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Claims of "Firsts"

It is the experience of this Wikipedian that when a person, group of persons or other entity makes a claim of doing something "first", they are either blatantly lying and are ignoring all prior instances of their claim, or they are ignorant.[1]

Since such claims are generally only used for marketing purposes- being used in press releases and the like- and since edits to the wikipedia making these claims have a tendancy to be unsourced, any unsourced or poorly sourced claims of "firsts" should be cut back from "x did y first" to "x has done y".

I believe this to be a preferable course of action to letting the list of unsourced claims pile higher and higher.

Signpostmarv 19:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

A third-party (and mostly independent) list of "first" claims is available here: http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Firsts

Gwyneth Llewelyn 11:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Money

So, I'm confused. Do you earn any money in the game if you don't provide payment details, like a credit card, for basic accounts? It doesn'tsay in the article.70.149.191.230 01:11, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

You can earn Linden Dollars by taking jobs in-world, using camping chairs, gambling etc.
As for whether you can sell them on the LindeX to credit your US$ account balance, my ISP's incompetence kicked in before I could find out.
Signpostmarv 18:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
There's no way to take money out without providing payment info. You can make it, though.
155.247.166.28 23:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Memberships Plans

Im confused aswell, but with the membership plans. Does it mean that you start a basic free and have to pay later? or is a basic membership entirely different from an additional membership? If so, how? --Chickenfeed9 18:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

As the article states, the only difference between the basic plans and the premium plan is that the premium plan can own land. And a L$300/week (as of December 3, 2006 it is L$300/week, but I'm on L$400/week) stipend.
  1. Basic members can rent land from other Residents
  2. Not all premium Residents have land
  3. You only need to buy land if:
    1. you wish to sell it to other Residents
    2. you wish to rent it to other Residents
    3. you wish to have permanent storage of objects in-world (basic vs premium has no bearing on the contents of your inventory)
  4. You only need to rent land from other Residents if:
    1. You cannot afford the tier fees to own the land yourself
    2. You wish to have permanent storage of objects in-world, but find the risk of an independent landlord acceptable.

There is an exception to this however. You have to pay tier fees to own land on the mainland- that is to say, to own land on simulators paid for by Linden Lab. You do not pay any tier fees for land owned on a private sim.
The owner of a private sim can either:
  1. Rent the land out in a similar manner as is done on the mainland
  2. Transfer a parcel of land into the ownership of a Group or Resident, enabling them to either sell or rent land out in a different manner.
    • Parcels of land transferred to the ownership of another group or Resident can be reclaimed by the sim owner if the the parcel owner does not keep up rent payments for example.
If that doesn't answer your question, or confuses you more (as I imagine it will :P ), just ask more questions. If possible, please state your interpretation of my rambling, so I know for sure whether I've confused you or not :-)
Signpostmarv 20:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your response, but im still a little confused. There is a basic account 9that I gather is free) and an additional basic (which you must pay for). Why would you pay when you could have it for free? if you do pay, what else do you get? --Chickenfeed9 16:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
  1. Basic accounts are free
  2. Getting an Additional Basic account helps prevent your account be erroneously perma-banned if you happen to share your computer with an asshole.
  3. Land owners have the ability to block people who have not provided Linden Lab with payment details, although chances are you'll not find anywhere that you really need to get into that employs this policy.
    • You can interact with objects inside a parcel by moving the camera inside- so unless the object is filtering out people not on the parcel, you'll still be able to buy objects from a mall.
    • You do however have to be on a parcel on order to watch streaming videos and listen to streaming audio
    • Although automatic parcel blocking only works up to an altitude of about 200m, you can use LSL functions to boot and ban people out above this altitude
Signpostmarv 18:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand now. --Chickenfeed9 15:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Economy

http://randolfe.typepad.com/randolfe/2007/01/secondlife_revo.html If everyone's out to make money, then why would you buy jewelery etc. when you really need to be selling items? I don't get how it works, because people's needs/wants in virtual reality are vastly different than in real-life. For example, you can be houseproud in real-life, but not in SL for example! leopheard 02:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Logically, your basic hypothesis is flawed. Not everyone is out to make money, so teh rest of your point falls apart. Rhialto 02:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree- people keep offering to pay me rather substantial amounts of money for the things I do in SL, and I generally do it for free or give a large amount of the money back to them.
As for being houseproud- are you saying that someone cannot be proud of the place they live in SL- in some cases, the place they have built with their own hands ?
  1. Not everyone is out to make money.
  2. A figure touted about every now and then is that SL is 20% Creators, 80% Consumers. The 20% make money by making clothes, vehicles, buildings, jewellery, terraforming, and scripting. The 80% make money gambling, camping, investing, hosting, dancing, modelling, escorting etc etc. Everyone wanting to make money is.
I think the key point in your hypothesis is that you don't get how it works.
Signpostmarv 18:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info Mr Patronising leopheard 19:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Graphics cards

