Having actually been there (I’m fairly sure I was invited so that I’d write nice things about them, to be honest), I can now say things about them and not be clueless as to what I’m saying. Yay! 
The problem is, I don’t have much positive to say. Let’s see…
- They’re obsessed with their public image and publicity.
- They put publicity before anything else.
- There are a couple of real jerks there – not the fault of the project, but Edi and, to a lesser extent, marsbar9 (name says it all) really ruin the experience.
- Excessively paranoid.
- Censor everything.
- Pop out of thin air to flame anyone who might disagree with them. (Decimus, I’m looking at you…)
- It’s a dull place to be anyway.
- Bureaucracy is rife.
In all honesty, you’d probably find more engaging creations and discussion at “Sandbox Island (TG)”, “Sandbox Island (TG) 2″, “Sandbox Island (TG) 3″ or “Sandbox Island (TG) 4″ on the main TG.
It’s a shame – all the adults (that I met) are nice, and most of the students are fun too – but the whole experience is destroyed by a small group of them, and partially by the odd censorship.
My advice would have to be something to the effect of “Keep away from them.” Sorry, the vast majority of people there. Especially Decimus. I generally liked him, although I suspect he’ll be the one who appears to flame me. 
Ugh :-/ The publicity adults want in TG projects…
Adult: “Here, see news reporters? We’re helping children!”
Teen: “No you’re not :p”
Adult: *FLICK* “*AHEM*, yes we do, RIGHT?”
Teen: “Nope.” *ZIIING*
Adult: “O-K, he’s/she’s off the access list…”
>.>
> Pop out of thin air to flame anyone who might disagree with them. (Decimus, I’m looking at you…)
Whatawhat?
Why would I flame you? (apart from the fact that you don’t appear to have read some of what people have said, which can’t exactly be called a flame :p)
Because you did.
And what didn’t I read?
As you may guess from the name, I am one of those students from the Schome Park mentioned. I am commenting because, although I appreciate this was written in annoyance etc, Schome deserves at least representation, if not vindication.
Firstly, publicity is a matter of necessity in keeping the project running and allowing as many people as possible to enjoy it, rather than the purpose of the project. This is said far better at http://schome.open.ac.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1383.msg27033#msg27033 (I’m afraid I don’t know how to hotlink on this page). The aim of the publicity is to try and get people to look at schome, so obviously that publicity which is intentional is going to be biased. However, anyone in the community can publicise schome however they wish-the comment before mine, though appreciated for its light heartedness and doubtless (hopefully) written with tongue in cheek, is wrong. After all, there would be little point building this community if anyone who expressed their views on it was kicked out.
Secondly, paranoia and moderation seem to be necessary in today’s paranoid society. In order to receive funding, especially from establishments such as the Open University, the community must be thoroughly kept within PG-this links in with the publicity earlier mentioned. The reason some of this moderation may seem silly is because it is seen to be best to err on the side of caution. Not only this, but much of the moderation is done by students themselves, in order to provide greater responsibility-one of the major aims of schome. The point is that we all learn from the experience, and part of that learning is in making mistakes, whether in excessive moderation or too little moderation.
Bureaucracy now. I admit it, I am a bureaucrat and the system I have helped put in place is incredibly bureaucratic. My justification for this is: try to run an island of equals without making some form of higher construct-the law provides something which all people follow even when they would not follow those who created the law in the first place. This is, as it sounds, illogical, but it is a phenomenon that I am sure that all readers would recognise in the world around them. To come back onto the matter at hand, the bureaucracy fulfills a purpose, and is always open to being improved or indeed cut down on-this is indeed one of the principles enthroned within the bureaucracy itself.
About the people: in life there will always be those who annoy you, who you end up hating. Likewise, in schome, many people see each other as being irritable. The key point is that it is subjective-we can choose not to see people as irritable and that is indeed what I personally do. Importantly, this is something which I have learnt from schome-how to tolerate and get on with others. If schome can teach _me_ this (let’s face it, I was and still am a disagreeable, unlikeable [insert noun]-exhibiting the very self moderation, there, that is so often classed as obtuse censorship
), it clearly has much to offer, merely from otherwise annoying people existing in the first place. I’m not going to annoy further by posting vindications of either Mars or Edi-they both know, as hopefully do all those in schome, that their talents are appreciated above the flaws that every one of us shares.
Finally: schome may well be dull-that is something which everyone must form an opinion of themselves about (visit http://schome.open.ac.uk/forum/index.php). I certainly enjoy it, being the obsessive and addictive personality that I am.
