Cole Naire

And thank you to everyone who has contributed to this discussion, which has not only permitted me to rant (a little), but has also been instructive and useful. Thank you, in particular, to Perrie and Cerise who have suggested some plausible reasons for both the AR bans and the indiscriminate way in which they were applied. I still find aspects of this puzzling, but perhaps Pussycat's evocation of the principle of "Bill the Cat's Razor" to the mystery does, finally, explain all.

The child avatar in question was accompanied by a number of siblings and her "mother." I was initially a little taken aback to discover that it was the child who was the owner. A reflection, I suppose, of the RL assumptions that we all still sometimes carry with us into SL. As it turns out, in any case, the "mother" was not much easier to understand than the child.

Hi Aethelwine, and thanks for the response! And thanks to Celestiall too, whose comments were similar to yours. Your advice makes good sense, although I do still tend to think that automatic age restrictions are, as you put it, a blunt instrument, for reasons I've delineated above. I have, in the past, done something like this, but only when I particularly wanted a group to meet with the sim owner for some reason. The only real wrinkle is with regard to live shows (mostly music), which are sometimes not listed on the "Events" calendar until quite late in the day, or are subject to change at the last moment. However, I concur with both you and Celestiall that some sort of advanced arrangement, when it is possible, is a good idea. Thanks again.

Hello Storm, and thanks for your post. I'm not sure what precisely about my account strains your belief. It doesn't really matter however; you are of course free to believe or disbelieve whatever you choose, and I'm not at all interested in trying to compel you accept the veracity of my story. Nor am I sure where you've got the figure of "8 months" from? My students created their first set of avatars in the second week of September, and their second set a week and a half later (after the first wave was banned). They are, as of the time of writing, about 13 weeks old.

Hi Innula, Thanks for the thoughtful comment, with which I quite agree: if 20 people suddenly show up en masse at a club -- and perhaps especially if they are noobs -- then that might well cause alarm and consternation. In fact, although there has been a general assumption here that I was talking about a club, the places from which my students were banned were not such. I'm sorry, I should have probably made that clearer early on. The sim at which I was speaking to the owner as she banned my students was actually a sort of amusement park with a Dr. Seuss-theme. I don't recall its name offhand, I'm afraid. It was also deserted when we first arrived there. I was careful, when students went to social venues such as clubs, to divide my class up. There were four project groups, so each group went to one of four different clubs. One, as I recall, was Fogbound, and another Alt7. I did this for precisely the reasons you mention. I didn't worry so much about this at places like art galleries or malls (or, apparently, amusement parks!). Possibly I should have extended that practice further. I also want to just briefly address another point you make, which is an good one. This is not an anthropology or ethnology course, nor even a new media course: it is digital humanities. The focus of the course was upon the expression of "the human arts" -- narrative, music, visual art, history, and so forth -- in a digital context. In other words, when my students went to clubs, it was to experience the music, not to gawk at the patrons. (In fact, one of my project groups focused their work upon music in SL, and built a very nice interactive drum kit, the components of which played different sounds when they they were touched.) No avatars were harmed (or harassed with badly-designed surveys) during this course.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: I'm very curious to know how that conversation went after you realized your students were getting tossed during it. You've only given us half the drama here. It was an odd conversation to begin with, as the owner was a child avatar who was intent upon RPing during our discussion. I did ask why my students were disappearing, and got something that was barely intelligible. At that point, I decided to cut my losses, and leave. Pussycat Catnap wrote: I'd disagree for the kind of course Cole has described. If you want to study virtual cultures... you kind of need a space with people in it. But I'm also not sure SL is the ideal choice. I'd put them in WoW - larger active population. There is much truth to this, although this is not an ethnography course, so we don't study "cultures" in quite that sense. But certainly there'd be much less point in the course without the art, music, and other facets of that culture. And, because part of the course is about 3D modeling and building, we need the capacity for that as well. In both of those regards, WoW would be much less satisfactory. Pussycat Catnap wrote: It is very strange that a whole class got zapped. But also strange that, if I read you right, no student has ever been zapped before. If it's happened to any of my previous students, they've kept quiet about it. That's why this year seemed so anomalous, and why I am wondering aloud whether there hasn't been a subtle shift in the culture and tolerance of SL residents.

There's not much question that SL has tumbled from grace as an educational facility since the heady days when NMC and the like were advocating it as the next Big Thing. There are a number of reasons for that fall, but an important one was their decision to revoke the discount for non-profits (something to which I see they are now quietly returning). There are other tech options; for theatre, for instance, there is now a stand-alone platform called SET ("Simulated Environment for Theatre"). And there are of course also such alternatives as Open Sim and ReactionGrid; John Lester convinced a number of educational outfits to jump ship there. It depends on what you want to do. If all one is looking for is virtual teaching space, or a way to do 3D modeling, there are certainly other options. If, on the other hand, one is looking for a rich cultural experience with (for instance) a vibrant art scene all its own, then SL remains the best place to be, for now anyway.

