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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    On the whole, I actually agree that threads are sometimes locked too quickly here. And I also think that the tendency to remove "off topic" posts is over-applied. That particular thread, though, was more like trying to interact with "messy" 8 year olds than adults. I'd prefer my "messy" not be applied with crayons. Yes, there will always be a certain degree of incivility and even trolling, but it IS possible to have intelligent conversations, and disagreements, without actually inundating the thread with puerility.
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    So, maybe we can try this again. Privacy is something that we all, to some degree, value in Second Life. Whether it is simply being able to insulate ourselves from those we don't want to associate with, or engage in activities that, for whatever reason, we'd prefer were not common knowledge. Privacy is also a factor relating this virtual platform with RL: most of us keep at least some separation between RL and SL precisely because we want our second lives to be, to some degree, "private" and separate from our RLs. (And vice versa, of course.) The platform provides a great many tools that can be used to ensure at least some degree of privacy, both in-world, and in terms of "leakage" between SL and RL. But clearly there are many who feel that these are insufficient. So, let's start from a given: there is no such thing as "perfect" privacy on a social platform. However, the degree to which we, and our activities, are exposed to others (and, again, vice versa) exists on a spectrum: one can be more, or less, private in Second Life. What are threats to privacy in SL? And what are potential, or even just partial, solutions to these that might be of assistance to those who want more privacy? Needless to say, let's be civil to each other, express our disagreements in ways that contribute to the discussion, etc., etc., etc.
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    Quartz tried to "clean" the thread to do more or less that . . . I think it was impossible to because the garbage was too woven into the useful and insightful stuff. What might work is a new thread or two.
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    That wasn't "controversy." Controversy implies reasoned disagreements and discussions. That was a few gems of real information submerged in a boiling, putrescent stew of asininity.
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    If you're talking about the newly-closed LookAt thread -- you were unlikely to get a coherent response there anyway. Why not start a new thread? Possibly in the Technology section?
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    This thread is simply beyond bizarre. I'm astonished it hasn't been locked yet. It's a shame, because it contains real information about "LookAt" and security (although nothing that relates these two to each other). And that's all stuff that is lost because it's been buried in a morass of condescension, insults, and juvenile pseudo-memes and pointless video clips. No one is going to go slugging through this text and image vomit to find the useful information. I'd suggest new untainted threads on these two subjects, but I'm sure that would be pointless.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    Here in Canada it's pretty much exclusively First Nations. And nearly everyone does a land acknowledgement, recognizing the particular nation whose land we are occupying, before starting events. I do, before every class I teach.
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    Fiiiine. If you're going to get all grumpy about it, I'll stop ARing your posts. There? All better now? 😠
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    Without getting into the details of what you said here (in part because I'm too lazy to look for the things you've referenced), I don't disagree: as a collective group, we should be more tolerant than we sometimes are. And . . . new posters should sometimes be more sensitive and attentive to the conventions of the culture into which they've chosen to introduce themselves. You wouldn't barge into a room full of people you didn't know and start firing off questions and comments without taking some time at least to get a "feel" for the room, would you? And if you perceived that you were not being well received, you'd hopefully adjust yourself accordingly? We need, perhaps, to be more respectful of new posters. And new posters need to acknowledge (and often do!) that this isn't just a soapbox: it's a community. They need to respect that too. Interesting. I think something like this was mentioned earlier, I think by the OP. I wonder if there is existing jurisprudence or law that addresses this? If "the metaverse" takes off, it's certainly going to be an issue.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    That's it exactly. I stayed, but it took me a good half year, and a great deal of anti-burn ointment, to establish myself as a member of the community. I wish that we were a bit more tolerant of new posters, maybe, sometimes. On the whole I don't think we're too bad though. It used to be much much worse. Generally, this iteration of the forum is a great deal less toxic than others I've known, and the people here are good people, and welcoming. There's also enough diversity of perspective that I don't think it's really an echo chamber. But new voices and ideas are always a good thing anyway. And the picture threads, BTW, can host their own variety of nastiness. People are people after all, even when there is nothing more at stake than "likes" and pretty pics.
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    Actually, the "troll" of my post was unintentionally ill-chosen, and wasn't intended as a pejorative reference to the OP. I nearly said "windmills," and in hindsight probably should have. It would have been funnier and less prone to misprision. I don't have anything personally against the OP. What I will suggest is that his approach has not been very carefully considered. Forums are delicate ecosystems; they develop their own rules. I've been here for a long time, and I suppose I'm part of "The Establishment," but if I posted, in rapid succession, three different OPs on, say, feminist issues, I'd get push back too. One mistake that newish posters often make is not to listen and gauge the conventions of the community before leaping in with both feet. I did that in . . . 2009? whenever it was that I started . . . and got flamed. You learn. And he could help himself by being a bit more attentive to his own thread and actually addressing points here rather than posting video clips. And, yeah, not the Brady Bunch. Seriously. ANYTHING but the Brady Bunch. (Except the Partridge Family. That would be worse.)