Oh, I must also apologise for the ridiculous length of this post, the many and varied faults of it and myself as its author, and essentially for posting something that is neither required nor desired. :p
I notice that moderation also applies here-I hope that my comment is not ripped to shreds (the threat of hypocrisy looms as a stick
), though please feel free to delete this-it is more me talking to myself than anything else.
Nah. I don’t ever edit comments – it’s just to catch out spam that gets past Akismet. Your first comment will be sent to moderation, as will any comment containing links. Anything else passes through – it’s just an anti-spam-bot safety measure. *points at the spam counter on the right*. As for links, you can either just type them, or use HTML (like this:
<a href="http://example.com">Some text</a>). And quotes are done with<blockquote cite="name">test</blockquote>, if anyone cares. Underline is<u>text<u>, etc. < and > without it being killed as bad HTML are < and >. When messing with this stuff, use of the “preview” button would be wise, because you can’t edit comments.I’m afraid I’m not sure what you’re referring to there.
As for my note about publicity there, I was being irritated by the idea that advertising came before being helpful in your (plural) minds.
I’ve found that much more moderation is done by the staff- in fact, the only instance of student-moderation I’ve noticed was that one, while I’ve had posts saying things like “95% uptime is not ‘very good’” deleted by staff.
My only complaint about the bureaucracy is that the system in place is fundamentally flawed – you can’t keep prim count down by demanding people submit buildings for planning, because there’s no obvious, codified provision for a reduction in the number of builds, just an increase.
I have no objection to censoring in favour of PG. Being a global mod on the TSL Forum I do so myself. What I object to is censorship where no rule is broken, the content was PG, and within the bounds of the TOS/CS/AUP/LDWANA.
This is a blog. It should be taken as a given that anything posted here is my opinion.
Marsbar9, fine. Edi, no. I have yet to see him do anything of use. “Can you please provide a description of what happened?” “NO!” “Perhaps someone else could do it?” “No! Stop bugging me!” etc.
I’ll let Marsbar9 off my metaphorical hook, but not Edi.
P.S. length is fine. I just suck at producing it.
Oh, and I won’t be visiting your forum. I deleted my account, although apparently the deletion of my account needs to be moderated.
> > Whatawhat?
> Because you did.
Does that /look/ like a flame? IMO, it doesn’t :p
> And what didn’t I read?
Have a guess :p
> I was being irritated by the idea that advertising came before being helpful in your (plural) minds.
I would consider that being helpful is more important than being more popular (take M$ – they seem to work on that principle and their products are generally fairly rubbish :p)
> you can’t keep prim count down by demanding people submit buildings for planning, because there’s no obvious, codified provision for a reduction in the number of builds, just an increase.
Indeed.
We’re not trying to reduce builds, merely to stop the number of prims hitting >14k as it did in the original version of SP.
I know that – I forgot to include in that forum post that I agreed with you.
What I mean is that you allow for constant increase in the number of prims, caused by builds passing planning permission. However, once they’ve done so, they have permission to stay forever. This means that eventually you will hit 15,000 prims, unless you have some way of removing things in existence.
Besides, you were targeting 8,000 prims. You’re currently at 10,848.
> However, once they’ve done so, they have permission to stay forever.
That’s a good point.
I suggested that that shouldn’t be the case and that, when we want/need to cut down on prims, we should remove the builds which are used the least.
Of course, if we didn’t have a prim limit, we’d have less of a problem. But it’s not as if we could just have an infinite number of prims…
Fine. Good. Push that through and I’ll cross bureaucracy off my list of broken things.
I must say that I think forums are a lot more useful in conversations like this than using a blog’s comment options, but never mind.
I believe you are referencing Marko there-publicity was used in his argument as hopefully more convincing than the aim of helping people, as many MG scripts would, as you said, be just as helpful. Besides which, we had already used the ‘to help people’ argument and repeating it would be pointless. Aside from this, I cannot remember encountering publicity as being classed above the key aims of schome (education in knowledge age skills, new learning environment etc) in any other place, though if you find such a case I will be happy to revise that statement.
It was mainly correcting the earlier comment that people would be kicked out purely for what they thought-one of schome’s aims is to ‘value and support people’ and thus kicking people out would be not only hypocritical, but also against the morals of those who started the project.
Well, I wouldn’t know considering that the posts would have been deleted along with the moderations. However, to use a field I do know about not one of my >1000 posts has been moderated, so moderation is clearly something that cannot be said to be random, and considering that every moderation requires documentaton etc, I see no reason why anyone would moderate needlessly, though what is classed as needless is a matter that I can’t really dwell on without much stronger information and empathy.