It is unfortunate, and I wish I had a solution to offer (other than something invasive and itself extortionist such as Redzone). It was rather odd, in the one instance, to be actually conversing with the owner, whom I apprised as to the nature of the group, while she banned my students one-by-one. it seemed, in that instance at least, an unnecessary precaution.

Hi Drake. I'm sorry that you see no merit in teaching about new technologies and digital environments to students who, I might note, are already spending a great deal of their time in them. I'm not sure that you have a very clear notion of the course, however, or how SL is of use to scholars such as myself. The course on virtual worlds that I teach is part of a program in "digital humanities," a field that explores the uses of digital technologies in the traditional fields of the arts and humanities. For this reason, the course examined, at both a theoretical level and through field trips, such things as the use of virtual environments for music, art, historical reconstruction and recreation, and virtual archaeology. It also touched, of course, upon the subject of online identities and self-representation, as well as community. I taught my students to build because digital humanities is very much about creating digital tools for humanities research. I was personally quite blown away by their inventiveness and creativity. I myself use Second Life (as part of a much wider research program) for the 3D modeling of historical social and literary spaces. I have built a full-scale reconstruction from primary source evidence of a Restoration-era theatre (Drury Lane, ca. 1674). Visualizing stage and audience space through 3D renderings can tell one a great deal about how these spaces were used, and how they impacted upon the literary texts created within them, including such things as how a particular play may have been blocked out on a theatre stage. (Restoration stages were quite a bit different from modern ones.) I have also built a fully animated printing press from the hand-press era which is housed in an interactive museum on hand-press era printing, and which is a very useful tool for the teaching of 17th-century printing technologies. This is the kind of thing that this course was about. As for my own experience in Second Life, I don't feel it really necessary to provide you with a full CV, but will merely note that Cole is my "teaching" alt. I discovered some years ago that it was inconvenient being IMed by friends and colleagues while teaching. I know you will be pleased to hear that my main, which is the avatar through which I do most of my building and research, has a much more interesting life.

Yes, I agree. I don't suspect malice. But someone, or a combination of someones (including possibly one of my students) blunder'd. Or was trigger-happy.

Romania? Never been. Is that on Zindra?

Thanks Cerise. I suspect that something like what you describe is the case, although I'm going to retain my faith that no student did anything knowingly wrong. Again, I'm thinking that accepting a gift of Lindens is the most probable trigger. Your theory about the extent of the bans is, like Perrie's, problematic only because one of my students had a year old account that was also banned. As for your point about clubs, etc., and noobs: agreed. And again, I maintain that this is not merely a pointless exercise, but actually a self-destructive one. Luring new residents in Second Life with the promise of live music, socializing, and dancing, only to see them kicked out of the clubs to which they go is helping no one.

My assumption was that I was not banned because of the greater age of my account, although one student who has taken a Second Life course before, and had a year-old avatar, was banned. I did examine most of my students' accounts for precisely that reason. A few students were absent, and so I didn't see these, but the ones I saw were completely blank and clean. What I think must have happened is that one of the students whose account I did not see accepted tainted Lindens as a gift. I don't think that explains the blanket ban, or how it was applied, but it's the only explanation I can think of. What makes it particularly puzzling is that, from my experience of friends who have been ARed, the system is generally not quite so draconian as this instance suggests. It makes me wonder if there has been a change in policy.

Indeed. What is similarly puzzling, if your interpretation is correct, is that I was not banned, despite using that same IP.

Thanks Amethyst. You make some good points. I can reassure you on some points. My students were extensively prepared for this course by someone (i.e., me) who has spent many thousands of hours in Second Life, and done and seen pretty much everything (short of owning a business) that there is to do and see. They were well aware that this was not a "game": in fact, I gave them from the outset a list of misconceptions and things to avoid saying (such as "SL is a game," or "Who is that player?"). The course began, before they ever stepped in-world, with a lengthy introduction to virtual worlds and the pertinent differences between SL and, say, WoW. I obviously cannot vouch for each and every one of my students. I can tell you that I examined their accounts, and can confirm with certainty that the vast majority of them had never possessed a Linden. Overall, they are excellent students who have demonstrated in their course work that they "get" Second Life. I do also understand that many sim owners automatically ban new accounts, and I understand why. Part of what I am suggesting here is that this is a rather poor policy that is going to hurt all of Second Life in the long run. A virtual world that makes virtual life difficult for avatars in their early months merely because they are "new" is one that is going to have a difficult time attracting new residents. They did not break the ToS when creating new accounts, because they did not receive IP bans. They in fact used the same IP to create the new accounts. There is a Student Code of Conduct, about which I gave the students a refresher before we started (along with the ToS, the Community Standards, and research ethics rules): were proof to come to light that one or more of the students had violated these, they would, in fact, be discipined, as they well knew. I do however sincerely appreciate the comments!