we live in a world someone else imagined

Pinterest contacted me today...

Hi Emilly,

It was bold in the original, I just kept it.

We recently removed a Pin from your "Unhallows" board because it goes against our Community Guidelines on self-injury and harmful behavior.

And that was when my brain dropped out through my open jaw, because...I have two Hallowe'en boards. "Vintage Halloween" is the more retro board, with everything from print-outs to tutorials on crafting haunted items. "Unhallows" is the more purely horror board, the place for everything unnerving, disturbing, skin-crawling...probably more '-ing', and...how...is that going to hold up to a sudden ToS change??

We limit the distribution of or remove content that displays, rationalizes or encourages suicide, self-injury, eating disorders or substance abuse. This content impacts the community - it can be triggering, or reinforce harmful behavior. These rules apply to all Pins, including ones on your secret boards.

I have no secret boards.

Please take some time to go through your Pins and remove any that may conflict with our policies, or we may take further action against your account.

I've spent the morning in between making appointments and meeting appointments of my own in applying the broadest definitions possible, just in case. Bleeding from the mouth? Gone. Bleeding from the eyes? Probably okay, but...if it's a large amount, gone. ANYTHING to do with wrist ribbons, wrist stitches, wrist wounds, EVEN IF IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SUICIDAL IDEATION...gone. I'm not even a third of the way through yet.

I'm still debating just dumping every single image with visible wounds anywhere.

The thing that frustrates me about these strikes, though, the thing that has always frustrated me about these strikes...is they no longer tell me what they've struck down. They used to, a few years back--and that information is kind of key to figuring out whether I want to challenge the strike or not? Because easily 70% of everything on Pinterest, for everyone, is relinked material. There is a very high noise-to-signal ratio.

How do I know if what I linked is bad, if you won't show me what I linked? How do I learn from my mistake if you won't tell me what it was?

"Why are you still on Pinterest?" asked Neome. My love, I am starting to wonder myself. A few years back they also made linking anything on the site that wasn't just pure image (which you had to open as a new tab and link THAT URL only) impossible, because now, when anyone clicks one of the links of mine (and you may even see it if you click the two boards I linked above), it takes them to the page--and then immediately greys out the page and a full-screen popup tells you how easy it is to create an account. It's become worse than useless for passing information on in any direction save back to Pinterest.

Apparently Elliot Management owns the company now, which is odd, because as this article says, they're more known for "activism", and as their own website says:

The firm employs a multi-strategy trading approach that encompasses a broad range of strategies, including, without limitation: equity-oriented, private equity and private credit, distressed securities, non-distressed debt, hedge/arbitrage, real estate-related securities, commodities trading and portfolio volatility protection.

...Right.

Maybe it's time to batchfile everything in a 'save these links' file and just kill my account.

the sky is folding, I'll see you in a while

Received this from Tumblr in the past couple of days:

The future is bright

Hey, did you hear the news? We’re being acquired by Automattic! They’re a technology company that empowers people to build beautiful websites, tell their stories, and find and grow their audience. We couldn’t be more pleased with this new and complementary home where we can continue working on behalf of our community—you.

Riiiiight. Because I'm sure those of us who used Tumblr as a way to connect with each other, a way to foster community, a way to express ourselves without restrictions...I'm sure Automattic really cares.

Your login credentials will remain the same. Nothing will change with how you use Tumblr and we’ll continue our efforts to make your experience even better.

Actually, not true, because I've been in the aggravatingly slow process of transferring the content I want to keep to another blog. I haven't made a single post on my own to Tumblr since the announcement. What happens at that point? I kill the account.

Starting September 26, 2019, your Tumblr account will be governed by the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

There are a few worrying passages in their Terms of Service.

Subscriber Content License to Tumblr:

When you provide Subscriber Content to Tumblr through the Services, you grant Tumblr a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable right and license to use, host, store, cache, reproduce, publish, display (publicly or otherwise), perform (publicly or otherwise), distribute, transmit, modify, adapt (including, without limitation, in order to conform it to the requirements of any networks, devices, services, or media through which the Services are available), and create derivative works of, such Subscriber Content.

This has become a fairly standard clause for electronic services, in order to allow the hosting services in question to host user-published content. And I get that. The phrase that jumps out at me, though, is "and create derivative works of, such Subscriber Content". That, to me? Is very telling, and is not standard to most electronic services.

The reference in this license to "creat[ing] derivative works" is not intended to give Tumblr a right to make substantive editorial changes or derivations, but does, for example, enable reblogging, which allows Tumblr Subscribers to redistribute Subscriber Content from one Tumblr blog to another in a manner that allows them to add their own text or other Content before or after your Subscriber Content.

Emphasis theirs, and gosh, thanks for explaining, but words have meanings. The rest of the clause allows those specific things, including reblogging by other users, a major function of Tumblr as it existed before. So the creation of derivative works based on user content is not needed as a clause in their Terms of Service.

There's also this:

Compliance with Community Guidelines:

You agree that you won't violate Tumblr's Community Guidelines.

What does that mean for the end user? Let's just focus in on what started all the controversy in the first place, and is very much in the Terms of Service that will go into effect on the 25th of September:

Adult Content. Don't upload images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples — this includes content that is so photorealistic that it could be mistaken for featuring real-life humans (nice try, though). Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine. Don’t upload any content, including images, videos, GIFs, or illustrations, that depicts sex acts. For more information about what this guideline prohibits and how to appeal decisions about adult content, check out our help desk.

Which means that Verizon, and its subsidiary Automattic, is CHANGING NOTHING about the policy that lost them hundreds of thousands of users over the past few months.

We think you’re going to love Tumblr’s bright future, but we also want to remind you that you have complete control over whether or not your Tumblr account remains active after Tumblr’s acquisition by Automattic. If you’re just not feeling it, you can choose to export the contents of your blog(s) and/or delete your account(s) by September 25, 2019.

And this is the bit I didn't know. I can export my entire blog, without having to do it by hand? (Which has been both irritating and exhausting, as well as somewhat angering to realize how much the anti-Adult policy stripped content that I also wanted to save from my Tumblog.)



And that, in fact, is what I'm doing. Took me a bit, I'm ashamed to say, to figure out exactly what they meant in their instructions, but once I got to the right area, the Export function showed up very clearly. But I'm sure that is a download that will be preparing for several hours, because my Tumblog goes back to 2014. That's a lot of content to batch up into one file.

Have more Qs? We got you. Find your answers in the FAQ.

Yeah, don't care. This is beyond last-straw time. I'm not even surprised, I'm just continuing to be disappointed. When that file downloads, I am killing my account formally, because I will then have the files I need to go through and repost. And that will be that. I am done with Tumblr.

it feels like we're pulling teeth

So...this happened:

[19:24] mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: can someone please explain something to me if something is ggaist the law as discrimination then how can there be discrimination on sl?
[19:25] Axxxxx Txxxxxx: huh?
[19:25] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: Huh?
[19:25] Sxxxxxx Rxxxx: huh?
[19:25] Sxxxxx Gxxxxxxxx: wat
[19:25] Rxxxxx Rxxxxx: discrimination?
[19:25] Mxxxxxxx Gxxxxx: SL is a virtual world, not a physical world

Pretty much. We were all kind of confused. (And no, I've left typos intact.)

[19:25] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: amybe someone that has been on sl longer than 3 years like me or leis is fine

She seemed to be implying that the longer we live on the grid, the less culpable we are for our actions. Which is patently false, and also, confusing again.

[19:25] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: sl is like someone's living room
[19:25] Axxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxx: just like muder is against the law but there is still murder just cause its against the law doesn't mean people wont do it
[19:25] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: oh so people do what they want to here?
[19:26] Mxxx Hxxxxxxxx: some do
[19:26] Txxxxxx Sxxxxxxxxx: They do that anywhere

Also largely true, but we were still trying to figure out what she was saying.

[19:26] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: no, they do what they want within the ToS
[19:26] Txxxxxx Sxxxxxxxxx: If people want to break laws, they will
[19:26] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: There are some things that will cost you your account if you're caught.
[19:26] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: Linden makes the rules.
[19:26] Mxxx Hxxxxxxxx: speeding is against the law, who can say they don't speed?

What?

[19:27] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: well one is safer going with flow of traffic if everyone is speedeing
[19:27] Sxxxxxx Rxxxx: people have to abide by LL ToS but like RL laws not everyone does
[19:27] Sxxxxxx Rxxxx: What exactly are you being discriminated by?
[19:28] Axxxxxx Txxxxxx: yeah, i was gonna ask what kind of discrimination?
[19:28] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: You can discriminate on a a personal level RL, just not on a professional level
[19:28] Emilly Orr: And yes, Ann, while there are rules on SL, some folks don't bother. Sometimes that gets them in trouble, sometimes it doesn't. Kind of like RL.

Which, annoyingly, is true everywhere. It's why everyone's so paranoid about copyright infringement still, because on the grid it's still so terribly easy to do.

[19:29] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: well i never went to a gay bar so i put on short shorts tank top combat boots and mylie cyrus hair and i was ejected cause they said mails only and your name is [axx] so out u go

And there we had it. Confusion solved. And new confusion retained, because seriously, this is a completely baffling thing in the first place. And to be angry over supposed online discrimination, because she went to a gay bar and got kicked out for not being male...because she wasn't...I mean, honestly, talk about your straight girl privilege speaking. Jesus.

