Gigs Shrugged

On Wikipedia, a community proposal has been made to remove Jimbo Wales from his postition of absolute authority.  Wales has always enjoyed a title of “benevolent dictator”, even though he dislikes that particular wording.

It is unknown what such a proposal might mean, as Wales would still be on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.  The proposal has currently garnered mixed results, with about half of the comments positive and half negative.

What are “PG” Regions, groups, events, and classifieds?

There are some landowners and Residents who desire a Second Life experience distinct from the activity that occurs in Mature and Adult Regions.  Region owners who wish to host this sort of Second Life experience should designate their Regions as PG.  A Region may be designated PG so long as it does not advertise or make available any content that is suggestive of any (even mildly) sexual or violent themes, or references to social drug or alcohol usage.

For instance, institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact closely with the broader Second Life experience may designate their Regions as PG to achieve this added level of protection and segregation.

Since Linden Lab will probably deny this policy ever existed in a couple months after they silently change it, I’m posting it here.

I’m off to have a beer now.  Oops, I guess that means this blog post is no longer PG.

The passage below is reminder of how far Linden Lab has gone from their original dream of being “bigger than the web”.  Self-limiting decisions such as this “adult ghetto”, banning people for “unacceptable fantasies”, and in general, moving further and further from the concept of a common carrier, and turning into something more and more like AOL in 1995…  a sandboxed playground for kids and people who can’t figure out how to use anything better.

Linden Lab wrote, in December 2006:

We could never write a set of rules that would work for all people all the time, nor could we enforce them across a population that is growing so rapidly. Instead, we believe that the best way to foster communication and expression is to put power into the hands of the people by giving you better tools for local control. And that’s what we’ve been doing for several months now. [...]
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While I’m not the least controversial character, I usually don’t embrace drama for drama’s sake.  I want to post about my recent banning from SLU to clear the air about certain things though.

1. Cris was absolutely justified in banning me.
2. It’s only for a week.
3. The threads were as described, various extremely tasteless “parody threads”.
4. They were just parodies and I don’t really feel that way about any of the attacked groups.

At the time the “stupid libertarian” thread was building up, I was in bed with food poisoning.  This much of it wasn’t Richie’s fault, but it did contribute to me flying off the handle, especially since I still felt pretty awful when I logged on.

As for why I did it, basically see Cale’s thread.  It wasn’t just that a couple people were attacking me, more upsetting was that no one was particularly calling them on it.  Cale sums up the situation nicely and I appreciate her being a rational voice.  It means that much more because I know she rarely agrees with me.  I do enjoy discussing politics with the majority of people on SLU, even if I only rarely get agreement.

See you all in a week or so.