agree, it is all in the balance — I almost quoted Maslow earlier.

and, it turns out that maintaining that balance takes hard work, thought, experimentation, and paying a lot of attention.

1/3 of the employees at Numedeon are involved directly in community management – and I think that is about the right ratio. For sure, there should be more community managers than programmers –

If you are interested in knowing more, you should go to Whyville, and search in the whyville times on censorship. Our kids discuss the issue all the time – I think with considerable insight and awareness of the complexity of the issues involved.

this stuff ain’t easy – but, for sure, if you decide not to pay any attention, it will bite you.

And in doing so, I can agree with a more moderate stance. There is a balance to be achieved. I’ve cited Maslow’s hierarchy in our discussions of PvP, and in that hierarchy the need for self-expression doesn’t emerge at all until all the lower-order needs are met, including the fundamental need for security. There are exceptions; even in war zones, art pops up now and then. But for the most part, it’s much nicer to have the social and commerical infrastructure to pop down to the art shop and pick up some acrylics.

But I’m wary of censors. I don’t mind warning labels, and I don’t mind a bit if some labels are off-limits to underage users. I also approve of giving users the ability to filter content by interest and by quality. I understand and accept the need to protect IP. But as an adult, I can make my own judgements about what is tasteless, offensive, or obscene. And as a creator, well, any attempt at censoring my work is going to provoke a response that is extreme, emotional, and very, very loud.

But if I accepted a job working at Disney, I’d shut up and draw hippos in tutus. It is art, and some of it is quite good art. But it’s out of balance without Vargas and Crumb and Zappa on the other side of the teeter-totter.

And I agree that much of SL is superficial (or just plain bad). Sturgeon’s Law is in full force. But without the 90% of everything that’s crap, you don’t get the 10% that’s not. One man’s crap is another man’s compost.

But – a couple of quick points:

1) I suggested to Raph in a side bar conversation that he consider including in metaverse the option to import the structure for different forms of governance. Would be rather an interesting experiment. In general I don’t think that the VW community has spent as much time thinking about this as they should.

2) I am a neuroethologist -and my view of humanity, as all animals, is not nearly as open minded (with respect to social structures and behavior) as most in the social sciences. I actually DO think that there are much more and much less optimal forms of government based on our genetic nature.

3) of course what a site / game / virtual world is trying to accomplish determines a lot of this kind of decision making. Regard it as ironic, but we are actually trying to give kids skills for the real world. One of the points I made in the conference is that virtual worlds are much more closely related to the real worlds of kids as users, than adults. It is an open question whether ‘our’ kids, when they get older will want the kind of annonimity that many adults seek on the Internet. My guess is that it will be so much a part of their lives that it won’t occur to them (for the better, in my opinion).

last) I will make the point again that we chose existing known governance and political systems to model Whyville’s governance on – thus, we were hoping, benifiting from many years of human invention in this regard. OF course, I know that these things are cultural and etc etc, but, our data leads us to believe that we got something right — in use stats, in behavioral stats, in the commitment our kids and their parents feel to the site, etc and to the creativity that has resulted.

I have, of course, been in SL – frankly, I find a lot of the site superficial, including a lot of the art – and not very engaging. I have also been to burning man – which also is surrounded by the same ‘live free and create’ ethos – that in a very similar way is also illusory — both in the supposid freedom and also in the quality and significance of a lot of the art.

Turns out, it is hard to do important things – takes a lot of time, thought, attention, experimentation and structure —

but thanks for your thoughtful entry.

You’re a neurobiologist? Dude, very cool.

My understanding (as a base) is that humans are social and self-interested, and the interaction of these two drives leads to hierarchial social structure.

These structures are emergent given the two base conditions (social and self-interested). In other words, I agree that people ‘design, develop and impose’ their own. The aspects of the structures, such as what are in-group and out-group criteria or what behaviors are and aren’t tolerated, will of course differ (and differ wildly). (Aside, “Artistic freedom ends where art criticism begins,” to make up a quote toward what Yukon Sam was saying.)

Taking the name Zeus is accurate in this sense: the designers are gods, not politicians. Note that I’m not saying they are like gods, they are gods, able to define the fundamental nature of their pocket reality in absolute terms. (Example: can people be harmed or killed? Can people fly?)

Thus, there is the ability to establish, in a fundamental and absolute sense, a political system, as though Democracy or Communism or any other system were as fundamental of a rule as gravity. Or, if not explicitly done, to craft the nature of the place to inherently favor some structure or structures over others. (Example: in-game currency certainly may favor capitalism, where a lack of such may favor a barter economy [fiat currency notwithstanding].)

There is also the ability to establish these systems at a more “profane”, less fundamental level, using any of the tricks gods have traditionally used to impress their desires upon the mortals. The difference is, one can violate the Ten Commandments but cannot violate the Laws of Thermodynamics.

I’m saying all this because this distinction becomes very important when replying to a statement like:

What has been interesting is to see how well it works, suggesting that this is actually a very natural form of governance for humans.