[19:29] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: that's absolutely ok.
[19:29] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: Make a male alt.
[19:29] Mxxx Hxxxxxxxx: thats not discrimination
[19:30] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: eww
[19:30] Emilly Orr: That's not discrimination.
[19:30] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: or find a bar that allows both genders
[19:30] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: it is discrimination for sex

No, no it's not. First of all, there's no strict discrimination policies against genders clubs on the grid are forced to allow in. It's their clubs. If they don't want people with purple skin in their clubs, they have the right to tell them to get out. Same thing goes for women in male-only clubs, men in female-only clubs, et cetera. That's not discrimination.

Or, to put it more plainly, there is absolutely nothing in the Community Standards that prohibits owners of a bar from disallowing a patron access to their club, simply on the grounds that she was the wrong gender. If they don't want girls in their clubhouse, they don't have to have 'em. Same thing goes for all-female sims who don't want males on their property. That's allowed.

What's not allowed is being vicious, insulting, racist, or generally bigoted about it. Which, from everything she'd said so far, didn't sound as if that was the case.

[19:30] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: that's your mistake, [Axx] - know where you're going.
[19:30] Emilly Orr: they're allowed to do that. Just like there are lesbian-owned sims, and only women are allowed.
[19:30] Sxxxxxx Rxxxx: that sounds more like trying to crash a private club

Exactly.

[19:30] Mxxx Hxxxxxxxx: they have the right to set rules like that, and I can direct you to a bar for women only if you wnat
[19:30] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: We're allowed ot chose to not have sex with people.
[19:30] Txxxxxx Sxxxxxxxxx: If its males only, its males only. Not a gay/lesbian bar
[19:30] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: it is if i own a restaurant

And we were confused again. The hell did that even mean?

[19:30] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: If you own a private club you set the rules.
[19:30] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: Sims are private property, not public.

Also a very good point.

[19:30] Sxxxxxx Rxxxx: I have seen places that are women's only too
[19:30] Axxxxxx Txxxxxx: this is second life
[19:30] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: get over it, [Axx] - move on.
[19:30] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: and i have sing that sayd whites only and i am baptist so no gays i get in big trouble

Well, yes, because that's an idiot position to hold in this day and age. But that's RL you're talking about, not SL.

[19:31] Emilly Orr blinks
[19:31] Emilly Orr: Wait, you're saying that because you own a restaurant in SL, you shouldn't be discriminated against? What?
[19:31] Mxxx Hxxxxxxxx: so have I, and never been in a mens only one
[19:31] Emilly Orr: Let me make sure I'm not misunderstanding. You own a restaurant, and you have a sign in it that says whites only, and no gays allowed, and you're angry over discrimination??
[19:31] Qxxxxxx Sxxxxxx: omg

Because seriously. Not only was that a stupid thing to say, it was an incredibly racist thing to say. And after starting the conversation bleating about being discriminated against...I swear, at the time I thought I literally heard my brain fall out and hit the floor.

[19:31] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: A male alt is a really quick fix to a mens only place, srsly.
[19:31] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: [Dxxxxxxx], that's bad advice
[19:31] Zxxxxxx Zxxxxx: Just like Frank's and Bogart's don't allow furries..not even just a tail and ears. Has to appear humanoid. They even kicked Torley Linden, with his Linden name on, because he had on an elephant avi.
[19:32] Mxxxxx Qxxxxxxx: oh wow they did?
[19:32] Zxxxxxxx Zxxxxx: yep.
[19:32] Emilly Orr nods. There was a historical old west sim I wanted to go to once, and they allowed nothing with fur, not even cat eyes. At the time I was mostly neko, so I had to go completely human.
[19:32] Emilly Orr: But sims have the right to do this.

Yeah. They do. Someone owns a sim, they pay rent on that sim to the Lab, that gives them certain rights (and responsibilities) over that land. If they don't want a certain species/gender/whatever on their property, we may dislike it all we want, but unless it's outright discriminatory in a major way--like a big "NO JEWS" sign on the entrance, say--they're within their rights to do so. Because it's their sim, and they get to make the rules.

[19:32] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: Exactly - it's perfectly acceptable; there are many places you can go - even places to explore things you have no experience with -- but to not accept the rules of an establishment ... well, that's on you lol
[19:32] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: A lot of places don't like furries. I got kicked out of someplace because my AO flies.
[19:33] Qxxxxxx Sxxxxxx: AO files?
[19:33] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: Yup, my stands look like i was flying.
[19:33] Emilly Orr: No, her AO flies. As in, it makes her fly.
[19:33] Qxxxxxx Sxxxxxx: ohhh
[19:33] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: So they asked me to leave. And I did. XD

I don't know if she was talking about the Avilion sim, but I know for a fact that's a rule they have--no flying without explicit permission from the owners. And again--they're allowed to have that rule.

[19:33] Sxxxxx Gxxxxxxxx: eh i get booted from places all the time for being too short
[19:34] Mxxx Hxxxxxxxx: I have a freind like that, they think shes a child avi
[19:34] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: -- but to not accept the rules of an establishment ... well, that's on you lol
[19:34] Dxxxxxxx Qxxxxxx: I've been asked to change if I'm in Lolita gear.
[19:34] Zxxxxxx Zxxxxx: If you have an establishment that you are going for a realistic human clientele, furries wouldn't work.

And all of the above are still true on the grid. Furries are still discriminated against, humans are occasionally discriminated against by furries, and short avatars get called ageplayers nearly everywhere. These are the crosses we choose to bear. Because it's a virtual world--we could always choose to be human (or not), or taller (or not), or tanned (or not)--whatever the standards are in any given place.

[19:34] Txxxxxx Sxxxxxxxxx: Basically, a public restaurant is not = to a sim. A sim is more like a private house, the owner sets the rules
[19:34] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: ok thx [Txxxxxx]

And that seemed to be the end of it...but I have a feeling she left without understanding why any of us had spoken against her whining in the first place.

Ah, well. Some avatars never learn.

[19:36] Cxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx: likes coffee and thunderstorms
[19:36] Qxxxxxx Sxxxxxx: right [Txxxxxx]!
[19:36] Zxxxxxx Zxxxxx: sighs..that would look so good with my collar.
[19:36] Mxxxxxxx Mxxxxxxxxx: oh never mind [Cxxxxxx]

you're an urge that can never be cured

It's that time again: too many tabs open with things I wanted to share. So here goes, in no particular order.

Michael Zoellner spent an evening tracing--by hand--the PSR B1919+21 waveforms from the cover of a Joy Division album, then 3D-printed them. That's all kinds of cool.

Anyone besides me like to go camping? BuzzFeed posted a semi-brilliant list of camping hacks, some of which I'd never heard of before.

(Oh, and there's a real easy dodge that entry didn't think of--one can also buy two one-person sleeping bags, and zip them together for a two-person bag. If both of them are rectangular, and not the 'mummy' style, it works like a dream.)

For other hacks, wander over to LifeHacker for a brief history of mechanical keyboards, and why you want one. I know I want one, because at less than six months in on the new comp, I've already typed off the L, the >, and the ? from the keyboard I'm using.

If you make machinima, or just need background music for a project, do consider Incompetech. Everything Mr. MacLeod releases is royalty-free; he only asks that you credit him back for any project usage. He also recommends AudioMicro.com, as another excellent resource for royalty-free music. (Both sites offer low prices for commercial use, no prices for personal use, and exist solely to help folks out. I do like to encourage this, as it makes everyone happy in the end.

An avatar known as Brilliant Scientist (great name!) refitted Maestro Linden's linkset script, with some assistance from Ann O'Toole, and launched it on the wiki. If you need one of those, try that one--it creates far less lag than its predecessor.

Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
Vladimir Nabokov, cited in A Field Guide to Melancholy by Jacky Bowring

Some days, everything has tentacles.

There's a bit of controversy raging around the Hawkeye Initiative currently. Blogger Natalie Reed explains it further. I get what everyone's saying, but I also think that several of these women are missing the point of both the Hawkeye Initiative, and the Escher Girls blog in the first place.

(Though I'd also single out this post, because it makes a damned good point.)

Also, at least according to one Jewish paper, women didn't exist during the Holocaust. This is a nigh-perfect case of good motivation leading to bad outcome. We know why they're trying to erase women from these photographs; but many of us are not comfortable with that conclusion. In addition, it's too closely kin to censorship, so it's disturbing on that level as well.

Moving in another direction entirely, go peruse the Rag & Bone blog. Much tasty literary eye candy--and paper-based art--there.

