Talk:Criticism of Second Life

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This article was the subject of an educational assignment in February 2013. Further details are available here.

This article was nominated for merging with Second Life on 10 January 2020. The result of the discussion (permanent link) was merge.

The contents of the Criticism of Second Life page were merged into Second Life on 21 January 2020 and it now redirects there. For the contribution history and old versions of the merged article please see its history.

Please see Talk:Second_Life#WP:SIZE.3B_Dividing_out_Second_Life.2FIssues_and_criticisms, Talk:Second_Life/Archive3#Cutting_down_article_bloat.

Signpostmarv 07:37, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about that bot someone scripted that copies someone's avatar perfectly, thereby ruining their ability to exclusively sell that avatar?

The previous unsigned comment was made 20:21, November 15, 2006 by User:64.122.208.51

See

CopyBot

Signpostmarv 15:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have written a section about this but unsure where in the article to put it, if someone could tell me where I would appreciate it.--LewisHoward (talk) 17:01, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism_of_Second_Life#Unauthorized_copying_of_content perhaps?--Canoe1967 (talk) 21:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

Meaning of "ownership" in Second Life

What does it mean to "own" something in Second Life? What legal guarantees does Linden Labs extend to owners of land/textures/models? If Linden Labs has a server crash and loses all of your owned data, are they legally liable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.9.0.27 (talk • contribs)

Please note: It's Linden Lab, not Linden Labs — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.253.210.104 (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See the Terms of Service

Signpostmarv 05:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Signpostmarv seems to have a big problem with this article. It has been tagged so thoroughly that it disrupts the reading process. There is no need to put Citation needeed tags at the end of every sentence. Looking at the article history, it does not seem that user Signpostmarv may be the most neutral person to flag this article. It frankly is obnoxious the ammount of meta that has been thrown on top of an otherwise NPOV article. Clearly there are many, many problems with second life, many controversies, I would suggest a fully expanded Criticisms section within the main Second Life article. However, if this article is to stand on its own, it must be not me stunted by attempts to quash any growth. Someone has used wikitags and made allegations that this article uses Weasel words, YET there is no discussion history illustrating such an opinion. It would seem to be unfair to flag any article with any such criticism without justifying such a lable on the talk page. Will watch ths articles growth.Testerer 06:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you examine the history of this article, you'll notice that most of the content got moved out into it's relevant articles, rather than piling everything into the main article (the lawsuit for example was moved to the Linden Lab article). This article is not intended to stand on it's own, but little or no discussion has taken place with regards to where the individual sections should be moved to. The wikipedia is about verifiability, and the statements flagged with {{cn}} should have references attached because of this.

Signpostmarv 13:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You'll also note I created the article in the first place, so to think I have a big problem with the article would be a bit ironic.

Signpostmarv 13:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. Yes it illustrates that child pornography is illegal in the UK.
2. No it doesn't have any relevance to "age play" activities in Second Life.

Question: Should this link be kept in the article while a more suitable link is found (e.g. one that relates to Second Life and issues of child pornography), or should it be removed on the grounds that it's only relevant to half of the issue, and not directly related to Second Life ?
Signpostmarv 15:31, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article states that computer-generated child abuse images are illegal. If you were to look at someone who was sexually "ageplaying" in Second Life, your computer would render such an image from the data given by the Second Life server. I think the relevance is pretty clear.. 62.3.233.118 19:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it's clearly relevant, it's talking about any depiction of child abuse, and would cover Second Life. If you want an article relating this to Second Life, then there's one here [1]. Mdwh 23:07, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a reference to the article about this point

--LewisHoward (talk) 17:03, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is a noteworthy controversy towards Second Life about how some children are giving up their real lives to just play Second Life. The children give up school, quality time, and other important social aspects so they can play online. I do have a source for it, so if anyone wants, they can add the section or I can. SOURCE: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6375226&ft=1&f=1048 Ekansonic55 02:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note- this won't be anything special, this is just the same as kids playing WoW etc instead of socialising.

Personally, if a kid is "giving up on real life in favour of second life", that means there's something considerably wrong with their real life that they favour the escapism of a virtual world.

Signpostmarv 13:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, they get addicted to it. Ekansonic55 04:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And the reason people get addicted to something is because whatever they have is lacking what the thing in question provides them.

