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Tonight on As The Avatar Turns
Prokofy Neva dislikes Terra Nova.
(It’s OK, guys, don’t cry into your beards. I still like you. Well, some of you. I’m kind of confused by Ms. Ruberg’s articles too.)
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about 3 years ago
In the politics of Second Life, there can be no friends and no quarter given. It is a harsh place, where phallus squadron loom ominously overhead, and SA goons lurk at the periphery of private lands, hoping the owner isn’t around to ban them.
At least now there’s a really cool hole in the ground to stick your head while you’re telling yourself that SL is still a legitimate enterprise.
about 3 years ago
Or to paraphrase, “In the grim future of Second Life, there is only war.”
about 3 years ago
TL;DR
about 3 years ago
That chick is flat-out nuts. She was, of course, one of the most frequent posters on the blogs she was banned from right up until the moment she was banned. Sour grapes.
–matt
about 3 years ago
Cool. Now I can change my bookmark from “Prokofy Nova” back to “Terra Nova.”
about 3 years ago
I’ve interacted with Prokofy in a few places on this great big web of ours, and while she has sometimes had some interesting ideas to contribute, I think a lot of people are turned off by the rhetorical style she uses. Oddly, I always felt that it probably fit in best with the discussions at TN, but maybe not so much. I’m pretty sure that she wouldn’t have so many problems with getting banned from places if she toned it down a little.
Me, I speak more plainly. A lot of what goes on over at TN, being aimed at academics, is quite simply irrelevant to me. However, occasionally there’s a post over there that’s very worthwhile and helpful from my point of view. It’s an odd parallel, because I feel pretty much the same about most of what Prokofy writes too.
The antitheses of Prokofy Neva in the blogosphere? Jeff Freeman, I think.
about 3 years ago
As far as I’m concerned they waited way too long to ban the nutcase.
about 3 years ago
I read half of the first Prokofy wall of text I encountered, but from then on she was in the Kitsune TL;DR bucket. The other users in the linked thread make great points about the (un)worth of two-page comments in the TerraNova format. If you have that much to say, you’d better write your own article.
Argumentative posts of that volume and frequency scream sophistry, not insight.
about 3 years ago
Jeebus.
I just took a look at terranova. It didn’t strike me as particularly different from, say, F13. Except with less swearing and green text.
about 3 years ago
The whole situation is completely silly. Prokofy likes posting all over the internet – but the ranking of her blog demonstrates how many people actually want to read her attempts to biblify the web.
Perhaps we need a command line control where we can turn off verbose mode?
about 3 years ago
I’m still waiting for the remote-capable RUM command for use by admins: Reformat User’s Mind.
about 3 years ago
I stop caring about the content of a paranoid rant the third or fourth time I have to untangle subject/verb disagreement or wonder which tense was actually meant.
about 3 years ago
Prokofy’s “contributions” to TN is what drove me away from TN … irony?
about 3 years ago
All I could take away from that drama was:
…that a statement I believe to be true is a fact until proven wrong.
That’s not really how academic discussion works and pretty much invalidates her arguments. ALL of them, regardless of their veracity. A person who is arguing from the point of view that she can make a statement with no evidence and then wait for someone to wade through a morass of words in order to disprove
her pointthat statement is a person for whom no amount of evidence can ever be proof. There will always be an extenuation or an agenda that discredits her critics without the burden of rational argument.about 3 years ago
She is a universal bore with no compelling arguments. If she had any, who among the TN audience had the patience to find them amongst the garbage? They’re a pretty patient group, too.
What bugged me most was that she tended to suck people in to her bizarre world of non sequitur, especially the authors of otherwise very interesting articles and research.
about 3 years ago
bullet, thanks for summing up what frustrated me about Prokofy’s posts, and so many other internet posts. It’s not really a discussion if you’re screaming “Prove me wrong!” while holding your hands over your ears and not listening, or over your eyes and not reading. Posters like that suck up far too much energy from other participants.
about 3 years ago
Oh, and be sure to read the “Prokofy Neva: Lunatic-At-Law” portion of the Second Life Sucks report. I like the part where they say s/he’s the Julian Dibbell of Second Life.
about 3 years ago
Scott Jennings says: As a note from a long time community maintainer (which I think is an appropriate public note in a discussion of community maintenance), public discussions of bans such as the above is exceedingly counterproductive.