Finally, if you're like me, you have far more anti-skills than you have skills. But even if you're not, it's good to read through, because that article provides an excellent working understanding of the difference between life skills/coping skills and anti-skills. (Just an FYI: anti-skills are the bad ones. Anti-skills are the ones we have that are habitually responsible for holding us back, keeping us trapped, and keeping us wary and fearful. It's not easy to ditch them, either, but accepting that we have them is a great first step.)

silver bullets in the jukebox, spin another round

This week's awesome bio award goes to Wrath and Ruin, a level 50 science brute seen in the Rikti War Zone:

Description:
Wrath: They KILLED us!
Ruin: No, not us. Her. They killed her...
Wrath: I'll feast on their eyes! The pain! They'll feel my pain!
Ruin: It is not all of them. They are not all bad. We can help them maybe!... Is it not what she wanted?
Wrath: They killed her! But yes, that IS what she wanted. And THAT's why she's 'dead'.
Ruin: But...
Wrath: She's dead, because WE were too weak to help her back then.
Ruin: We are stronger now... We could do...
Wrath: Something, yes. We can fix their perceptions!
Ruin: Umm, that is nice of us... I guess...
Wrath: 'Very'. We'll help them see. And then, ease their pain. They're in so much pain.
Ruin: Or will be...
Wrath and Ruin: Hah, hahaha, AhhhAHHAHAAHAha...
Ruin: Seriously though. I think there may be something...
Wrath: wrong with us, yes. But I don't care. I like it.
Ruin: Yeah... me too...

Perrrfect.

In other news, artist Matt Rhodes has knocked out a concept for Galactus that I really want to see become the official concept. I'm definitely more highly in favor of his version than the traditional short, stubby, yet somehow still gargantuan pink guy that Lee and Kirby invented. (AND it even explains why that invention exists, without diminishing the power of the new one.)

Friend of mine (who has an established online pseudonym that is not her real name, in her case of over a decade's standing) has been following the main Google+ commentary thread on the "new and improved" pseudonymity policy. After the initial announcement, I hadn't bothered to read any of the comments, for two reasons:

1. I left Google+ because they don't allow me to be Emilly Orr, a name I've established for almost seven years now--which is also the name that nearly everyone in my life, online and off, uses either exclusively to talk with me, or uses interchangeably with my "real name" (and yes, this includes spouses and some family members); and

2. I didn't want to reach that point whereby I either couldn't provide Google with enough substantive "proof" for why I wanted to use that name, and they killed all access to my Google accounts across the board, or somehow tracked down my "real name" and replaced it without my consent, thus giving anyone with (or without) a Google+ account access to my RL information.

So I'm now reading the comments, and...wau. So damn many comments. Here's a cursory few that caught my eye:

First, part of Bradley Horowitz's original announcement:

Since launch we've listened closely to community feedback on our names policy, as well as reviewed our own data regarding signup completion. The vast majority of users sail through our signup process--in fact, only about 0.1% submit name appeals.

When we analyze the set of all name appeals on Google+, we find that they generally fall into three major categories:
- The majority (60%) of these users want to simply add nicknames.
- About 20% of appeals are actually businesses (who are inadvertently trying to set up their business as a Profile, rather than using Google+ Pages which were intended for this purpose.)
- And the remaining 20% would either prefer to use a pseudonym or another unconventional name.

Today we're pleased to be launching features that will address and remedy the majority of these issues. To be clear--our work here isn't done, but I'm really pleased to be shipping a milestone on our journey.

Nicknames and Names in Another Script

Over the next week, we'll be adding support for alternate names--be they nicknames, maiden names, or names in another script--alongside your common name. This name will show up on your Google+ profile and in the hovercards which appear over your name. In the next few weeks, we'll be displaying it more broadly as part of your name in other areas of Google+ as well. So if you're Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jane Doe (Smith), or Saurabh Sharma (सौरभ शर्मा), you can now communicate your identity the way you want to.

To add an alternate name, go to your Google+ profile, click Edit Profile, select your name and click on "More options." (See attached photos)

It's important to remember that when you change your name in Google+, you’re changing it across all services that require a Google Profile.

Other Established Identities

On Google+, we try to flag names which don't represent individuals, such as businesses or abstract ideas which should be +Pages. Sometimes we get this wrong, so starting today we're updating our policies and processes to broaden support for established pseudonyms, from +trench coat to +Madonna.

If we flag the name you intend to use, you can provide us with information to help confirm your established identity. This might include:

- References to an established identity offline in print media, news articles, etc
- Scanned official documentation, such as a driver's license
- Proof of an established identity online with a meaningful following

One wonders how exactly they're interpreting "meaningful following", but that's the least of my complaints with this announcement.

Sai summed up many of my objections in a comment very succinctly stated, near the top:

1. "Another script"? That would be Latin charset, for people whose primary language is in another charset. Why should English get privileged as the universal default for their "primary" form of name?

2. "with a meaningful following" is extremely objectionable to me.
a) it's complete weasel wording
b) it cements having pseudonyms as a privilege of celebrity

Both are unacceptable. Normal people need to have pseudonyms too, as I think has been extremely well established. (cf. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F)

3. If it's on your driver's license, it's not a pseudonym. And if it's not on your driver's license, that doesn't mean it's not your legal name either, in common law countries.

4. It discriminates against people (like me) with unusual names. Why do we have to show identification or fame, but the real pseudonyms ("John Smith" et al) don't?

5. Google+ still can't be your first identity online if you have a nonWASP name...but Facebook can. "Google+: your second social network." Seriously?

I'm sorry, but the only difference I see here is that you're now listing the nickname field on the hovercard and profile. I see no substantive policy change. Fame was already an obvious and hypocritical exception to the policy; now you're just open about it.

And this took half a year?

Exactly. I highly recommend reading through the Geekfeminism link; I only wish the folks at Google pushing this insane policy so aggressively would do the same, and, better still, actually comprehend the logic in it.

Yonatan in response to Sai:

You're asking all of the right questions, so let me give you systematic answers. I'll start with the easy one, and write a separate comment for the big one:"Another script:" No, the Latin charset isn't privileged. Your name has to be in any single script (as per UTR-39); your nickname has to be in a single script; but they do not have to be the same script.

Sai's response back:

I understood they don't have to be in the same script. But the example given ("Saurabh Sharma (सौरभ शर्मा)") pretty explicitly says that the native script is the "other one". That's rather rude IMO.

While I've never had a name in a non-Latin character set, I do understand the point--it presumes that English, and by default Latin characters, are the obvious global default, and that anyone who doesn't use English (and Latin characters) are by this definition...well, you could take that several ways, depending on how you're reading it. At the least Google is trying to tell the rest of the world that their languages are by default "alternate" ones; at worst, the communication says they're less, they're not as important, they don't mean as much. These aren't good things to say.

Gary to Yonatan:

firstly, this is a step in mostly the right direction and I'm glad to see it. I would be interested in a response to Sai's other comment, though. Surely celebrity should not be a prerequisite for choice. In that regard, this policy change seems to continue to willfully miss the point: it is not our responsibility to explain our choice of name to you, but rather your responsibility to explain to us why that choice is something we should not have. So far Google has abjectly failed to do this.

Good comment. Is celebrity the only reason a pseudonym would be allowed? What qualifies as a "meaningful following"? And he's absolutely right, why is Google putting themselves into judging what names are "allowed" (hence, "good") and what names are banned, blocked, or denied (hence, "bad")? They're our names, not theirs. Why do we have to justify our own names?

Yonatan back to Sai:

Saurabh is actually one of the PM's on the team, and he uses Latin script as his default script. :)

Sai's comment in return:

Then that's not a good representative case to use for internationalization, eh?

No. It's really not. In that case, Horowitz is taking a name he's seen around the office and pretending that it shows some amazing international sensitivity, when in fact Saurabh likely only uses non-Latin script when communicating specifically with people who use that script by default. And possibly not even then. So that's really a specious example start to finish; thanks, Google, for continuing to denigrate our intelligence.

And what I'm going to end with (at least for now) is Yonatan's comment back to Sai:

OK, +Sai .: Here's the big answer.

First of all, you might ask why we have a names policy at all. (i.e., why we don't simply go with the JWZ proposal) One thing which we have discovered, while putting some miles on the system, is that it is indeed important to have a name-based service rather than a handle-based service. This isn't a matter of functionality so much as of community: You get a different kind of community when people are known as Mary Smith than when they are known as captaincrunch42, and for a social product in particular we decided that the first kind of community is the one we want to build. In order to do that, we want to establish a general norm that the names you put in to the system should be names, not handles.

So one thing that our name checking flow tries to catch is handles, which should normally be nicknames, shown in addition to a name. The other important thing it's trying to catch is people who are creating individual accounts, rather than +Pages, for non-human entities such as businesses or organizations. The behavior of +Pages is deliberately restricted in the system, and we don't want people to be creating fake human accounts to circumvent that. The name check turns out to be a very powerful tool to catch these.

Our name check is therefore looking, not for things that don't look like "your" name, but for things which don't look like names, period. In fact, we do not give a damn whether the name posted is "your" name or not: we will not challenge you on this basis, nor is there any mechanism for other users to cause you to be challenged for this.

There are two main cases where the name check screws up. One is false positives: people (such as you) who have unusual names which get flagged because they looked like handles. Being able to appeal via things such as drivers' licenses is useful for this case, since it's a simple "oh, we got this wrong." The other case is people such as +trench coat, who are so well-known under this handle that it would be bizarre not to let them onto the system under this name. For this case, we allow appeals based on being well-known under the name: thus the ability to prove the "established pseudonym." We've deliberately set the threshold for that latter case fairly high for now, but we intend to continue to tune it; the objective is that the frequency of such names should basically be the same as their frequency in meatspace.