Signpostmarv 15:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are very correct but I was just suggesting. Indeed children would give up normal life because obviously Second Life allows things beyond the limits of real life. Ekansonic55 00:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

if they get addicted to it or if a kid is "giving up on real life in favour of second life", it does not matter to me, dont le this be abused. cap out ammount of time allowed. do you want people doing one thing for over a certain number of hours a day? restrict usage, i care more about kids playing for 15 hours than curses or sex. Guardimp 07:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing noteworthy about the controversy mentioned above, is that these children obviously have problems that should be adressed by competent people. There are plenty of people hooked on football or other sports, some (if not many) to such a degree it impacts their daily lives and social relations. So, should we ban football? Or ban the tv on which they spend too much time watching it? Should we also cancel olympics, and tear down all stadiums? TV programmes, movies, radio shows, video games, news, mineral water, ice cream? All these can be psychologically and/or physically addictive to different persons, should we ban everything for which you can find problem users? People have for decades been (and still are) getting hooked on any of these things, some are repeatedly on topic while others are never mentioned or mentioned only in a humoristic manner. Humans are complicated and can have a number of reasons to seek escape. Banning e.g. World of Warcraft because you can find problem users that give up "normal life" for a subsitute, wouldn't solve anything, you would just be fighting a symptom of the problem driving the person to do so. MischLameth (talk) 01:51, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tagged the article for nomination to be checked for neutrality, using {{POV-check}}. One of the core policies of Wikipedia is that articles should always be written from a neutral point of view. This is one of the the Five Pillars of Wikipedia. It seems that many parts of this article contain user opinions. --Dillard421 09:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you ever played Second Life for an extended amount of time all the issues listed here are real. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.208.84.21 (talk) 03:02, August 23, 2007 (UTC)

• That's irrelevant. Sources are what's relevant in Wikipedia. 68.146.41.232 (talk) 17:20, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree the neutrality of this article is lacking. That is not the same however as saying that SL is perfect or that there haven't been criticisms made. Criticisms have been made and this article can document them, it just needs to be more neutral about it and less editorial. -- BlindWanderer (talk) 03:10, 31 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should the article include a discussion regarding bugs? My particular "favorites" (note the quotation marks) is the one that causes one's avatar to start flying uncontrollably, either away from a location, sometimes horizontally, despite limits on flight. And then there are those who spend hours "camping" only to find the time wasted because they decided to check their e-mail or surf the Net, which sometimes causes the SL client to log you out even though the image in the program window still shows you taking part in whatever activity you were doing before doing off elsewhere. A third bug involves the sim lag issue, which has driven some area owners to request and in some cases require that visiting avatars remove any scripted add-ons or high "prim" appearances. All three glicthes (well the last is more preventative) are issues that seem to be pretty frequent, from what I've seen. 23skidoo 19:50, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's a Grey Goo Fence now, fyi. --217.93.247.47 (talk) 19:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All the "bugs" you mentioned as your "favorites" are not "bugs" at all.

A quick check of the JRIA (Offical bug reporting / error tracking service of Second Life shows no outstanding issues in regarts to the avatar flight issue you presented. Perhaps you are confused about the behavior of the Second Life client when you move from one SIM to the other "on foot" (versus direct teleport) -- if you fly into a new SIM (area) of second life, during the time it takes for the second life servers to move your avatar from one SIM to the other your avatar will appear to be flying uncontrollably -- this is not a "bug", it's a common enough thing in multi-player games. To verify this, access the debug options of the Second Life client and disable the "Velocity interpolate objects" option, then fly from one SIM to the next. Instead of your avatar "flying uncontrollably" it will simply stop and "freeze" for the time it takes the server to handle your move from one region to the next.

Your second "bug" regarding avatars engaged in "camping" as being logged out as a cause of checking their e-mail or browing the web -- no disrespect intended, but collation does not have anything to do with causation. Simply because you are disconnected from second life at times when you happen to be checking your e-mail or browsing the web does not in any way mean that checking your mail or browsing the web is *causing* the problem. The true nature of this "bug" is that home internet connections rarely will allow a constant connection to a server to be possible for very long periods of time. Second life SIM's are known to reboot, be rebooted, lock up, shut down, and many other things that cause you to be disconnected without receiving notification of this event. You need to understand that simply becuase you can still see the graphics on your screen has no connection with the actual established connection taking place.

And finally, your third "bug" is a not a "bug" in any sense. Overcrowded servers or servers overloaded with complex scripting will not perform as well as servers that are running under more normal conditions with less complex scripting taking place. It's also very vital to understand the difference between server side "lag" and local connection "lag", and then to understand that poor video performance and what people refer to as "lag" is generally a result of inferior hardware, out of date drivers, or a miriad of other possible issues.

In short -- we don't need to waste space on this already bloated article with a section for "bugs" of this nature. I suggest a simple section pointing out that problem tracking is handled by the second life JRIA. The things you mentioned are personal experiences with the client.

Mix.master.entropy (talk)Entropy —Preceding comment was added at 00:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Much of this section had serious problems with neutral point of view, and violates much of the the Five Pillars of Wikipedia. Removed sections that had glaringly obvious self-published sources, added proper citation needed tags to sections that would be proper if they had a proper source. All changes clearly documented in edit summary field. In a nutshell, the entire section cited sources that are rich in emotional self-published content. The most extreme example of this is made clear in my edit at 22:55, 9 June 2008 -- the only source listed for this entire bloated section was a personal blog, and that's just not going to cut it.

