell a server the region name you've just entered is to track your movements.    However, since I don't quite see why rigged arm warmers would need to be scripted to do anything at all (except maybe change colour and texture), let alone do it in no-script areas, I'm clearly missing part of the story.

4 hours ago, Ipecac Burnham said:

Does Store X really need all my perms to TP me to Kitchenware...

Yes, it does. 

When you use regular permissions, the script asks for specific permissions (PERMISSION_ATTACH, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION, PERMISSION_TELEPORT and so on) in order to do what it needs.   In some circumstances -- when the script that needs the permissions is in something you're wearing or something  you're sitting on -- these are granted silently but in all other cases you see the permissions dialogue box.

In contrast, when you join an experience, that grants all scripts set to that experience the various permissions listed in the dialog box.   There's no granularity at all -- you can't grant an experience permission to teleport you but at the same time deny it permission to animate you, and there's no way for the script to request some experience permissions and not others.

 If I want to be able to animate and teleport someone using conventional run_time_permissions, the call is

 llRequestPermissions(id, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION|PERMISSION_TELEPORT);//or whatever permissions I need at the time

When I'm using experience perms, however, the call is simply

llRequestExperiencePermissions(id,"");

(The "" parameter is a deprecated relic from when they were first experimenting with experience perms, and you had to specify the experience key).

4 hours ago, Klytyna said:

One of the reasons most SL scripters don't really do that well at Experience coding is... It's hard to practice and experiment with stuff you can't actually compile, because you are NOT an Entitlement Club member, with your own Experience key...

That assumes that "most SL scripters" aren't premium members (I don't know whether they are or not) and  that they also don't have any friends who are premium members who are prepared to create an experience for them to experiment with (which I doubt is the case).

It also assumes that a scripter who is interested in learning about experience perms isn't going to be sufficiently interested to invest $9.95 (the price of a couple of cups of decent coffee, maybe?) a month for a couple of months in becoming a premium member for as long as it takes to get his or her head round them.   OK, I understand that for people in a many countries that's not possible but certainly for most people in SL it is.   And really, someone who already understands both regular permissions and the dataserver event won't have any difficulty in picking up experience perms,  so I can't imagine it's going to take most experienced scripters more than a few hours to get up to speed with them, if that. 

 

Edited October 21, 2018 by Innula Zenovka

[Scylla Rhiadra]

On 10/18/2018 at 5:37 PM, Rolig Loon said:

Some of the most disturbing effects are blunted when we have to ask the visitor each time, "Is it OK to teleport you into a dark room now?".   Using an Experience means not having to break the fourth wall repeatedly.

To some degree, this is of a piece with what I've just said, above, but in a slightly different context.

The "fourth wall" exists, I think, for a reason; it's not a mere inconvenience that playwrights, directors, actors -- or scripters and sim developers -- need to "overcome." The fourth wall is what separates the artifice from the "real," the illusion on stage, or being rendered in pixels on our screen, from what we perceive as our true context. The fourth wall is, ultimately, why we can both be terribly saddened by the death of Cordelia in Lear, and at the same time delighted by it. Were our often unconscious but continual awareness of the fact that we are experiencing a theatrical illusion -- an awareness generated, in large measure, by the fourth wall -- dispelled entirely, we would not merely be saddened: we'd be shocked, horrified, and traumatized.

I know that you know this, and you speak quite rightly of achieving a "balance." But, for me, the very power of immersion in SL is the reason why that balance should always be weighted, as I said above, on the choice of the spectator. We know, from years now of experience of how people "live" in virtual environments, that it can actually be terribly difficult to disentangle our emotional responses to virtual interactions from our contexts in physical life. And that's not always just the result of a lack of a sense of proportion on the part of the resident: Skell's point about his fear of heights highlights the degree to which the enormous power of immersion can produce something very like trauma even in people who are also very self-aware.

And finally, to reiterate a point I made above, the presence of what you call the fourth wall also gives us the critical distance we need to analyze, rather than merely become lost within, the experience.

There are times when it can be enormously useful and effective to generate stronger and more compelling (in every sense) illusion in virtual worlds. But I think there are lots of reasons to err on the side of caution, and keep that fourth wall firmly in place more often than not.