How come my graphics cards point was removed? Surely, if only TWO TYPES of card can use the SL client, that's a huge problem for millions of potential users surely!?! The previous unsigned comment was made December 10, 2006 20:03 by Leopheard

You seemed to have misunderstood the meaning of a system requirements list. These tend to be hardware specifications that a company releases that gives an implicit guarantee that the software will run successfully on.
It is NOT a list that explicitally states "The software will only run on this hardware". Second Life runs on hardware below the spec of that list, but Linden Lab will not make any guarantees about it. I've had SL running on hardware not on that list, as doubtless many hundereds, possibly thousands of users have.
To cut things short, the section violated WP:NPOV, and thus it was removed.
Signpostmarv 01:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Advertising

The whole article looks like an advertisement by a Web 2.0 venture. Look for a Second Life IPO near you soon.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.168.104.36 (talk • contribs) 23:47, December 11, 2006.

That'll be why there's an issues and criticisms section, and why the article notes the competitors, yes? Rhialto 01:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
See Talk:Second Life/Archive1#Vanity.3F
Signpostmarv 11:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Excessive Citations?

Both existing citations and the call for more are unusually high in this article. It gives me the impression it's at least partially the work of posters whose past attempts at inserting non-neutral POV material were thwarted and are now working under the letter of the law to discredit the article. WP:V only requires citations for statements that are, or are likely to be, challenged. I propose a broad sweep to remove uncited statements that were flagged for being speculative (such as why most land is sold). I'd also prefer removing ‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.› [citation needed] marks by statements that are not likely to be challenged, though I don't have an objective way of identifying which ones those are. Jeff Alexander 01:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The reason there are a large amount of citation requests in this article is that is difficult to get information out of Second Life in a manner which satisfies WP:V.
Anything relating to the Teen Grid can't be verified by an adult who isn't a Linden Lab employee without violating the TOS.
The majority of the citation requests can be sourced from the SL forums- but there are two problems with this:
  1. The forums require a logon.
  2. You'd have to go looking for it.
Others could be sourced from the 36 hours of SecondCast episodes I have, and from the podcasts of the Town Hall meetings.
I see little or no negative comments that need a citation, so why strip anything out at all ?
If you go looking for information on why most land is sold, look for quotes from interviews with land barons.
Signpostmarv 09:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Why strip anything at all? Because I'm firmly of the point of view that saying nothing is better than speculating, even when it's tagged as such. It's the responsibility of the person who adds a statement to ensure it's accurate and not just how things seem to be, or what he hears everyone else say. "The primary reason for buying land in SL is to sell it at a profit" is exactly what someone who thinks capitalism is ruining SL would preach (or someone whose PoV has been unknowingly biased by such people). It could easily be true, but do you think he's likely to check first? I don't, and if he didn't, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it's true. (That's the actual policy here, not just my opinion. I know you know that, marv, but other editors might not be clear.) Jeff Alexander 21:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Exhaustive effort should be made before deleting content that is without source. I would suggest doing a big-ass list of things with reasons as to why you're flagging them for deletion and allowing a couple of weeks for discussion before nuking things. With regards to the land-for-profit thing, one need only look at a screenshot of the world map with the Land for sale filter enabled to see that land is being sold for profit. To see that the majority of land is being sold for profit, one would track new sims that are going up for the First Land program, and watch the prices of the plots. Or you could contact Linden Lab and ask them very nicely to publish the statistics of the prices land is bought for, how long it is occupied and how much it is sold for.
Signpostmarv 10:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
As a matter of principle, the more citations, the better. However, since my first major contributions on this page were deleted ages ago for "lack of citations" and "POV" issues (*sighs*), there seems to be no amount of citations that will ever satisfy anyone to remove the tag for "This does not cite its references or sources.". Well. At the moment I'm writing this, it has 36 citations. The page for There.com, Multiverse Network or OpenCroquet have none. World of Warcraft has 48. Beyond the lack of citations, the other sites have often misleading comments. OpenCroquet, for instance, has some interesting claims like:
Croquet is also more extensible than Second Life in that it is free to share, modify and view the source code (due to a liberal license), it is not hosted on a single organization’s server (and hence governed by that organization), and it provides a complete professional programmer’s language (Smalltalk), IDE, and class library in every distributed, running participant’s copy. (The programming development environment itself is also simultaneously shareable and extensible).
From quotes similar to that one, it lends to the belief that a) Second Life is not "extensible enough" (one can only take a look at the kinds of professional things being done as 'extensions' to SL and compare to the ones being done in OpenCroquet), while the way SL is 'extended' is through integration with back-end servers running outside Linden Lab's Grid; b) the single-location-nature of SL seems to mean that it is not extensible (there are actually at least two locations now, but the point is irrelevant), while, again, while the grid is definitely on a limited number of locations, back-end servers by third parties are not; and c) Smalltalk is a "professional programmer's language", while, say, anything else is not (since 'extensions' to Second Life are done outside the scope of the virtual world environment, they can naturally be written in any language). While it is undeniable that there is a huge difference between an open-source environment and a closed-source, open API environment, what is meant "extensibility" is definitely not clearly defined there (and probably deliberately so). BTW, as soon as the code for the SL client is released as open source next year I'll be happily playing the censor on the OpenCroquet page. :)
None of those sites have been tagged for "more citations needed". While I agree that a few more citations are welcome, what is the required (or desired) level of citations needed to get rid of that silly, obnoxious tag? 48, just like World of Warcraft has?
Gwyneth Llewelyn 05:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, the article is currently approaching FA status, even if it was nominated a bit prematurely IMHO. It is important for it to have every point that is even slightly dubious backed up, if we are ever to get it to genuinely FA standard. By the way, congratulations to all the people who've got it so close. But now is not the time to be frustrated when citations are requested. Metamagician3000 14:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I have, however, deleted one citation tag. It looks to me as if there is nothing controversial or requiring attribution about the claim that Linden Lab is named after Linden Street. Metamagician3000 00:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Also the explanation of different businesses in-world. This is not something that requires support or attribution as far as I can see. Metamagician3000 10:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
The issue with me isn't raw number of citations, it's density. Also, to be clear, I am not proposing removing any citations already present; merely dealing with the number of "citation needed" flags with a combined approach of providing them where possible and deleting uncited claims that are anecdotal in nature. "what is the required level of citations needed to get rid of that silly, obnoxious tag?" I'd remove the big tag the moment all the individual "needed" flags are gone. Jeff Alexander 22:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Avaita Vedanta

I've deleted the following wording: The concept of Maya (illusion) as articulated in Advaita Vedanta is closely analogous to the ideas expressed and explored in MMORPG software in general and Second Life in particular. For a humorous approach to this concept see the movie Are You Real. If anyone can find a source for this comparison between SL and Advaita Vedanta, fine, but as it stands it is original research and the reference to the movie is building a peripheral point on what is already a peripheral point. Metamagician3000 00:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You obviously didn't read what you deleted. To quote the link on the movie page you noted above, "A short movie set across three 'worlds', namely Planeshift, Real life in Calcutta, and Second Life that explores the boundaries of real and the illusory. Based on the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta..." That link you deleted *is* the source for the comparison between the two. take a look at teh link for yourself to see the cite, then feel free to revert the article. Rhialto 22:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
You can try reworking the wording to attribute the claim to the movie, rather than having us make it. But I'd then question whether this movie is a reliable source for the claim or whether it is a notable point of view. I willingly concede that I didn't quite understand the point in the way you've now made it, but the wording you suggest I didn't read does not actually say what you just said. In any event I still don't see how the wording can be justified or why something like this is necessary. As I've just explained, there are a lot of problems with it. Still, I did place the wording here as a resource, rather than simply deleting it. There was a reason why I did that: it means that people don't have to go to too much trouble to dig it out. If you or anyone else can do something with it, despite my criticisms, go ahead.
By the way, just a word to the wise: there is absolutely no reason for you to accuse a fellow good-faith editor of not having read wording he has deleted. It's always better to confine yourself to discussion of the merits of the material. Metamagician3000 23:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

100,000 users?!?!