The Web Development Group? Besides, every member is another vote, another opinion, and in doing this we get a far better idea of what is best, even without Edi’s own contributions to the production of ideas, which are there to see if you look with an open mind (reading this, it is rather insulting, but I am afraid I can’t think of a better way of putting it, sorry).
There is already some form of such a system, with a poll a while ago determining the least popular builds. However, it is far preferable not that we order the removal of builds which have received or are receiving permission (many of which are removed under the owner’s own duress, such as the Bridge, the Mind Museum and CloudBase), but that we order the removal of those builds that have been forgotten about or been created accidentally-hence the regular sweeps and reminders. The key point is that builds should be removed voluntarily if at all possible, which is why the prim number has fell from >11,500 to its current 9,660. However, a better system will indeed be required given time.
Another long comment there. Thanks for the advice on formatting. Oh, and my usual apologies.
I saw it in several other places – but I can’t find them now. Probably hidden in the non-public forum, which I can’t access, having deleted my account (pending moderation).
And this comment was… where? I can’t find it referenced in any forum thread or comment.
Well, good for you! It’s nice that you manage to avoid the completely arbitrary moderation decisions. Why it was necessary to point that out is beyond me.
Are you referring to the group that had one meeting, which was never documented because Edi insistently refused to write anything about it, and refused to let anyone else write anything about it, and in which nothing was discussed anyway? It consisted of “What have u done?”, some answers, and 15 minutes of him begging to have access to my server. This is not “useful.”
As for his opinions and contributions, I cannot remember any post made by him that went beyond a single sentence in length, or wasn’t very rude. So, while you can insult me for being “close minded” all you like, that doesn’t make his “contributions” any more productive. Feel free to flame me for being equally useless if you like, although I would disagree. At least I expand upon what I say.
I make it 10,848.
Insults aren’t removed, incidentally, although swearing would be. However, reasons that I left Schome could essentially be compressed down to a single reason:
Edi’s arrogance and posting style annoys me enough to make me leave.
Hypocrisy? Probably.
The first comment, by Smiley Barry. I am afraid later comments have somewhat eclipsed it.
The in world counter now calls it 9,630.
If they are completely arbitrary they would have an equal distribution per post. Assuming that 3/134 of your posts have been moderated (the minimum) the chances that none of mine have been moderated is broadly speaking 1/24, and more accurately speaking a lot higher (increasing rate of decreasing probability rather than linear drop). Clearly, the decisions are not purely arbitrary, and this is even without looking at psychological factors (what would be the purpose of arbitrary moderation?).
He has created a domain which now holds several websites, which is something, though I lack the expertise to comment more fully. I’m not going to get into a pointless argument (too late probably) on this, but every person is of value-we are all equal. Rather than targeting Edi as a person, why do you not look upon the altogether more justifiable option of looking at the mistakes which he has made and which he has admitted that he has made. To expand upon his contributions he took a prominent place at tonight’s general affairs meeting (I am afraid I tend to refer to recent events due to my bad memory) and acted as probably the main spokesperson for the stricter AUP enforcement lobby, going through the arguments effectively (even though I disagree with him, I am not about to discount his achievements). He is not a saint, and has indeed made many mistakes. He can be hypocritical, abusive, and pointlessly aggressive. However, there is no reason to judge over him, or over anyone else. What do you gain from it, and how much does Edi lose?
Incidentally, I want to try my utmost to ensure that this is not a flame war-I certainly see no reason why I should be arguing with you. If you wish to hate me, please just do so, rather than spending time getting me to hate you (though I sincerely doubt this is purposeful). Indeed, if you wish to hate anyone, hate me foremost of them all, for I am equal to them, and thus equally bad. Anger creates only further anger and thus be done with it, for happiness is easy, if one only looks for it. Standard apologies apply, plus the extra one for being so [insert adjective] poetically useless.
Okay, if you’re all going to hate me, I’ll go and withdraw as much as possible of what I’ve done to help you – something that I’ve never done before, even when severing any other connections for whatever reason. (It’s worth noting that this involves deleting a good chunk of wiki navigation.) I’ve had enough messages of hate from you people to make anything that you (plural) try to say against the concept entirely hypocritical, and I’m sick of invariably receiving grief whenever I try to help people. And that doesn’t just go for schome.
Because Edi is a person, and Edi the person made said mistakes and admissions, although I have not yet actually seen any admission from him that wasn’t forced.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why moderators have to approve me deleting a forum account and why, more to the point, they have not yet done so.
