[...] long lists of contributors and participants, alongside virtual worlds, have the capacity to effect social change. Furthermore, if we consider that massively multiplayer online games are really virtual worlds, the [...]

Rik if you are “Rik Riel” (not sure which Rik you are)

For the record, no.

I don’t let them sign with fake names because too many jerks and sociopaths use the web to get away with behaviors that would otherwise get them in prison or a mental ward, or just punched out in a bar. My only means to resist that digitally is to insist that at least when they are on ground I control (and yes, this is about control), if they can’t exercise self-control then I deny access. This is no different than hosting a large party where strangers attend. One might throw such out, but if well behaved and interesting, then there is no reason. IOW, it comes down to manners and self-respect. Somehow the web is enabling those without manners and self-respect and those who are at the edge of losing them to thrive.

And that is bad for the rest of us.

Best of luck, Prok. I hope somewhere someone is making you dinner tonight and you rented a good movie in exchange. Take the time.

What people left villages for in real life was to have urban settings with permeability, where they could join — or leave groups — at will. Where they could be themselves or somebody else. Where they could have diversity and variety and choice. The affinity group they might make isn’t something they are stuck with (and if the “open idenity” freaks have their way, soon we will all be stuck with one IP-welded identity that they will impose on us for the sake of “openness” but will actual close off membership arbitrarily to everyone who harvests your IP and doesn’t like you).

Thank God for Times v. Sullivan, which gives you the right to call a public figure a name even, in the interests of democracy and open, critical discussion. Thank God.

I disagree that there is something inherently evil about an avatar with a different name or unlinked to your real name. Somebody who crabs about this doesn’t someone acquire greater authority or trust for me than somebody who appeared to me in a fox costume with a fake name who I could reliably track with transactions, speech, behaviour *deeds* over three years. That’s simply more important in a digital world than your RL credentials and name linking.

I personally don’t permit anonymous contributions on my blog, and insist on a SL name. I wouldn’t insist on a RL name, however, because I do think you should have the right to a second life. It’s like the right to get out of the village and go to the big city.

The drive to impose reputation points and affiliations and identity checks on people online is awful, and is actually a regression to the village of the past, nothing revolutionary about it at all, it’s profoundly conservative.

Those are naive attempts to create order without imposing authority. I don’t think they will succeed. Social media are overhyped. To an extent, I agree with this. What I disagree with is the villages or tribes are per se bad. They are a natural development of the use of any system of sustained communications (not occasional encounters).

If the game or virtual world doesn’t have a built-in dev-originated village, the users will create one. Some will be remarkably open and others less so. There is a founders effect and the effects of neighboring villages.

Having the computer impose the authority is bad because it can be gamed. Worse yet will be standards for worlds that can share those reputation points. There are some significant legal dangers here. Sad but so, history both ancient and current reveals the willingness of tribes to demonize one considered other for reasons not limited to appropriate local mores. Enabling such to become digital concrete can destroy lies. That is why laws against libel and slander exist. I sense a tragic naivete in some of these discussions.

Games shouldn’t use them at all, or at least, they should be part of the game.

We are not our avatars. We should be able to dispense with a digital personna as easily as Delete *.*, but if we choose to keep them we should become very aware that the network is an amplifier. That is why I sign my real name, don’t use personna names, and don’t go into worlds or sites that require them. Anonymous/pseudononymous contributions are not only a sign of fear, they are a symptom of lack of discipline.

yes, um, soldiers always move in formation, in uniform, using plans and logic. And a good thing, too, so that all these millions of hours spent on WoW raiding will be useful, eh?

1) What soldiers?

2) Don’t start sentences with ‘and’

If I could make sense of this and how it relates to the ongoing discussion, I’d love to respond.

yes, um, soldiers always move in formation, in uniform, using plans and logic. And a good thing, too, so that all these millions of hours spent on WoW raiding will be useful, eh?

Indeed, Rik was trying to salvage the reputation of games by saying they help “build logical minds”. If that were true, we wouldn’t have the posts we have on this blog — hello?

Raph puts out a picture of a corpse in Darfur. Raph then comes on my blog and says “This isn’t about Darfur.” Ok, well, then, put out a corpse from WoW then, Raph. Seriously, I think that’s just too facile a sleight of hand. It’s as if Raph, by saying this is a “Rorschach blot” is ascribing the ultimate arbitration of meaning to himself, and saying everyone else is doomed to partial Rorschach-like warped interpretations that only say something about their own psychology. Seriously, time to page Heroclitus: “While reason is common to all men, most men act as if they have their own private understanding.”

Peter S. has an interesting idea, but I don’t think you can make a blanket statement about all social media online as somehow being “good” and “humanizing”. Paging Kathy Sierra.

>we’re just using it metaphorically to describe people of similar tastes, backgrounds, employment sector, or combinations of those or other groupings.

Please. That kind of tribe doesn’t have to be in a tent with a campfire to be the restraining, awful thing I’m talking about, and I guess that’s how villagers recreate their villages. Howard Rheingold, in the other conversation, was emphatic about this: that all this niching of social media would merely make lots of tribes of people who stuck with their “similar taste” comrades and like-minded and never had to hear from anybody with a different point of view, who stood by that point of view.

Quite a few people on game boards like this think the job of social media is to “bring around” those people who aren’t comforming to The Group, to tribalize those lingering hold-outs who refuse to go along. My God, it’s awful stuff.

IRC channels? God, the awfulness of IRC culture. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

I really think there’s a BIG difference between having some affiliation, like “I’m in the tenants’ committee or the parish council” and the kinds of horribly rigid and binding cult-like brands that people wear today in places like this:

“I’m for net neutrality”
“I’m against creationism.”
“I hate SUV drivers”
“Bush is a war criminal”.

Rik if you are “Rik Riel” (not sure which Rik you are), I’m pretty certain that any “viewpoint I’ve ascribed to you” comes out of reading your actual pretty predictable opinions. Oh, well.

So let me say it again:

The drive to impose reputation points and affiliations and identity checks on people online is awful, and is actually a regression to the village of the past, nothing revolutionary about it at all, it’s profoundly conservative.

People find it very irritating to be declared conservative when they imagine they are revolutionary. Social media isn’t revolutionary. It’s largely regregressive, and is conserving elements of past culture that is threatened by media.

[...] I just think, ‘Goddamn we’re irrelevant,’” he said.Edit: whoops, holy cow, this entry just got linked by Raph Koster himself. This is awesome, because it means I’m entitled to wear this shirt now. (5 Comments |Comment on [...]

It wasn’t. But Prokofy Neva disagrees with people as a way of life, and if she can’t find fault with what you say, she will randomly assign you another viewpoint, which she then finds fault with.

Truer words were never spoken.