<Tenshi> so… what’s the deal? Why opt-out and not opt-in? I mean, I can see where you’d get less participation with an opt-in (possibly) but..
<Tenshi> also, how do you feel about it?
<CPrior> right, so i had a good conversation about that on the second cast that went up a couple nights ago with christiano, lordfly, and hiro
<CPrior> as lordfly pointed out, opt-in systems just don’t work
<CPrior> ESC did an all-opt in search engine (slindex.com) previously and it didn’t go anywhere because no one used it– there was no value to get from the service initially
<Tenshi> Hm, I didn’t know there was a second cast episode out. I should go dig that up.
<CPrior> second411.com search, also all opt in, is now owned by mark barrett, who also works for esc
<CPrior> so this is something we had thought extensively about
<Tenshi> Do you think that the system is worth the problems of a few people hollering “foul”?
<CPrior> all opt-out systems like mark’s first projects, slbuzz, which clearly raised some red flags (mine own included, perhaps), are obviously a bit much
<CPrior> so the black and white sort of approach doesn’t yield much to work with
<CPrior> but we decided to make that compromise: if someone is trying to sell something, presumably they want people to be able to find and purchase it
<CPrior> i’ve had a heck of a week and am absolutely doing everything i can do address the concerns people have voiced
<CPrior> but fundamentally, yes, i do believe this is a step forward for finding things in virtual worlds — ie, both for the person looking to purchase something, and the content creator / business owner
<CPrior> if i decide i want to buy a hat, i don’t walk downstairs and wander around around manhattan hoping to bump into someone
<CPrior> i google it
<CPrior> and in SL, there were literally thousands of hidden treasures that I would need to somehow in conversation find out about and receive a landmark
<Tenshi> I honestly thought it was great until I realized that it did expose my private home location. That wasn’t so good. But I found the problems and fixed them, I think – unchecked the “for sale” bit, which I’m still not sure was on.
<Tenshi> Right, the SL search is very similar to Google. (in function and use) At least for me.
<CPrior> things have been found in SL through word of mouth only, for the most part, and that’s almost unbelievable to me
<CPrior> when you compare it to the way we use the web to find our way through RL these days
<Tenshi> that’s very true
<Tenshi> How do you think this will add to the future of the Sheep?
<CPrior> the majority of the 14 months I’ve had with the sheep i was working on SLBoutique.com
<CPrior> and we were keenly aware that taking items and boxing them up, putting them in vendors, then flipping over to a web site to login and add pictures, descriptions, prices, etc., was a pain in the neck when all of this stuff could be seen in world
<CPrior> we wanted to build services on that data, but LL didn’t provide an API to get it
<Tenshi> As a retailer in Second Life, I have to agree with that. I didn’t want to do things twice, so I don’t utilize SL Boutique.
<CPrior> yeah it’s a pain, i completely appreciate that
<CPrior> so it’s taken a bit longer, but we now have the data, and (I can’t stress enough) want to build those APIs to make it available for everyone
<CPrior> and hopefully can help enrich services like SLB, even SLX, SLQ, …, by providing this base
<Tenshi> Groovy. Thank you for your time.
**** In regards to personally banning Grid Shepherd:: *****
<CPrior> technically, just as you and i can cam into a parcel despite banlines and right click stuff, it “can”, but we also load the parcel bans if grid shepherd is there, we just filter out those results (just like items from people who have opted out)
secondlifetribune 