Wow, such consistency…
Bullet:…that a statement I believe to be true is a fact until proven wrong.
That’s not really how academic discussion works and pretty much invalidates her arguments.
You should spend more time in academia… or be glad that you don’t have to…
about 3 years ago
> Wow, such consistency…
As I said immediately afterword (as I’m sure you noticed) I corrected my typo in the Terra Nova comment. What I meant to type was that public ANNOUNCEMENTS of bans was counterproductive. Which is in fact true. You don’t announce bans for the world to comment and posture about. You tap people on the shoulder and silently escort them to the door.
about 3 years ago
And perpetuating the announcement is of course different and constructive? I still don’t see the consistency. Sorry. I don’t mind that you aren’t consistent, though. I don’t expect community managers to be consistent. I expect them to outsmart themselves like this…
I do agree that having the comment thread was silly, I don’t think they intended a ban, because in reality they can’t enforce it. When Dan Hunter got fed up it probably just stuck, hoping that the accused didn’t realize that they could take on a new identity…
That said, the real mistake was to announce a policy set-in-stone with big letters, and have people discuss it. If you’re claiming to have a huge dramatic problem, you’ll increase your chances of getting one. You either propose a set of policy options for discussion or just establish a well-established-policy as the most natural thing in the world, preferably during some event where it fits in (like when you are doing major redesign of a system).
What is surprising is that people are reluctant to learn from the downfall of USENET in 1995. Small narrow groups with an established focus suriveved, wide inter-disciplinary groups died. Inter-disciplinary groups shold have moderation policies set up-front. Obviously.
Besides, Terranova could do more to encourage their inter-disciplinary focus, like actually explaining the theories they refer to in their posts so other participants actually can follow. Most people don’t have a good grasp on Structuration Theory, Actor-Network Theory and so on, but not because said frameworks are terribly clever and hard to get. (Well, the books on them make them hard to get… but that’s mostly due to exessive verbosity.) I guess there are many ways to moderate, but moderation through obscurity is the less flattering one…
about 3 years ago
“When Dan Hunter got fed up it probably just stuck, hoping that the accused didn’t realize that they could take on a new identity…”
I don’t see it happening. Prokofy is too narcissistic to post one of her diatribes under the the handle of ‘Joe’.
about 3 years ago
@ola: By pointing out the silliness of announcing bans Lum is being inconsistent? Based on your usage of the word “inconsistent,” I don’t think you understand its meaning.
about 3 years ago
DaveN, nice fanboi.
about 3 years ago
>You should spend more time in academia… or be glad that you don’t have to…
Yeah, nothing destroys a good system/method like people using it.
about 3 years ago
Yet another bloviating internet ad-infinitum poster who just doesn’t get it. Sure, each one may actually have some interesting and/or valid points amongst the verbal drec, but it’s ultimately just not worth the pain and work to bother going through and just wears on the discussion at hand.
State your point of view clearly and succinctly along with a couple supporting arguments if needed and leave it at that.
I agree with the “if you really need to hear yourself speak alot, take it to your own blog” view. Then those who want to try to divine your pov in more depth can choose to do so while keeping the original discussion more succinct and cogent.
about 3 years ago
Ah, another amen corner I see!
My posts on Terra Nova weren’t especially long — they just disagreed with the orthodoxies of the contributors and their fanboyz.
Re: “…that a statement I believe to be true is a fact until proven wrong.”
That’s the case for every single person contributing or commenting on a blog. People gather evidence from their own experience; they read; they think; they look at whatever “facts” are out there — usually from Google or Wikipedia. And they pronounce something to be true. Oh, like Bonnie Ruberg thinking that sexual expression has been “suppressed” in Second Life. Oh, and like Nick Yee thinking avatars have a “gaze” and their behaviour reveals their RL gender! Yeah, stuff like that!
And when they’ve made their statement, which they believe to be true, they don’t leave “the burden of proof” on others; they wait to see if anything else that either they find out or that others press upon them could disprove their belief in something as a fact.
All I’ve done is describe exactly what everybody else does everywhere, but is too arrogant or ashamed to admit.
I don’t know what my “blog ranking” is but I’ll wager it’s higher than Nobody’s.
about 3 years ago
Time to Prok: 5 days. I guess you weren’t on her radar screen until now.
about 3 years ago
“My posts on Terra Nova weren’t especially long”
Actually, they were. Subjectively obvious and mathematically provable. But thanks for playing.