So to answer your questions one-by-one:

(2) "Meaningful following" only applies to cases of established pseudonyms which do not look like names. The definition of "meaningful" is deliberately vague so that we can tune it, so that it behaves in a natural fashion.

(3) That's correct; drivers' licenses are for false positives, not pseudonyms.

(4) Unusual names will indeed hit friction, because of false positives. We're trying to minimize that, but it's going to take some trial and error.

(5) Google+ can absolutely be your first identity online. No matter what your language, no matter where you come from. The "established pseudonym" logic should apply to a very small subset of people. If some groups are seeing a higher false positive rate than others, that's a bug, not a feature, and we have the data available to spot this situation and remedy it.

Does this answer your questions better?

Not really. Let's take this point by point:

1. So Google's only interested in surface community--they don't want people with goofy-sounding names to apply, because that would not make a strong social network of honest people, but a bunch of kids who would do bad things simply because they don't have "real names" like adults do. The hell.

2. Even if we somehow manage to convince them that our psuedonyms are real enough for their data checks to pass over, we'll still have to use "real names", it sounds like, because nick-names are only pairing with "real names", because that's the way adults in the real world operate.

3. In fact, we do not give a damn whether the name posted is "your" name or not: we will not challenge you on this basis...Except that's not what Google said earlier. Google said earlier that if we were operating under a pseudonym, then Google would kill all Google functionality across the platform. If we lost Google+, we lost Gmail, we lost Picasa for pictures, and people were wondering if this would also block use of Chrome.

In fact, I'm still not entirely sure that's not going to happen in March; that even though I'm not on Google+, they'll "discover" I've been running under a pseudonym all these years and tell me that (even though, to their new and revised definition, "Emilly Orr" looks like a real name) it's not good enough, and kill my Gmail access.

4. If I have a strange-sounding pseudonym (which I don't), and I have sufficient celebrity and name recognition (which I don't), then I get the name by default because it would be "bizarre" not to operate like that. Which is, I suppose, fine for people like "trench coat", Cher and Madonna, but where's the dividing line for those of us not deemed strange enough? Is this the Google version of "go big or go home"?

5. Google doesn't want to tell us how they define "meaningful" because they don't want people to "game the system". Gosh, that sounds familiar...Anyone else flashing to the Lindens' policy on Adult terms in the Marketplace? You know, obviously bad words like "pe", "5" and "*"? (Though rumors are "5" got fixed.)

6. Finally, this bit: [T]he objective is that the frequency of such names should basically be the same as their frequency in meatspace. Right. So in my case, the fact that most of the people I know call me "Em", including the ones that know me by the name on my ID, means I can establish "Emilly Orr" as my official name. Right? Save that Google did everything they could, several months back, to terrify me out of my tiny mind that if I held onto that designation on Google+, I would lose all ability to use my email address--which at this point is tied to several major institutions and would be a pain and a half to replace. I'm not talking Second Life and City of Heroes registry; I'm talking banks, hospitals, and politicians.

You can't have it both ways, Google. Either it's okay for us to have pseudonyms, or it's not. And restricting us to pseudonyms that sound like real names just makes you look like consummate dicks, frankly. To be blunt.

I scrape my knees, I scrape my hands until they bleed

You may notice a small censorship logo to the left of this entry. I've read enough on SOPA to be really, really terrified at the implications. Just concerning this blog alone, there would be major changes. To wit:

• If ANYONE entered a complaint, I could not criticize the Lindens, or Second Life, or use Second Life as a phrase without official permission (plus, face felony jail time);
• If ANYONE entered a complaint, I could not link back to content anywhere else that I did not originate (plus, face felony jail time);
• If ANYONE entered a complaint, I could not use graphics containing content that I did not originate, but instead, only manipulated (in artistic or photorealistic ways) (plus, face felony jail time);
• If ANYONE entered a complaint, I could not mention musical bands, artists, songs, lyrics (including the blog titles) or descriptions that could be matched to existing bands, artists, songs, or lyrics (plus, face felony jail time);
• If ANYONE entered a complaint, I could not quote literary sources, literary quotes, or writers in small ways or large (plus, face felony jail time);
• If ANYONE entered a complaint, I could not display ads, or pictures from Amazon, or graphics linked to other blogs, or text links to YouTube (plus, face felony jail time);
• And all of this could be completely pointless anyway, because if ANYONE complained about copyright violation to my website provider, for ANY reason, this blog could disappear entirely (And I might still be sent to jail with felony charges).

It's a very, VERY badly written law. If you're reading this, and live in the States, please consider joining the fight in any way you can.

In the meantime, while we live in fairly uncensored (ish) lands, have part one, part two and part three of MightyGodKing's Literal Titles series. Some of them are really, really accurate; some of them are really, really funny as well.

While I have ethical issues with the parenting evidenced in this Skyrim video, I will also say that if both parents are gamers, that it's going to be part of her environment growing up anyway, and her father, at least, seems determined to integrate that--and her choices as a budding gamer--into parenting education. So it's not all bad. Still, I agree with many respondents after the article--"People don't want to be sword" is really good advice any way you take it.

New World Notes mentions the departure of Kim Salzer, former VP of Marketing, from Linden Lab. Based on information read there, and information I've tracked down from other sources, I'm thinking she's responsible for three things I really, really loathed hearing about in connection with the Lab:

1. She tried to co-brand virtual animals (especially Ozimal bunnies) with Linden Lab, which was both a slashing mark of nepotistic favoritism, AND encouraging the wrong thing for customer retention;
2. She regimented communication between departments, so whereas before, anyone could talk to anyone, now the people behind Concierge support can't get answers on anything without three emails and a priority-courier envelope sent across the hall;
3. She was responsible (though perhaps not solely) for the proliferation of "Be a sparkly vampire just like those characters you've read about!" campaigns that are now seen EVERYWHERE (and hey, she might have ALSO been responsible for the insanity of the "Be a Na'vi in Second Life!" ads).

Based on the above, I'm thinking I'm happy she's gone, but on the other hand, I'm a cynic and mistrustful, so there you go.

To bring up another reference for "Navi", have Meekakitty's take on Link's little fluttery helper from Zelda: Link to the Past. It's a plaintive, sweet, and oddly sincere tribute to what's essentially the most annoying thing in the game.

Did I mention the new Saint's Row Zombie option? I'm not entirely sure what it means by doing the sounds yourself, but maybe that's exactly what it says--you get an option for "Zombie" to record you grunting, moaning and asking for braiiiins...

In the meantime, back to Skyrim, there's now a downloadable mod to remove all spiders from the game. I haven't played Skyrim, I don't know how annoying the spiders are; what I do know is that both Miss Kamenev and my WoW-playing friend are utterly, utterly scared of things with eight legs, so for them? This mod makes Skyrim playable!

Well. As playable as self-impaling followers, floating wagons and circus performers in armor can be.

The Key of Awesome returns with some questions on the missing plot points in Dark Knight, which...yeah, I'm kind of behind. Unlike some of my friends, I liked the film, but there are some glaring plot holes that refuse comprehension.

For those of you who play Minecraft, there's now a sound mod, along with an assortment of sound packs people have created. If you're like a lot of us, and really, really hate the new sounds, this is an option to deal with that...that doesn't feature waiting for Notch to fix things, if he ever will.

And just in time for the holiday season, you can get Vat19's 26-pound gummi Party Bear! It's not a prop, it's fully edible, but it doesn't go cheap. Still, it pretty much is a party sensation, guaranteed.

Finally, to wrap this up, have a taste of the Extra Credits team taking on Deus Ex: Human Revolution as an exercise in transhumanism and wealth disparity. Those are pretty hefty weights to hang on a video game, but watch the video and you'll see why the game not only shoulders them bravely, but does it in style. Enjoy!

cut yourself until you bleed, but fall asleep next to me

The arrival of the Nightwatch:

As you may have already guessed, the handful of provisions in the bill that really deal specifically with child porn are a fig leaf for its true purpose: A sweeping data retention requirement meant to turn Internet Service Providers and online companies into surrogate snoops for the government’s convenience. Any provider of an “electronic communication” or “remote computing” service—meaning broadband providers like Comcast, but also companies like Google—would have to retain records of the “temporarily assigned network address” (such as an IP address) associated with each account for 18 months. Some of the other provisions in the act seem perfectly reasonable (though I don’t know enough to say whether they’re necessary), but as a hearing earlier this year made crystal clear, it’s the data retention requirement that the government really cares about.

Big Brother always wants to watch everyone, that's not news, but that this effort is hidden in the guise of protecting children just makes me ill.

Are we all holograms? Maybe, say scientists. Fascinating if true--well, no, actually, fascinating either way.

Some Doctor Who info overheard from Comic-Con (and my thanks to Miss Fuschia Begonia for the link).

If you love art, if you love cephalopods, toss some love to Octopus Grove: part art installation, part eco-consciousness awareness mission, and all from the hand, heart and head of an artist who wants to give back as much as they want to create. Spread the word if you can't financially support; or buy things from her, to support her effort to support herself, and thus get Octopus Grove off the ground.