Argh. I don’t want to hate anyone and I do my best not to. Instead, patronising as it is, all I feel for you at the moment is pity. Please, I really do not want to have to pity you-just try not to hate, and try to, clichéd as it is, be happy. If me shutting up will do this, I will do so, and I will continue to try to get other people to shut up as well.
There are a lot of other people in schome who seem to want to hate you and I have spent a lot of time tonight persuading a lot of people not to hate each other. If I hate, all I do is end up being hated. If I am hated, I hate more. Please, turn the other cheek, take the moral high ground, please do not cause more hatred-I will do my best to ensure that everyone does the same. In the end what do you gain from hatred, from undoing everything you have done?
Edi the person has more sides to him than making mistakes. If you want to hate the mistakes, there is still no reason to hate his other sides, his better sides. If you cannot or will not forgive Edi, please do not reply to this section of the comment-neither of us gains from it.
I am deeply, truly, sorry, for everything.
I’m still not entirely sure why you’re leaving – I mean, I can understand you getting annoyed at some things, but not to the point of leaving.
Similarly, there are a couple of things I dislike about you, about various other people, about the universe, etc., but I try (and appear to mostly succeed) to ignore them. (for a start, something like that’s *always* going to happen)
That’s all very well, but I don’t succeed in ignoring people who fail to meet my expectations of people. This set of people includes Edi, and the vast majority of my school, for that matter. That, plus the assorted hate messages I received that have succeeded in making me cry. Well done, you people. (You know who you are.)
Besides, I already shut down all services at spii.co.uk (thus deleting all mail), disabled the HUD Thingy on Schome Park, and sent an email to PeterT requesting the deletion of my account.
So meh. Too late for this now. Suffice to say that I am now more disillusioned with TG educational projects than I was when I started.
I have nothing to say in regards to Schome because, after all, I never understood the point of their existence of SL. Again.
Still, I just want to say that you shouldn’t let this get to you – not because it’s right or wrong, but for practical reasons. If you’ll suffer over failures like this, then I’m sure you won’t lead a happy life, because people love to do these things over and over.
And I’m still disillusioned with most TG educational projects, too. I’m hoping that it won’t be too late when the owners of x number of still pointless sims decide that they actually want to use for the best the huge opportunity they’re being given.
Katharine, I do not really care about what you think of me.
In my opinion I think I have contributed alot to the schome project,
for example I have something around 180 posts on the forum in the short time I have been there (which is more than your 140 (roughly)) and very few of my posts were that short actually, I only really write short posts when I agree with something. Also I have built the W.D.G. Centre and formed the W.D.G. Group which provides free hosting (including full cpanel 11 and FTP access). I am currently building a space ship (which the help of dec and achilles) for the next Machinima. And if you don’t like the whole schome project then we should think ourselves lucky that you are no longer participating in it.
Edi
@Sunny: I recommend posting that comment again, only on the AjaxLife R13 post, since Kathy sees comments on ALL posts
.
@Voice Of Your Conscience: Who the heck are YOU? Maybe in the end i’ll find out it was Kathy herself ‘^_^.
I have seen very few of your posts get past two lines (excluding your name at the end) on my 1,920 pixel wide monitor.
No, no, you missed the point. I don’t like you. Because you’re an idiot and have no redeeming qualities that I have yet to observe. I’m fine with the rest of the project, despite its assorted flaws. However, your sentiment is appreciated. Hmm, I don’t like you. I’d like it if you were to quit Second Life, my blog and the internet, please. Thank you.
Ouch – again.
Blimey this all blew up rather fast – go off to a conference for a couple of days and ker bang … Such a shame that despite Explo’s best efforts we failed as a community to manage this better – loosing anyone from the community feels like a huge failure as far as I am concerned.
Katharine – I believe that one of the staff team have now actioned your requests re your accounts. I will respond to your email once I get back from the conference (internet access – and email access problematic at my end until Thursday).
I sincerely hope we can resolve this one more satisfactorily in the very near future … :O(
PeterT
I’m not here on Thursday/Friday/Saturday. As you know perfectly well, I’m at Linden Lab’s office in San Francisco.
You already know that I consider it impolite to hold secret conversations elsewhere. So I’m going to copy your comments over here. If you move your discussion where I can’t see it I will be very unhappy with you.
Smiley – I’m Mariel Voyunicef
Absolutley pathetic Katharine you need to realise that all you do is boast and that noone actually likes you.
Okay then, Edi. That’s it. Your school bully attitude is not welcome here.