Edited October 21, 2018 by Scylla Rhiadra
Because coherence

[Innula Zenovka]

12 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Immersion works best when it is coupled with an experience that we have chosen, rather than pre--programmed one compelled upon us -- most often, with the best intentions -- by a scripter.

Experience tools are most often used to add immersiveness to interaction with SL objects.  You choose to interact -- you sit on the chair and select "Reading" from the list animations it offers you, and experience tools are then used to attach a book to your avatar without presenting you with a separate dialog box asking for permission to attach it to you.    You choose to click on a button to teleport to another region, or to enter the magic portal, and the script uses experience tools to teleport you there without asking you to click on a map or a link in chat.

You give the example of dance animations sometimes putting individuals or couples into unwanted positions.   This is very true.   However, the fact that there's a risk of this happening doesn't deter most people from experimenting with dances on dance balls with which they aren't familiar, for fear they might not like the dance or that it might put their partner's hands in inappropriate places ,  and SL is far more fun and immersive because of it.  

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Innula Zenovka said:

However, the fact that there's a risk of this happening doesn't deter most people from experimenting with dances on dance balls with which they aren't familiar, for fear they might not like the dance or that it might put their partner's hands in inappropriate places ,  and SL is far more fun and immersive because of it.

Absolutely, Innula. I don't shy away from dancing because I'm worried about suddenly being virtually groped on the dance floor: I choose to take that risk because the possible downside is, mostly, so very trivial.

But that was, as I said, a deliberately trivial example, chosen because it's something that most people (at least most women) in SL can identify with. When those same principles are extended to potentially much more powerful experiences, the emotional and personal stakes become much more important. Again, I can imagine all sorts of ways in which I might have been able to use Experiences to make my exhibit on depictions of sexual violence much more powerful and affecting. I imagine, for instance, that I might have been able to actually insert visitors into interactive scripted and animated objects and instances where they are suddenly and unexpectedly the "perpetrators" or "victims" of sexual violence. I could have put them inside the experience of being virtually gutted, mutilated, raped, etc.

That would undoubtedly have been powerful. It also would have been enormously irresponsible and potentially dangerous.

[Innula Zenovka]

@Scylla Rhiadra And in RL you can stage exhibitions and interactive displays that are extremely powerful and disturbing.   Since you're a responsible promoter of exhibitions, you'll both use your good judgment about what to include and what's going too far, and you'll also take steps to warn visitors of what to expect before they enter the exhibition.    Furthermore, word about your exhibition or installation is going to get around in reviews and word-of-mouth anyway.

Same as SL, really.

Few people in RL would, I think, refuse to attend an exhibition in which they might otherwise be interested because  they couldn't be sure the exhibitor wouldn't take the opportunity to spring distressing scenes on them without any warning, despite the fact that in RL we don't have the option to teleport out of exhibitions we find disturbing and distressing.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Innula Zenovka said:

@Scylla Rhiadra And in RL you can stage exhibitions and interactive displays that are extremely powerful and disturbing.   Since you're a responsible promoter of exhibitions, you'll both use your good judgment about what to include and what's going too far, and you'll also take steps to warn visitors of what to expect before they enter the exhibition.    Furthermore, word about your exhibition or installation is going to get around in reviews and word-of-mouth anyway.

Same as SL, really.

Few people in RL would, I think, refuse to attend an exhibition in which they might otherwise be interested because  they couldn't be sure the exhibitor wouldn't take the opportunity to spring distressing scenes on them without any warning, despite the fact that in RL we don't have the option to teleport out of exhibitions we find disturbing and distressing.

 

Yep, all of this is true.

But no one here (I think) is arguing otherwise. I don't think anyone has suggested that Experience are intrinsically "bad," should be disabled, etc. I certainly am not, anymore than I am arguing that dances with "wandering hands" featured should be banned.

I think that it's more a matter of trying to locate where the balance should lie, and distinguishing between the kinds of Experience that might be appropriate and useful, and those that might seem a good idea at the time, but that perhaps go too far, or raise problematic issues. So, it's about nuance rather than a simple binary of good/bad. 

I think it's important also to understand why some people are uncomfortable with, or dislike Experiences, and recognizing the validity of those views, rather than dismissing them offhand as unfounded, hysterical, etc. 

[Rolig Loon]

46 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I want to re-orient this a bit, and think about it not in terms of "risk" and "safety," but rather as an issue of empowerment and control, because I think it lies at the heart of the objections many people have raised here to Experiences. 