On another topic entirely, here's a little diatribe on the snakepit of modern comics, as viewed through the lens of the nineties, courtesy of Warren Ellis.

Tired of the supernatural getting all the attention? Try these seventeen real-life mysteries. They're all fascinating, and none of them is involved in anything supernatural in the least.

And if you have been banned from Google+ (or all Google products), Skud would like you to fill out a form collating everyone into one central database. One would assume for later legal action, or at least, hassling of the Google.

Through an oversite, the JIRA issue EXP-795 was hidden from public view. Thanks to the efforts of Kurt Linden (and thank you, Kurt, for doing this), it is now public and searchable. And it no longer effects just the login screen, but a couple different things in Basic viewer mode for v2. Watch the issue if you want to see it fixed; if you have a 27" monitor, or a Mac computer, you want to see this fixed.

My sidebar is a nightmare. This has been pointed out several times. And, to date, each attempt to rein it in has resulted in more links. (I am bad at organization.)

So, with a ruthless hand and tearful heart, I've cut out everything I don't visit at least once per week. Because, considering the sidebar is mostly for me, having it that cluttered does no one any good.

Next up: going through the video links (where I stopped, this time around). Next past that: gutting the in-world inventory. Again. GAH.

Australopithecus would really have been sick of us

City of Heroes--it's kind of like this.

Some days it's weirder--my signature character, if you will, on City of Heroes has a black and white color scheme. And I mean that--black and white brocade top, black with white designs Korean kickboxer pants, Chinese black silk slippers and white tabi socks, white-and-black stranded hair, black-and-white horns. White skin. (Red eyes--my sole concession to the fact that other colors exist.)

She's very monochromatic.

So, there's this thing around level 20 where the character is given a chance to adventure for the right to wear a cape. And they have all sorts--full capes, half-capes, one-shoulder capes, squared off, scalloped, asymmetrical...

So. Imagine. This character. My hero. After her grand adventure defending Paragon City, and fighting back the evil Rikti aliens for possession of Hero 1's (yes, you heard right) dying letter to his city, his queen (he was British) and his country...She went to the fashion house to pick out her cape. Her very own cape. She was shown silk and wool and oilcloth, demicloaks and full cloaks, and was told no dream was too large, no idea too insane (after they saw her bank balance, that was). They could design it in any color combination, any symbol, just name it, anything, at all...Just pick one, any one, and they would turn it into her dream cloa--

And she pointed. To what she wanted. In the back. On a costume mannequin. A black...and white...striped...scarf.

So now my character? Is proudly adventuring in a striped scarf. I'm laughing hysterically over this.

In other news...Based on a thread I started on SL Universe, the Lindens might be looking at Urban Dictionary for their censorship efforts. If that's true, then we might as well plan to see these terms blocked soon, too:

#3
angry dolphin
angry dragon
an hero
alaskan pipeline
arabian goggles
banana
barbed surprise
bare 10
becky
byrd
cabbage babbage
cake
cobra yawn
dome

That would hit sculpt artists, steampunks, wildlife breeders, the roleplaying community, fruit sellers, dragon keepers...anyone I leave out? And this is just a cursory overview. I wasn't doing that much research, just skimming the surface of the surface, of the more than two million words on that site...

Note for the curious: you don't want to know what those mean. Hells, I don't want to know what those mean.

But if any of those do pop on the "Adult"-rated word lists? I may need to get very, very drunk...

I keep meaning to get back to the Jira That Will Not Die, but in the meantime, Soft Linden has a very important message, added the evening of March 7, 2011:

A number of you have ARd or sent notes about the other system we removed from the marketplace, pointing out that the creator plans to continue operating in violation of ToS. Stay tuned, and I'll make sure folks understand this internally.

In the mean time, if you see one of his resale vendors, you should Abuse Report the vendor's owner. File the AR against the object's owner whether the vendor is owned by the creator, an alt of the creator, or set out by others for commission. For the AR type, select "Harassment->Soliciting/Inciting others to Violate ToS." Feel free to add a link to this comment.

As always, file ARs based on first-hand knowledge. There's nothing wrong with peers filing additional ARs to underscore importance. However, each person filing should take a close look and ensure they understand the object of the AR and how they would personally justify the AR if asked.

Obviously, the bold inserts are mine own; but I think they're important to point out. Namely: zFire is still putting RedZone back on the market, even when the Lindens take it down in person (that happened, both on the Marketplace and in world); Soft at least says there's going to be an understanding in Linden Labs of what this means to the residents on the grid; and finally, that people who send in ARs for RedZone (and by extension, any other products/people they're abuse-reporting) should really give thought to whether they want to do that; abuse reports are not frivolous things.

That last mainly tells me that they want accountability on this issue; which also generally (though not always) means that someone with some name cred threatened legal action. Now, I may be wrong in this, but something else is going on. They're making very sure--or, at least, Soft is making very sure--to phrase things distinctly and accurately.

On the other hand, this is all still boiling over on the JIRA. Has there been one single blog post (which few people read, as well) over this? One perky little mention on the Marketplace or on the main Second Life site? (No; they're too busy gushing over vampires.) Or maybe a line on log-in, you know, like THEY NEVER DID WITH ZINDRA--

Sorry. *coughs* Got away from me there for a bit.

Anyway, things are still moving towards an endgame; sadly, we're not there yet. And there's more badness to come. Stay safe out there.

swallowed up in the sound of my screaming, cannot cease for the fear of silent nights

Of course she is disappointed.

That it all came down to a battle over one word, and one man. That it didn't mean more than that to anyone involved. That no one seemed to see it for what it was, but her. That no one seemed to honestly understand, but her. This is not the first time this has happened. Though that is disappointing, too.

Of course she is disappointed.

That she now watches warily behind her eyes, wondering what next will go wrong. Wondering how long the tightrope walk continues, love to love, event to event, friend to friend, and some not so friendly. She wonders if she's placed her trust in the wrong people, and is further disappointed that this is not the first time that's happened. She wonders what controversy will next arise to wipe this one away, and if she'll be at the center of that one, too.

Of course she is disappointed.

She listens to people talk, she watches them interact, she pulls out tales and contentions, thread by tendril thread, from those around her. And she hears story after story--"outgrown Caledon", says one, and "down to my last parcel there", says another, and "haven't owned Caledon land in six months" says a third. Story after story, tale after tale. How much of the old guard has moved on? How many new faces will it take before no one's left of the old guard to welcome the new ones in? This, also, is not occurring to her for the first time.

Of course she is disappointed.

Partially because she's still contemplating what to say to Des, who so massively missed the point entirely; and if he missed it, the point, her point, painted in brushstrokes so bright and vibrant that she thought a child of five would have winced at the impossibility...then she was far, far too subtle for everyone else. This is not the first time she's been more subtle than the situation called for.

Of course she is disappointed.

Because she keeps making the same mistakes. Because in all her years she hasn't learned the trick of communication, of telling her truth to other beings in a fashion that stays with them, for at least as long as it takes to leave a dance. Because she doesn't know how she wound up again in this place, where no word seems true, where all faces seem false, where nothing can be relied upon and all her foundations tremble.

This is far, far from the first time that's happened, either.

People. Listen. Leave Lord Bardhaven out of it--fine, he's angered and hurt a great many, he's been muted by more, he's earned the karma. Fine. How many times do I have to say it was not about him?

Listen. What I do in the privacy of my own home; what I complain about in IM; what I gossip about in other homes; that is (reasonably considered to be) private. Nothing stops that, nothing interferes with that. I'm sure people have been complaining about me this week in various places, and that's also not the first time that's happened, and that's also fine.

Private complaint; private ranting; private upset...hells, in the wide scheme of things, even though this blog goes before the eyes of far more people than it did when it started, even this qualifies as 'private', to an extent, from the grid at large. Does anyone else understand that basic point?

Public on the grid DOES NOT EQUAL private on the grid. Public even OFF the grid DOES NOT EQUAL private on the grid. And in public on the grid, WE NEED TO BEHAVE BETTER.

How is this unclear?

And there's the question of phrasing. That was part of the problem, because it presented a no-win situation. Comparable to "So, how long have you been beating your wife?" If you answer "a long time", even jokingly, you're doomed; but conversely, if you answer "I haven't!" or some similar retort, it doesn't wash, because the question is already in the minds of the listeners.

"Are you still beating your wife" = "He must beat his wife." (And also, he must have a wife in the first place.)

"Does he still have a brother in jail?" = "His brother is in jail." (And, conversely, also has a brother.)

"How long has he been a racist?" = "He's a racist."

It's a trap, it's a loaded question, and it's one we all fell into, pro or con; whereupon the unfriendly feelings for Bardhaven rose up and overwhelmed the partygoers. And fine, yes, that's not good either, but the entire question as posed was a goad to the crowd.

We have to be better.

Listen. For the love of all gods, listen. We need to consider our words, in public, if not in private. We need to realize that sometimes things have meaning far beyond the moment. And yes, yes we are back to this--we need to have better manners.

Or we're just a regular crowd of net idiots who like fancy dress, who have the manners and comported behavior of your standard 4chan reader. We have to be better than that.

Or the entire experiment's a wash, start to finish.

