The 'other' Second Life

[Conifer Dada]

I'm not a voice user in SL and I keep it turned off. I have turned it on occasionally to listen to conversations, which tended to be chaotic and hostile. Anyway today I went to a fairly crowded welcome area where people were just standing, with nothing happening in 'chat'. So I assumed they must be using voice and so turned it on. I wasn't surprised to hear that the chat was chaotic and hostile, as I'd found before. But I was surprised how nasty it was. There was overt racial abuse between white and black people (in both directions, may I add) and really nasty stuff. Then there was some guy rambling on about some obscure pop group from the 70's, another was ridiculing the looks of a female avatar, while someone else just made silly random noises. This wasn't a case of one griefer stirring up trouble, it seemed more like these people, some of whom were barely coherent (drunk or on drugs) had come on SL with the intention of getting in a slanging match. What struck me is how different this 'other' Second Life' used buy voicers seems from the generally pleasant and friendly atmosphere I find in my normal text-chat SL environment.

 

[Spirits Rising]

You went to a "Welcome" area - what did you expect?

 

[Rose Karuna]

I'm actually glad to know that someone besides me does not have voice enabled.

 

[Bea McMahon]

I don't keep voice enabled. I see no reason to do so. I tend to hang in areas where voice is not enabled, anyway.

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

Welcome areas attract people that get banned everywhere else due to chaotic, antisocial, or down right fascistic behaviour.
They also attract occasional good people wanting to help out newbies as newbies often drop out of their tutorial in welcome areas. It makes for a jarring mix.

Voice, however, is just a tool. You can use it or misuse it, but it's not the tools fault.

 

[shy poster]

People who are home on a week day without anywhere to go irl and anything to do are a little suspect every time

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I'm actually glad to know that someone besides me does not have voice enabled.

Add me to that list. I'm not even sure voice works with my 64-bit Linux setup, but I'm not breaking a sweat trying to fix it.

 

[Spirits Rising]

Add me to that list. I'm not even sure voice works with my 64-bit Linux setup, but I'm not breaking a sweat trying to fix it.

It should - for now apparently. If you were inclined to use it though, you'd have to install a few libraries, one of which can only be properly grabbed - at least on X Ubuntu - through the terminal.

 

[Conifer Dada]

I've been in SL long enough to know what to expect in welcome areas and, as I said, my few previous occasions with 'voice' enabled also gave me an idea of what to expect. What I did find surprising is that so many random people had gathered together looking for a fight, rather than one or two people trying to disrupt an otherwise friendly gathering.

The point of my post was to highlight the difference in atmosphere between SL without voice and SL with it enabled.

People who are home on a week day without anywhere to go irl and anything to do are a little suspect every time

I was home on a weekday with not much to do irl but it didn't make me feel like picking an argument with anyone!!!

 

[Kathryn Elisabeth]

Voice is easier, especially if too pissed off / wasted to work a keyboard. Safe/Info Hubs with voice, the Lowest Common Denominator of the Lowest Common Denominator. Is a good thing though. Keeps 'them' occupied and over there.

 

[Spirits Rising]

Sorry - those sorts of Hubs are not typical of Voice use. They just aren't. Hubs are the Garbage Dump - in just about all aspects.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

What struck me is how different this 'other' Second Life' used buy voicers seems from the generally pleasant and friendly atmosphere I find in my normal text-chat SL environment.

The voice infohubs have their own culture. Some time back, (maybe 2010) I was temporarily without a homebase and ended up at an adult one. (I got sent there once when the grid was having issues). This one had a culture of people who socialized at the hub, though a few may have gone elsewhere now and then. I was surprised to find out a few were "landed". They even had people playing music over voice. The queen bees of this hub were a grandmother (who was younger than me), her adult daughter and their female friends. The grandmother had what I would call a "sexed up kardashian-y club girl" avatar.

I found the women were okay, if a bit...rough around the edges. The men were in general NOT people I'd want to be around much.

You went to a "Welcome" area - what did you expect?

You've got a point.

They also attract occasional good people wanting to help out newbies as newbies often drop out of their tutorial in welcome areas.

Indeed, I've tried to help newbies at them now and then.

Voice, however, is just a tool. You can use it or misuse it, but it's not the tools fault.

Indeed

People who are home on a week day without anywhere to go irl and anything to do are a little suspect every time

Not everyone has a monday through Friday 9-5 job. My weekend is actually in the middle of the week.

Add me to that list. I'm not even sure voice works with my 64-bit Linux setup, but I'm not breaking a sweat trying to fix it.

Voice works just fine on 64-bit linux. On Fedora, if you pull down the "Media" group with RPMfusion repos enabled it will pull down most of the libs Firestorm will need. Doublecheck by running ldd on the SLVoice binary in a terminal. The one you might be missing is: libidn.so.11 which on Fedora is provided by libidn1.34.i686

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Voice works just fine on 64-bit linux. On Fedora, if you pull down the "Media" group with RPMfusion repos enabled it will pull down most of the libs Firestorm will need. Doublecheck by running ldd on the SLVoice binary in a terminal. The one you might be missing is: libidn.so.11 which on Fedora is provided by libidn1.34.i686

Yep, that did it. For Ubuntu/Mint, the required library is libidn11:i386.

 

[Lance Corrimal]

People who are home on a week day without anywhere to go irl and anything to do are a little suspect every time

heh. i take personal offense on that one. I work from home, and not in some small two bit job.

 

[Lance Corrimal]

Welcome areas attract people that get banned everywhere else due to chaotic, antisocial, or down right fascistic behaviour.

...maybe, just maybe, the lab could do something to improve new user retention by doing something in this area?

 

[Sid]

...maybe, just maybe, the lab could do something to improve new user retention by doing something in this area?

You still believe they can?
If it is not technical, they are pretty much clueless.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I'm actually glad to know that someone besides me does not have voice enabled.

(raises paw)

I really hate what Voice did to Second Life, it split communities into voicers and chatters, and it really limits the size of a group... you really can't engage with more than a couple of people in voice and you too often end up with one person dominating the conversation simply by talking over people. It takes more work to manage larger groups in voice and most people can't be arsed.

It's kind of inevitable in "VR" environments where you're wearing a headset because you really can't type there, but I'd really love a VR environment where everyone had a speech-to-text interface and so still communicated through text chat.

Sorry - those sorts of Hubs are not typical of Voice use. They just aren't. Hubs are the Garbage Dump - in just about all aspects.

I disagree that hubs are just garbage dumps. I hang out in infohubs, usually Ahern/Bonifacio/Morris/Dore, and while the environment in text chat is occasionally dominated by trolls more commonly it's got interesting discussion. I've never entered the alternate reality of Voice there.

 

[shy poster]

People who are home on a week day without anywhere to go irl and anything to do are a little suspect every time

hahah dont you roll your eyes at me!

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

hahah dont you roll your eyes at me!

 

[NeoBokrug Elytis]