The criticism section still needs major work. It's a simple principle of self-published blogs not being acceptable.Mix.master.entropy (talk) 23:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)entropy[reply]

Many sections here are now outdated and incorrect. There is, for instance, a current "grey goo fence" and other mechanisms implemented to help avoid "griefing" and disruptive behaviour. MischLameth (talk) 01:51, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi I am the person who has recently edited the article, I was doing so as part of a module for university. You can find more out about that by looking at my profile.
The changes that I made were well researched and I feel are of a good enough to be posted on the actual page. Please feel free to look at my sandbox to see all the work and research that I did.
If you feel there is a problem with my work please contact me so I can amend it before you just delete it.
Also I have another section but I am unsure of where in the article to put it so if you could reply telling me where it goes it would be appreciated

Within second life people like to be unique and 'own' their character. As well as their character users like the content they create to also be unique, however this is because for some people they make their real life living selling things within second life. With money to be made some users will copy what others are making to sell themselves.

was one way in which this was done as would recreate objects etc perfectly.
This is against the second life terms of service, to be able to stop the recreated content being sold it has to be deleted. The way this is done is by the user filing complaints and proving that the original content is theirs. Doing this will get the content deleted and the user who tried to copy the content will be banned.
Once the complaint has been filed the user will get a email verification acknowledging the report and it will be dealt with ASAP but it depends on the backlog.

Thank you
--LewisHoward (talk) 16:59, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Re: the material in the above post: The

Unauthorized copying of content

section mentions CopyBot already, so that would be the most appropriate section to add more information on that topic.

Re: material at User:DannyDLancaster/sandbox:

• "Isolation and addiction in Second Life" and "Case Study Kim Yoo-chul and Choi Mi-sun": Those topics probably belong under the existing
  Social Issues
  section in the article.
• "Meaning of "ownership" in Second Life": This topic probably belongs under the existing
  Content
  section in the article, either as a new subsection under Content, or under the "Unauthorized copying of content" section.

Re: Your previous edits of today: Yes, they seem on-topic and well-sourced. If somebody removes or changes your additions, don't worry, that happens all the time. In that case, you can post here on the article talk page, or ask the other editor directly on their talk page for advice on what they thought was wrong with it. --Geniac (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your feedback

--LewisHoward (talk) 03:53, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if there shouldn't be a section dealing with this. I can only speak anecdotally but one of the things that turned me off SL a few years ago was when I was exploring some random area and suddenly I got bombarded by messages telling me to go away and leave - not really in that kind a language. I got a little ticked off at this, so I used a trick I'd learned to "look through walls" and apparently I had wandered too close to a place where two avatars were having "intimate relations" (silly as that sounds). That's like somebody screaming at you from their bedroom window while you're walking on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. I've also had my avatar "attacked" for no reason by another user who was either just messing about or was legitimately belligerent. And with the Teen SL I'm sure the same sort of cyberbullying that infects social media exists there too (especially in the inevitable cases where someone decides to create an avatar of the opposite sex, either due to personal orientation or because they'd rather mess about with a male/female avatar). As I say all I have are anecdotal things, so I can't add anything to the article without it getting deleted, but I thought I'd put this here in case anyone has come across any discussion about cyberbullying, etc. In fact, wasn't there a news story about 3 years ago about an apparent "murder" in Second Life where some guy's avatar was somehow wiped out? 68.146.70.124 (talk) 18:05, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1. You probably "explored" into someone's private property. It is possible (and common) to detect your "looking through walls" trick, which is considered an invasion of privacy, and their response wouldn't qualify as harassment (or even "cyberbullying").
2. Teen SL hasn't existed for a few years.
3. That "news story" was a hoax. It is not possible to "murder" someone.

Second Life is part of the internet, and cyberbullying is a reality of the internet as large, not exclusively SL. If being yelled at is a problem for you, the internet is not the place to be. 75.70.43.92 (talk) 19:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To fix a lot of unverifiable content, NPOV problems, etc. I have gone through and edited or rewritten a lot of content. Unfortunately this resulted in a long list of edits (I was only planning to make a few minor changes but it spiraled into this). Apologies for that. That said, a lot of unverifiable, uncited content dated back up to 8 years and, as such, warranted revision or removal, and some sections had some very blatant NPOV issues which were fixed by heavy editing and removal. Unfortunately a lot of this article consists of repeated information, unsourced accusations, and poor, often broken citations, and would benefit from a complete rewrite to consolidate content (and potentially merge into Second Life). 75.70.43.92 (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to call it botched, but there is a lot of original research done in this article, and I've attempted to remove some; as well as some unsourced sections. I'm going to wait and see if there is any backlash to this, otherwise I'll continue tomorrow. Tutelary (talk) 19:16, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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