Speaking of large unsettling changes...Second Life might be banned soon in Australia. That could change large things on the grid, considering the Aussie residents of Caledon alone.

And in the wake of the news, Second Life releases the Snowglobe viewer--which is apparently just packed with fun and amazing bugs and glitches--everything you hate from viewer 1.23 plus crashing every time you bring a texture into world! Or maybe get a texture at all, it's unclear.

That would be fun, wouldn't it? An improvement for the viewer on SL that makes it impossible to shop? Why bother even having an economy then...

Tonight was also the Poetry Slam at der Hut in Absinthe, and I didn't get word out early enough, and I was pulled in and out of world, anyway, so I was very very much distracted.

What I wanted to share then:

Writing Poems on Antidepressants

Each day offers some little irony or a dream
or a blind albino woman
sitting next to you on the train
with eyelashes like white silk threads
attached like broom-straw to her one closed eye
as she taps her cane against the window
and you, the poet on antidepressants,
thinks: look at that, hmmm, interesting.
Did I buy dog food? Here’s my stop.
--Nikki Moustaki

But I'll leave it up here anyway. Remember, every Thursday from five (ish) to seven (is) pm SLT, you can come to der Hut in Winterfell Absinthe and engage in spirited poetry-reading. All weapons must be no-push, with temp-rez ammo. Bring a sense of humor and a love for poetry.

outside, and they lead us out quietly

The corporate language they're choosing to use is anything but clear for the casual bystander; but the Lindens are now working towards working towards development of adult continent rules.

Here's some of the highlights from that link:

Q: What laws are going to be applied/quoted to support what is considered Adult Content? It is a very thin line you guys are trying to walk. It would have to be challengeable and be supported.. cant be simply an Opinion surely?
A: Sexually explicit likely the largest piece - not talking about private, talking about what is publicly advertised to public; another category intensely violent activity, not simple shooting more like beheadings and torture; third category actual photographs nudity, pornography
Will need to allow for exceptions for artistic display, educational components, health; some definitions in place being honed with input included

So they're still working on defining, albeit fuzzily, what "adult" versus "extreme content" is, but this is a fairly solid step--they're not going to evict everyone who has a sex bed, unless we move it out to public spaces and advertise what's going on. Private interactions should remain unpoliced. Emphasis on should.

Q: Nude beaches?
A: Simple nudity alone hard to regulate

They're admitting they're going to have problems in this area. Considering that not a large portion of the grid chooses to walk around nude in public--I hate to be harsh, but that's not my main concern. SL nudists only allowed to be nude in their own private spaces, I personally am fine with that, and don't necessarily see a problem with an edict not to shop nude. (While of course understanding that people will do what they want anyway, just to push the limits, if nothing else.)

Q: What about pictures of naked skins?
A: Tough area to get right; search filters may apply here; e.g., genital words go to adult category; still thinking it through

So art gallery displays, skin shops, makers of prim bits, and the like may need to follow this development closely; so far, it sounds like they're in the clear (at least the galleries and skin makers), but will have to be clear about what and how they offer access to nudity.

Q: If someone uses words like Essex (valid UK location), or watch our play Dick Whittington, they could be parsed into Adult Content?
A: Probably not; lean toward conservative side

This one, I admit, is a problem for me, if only because I know how many problems occur with students in the world beyond who need to turn in health class reports and a) find things they absolutely shouldn't have to deal with, or b) find access to everything concerning the term "breast", say, for breast cancer, blocked and filtered out by their school's auto-blocking software. Both ways have implementation difficulties.

Just as a search for "breast cancer charities" in SL, you want to show up as some branch of the RFL, and not some balloon-sized prim breast shop with protruding prim pierced nipples; but watching the search terms for what is and is not "adult" is going to be three shades of headache right there.

Q: Is this a precursor to incorporating the Teen grid?
A: Nope

Finally something connected to the Lindens comes back with a quantifiable answer. So okay--unless there's been another breach of faith, sequestering "adult" activity has nothing to do with eventual reunification of the Adult and Teen grids.

Q: Multinational platform and opinions could result in a flood of complaints; you will have to tenfold your support team
A: It's true will get many reinterpretations; happened with gambling - still get reports about games that are not games of chance; similar misinterpretation on age play
Have a team who understand policies and only enforce where there is really a violation; will have to do same here; feel confident have learned how to do that and can do it

Maybe; I still say I can name ten places that use so-called "games of chance" that haven't been touched by the gambling ban. How'ver, that's neither here nor there; what they are saying is that yes, they do understand this will require a separate "Adult" police team, for lack of a better phrase, to go through each complaint case by case.

Q: Re: policing/policies - the parameters being used to decide what is adult content, if not legal based, could be construed as being nothing more than discrimination, which in itself is illegal
A: Adult definitions are around sexually explicit activity and intensely violent activity; those are not 'strictly legal' based definitions

And this is a private company anyway; though I and everyone else forget that, they have no responsibility to provide game access to everyone in a way consistent with the provisions of the various gender/disability/religion laws enacted in RL. That they are choosing to operate within these strictures should be lauded as a good deed.

Q: Will the adult region SIMs be in the same price category than mainland (195.00 USD) or because it is now an adult content SIM which would attrack certain traffic will the price be raised
A: No intent to price differently from Linden Lab; on open market another story

In other words, parcels rated "Adult" may well rise dramatically in price, or plummet to below current mainland levels. They're saying they have no control over resale, and won't even try.

[Q]: Is content separation [motivated] by feedback from corporate enterprises?
A: Fair question; corporations are a small component of the resident groups that want more control predictability; they span from organizations to businesses to lots of residents doing lots of different things

In other words, Dude, everyone complained, chill, we're not selling out. Whether they are or not remains to be seen, but that's at least what they want publically perceived.

Q: Would having a red light mainland make the public and press think worse of SL as 'being like Amsterdam', i.e., ignoring what else it has to offer other than adult content; would creating a specific area for this kind of thing have a negative impact on the [brand's] value
A: The same content in SL now will be in SL after AO; it may be perceived as a red light district yes; everyone knows platform has broad creativity; so no, that's not a concern

This one confused me, sheerly on the count of, Second Life has an Amsterdam sim, which is pretty much a red-light district already. So I had a moment of head-tilt there.

What they seem to be saying, though, at least on the surface, is Yes, we know, this is going to increase our rep as being nothing but the game where the perverts are; we don't care, though, because we're able to mention so many other things our residents do that the media will follow up on those aspects of the game.

Even though, by and large, most media outlets never have...

More later, when I sort through more of the forums stuph, including the new thread unification thread (as redundant as that sounds, and is).

awake and unafraid, asleep or dead

Deltango Vale made me giggle insanely for a bit:

Quote: Originally Posted by Vye Graves Amen, so why bother making faux safe areas that won't be safe regardless?

I agree. LL is digging itself deeper and deeper into a hole with its California mentality. They really need to leave the state, see the world, meet humans.

"Meet humans". Hee. That's just tremendously amusing, there. But not a bad point, beyond that, though I'd go deeper and focus on the internals: The Lindens, maybe en masse, need to leave the Lab and get into the grid, meet their residents. And not just at 'face time' office hours. I mean, get out there, wander the whole world they've made. Hit one of the StarGate networks, set it to random and wander gate to gate, see where they turn up. Pick up random landmarks, follow them. Find out what's really going on on the ground.

If the goal really is to make Second Life just like the real world, then that means leaving things exactly as they are now. In the real world, mature people make their own informed choices about where they want to go and what they want to see. There are no walls separating what is adult from what is not. We all have access to adult content. Adult enterprises are in the phone book and the yellow pages, bookstores do have an adult section, and big cities do have brothels and red light districts. If you don't want to go there or see that, simply don't, and if you end up there by accident, walk away. (Gentle Tornado)

Gentle's got a good point too, but at this point in the debate, I think we're far past logic and rationality winning the day.

I must have skimmed past Briher Destiny's post, wherein is included the now-removed "definition" of "Mature" (note, Mature, not Adult):

The definition of mature is:
"For instance, social and dance clubs, bars, stores and malls, galleries, music venues, beaches, parks, and other spaces for socializing, creating and learning all support a Mature designation"

The definition of PG is:
"For instance, institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact with the broader Second Life experience"

Soooo, let's break this down. Mature means, according to this definition:

Blues clubs * dance clubs * strip clubs * bars * pubs * clothing stores * malls * art galleries * anyone playing live music * all beaches * all parks * anywhere people gather to hang out * anywhere people build things * college campuses

What?

Are they serious?? That's EVERYTHING!

Then look at what their definition of PG would include:

Universities (but apparently not colleges) * Conference organizing and booking businesses (but not actual conferences) * Any RL business (as opposed to ones purely in SL) * Any group which contains members who only want to stay in PG zones

...the way I see it? That's everyone, too! What the hell?

Matthew Dowd was baffled too:

So rather than introduce a new classification for "institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact with the broader Second Life experience" and leaving the existing terms alone, they are

a) changing the definition of PG so that it is even further from the normal RL usage of PG
b) effectively changing the new definition of Mature to be that currently used for PG (which will mean almost everyone not a [university] or RL business on PG land will have to move)
c) creating a new classification of Adult with the definition currently used for Mature, which will mean that almost everyone currently on Mature land will have to move.

