We’ve been talking on this blog recently about the importance of communities in growing Second Life here and here – and it was an issue on the Designing Worlds show about Second Life retention.
We will be exploring the issue further with an interactive installation at the Second Life 11th Birthday Celebration – we are putting it together now!
What is important about Second Life? What keeps you logging in?
And we want to ask people … How should Second Life be advertised? What sort of demographic should it be reaching out to? What sort of training should Second Life offer? Should training be outsourced to resident groups?
And above all we want to ask – what does community mean to you? What type of a community would you like to live in? What does a community need to keep it vibrant?
You can help us frame the questions we will be asking by filling in the form below.
Prim Perfect 
Reblogged this on Caledon: possessed of character and commented:
and how do you spell community?
The idea that there might be a “community” in SL is like believing that everyone’s favourite ice cream flavour is the same; it is not only ridiculous, but offers an insight into the desperation of those who want to be part of a movement in which everybody agrees and has the same morals, motivations and masturbatory fantasies. SL is even worse than the real world in this respect, because global culture is not homogenous; incest – which is not actually illegal in over 90% of nations which have a coherent legal system – is a taboo in some places but a way of life in others; child sex and prostitution is a way of life in some places, in the same way that inflated salaries for sportsmen and bankers are accepted in others. And in SL you have all these people coming together with the only proscriptions being on gambling, money laundering, and simulation of sex with minors, both parties being adults – bestiality and rape is not condemned but condoned. By some. You want me to put up my hand and say I want to be associated with such a community? No thanks.
Pep (gets fed up with imprecise and valueless questionnaires, and would say that PrimPerfect should know better than to initiate one, and Inara should feel embarrassed at primulgating such arrant nonsense.)”
I am afraid you have rather misinterpreted the concept behind the survey. The idea is to look at not a homogenised Second Life community, but at communities that have been formed and grown (or failed to grow) within Second Life. To pick up on your simile – this is not based on a belief that everyone likes the same flavour of ice cream – it’s looking at which flavours are more popular, and why people might prefer chocolate to coffee, or strawberry to raspberry flavour. And it’s part of an exercise to see whether providing areas that have the greatest appeal might help Second Life to grow – ice cream parlours that provide the favourite flavours or that might offer Rocky Road as an interesting variable.