…given that the speaker is literally able to define natural law. How much of the natural feeling is due quite literally to the place’s nature, making a given system work more naturally? How much is alternately due to the “priests”, the representatives, interpreters, salespersons and ultimately communication pathways presumed to be following the will of the gods? How much is due to the people themselves, in the light of the self-selection bias inherent in all games? (“Over time, the players remaining in your game will be the people who like your game as it is right now,” to mangle a quote that could well have come from Raph.)

Okay, damn, that’s an awful lot to type just to set up what I was going to say. You’re not the only mike-hog here, dude.

In any case, this does relate to the discussion of freedom and governance between James and Yukon as the potential for social calamity exists regardless. Anarchy doesn’t (explicitly doesn’t) prevent people from forming social cliques that can, even with no authority, stifle individualism and creativity. Should authority intervene, and governance imposed? Should it be the priests or the gods themselves? “Less is better” is to me too simple of an answer, and one providing no direction for what form the intervention would best take.

Thus, I think, the reason for the discussion of what form these relationships should evolve into, from those currently existing in the two currently well-known examples. I can see a criticism that perhaps they should not have picked the examples due to their ease of discussion, and one that perhaps people didn’t propose or discuss things that were far out enough compared to the baseline the two games effectively establish. But in terms of evolution, it makes sense to start with the two large, successful strains and see how they may evolve and adapt, particularly if the governance aspect is a weakness and their success is in spite of it.

By the way, this has strong support in biological modeling in population genetics.

Furthermore, I believe your original claim was that anarchy itself was necessary for creative expression to flourish, and my challenge was to give me an example in human history. As Raph points out – there was no such thing in any of the periods you mention – quite the contrary.

Anarchy produces chaos, and chaos is something that humans avoid (and lots and lots of humans who have gone to Second Life once or twice, haven’t returned).

So, perhaps you are arguing that some special type of human reaches their ultimate creative potential under these circumstances. But I am not such an elitist, and I don’t accept that argument at all. Case in point, Whyville currently has about 3,0000 registered avatar part design shops, and our poor suppressed kids have generated more than 1MM parts and sell about 40,000 of them a day to other kids. We are currently in discussion with a major clothing manufacturer to have those designs influence a real line of clothing in the real world. The reason – the professional design guys LOVE what our kids are doing and our kids do too.

BUT, every design that ends up in the virtual stores of Whyville passes through our curation system for content – NOT style, but offensive content. Why? because offensive content is a turn off to everyone – FURTHER, the fact that we impose standards has meant that our kids have reached above and beyond those standards –

So, I have famously been quoted in the past as saying, if you build a place where anyone can do anything, it will end up being a cross between Bagdad where the terrorists run wild, and Orange County, where the developers run wild. Who wants to live THERE – not me (and it would be hard to argue that much interesting art has come out of either place recently).

p.s. one other point about deregulation – the weakening of the comics code authority allowed a supressed underground comics movement to bubble up – one can argue the same for several of the other periods of time you mention. So, in fact, there is probably more evidence that repression leads to great art than anarchy — the release from repression allows it to bubble up, become commercial, and often trivial, corrupted, and bad in the process.

A few examples that come to mind; the weakening of the Comics Code Authority heralded the emergence of comics as art, with more mature stories and themes. The end of the Hays Code preceded a similar blossoming of American cinema. The social turmoil of the sixties gave us rock and roll, pop art, performance art and a revitalized fashion industry, just as the roaring twenties energized jazz, literature, art deco, and modern dance. The great masters of the post-impressionistic period arose in cultural settings with decidedly diminished social strictures and mores. The Italian Renaissance was a direct response to the weakening central power of the Catholic church; just as the Elizabethan era was marked by a significant reduction in repression and religious persecution (of Catholics under Henry VIII and Protestants under Mary) and a concurrent flourishing of drama and other art.

For counter-examples, we need look no further than the authoritarian regimes of Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany. Art harnessed in the service of the state ceases to be art at all, but becomes mere propoganda.

In terms of virtual worlds, it’s no surprise that the font of creativity is Second Life. Disregarding derivative worlds based off the SL source code, there’s simply no other graphical virtual world of any significance that offers an accessible tool set to create content, a minimum of constraints on the form of that content, and IP ownership to the creator. And that’s why we have real world art instalations exploring the emergence of “mixed reality” art in Second Life, amazing interactive virtual light sculpture, and more SL fashion blogs than there are RL fashion blogs.

Game worlds without any of that are great fun. I play them all the time. But if I want to do anything serious, something with any significance beyond wasting a few hours in mindless fun, I go to Second Life.

I’ll kick the Lindens daily and twice on Sunday for various boneheaded mistakes, most especially recent policy choices to appease stuffed suits at the expense of core users. But artistic freedom is something that they did right.

Any evidence in human history (or second life for that matter) for your assertion – or doesn’t it matter – how you “feel” about something trumps about 8,000 years of human history, experience, and thought.

Oh, and BTW, if you really think that Linden Labs is running an experiment in anarchy – my suggestion is that you dig a little deeper. Linden labs is running a business – complete with everything that entails —

And you made a nice contribution to their marketing efforts. congrats.

And THAT’s what makes Second Life INFINITELY more interesing to discuss than some kiddie autocracy (or would that be theocracy?).

Perhaps the standard for communication and discourse has now become some tweet or other – which is too bad