OLR: Exercise 2 – Topic 5

A social architech is someone who designs and delivers societies or groups. Most applicable to this subject would be the Web Social Architechs which help design, nurture and grow online communites.

Online Communities:

www.curse.com

Curse is an online gaming community which has many portals pertaining to different games of many different genres. It originally started out as a mod portal for the game World of Warcraft. This portal then grew as people congrigated together to discuss not only the mods but the game itself. It progressed into a news portal in addition to its original intent. The community is made up of gamers from all over the world.

Here is my WOW Character: http://my.curse.com/vee/characters/details/42388/ (note the website was having issues at the time of linking this)

www.secondlife.com

Having only spent a short period of time in second life It is designed as an entirley user driven world. It is similar to a web 2.0 website however it is contained within a 3d metaverse.

Objectives:

Curse:-

• Provide a central point for modification uploads
• Community and industry news
• Upload videos
• Participate in discussions regarding news updates and all aspects of user submitted content.

SL:-

• User driven virtual world
• Meet friends and form groups
• Start a business
• Live out your fantasy life.

Rules of Engagement:

Curse:-

• http://about.curse.com/terms-of-use/
• Fairly common rules for an online community.
• Fair play, no harrasment, no spamming.

SL:-

• http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php
• Combating intolerance
• Assult – combat only in designated areas

Unique Features:

Curse:-

• User driven content.
• Video uploads
• File uploads
• Myspace and blogger style functionality built into the website for each community member.

SL:-

• User driven content
• Voice chat
• Scripting language
• Real world to virtual world currency exchange
• Unique opportunities e.g. Second Life stock exchange

Behind curse gaming is a dedicated group of gamers who build and run the site. http://about.curse.com/ I believe they are social architects in their vision of an online modification community which has now expanded beyond belief.

Behind Second Life is developed by the company Linden Labs. (www.lindenlab.com)

Taken from their about page:

Linden Lab was founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale to create a revolutionary new form of shared experience, where individuals jointly inhabit a 3D landscape and build the world around them. Today this experience, known as Second Life, has a rapidly growing population of Residents from over 200 countries around the globe, who are creating and inhabiting a virtual world of their own design.

From the world that has been created it is safe to say that Linden Labs are perhaps not Social Architects but provided the tools to thes that are.

OLR: Exercise 1 – Topic 5

Through out the many virtual worlds that I visit I tend to keep the same personality.

My current online identities are as follows:

World of Warcraft – Online Roleplaying game. – Guild leader, Class leader and Webmaster

Gaming forums – e.g. www.cursegaming.com I try and offer advice on technical issues and game issues. I try and help new people.

MOO – Part of this course! POD Group member and all round nice guy!

I keep these personalities the same as my Real Life one as I have many real world friends In them. The thing I have noticed is that online personalities allow people to be a bit more outgoing then they may be in real life. I tend to try and be helpful and caring to other people as well as good for a laugh. I try and keep any real life issues out of online personalities as this is a place of fun and friendship.

I aim to make my online personality bring out the good in me. Meeting new people and having fun are the main aims to me.

From what I have seen many people take advantage of an online identity to live out fantasies, and test out different aspects of their personality that they might be too shy to do in the real world. This can be both good and bad as it may hurt people but can be a great tool for allow people to grow and open up socially.