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    The irony here is that there is stuff that we all wish we could tell LL about how to improve the platform -- and none of this is it. Marketing is so weird. Rather than simply ask us, "Do you want more games on the platform?" they want to slot us into demographics that they think will indirectly tell them the same information. Because their analytics, they're pretty sure, know us better than we know ourselves.
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    Just a quick thought that occurs . . . I think a far more invasive and intrusive affordance -- and also a more useful one -- is the popular "What Is She Wearing" HUD. Wow, the TMI that I've learned using that . . . In terms of users violating privacy, that's a far worse offender than "LookAt." This thread is already such a mess, that I thought I'd just mischievously throw that it into the mix as well . . .
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    I am pretty agnostic about the social impact of LookAt. As I've said, I've never had any issues with this myself, and I don't really see how it is impacting upon public sociability at chat hubs and sims. But I find that conversation at least interesting and germane to the issue of cross hairs / beacons. The rest of this stuff just . . . isn't.
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    And this, it seems to me, is kind of to the point. The cross hairs that appear on our screen have nothing to do with what LL knows or doesn't know. Disabling them does nothing, in terms of "privacy," to restrict or control that. I'm honestly not sure that there is a "solution" to the potential for datamining that QwiQ (and, briefly, the OP) identify as important issues, beyond an assurance, maybe, from LL that they are not collecting this data. If the software enables you to look at things, the software can also record it: the only way to conclusively ensure that this data is not collected is to disable the code that points cameras. And certainly getting rid of TPVs isn't going to change that. The other point, more generally, is that the data likely to be collected isn't going to be worth much to anyone, except possibly to LL itself, or just maybe to merchants and creators (although I'm doubtful). It's not merely that the size of the users of this platform is so small: it is also pseudononymous and rife with alts. The reason FB doesn't want SL avatars to have accounts on their platform is that it contaminates the data with information about virtual people that is all but unusable to the real world companies that might be interested in buying. Who, who has money to spend on such things, is going to buy data about where my avatar, or my alts, point their camera? How is that going to help them market Coke and Big Macs?
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    Possibly you wouldn't need to "white knight" if the OP was a bit more detailed and forthcoming with details and clarifications? I asked for that, quite politely I think, and so far haven't even been graced with a Brady Bunch clip in response. The title of this thread, and the OP's first post, make it clear that his focus is upon what he calls "beacons," by which -- and this seems to be everyone else's assumption as well -- he means the cross hairs that we can optionally use to see where we are looking, and where others are looking. These are user tools. They have zilch to do with the ability of the viewer camera to look at people, go through walls, look up skirts, wander into the next sim, record data about what is being "looked at," etc. Disabling or restricting our ability to use "LookAt" does absolutely nothing to address any of the points he has made about "privacy," except insofar as it might provide some with the privacy to look up skirts and spy on others undetected -- not, it seems to me, a kind of privacy we should particularly want to protect. Your own points about data harvesting, monetization, etc., are well taken, but they too don't really have anything to do with these "beacons," which, again, are a user tool, and have nothing to do with how LL or anyone else might use the information they can (putatively) collect from user cameras. You're a very well-meaning White Knight, but you're attacking the troll in front of you, while the OP is actually urgently in need of assistance from the dragon behind you. Had the OP, or you, addressed the kinds of social issues that "LookAt" may or may not be causing, as others within this thread usefully have, this thread would seem a great deal less pointless and confusing than it frankly does.
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    I think on balance I'd be against removing it, because in general I am against removing anything that empowers us. And this is just another tool that we have at our disposal. But then, as I said, it's never (that I can recall) impacted negatively on my experience. And certainly, any tool can be misused, as it appears that this one sometimes is.
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    Weird. I've never had someone yell at me for looking at them. I occasionally turn on crosshairs when I'm working in a sandbox: generally I have my head down working then, and am not paying a lot of attention to what is going on around me. I've found that the sudden appearance of crosshairs on my avi is a pretty good early warning sign that I'm about to be interrupted.
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    I'm not at all opposed to change. Indeed, if SL is to survive, yet alone prosper, change is absolutely required. I just think the implications -- particularly if they involve trying to attract a largely new demographic to the platform -- need to be considered carefully.
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    I don't think it's going to turn SL into a dedicated FPS, but . . . it's naive to imagine that the introduction of new affordances isn't going to impact upon the broader culture here. The introduction of mesh, and the shift from in-world creation to Blender and other external mesh creation programs HAS had a pretty profound effect on SL, albeit one that took a few years to develop. SL is much more about "consumption" now than "creation." Consumerism was, of course, always important here, but shopping has become possibly the single most important and common activity in-world. I have no idea what kind of changes might be wrought by the kinds of tools that we're talking about it, but changes there will be.
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    That really is not terrible.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    The mods got to those quickly, given that it's a Sunday evening! Thank you mods!
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    Unfortunately to describe it is to perpetuate it. Suffice to say it was semi-literate racist trolling of the worst kind.
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    That's a neat solution to some problems but I don't think it would work for situations where the root prim is aligned on a really random axis.
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    Are we still discussing this as though it were a thing? Has there been a change?
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