You have emphasized, I think, the powerful immersive quality of Second Life: that this is a huge part of its appeal is undeniable, But the other side of SL's power is the degree to which it promises us control.

That is an excellent point, Scylla, because risk management is indeed always about control.  We feel safe and comfortable only to the degree that we can manage our way through a potentially confusing and dangerous world.  We manage by exercising direct control over things when we can and by developing trust in people and institutions who can manage them better.  I drive a car on the highway, secure in the belief that I can keep it on the road and can avoid the nut case on pot who is driving the opposite direction.  I know that airplanes are also potentially dangerous, but I do not have any control over how fast or how high they fly.  I keep my sanity as a passenger by trusting the pilot and the engineers who built the plane -- deferring my control to other people.  Somewhat paradoxically, I am actually safer in an airplane than I am when I drive to the grocery store but I know of people -- famously, Isaac Asimov, who refused to fly anywhere -- who do not believe that.

We are constantly faced not with a choice between risk and no risk, but between Scylla and Charybdis-- one risk or another. Our task is to decide when we can control things best ourselves and when we can -- and ought to - trust someone else to control them. And, yes, you are right that it is not necessarily about safety but about convenience, piece of mind, and the degree to which we are even aware of what goes on behind the scenes.  More than a century ago, people were afraid of travel in horseless carriages and elevators.  My grandfather refused to use a credit card.  I met a woman in Macy's a few years ago who was afraid to step on the escalator.  As life goes on, some of us go ahead blindly, wandering through a changing world without thinking about where their freedom to choose went, and without realizing the new daily risks.  Others freeze like deer in the headlights, immobilized by being unable to control anything and unwilling to trust someone else to do the controlling.  The rest of us manage the changes around us gracefully, although sometimes with a sigh or rolling eyes.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

27 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

We are constantly faced not with a choice between risk and no risk, but between Scylla and Charybdis-- one risk or another. Our task is to decide when we can control things best ourselves and when we can -- and ought to - trust someone else to control them.

You make some excellent points here! I think that where we differ is mostly in emphasis. I agree completely that Experiences are a potentially wonderful tool to enhance our enjoyment of SL, how it educates us, entertains us, and takes us outside of ourselves. And I think you clearly recognize the problematic elements: I like very much that you emphasis personal choice above, even if it is between Scylla (*coughs*) and Charybdis.

A thought that has just occurred to me, not entirely irrelevant to our discussion, is the degree to which the low-stakes of most risk-taking in SL might encourage people to do things here that they would never attempt in RL. That seems pretty obvious, but I'm thinking primarily about emotional risks: the painfully shy person in RL who feels somewhat safer about connecting here, for instance. And in some ways, of course, that's exactly the kind of affordance that SL should offer. At the same time, "low-stake" risks are not the same as no-risk-at-all, and I've certainly known people in the kind of situation I've described who have been very badly hurt, "for real," by their temerity in trying something new.

I don't have a solution for that. There probably is no solution for that, except for facilitating and encouraging realistic risk-assessment. And maybe we can facilitate that through education?

[Luna Bliss]

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

You have emphasized, I think, the powerful immersive quality of Second Life: that this is a huge part of its appeal is undeniable, But the other side of SL's power is the degree to which it promises us control.

So suppose you sit at the bistro table at my little roadside cafe. No Experience involved, not even a permissions dialog, but because you sat, my scripts could now teleport you to a realm of sinister delights, flash seizure-inducing lights on your screen, portray your avatar eating prim babies, and generally make a tremendous nuisance of themselves.

Shall we now remove the ability to sit in SL? Before you know it we'll regress to a near-Sansar level of lameness.

To interact at all with the virtual world -- even merely sitting -- one grants some control to scripts.

Another note about control and choice in SL: Above there was a brief exchange about the ability of attached scripts to continue running on land that's set "no scripts" -- a shorthand label that some landowners misconstrue as granting them the ability to restrict their visitors' choice to run scripts attached to their avatars. I'm guessing some share of landowners would want to assume that control over their visitors -- and some of those same people would not want another landowner to require consent to an Experience to enter their parcel.

Personally, I would much rather participate by choice in an Experience than be denied use of my attached scripts. YMMV, but either way these are questions of control and choice.