The Guardian's take on the size of SL's user base isnt worth citing quite simply because they say themselves there that there is no way to verify user trends. Only SL own analyses based on their traffic stats would be credible, and worth including. Since SL are unlikely to be making those details available, and citing this source can be disparaging, I have removed it altogether. frummer 20:06, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

You mean these details ? The details that Tateru Nino archives and spits out as graphs on her blog ?
Signpostmarv 14:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Until you can come up with a better argument, I'm putting it back. There is nothing disparaging about the article cited, but it is decidedly POV to try to suppress the notion that SL might not be as popular as the raw subscription numbers suggest. If The Guardian "isn't worth citing," we might as well throw in the towel where credible sources are concerned. Krychek 00:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, some further analysis: that economy stats page is the Guardian's own source for the number and the only obvious indicator that I can see is the "Total Customers Spending Money In-World" stat. The Guardian article was published in December, so I think they had to have used November (or older) stats. Considering the recent media attention (especially the prominence in Time Magazine's Person of the Year issue), I'd keep that updated with the December (and eventually January) number - I reckon that's a reasonable indicator of use to an order of magnitude or so. (Of course, note it for what it is, the number of people who have spent money not "the number of unique, regular users" - the "unique" part of which the Guardian article doesn't even claim and which I'm removing as soon as I post this. If nobody objects, I'll also add something about "before December 06".) —AySz88\^-^ 01:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The statistics are published every day at midnight. Take this into account when making edits.
This does of course, meant that the guardian was using day-old statistics, not month-old statistics. The figures for last x days are rolling periods, not fixed, calendar-based buckets.
Signpostmarv 02:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the header of that particular table says "Monthly Spending by Amount (2006 December)", so I think that is compiled monthly. —AySz88\^-^ 02:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
And here's me thinking in a section regarding "100,000 users" that you're referring to the population stats....
Signpostmarv 16:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Client Now "Open Source"

The Second Life client software has been released under the GPLv2. I'm afraid I'm not sure how to edit the template on the side to reflect these changes, nor what I would need to do for citations, so I figured I'd let it out here. Also, I imagine some of the body text would need to be changed, and I'm not such a great writer, so I'm definitely not up to the job. Someone else can change the article to fit the information. :)

Cite? LL is on record (in the wake of the copybot incident) as saying that no 3rd party client may be used to connect to the grid, which seems to directly contradict this claim to open source status. Rhialto 19:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Even if they did say this, this isn't a third party client that they've released the source code too. Also, various libsecondlife tools are quite capable of connecting to the main grid. Theshibboleth 21:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware of Linden Lab stating that you cannot connect 3rd party clients to the grid.
I think the fact that they've released the source code to the client would overrule any policy regarding 3rd party clients, although as I said I'm not aware of one.
Signpostmarv 22:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I have seen their blog on this now. Seems they have changed the older policy. They definitely did state that connecting to the grid with a 3rd party client program was against ToS, in the wake of the copybot issue (can't get an url cite right now due to firewall). Releasing the client code this way pretty much establishes that as no longer official policy though. Rhialto 00:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Linden Labs press release titled "Linden Lab To Open Source Second Life Software" and Linden Labs blog post about open-sourcing the client. Those should suffice for citation purposes? Of note is that the client software has been released as open-source. The server software (which is where all resident created content is stored and where copy permissions are handled) has not. Also, all code contributions must pass through LL developers before making it into the main client. -Tjkiesel 12:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
You'll notice I did that three days ago.[2]
Signpostmarv 05:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it really necessary to link to so many subpages of the official site in the External links > Linden Labs section? All the following pages can be reached by one click from the home page (or occasionally two clicks): Official Linden Blog, Terms of Service, System requirements, Teen Second Life, Economic Statistics. I propose that this section should only link to the Second Life official site and the Linden Lab official site. —Slowspace 15:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Economic Statistics is covered by Economy of Second Life. Removed as the article is linked to in this one.
  • System requirements has an info box, if necessary, the link should go in there, not the external links section.
  • If the OFB was in Linden Lab#See Also, the OFB could be removed from the list.
  • I've added Teen SL to the See Also list, so whether or not it remains in the external links is still up for discussion.
  • the link to LL's website could be removed if we take into account the fact it's viewable at the top of the page twice.
  • removing the TOS would probably be done by touching on what is and isn't allowed by the TOS/CS combo, and using them as references.
Signpostmarv 16:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I think WP:EL needs to be consulted:
  • Links should be kept to a minimum.
  • Try to avoid linking to multiple pages from the same website; instead, try to find an appropriate linking page within the site.
In this case, the SL home page is the "appropriate linking page within the site". In response to your comment, Signpostmarv:
  • System Requirements link could go in the infobox, but definitely remove from External Links.
  • Blog link can be removed (really no need for this link).
  • Teen SL link can be removed (now linked in See Also).
  • LL link can be kept (no other link to the site in the article).
  • TOS link can be removed (really no need for this link).
Slowspace 23:31, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I've removed the links which I listed above. If you disagree with this change, please discuss it here, rather than simply reverting the change! Thanks. —Slowspace 00:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Mainstream Media Coverage section