If that's what they're planning, then I don't know where any of us are going to end up! On the one hand, we're assured that art galleries, skin shops and non-strip dance and music clubs are fine and won't have to move, as well as personal adult equipment in homes and private spaces. But by this, everyone's going to be shifting around. What. In the. HELL.

Ceera Murakami adds another note:

They have made up their minds that they are unable or unwilling to come up with a technical solution that will allow residents to peacefully coexist, even though many viable solutions, such as the "Privacy in a Pocket" and "Privacy Zones" ideas have been proposed by residents. So with that close-minded viewpoint, the only way to keep the eventual flood of 13 years olds (When Phil has his way and they merge the teen grid with the main grid) from camming into the XXX sex dungeon is to isolate all Adult Activities to their own continent, and somehow ban the unverified kiddies from teleporting to regions tagged as "Adult".

But the fact that they are utterly unwilling to acknowledge is that 100% of those teens on the teen grid ALREADY HAVE PAYMENT INFO AVAILABLE, and would therefore have COMPLETE ACCESS to the porno continent if they are allowed on the grid, and having payment info on file is considered adequate as proof of adult status. Because it is a REQUIREMENT for the teen grid that they provide some sort of payment info - usually their parent's credit card.

That's a point I hadn't even thought of. You know, I had a dancer apply once. She wasn't that articulate, and I had concerns over her, but she'd also attended the strip club for weeks before, and really wanted to be on stage. She'd started seeing one of my loves at the time, and they were getting serious.

Unbeknownst to me or him, she was also seeing another fellow, and to him she let slip that she was thirteen.

He--being a responsible adult--told me, told the club owner, both of us banned her avatar from the spot, and I told her she'd have to come back when she was eighteen to apply.

"But that's six years from now!" she wailed to me in IM.

Which made her twelve.

She'd been on the grid, in and out of strip clubs--she eventually got a dancing gig in a club I didn't manage, and begged me not to "tell"--for over a year, which means she could have been as young as eleven when she walked into the adult grid.

ELEVEN YEARS OLD. HAVING SEX WITH OTHER AVATARS. STRIPPING FOR LINDENS.

It's already happening, people. Plus she had that all-important note for strip clubs on SL: "Payment info on file". Which means she'd tossed up a credit card and LL had taken payments from it. She was VERIFIED.

This proposal by the Lindens? Won't go even that far, so why are we here again?

Grady Vuckovic agrees:

I think there is a very very simple solution. Rename 'TeenGrid' to 'CleanGrid' and name the main grid 'AdultGrid'! The folks in TeenGrid aren't meant to be doing anything adult-rated anyway, so let those adults who prefer to have the teen experience just go there. And just don't allow any teens to enter the AdultGrid. Hell, those adults with the child avatars could go to the teen grid too then. Since those with child av's aren't meant to be doing anything adult rated.

That way people can choose their experience yes? And little johnny or whatever is still safe.

"Tick yes to certify your an adult: Yes [ ] No [ ]" Why not just have that at the registration page for SL? .. "Because it's silly! A teen could just lie about their age!"... Correct. But aside from LL manually sending a security guard to every SL user's home, and standing next to them while they are logged in, to make sure they aren't a child, what other option is there?

Credit cards can be 'borrowed' from parents. Passports, and other documents can be too. If a child is determined to get in, they will, and get in easily too.

Deltango Vale's response later down the page is worth reading in its entirety, but I wanted to preserve just the end bit here:

By definition, everyone in SL is an adult. That means one has passed through puberty, has learned to relate to people and become responsible for one's decisions - including the decision to be in a virtual world with other adults. As an adult, one recognizes and accepts that people have different styles and tastes and that rudeness or harassment should not be confused with sexuality. Welcome to adulthood, folks.

See, it's that "personal responsibility" tangle again. The rest of the world has some idea of what those words mean. In America, most of our citizens fight with tooth and law to prevent adults from having--and accepting--personal responsibility for their actions. It's an ongoing battle between the folks who want laws to cover everything, and the folks who want breathing room.

Now that fight's landed on SL.

And I have nothing more to say than to add that everyone who can desperately needs to read Leather Chaffe's entire forum post.

Coughran Mayo brought it around again to individual avatar behavior:

I think the single biggest issue in this topic area is sexual harassment. I know a dozen people whose first, and only experience with SL was ruined by some avatar coming up to them and badgering them for sex. It's one thing to "hide away" adult content (I have other opinions on that for another post) but what do you do when it comes at you unbidden?

And see, there it is again. STOP LETTING IDIOTS GET ON THE GRID. That's it, it's that simple. Anyone who's been on SL for a day, who is wandering around naked with a huge prim penis, wearing only shoes (IF they wear anything at all!), and badgering people in broken English with longer strands of Portuguese for sex--THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM, LL! That, right there, larger than ANY other concern on the grid.

TRAINING is needed for new avatars. TRAINING and GAME EXPLANATION. (And maybe a temporary ban on Brazilian men joining the game for a while, though I do realize that is a potentially racist comment, but good gods, when ALL WE SEE of the naked pervs on the grid are WANDERING NAKED BRAZILIANS, a country gets and KEEPS a tremendously BAD reputation!) BEFORE THEY'RE EVER ALLOWED FULL GRID ACCESS.

Damn.

Honestly, I'm two pages from page twenty on the first forum posting alone, and already I'm getting bored of ranting! This is stupid. It's crackheaded and it's completely mentally challenged, and everyone who thought it up should go lay down for two weeks and grow the hell up after.

WE DON'T NEED THIS. THE GRID DOES NOT NEED THIS.

I adore the idea of "CleanGrid" and "AdultGrid"; I think that's a great solution to the problem. Or at the very least, make TeenGrid work right, so teens can actually log in like the rest of us. So they'll stop "sneaking across the border".

AND POLICE YOUR GODDAMN SPAWN, PARENTS! LL IS NOT YOUR BABYSITTER! I'M NOT EITHER!!

I'm just sick of this. Sick. It's not necessary, it's yet another problem that doesn't need to be solved, or could be easily solved in other ways by the Labs. Why are they choosing this one? Why, for the love of all gods, do they want to push everyone to these extremes?

You know, I haven't set foot in SL in four days, outside of brief mail-clearing excursions so things won't cap. Four. Entire. Days. If I don't go in tonight, that'll be five.

And if I do this for another week, that'll be a fortnight.

And the naked honest truth is, I'm not missing it. Most of the folks I want to keep up with I can keep up with beyond the grid. Most of the others I can email offline, or go in long enough to drop an IM and get out and wait for a response.

When did Second Life stop being fun and start being a chore? This stifles creativity. This stifles invention. This stifles production, and it stifles the in-world economy. When is LL going to see that? How long is this stupidity going to continue?

Well, I for one have had it. No more rants, I'm going back to music posts, this is a waste of my time, my heart, my spirit and my convictions. No more. They want to roll downhill on fire, I say LET THEM. Maybe the Lindens will learn something out of it.

Even if it's how to fail by "thinking" they're doing the "right thing".

all in the name of misbehavior

Vye Graves starts this post off by musing on misdirection:

SL has no way of judging whether an animation, say, is adult. a collection of prims could be a necklace, or [genitalia]. You can't tell people a place is "safe" from such things with no way to enforce it. Why try?

I will obey whatever rules LL puts in place, but you can bet literally thousands of people will make it their hobby thwarting and griefing this policy. I really don't understand why anyone would imagine this is possible at all.

It's an important point, one we should remember. No one is ever seen--unless they choose to be seen so--carting around a pony nuke to destabilize a business. Yet before the advent of Havok 4, businesses and sims were routinely nuked by people who carried them in invisibly--in their inventories.

I have bustle dresses in my inventory. I have parasols, fans and Victorian and Edwardian hats. I have corsets and bloomers, button-up boots, and full-length gloves in black, grey and cream, embroidered with a minor rainbow of flowers to complement nearly any outfit.

I also have full latex, leather, straps, buckles, lingerie and defiantly adult furniture--from full beds to concoctions of lumber and steel and cuff rings. What stops me--beyond sheer common sense--from rezzing these things out on PG land is if the sim owner has marked no rezzing of non-group (or non-owner) items.

But nothing stops me--save again, that nagging common sense--from dressing however I choose, anywhere I choose. I know how to dress appropriately--and do manage to, most of the time.

Others feel that is an extreme way to curtail their personal freedom, and go on wearing their nipple piercings attached to the draw-down chain which slides between their legs and back up to their collar, and they see nothing wrong in going shopping wherever they want, looking how they want.

And it doesn't even need to go that far. Just the fact that we carry whatever we carry in our inventories, that is not curtailed or regulated in any way--and believe me, I am not asking for it to be!!--means that we have the capacity at any time to be non-PG in PG areas.

Hells. Take our inventories away. We port in to a PG area, our inventories grey out, unable to be accessed. We are still us. And nothing will stop us, ourselves, from speaking however we want.

