New Citizens Inc

NCI Policies about viewer support

I’m writing these notes because we cannot procrastinate longer a clear position on supporting SL viewers.

I remind that official viewers are:

• the standard 2.0 Linden Lab viewer;

• the SnowGlobe open source viewer;

• Viewers that are certified according to “Policy on Third-Party Viewers”, http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php

I remind also that we are member of RHN that is an organization sponsored by Linden Lab, to keep our membership we must grant a certified quality level.

I urge every member of Staff group, especially directors, to reach a definitive, shared, unambiguous opinion about this subject. To define quickly rules and methods to implement effectively our support, because at the moment 2.0 supports is left to the initiative of some isolated individuals.

I’m posing some hot issues.

1) The official viewer is obviously v2.0 should all of us use this viewer? If not, how can we grant support to new residents that, unavoidably, will use this viewer more and more?

2) Should we support Emerald? I remind that this viewer is not yet certified, if we decide to support it how can we organize ourselves to effectively support it in presence of an official 2.0 viewer?

3) How can we efficiently advertise our decision, whatever it will be?


But I’m also proposing an organization.

1) Being recognized: evidently people are very passionate about user interfaces, nothing new under the sun, wars like the one we are seeing these days, were fought in the past (vi vs. emacs, Windows vs. Linux and so on). If we decide to support several viewers my proposal is that it should be evident on our helper tag what kind of support we can offer.

2) Being grouped: listing groups of helpers that offer themselves to help for some specific viewer. Lists are handy to contact the appropriate helpers in case of question that cannot be answered directly.


Loris Talon

Feel free to add me to a SL2.0 supporter list, if need be. I've been in the UI since it went open beta and have found most all useful functions and shortcuts. (^_^)y

Whether we individually like viewer 2 or not, it's what newbies are using right now. It's possible for them to install older versions, or third-party viewers, but by the time we deal with them hardly any of them will have done that - or even really be aware of their existence.

So, we cannot do anything *but* support viewer 2. If you're not using it, make sure you know people who are, so you can refer questions to them. Nothing requires you to like viewer 2 or like it, but we have to help the new users with it. Helping new users is what we do, and fewer than one in a thousand will have anything other than viewer 2 installed.

Roughly half of the active third-party viewers no longer offer Second Life support as of last week. Of the remainder, the status is unknown. Emerald might make the official list if they can fix their licensing/copyright problems, but it is too soon to tell. Rumor has it that they're trying to cut a deal with Linden Lab to get an exemption, but that might not even be remotely true.

I use Kirstens 2.0 myself since it has most the tweaks added and a few nice features I'm back in town now yay!

First, who are these directors you mention? The board is no longer in existence and only Tateru has the ability to make decision on behalf of NCI.

I'm of the view that we must support both 1.2 and 2.0 based viewers. NCI caters not just for new residents, but old ones as well. LL have also stated that 2.0 is not a good viewer for builders. All folk should be some what familiar with both versions of the viewer to enable basic support for new residents, in depth support can be given by those who use the new viewer, as it is for Emerald, Snowglobe, etc.

Basically, we should support all popular viewers.

Afon

While our focus is "new citizens", who's to say how new is new? We all do our best to answer questions of whatever kind we're equipped for. I can be very helpful with scripting, and not helpful beyond absolute basics in shirt-making. And so on.

On a given day, we see viewer questions about 2.0, about 1.xx, about Emerald, Kristen, RLV, and others. One or another of us usually has an answer.

We'll have tons of questions about 2.0, not just from new citizens but also from people who choose to follow the LL guidance and convert. That means we'll prosper by having lots of people using it and learning its nuances.

The same was true with sculpties and with every other new thing that comes along. We succeed best when enough of us get on top of things. With sculpties, only a few citizens will use them. With 2.0, the vast majority will. So of course, let's climb all over it.

At the same time, let's recognize that much of our strength is in our creativity and diversity. We are not a phalanx of drones marching in unison. We are people with unique interests and talents. That's what lets us cover everything we need to cover. and that's how it ought to be.

The way I figure it is folks using older/alternate viewers probably have an easier time digging up support information for it.

I think that we cannot, at any point, forget that this is not a corporation. This is a volunteer organization. I'm happy to help with 1.2x and Emerald queries, as I am very familiar with both. I am also happy to help with 2.0, as I spent a large portion of the last week in it. Please keep in mind that this is a volunteer organization.

A good point. Being people who volunteer to support new users, there shouldn't really be any issues about making the necessary adjustments. Not if the alternative is disadvantaging newbies.

I'm replying to Calica.

I don't see any contradiction between the words Volunteer and Organization. We are an organization of volunteers, does that mean that everybody can do what they want? Does that mean that there aren't any rules? Even and anarchist organization has rules or it cannot survive.

The last one is the key word. We have to survive as an organization.
We can survive as an organization if we serve the purposes we were born for.
Helping people, new born people and aged people.

My question is all about that, how can we serve better our purposes in presence of this little/big revolution?

We have a new viewer, it is the official viewer, at the moment very few NCIers have adopted it, at the moment our support is lacking. I asked what can we do to solve quickly this situation. Am I undermining your thought autonomy? I don't think so.

Loris