Also see #External_Links_are_a_Mess

This section really needs a thorough clear-out. The number of links to news items is totally inappropriate, for several reasons:

  • It's basically a lengthly list, which falls under WP:NOT:
    • Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. Wikipedia articles are not: Mere collections of external links or Internet directories. There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia.
  • It's one of the main reasons why the article failed to become a Featured Article.
  • It takes up a disproportionate amount of space in the Contents.
  • No other "new technology" articles (eg. the Wii or the iPhone) have such a massive collection of news links.

This problem of excessive links will only get worse, as new links are continually added. If a news item documents something significant about SL, then a summary sentence/paragraph should be added at the appropriate place in the article (if not already present), with a Reference to the news item. I will start work on this, as soon as I have time. —Slowspace 11:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems a good idea to keep a log of removed links here, merely for interest and possible future reference. Please add to this list if you remove any links. Thanks.
I've added the {{External links}} template to this section, since people are continually adding new links whenever they find another SL news article. —Slowspace 13:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it'd be a good idea to have www.sluniverse.com and www.secondlifeherald.com added onto the list. They're both well-known and good resources for second life. Any reason why not to? 782 Naumova 17:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

What do you feel they would add to the article that isn't already covered? I guess thats the crux of it there. I've noticed a crunch of late on the external links sections of some articles as they've gotten out of control with people trying to use the external links or fansites section of articles as advertising. I'm not saying they wouldn't be good additions to the page, I'm just asking what you feel they provide that existing content and links do not.--Crossmr 18:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  1. SL Universe's Snapzilla is the most widely known photo-sharing site aimed specifically at Second Life, making use of it's Postcard feature.
  2. Aren't the peeps behind SL Universe the same ones originally behind SLURL ?
  3. The built-in photo features aren't covered anywhere in this article, neither is the reaction of SL Photographers to Flickr's NIPSA policy
Signpostmarv 20:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
First time to this wiki entry, I had hoped to jump in and grab a link to one or two established second life blogs or podcasts so I can check out what's being said outside of the official sources, but it appears the links section has suffered the usual fate of clueless expansion followed by frustrated link nannydom. Could someone please resurrect a small handful of the best non-official links so I don't have to spend two hours with Mister Google to try and figure out which of the 15,800,000 hits are worth looking into? I'd like to figure out what's going on in the game from a non-whitewashed but still mainstream perspective before I commit myself. All I'm asking for are the websites anyone who'se been in the game for more than two weeks can reel off with a moment's thought.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Haverberg (talk • contribs) 06:29, 8 August 2006

Wikipedia is not a link repository or search engine. WP:NOT. If a link is relevant to the content of the article and what is being said in that article, its usually provided. Links need to be kept to those that either source or expand upon existing content in the article. While "Joe's Second Life Blog" might be about Second Life and might be an interesting read about the inner-goings on, it might not be actually terribly relevant to the article. This is what happens with link creep. If a specific blog entry or podcast were to deal with something specific that was discussed in the article, it might find its way into the links as relevant, but when we start to get into "I think this is a generally useful blog, or this is a generally useful fan resource" we get into virtual pissing matches over who wants what on the list. You get people using the links as a form of advertising and other issues.--Crossmr 06:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
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