Your2ndPlace

"RL names" is an idea whose time has long passed, and it's a foolish and disastrous error on Facebook's part that they insist on users divulging so much data.

Do you really not put money into a bank "owned by avatars with fake names?" Really? The rest of the world does: they sign their paychecks over to "fictional persons' called corporations whose "residences" are a post office box in Delaware. Most atomic-world business is done through "fake names" specifically to *protect* people from liability.

Synthetic worlds take that concept beyond business into every aspect of identity. We *create* who we are, transcending the concept of inherited identity that marked the peasant with his father's name and job, her husband's identity in name and law. Oh, yes, the peasant village assured you that you knew who you were dealing with and their reputation, back for generations - at the cost of stifling change, growth, experimentation, innovation.

That's what you're advocating *for.* It's antiquated and dangerous. Synthetic worlds are to personal freedom what the corporation has been to financial freedom: a step from the shackles of the inherited into the invented.

Facebook, despite its numbers, has some strange ideas that belong in a past century. SL is a market leader, not a follower: by your logic, Linden Labs should be making cars, because there's a huge market for cars and an industry template. That's not how innovation happens! Innovation happens by breaking from the old ways and seizing on the new.

In three years, the conventional wisdom, what "everyone knows," will be that identity unity and transparency is dangerous, outmoded foolishness, and *of course* anyone would manage their identities through avatars, just as they'd do business through and with corporations. LL is a tiny bit out ahead of that trend, not slavishly following a company with an antiquated business model.

Look outside and wave - that's us passing your unitary identity in the fast lane....

--Sophrosyne Stenvaag, http://sophrosyne_sl.livejournal.com

I disagree with your suggestion that RL names be used in SL. SL is a fantasy-land...of role play and imagination and creation. No better way to smother that than to use RL names. I can do things here that have no connection to RL. I can experiment and try on new ways of being and behaving. And if I want to share my RL name I can - with those I choose to.

I have interactions with RL people using their RL names - IN RL!!! I do not need to make a make-believe world that consists of all RL things and people. WHY?? What a waste of energy.

I do not think RL names would lend more credibility. What is to stop someone from lying?????

Leave SL the way it is and go start your own RL-Land - but leave my playground untouched. Go be boring with the rest of the people on Facebook.

Facebook was in the news the other day, people were being told they were revealing too much information about themselves and that that is dangerous. I really don't think RL names is an attractive proposition. I certainly wouldn't want to use my RL name on SL. Isn't part of the selling point of SL getting away from RL?

Now as for buying an island off someone whose name matches their payment info on file name, I don't see that as being an issue either. If people are going to rip people off with their SL name tied to RL info, they will also rip people off with their RL name tied to their RL name.

I think that LL can help with trust, by getting away from their "No interference" approach and actively aiding residents who are scammed. If someone buys an island and it isn't delivered, LL have a duty to intervene, surely?