It's an impossible standard. It will be an impossible standard. How do they propose to disallow personal clothing choices, as well as enforce grid-wide gag orders, on every single avatar that might have need to port to a PG area? How?

sachi Vixen, skin designer extraordinaire, had this comment to add:

I do not understand the idealogy that insists that grown ups need to protected when they are perfectly capable of tping away from an area they don't want to be in or, heaven forfend, close that little X in the corner of the window. I know that there are people who are very offended by a nipple but actually a nude body isn't anything indecent but is simply how we are made. Nudity doesn't have to be sexual, indecent or offensive. I might be offended by spiders, all those legs you know, but are you going to make them all register for a spider licence because I don't like them? Do we ban Michelangelo's David from our sims because he has his kit off or is he a work of art? This kind of thing just feels very unhealthy from a human nature aspect to me and I don't want to see SL nor the internet generally to go in this direction. People don't need to be protected, they need to take responsibility for themselves and for their own children.

I entirely agree. And maybe that's part of the California-centric perspective that, at one point, the Lindens did not want to seem to be enforcing: because that's certainly the American perspective at large. Children in danger? Let's not teach them; let's make a law! Law not working? Let's not teach the parents, let's make a new law! That law not working? Let's blame society instead of instructing communities, schools and teaching centers.

Personal responsibility has, for the better part of two decades, been profoundly lacking in this country. Depressingly so, even. Encouraging people to take responsibility for what they see, what their children see--it sounds logical. It sounds rational. It sounds doable.

But there is that nigh-inherent attitude on the part of people who don't want to be bothered that more legislation is the answer, not better instructions.

In this response, Blondin Linden takes on the 'accidentally naked in infohubs' question:

Good question: Failed logins would redirect based on preferred maturity - instead of dumping everyone to a PG region. This should help curb the AR's.

...right. Okay, for anyone who didn't catch that, let me add a personal detail: more of Korea4 has seen me naked than those I love and those I hired out to, combined. Why? Because Korea4 was the default infohub for the Rivula sim, and Rivula went down a lot. So for the first solid eighteen months of my existence on the grid, I showed up naked in Korea4 when my sim was inaccessible.

Over. And over. And over again.

But Blondin's suggestion wouldn't necessarily work either--say I get or gain a Mature/Adult maturity level. Will this mean instead of Holden, or Korea4, or Mauve, or any other infohub surfacing when my sim goes down, I'd show up naked on the stage of a bondage club? Or standing in the center of the Sex-o-Rama performance cage?

I mean, really, are there new mature/"adult" infohubs planned? Or is this yet another confusing answer-without--answering post?

Vye Graves again:

I vehemently believe that making claims of safety that you can't back up is asking for doom. An adult "continent" doesn't address private sims still accessible by the search, still viewable most likely from non-adult areas. IF, contrary to the claims now contradicting Phillip's interview less than two months ago, they are really thinking about merging the grids, then this is way more of a liability issue.

Doing your best to keep kids out is one thing. Inviting them in with some sad promise of safety is quite another.

"Liability" at the least; tragedy at the worst, yes.

So how long until furries, goreans, child avatars, and anything else that isn't a well behaved, normal adult human is forced into ghettoes of their own? As for those of you among the user community that support this. These people are coming for your freedom, and you are welcoming them as liberators. Wake up and smell reality, because you are probably next. (Nexus Burbclave)

Nexus has a damned good point here.

To the person who suggested that University Professors should teach their classes on the Teen Grid, college students are usually over 18 and are, therefore, adults. It is just that many of them resist being required to go to classes in Red Light Districts... (Doreen Garrigus)

I'm a bit confused about the point Doreen's trying to make, here. I grant you, I haven't been to every college campus in SL, but those I have been to are wide, well-lit greenspaces with buildings, near nothing that even approaches a red-lit road let alone a running brothel.

Are there college students or business people attending distance courses in SL who have to contend with running a gauntlet of vicious escorts, open brothels and people armed with whips and floggers, just to get to class? Anyone?

Doubledown Tandino continued:

(I'm getting a mental image of all these prof and student avatars being trapped in some sort of sex maze getting pelted with pink penises and every single movement or teleport to another location puts them in another maze with pink pelting [penises].... but they do have the knowledge to complain about it, and the knowledge to get to their virtual classroom.)

I'm in SL at least 40 hours or more a week.... for the past 2 or more years... my mature checkbox is clicked..... I never have ever in all my time ever been subjected to any lude xxx content accidentally,.... and on a daily basis, i do absolutely nothing to avoid it, and yet, I still don't see it. It's like people are raising an issue just knowing it exists. I have a feeling all of these 'hey I was forced to teleport to a sim and i tripped on a penis and i cannot avoid any of it' stories are fishtales.

Now, not that that's not an amusing image of the pink penis maze--and it is, it really, really is--but I more wanted to bring up a bit about the either/or tenor that's developing.

The people in Nany Kano's camp are offended at SL's sexual content. They feel it's shoved in their faces every time they go shopping and see anyone in fishnets, or see a skin store with images of nude women, or see cuddles in a shop that may go--to them--that one step too far.

The people in Doubledown Tandino's don't see the problem at all, and by that, I mean they literally don't see it--they go to dance clubs and see women in short skirts, but not naked; they go to skin shops and try on demos, because that's what you do in skin shops. They go to stores and aren't offended by piercings in odd places or latex or leather or cuffs or collars, and they don't get why other people are so hung up on things.

Me, I tilt towards Doubledown's mode of thought, but I can see the other side of the playing field. And while I emphatically don't want to live in a world where I can be so easily upset, I can see why they are. It's lack of understanding, mainly, or maybe a short in the shouldn't meter--they get stuck on what other people shouldn't do, because they don't do it. And they get to thinking soon after that, that everyone should think like they do, because they do.

People in the middle group--and some folks in Doubledown's, to be fair--understand that everyone's going to approach certain things differently, and finding equable middle ground is the most important, not caving to one side or another.

Let's talk about the infamous "Golden Rule", for instance. It's a great example. Some folks know, they just know, what it means, and they can't be pushed from that meaning, through discussion, open conversation, debate or even coercion--because they know what it means, their minds are locked shut on that concept. It's done for them.

Other folks wonder at the deeper meanings. What if you had someone who was trying to do unto others as he would have others do unto him, and he was a serious control freak? I mean, obviously you'd want to be controlled, and have every single aspect of your time with him patrolled, documented, watched, discussed, and restated, wouldn't you? It's what he would want, after all, if you and he switched places.

Or what if you were trapped in an elevator with someone unstable? To whom "do unto others" meant carving things into the walls to protect you from demons, carving crosses into his forehead and down your forearms, maybe holding you down with a knife to your throat to protect your soul from the evil that waited beyond the doors?

Or let's take this out of the stratosphere of "that would never happen" (for most people, anyway): what if one person's idea of "do unto others" includes feeding you coffee made with blessed water, and wasn't Christian? I had a friend who routinely blessed the water she made coffee and tea with, by leaving a flask on her altar overnight, and consecrating it in the morning, before mixing what was in the flask with tap water.

She really, truly felt that was the highest and best good she could do for anyone who stopped by her jewelry store. But a priest came by one day, and someone--not realizing who he was, let alone what--let slip the blessed beverage concept, and you would have thought all of us in the store had personally slaughtered his children in front of him, the way he screamed and carried on.

But to him, to his perspective, she had potentially endangered his immortal soul, because heathens had darkly enchanted fluid meant to refresh and offered it in the spirit of friendship.

Do unto others. It's a tricky concept. What the Lindens are proposing is even trickier--design a set of statutes of approved behavior for non-adult spaces, and approved behavior for adult spaces, and make sure both spaces are kept far apart from each other.

Impossible. But they're trying. Or at least they're telling us they're trying.

Vye Graves isn't so sure:

There has to be a functional usefulness to a system like this. A level of assurance, with, granted, a plus or minus of failure, but at least some means of proactively preventing content from being accessed. The fact is, the content is in mine and your inventory, and we can take it anywhere.

Unless that changes, these measures are meaningless.

I think the concept of the one-day griefer accounts need to be addressed, actually. I know people are very much plug-and-play, download it, drop it, unzip it, live it--but is there anything wrong with a one-day waiting period with a verified amount of log-in time for training on Orientation Island? I never wanted the open SLUrls available to any resident, or any idiot who wants to come in and make fun of the "furfags" and the rest of us, with whatever they wanted to use to crash sims and cripple grid performance.

And Felix Oxide ends this entry:

You are right about content. There is nothing except the threat of an AR to stop anyone from rezzing inapproprate content in PG areas. The griefers aren't going to move along to the redlight district with the legitimate users. They will stay right there in the PG area hoping to get a reaction out of those that do not want to see the objectionable material. This whole thing makes absolutly no sense and the only assurance you will ever have is if all offending content is deleted from the database and all the users kicked off of SL so the grid is empty.

There's a dark sort of logic to that. Do we want protected spaces more than we want vitality and active users? How many users--the few left actually spending money for the game--will leave because of this forced relocation to Pervistan? Do we need protected spaces more than we need to just start slapping people who come in stupid?

Or maybe what the Lindens really want is for everyone to leave, so they have the whole grid back, and they can make it as PG as they want to.

Maybe that's the core reasoning behind this.

If so, it's a lousy business ethic they've got.